This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

Nintendo’s Investor Q&A has been published and it seems like one investor is already starting to think about what comes after the Switch.

Nintendo’s executives were asked about future hardware going beyond the limits of an image being ‘displayed on a TV or other kind of screen while you do something’. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa essentially avoided the question, detailing how the Switch is increasing momentum despite being in its fourth year on the market. Nintendo’s apparently want to ‘extend the life cycle of Nintendo Switch while maximising such advantages’.

However, Ko Shiota, Nintendo’s Senior Executive Officer, elaborated a little on how the Switch has reinforced Nintendo’s belief in a dedicated video game platform, and how that will shape their thinking when it comes to future hardware:

“In addition to the performance aspects (higher technical specifications), Nintendo’s dedicated video game platforms are developed with focus on providing a comfortable environment for consumers to play fun software. From the perspective of playing with the image displayed on a TV, we believe that because consumers can play Nintendo Switch on a TV or the game console screen itself, it has greatly increased the opportunities for gameplay in various scenes in their lives, compared to previous consoles. Through Nintendo Switch, we’ve made many discoveries about where a dedicated video game platform can fit into a consumer’s daily life. We see scenes on social media of children and their families sitting aground a game console to play, which gives us a renewed sense of the value of a dedicated video game platform. We will utilize these experiences in carefully considering the form our future game consoles will take.

Clearly Nintendo aren’t ready to divulge any specifics on a Switch follow-up, but reading between the lines it doesn’t sound like Nintendo is getting out of the hardware biz any time soon, even with the emphasis on cloud solutions growing within the industry.

Do you think the dedicated game console still has a long future? Let us know down in the comments!

Source: Nintendo