Nintendo has never been afraid to share their vision of gaming and game development with the world, including how they think about their consoles. Currently, the Nintendo Switch is dominating the world and despite a lockdown that has hindered game development, they’re still putting out successful titles like Animal Crossing New Horizons and Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. But that begs the question, what comes next?
During a shareholders meeting, a question like that was asked. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa and director and senior executive officer Ko Shiota would answer that question with many responses:
“Our current generation game system, Nintendo Switch, has entered its fourth year since launch, but its momentum is increasing,” said Furukawa. “We believe there are two factors behind this. First is the existence of two hardware configurations with different characteristics, in Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite. The second factor is that Nintendo’s development resources are concentrated on developing content for a single platform, Nintendo Switch. We want to extend the life cycle of Nintendo Switch while maximizing such advantages.”
That wasn’t all though:
“In addition to the performance aspects (higher technical specifications), Nintendo’s dedicated video game platforms are developed with a focus on providing a comfortable environment for consumers to play fun software,” added Ko Shiota. “From the perspective of playing with the image displayed on a TV, we believe that because consumers can play Nintendo Switch on a TV or the game console screen itself, it has greatly increased the opportunities for gameplay in various scenes in their lives, compared to previous consoles,” he explained. “Through Nintendo Switch, we’ve made many discoveries about where a dedicated video game platform can fit into a consumer’s daily life. We see scenes on social media of children and their families sitting around a game console to play, which gives us a renewed sense of the value of our dedicated video game platform. We will utilize these experiences in carefully considering the form our future game consoles will take.”
So it appears they already have thoughts on what they want to do next, which is cool, and something we’ll be discussing on the next episode of the Nintendo Entertainment Podcast!
