Nintendo Does Not Plan On Making iPhone Games Anytime Soon

Nintendo has recently been under pressure to create or port their games to smartphones like the iPhone. The company has remained firm in their current philosophy of creating software only for their own products. However, more pressure to at least attempt putting some of their games on mobile devices is building. This has prompted Nintendo's President, Satoru Iwata, to respond. According to IGN, at Nintendo's press event yesterday (held before the Tokyo game show started), Iwata shut down any potential plans for the company to head in that direction. IGN reports:

This is absolutely not under consideration," replied Iwata. "If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It's probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we'd make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short term profits, but to Nintendo's mid and long term competitive strength.

Nintendo has recently unveiled the company's plans for the rest of the year and how they plan to turn around their situation with the Nintendo 3DS. The handheld has been underperforming at retail and struggling to compete in a more crowded mobile market. The system's price was recently dropped and Nintendo continues trying to find ways in order to boost it. Nintendo has recently shocked everyone with revelations of a second analog stick attachment that the company apparently forgot to include the first time around. However, the software outlook does look promising. The fourth Monster Hunter is set to hit the platform sometime in the near future, and this year many classic Nintendo franchises will be released for the handheld. However, investors are still worried and putting pressure on Nintendo to release software for smartphones. The recent press conference and Iwata's statements regarding smartphones have created a backlash at Nintendo. The company's stock took a big hit as a result of the conference. IGN further reported:

Stocks took another 5% tumble after the conference closed, as they seem to do in the wake of any major Nintendo announcements these days... So it seems like relations between Nintendo and its stockholders aren't going to be getting better any time soon. This issue of smartphone development feels immovable at the moment.

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