Nintendo: "We have no interest in switching our customers"

Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima has asserted that the company's new console does not represent a shift in the way it sees its audience. "As the name implies, we're switching a lot of things," he told Bloomberg, "but we have no interest in switching our customers."

The Switch debuted in a promotional video that had a distinct lack of families and children, two groups with which Nintendo is closely associated. It also featured footage from core-facing franchises like The Elder Scrolls and NBA 2K, despite neither being confirmed for the console when it launches in March next year.

According to Kimishima, however, Nintendo has no intention of "just going after a certain age group. Depending on the kind of software that comes out, families and kids will be able to play too." The prominent use of games like Skyrim was to communicate with groups who "will grasp it right away," referring to the console's ability to be used as a handheld or connected to a television. "For families and kids," he added, "we want them to understand by actually experiencing it."

"Our core philosophy is that we want to increase the number of gamers at all ages, and there's no change to that. So we have no intention to lean just towards core gamers. But to communicate our new idea, when you think about who will understand it first, naturally it will be people who really understand games. To communicate that as quickly as possible, we focused on those folks who really understand games."

Kimishima placed the Switch in the context of a plan to "revitalize" Nintendo, which he devised along with creative lead Shigeru Miyamoto and tech led Genyo Takeda three years ago. Console hardware was one aspect, smartphone software another, and making better use of the company's enviable IP stable another.

"Now the critical period is finally here," he said. "From the end of this fiscal period and into the next one is when we actually show the product and deliver it to our customers.

"Our revenue has fallen for eight straight years. What we aim for is to increase the number of people who play games. We want to deliver all kinds of new surprises to our customers, and it is through their support that our revenue increases. That's the end result. But if that result doesn't show, that means we weren't able to deliver. Next year is when we see the result."

Kimishima also described the Switch's detachable controllers are "add-on hardware" or "accessories," and that we "can assume that there will be a wider array."