Furukawa on ensuring Switch has a long life cycle, approach to developing new hardware

Japanese publication Nikkei posted a new interview this week with Shuntaro Furukawa, the global president of Nintendo. The two sides ended up discussing Switch’s life cycle as well as console development in general.

According to Furukawa, Nintendo is “always doing technical and market research” when it comes to creating new hardware. He also said “the thing that makes an idea a reality is whether we can offer a new experience or not.”

We’ve gone ahead and prepared a translation of Furukawa’s remarks. If you’re interested in reading what he had to say, continue on below.

Looking back on the DS and Wii, those systems peaked about four years into their life cycles – how is the Switch shaping up so far?

As the Switch enters its fifth year on the market, one of our focal points is ensuring it has a long life cycle. It’s very important for us that customers continue to enjoy playing their Switch. This includes Switch owners who bought the console at launch all the way through to those who bought in with recent releases like Animal Crossing. It’s about providing new gameplay experiences for all Switch owners. We need to keep in mind that the console base will continue to expand, as well as the types of games that have already been released for the system.

So if you wanted to, you could take steps to extend the hardware’s life cycle?

Right. I always say that the Switch is around the middle [stage] of its life cycle. We’re able to offer a wide variety of different games because the Switch is both a home and portable console, but there’s much more that can still be done in the coming years. 

Do you develop consoles with a target time period in mind?

We never consider when to release consoles, but we’re always doing technical and market research. Our hardware and software teams work in the same building, constantly communicating and thinking of new ways to ways to have fun. Even when developing one specific piece of hardware, there are so many hurdles to jump through over several years that the reality of it is we never really stop. In the end, the thing that makes an idea a reality is whether we can offer a new experience or not.

Translation provided by centurionnugget and Jarop on behalf of Nintendo Everything.

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