Nintendo has denied reports that it will release “mini-games” for smartphones and tablets as its profits fell 30% since April last year.

Instead, top Nintendo executives’ salaries will be cut for five months starting in February as they take responsibility for the poor performance. The compnay's president, Satoru Iwata, will take a 50% pay cut, while the legendary game designer and the father of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, took a 30% cut.

‘No plans to offer mini-games on smartphones’

A Japanese newspaper, Nikkei, reported on Tuesday that Nintendo was planning to release games for tablets and smartphones before the end of 2014 as a way to attract new players and boost its falling revenue.

Nintendo later denied the report, saying that the company was “willing to make use of smart devices to promote” its products, but that “Nintendo’s intention is not to make Nintendo software available on smart devices”.

“We can confirm that there are no plans to offer mini-games on smartphone devices," a Nintendo spokesperson told gadget site Engadget.

Struggling sales

Nintendo’s financial outlook looks bleak as the company is expecting to make a 25bn Yen loss (£146) for the 12 months in 2014 through to December, a reversal of the 55bn Yen profit originally expected.

Part of the cause was the Wii U missing sales targets by a wide margin. Nintendo was forced to slash its annual forecast for Wii U sales by 69% from 9m to just 2.8m, having sold 2.4m of the consoles April through till December last year.

Sales forecasts for the Nintendo 3DS handheld video game console also had to be slashed by 25% to 13.5m from 18m for the year, as smartphone and tablet adoption has impacted on mobile console gaming.

Nintendo is expected to announce a new management strategy on Thursday to deal with its software and hardware sales decline.

• If Nintendo ever did make mobile games for smartphones and tablets, what could it learn from Sony and Microsoft?