Why Nintendo Won't Make Games for Smartphones

The temptation certainly exists to criticize Satoru Iwata and his decision not to bring the company’s most popular titles to mobile gaming platforms like iOS; however, looking beyond our disappointment at being unable to play Pokemon and Mario Kart on the iPhone, we can look at the situation dispassionately and draw a number of parallels between Nintendo and Apple, Satoru Iwata and Steve Jobs: both men led (and lead) their respective corporations with a complicated, long-term vision for success. As the sole possessor of this grand master plan, Iwata’s decisions, like Jobs’s, sometimes seem nonsensical and even cryptic, in a way. Nonsensical or not though, no one in their right mind would argue that Steve Jobs was anything less than a genius; perhaps, in time, the same will prove true of Satoru Iwata.