President of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, opens up on the companies stance of cloud gaming and how their team looks at new technology.
Taking to an Interview with Nikkei (paywall subscription), Furukawa stated that the company is constantly exploring new and interesting ways to incorporate technology in their hardware and software, noting that they have taken an interested in AR (augmented reality).
NintendoEverything has provided some translated excerpts from the interview that you can read up below.
Something I do not want the public to misunderstand is that we are not turning our backs on new technologies – we are constantly researching and developing. Our hardware development teams evaluate all kinds of new technologies available thus far and consult with our software developers. If they determine that a technology can be used with a game, then they will utilize it. We will not be changing this fundamental approach moving forward.
As for AR, it is definitely one of the many aspects we are interested in. We are currently researching what interesting ways we can utilize it.
Furukawa then spoke about cloud gaming, saying it would be pointless to solely focus on one place to play titles, although with how young cloud gaming is, he doesn’t see it being a big public interest until much later down the line and therefor console hardware won’t be going anywhere.
It’s possible that cloud gaming could capture the public’s interest in 10 years from now, however at this point in time, I do not think that dedicated hardware will go away. It’s a long way off before we’ll really know the outcome. With that said, it would be pointless to solely focus on methods of play that can only be had on dedicated hardware. Once your audience starts saying they can play on other consoles or smartphones instead, you’re finished.
Does this mean Nintendo will have another console after the Switch? Yeah, that’s a pretty safe bet, no? Nonetheless, with the next-gen of gaming coming this year with the PS5 and Xbox Series X, we can expect something from the Big N regarding a Nintendo next gen console soon.
Speaking of Nintendo consoles, have you seen the Nintendo Switch clone? Check out the Nanica Smitch here.
Source: Nikkei, NintendoEverything (1), NintendoEverything (2).