Former Nintendo America President Reggie Fils-Aimé recently had a chat with CNET about his new book Disrupt the game.
While the usual batch of Nintendo-related questions popped up, Reggie had a little extra to share on this particular occasion. First, he doesn’t expect Nintendo to revive these “mini consoles” like the classic SNES and NES now that it has a solid way to deliver legacy content through the Switch Online service.
In his opinion, he thinks Nintendo should focus its energy and effort on delivering “more” N64 content, and maybe even other legacy systems like the GameCube and Wii, and really leverage that. Nintendo look. Here is part of the exchange:
On the NES Classic, SNES Classic and whether mini consoles will return
Management: “Is it going to come back? Will there be other physical boxes with legacy content? I don’t think so. If I was back at Nintendo for a day, I would be much more focused on: how to company leverage all of their great content, deliver it to the consumer through this Nintendo online experience? What they do…they release N64 content, they work with other platform holders to bring out a some of that legacy content. But that’s where the opportunity lies. Nintendo has even more N64 content to exploit.
They have GameCube content to exploit, they have Wii content. I see this future of digital content for you, the consumer, as a growing opportunity that I would like to continue to take advantage of.”
When we last checked in on the SNES and NES Mini, combined sales of the systems had passed the ten million mark. While that’s a pretty stunning feat for the re-release of two legacy consoles, Switch Online is admittedly garnering a lot more interest, with subscriptions (as of last November) surpassing 32 million users.
The system itself has also moved over 107 million units as of March 31, 2022, meaning Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pack subscriptions will likely continue to increase.
What do you think of Reggie’s comments regarding Switch Online? Should Nintendo monopolize the now classic consoles like the GameCube and Wii, in addition to the N64? This follows the news Pokemon Snap will arrive in the N64 Switch Online library next week. After this release, the only other known games scheduled for this library include Custom Robo and its sequel, which are currently exclusive to Japan’s NSO service.
