No Announceable Plans for a New Console
With Nintendo not jumping into the next-gen console wars, the president and director of Nintendo were asked about it in their annual shareholder meeting. It seems though that there are no plans to move away from Switch anytime soon, because instead of talking about new upcoming technology, they spoke of simply maximizing the Switch’s lifespan.
With strong sales numbers and a dedicated fanbase, I’m not surprised to see Nintendo not joining in the next-gen war with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Nintendo has never been known for its hardware, but have more focused on unique experiences, which the Switch provides.
President Shuntaro Furukawa and Director Ko Shiota seem to be proud of their achievements with the switch thus far, especially on its ability to engage its players in new spaces. They haven’t exactly stated what additional steps they will take, but they promise to extend Switch’s life cycle and maximizing its advantages.
Read their full statement below:
Furukawa: Our current generation game system, Nintendo Switch, has entered its fourth year since launch, but its momentum is increasing. 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.
Shiota: 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. 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. 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.
Source: Nintendo