Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently sat down with Nikkei in Japan and discussed how Nintendo is responding to some of today’s gaming trends. Nikkei’s piece was translated by Nintendo Everything. Furukawa says Nintendo plans to keep its products unique enough in comparison to others so their gaming experiences cannot be replicated by their rivals.
One topic Furukawa spoke on was the growth of cloud gaming, with new consoles such the Google Stadia which run games remotely from a cloud database. Furukawa believes cloud gaming won’t become mainstream for another 10 years, so “dedicated hardware” will remain more popular than cloud-based services for quite some time. Though Nintendo will stick with their hardware for now, Furukawa believes “it would be pointless to solely focus on methods of play that can only be had on dedicated hardware. Once your audience starts saying they can play on other consoles or smartphones instead, you’re finished.”
Furukawa wants to stay on top of his audience’s playing habits and preferences. Because of this, he emphasized that Nintendo is “not turning [their] backs on new technologies,” but “constantly researching and developing” new technological approaches to their products. The hardware and software teams are in constant conversation with one another to accomplish this. When new technological opportunities present themselves, Nintendo tries to take them. Furukawa told Nikkei that “If they determine that a technology can be used with a game, then they will utilize it.” Furukawa emphasized that Nintendo will keep “this fundamental approach moving forward.”
Getting more specific with technology, the second topic Furukawa focused on was augmented reality (AR), which has steadily become more popular in gaming, with huge games like Pokémon Go taking advantage of AR technology to shape their gameplay. Furukawa says AR “is definitely one of the many aspects [Nintendo is] interested in” and is “currently researching what interesting ways we can utilize it.”