Why Nintendo Chose iPhone Over Android

It's become obvious that Apple has somehow shaken hands with Nintendo in a way that's brought the first real Nintendo-made Nintendo character game to their platform first. That game goes by the name Super Mario Run, a game which is a mobile-friendly edition of the first several Mario games mixed into one future-ready package. Today we find out why it was Apple, not Google and Android, that got to get the game first.

Mario inventor and creator Shigeru Miyamoto appeared onstage at Apple's latest event to announce something magnificent. The iPhone would be the first place anyone would be able to play Super Mario Run, the first mobile game which would feature one of Nintendo's most famous characters.

"It started when we were working on Miitomo, or before that when Mr. Iwata was still with the company," said Miyamoto in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

"Apple invited him to have a conversation about how the two companies could work together and they started working on Miitomo and then this opportunity came up."

But it wasn't just that Apple spoke to Nintendo first. According to Miyamoto, "One of the reasons we focused on iPhone first was the stability of the platform and being able to get the level of response that we want out of the games."

"And that's not to say that Android devices don't have the same level of responsiveness. But because there are so many Android devices, trying to engineer the game to work across them all requires quite a lot of time."

Of course, the game is eventually coming to Android, too. It'll just be a bit more time before it's ready.

But what if there was a single set of smartphones that Nintendo could start with? Maybe if Google had their own hero phones? Wouldn't that be great?