Posted in: Games, Nintendo, Video Games | Tagged: nintendo, nintendo switch

Nintendo May Stop Creating Home Consoles In The Future

Published Sun, 06 Jan 2019 15:40:41 -0600

If you're of a certain age, it's kind of hard to think of video games and not instantly say Nintendo. It used to be a phrase, "We're gonna go play Nintendo." That's changed over the years with different consoles and the way we've come to know gaming, but nothing lasts forever and it's very possible in 50 years, none of the companies we know today will ever exist in console gaming. However, Nintendo may get there a little faster than others, if you believe a recent interview with Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, who in an interview with Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei said the day will probably come when Nintendo stops making consoles altogether.

"It has been over 30 years since we started developing consoles. Nintendo's history goes back even farther than that, and through all the struggles that they faced the only thing that they thought about was what to make next. In the long-term, perhaps our focus as a business could shift away from home consoles – flexibility is just as important as ingenuity."

It's an interesting statement considering how the company brought themselves back into the conversation with the Nintendo Switch last year. But from a financial standpoint, the amount of money the company puts into consoles could be saved if they decide to go a digital route somewhere down the road. But that's probably a long ways off because while Nintendo is fine doing things like crossover events and even crossplay between consoles, they have remained stingy on sharing their IPs on other consoles.

Sonic The Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Crash Bandicoot, just some of the names of characters you can now find on multiple consoles. But if you want to play a modern Mario game (that wasn't emulated), there's only ever been one company to go to. And as cool as it would be to see the company go digital and release games across the spectrum… we just don't see any Nintendo properties coming to a streaming service or rival company anytime soon. So while this goal may be in their sights, it's still many, many years away.

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