Nintendo on large global trends, cloud gaming, VR, and 5G
During Nintendo’s 79th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, one investor shared the sentiment that the company “has been a little slow to join large global trends like the mobile business and releasing games that use VR.” Having said that, this person wanted to hear Nintendo’s thoughts topics such as cloud gaming and 5G.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, Shigeru Miyamoto, and director / senior executive officer Ko Shiota all provided commentary. Here the official translation of what they shared:
Furukawa:
While we don’t expect all games to become cloud games any time soon, the technologies are definitely advancing. We see a future where cloud and streaming technologies will develop more and more as a means of delivering games to consumers. We must keep up with such changes in the environment. That being said, if these changes increase the worldwide gaming population, that will just give us more opportunities with our integrated hardware and software development approach to reach people worldwide with the unique entertainment that Nintendo can provide.
Shigeru Miyamoto (Representative Director, Fellow):
We have not fallen behind with either VR or network services. We worked on them from the very beginning, and have been experimenting with them in a variety of ways. In that time, we have objectively evaluated whether they actually allow our consumers to have an enjoyable play experience, and whether we can operate them at an appropriate cost. Because we don’t publicize this until we release a product, it may look like we’re falling behind. In regards to VR, we think that we have created a product that is easy for our consumers to use in the recently released Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit. Nintendo consumers encompass a wide range of ages, including young children, so we will continue to create and announce products that can be enjoyed by anyone.
I think that cloud gaming will become more widespread in the future, but I have no doubt that there will continue to be games that are fun because they are running locally and not on the cloud. We believe it is important to continue to use these diverse technical environments to make unique entertainment that could only have been made by Nintendo. The number of people coming into contact with digital devices is increasing more dramatically than ever before. For example, Super Mario Run has surpassed 300 million downloads. The fact that we’ve reached such a market means that opportunities for us are greatly expanding, so we would like to work on more and more unique projects.
Ko Shiota (Director, Senior Executive Officer):
5G can send a large amount of data without latency. We are aware that this technology has been gaining a lot of attention, and Nintendo is also investigating it. However, we don’t only chase trends in technology. When considering what to offer in our entertainment and services, we think about both how the technology will be applied to gameplay and what new experiences and gameplay we can offer consumers as a result of that application. Cost is also an extremely important factor when it comes to 5G. It’s difficult to use even an outstanding technology if the cost is too high, so we will continue to also thoroughly investigate the cost of new technologies.
