Reggie Fils-Aime: Switch online to have “extra Nintendo twist”

Reggie Fils-Aime: Switch online to have “extra Nintendo twist”

While the paid Nintendo Switch Online will only launch next year, many fans got a quick a look at the features that were promised around mid this year.

In an interview with Forbes, President of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime spoke up more about the service, saying that it will come with a “Nintendo twist”, including a variety of unrevealed things that makes Nintendo different from other platforms.

Forbes: Tell me about Switch Online, and the plans for next year and when it becomes a paid service. What, exactly, is that going to look like?

Reggie: I’m not going to tell you exactly what it’s going to look like. We’ll share more about that next year. But what I can tell you is that our vision is to have a robust online environment that not only provides the mechanism for you to have your multiplayer experiences and matchmaking, those elements are minimum. Our goal is to provide that extra Nintendo twist, and that’s what makes our company historically so effective. We don’t do things the same way everyone else does. We relish being different. We see that difference as an element that makes us more compelling to the consumer. And so having that differentiated experience is what we are focused on and we’ll unveil more next year as we’re closer to the launch of the service.

Reggie also continues on saying that the company has an incredibly huge back catalogue of great retro games and that they will find other ways to monetise the content and bring about the different experiences than just with the Switch Online retro game catalogue.

Forbes: You’ve already talked about how Switch Online subscribers will get access to a library of classic games. Nobody else has a back catalog of first party games like Nintendo does. But why does the company’s strategy seem to be –both when it comes to software, and hardware– to sell access to that old IP as a bundle, versus allowing customers to buy individual games?

Reggie: Again, [as far as] details around Nintendo Online and what that service is, we’re gonna deal with that separately. Regarding our back catalog, we are in an incredibly fortunate situation that we have a robust back catalog. Not only robust in number, but robust in truly best of all time types of games. Our strategy today is to leverage that with the NES Classic and SNES Classic. And we believe what we’re offering at a set price is a fantastic value for the consumer. And a way not only for adults like myself to relive playing the Super NES and all of the great games on that platform, 21 of them, but that it provides an opportunity for new players to experience all of this great content. And we think that is a fantastic way to do it. It’s both rekindling nostalgia but also creating a passion for Metroid, creating a passion for intellectual property that newer players may just not have ever tried. And we think that is a really effective strategy. So that’s what we’ve done with the NES, that’s what we’ve done with the SNES. Again, what the future looks like we’ll talk about in a different setting. But we believe monetizing our content, exposing it to consumers in that way is a great execution of our strategy.

On our side, we can’t wait to see what Reggie’s unrevealed Switch Online differentiated experience are. Only time will tell I guess. The full interview contains Reggie’s comment on a variety of other topics such as the Nintendo Switch’s hit line up of games, and so on, if you are interested, you can head here.