Nintendo has announced that it is collaborating with mobile game developer DeNA to establish a new joint venture company called Nintendo Systems Co. Ltd.
According to the establishment notice written by Nintendo on Tuesday, the Nintendo Systems Co. Ltd. will be a subsidiary since Nintendo is contributing 80% of the capital required to run it. It will be focused on research and development, as well as “operations to strengthen the digitalization of Nintendo’s business.” It will also work to create “value-added services” that Nintendo says will reinforce its relationship with its customers.
The joint venture between Nintendo and DeNA was seven years in the making, as the latter company has been developing mobile games for the former since 2015, including Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokémon Masters, and Mario Kart Tour. However, DeNA will be expanding beyond developing games for smartphones, as Nintendo will be tasking it with “the joint development and operation of membership services for various devices.”
Nintendo Systems Co. Ltd. is scheduled to open on April 3, 2023. It will be based in Tokyo with director and president Tetsuya Sasaki at the helm.
DeNA has created some other mobile games that operated as social networking apps, such as Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and Miitomo. Although it launched on iOS and Android alongside the My Nintendo loyalty program in 2016 and gave users Mii’s personality, Miitomo didn’t garner the same level of popularity that Tomodachi Life and (eventually) Miitopia did, so its service was discontinued in 2018. The company also created Super Mario Run, one of Nintendo’s first forays into mobile gaming.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.