In an interview with Fortune magazine, Reggie Fils-Aime went over how Nintendo weren’t as interested in investing into VR.
From the interview regarding:
We have a long and deep history with VR with Virtual Boy, and we also have a history with augmented reality because there’s AR in Nintendo 3DS. We know the tech and we know how the tech has evolved. For Nintendo, we always go beyond the tech to make sure that the experiences we do are fun and they’re social, and I think those are the two key opportunities today on the VR/AR space. Are they both fun and social? I don’t think that’s there yet. So we’re going to continue to stay close to the technology. We’re going to continue to do our own internal experiments, but we don’t believe it’s ready for prime time yet.
They did express a lot of interest into eSports, saying it’s a great way to expose their fans to their games.
With the success of both the Smash Invitational last year and the Nintendo World Championship last month, with the latter garnering 5 million views, it’s no wonder Nintendo see a more immediate future with eSports.
We saw success last year with the Smash Bros. Invitational, and Smash Bros. has always been a game in the eSports community. What we’re really gratified to see is that the community has now embraced Super Smash Bros. for Wii U because it has the speed and customization they like. We’re also seeing them embrace Mario Kart 8, as well as Splatoon, in a competitive environment. We’ve always been close to the eSports space and will continue to be.
It’s interesting to see them take this stance, as they’ve been very protective about their image, seeing as they tried to stop Super Smash Bros Melee from making it to EVO back in 2013.
Seems as if their attitude has changed over the last two years, and we’ll see where they plan to take their brand in the eSports scene, as they have plans for it outside of E3.
We’re fortunate that we’ve got the range of content to pull it off in the here and now, and we’re really gratified to see the reactions. All of that is going to go into the mix as we think about proper opportunities, future E3s as well as potentially taking the idea outside of E3. So it’s something we’re going to be looking at really hard.
