Nintendo’s European studio NERD have released a job opening hinting that work is well underway on the successor to the Nintendo Switch.
NERD in this case, does not refer to Pharrell Williams’ 2000s era band. We are talking about Nintendo European Research and Development, a French software technology company and a subsidiary of Nintendo.
Note that I was careful not to call them a game company, as NERD does not make video games like EPD or Intelligent Systems. Instead, their specialty is in middleware, the programs used to make video games, and/or make those games better.
NERD was launched in 2003 as ActImagine, and first made their name making video compression technology for Nintendo platforms, called MobiClip. One of their first major projects was working on Metroid Prime Hunters for the DS, with that game’s cutscenes running on MobiClip. Nintendo acquired them as a subsidiary in 2011.
You probably heard of NERD during the release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. They had produced the emulator for those games, and received a lot of flak for that collection’s poor performance. But that wasn’t really indicative of what the company is capable of.
NERD developed all the emulators used in the games bundled with Nintendo Switch Online, and the Expansion pack. They also developed the emulators used in the NES Classic Edition and SNES Classic Edition. These are all brand new emulators for each individual platform.
They also developed these technologies for these various Nintendo Switch games:
- VR for Nintendo Labo
- Deep learning on Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch
- Heart rate detection system on Ring Fit Adventure
- Gesture tracking on Nintendo Switch Sports
- Steering control, location tracking, video capture and streaming on Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit
In so many words, NERD are unsung heroes within Nintendo, developing many of the technologies we take for granted, but power many of their unique, unusual, and successful products.
NERD’s website hosts a new job opening for a Game Tech Engineer, located in Paris, France itself. The reason this job opening is interesting is some details in the listing clearly refers to Nintendo hardware that is not the Nintendo Switch.
In the section describing the company, they state:
“we contribute to emulation, signal processing, content generation, computer vision, machine learning, system development, optimization and security for Nintendo Switch™ and other Nintendo platforms.”
And under the section describing the position responsibilities, it refers to these specific responsibilities:
- Game engine architecture
- Cross-platform development
- Network programming
- Interactions with large code bases
On that latter note, it’s easy to just focus on the line ‘cross-platform development,’ but the other items are just as interesting. They paint a bigger picture that NERD could be working on interoperability and compatibility between the Nintendo Switch and its successor.
So let me speculate on what this job description could be suggesting on what’s coming with Nintendo’s upcoming console, particularly in relation to the Switch.
For example, both platforms could be sharing online systems. There could be the same system setup for online updates, online play, and account management. You could bring the same Nintendo account over from your Switch to the new console. The same access to services like Pokemon Bank could come to the new console as is on the Switch.
And it could go even farther than that. If Nintendo is working on backwards compatibility between the Nintendo Switch and its successor, NERD is probably working on that system right now. We may be seeing a future where we can play our digital Nintendo Switch library on the successor console, with full compatibility.
These would all be great to see. In fact, I’ll warrant a guess that a lot of gamers already expect all of the features I mentioned above, as they are present in PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
For now we will have to settle for the knowledge that Nintendo is clearly preparing for their next console to release in the near future.
