DeNA wants games to bring in over $ 25m/ month

Tokyo: Japanese online gamemaker DeNA Co Ltd on Wednesday said it wants its new partnership with gaming giant Nintendo Co Ltd to yield titles that bring in

over three billion yen ($ 25.02 million) a month. The alliance, announced on

March 17, will bring Nintendo characters such as

Super Mario and Donkey Kong to smartphones, and see their jointly developed

games available through phones and tablets as well as Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS consoles. DeNA chief execu

tive Isao Moriyasu said the partners would release their

first game later this year, but was coy on which character from Nintendo’s trove of intellectual property ( IP)

would be featured. “We want to create games that will be played by hundreds

of millions of people,” Moriyasu told Reuters in an interview. “We want to cre

ate multiple hit games rather than aiming to succeed with just one powerful IP element.” “We haven’t talked to Nintendo about targets, but at DeNA, our best- selling game brought in 3 billion yen a month, and we want to surpass that,” he

said, referring to smartphone game Kaito Royale which was turned into a TV series. The companies have not disclosed details of any revenue- sharing agreement, but analysts said Nintendo will likely earn around 70 percent of proceeds from the partnership. Investors

have long called on Nintendo to shift focus to mobile devices after losing

customers to both smartphone gaming app makers and console rivals such as PlayStation maker Sony

Corp and Xbox maker Microsoft Corp.