In an interview over at [a]listdaily, Dena West CEO Shintaro Asako talked about the upcoming Nintendo mobile games that we are all anxiously awaiting. I’m really very curious to see what DeNA and Nintendo will come up with and how they’ll fit Nintendo IP into the mobile world. Asako started the interview by talking about the key to attracting a good audience for a mobile game. He emphasized the need for the game to be sexy enough (his words, not mine) and to be able to grab player’s attention right away by appearing to be relatively simple and then slowly revealing more complexity. He often came back to the importance of having an already-established IP to work with because they don’t have to spend a lot on marketing and they have a ready-made audience that will jump on the game the minute it’s out.
Shifting the conversation to DeNa’s deal with Nintendo, Asako explains that there are people who have decided to spend a minimum of $200 to buy Nintendo consoles in order to have access to Nintendo IP. That number, Asako continues, is twice as big as the Candy Crash‘s total user base. Asako stated that the large Nintendo player base and the money Nintendo fans spend lead him to think that at least 150 or 200 million people will try Nintendo mobile games. As for marketing the games, Asako said that they’ll go with mass marketing to get the word out that a mobile game is coming out.
Asako was very interested in talking about the marketing side of things and explained how Nintendo has such strong IP that DeNA can include mass marketing in its campaigns from the start without worrying about the product’s long-term value. Apparently, we can expect to see DeNA ads in live sports because Asako says it helps the company track installs and see whether install spikes were linked to the TV commercial. While Asako didn’t mention Nintendo ads, who knows, maybe we’ll see famous Nintendo characters interrupting Sunday Night Football. If you want to read the whole interview, go here.
