Mario and the gang could be making their smartphone debut a lot earlier than we thought as Nintendo plans on releasing its first mobile game later this year.

Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata announced that his company intends on using their partnership with the mobile gaming giant DeNA to release their first official smartphone game sometime in 2015, Polygon reports. During the Q&A segment of yesterday's big announcement, Iwata was asked when development would start on the projects of this partnership and which of the two companies would be leading the other during the creation process.

"Regarding the individual video game titles, when it will be launched, we will be making the announcement when each of those games are ready. At least, however, we believe that there is no mean of collaboration if we can't launch anything, at least once, or some sort of output within this year," Iwata said. "Also, per game title, regarding the roles of each companies will differ depending on games."

Yesterday, Nintendo revealed to the world that it was finally entering the mobile gaming market, announcing a partnership with DeNA to start bringing Mario, Link and all their other famous faces over to smartphone formats. While many are hoping that many of Nintendo's old classic games would be available for mobile devices through this partnership, that is certainly not the case. Nintendo remains adamant that it is only creating new games with DeNA and is not going to be porting any of its previous titles over to smartphones. Nintendo also announced yesterday that it is working on its next major piece of gaming hardware, which has been code-named the "NX."

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