Nintendo won't tarnish wholesome brand image on speculative metaverse

Nintendo has no plans to support the metaverse, gaming's nascent and often-confusing new trend.

Despite properly being able to explain it, Ubisoft, EA, Bandai Namco and even Square Enix are gung-ho for the metaverse. Nintendo, who is typically shrewd, conservative, and studiously careful in its adoption of video game trends, isn't ready to help trailblaze the new NFT-laden digital frontier. Instead, Nintendo will bide its time as it has done so often in the past.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa was asked outright by an investor if Nintendo will support NFTs and the metaverse. There was no comment about NFTs (Nintendo stands to make a killing from its treasure trove of instantly-recognizable IPs at the cost of its wholesome brand image) but Furukawa did discuss the metaverse.

Here's what the Nintendo CEO said:

"The metaverse has captured the attention of many companies around the world, and it has great potential. When the concept of the metaverse is introduced in the media, games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons are sometimes brought up as examples. In that sense, the metaverse is of interest to us.

"But at this point in time, there is no easy way to define specifically what kinds of surprises and enjoyment the metaverse can deliver to our consumers. As a company that provides entertainment, our main emphasis is on ways to deliver fresh surprises and fun to our consumers.

"We might consider something if we can find a way to convey a 'Nintendo approach' to the metaverse that many people can readily understand, but we do not think that is the situation at the present time."

Don't expect Nintendo to start harping on about the experimental and extremely speculative web3 market...especially when it's only just recently started to push into paid online subscriptions and digital engagement.