As of now, Nintendo isn’t on board with the metaverse concept, citing a lack of “new surprises and pleasure”.
In recent financial earnings Q&A, president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about Nintendo’s ambitions for the metaverse and NFTs, but only addressed the former.
“The metaverse has attracted the attention of many companies around the world, and it has immense promise,” he said first. But, as Furukawa points out, it doesn’t meet Nintendo’s current plans:
“There is no easy way to quantify exactly what shocks and enjoyment the metaverse can bring our users. As an entertainment firm, we are constantly looking for new methods to delight our customers.”
So what would sway Furukawa? “We would contemplate anything if we can express a ‘Nintendo approach’ to the metaverse that many people can easily comprehend, but we do not believe that is the situation at the moment.”
The metaverse is a hot topic right now in the tech sector. A metaverse is a persistent virtual world that breaks down barriers between internet services and is united by a single economy.
Recently, major game companies have showed substantial interest in the metaverse. En 2017, Epic raised $1 billion in funding. A “IP metaverse” for Bandai Namco’s game catalog is planned to cost $130 million, according to Krafton, the creator of PUBG: Battlegrounds.