By using its success with the old Game & Watch and the money-making Game Boy, DS, and 3DS handhelds, Nintendo could easily find a way to get people to download a $1 app a billion times.
Gamevil is taking its hit Korean game Dragon Blaze to a global audience starting on May 11 by launching the title worldwide in new Western markets. Preregistration starts today for the role-playing game, which originally launched in February 2014 on the KakaoTalk messaging platform in South Korea and later in Japan.
If Nintendo can bring the same level of innovation to its game monetization strategy as it does its gameplay experience, this deal could create a new template for how mobile games and advertising can work together going forward.
Back in November 2008, I warned Nintendo that the iPhone represented a threat to the dominance of the portable Nintendo DS gaming handheld. Seven years later, Nintendo acknowledged the threat by creating an alliance with Japan’s DeNA to make mobile games with Nintendo characters.