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Nintendo has experimented with releases on non-Nintendo hardware before, even during the NES/Famicom era. They released a port of of Super Mario Bros. with original levels for the NEC PC-8801 called Super Mario Bros. Special. It was special all right: no scrolling, just flick screen graphics like Prince of Persia. And only four colors so the sprites were dithered and ugly.

Then there was the educational game market, with Nintendo licensing out Mario characters to Software Toolworks and others to produce educational PC games like Mario Is Missing and Mario Teaches Typing.

Then there was the CD-i but I'm not really counting that since it was the remnants of a deal to produce a SNES CD add-on.

I don't think this is going to be a move to mobile phones -- even though it's a money press to pivot from hard-to-produce good console games to shitty in-app-purchase-laden mobile-phone shovelware and that's just what Sega and Konami are doing. I think they will use mobile software to supplement the console experience. Imagine booting up a Pokémon Garden app that lets you check on the health of your Pokémon when you don't have your 3DS with you.

SMB Special port is even worse than expected http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HQOKmAPRA

It's funny how limited these things were, yet I'm more immersed than Crysis or GTA. Maybe a psychology/nostalgia. But even these accounted for, I'm amazed that people were making fun toys out of such constrained hardware. It's all stupid and bare, but a bunch of invisible blocks gives big surprises. A tiny palette swap and you're into a secret coin-filled cave. It's like stories, a few words trigger your imagination better than pseudo realism. It's also a bit relativist, in 85 it was the best medium so we'd never question the visuals, and would go along with that adventure. Until SMB3 quality leap, the SNES etc etc. A recurrent question of mine nowadays is how low can you go (cpu/ram/colors) and still make a special gaming experience. Back in the days that was the art.

They licensed games on platforms even before that - Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong were ported to many home computers by Atari's home computer label, Atarisoft. Those were good ports, so I imagine Nintendo was enthusiastic to try it again later with those disasters.
Those date from a time when Nintendo sold arcade hardware but not home consoles, so shipping a Nintendo game on non-Nintendo consumer hardware was not considered a compromise to Nintendo's core business.
A graphic in that story indicates that Nintendo are moving towards a device-agnostic, subscription-based approach to game releases. Sort of Netflix, but for games. Challenges would certainly exist from a controller point of view, but if they can provide a controller standard to work across multiple devices it could work.

Of course, this is mostly rumour at this point. Interested in seeing what the Nintendo NX turns out to be.

> The graphic in that story indicates that Nintendo are moving towards a device-agnostic, subscription-based approach to game releases.

Where are you seeing this? I only saw a progression of the Super Mario Bros. games over the past 30 years. Nothing (that I could see) hinted at moving in this direction.

If you're referring to the hand drawing the board, this is more in reference to forthcoming Mario Maker title for the Wii U:

http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/i7YeZxnWhEFX6ST-sLdUBGm...

> Where are you seeing this?

The graphic with "Jointly develop and operate a new membership service that encompasses smart devices and dedicated video game systems" in the centre.

Are we looking at the same thing? [1] I'm not seeing this at all. The only thing I see is about the history of SMB.

[1] https://www.nintendo.co.uk/games/oms/mario30/index.html

The story link changed.

Here's another source for the image I'm referring to: http://www.vg247.com/2015/05/08/nintendo-rewards-pc-nx-wii-u...

Here's a direct link to the image: http://assets.vg247.com/current//2015/05/30l.jpg

My misunderstanding -- you were referring to my link, not the root link. I see what you're referring to now.
What else could they mean by "mobile"?
Mobile as in "portable". Which could include any array of portable (and non-phone) devices.
I thought that might be what you meant, I just always associate the word mobile with phones and thought I might have been missing something. The 3DS eShop already has a lot of popular NES games, though and keeps expanding fairly consistently.