New Nintendo Partner DeNA Believes They Can Get 100 Million Daily Users For Mobile Titles?
The events of yesterday are still sifted through today. To recap, Nintendo has partnered with mobile gaming company DeNA to make original titles featuring their characters for smart phones. The world has reacted to this in numerous ways. Some like it, some don’t, and of course some are unsure.
One person who is really upbeat about all this is Shintaro Asako, who runs DeNA West. He stated proudly that he believes that the new partnership with Nintendo could lead to 100 million daily users for their titles.
“We wanted to get a huge audience like Candy Crush,” DeNa West CEO Shintaro Asako told VentureBeat’s GamesBeat. “We wanted to create something with that kind of daily active user base.”
He’s quite adamant that this is a reachable goal too. “I don’t think we’re dreaming [about reaching] 100 million DAU,” he said.
Clearly some people agree with the potential this new partnership has. Just from the stock market numbers, both companies stock went up in value moments after the partnership was announced. For Nintendo, it went up 15%, and based on where they were last year, they’re now up 40%.
Now of course, part of getting this 100 million daily user base is actually having games for them to play. According to Mr. Iwata, they hope to release their first original smartphone game, later this year.
“Regarding the individual video game titles, when it will be launched, we will be making the announcement when each of those games are ready,” Iwata responded. “At least, however, we believe that there is no mean of collaboration [sic] if we can’t launch anything, at least once, or some sort of output within this year. Also, per game title, regarding the roles of each companies will differ depending on games.”
Interesting, on numerous levels. You can feel the potential for this and that both Nintendo and DeNA have thought out what they’re trying to do. The only question now is: Will they live up to it?