Nintendo says the transition to its next console is ‘a major concern for us’
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has said the company’s eventual transition away from Nintendo Switch to its next hardware platform is “a major concern” for the company.
Speaking during a Japanese investor Q&A this week (translated by VGC contributor Robert Sephazon), Furukawa said the company planned to alleviate the risks of resetting its 100m+ userbase by building “long-term relationships” with its users, partly via Nintendo Accounts and by using its IP outside of gaming.
Furukawa was replying to a question about how Nintendo has been able to maintain a strong game release schedule six years into Switch’s life cycle, and what his thoughts were on transitioning to its next hardware platform.
In its recent history, Nintendo followed up its big successes such as Wii (101.6m sold) and DS (154m sold) with significantly less popular successors (Wii U sold 13.5m and 3DS managed 75m), and Furukawa said the company was mindful of these experiences.
“We have already announced a portion of our software roadmap releasing up to next spring,” he said. “Unlike the past, we continue to have a large variety of games scheduled to be released, even beyond five years of release. This is because the Nintendo Switch has had such a smooth launch, allowing us to focus all of our development resources on a single platform.
“However, the question of whether we will be able to just as smoothly transition from the Nintendo Switch to the next generation of hardware is a major concern for us. Based on our experiences with the Wii, Nintendo DS, and other hardware, it is very clear that one of the major obstacles is how to easily transition from one hardware to the next.
“To help alleviate this risk, we’re focusing on building long-term relationships
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