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Nintendo is entering the mobile gaming world with its first app, Miitomo. Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima announced this on October 22, 2015 in a strategy briefing for investors in Tokyo.

Miitomo is a "communication application that helps friends share fun personal facts and interests," Nintendo said in a press statement. Players can create avatars that are called Miis. They can use it to engage with people or make new friends. The game itself is free-to-play, but it will include in-app purchases, Kimishima said.

Nintendo said last March that they would begin developing mobile games, but Miitomo marks Nintendo's first official release in mobile gaming. Rivals Sony and Microsoft have already released games and apps for mobile devices.

Miitomo will be developed in partnership with DeNA, a Japan-based game developer that publishes a range of other free-to-play mobile games, including the popular Star Wars: Galactic Defense. The game will be available in both Android and mobile devices.

Nintendo also announced a new membership program called My Nintendo at the investor briefing. The service is designed to connect users across different devices, including Nintendo's consoles, PCs and smartphones, said Kimishima. It also allows cloud saving so users could transfer their data from their game consoles to mobile devices easily. The service will be launched alongside with Miitomo in 2016.

Gamers and investors were disappointed with the news as they were expecting the game to be released before the year ends. Nintendo's stock fell 7% upon the news.

Miitomo is only one out of the five smartphone games that Nintendo and DeNA are planning to release. Nintendo previously shunned smartphone games and suffered as a result. The company, which just reported its first half-year operating profit in five years, had hoped to boost sales by tapping into the mobile gaming genre.