During the latest financials report briefing, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa spoke about the company during the coronavirus pandemic. According to Furukawa, Nintendo is “taking a flexible approach” to operations as this pandemic could have some long term effects. Furukawa elaborates further below in the Q&A, courtesy of Nintendo Everything:
Considering the potential for lifestyles to change significantly even after the end of the situation with COVID-19, do you think that the entertainment industry will also change? What are your strategies and positions regarding this?
At this point, we cannot fully predict the effects of the situation with COVID-19, so we are working on a variety of activities under the premise that the effects will be long-term. For example, there have been cases where the marketing of products did not move forward as we had planned, so we are taking a flexible approach in thinking about what we can do under these circumstances. Whether it’s with employee working practices or the variety of initiatives undertaken by the company, we believe that it is very important to respond flexibly, without being constrained by any conventional approach.
It would be presumptuous for me to talk about the entire entertainment industry, but people around the world are in the difficult position of having no choice but to stay at home right now. We often describe Nintendo as “an entertainment company that brings smiles to people all over the world,” and (under this situation,) we think every day about what we can do that is unique to Nintendo. Even if we anticipate that many things will change, no one really knows what those changes will be at this point. For this reason, I think that we as a company and I personally will have to be flexible to adapt to whatever potential scenarios arise in the future.
Employees and developers are “gradually gaining experience” while working at home, with the company deciding what can best be done remotely. Japan has been hit hard the most due to the lack of a remote work environment so Nintendo had a rough time adapting to it. Furukawa elaborates on this topic below:
Regarding the information about risks related to COVID-19, you explained earlier that it is affecting parts procurement. What parts are lacking in the Nintendo Switch production process? Given that demand for smartphones has not dropped, I suspect there will be concerns about insufficient semiconductor memory in the medium term. Can Nintendo revise its Nintendo Switch hardware production plan upwards in terms of its production volume? In addition, regarding software development, we have heard from other companies that creating assets such as textures (the patterns and images applied to the surface of 3D objects) is very difficult while working remotely. Have you had such issues?
I cannot provide any comment from Nintendo about which parts have procurement issues at this time, because this relates to other companies’ business with us. Regarding the question of whether the procurement situation for semiconductor memory or other components is affecting our production plans, considering the demand for smartphones and other products going forward, this situation has not imposed any restrictions on our production or sales plans in particular.
As for game development work being done remotely, since there are indeed big limitations on what can be done from home, we do think this will have a large impact. Nintendo has development partners and development offices not just in Japan, but all over the world. The first locations to be affected were the offices in Europe and America, where working from home started early. Then our offices in Japan also switched to working from home. In the case of Japan, this had a major impact on development because we did not already have a remote development environment in place. But even so, we are gradually gaining experience in assessing what can and cannot be done remotely, and in determining how much progress we can make on the work we are able to do from home. Please be aware that the impact on game development in terms of both hardware and software may potentially increase as the amount of time spent working remotely increases.
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