Nikkei recently conducted an interview with Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's current president—to commemorate a special occasion. The Japanese multinational video game company is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its "Family Computer" (aka Famicom/NES) home gaming system. A lot of the conversation revolved around the significant legacy (and sales: 61.91 million units) of their first home games console, but subsequent media attention focused on Furukawa-san discussing plans for the popular Switch model and beyond. Dr. Serkan Toto (of industry consultancy Kantan Games Inc.) kindly pulled out and translated the key takeaways from Nikkei's paywalled article. The Nintendo CEO did not disclose any major revelations—he stated that his team will be dedicated to advancing the current Switch's business model until March 2024 (end of the '23-'24 fiscal year): "The biggest obstacle at any time, not just limited to the "Next Console", is knowing whether we can deliver something that customers really want." This answer aligns with information disclosed to investors a couple of months ago, and a September Direct announcement of upcoming new titles and remasters.

The wider gaming community is eager to find out what is in store for the rumored "Switch 2," but Furukawa remained guarded about future prospects. He revealed that Nintendo will continue to "support" the existing model over the fiscal year starting April 2024 to March 2025 (FY24): "I can't talk about the specific topic...We are still working on Nintendo Switch software for the fiscal year ending March 2025. The momentum will be sustained to continue to expand the Switch business. In the fiscal year ending March 2024, we will keep up the Zelda momentum and move into the holiday selling season. In terms of hardware, we will maximize demand not only for new purchases, but also for second units and replacements." This rather boring outlook contrasts heavily with recent leaks—next-gen tech demos and dev kits are alleged to be out there. It is commendable that the House of Mario is dedicated to its existing customer base (129.5 million units sold as of September 2023), but the Switch's creaky Tegra X1 SoC simply cannot keep up with competition in modern times, even with customized FSR 2 support. A bespoke NVIDIA Jetson Orin SoC (T239/Drake) is speculated to drive the successor's insides, although wilder theories point to NVIDIA and MediaTek's chipset alliance producing a more potent solution that embraces newer architectures.Nikkei asked about Nintendo's intended plans for increasing first party headcounts—Furukawa replied: "Game development is becoming more sophisticated. The development resources required for single software continue to increase, so it is essential to strengthen the development organization. More than simply increasing the number of employees, we must be able to develop software that meets Nintendo's expectations. To this end, we decided that instead of allocating resources outside the company, it is necessary to reinforce our internal development resources, which have a deep understanding of the creative DNA and the Nintendo brand...We do not reject the use of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). However, if an organization that does not understand Nintendo's creative approach is brought into the fold, it may not produce the expected results. On the other hand, for companies with a similar development approach, we can form various partnerships with them, not limited to M&A."

Nintendo Direct - September 14th, 2023: