Nintendo's investors are urging the company to bring its iconic game characters, like Mario, Luigi, Zelda, and Donkey Kong, to Apple's iPhone and iPad. The call to make games for Apple's hit mobile devices, which have fueled success for companies like PopCap and Rovio, comes after lackluster sales of Nintendo's latest 3DS handheld have driven prices of the company's stock to a 6-year low.

But despite the allure of selling millions of copies of a touchscreen-enabled Super Mario title to some 200 million iOS users, who on average play 14.7 hours of games per month, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata will have none of it.

What investors want

Gaming on mobile phones is big business; it's the largest growth segment in gaming right now, and even big developers like EA and id have targeted Apple's iOS platform with top titles.

And why not? Nearly all the top-selling apps in the App Store are games, and mobile game companies are raking in millions. Rovio's Angry Birds HD for the iPad won the 2011 Casual Game of the Year award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, but perhaps more telling is that it was also nominated for Game of the Year and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming. As noted by MacRumors, bigger developers have been snapping up successful iOS developers for millions, and EA recently paid $1 billion to buy Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled developer PopCap.

Meanwhile, sales of Nintendo's aging Wii have begun to dip, and the company recently announced that it was slashing prices of its new 3DS handheld after admitting that sales of the new device were far lower than expected. Nintendo chief Iwata even agreed to a 50 percent pay cut, with members of Nintendo's board accepting 20-30 percent pay cuts, all in the name of helping to return the company to profitability after posting a $331 million loss for the second quarter of this year. The company also revised its sales forecast down for the fiscal year.

The bad news prompted sell-offs of Nintendo stock, with the price plummeting 21 points to hit its lowest level since August 2005. Meanwhile, investors are looking at Apple's 200 million installed base, which appears to be rapidly growing, and thinking, "Make games for the iPhone."

"Smartphones are the new battlefield for the gaming industry," Japanese investment fund manager Masamitsu Ohki told Bloomberg. Ohki suggested that the company use the $14 billion in cash and liquid assets it amassed selling Wiis and DSes to either "buy its way into this platform or develop something totally new."

(It's worth noting, however, that a similar strategy has yet to pay off for Sony.)

What Nintendo wants

Nintendo soared to record high profits selling millions of DS handhelds and its now-iconic Wii consoles. Unlike other console makers, including Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo actually profits from its hardware. And games featuring its well-known and well-loved characters help sell that hardware. Those sales helped the company accumulate its $14 billion hoard, so the last thing that Nintendo wants to do is devalue its own hardware by releasing games for other platforms. Ars Senior Gaming Editor Ben Kuchera likened that strategy to "Nintendo slitting its own throat."

(This is not unlike Apple's refusal, despite many pleas, to license Mac OS X for standard x86 PC hardware—the company makes billions in revenue on Mac hardware, something it would be hard pressed to do selling a $29 operating system.)

Another thing that Nintendo doesn't want is to compete on a platform where sub-$10 games, many of which sell for just 99¢, rule the roost. At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, Iwata strongly criticized companies hitching their wagon to mobile smartphone gaming at the expense of quality. "These (mobile) platforms have no motivation to maintain the value of the gaming," Iwata said during his keynote speech. "Quantity is how they profit. The value of software does not matter to them."

"In the oceanic smartphone games market, the chance to be visible—and the opportunity to make a living—is remarkably low," Iwata said. Though it typically makes a healthy profit on its hardware, Nintendo also profits heavily from high-margin software sales. Nintendo credited part of its recent "drastic" drop in profits to declining first-party Wii software sales.

What Nintendo wants, and what its corporate culture encourages, is to do things that are different from what everyone else is doing. With so many other game developers releasing games for the iPhone and iPad, Nintendo jumping on the bandwagon wouldn't be different at all.

The 3DS, with its glasses-free 3D screen, combination touch and d-pad input, multiple cameras, and new online features, is certainly different from any other handheld gaming system. The lower price and promised upcoming high-profile releases should help sales, at least in the short term. And the upcoming Wii successor, the Wii U, also shows major promise in gameplay innovation with its 6" LCD-equipped controller. That console is set to launch next year.

No matter how much we might want to kill time at the doctor's office by racing around Mushroom Gorge—complete with Game Center-powered multiplayer action!—Nintendo just isn't going to let that happen any time soon. The company would rather you play its games featuring its popular characters on hardware of its own design. As long as Iwata is in charge—and the company can recover from its recent losses—that's how it will be.