Nintendo is going to stick to making games for its own hardware platforms, according to the company"s president Satoru Iwata. News.com reports that in speaking to a Japanese news agency, Iwata says that the company has no plans to offer its classic game franchises for the smartphone market. While he admitted that offering smartphone-based games might help Nintendo financially in the short term it would hurt the company"s long term plans.
Earlier this week, Nintendo"s stock price took a big hit, going down five percent, after investors saw that a pre-Tokyo Game Show press event by Nintendo didn"t offer any sign that the company would release games for the growing smartphone market. But Iwata disagrees with that strategy, saying that such a move would cut into the company"s business of making both its software and its console hardware by itself.
As we have reported before, Nintendo"s stock price has taken a nearly 50 percent hit in 2011, thanks in part due to the announcement of its upcoming Nintendo Wii U console back at E3 2011 in June. That event caused Nintendo"s stock price to drop over 10 percent as investors were unimpressed by its hardware. The company"s stock price took yet another hit in July as Nintendo slashed the price of its portable Nintendo 3DS console in an effort to boost the poor sales of the 3D-based device. There are also rumors that the Wii U is dealing with its own production issues that might delay the release of the console. Nintendo didn"t reveal any new info about the Wii U during this week"s Tokyo Game Show.