Japanese gaming giant Nintendo confirmed Tuesday a broad partnership with fellow Japanese videogame maker DeNA that will see it create games for smartphones and tablets based on its classic characters, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Nintendo will not be porting any of its existing games to smartphones, and instead develop new titles from the ground up to make sure that consumers get a “quality of game experience” from such a partnership.

“To ensure the quality of game experience that consumers expect from this alliance of Nintendo and DeNA, only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created, rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system,” DeNA said in its press release.

The partnership will not be limited to any specific Nintendo characters, but include all of the company’s IP. However, Nintendo and DeNA will be focusing on quality rather than quantity, so don’t expect them to flood the market with tons of games.

Additionally, both companies are also developing a cross-platform service that will allow users to play game across a wide variety of devices, including consoles, smartphones, PCs and more. This service is slated to launch in the fall of 2015.

This partnership will see both companies make an investment of 22 billion yen in each other. While Nintendo is buying a 10 percent stake in DeNA, the latter is buying 1.24 percent of Nintendo.

That’s a notable U-turn from his belittling of mobile games as a low-quality, unprofitable industry. In reality, games on mobile generated an Newzoo-estimated $25 billion in revenue in 2014, up 42 percent from a year earlier, and are projected to replace consoles this year as the largest game segment.

Are you excited about this news or is Nintendo’s move a typical case of ‘too little, too late,’ do you think?

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