Nintendo And Smartphones

While I remain a Nintendo fan to the bone I have to admit, Nintendo's probably the most stubborn company in the entire gaming industry. Though this has allowed them preserve the quality of their top franchises and offer unique gameplay experiences in a generation that cares mostly about visuals, Nintendo has found itself in the old school in so many other aspects. This is pretty much common knowledge but the company's struggles with the Wii U even makes it more evident.

Nintendo has talked about changing it's paradigm and this includes the use of smartphones to their advantage even though they've decided to keep their titles to themselves, not a bad start but I do wish they'd consider making games for smartphones. Many fans believe such a move will hurt the brand but personally I believe it won't and here's why.

First of all the Wii U and 3DS though with touchscreens, are very different from smartphones and offer different gaming experiences. A Pikmin minigame for example on smartphones can hardly displace the unique feel Pikmin 3 on the Wii U offers while making it available to a large number of smartphone users who can have a feel of what Pikmin games are like and probably purchase the Wii U for that reason. Call it crazy if u like but it's not different from how consumers of a single product grow into fans of a certain brand, or how I was slowly lured into the crowd of Nintendo fans after playing A Link to the Past.

Don't be such a fanboy, just imagine it...

With features like unlocking extras on the console version of a game after making progress in it's smartphone siblin and connecting both hardwares afterwards, smartphone installments of treasured Nintendo games will only help advertise the console versions ( Now I'm not talking about ports like Final Fantasy III on smartphones, I mean something fresh and and accessible for smartphone users ). Plus Nintendo has Miiverse which in my opinion is seriously being underutilized, there are a whole lot of ways they could be using that.

This is all wishful though. But while the iPhone didn't displace the iPod or iPad even though the run the same OS and have almost all things in common,  I strongly believe Nintendo products and smartphones can coexist, at least we can believe that for the 3DS' sake. I'm looking forward seeing what Nintendo has planned for smartphones, but... it's Nintendo, keep those expectations down for your own good.