Reports have emerged in Japan's biggest newspaper Nikkei that Nintendo is considering introducing an in-game purchasing model for the 3DS.

Nintendo's digital downloads are currently accounting for less than 5 percent of its total sales figures, something which is not the case for other Japanese games makers.

The report indicates that a firmware update could arrive as early as next month, allowing developers to start integrating micro-transactions into their titles, but the first games to use this feature aren't expected to arrive until 2012.

If you can't bring Nintendo to mobiles...

It's a shift that comes on the back of the less than satisfactory launch of the 3DS handheld, and much debate over whether Nintendo should admit defeat and start development for smartphones.

Here at Pocket Gamer.biz, our team of Mavens had a field day discussing the topic, before Satoru Iwata himself dismissed all talk of the rumours by categorically denying any future move into mobiles.

"If we did this (moved to mobile development), Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo," he said.

"Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths."

[source: TechCrunch]