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Platform holder Nintendo has said it will again buck the trend by not increasing its focus on PC.
It is now the norm for Xbox exclusive games to release on PC. PlayStation, too, has a streaming games service up and running on PC. And a greater number of Japanese developers are bringing new games and porting older ones to the platform.
But speaking to investors, Nintendo boss Tatsumi Kimishima has played down any potential for its IP to also move onto PC.
We are aware that many consumers play PC games. However, we believe that the integrated hardware-software business is the best way for us to provide the surprises and new gameplay experiences that we want to achieve,” he said.
On the other hand, we offered three applications for smart devices during the previous fiscal year, and, though the content and consumers playing the applications were different, each one was received extremely favorably. Super Mario Run, for example, achieved 150 million downloads worldwide, and consumers who had never played our games before were able to experience our IP on their smart devices.
We believe that we can further expand our core integrated hardware-software business by providing our software on smart devices and increasing the number of consumers who experience our IP.”
Designer Shigeru Miyamoto even went on to suggest that the PC craze could be cooling a little.
In the past I have seen a number of exhibition booths at E3 where dozens of PCs lined the hall for consumers to try out network experiences,” he added. However, at E3 this year, there were not many gaming PC exhibits or VR exhibits, which captured significant attention last year. I feel as if this environment allowed the attendees to see Nintendo anew as a company offering consumer-oriented dedicated video game systems.”
