Nintendo has revealed new plans to entice gamers to buy their games, by offering more affordable titles on the 3DS.
Coming a little over a week before the next Nintendo financial meeting, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had an interview with the Nikkei, where he explained some of his plans for Nintendo’s comeback strategy.
These more affordable titles will be based on old, recognizable games, and will also take ideas from games that are available now on smartphones. They intend to keep development costs low for these games as well.
Iwata didn’t name IPs, but it seems likely their most recognizable IPs, like Mario, Zelda, etc, will be up for grabs. They do also have more recent games that have dabbled in smartphone strategies, such as Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball, Steel Diver Sub Wars, and most recently, Collectible Badge Center.
Nintendo will also dabble in free trial version of games, this time to drive sales of new and untested IPs. What they will do is let fans play the first stages of these games for free. Obviously, these games will be designed with this in mind.
Nintendo’s Q3 financials are on the upswing with a profit for $ 266 million, but still below expectations. Nintendo has cut their FY forecast by half from 40 to 20 billion yen, but Iwata still expects a return to what he calls ‘Nintendo-like’ profits in the future, now forecasting a profit of 100 billion yen, or $ 845 million, by March 2017.
Do you own a 3DS? Are you looking forward to these smaller scale games? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
