In 2018, Nintendo invited me to a meeting in New York City to see a mysterious new initiative. It was teased as an “interactive experience for Nintendo Switch,” which sent my mind to all sorts of places. This is the company that made a weird dual-screen Game Boy and bongo controllers, after all. It could be anything. Even still, I did not guess that I would spend that meeting folding bits of cardboard — or that those cardboard accessories would turn out to be so awesome. That was the moment I completely gave up on trying to guess what Nintendo would do next.
That meeting has been on my mind quite a bit over the last few weeks. While much of the game industry has been on edge in anticipation of whatever the follow-up to the Switch will be, Nintendo has focused on pretty much anything and everything else.
Last month, I went to visit the company in Kyoto, but not to see new hardware; instead, I went on a tour of the just-opened Nintendo Museum. This month, Nintendo did announce a new gadget, but instead of a console, it was an alarm clock. And just this week, details started trickling out about the company’s secretive online test, which some predicted would provide hints at the Switch 2. Nope: instead, it seems to be an online game in the vein of Minecraft. Three big moments, zero Switch successors.
This isn’t new, of course. Nintendo generally goes its own way. When Sony and Microsoft ushered in the current generation of consoles, Nintendo launched a new version of the Game & Watch, an LCD handheld from the ’80s. But the rapid succession of announcements and reveals from the company over the last few weeks has been surprising and indicative of its idiosyncratic nature. And while it might seem random, the weeks full of museum openings and alarm clock launches are likely part of a very calculated strategy.
It could mean a few things. Maybe Nintendo is clearing the runway to keep the focus on the Switch 2 whenever it does decide to announce it. In the Switch era, Nintendo has become much more adept at clear messaging, which hasn’t always been the case. Just think back to when the Wii U was first announced, and some (myself included) initially confused it for a Wii accessory. So it makes a lot of sense to get this other stuff out of the way before the next console. Nintendo Direct presentations have become huge moments, and the one dedicated to the next console will possibly be the biggest to date. You don’t want to mess that up.
It could also be an indication of where Nintendo is right now. This is a company that doesn’t want to be only known for games. Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto said as much when I was in Kyoto in September. “A lot of people may see Nintendo as a video game company,” he explained during a press conference. “But what I wanted to express with this museum is that we are first and foremost an entertainment company.” While it’s been building a new console in secret and sending out its current one on a high note, it has also been branching out in new directions.
Doing things differently isn’t always a guarantee of success, of course, and Nintendo has certainly had its share of failures. These glory days of the Switch, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Super Nintendo World famously happened in the aftermath of the Wii U, Nintendo’s worst-selling home console to date. It took 30 years for the company to follow up the infamous original Mario movie flop with a billion-dollar film. The industry ebbs and flows, and it only takes one console generation to move from the top of the market to the bottom. That only makes it harder to predict what Nintendo will do; I certainly would have never guessed the Switch was its next system back in 2017 or that it would go on to outsell the Wii and Game Boy.
This is all a long way of saying that, just like when I sat down in front of some stacks of cardboard in New York, I am currently at a loss trying to figure out what Nintendo’s execs are thinking. I have some ideas, of course, helped along by a steady stream of rumors, but no real sense of what the company’s next console will look like or when it will be announced. All I know for sure is that it won’t be boring. But if it is? That’d be another big surprise.