Nintendo has finally launched its first smartphone app, Miitomo, in its native Japan.
We've been waiting for Nintendo's first mobile game ever since it announced its partnership with the Japanese mobile games developer DeNA. That was a year ago to the day.
Now Miitomo has finally hit the App Store - in Japan, at least.
To call Miitomo a game is a little disingenuous. By all rights it's more of an app - a casual social network app, to be a little more precise.
Miitomo lets you create and customise avatars called Miis, post comments to fellow users, engage in polls to determine and share your likes, and so on.
Anyone who has used a Nintendo console over the past decade or so will be familiar with Nintendo's Mii avatars, and the particular brand of bright and breezy social interaction it encourages through them. Miitomo appears to be a logical extension of that.
Nintendo is planning to release actual mobile games, with as many as four set to arrive over the coming months. But this is an interesting first step for the company.
"This is the first time we're creating content for a device we did not initially create," Nintendo US president Reggie Fils-Aimé told The Wall Street Journal.
With a general March rollout in place, expect to see Miitomo popping up on the UK and US App Stores some time over the coming days. Of course, most die-hard Nintendo fans will be more interested in the company's next console, the mysterious Nintendo NX, which will be announced later this year.
