Nintendo has always been a quirky, fun-loving company, but like any other publicly traded entity, there are shareholder meetings. Rather than focusing on fun news reveals like the Nintendo Direct videos or making a festival out of things like E3, these meetings consist of the usual financial business, for the most part. At a recent meeting, however, Twitter user NStyles got a chance to speak to Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of beloved series like Mario and Zelda and one of Nintendo’s most senior executives, and got a fairly juicy detail out of him. Apparently, Nintendo is conducting research into VR. With fans still not having much to go off of for the upcoming NX console aside from a few scant leaks, and Nintendo trying to break into mobile gaming, hearing that they’re researching VR presents a number of possibilities.
Miyamoto did not go into detail about what Nintendo may have been looking into or working on. In fact, at one point in the conversation, he asked shareholders to keep what he was about to say secret, and whatever was said has yet to make it onto the internet. What he did say, however, was that he was not terribly impressed with what he saw at E3. Given that some projects at the forefront of VR gaming were present and Sony showed off a number of projects for the PlayStation VR, this means that Miyamoto is likely to set the bar high for any VR product that Nintendo may put out.
The other point he made was that there are some definite concerns with VR in its current form that are keeping the company from going much further with the technology at the moment. The key concern is the effect of long-term VR usage, including VR sickness, eye strain and other neurological factors. While research projects like SparseLightVR are in the works to solve these issues, they are still far from a commercial release, for the most part, which means that if Nintendo wants to continue their VR adventures, they may well develop their own solution. However the research may go, the unique personal factor of VR gaming makes it hard to imagine the average Mario or Animal Crossing title playing out like normal, though the idea of something like Metroid Prime in VR is sure to get a lot of fans excited. For now, there’s not much more than speculation and a few offhand words from one of the most creative minds in Nintendo to work from.