Nintendo president on the risky entertainment business, pondering a future without consoles, and doing more to spread Nintendo's IPs

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently sat down with Nikkei for a quick interview about the games business in general, as well as Nintendo's path moving forward. There are a number of interesting tidbits, which you can find below (translated by NintendoEverything).

On the inherent dangers of the entertainment industry

We’re in the entertainment industry; there isn’t much we can do about that risk. To us, the guiding principle by which we operate is offering customers all around the world innovative and unique ways to play games. I don’t want our developers to think too much along the lines of “what should I do if we fail?” My most important role is to facilitate an environment in which they can demonstrate their own abilities. I’m not a pro developer myself, so I leave the actual development to leaders that can tell what a good game is and what isn’t.

On a future that might not include home consoles

It has been over 30 years since we started developing consoles. Nintendo’s history goes back even farther than that, and through all the struggles that they faced the only thing that they thought about was what to make next. In the long-term, perhaps our focus as a business could shift away from home consoles – flexibility is just as important as ingenuity.

On fostering other streams of revenue

I’d like to increase the (amount of) games on smartphones that have a continuous stream of revenue. We’re also dabbling in theme parks and movies – different ways to have our characters be a part of everyday life. I’m anticipating a strong synergy like that.