Talking to buyers at a just lately revealed open question-and-answer session, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa made one among his uncommon feedback about Nintendo’s subsequent console. Requested if the corporate had any particular measures in thoughts for the transition to next-generation consoles, Furukawa introduced up Nintendo Accounts.
As translated by Twitter consumer Genki, Furukawa mentioned: “As for the transition from Nintendo Swap to the subsequent era machine, we wish to do as a lot as doable in an effort to easily transition our clients, whereas using the Nintendo Account.”
This looks as if a fairly innocuous and apparent assertion, however for Nintendo, it’s vital. Nintendo Accounts had been soft-launched in 2016, and weren’t tied right into a Nintendo {hardware} platform till the discharge of Swap the next yr. So the transition from Swap to its successor will, extremely, be the primary time Nintendo’s customers will have the ability to carry their account from one console to the subsequent. Wii and Wii U house owners will bear in mind Nintendo’s rudimentary Nintendo Community ID system, and the ache of attempting to hold this id throughout consoles.
In additional feedback, Furukawa famous that Nintendo had beforehand wanted to rebuild the connection with its clients with each {hardware} transition. In distinction, he mentioned there are actually over 290 million Nintendo Accounts — each from Swap customers, and gamers of Nintendo’s cell video games — by means of which the corporate may join with its customers.
Furukawa was absolutely stating to buyers that Nintendo Accounts will make for a a lot lower-risk transition to a brand new console for Nintendo, leveraging Swap’s huge recognition — in addition to a hopefully extra seamless expertise for its followers. The significance of constructing a reference to customers that extends past the {hardware} itself was just lately underlined by Xbox boss Phil Spencer, when he lamented to Kinda Humorous Video games that “we misplaced the worst era to lose within the Xbox One era, the place everyone constructed their digital library of video games.”
It’s tempting to deduce from Furukawa’s feedback that Nintendo will permit customers to hold their digital libraries of Swap video games with them onto a backwards-compatible successor, maybe of comparable design to its wildly profitable hybrid handheld. However there’s no assure of that. In any case, for instance, PlayStation Community accounts persisting from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 sadly didn’t make PS3 video games playable on the later machine.
Nor did Furukawa didn’t sound in a specific hurry to launch Swap’s successor, noting that the power of Swap’s {hardware} and software program gross sales in its seventh yr beat these of any earlier Nintendo console. “We think about that now we have entered uncharted territory,” he mentioned. The clock could also be ticking for Swap, however Nintendo appears ready to attend to switch it till the final minute.