It’s Officially A Brand-New Era For Nintendo

Perhaps more than any other video game company, Nintendo is defined by its franchises. When you think of the Big N, you think of The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Metroid, and Pokémon. If you’re the kind of person who hasn’t been able to move past the 90s and has difficulty forming emotional connections with other people, you probably think of Earthbound.

For some, Nintendo’s focus on established IP has always been a bit of a sticking point. It is, of course, worth noting that Nintendo tends to experiment within its franchises, and has created successful new ones — such as Splatoon and Pikmin — over the last few decades.

It’s heartening, then, to hear from no less a person than Shigeru Miyamoto himself that he wants to continue pushing Nintendo IP outside video games. At the moment, the big focus has been on the Mario movies and the upcoming live-action Zelda, but that could be about to change.

Speaking at Nintendo’s recent investor Q&A (thanks, Nintendo Life), the board asked how Nintendo plans to continue growing its IP beyond video games. In recent years we’ve seen movies, theme parks, and even apps. NCL president Shuntaro Furukawa suggested that the company’s “basic policy will not change in the Nintendo Switch 2 generation,” before Miyamoto weighed in.

Here’s what the Nintendo designer and video game legend had to say:

For more than 15 years, I had been discussing with Mr. Iwata, who was President at the time, what Nintendo should become in the future. At first, I was cautious about Nintendo expanding its business to smart devices and using characters created for games outside of games. I was concerned that, depending on how the characters were used, it could impose unwanted limitations when creating games.

However, as we developed Wii, I realized that while there was a limit to the number of people Nintendo’s dedicated video game platforms alone could reach, it is possible to reach a much larger audience through smartphones, movie theaters, YouTube, and other channels. I also thought that the purest reason for consumers to purchase a Nintendo dedicated video game platform was not because it was inexpensive or had certain features, but because they wanted to play a particular game, or wanted to play Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda. From there, I thought that introducing Nintendo characters to regions and consumers unfamiliar with them would also lead to game sales in the future, so we made a significant shift toward expanding points of contact between the consumers and our characters. This strategy of “expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP” began more than a decade ago.

Today, I feel that IP related initiatives have a high profit margin and have grown as a business. They have also come to play a major role in expanding Nintendo around the world, so we will focus even more on this area going forward.

Miyamoto pointed to the success of Pikmin Bloom, a mobile game not unlike Pokémon GO, and said: “Going forward, we will expand these initiatives and would like to bring not only Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, but also new characters, to the world. We will expand these initiatives through a variety of methods, including movies and videos.”

Given the enormous success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Super Mario Galaxy movie, it’s not surprising to hear that Nintendo wants to keep pushing outside video games. Personally, I’d happily take a Metroid sci-fi horror starring Brie Larson, but it’s far more likely that we end up with a feature-length Pikmin movie first. I’m a patient man, mind you.