Nintendo has historically approached new technologies cautiously, dipping a toe or two into the water and checking out the market from afar before choosing to commit. Such was the case with the mobile world, where we’re still waiting on their next game, and apparently they will approach VR in this manner, as well. Not long ago, famed Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto said that he had some concerns with VR and was not terribly impressed by what he saw at E3. In the full publishing of Nintendo’s annual shareholder Q & A, we get a bit of a closer look at Miyamoto’s opinion of VR and the issues Nintendo wants to see solved before they make the leap into the nascent field.
Anybody who’s picked up a controller to a Nintendo system can tell you that it can be hard to put down, and if you have time for an hours-long gaming session, it is pretty likely to happen. Miyamoto says that his team is actively researching VR, but wants to develop with that in mind, thinking about the long-term effects first. While he did not mention any specific VR products, he did say that he wants to make VR safe for children, safe for extended play, and able to give players value from short sessions before proceeding. Since the verdict is still out on whether Nintendo would be missing an opportunity or avoiding a costly mistake by staying out of this VR generation, details on how they planned to optimize VR for their products and user base were very sparse.
Miyamoto did say that the company is eyeing VR cautiously, and that “it might also not be clear how the experience can be made into a product.” With that in mind, the small amount of detail on Nintendo’s VR exploits may not be because the company does not want to expose anything yet, but because there isn’t much to expose at the moment. In this industry, of course, that could mean many different things. At this point, only two things are for sure when it comes to Nintendo and VR; they are being extremely cautious, and they are highly unlikely to re-release the Virtual Boy.