Nintendo's New Year's Resolution: Make More Money

Nintendo, like most of us, sees the new year as an opportunity to reflect, but also to turn its eyes towards the future and prepare to meet it head-on. Indeed, it’s resolution season, and unsurprisingly Nintendo’s boss, Tatsumi Kimishima, has recently laid out his bold new plans for Nintendo in 2016 in an interview with Japanese business newspaper Mainichi. Now, while we can’t read japanese, a but a translator over Twitter has looked over the interview and given us a pretty basic idea of what Mr. Kimishima has in store for this year, so, let’s give it a once-over.

The first, and arguably most important, thing said was that Nintendo would be announcing more information about the NX this year. Nothing he said implies it’s anything specific like release titles or even a release date, but he did say he wanted to surprise fans with new ideas, rather than simply build off old ones--a winning strategy, a that’s what made them the mad yen back with the release of the Wii.

Secondly, while their team-up with Universal to see some Nintendo-Themed rides at Universal Studios is going well, there’s more he’d like to do. Namely, he’d like to start farming out Nintendo’s famous stable of IP out to other studios for anime films and TV shows. Emphasis on ANIME--I don’t think we’ll be seeing a reboot of the Super Mario Bros movie, or that rumored Legend of Zelda netflix series.

Finally, he said that while the Miitomo won’t have any of Nintendo’s flagship characters in it, he did say that by 2016 smartphone apps featuring characters like Mario and Luigi would show up. If they’d be games (God forbid we get a Mario version of an endless runner) or other features, it’s hard to know right now… but we’ll find out in time, I imagine.

And his long-term goal, in the span of 4 years, is to have Nintendo earning at least 100 billion yen in raw profit. Quite the lofty goal, considering that’s four times as large as it is right now. Still, dream big: you won’t reach that rainbow if you don’t jump for it.

That goes for you guys, too.