Nintendo ‘looking at’ VR, stays quiet on smartphone debut

Nintendo is considering developing for virtual reality, but has no immediate plans to take on the nascent technology.

That’s according to games industry analyst Serkan Toto, who reported that the prospect of virtual reality was noted during Nintendo’s recent investor briefing, with the platform holder simply acknowledging that it was ‘looking’ at the sector.

The briefing accompanied Nintendo’s latest financials, revealing that net annual profit has slumped by nearly a third (31.9 per cent) to ¥40.55 billion.

In the last three months of 2015, 1.87m Wii U consoles and 3.6 million 3DS units were sold. Total lifetime Wii U sales have now reached 12.6 million, with software sales topping out at 79.3 million.

The best-selling Wii U game of the last period was Splatoon – the ink-shooter chalked up four million sales.

Nintendo decided to stay quiet on its upcoming mobile debut, Miitomo, which is due for release for smartphones in March.

Miitomo will be the first of around half-a-dozen mobile titles in development with Nintendo’s new collaborator, DeNA.

In other recent Nintendo news, devs can now use the Unity engine to build for the 3DS family of portables.

So Nintendo (at the briefing) just said no change in plans for the smartphone app roll out. Says they "are looking" at VR – with no details.

— Dr. Serkan Toto / Kantan Games Inc. (@serkantoto) February 2, 2016