Le Monde Interviews Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi

French site Le Monde has an exclusive interview with Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi. There were a number of interesting points discussed including Nintendo Switch production, which still needs to be ramped up to satisfy demand worldwide. Here’s some key points taken from the interview which may be of interest:

• Nintendo has been able to improve the Switch production line, so more units are coming
• Nintendo worked hard to make sure the Switch was easy to program for
• Nintendo has 11 production units for software, and each one of them is working on multiple projects
• The scope of Zelda: BotW’s development team was quite massive, but Zelda games usually are among Nintendo’s biggest
• Nintendo will continue to try and create more ambitious titles like this for Switch
• Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda: BotW shouldn’t be compared as they’re two different types of games
• Breath of the Wild was about open air and freedom, while Super Mario Odyssey is about being locked in a box
• Nintendo won’t apply the open-air design of Zelda to every other franchise just because it worked well in Zelda
• Nintendo is open to other partnerships like the one between Ubisoft and Nintendo
• These partnerships must be beneficial to the player, and they depend on the project suggestions Nintendo receives
  The Switch launch titles of Zelda, 1-2 Switch and Snipperclips were chosen to showcase different aspects of the Switch
• The goal is to provide software that is unique to the platform and showcases what it can do
• Nintendo hasn’t abandoned more “realistic” games like 1080 Snowboarding and Wave Race
• While Nintendo has a lot of projects in the works, they won’t say that those specific franchises are coming back
• If Nintendo has an idea to pursue a realistic, yet fun game, they will certainly do so
• The way Switch software development is handled was done in order to make things easier for third parties to adapt their games
• Nintendo hopes people pick up Skyrim and FIFA in order to see the value in being able to take/play those games anywhere
• Nintendo believes third party opinion of the Switch has changed for the better since it launched

Source / Source

Thanks to Ridleyslayer for the tip!