Shigeru Miyamoto says making old titles work on new consoles is more simple than ever before.
The Nintendo director gave insight into what conversations were happening within the company about making some classic games able to be enjoyed on new devices, such as The Switch - which has sold more than 114.7 units internationally - their handheld device.
Speaking at an event to mark the publication of their financial results, the games executive said, according to VGC: “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.
Shigeru admitted some games might need “additional modification” before they were formatted for newer tech but was hopeful about its possibility.
He continued: “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 standardised, and we now have an environment that allows players to enjoy older video games on newer consoles more easily than ever before.”
Shigeru was keen to get the company - which has produced classic game franchises such as Mario Brothers, Pokemon and Animal Crossing - to make “new video game experiences” that could not be made with their “pre-existing hardware”.
He concluded: “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 Switch - which debuted in March 2017 - has touted as a reason behind the Japanese games company was attributed as a reason behind their ability to pursue research and development
Last November, Nintendo revealed they were working on follow-up hardware but no plans have been made public yet.