Nintendo's President and CEO talks about his company's mobile partnership with DeNA as well what their smartphone games will cost.

When Nintendo announced that it was partnering with DeNA to make games for mobile devices, that's about all it said. Nintendo's CEO and President, Satoru Iwata, sat down with TIME to talk more about the partnership and why it's waited this long to enter the smartphone gaming market. When asked why Nintendo decided to go over to the dark side of mobile gaming, when it had previously shown reluctance to do so, Iwata replied:

We made the announcement yesterday because we finally found solutions to the problems we identified. More specifically, we will not merely port games developed for our dedicated game systems to smart devices just as they are—we will develop brand new software which perfectly matches the play style and control mechanisms of smart devices. We have come to the stage where we can say that we will be able to develop and operate software which, in the end, will not hurt the value of Nintendo IP but, rather, will become an opportunity for the great number of people around the world who own smart devices—but do not have interest in dedicated video game hardware—to be interested in Nintendo IP and eventually to become fans of our dedicated game systems.

Iwata hinted that the new hardware project, the NX, isn't necessarily involving DeNA. In terms of mobile game pricing, Iwata said his company will deal with things on a case-by-case basis:

Accordingly, for each title, we will discuss with DeNA and decide the most appropriate payment method. So, specifically to your question, both can be options, and if a new Nintendo-like invention comes of it, then all the better.

On the other hand, Nintendo does not intend to choose payment methods that may hurt Nintendo’s brand image or our IP, which parents feel comfortable letting their children play with.

Also, it’s even more important for us to consider how we can get as many people around the world as possible to play Nintendo smart device apps, rather than to consider which payment system will earn the most money.

Interesting enough, Nintendo and DeNA will be releasing their first mobile game together before the year is finished. We'll just have to wait and see what this first project is and what its pricing will be like.

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