Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto has commented on backward compatibility. For the longest time, many have questioned the company's commitment to bringing older games onto newer consoles. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, it's easier than ever before for consoles like the Nintendo Switch to have backward compatibility but couldn't say when it will happen for certain games.
Following the floundering sales of the Nintendo Wii U, the company began the development of a new console. That console became known as the Nintendo Switch which eventually managed to outsell the PlayStation 4. Questions, however, frequently come up about how and when Nintendo will allow gamers to play older games on current consoles. Now Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto has addressed backward compatibility and how committed the company is to porting older games onto current consoles.
Shigeru Miyamoto is an executive at Nintendo and has worked at the company since 1977. His credits include the creation of The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, and Pikmin, and has influenced the creation of many more. Shigeru Miyamoto is often listed as one of the most influential people in the Japanese gaming industry and has worked in a variety of roles at Nintendo. During a recent Q&A Miyamoto was asked about the potential future of backward compatibility. While some challenges could arise with publishing rights and potential hardware issues, Miyamoto responded by stating that the current hardware was ideal for it. However, he also stated that Nintendo was currently dedicated to making new content for the current console generation.
“In the past, we provided a service known as the ‘Virtual Console’ that allowed users to play older video games on new consoles with newer hardware. As long as the hardware remained unchanged, those games could continue to be played. However, the publishing rights to video games are complicated, and we have said that we would only add titles after securing the necessary rights. Of course, video games developed for dedicated consoles were created in different development environments for each console. As a result, when the hardware changed, the development environment could not necessarily be reused, and so the video games that had been released on older consoles could not be played on newer consoles without additional modification. Recently, however, the development environment has increasingly become more standardized, and we now have an environment that allows players to enjoy older video games on newer consoles more easily than ever before. However, Nintendo’s strength is in creating new video game experiences, so when we release new hardware in the future, we would like to showcase unique video games that could not be created with pre-existing hardware.”
The Q&A came after Nintendo published its latest financial report. This report revealed a number of revealing things which included the top ten best-selling Switch games and also revealed that sales for the games were up. However, despite that, sales for the consoles themselves were apparently down. This was apparently due to a shortage of semiconductors, though supply line issues are apparently being improved. When it comes to many older games, however, fans currently do have alternative methods to play them.
Way back in 2018, Nintendo added a new feature to its Online mode. This feature allowed gamers to play older NES games as part of the Nintendo Online feature but did require players to sign in weekly in order to play. Eventually, Nintendo added games for the Super Nintendo as well as the N64 though the feature remains controversial among some gamers. Based on Shigeru Miyamoto's words, however, gamers will have to settle with these virtual consoles for the time being.
Source: Video Game Chronicle