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Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passed before the Switch launched in 2017, but he left the company with a vision that it’s beginning to make good on — one that will be crucial to the Switch 2.
“Mr. Iwata was the head of development, so he put a lot of thought and time into Switch,” veteran game designer and Nintendo fellow Shigeru Miyamoto told Time in 2017. “[T]he idea of Nintendo Switch being a device you can take out and anywhere, and the idea of it being a system that really allows networking and communicating with people, I think that’s something Mr. Iwata put a lot of emphasis on.”
Despite its creativity and innovation, Nintendo can often seem behind the curve when adopting new technologies or game ideas. Nintendo abandoned the technological console arms race in 2006 with the launch of the underpowered Wii, proving it doesn’t need to win on graphics. The company instead prefers to follow the “Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology” philosophy — creating new ideas using mature, reliable technology — that Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi described in his book Gunpei Yokoi Game Kan.
But Nintendo has been keeping pace with a multiplayer trend during the Switch era, experimenting with ever larger numbers of players. Tetris 99, F-Zero 99, and Super Mario Bros. 35 — these competitive multiplayer games borrowed from popular last-player-standing games (PUBG, Fortnite) to modernize classic 8- and 16-bit franchises with huge player counts.
We’re already seeing some of that in the new Mario Kart game for Switch 2, which looks like it will double the number of simultaneous online competitors seen in previous Mario Kart entries from 12 to 24.
Some of these massively multiplayer games have arrived near the end of the Switch’s life cycle, suggesting that Nintendo is getting started with its massively multiplayer ambitions.
Last year, the company started the Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program, a mysterious beta that Nintendo developed to “test the boundaries of mass multiplayer functionality and gameplay on our servers.” How Nintendo will implement its MMO-like ideas remains to be seen, but there are certainly strong Nintendo franchise candidates that could benefit from introducing higher player counts.
Bringing even bigger audiences together to experience the joy of play through Nintendo IP like Super Mario Bros. and Animal Crossing — as well as brand-new experiences — could be the culmination of Iwata’s vision.
