A report by Japanese newspaper The Nikkei has been making waves this morning, claiming that Nintendo plans a marketing effort that will bring ads and mini-games featuring its franchise characters to smart phones.

This is from the linked post by Japanese mobile and social gaming consultant Dr. Serkan Toto:

Japanese newspaper The Nikkei just reported on its website (2am Tuesday JST) that Nintendo is finally going mobile within this year.

According to the country’s biggest business publication, Nintendo will make such an announcement this Thursday, the day it holds a briefing for investors.

But Nintendo will not simply put Mario, Pokemon or other games on smartphones. According to the report, Nintendo plans to use Android and/or iOS devices (not confirmed at this point) to market its console games.

To be more concrete, The Nikkei writes that Nintendo wants to use smartphones to expand its potential user base by spreading information about new game releases, i.e. by using video to introduce future titles. (This will probably happen through some kind of official Nintendo app.)

In addition, Nintendo is said to be planning to put so-called “mini games” on smartphones, playable demos of console games – content that can only be purchased in full on Nintendo hardware. The reasoning here is to give smartphone-only players a taste of the experience without making the actual game available on non-Nintendo devices and convert these users into Nintendo customers.

According to The Nikkei, this content will be entirely free, and Nintendo is not planning to offer paid or freemium games on smartphones at the moment.

To make it clear again: this information is not coming from Nintendo itself. Expect further details during the company’s briefing on Thursday.

I think, if true, this is a brilliant move on Nintendo’s part.

UPDATE: according to this report from Engadget, Nintendo is denying this rumor.

“Nikkei’s article contains information previously stated by Mr Iwata during past press conferences, including statements which relate to Nintendo’s willingness to make use of smart devices to promote our products.

However during such past announcements Mr Iwata has also stated that Nintendo’s intention is not to make Nintendo software available on smart devices and as such, we can confirm that there are no plans to offer minigames on smartphone devices. “