Nintendo planning major office expansions for more in-house development
According to a new report from Nikkei, Nintendo is planning two major office expansions to allow for more in-house development as opposed to outsourcing.
Beginning in May 2022, Nintendo will rent the sixth and seventh floors of the Kyoto City Waterworks Bureau’s new government building. This is located right next to Nintendo’s current headquarters. The space will be used to house more development resources, Nikkei reports.
The same article notes that under Kyoto City’s Corporate Location Promotion System, Nintendo will receive up to 160 million yen ($1.4 million) every year for three years to cover some of its operation costs based on the number of new employees hired.
Also in the works is an entirely new building on the site of its former headquarters. While the site currently has the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center and its Mario Club QA team, there’s a large area of empty land. The new building will almost certainly be located here.
Today’s news follows comments made by Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, who said last month that the company will be using its strong financial position from Switch’s success to spend cash in various ways. One example includes the expansion of “game development frameworks inside the Nintendo group.”
As a company that brings smiles through entertainment, Nintendo’s goal has always been to create original entertainment. In a business with extreme fluctuations like the entertainment business, the basic policy of our financial activities has been to secure cash and other liquid assets so we can continually offer products and services that constantly deliver new surprises.
While this basic policy will not change, the Nintendo Switch business has exceeded our expectations, putting us in a strong cash position in these last few years and presenting a good opportunity to reconsider how to most effectively utilize our cash in a variety of strategic and meaningful ways.
Let me describe the fields we plan to actively focus on from a mid- to long- term perspective, given the changes in our current business environment.
These efforts will be made in addition to our conventional research and development and capital expenditures.
The new fields where we will utilize our cash can be broadly classified under two themes: building software assets and building a foundation for maintaining and expanding relationships with consumers.
These software assets include games, and we aim to expand our game development frameworks inside the Nintendo group. We are not dismissing the possibility of M&A activities, but our first priority is to organically expand our own organization to continue Nintendo’s creative culture.
