Out of the last 4 Nintendo consoles, only the Wii has been doing well compared to the competition at the time (by a small margin), with the others only selling 10-30% as much units.
I think they see the writing on the wall and want to diversify.
I think they see the writing on the wall and want to diversify.
You can do crap Mario for mobile, and nobody cares and you got bad PR and sales of consoles go south.
You can do great Mario for mobile, and everybody got Mario for free and sales of consoles go south.
Running between these scenarios is tough.
I don't know how much longer the game industry can expect its target audience to spend $60 each on piles of games. Things have been trending towards freemium for long enough that it almost seems weird when the game that everyone's playing is not free(ish).
My point being, if enough people aren't buying console+game anymore, would the opportunity cost of doing it on mobile instead be that bad?