When I say “Nintendo," do you say “Kim Kardashian?" Well, the CEO of DeNA West, Shintaro Asako, does, in a way. In an interview with Pocketgamer.biz, Asako talked about the importance of working with Nintendo because of the way each company plays to the other’s strengths; Nintendo approaches games as a product while DeNA approaches them as a service based on its history as an ecommerce platform. Asako feels that DeNA’s expertise on the backend of game development perfectly complements Nintendo’s best-in-business IPs.
However, Asako noted that even if DeNA builds a fun game in a good engine, discoverability can still be quite an issue for companies working on mobile, and that’s where Nintendo’s brand name alone can help by securing a massive audience, hopefully of hundreds of millions. For Asako, the prime example of a great partnership is Glu mobile and Kim Kardashian: Glu built the game and Kim Kardashian ensured that millions would download it. Asako, then, hopes Nintendo’s IP does for his company just what Kim Kardashian did for Glu.
Unfortunately, he didn’t provide any new information regarding the actual games that will come out of his company’s partnership with Nintendo, instead reiterating that the first game should release by the end of 2015 and then four more by the end of March 2017. Now, where’s a screenshot of Kim with a Mario hat when you need it.
