Nintendo Job Opening Hints At Its Next Console – And “Cross-Platform” Features

gameranx.com:

Nintendo’s European studio NERD have released a job opening hinting that work is well underway on the successor to the Nintendo Switch.

NERD in this case, does not refer to Pharrell Williams’ 2000s era band. We are talking about Nintendo European Research and Development, a French software technology company and a subsidiary of Nintendo.

Note that I was careful not to call them a game company, as NERD does not make video games like EPD or Intelligent Systems. Instead, their specialty is in middleware, the programs used to make video games, and/or make those games better.

NERD was launched in 2003 as ActImagine, and first made their name making video compression technology for Nintendo platforms, called MobiClip. One of their first major projects was working on Metroid Prime Hunters for the DS, with that game’s cutscenes running on MobiClip. Nintendo acquired them as a subsidiary in 2011.

You probably heard of NERD during the release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. They had produced the emulator for those games, and received a lot of flak for that collection’s poor performance. But that wasn’t really indicative of what the company is capable of.

NERD developed all the emulators used in the games bundled with Nintendo Switch Online, and the Expansion pack. They also developed the emulators used in the NES Classic Edition and SNES Classic Edition. These are all brand new emulators for each individual platform.

They also developed these technologies for these various Nintendo Switch games:

In so many words, NERD are unsung heroes within Nintendo, developing many of the technologies we take for granted, but power many of their unique, unusual, and successful products.

NERD’s website hosts a new job opening for a Game Tech