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Nintendo reveals backwards compatibility is “easier than ever”, but doesn’t confirm it’s coming to future hardware

Shigeru Miyamoto believes that there’s quite a bit of ease when implementing backwards compatibility in newer consoles.

Update:
Nintendo reveals backwards compatibility is “easier than ever”, but doesn’t confirm it’s coming to future hardware

Whether the successor of the Nintendo Switch is backwards compatible or not is still a huge mystery. During a recent investors meeting, creator of Mario and Zelda Shigeru Miyamoto answered some questions about this specific functionality. Even when the legendary developer stated that the objective is still to create original experiences, he also reflected upon the fact that adapting old games in new generation machines is “easier than ever”.

“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,” he said. “As long as the hardware remained unchanged, those games could continue to be played.” However, the creative pointed out that the issue with publishing rights is quite complicated, so they have to make sure to only add games that can respect those rights.

“Of course, video games developed for dedicated consoles were created in different development environments for each console,” Miyamoto continued. “As a result, when the hardware changed, the development environment could not necessarily be reused.” This is the reason why older games that had been rereleased in older consoles haven’t been brought back on Switch: they just can’t do it without modifying the titles.

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Backwards compatibility is easy, but the goal is new games

For Miyamoto, backwards compatibility is easier than ever because all of the processes have been standardized. They currently have tools that “allows players to enjoy older video games on newer consoles more easily than ever before.”

The thing is the company is still focused on developing newer products, just as Miyamoto said. “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 successor to the Nintendo Switch hasn’t yet been officially announced, but a job posting by Creatures - one of the developers allied to The Pokémon Company - mentioned “next generation hardware” very recently.

Source | VGC