Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa Expresses Wariness Over Acquisitions

For gamers who grew up in the 1990s, the past few months may have resurrected the specter of the Console Wars. Microsoft’s $68.7 billion (USD) future acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. felt like a warning shot across the bow of its high-performance competitors. Sony’s announcement of its $3.6 billion deal for Bungie Inc. surely felt like a response aimed at Microsoft, staking its claim upon the very studio that developed Xbox’s legendary franchise Halo. In reality, these deals had been in the works for months and had little to do with one another. Still, many have called for Nintendo to get involved  with some mega-acquisitions of their own, arguing that it might be necessary to keep pace with competitors and to protect long-established relationships with developers. Those in Nintendo’s leadership remain skeptical of such moves, however.

There seems to be some agreement among experts that Nintendo will stay out of the acquisitions frenzy for now. Tokyo-based consultant Serkan Toto recently spoke with Bloomberg, noting that “[he] really [has] a hard time imagining which of the big ones they could even be interested in buying. Nintendo will always stay Nintendo. The company has always relied on first-party games, and [he doesn’t] see any reason why they should change.”

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed what many experts have suggested. On Thursday, Furukawa said, “Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t posses Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company.” This reinforces the commitment Nintendo has made all along to its own internal talent. Back in November, the company promised to spend 100 billion yen to bolster its internal developers and further craft homegrown talent.

For those hungering for a return to the Console Wars era, those dreams must be deferred. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo each have enough space to succeed on their own; perhaps this is a sign of the growth of the video game industry as a whole and a testament to just how far-reaching this one-time marginalized hobby has become. For now, Nintendo will continue marching to the beat of its own drum.

Source: Bloomberg
Featured Image: Time

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