Fanbyte has had the chance to interview former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé and was asked a number of questions about his time there including his push for diversity at Nintendo of America, what he thinks of the latest acquisitions from Sony and Microsoft, and what he think thinks the successor to Switch would be like. He said that judging from his extensive time at the company he believes that in all likelihood that the Nintendo Switch’s successor “is going to be something completely different”. Reggie reiterated that the Kyoto-based company is always pushing for innovation in gaming, rather than simply resting on its laurels.
If you were still in charge, what would the successor of the Nintendo Switch look like to you?
“What’s so provocative about that question is, again, Nintendo is a company that just believes in innovation and doing things fundamentally different and so in all likelihood, the successor is going to be something completely different. If I were, you know, the king of Nintendo for a day, I personally believe that we’re almost at the point where a streamed gaming experience can be brought to bear.
Essentially, all we need today is better routers in our home and any game including fast twitch games, can be experienced through a cloud stream type of experience. What I would love to see is a cloud-based experience. So no platform in the home — everything is done through the cloud. This way, it truly becomes an experience where you’ve got new content, [and] you’ve got the best of all of the old content that’s made available through some sort of subscription service. That’s what I would do. But candidly, I don’t think the router improvement is going to happen for another probably three to four years. So that’s when I would bring the successor platform to bear.”
No way. People in areas with good internet take it for granted that there’s still a lot of areas with terrible coverage and connection speeds.
It also adds nothing to the gaming experience except for MAYBE convenience (and it would just be inconvenient when you have connection issues).
Plus, I think there is a strong desire for physical releases still. Customers have started to realize how you don’t actually own anything digital and will lose it whenever the service stops being supported.
Guarantee Nintendo would be the last to abandon physical. They probably know to fans of their hardware, the physical copy is both a game and collectible, its not like xbox where the disc is pretty much useless. You get the convenience of personal ownership as well as the physical copy kinda acting like a autograph or ticket stub to an event, piece of memorabilia long besides letting you play it.
But the disc isn’t useless. The game data is still in the disc, the game just installs because the laser can’t read that much data at the required speed, but anyone with no internet would still be able to play the game using the disc alone. And it’s not just XBO, it’s how both PS5 and XBSX function.
Ps5/4, yes, you are correct. However many xbox discs are increasingly useless because they require day 1 patches downloaded to even start many games or most data is downloaded from online even with the disc. You can use a ps4 completely never going online just using discs, post 360 xbox this is not possible or extremely specific, you cant even use the system without registering it online first.
“Customers have started to realize how you don’t actually own anything digital and will lose it whenever the service stops being supported.”
Maybe I’m missing something here but what about Steam? Those games are stored digitally but when you purchase them they are downloaded to your PC for you to keep for good. Granted there is the issue that maybe the hard-drive could eventually pack in but you can say the same for cartridges.
Unless I’m mistaken, as long as you have access to your Steam account, you can just login & re-download your games on a new computer if the hard-drive decides to go nuclear on itself. As long as the company’s servers don’t get wiped out by an EMP or Snake Plisskin (kudos if anyone gets what I’m referring to), your stuff will be fine.
Personally, my plan would be to buy new hard drives after a few years & copy my games onto the new ones, trashing the old ones. (Would have to mark down the year of each hard drive so I know how old each one is but worth it in the long run just in case.)
Won’t be long until we see the completely new successor climbing down the gaming markets. If Reggie was in charge again, he will know exactly what the next system will be like that will meet fans satisfaction.
I’d much rather have another Switch that improves on what it has, but Nintendo will be Nintendo. Count me out if it’s another controller gimmick. I cannot do it anymore.
Technically the switch is a controller gimmick but honestly alot much better, aside from the drift but yeah I totally understand I still have no idea what Nintendo was on when they made the GameCube and 64 controller
What are you talking about. The N64 controller was revolutionary for the time and the GC controller was so functional.
“For the time” being the key phrase here. It’s aged horribly since and is honestly one of my least favourite controllers in all of gaming.
It’s so awkward and uncomfortable to use.
neither do I.
You must be the first person to complain about the GameCube controller, because from what I’ve seen, the majority of games actually LOVE the GameCube controller layout and the triggers are still the best analogue triggers out there.
I’m not the only one, I seen others complain about it as well, if you like it more power to you and everyone else but its just not for me.
If thats Reggies idea, then im glad he retired.
To be fair, he was a marketer, not an engineer and was never expected to even give input on what the next devices were. The interviewer asked him a question, and he answered, when he really should have not. It was not a question that was about his forte.
No offense Reggie, but that is a TERRIBLE idea. Even more so with Nintendo’s spotty record when it comes to literally anything online.
The Switch format is perfect. Everyone loves it. Just make it stronger and add some more features.
The switch is working well and people are asking for a more powerful version for years if not from the very beginning.. so for once it would be really nice if they go the PS route of just increasing the switch power and naming it switch 2 that simple
I’d be entirely happy with a Switch Lite type system that has WAY more power and a bigger screen (no detachable controllers) and a GameCube wireless controller that works when the system is docked. It’s a slight evolution of the Switch but also kinda the 3DS (portable) made dockable that becomes a GameCube (home console but faster of course)
I hope he’s wrong. Cloud gaming is problematic.
NINTENDO is getting everything ready for the 3DS successor!