During a recent Q&A session following its third quarter financial briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto offered their thoughts on the future of the industry. In regards to the seemingly inevitable rise of cloud gaming, Iwata expressed concern over things like latency and connection speed, saying he was surprised these factors aren't being considered as people look to cloud gaming as the future of the industry.
"There are many things that cloud gaming cannot do by design, but this fact has not been communicated well to the public, and I find it strange that many people claim that cloud gaming is the future," Iwata said.
As for whether consoles are soon to be a thing of the past, he said, "Naturally, our stance is that dedicated gaming platforms will not die out and we are determined to create a future where they will not." Iwata also assured the audience of investors that even though the company recently announced the merging of their console and portable teams, "we are not saying that we are planning to integrate our platforms into one. What we are saying is that we would like to integrate software development methods, operating systems, and built-in software and software assets for each platform so that we can use them across different machines."
Two's a party.
The true reason behid this integration is apparently to free up more development resources. "Platform integration does not mean creating one type of platform, but the point is that the united method of software development will enable us to share our most precious software assets across different hardware." Miyamoto seconded the notion, saying, "The integration of our hardware divisions is for the purpose of getting our core developers to work on creating actual entertainment applications, and we are not trying to develop a unified platform."
When it comes to staying competitive in the gaming market, Nintendo's stance seems to be the same as ever - focus on creating "new" experiences to surprise gamers rather than pushing graphics. To this end, Iwata commented, "We feel that we are nearing a saturation point in terms of simply improving performance or enhancing graphics. What is far more important for the future of video games is whether we can make new propositions in other aspects and create games out of something that people never expected to see in the form of a game."
Miyamoto addressed the growing prominence of mobile gaming by saying, "what Nintendo should do this time is create something that is more fun to play on our devices. The sales of Animal Crossing: New Leaf we released last year in Japan have already assured us that, as long as we create software that meets certain demands from the consumers, such as a game title they really want to play by any means and they want to do so without worrying about the battery life of their handheld devices, they will be willing to purchase it."
So for now it seems both console and portable gaming have a place in the Big N's future. Stay tuned to IGN for future updates on the state of the industry.
Audrey Drake is an Associate Editor at IGN and a proud member of the IGN Nintendo team. She is also a lifelong gamer, a frequent banisher of evil and a wielder of various legendary blades. You can keep track of her wild adventures by following Aminka on IGN or @GameOnAminka on Twitter. Game on!
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