Nintendo Announces New Subsidiary Company In Collaboration with Mobile Gaming Studio, DeNA
Nintendo has officially announced a new subsidiary company, Nintendo Systems Co Ltd, in collaboration with their long-term mobile gaming partner DeNA. The partnership between Nintendo and DeNA started in 2015, with Nintendo taking 15% equity in the company. DeNA has been behind most of Nintendo’s mobile games, including Miitomo, Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and Mario Kart Tour.
But this new joint venture will not be limited to the mobile gaming sector only, as stated by DeNA in their announcement; the new company will also focus on developing and researching new digital technologies and services for Nintendo Co Ltd.
As part of this effort, Nintendo entered a business and capital alliance with DeNA in 2015 and has collaborated to develop and operate the new core system centered around Nintendo Account since then.
Based on the expertise accumulated over the seven plus years and the experience of co-developing multiple services based on Nintendo Account, Nintendo and DeNA will advance their partnership and establish a joint venture company.
With the objective to strengthen the digitalization of Nintendo’s business, the joint venture company will research and develop, as well as create value-added services to further reinforce Nintendo’s relationship with consumers.”
80% of the required capital for the new company will be provided by Nintendo, and it will have significant holdings in the company. The new company will be located in Tokyo and will start its operations in 2023. Gaming companies, including Nintendo, have been taking a serious interest in the mobile gaming market due to its massive exponential growth.
Nintendo has reported $160 million in revenue from its mobile gaming division. However, still, it’s far behind giants like Take-Two Interactive, who have reported total revenue of $932 million that their mobile gaming division generated. Activision also recorded $730 million in income from their King studio, a house of popular games like Candy Crush.
As for Nintendo’s mobile games revenue, as reported by Sensor Tower, Nintendo’s Fire Emblem has generated over $1 Billion in player spending.
However, if we consider the download figures of the mobile games by Nintendo, Fire Emblem Heroes ranks No. 4 in its portfolio, picking up 17.8 million installs, or 2.7 percent of the total. Super Mario Run ranks No. 1, with 310.7 million downloads, or approximately 47 percent of the total. In contrast, Mario Kart Tour ranks No. 2 with 227.2 million, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp ranks No. 3 with 65.4 million.
It will be interesting to see how this new company will turn out for Nintendo and what games or services they will develop to enhance the fans’ experience. What are your thoughts about this? Let us know in the comment section below.
