 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We obviously spend a lot of time here talking about what's coming next from Nintendo, be it video games, systems, accessories, et cetera. And right now, we're in an interesting time where we're in the middle of the Switch's lifecycle, at least according to Nintendo. We've been in the middle for three straight years, but that's neither here nor there. At some point, Nintendo's gonna have to release brand new hardware. Now, we're not talking about the Pro or anything like that. We're just talking about whatever Nintendo does with their next gen and when next gen will come. Now, a lot of the conversations around Nintendo's next gen have been under a presumption that Nintendo is going to do something that they haven't actually done a lot of lately, and that is iterate on their current platform. This is the most recent release, Switch OLED, and the big presumption, since there's not a lot of competition for a device like this and the sheer popularity, as that Nintendo would release just another device similar to this that's more powerful, maybe has a higher resolution screen, maybe it improved Joy-Cons, but it would largely be the same sort of platform, sort of like a Steam Deck. But the thing is, that presumption works on the back of Nintendo doing something they haven't traditionally done, at least not for a while. The Super Nintendo was an iterative system on top of the Nintendo Entertainment System, and yeah, they added some new control functions, but for the most part, it was just a more powerful Nintendo Entertainment System, and the N64 came out, and then they tried something completely different with obviously the GameCube going with disks and a more modernized controller compared to the Nintendo 64, and then they completely flipped the script and went with Wii, and then we even completely flipped the script with Wii U with the GamePad, and then obviously we get to this. It gets to a point where it's obvious that what Nintendo likes to do is come up with unique and raw ideas and try them out. Even going from DS to 3DS, while that is a more traditional path, they had to do something that ended up being a feature people cared about in Glasses Free 3D. So look, Nintendo has a long history of, we don't do iterative. We actually, more than likely, are gonna give you something that's completely different or significantly different than what you're used to. I don't think this is always the best business idea, but Nintendo likes to disagree. So we have new news coming from Shintaro Furukawa, who did an interview with Nikkei out in Japan. Talking about Nintendo's next system, and obviously it's really refreshing to see a Nintendo president talk about something that isn't even announced yet, but what's interesting is why they haven't announced it, what they're waiting for, and yeah, this maybe excites you or maybe concerns you. Let's get into it. Before we do, I wanna remind you, we are giving away a Nintendo Switch OLED, a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X to one lucky winner this month. All you have to do is head to that gleam.io link down in the pinned comment or the description. So, reading this translated version of it off of video game Chronicle, and the title says Nintendo's president says Switch's successor will need to offer a new experience. Speaking with Nikkei, through an interview, which is through a paywall, Shintaro Furukawa said that any successor to the Nintendo Switch must be able to offer consumers new forms of entertainment. Furukawa said Nintendo doesn't have a specific timeframe in mind for their hardware development, rather it is a constantly researching technology and a bid to create new experiences. The hardware and software development team are in the same building, communicating closely and thinking about how we can propose new forms of entertainment, Shintaro Furukawa said. In order to create a single piece of hardware, we have to do a lot of preparation several years in advance, so we are working without stopping. In the end, the deciding factor in whether or not to commercialize a product is whether it can create a new experience. Obviously, they go into House Switch to launch in March of 2017. Shintaro Furukawa goes on to say, we always say that we are in the middle of the Switch's life cycle, and since one piece of hardware can be used to play both stationary and portable games, we can offer a wide variety of software for this purpose, Furukawa said. The life cycle can still be extended. Again, talking about Switch. During a recent financial results meeting, Furukawa said releasing a wide range of software to ensure Switch continues to appeal to as many people as possible will be the key for helping the systems surpass the sales of the company's most successful console that ate the Nintendo Wii. What's interesting, obviously, in this interview is obviously his words on, you know, commercializing or basically releasing the next Nintendo product, it has to create a new experience. Now, new experience is obviously a very broad term and can mean a lot of things. Just releasing a more powerful Switch could enable new experiences because power is one way new experiences can be enabled. But we also know that's not the only thing Switch did, like when we look at Switch, we go, oh, it's just a portable home console. It's also a portable, you know, portable device and it's hybrid. It replaces everything. Yeah, it does do all that stuff, but that's not all Switch does. Like we might look at this as a general consumer race and go, yeah, that's why we bought the Switch for that portable home console hybrid nature. But they also had HD rumble in the controllers and detachable controllers that can be used as motion controllers or a standard controller plus the kickstand for tabletop play. Nintendo looks at the totality of all of these features and goes, these create new ways to play games. Like we might not think about it like Clubhouse 51 games where you set your Switch down and you're going like this with your finger on the touchscreen. They look at Switch as a multi-purpose device that could do all these many things that we have never had a singular device out of the box actually be able to do. So we might look at this as just a portable hybrid system but Nintendo looks at it as, we had a bunch of unique ideas that have been used. Even if the most popular reason the system sells isn't those ideas and isn't those features, they're still there. And Nintendo doesn't want to release another system until they have more of these unique fun ideas that they could include with the system to make it do things that you can't currently do with Switch. Now we all know more power is obviously natural and Nintendo does increase the power almost every generation. But what else is Nintendo going to do? Because obviously a lot of us really love this concept and there isn't really, I mean, Steam Deck is probably it. Like there's not really a massive competitor with Switch for this concept. So obviously a lot of us would just presume, why would you go away from something where you own the market, right? Nintendo dominates this market because of this. I don't know. They might not go away from this concept, by the way. Maybe the next one will have some crazy morphin' bendable screen fold-in-half thing and that's the new feature that they can create, you know, DS-like experiences where you could fold-in-half and like have a top screen and bottom screen or you can unfold it entirely and it just looks like this. Maybe that's the direction Nintendo's going to go. We don't know. Well, all we can say for certain is that Nintendo has new hardware. It is also funny that Shichiru Furukawa did say that we always say we're in the middle of the Switch's life cycle. The Shichiru Furukawa said there, we always say because they're not going to say they're out of the middle of the life cycle until they're ready to release new hardware. I mean, he didn't add that second part but there was an inference there that we always say this. He realizes he keeps saying it because they're not ready to move on. When they're ready to move on, that's when they'll stop saying they're in the middle of the Switch's hardware cycle. So obviously we're not getting a brand new, you know, next-gen system this year. Probably not next year either because obviously we have those Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC updates all the way through next year. But I think at some point in 2023 or 2024, suddenly Switch won't be in the middle of its life cycle anymore because Nintendo will be ready to reveal what's coming next. So we'll have to see. Obviously Nintendo's always working on new hardware Shichiru Furukawa told us in the past year or so that they're always working on new hardware including their next-gen device. I don't know if they really fully know what it's going to be at this point. Maybe they do. He says it takes years before they approve of things. Maybe something's already been approved and they're just still working towards it. Maybe it will be a follow-up to this. You know, like I said, the 3DS came out and yeah, it was basically a more powerful DS than it had the 3D capability. Are they gonna add a camera to the back of this and let you do AR? That would be new functionality that Switch currently can't do. Maybe they're gonna add a front-facing camera and you add glasses-free 3D to it for some. There's a lot of ways Nintendo could go with this and still have it be mostly what we want it to be which is a more powerful next handheld device. I think what concerns people when you hear Nintendo talk like this is just the history of Nintendo. They're known for retconning everything they've built and just trying to start all over again and a lot of us get really frustrated with this and the one reason the PlayStation audience is so loyal and comes around for every generation is they know what they're going to get. They know the next system is just gonna be a more powerful of the current system and they like that. There's a consistency there. There isn't that consistency with Nintendo. We have wildly different devices generation to generation and to me that really kills momentum and can kill audiences. So I understood why they went in a different direction with the Wii because they needed to but now that they have a device that nobody's actually replaced yet, why go away from it? Like I personally would not go away from what's already currently massively successful and working for Nintendo. That being said, I am the center of a chance from Nintendo Prime and enjoy this, enjoy this because we've only got one more day with this current studio and this current set. I don't know how many more videos that's going to be the news will largely determine that. Like maybe we have another video later today. I am planning on doing a live stream tonight sort of a send off stream because we're not going to be streaming tomorrow night because the studio is going to be torn down. So yeah, tonight, this is it. This is the final stream. Tonight is it. We have one final live stream for all of you guys on this set and I hope you're looking forward to that. We might have one more video tomorrow morning before I actually begin the teardown process and there'll be one final video sending off this set where I give you the studio tour of the current one, why we're making changes, what's happening and maybe a mini look at the vision for at least what I'm thinking of the vision for the new set. So we'll, I'm going to be extremely busy over the next week. We have the whole studio remodel our house remodel just a lot going on but the videos are going to continue to come. We're going to be going mobile here with the laptop. You know, we'll be doing a lot of, probably not a lot on camera. I don't think I'm going to be on camera for that many videos, if any, until the studio is ready to be unveiled. But we'll see. Maybe I changed my mind and I slapped my camera in front of a wall and talked to you guys. I don't know. We'll figure it out. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Roppeljantz from Nintendo Prime and I'll catch you guys in the next video. Bye.