Nintendo planning future platforms

Nintendo already has its eyes on what's next. A translation of prepared remarks from president Satoru Iwata today states Nintendo last year began work on technology for "future platforms" that would make software assets more transferable, regardless of the platform. According to Iwata, this would have multiple benefits, including avoiding software launch lineup shortages.

"Last year we also started a project to integrate the architecture for our future platforms. What we mean by integrating platforms is not integrating handhelds devices and home consoles to make only one machine. What we are aiming at is to integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform," he said. "They will also work to avoid software lineup shortages or software development delays which tend to happen just after the launch of new hardware."

Iwata said that previously it was technologically impossible to have the same architecture for handheld and home consoles, but Nintendo's new technology could change this. Iwata's comments suggest games could be shared between a home console and a portable device, though the company is a long way away from implementing any such technology.

"Although it has not been long since we began to integrate the architecture and this will have no short-term result, we believe that it will provide a great benefit to our platform business in the long run," he said.

Nintendo's latest platform is the Wii U, which launched last year and has sold over 3 million units worldwide.