During a recent interview with
Fortune, Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser discusses a little bit about cloud gaming and streaming technologies in general; revealing that Nintendo has actually been paying close attention to these new technologies and trying to understand them.
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The Switch delivers on a lot of the promises [of streaming]. It’s a device where you can play anywhere, at any time, with anyone. It’s obviously something that we’re closely watching, and looking at, and understanding," explained Bowser.
Nintendo is well-known for innovating at their own pace, but part of this innovtion comes from figuring out both the technology behind what they want to deliver, and the consumer's needs, and them carefully trying to understand streaming technologies would — especially considering how popular the Nintendo Switch is — is definitely interesting to know.
On a separate interview with
TIME, Doug Bowser reiterated that Nintendo are studying and understanding the technology behind streaming services, but he also believes that the Nintendo Switch offers a similar experience — keeping in mind its portable nature — by letting players seamlessly play at home or on-the-go without the need of a streaming service.
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We’re looking at those technologies and understanding their capabilities and how they may contribute to the gameplay experiences we desire with our IP and characters and environments.
However, we also believe that at this point in time Nintendo Switch also offers a very compelling and unique gameplay experience. It’s a very unique platform in that you can play it at home on your TV, and instantaneously pull it out of the dock and go to a portable mode, whether that’s a tabletop mode or a handheld mode, and continue playing that game seamlessly wherever you go."
This agrees with what Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, said about cloud gaming; revealing that he has no doubts about cloud gaming becoming mainstreeam, but he also believes that players will still want to play their games locally without the need of a streaming service.
At the end of the day, streaming services are pretty much inevitable, but Nintendo understands that physical media will still have a place for a majority of players. There's no doubt that Nintendo will embrace streaming technologies sooner than later, but that doesn't mean they'll get rid of consoles any time soon in favor of cloud gaming; something that a lot of us are thankful for.