As Nintendo gears up to announce the successor to the Switch, company president Shuntaro Furukawa reportedly says you can expect game development to become even longer and more complete in the future.
As Famitsu reports (translated through Google and DeepL), Nintendo recently fielded questions from investors following a financial results briefing. While plenty of questions focused on the recently confirmed Nintendo Switch successor – naturally – we did get some insight from Furukawa on the state of play for games development for the wider industry.
Essentially, it's "inevitable" that making games will become a longer process as they become more complex and sophisticated. Furukawa points to merger and acquisition as one possible solution to dealing with this, though it's far from guaranteed that it'll happen. Nintendo has a very set way of working, and any potential new development partner would need to get up to speed on that.
Nintendo has developed many beloved properties, from Mario to Zelda and all the spin-offs between. I'm sure you'll likely see all the familiar faces on the Nintendo Switch 2, though maybe not at the frequency of older consoles regarding main entries. In fairness, though, that's unlikely to surprise many as that's how development has been trending regardless over the recent console generations.
As for the Nintendo Switch's successor, the company says it will announce the next-gen Switch successor "within this fiscal year." Furukawa says "Switch next model is the appropriate way to describe" it, but don't expect any news at next month's Nintendo Direct.
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