Nintendo wants a “smooth transition” to their next-gen console through Nintendo Accounts

It looks like Nintendo is getting ready to talk about a successor to the Switch, and they’re planning on giving current users a “smooth transition” to the next-gen console through Nintendo Accounts.

This was revealed during an investors meeting the company held recently, as shared by IGN (translated by @Genki_JPN). In the Q&A session of the meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa revealed that they’re already planning on bringing it as many of its current users on the Switch to whatever comes next for them. This will seemingly be achieved through Nintendo Accounts, perhaps pointing at the possibility of backwards compatible libraries.

“As for the transition from Nintendo Switch to the next generation machine, we want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers, while utilizing the Nintendo Account,” said Furukawa (translated by Genki).

The future of Nintendo is on the horizon

The concept that Nintendo is already looking to bring in their userbase in a “smooth” manner should be pretty exciting to fans of the company, its games, and its consoles. This would mark a first instance for the Big N in which they try to bring forward their current infrastructure to the future without inconveniencing players. The current Nintendo Accounts were introduced with the Nintendo Switch, and have since expanded to offer connectivity for players on said machine as well as certain Nintendo mobile games and other services.

Previously, the company had the Nintendo Network ID for the Wii U and 3DS, but these where not exactly easy to use. And even before that, the Wii had its own account system linked to online purchases that relied on hardware certificates to prove one’s ownership of their digital titles.

To put it into perspective, should Nintendo manage to transfer all of its users without issue, it would mean that over 290 million players would continue to use their services on a next-gen console, sort of what their competitors have been doing with Xbox and PlayStation for over 3 generations already.

We’ll have to wait for an official announcement for more details of this future Nintendo console, but the fact that they’re already speaking about it could mean that that day might come sooner rather than later.

Source | Nintendo