The president of Nintendo expects the game development cycle to be more complex and more lengthy in the future.
Speaking during an investors Q/A, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that the company’s goal of maintaining and expanding upon the relationship with customers includes improving customer experiences based around the Nintendo Account and creating new added value. He recognized that in order to maintain long-term relationships with customers across hardware generations, the Nintendo Account should continue to be used with the Switch successor.
Additionally, the Nintendo president mentioned the inevitable trend of further lengthening, complicating, and advancing game development in the future. He said that, while practices such as mergers and acquisitions are considered the means to address this situation, the basic policy is to first ensure a solid understanding of Nintendo’s brand internally, and to cultivate talent that will carry forward the company’s development in the future alongside developers who have built the company’s brand over the years.
On the subject of the company’s next-gen console commonly being referred to as the successor to the Nintendo Switch, Furukawa was asked whether this means the upcoming console will follow a similar concept. The Nintendo president responded by saying that he couldn’t discuss anything in detail at this stage.
Recently, Furukawa took to Twitter/X to share that the Switch 2 announcement will happen before the end of the current fiscal year. The company’s fiscal year ends in March, 2025, so its next-gen console is expected to be revealed before then. He also highlighted that it will have been over nine years since Nintendo announced the existence of the original Switch back in March, 2015. He mentioned that the company will also be holding a Nintendo Direct presentation this June, involving the Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024. Furthermore, he cautioned that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.
