Nintendo Considering Tablet & Smartphone Integration

Microsoft and Sony have both started to really push second-screen integration for their consoles, starting towards the end of the last console generation, and now with Apps such as Smartglass for Xbox One or Vita support for PlayStation 4. Nintendo however, have yet to really make any major in-roads in the mobile device arena.

Man of the people, the ever-popular President of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, was quoted by Polygon as saying that Nintendo have been looking at creating “little experiences you can have on your smartphone or tablet.” He didn’t extrapolate further into what these experiences would consist of, but did hint that they were mainly still designed to push players back towards their own Nintendo consoles.

Going into the topic further, Fils-Aime states that “Our philosophy that Nintendo games are best played on Nintendo devices has not changed,” when asked whether or not we would see the famous Nintendo characters ever make their way into standalone Apps for mobile devices. They recognise the huge install base of mobile devices, but still look at them more as marketing tools for home and handheld consoles.

So, whilst we do have Pokemon TV and the Pokedex Apps on mobile devices, it sounds like we certainly shouldn’t hold our breath about seeing a Mario or Zelda game ever appearing on our iPhones or Android devices, for example.