It was just under two months ago that Nintendo finally decided to enter the mobile gaming market, in a partnership with the team at DeNA that will bring several familiar faces to tablets and phones alike. But now comes the magic question – when will we be seeing Mario and company on these devices

Apparently not too long. Cult of Android has reported that Nintendo intends to deliver its first smartphone game by the end of this year, with four more “top quality” titles set to arrive by 2017, according to president Satoru Iwata.

The company is taking a slow but sure approach to adapting to the mobile market, a change of pace from developing games for its own handheld platforms, like the 3DS and the recently released New Nintendo 3DS, which has been selling reasonably well since debuting on the market.

“We aim to make each title a hit,” said Iwata while meeting with investors. “and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.”

Even with the strongest franchises in the world, a game on both the App Store and Google Play simply can’t find success “if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game.” (Nintendo probably learned this lesson years ago with its lacking educational Where’s Mario games.)

Don’t expect ports of popular titles from previous platforms, either. “If we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices,” said Iwata.

Even with its push onto the mobile market, Nintendo won’t be departing the console scene anytime soon. It intends to unveil a number of new titles for the Nintendo Wii U next month at E3 2015, and is hard at work on a new device called the NX, which likely won’t be shown off until sometime next year.

This appears to be the latest initiative put together by the company in its effort to turn around its profits, which we reported on last week. We certainly wish them nothing but success.