According to Nintendo’s second-quarter report, President Shuntaro Furukawa credited the company’s massive success to its fans as well as its careful approach to aligning new games with its existing IPs.
This is according to the translated financial report shared today. Furukawa attributed Nintendo’s success to multiple factors: such as investment in developer relationships, diversification across multiple regions, and greater language localisations – which has brought Nintendo IPs to new regions.
Furukawa also said:
“Because we consider our strength to lie in our IP assets, such as our characters which have grown alongside the memories of consumers have made while playing our games over years, we have been actively utilizing our IP.”
As such Nintendo understands that its success comes from consistency and preserving the relationship that players build with the various characters that make up Nintendo’s IP. Furukawa went on to say:
“We believe that the growth of Nintendo IP has been due more than anything else to the many people around the world playing and enjoying our games. Nintendo has carefully crafted each title to align with the chracteristics of the IP. This approach to software development has remained consistenet since we first developed titles for the Nintendo Entertainment System.”
A touching sentiment, connecting the success of a company to the love and passion of its fanbase and that company’s commitment to developing games that are consistent with its IP. Essentially Shuntaro Furukawa is stating that Nintendo’s commitment to developing games the same way for the past 39 years has led them to this point.
Nintendo is synonymous with gaming and pushing the limits with hardware that has consistently been just below the industry standard. The NES, Gameboy, SNES, Switch and a whole host of other devices have found their success not through being the most performant devices but through their IP and the consistency thereof.
Perhaps this is why those devices are still popular today. Gameboy communities are thriving and new games are still being released for those older systems. If you’d like to revisit older games and try some new ones then maybe check out this piece on the GBA and games that are still worth playing! If you’d like to read the full translated report from Nintendo you can find it here.
