Late last year, Nintendo announced that it would be establishing a joint venture called Nintendo Systems with mobile developer DeNA, and now the company has officially launched, right on time. So what exactly will Nintendo Systems make? Things are still murky. There is an official website but that is about where the information ends. A press release from November states that the company will work to “strengthen the digitalization of Nintendo’s business” and create new “value-added services.”
Nintendo and DeNA have been closely tied together since 2015, as the latter developed a number of mobile titles based on Nintendo IPs. This relationship allowed for the release of popular smartphone games like Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, among others. So one likely outcome here is that the just-announced Nintendo Systems will develop and publish forthcoming mobile titles.
There is another, less-glamorous, option. In addition to developing mobile games, DeNA also handles some of the infrastructure regarding Nintendo Accounts services. Nintendo has stated that they will continue to use dedicated Nintendo Accounts moving forward into new console generations, so the new company could just be a way to keep everything in-house.
After all, the website also suggests Nintendo Systems will assist with the “development and operation of systems related to the digital part of Nintendo’s business." This is a loose translation from Japanese, though it certainly sounds boring enough to be related to accounts stuff. We reached out to Nintendo for some clarification and will update this post when we know more. In the meantime, there are just a few more weeks until that Breath of the Wild sequel drops.