Professor Layton: Brain-bending game goes social and mobile later this year

The popular puzzler/adventure game series starring a top-hat wearing sleuth named Professor Layton will be getting a social overhaul and will launch on mobile phones in Japan later this year.

Professor Layton Royale will be the first product of a partnership between Layton creator Level-5 and the Japanese mobile social network DeNA. The two companies plan to work together and adapt other popular video games into social games.

Right now, details are scant on the upcoming Professor Layton mobile game, outside the fact that you will take on the role of detective, citizen or thief and the game will feature a mashup of characters from both the Layton universe (including Layton and his precocious boy sidekick) as well as those from Mobage's popular Kaito Royale series.

Professor Layton Royale will be released on the Japanese Mobage social network. At launch, the game will only be available in Japan, but a press release says there are plans "to provide soon [sic] localized versions to international users on the highly anticipated global Mobage service."

There's no news about Royale being released as an Android or iOS app, but based on the popularity of this series (the franchise is one of the most popular Nintendo DS-exclusives and has sold 12 million copies worldwide), I'm sure -- as the old maxim goes -- where there's a will, there's a way.

As a side note: It's interesting that one of the Nintendo DS' most popular games is headed to mobile. Will this be a wake-up call to Nintendo, whose president recently said that the gaming company is 'not interested' in mobile and Facebook? I remember -- just a few years ago -- several Nintendo executives told me that Apple wasn't the competition. Fast forward to 2011. Nintendo higher-ups declare that Apple is the 'enemy of the future' and readies the Nintendo Wii-U, which bears a striking resemblance to the Apple iPad, for launch.

[Via Akihabara News]