Nintendo 2019: Game Company May Drop Consoles For Mobile Games, Movies, Theme Parks

Nintendo of Japan president Shuntaro Furukawa has confirmed his plans for the company’s future, revealing that they are considering moving away from developing their next big console.

The new corporate head, who took on the helm after Tatsumi Kimishima stepped down, said he is looking at investing on smartphone games, movies and theme parks to help boost Nintendo’s revenue. Here’s what we know about Furukawa’s plans.

In the translated Nikkei interview (via Nintendo Everything), Furukawa looked back at the history of the company, as well as shared his vision for the future.

“It has been over 30 years since we started developing consoles. Nintendo’s history goes back even farther than that, and through all the struggles that they faced the only thing that they thought about was what to make next. In the long-term, perhaps our focus as a business could shift away from home consoles – flexibility is just as important as ingenuity,” Furukawa said.

While Nintendo did begin in the business as a hanafuda playing card producer, they’re mostly known nowadays as one of the big home console brands along with Sony and Microsoft. Later in the interview, Furukawa noted three avenues Nintendo intends to branch out: the mobile market, theme parks and movies.

So far, Nintendo has started making moves on the mobile market since 2016 with the release of the Miitomo smartphone app. While this app was discontinued last May 2018, Nintendo has managed to establish a presence in the mobile market with games like "Fire Emblem Heroes" and their collaboration game with Cygames, "Dragalia Lost."

Meanwhile, Nintendo is currently working with Universal to make the theme parks, which are now planned for Orlando, Hollywood and Japan. The Orlando park construction is underway, and the Super Nintendo World in Japan is expected to be done in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, we’ve yet to know which of their franchises will be heavily used as attractions for these parks.

Lastly, TheNextWeb confirmed that Nintendo will also dabble in hand-drawn and 3D animated films in the future. Again, Nintendo has yet to say which of their franchises will be used first for these projects.

Japanese video game developer Capcom has experienced some success with movies with their live-action "Resident Evil" movie trilogy and has the upcoming "Monster Hunter" live-action movie soon. Nintendo may want to try their shot in the movie business as Capcom did earn money following their venture into filmmaking.

As for the possibility of a Nintendo console after the Switch, it remains uncertain as the Switch doesn’t seem to show any decline so far. We’ve yet to see if Nintendo really intends to leave the home console development industry.