Easier to port classics than ever before

Easier to port classics than ever before

The possibility to port classic Nintendo titles to their current system, the Nintendo Switch, was one of the topics Shigeru Miyamoto, a famed video game creator, discussed during the Q&A session that followed the release of the company’s most recent financial results.

The development environment of today is getting more standardized, according to Mr. Miyamoto, making it simpler than ever for them to port their back catalog to the Switch and their next platforms. He emphasized, however, that the company’s main goal is to provide innovative experiences for its sizable user base, and that when they unveil their next system, they plan to show off fresh titles that cannot be played on the Nintendo Switch at the moment.

Miyamoto on porting classics

“In the past, we offered a service called the “Virtual Console” that let consumers play more recent consoles with more modern technology while still using older video games. Those games could still be played as long as the hardware was the same.

But because obtaining the requisite rights to publish video games is difficult, we have said that we will only add titles after doing so.

Of course, each platform had a separate development environment for the video games that were made for it. Video games that had been launched for previous systems could not be played on newer platforms without further modification since the development environment could not always be reused when the hardware changed.

However, the development environment has recently gotten more standardized, and as a result, it is now easier than ever for users to play older video games on current platforms.

“However, Nintendo’s strength is in developing fresh video game experiences, so when we launch new technology in the future, we would want to highlight distinctive video games that could not be produced with current hardware,” the company says.