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Nintendo’s possible plans for smartphone peripherals
July 02, 2025
At the end of last month, Nintendo held its “76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders” andas Polygon noticed, one of the comments made had to do with the company’s plans for mobile.
And the response, from Shinya Takahashi, Director, General Manager of Entertainment Planning and Development Division:
With respect to Miitomo, Nintendo’s first app, whichhad a smash startbut has been plagued withreports of dwindling retention, Nintendo’s President, Tatsumi Kimishima, commented that “we are focused on the retention rate, which is how many users continue to playMiitomo”.Missing was any intention to developcontentfor the app, the lack of which many feel is directly responsible for the diminished usage. Nintendo plans to launch a total of 5 mobile apps before next April, two more of whichhave already been announced.
The bigger picture
The meeting also contained comments about the company’s next console, code-named “NX”, expected to launch next March. Nothing specific was given, however, about the OS it will run; some early rumors had suggestedit might be Android. There was some reference to the idea that the NX may be a “challenge” for mainstream success,as the Wii U was. To date the Wii U stands asbeing the least successfulof all “core” Nintendo consoles released, having sold just 12.80 million units as of March 31st this year. Prior to launch,at least one person in the company had expected100 million units to be sold.
The transcript also included a rather curious exchange (Question #1) with a point being made about the total absence of women among Nintendo’s directors and executives, to which the President replied that “we choose directors who we believe can best help steer our company regardless of gender, age, or nationality” and adds that the company “has many female employees in active roles, and our overseas subsidiaries have many female staff members” and stresses that “our management team is keen to absorb the opinions of those employees to develop products and run the company in ways that reflect both the female viewpoint and a global viewpoint.”
In recent years Japan has sought to try and includemore women in corporate leadership roles, though it would seem Nintendo – based in Kyoto – wants to remain tied to its traditional mindset, something that many feel also plagues the company’s policy on DRM.
Pocket Gamer
Nintendo’s possible entry into the smartphone accessory market will no doubt be of interest to those who were upset by the lack of traditional Mario or Zelda mobile games. It could, potentially, mean the eventual emergence of an action platformer that manages to make use of a mainstay manipulation model (i.e. a controller). Still, based on the meeting as a whole, mobile clearly is not the main priority of the company, as it is instead focused on the NX and making that a success.
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