Nintendo Is Leaving Its Comfort Zone, and We’re All Better Off
Games for mobile devices, theme park attractions, escape rooms — the Japanese company is finally expanding its horizons.
Super Mario will finally jump to iPhones on Thursday, and I will get to live out my boyhood dreams of exploring the game series’s Mushroom Kingdom in the real world sometime in the future. Today, Nintendo revealed initial plans for its , which will open in Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan in 2020, with other locations to follow.
There will also be . My inner child just can’t even.
You see, the Japanese company that’s also behind ±Ê´Ç°ìé³¾´Ç²Ô and Donkey Kong has majorly shifted its strategy in the past few years, at a time when the smartphones in all of our pockets increasingly threaten its grip on the handheld games market and its Wii U console failed to live up to the success of its predecessor.
Now, Nintendo is no longer just a company that makes video games — it’s a company that leverages its legendary libary of intellectual property.
“We have reshaped our overall business mission and key strategies that are driving it,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé recently told . “Our business mission is to make people smile through the use of our IP.”
Even just a few years ago, the idea of its characters ever appearing on a system not bearing the company’s name (let’s forget those ). This year, the company will have released three mobile apps: its social network-like , that little augmented reality game ±Ê´Ç°ìé³¾´Ç²Ô Go and Super Mario Run on Dec. 15.
It took a while, but Nintendo is adapting to survive and thrive. It’s following in the footsteps of the Walt Disney Company, which started out making cartoons starring Mickey Mouse and is now a licensing behemoth .
Of course, the Big N isn’t out of the video game game. It will release its newest console, Switch, this March.
Super Mario will finally jump to iPhones on Thursday, and I will get to live out my boyhood dreams of exploring the game series’s Mushroom Kingdom in the real world sometime in the future. Today, Nintendo revealed initial plans for its , which will open in Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan in 2020, with other locations to follow.
There will also be . My inner child just can’t even.
You see, the Japanese company that’s also behind ±Ê´Ç°ìé³¾´Ç²Ô and Donkey Kong has majorly shifted its strategy in the past few years, at a time when the smartphones in all of our pockets increasingly threaten its grip on the handheld games market and its Wii U console failed to live up to the success of its predecessor.
