Nintendo planning to boost console game sales via smartphones: Report

Reports indicate that Nintendo will soon announce plans to make its way into the bustling mobile gaming segment.

According to the reports, Nintendo will initially not start with actual mobile games, but instead promote its console (home and portable) games with other content, such as background stories, tour for in-game worlds and some latest news on game titles reaching the Nintendo platform, according to Nikkei via Engadget.

It has been also noted that the firm will probably release teasers or demos for few of its games for free, and will hold off on in-app purchases, hoping that the gamers would go and buy the full version console game after playing it on smartphones.

Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo, mentioned last year itself that the firm will be focusing towards the smartphone segment stating that they need to "take advantage of their[smartphones'] existence."

"For instance, we already made it possible to browse Wii U's networking service called Miiverse on smart devices[smartphones and tablets]. Starting with this attempt, we are discussing among us how we can expand the use of smart devices to help drive the business of dedicated gaming systems," he stated in the Nintendo Q&A page.

It has been also understood that Nintendo will announce their plans later this week, alongside the announcement of Q3 financial results.

Talking about the financial results, recently it was noted that the firm reported a poor sales in the holiday season.

Nintendo said Friday it expects a loss of 25 billion yen ($240 million) in the year to March, reversing an earlier 55 billion yen net profit forecast, while annual revenue would drop 36 percent to 590 billion yen. The company, maker of the Donkey Kong and Super Mario brands, also said it expected to sell just 2.8 million units worldwide of the Wii U, way off earlier predictions of 9.0 million consoles.