DeNA has been talking up its upcoming mobile games with Nintendo, specifically mentioning just how much money it wants to make (a lot) and the game it hopes to beat in the process.
Speaking to Reuters, DeNA Chief Executive Isao Moriyasu said "We haven't talked to Nintendo about targets, but at DeNA, our best-selling game brought in 3 billion yen a month (about £17 million), and we want to surpass that".
So what game was has the monetary targets, at least, that DeNA is aiming to hit? Kaitō Royale, one variation of which looks a bit like this:
Probably not what most people are expecting or hoping to see from Nintendo's first mobile game, but then DeNA has only really talked about the financial part of their aspirations here. Characters, gameplay and all the rest is still secret for whatever the two companies have planed for a first release later this year.
The original Kaitō Royale is a Mafia Wars style game that launched in 2009 as the first title for DeNA's Mobage mobile/social platform. The one with 30 million subscribers that Nintendo seems so keen to buy into. The original game has partly been attributed to the subsequent boom in social mobile games in Japan. It was so popular that it's lead to multiple spin offs like Kaitō Royale: Secret Poker (in the image up top), Kaitō Royale Zero (in the video), and its own TV show which has been running since 2011.
At the very least this might give us some insight in the monetization models DeNA is thinking about (you're not making that much cash a month with a pay once game). The original game saw players picking a cast of characters and battling enemies, with a cool down after encounters that you either waited out or bypassed by buying coins. The social side works by giving you additional bonuses and in-game cash by building up a friends list of allies.
It does sound very... mobile, doesn't it? Although it seems like the DeNA/Nintendo collaboration could produce all manor of new stuff, with Moriyasu adding, "We want to create games that will be played by hundreds of millions of people. We want to create multiple hit games rather than aiming to succeed with just one powerful IP element."
