During a financial results Q&A with investors and analysts, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata touched upon the subject of Nintendo’s next hardware platform. In light of the company’s performance, an investor asked when Nintendo plans to introduce its next videogame systems, and Iwata addressed this topic.
“Once we launch a new platform, we naturally start to prepare for the next one. As it takes several years to develop a single platform, if you ask us whether we are preparing for our next system, then the correct response will be that we are always developing new hardware,” Iwata said.
“On the other hand, the most difficult question for us to answer in public in concrete terms is when we are going to launch our new hardware and what kind of hardware we are going to launch, and I am afraid that I cannot talk about this in more detail.”
He elaborated: “However, I can certainly assure you that we are not at a dead end of any kind in which we are out of ideas for developing new hardware. I of course believe that launching new hardware will not produce good results unless we first make sure that those who have already purchased our platforms are satisfied.”
“We will continue to work hard to ensure that consumers who already own our platforms are satisfied, and make sure that people will continue to see great value in our software, but I would like to say that we are preparing for our next hardware system, and in fact, we already have a clear idea to some extent about the direction our next hardware is going to take.”
In previous statements, Iwata has mentioned that Nintendo’s future devices could share the same operating system, similar to iOS and Android devices, and perhaps even similar architecture. This, he says, will make it easier to develop games across multiple Nintendo platforms, the way a number of smartphone game developers already do.
