Sorry Facebook. No Mario and Zelda on Facebook!

[Charlotte]

Microsoft have lead on Facebook but Nintendo reject it.
Game publishers from EA to Take Two to Ubisoft may be bringing their franchises over to Facebook, but there's at least one big-name publisher that isn't eager to make the jump to the social network.

"I think we will continue to save Mario for our own platforms," Nintendo Executive vice President of Sales and Marketing Cammie Dunaway told VentureBeat when asked about potentially bringing their Mario series over to Facebook. "It's one of the secret weapons we have. Mario and Zelda are intellectual property that is important to us and will only be seen on Nintendo platforms."

It sounds like a pretty strong blanket denunciation of social gaming at first blush, but notice that Dunaway only explicitly wrote off Facebook versions of Mario and Zelda, and implicitly covered only "intellectual property that is important to us." That leaves the door open for Facebook versions of franchises that are not important to Nintendo, meaning we should expect ports of Clu Clu Land and Earthbound any day now. Huzzah!