Nintendo’s focus may eventually move away from home consoles, says Nintendo president

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has stated the company will respond flexibly to any future challenges, stating Nintendo was "not fixated on [its] consoles" and may be interested in creating more mobile games in the future.

Talking to Nikkei about how the company intends to adapt to market fluctuations, Furukawa said he was "thinking about little ways [he] can reduce that kind of instability" and said he’d "like to increase" Nintendo’s smartphone game development to secure "a continuous stream of revenue".

"We aren’t really fixated on our consoles. At the moment we’re offering the uniquely developed Nintendo Switch and its software – and that’s what we’re basing how we deliver the ‘Nintendo experience’ on," Furukawa reportedly said (as translated by Nintendo Everything). "That being said, technology changes. We’ll continue to think flexibly about how to deliver that experience as time goes on."

"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.

"We’re also dabbling in theme parks and movies – different ways to have our characters be a part of everyday life. I’m anticipating a strong synergy like that," he said. "My most important role is to facilitate an environment in which they can demonstrate their own abilities. I’m not a pro developer myself, so I leave the actual development to leaders that can tell what a good game is and what isn’t."

The PS4 was the most successful console of 2018 in the UK in terms of software sold, with PS4 games representing 42.2 per cent of the market, followed by the Xbox One with 30.5 per cent of the market. The Switch accounted for 24 per cent of the market, which represented a 90.9 per cent increase of copies sold year-on-year. In terms of revenue, Nintendo’s platform was up 73.4 per cent year-on-year.