According to an article translated from the Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has reaffirmed his position that mobile phone game development would be bad for Nintendo in the long run.

Nintendo has been under pressure from investors to begin developing games based on their marquis franchises for mobile platforms like iOS and Android. However, Iwata remains stalwart in refusing to give up on Nintendo's hardware business.

"This is absolutely not under consideration," said Iwata, according to Andria Sang. "If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It's probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we'd make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short term profits, but to Nintendo's mid and long term competitive strength."

Sales of Nintendo's latest handheld gaming platform, 3DS, have been less than stellar thus far. Though a recent price drop produced a significant sales bump that could get the platform back on the right track.

It's hard to blame Iwata for wanting to adhere to old strategies though. The Nintendo DS is still one of the best selling gaming consoles ever made, and made Nintendo quite a bundle. That said, it's pretty hard to ignore the ridiculous world-ending profits Nintendo would see if they put out a new full-priced Mario game on iOS.

Regardless of their position on iOS game development, we at Mac|Life adore Nintendo, and would like to lend our collective voice to peer pressuring Nintendo to start releasing titles on iOS. C'mon, Nintendo! All the cool kids are doing it.