While the love for the Nintendo Switch is very nice to see and very well-deserved, there was a time when two “other consoles” of Nintendo had an equal amount of desire from fans. Those consoles were the NES Mini and SNES Mini systems. Compact versions of the classic consoles that each came with a set of classic titles built into the systems for people to play without having to dig out their old consoles. Many, including Reggie Fils-Aime were fans of these systems when they came out.
But Reggie Fils-Aime said in an interview about his new book “Disrupting The System” that he felt that Nintendo’s vision now needs to be on its “online delivery” rather than the potential for new mini-consoles:
“Will it come back? Will there be other physical boxes with legacy content? I don’t think so,” he said. “If I were back at Nintendo for a day, I would be much more focused on: How does the company leverage all of its great content, deliver it to the consumer through that Nintendo online experience?”
Nintendo Switch Online has indeed been a part of their focus for content for the past few years, including with the Expansion Pack which delivers more games. They’re not doing everything that fans want them to on this field of play, but Reggie feels they have more to give:
“Which they are doing… they’re putting out some N64 content, they’re working with other platform holders to bring out some of that legacy content,” he said. “But that’s where the opportunity is. Nintendo still has more N64 content to leverage. They’ve got GameCube content to leverage. They’ve got Wii content. I see this future of digitally delivered content to you, the consumer, as just this burgeoning opportunity that I would want to keep taking advantage of.”
We’ll have to see what they do, and given that we haven’t seen new mini-systems yet, he’s probably right about us not getting another one soon.
Source: CNET
