Despite the demonstrable success Nintendo has enjoyed by focusing on the likes of Mario, Splatoon, Zelda, Animal Crossing, and so on since the Switch launched back in 2017, it seems the company is eager to diversify its portfolio going forward. In an interview with Nikkei (thanks VGC), Furukawa has suggested that Nintendo needs to commit to creating new franchises and evolve its output in order to better challenge the growing competition in the home entertainment department from other companies like Sony and Microsoft. “With the expansion of time spent at home, the range of ‘entertainment’ as an object of consumption is expanding,” the president said in the interview. “Games are not a necessity of life. In order for customers to choose games in their finite time, they have to be interesting. Competition is tough, and I am not optimistic. “I myself am looking at and studying various forms of entertainment. In the future, we will focus on creating new game series as well as long-sellers such as Mario and Zelda.” When it comes to new hardware, Furukawa was a little coyer, and it seems he’s not ready to announce anything about the rumored next model of Switch. Yet. “We are constantly building up ideas for the new consoles the market is expecting, but there are some things we can’t do now due to technology and cost constraints,” he said. “The hardware and software development teams are in the same building, communicating closely and thinking about how we can propose new forms of entertainment,” he said. “In order to create a single piece of hardware, we have to do a lot of preparation several years in advance, so we are working without stopping. In the end, the deciding factor in whether or not to commercialize a product is whether it can create a new experience.” So it seems that the company is not ready to announce any new hardware just yet, but it’s certainly something that has been considered by the gaming giant over the past few months.
