You never know, $Nintendo (7974.JP)$ what the development department is busy with.

It has been seven years since the Nintendo Switch was released, and there is still only a vague shadow of the next-generation hardware from nintendo. During this summer's financial report meeting, current president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that information about the new console is planned to be announced before March 2025.

This is indeed very slow.

After 8 years, the generational change is completed, which means the new console will become the most "difficult to produce" generation of consoles in nintendo's history. In the past few decades, the cycle of game console updates has often been 6-7 years. The main reason for this is that past game consoles did not support "backward compatibility," and new consoles often use an entirely new hardware architecture.

In the past 10 years, as both Sony and microsoft adopted the "same architecture iteration" strategy, the console iteration cycle has been shortened to 3-4 years. Nintendo has also announced that the new console will be "backward compatible" with Switch games, making its arrival seem a bit too late.

While the new console is "delayed", Nintendo has continuously released a series of "sideline" new products.

From "alarm clocks" to "music apps", and even the museum that just opened this autumn... some have raised doubts about whether Nintendo is still a game company.

However, if you look closely, you will find that Nintendo is adapting to the new era of the gaming industry in a unique way—they realize that what is more important than the iteration of game console technology is to make their IP resonate with the hearts of generation after generation of players.

This is very "Old Nintendo".

01 If you like me, give me a clap.

On October 9th, without any prior notice, Nintendo directly announced this new hardware product "Alarmo Alarm Clock".

In appearance, Alarmo is a typical, traditionally defined alarm clock. It has a round body, two legs, and a button on top for setting controls. The round body features a 2.8-inch screen for displaying time and alarms.

Users can choose a theme from a variety of nintendo games for the alarm clock.

After selection, the alarm clock display interface will apply this theme, and the ringtone will also use relevant game music and sound effects to wake you up. Currently included game themes are "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," "Super Mario Odyssey," "Splatoon 3," and "Ring Fit Adventure." Nintendo has stated that more game themes will be pushed later, and users can connect Alarmo to download updates.

Besides themes, Alarmo also includes many different "scenes" that can be used for waking up in the morning.

For example, when you set the Zelda theme, Alarmo will first use Zelda's gentle voice to wake you up. As you continue to snooze, the ringtone volume will increase, and it will switch to more urgent scenes, such as being chased by a powerful monster called "Guardian" from the Zelda game.

In addition to waking up, users can also set a "bedtime."

Thus, before sleeping, Alarmo will play some soft and soothing music and sound effects to assist in falling asleep. For example, the "night" music from Hyrule is just like in the game, featuring gentle campfire sounds, wind, and piano melodies.

Alarmo has a built-in millimeter-wave motion sensor, and most of its perception functions, including detecting "sleeping" and "waking up," are achieved through this sensor. Therefore, you do not need to manually turn off the ringtone every morning, and you don't have to worry about falling back asleep right after turning off the alarm.

Based on the sensor capabilities, Alarmo can also record your daily sleep and wake-up times, but this information can only be viewed on the Alarmo ontology and cannot be synchronized with other devices or applications.

Additionally, if two people are sleeping in the bed, Alarmo's sensing function will not work properly.

Even with some technical elements added, Alarmo is still just an alarm clock and not some revolutionary new cni next-generation hardware index. It is an alarm clock designed around the 'sleep' scenario, using technology familiar to Nintendo and gamified design. It doesn’t have the ambition to change the world, but rather resembles a toy that can become a bit of 'seasoning' in the lives of many Nintendo game players, especially children.

However, it is clear that most Nintendo players are quite fond of this.

After the release of Alarmo, the first batch of stock was immediately sold out, and currently Nintendo only accepts orders from members. Priced at $100, which is over 600 yuan, Alarmo's price has already been inflated to around 1500 yuan through domestic channels.

02 Old Nintendo's music companion

After releasing Alarmo, on November 1, Nintendo launched a new software service, Nintendo Music.

Like all streaming music services, Nintendo Music's product framework is a music app, but it only features soundtracks from Nintendo's own games. All players subscribed to Nintendo's online membership can use it without additional fees.

It is important to emphasize a background fact that for many years, Nintendo has rarely licensed its game music to any streaming music platform.

This is a traditional custom in the japanese game music industry, where most japanese game publishers release CDs of game music separately after the game launch, or bundle CDs with the deluxe edition of the game. For manufacturers, this presents a significant source of income.

After 2020, as CD sales began to decline, many game publishers started licensing their music to streaming music platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music.

Nintendo had never licensed its music until this time when it launched its own music service.

Although the music app is a product paradigm that has been around for decades with little space for innovation, Nintendo has once again demonstrated its insight into the market and users, along with its own product thinking.

In the Nintendo Music app, users can not only listen to a variety of game music but also convert many tracks into 'extended mode' listening, which can be extended to 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

This is a very popular content format on YouTube, namely Lo-fi music, which is referred to in japan as "study background music." Many people will play corresponding music to create an ambient atmosphere while studying, working, or exercising.

Many DJs who specifically arrange "study background music" often use Nintendo's game music. This is because Nintendo's game music typically features simple yet pleasant melodies, and the arrangements often include many environmental sound effects to create a relaxed atmosphere.

For example, the background music of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and "Animal Crossing" is very popular on YouTube, with one of the most popular videos having over 8 million views.

Furthermore, as a game publisher, Nintendo has accumulated development experience early on in seamlessly extending a limited music track through looping and transitions. This is inherently a requirement for game background music, as composers often need to consider how the music will loop and extend in the game scenes or be naturally interrupted... This experience is not possessed by any other software developers in the music industry.

This is something "only Nintendo can do."

03 What Nintendo does is not just technology.

Many people are surprised by Nintendo's "unorthodox" approach today, but in fact, as early as the Wii era, Nintendo had already begun its transformation, no longer competing with Sony and microsoft on technology, but instead focusing on gameplay and interactive design, and deeply cultivating first-party works and IP.

This strategy once caused Nintendo to suffer a setback during the Wii U era. Because the contemporaneous PS4 and Xbox One had just gone through a significant leap in performance, many third-party next-generation masterpieces could not be launched on the Wii U, and Nintendo's internal game development teams, under tremendous pressure, did not release significantly high-quality new titles.

In 2017, when the Switch was launched, Nintendo was in a dark period, with former president Satoru Iwata's passing. To some extent, the Switch was Nintendo's 'last gamble.' At that time, Sony and Microsoft had just released the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, and many believed that the Switch was already lagging too far behind in performance compared to these two companies, making it difficult to gain support from third-party major titles in the future, with little hope for a comeback.

However, through a series of well-prepared major titles such as 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' and 'Super Mario Odyssey,' the Switch succeeded.

Eight years later, the Switch became the second best-selling game console in history, second only to the PS2, which many households bought to use as a DVD player.

Moreover, over the past eight years, the 'war' of game consoles focusing on technology has clearly reached a bottleneck. Those game development teams at the forefront of technology have encountered varying degrees of difficulties. With the increase in console performance and the scale of games, development costs and project management difficulties have grown exponentially, making it increasingly difficult for many major titles to be delivered, and the quality after release often suffers.

At this time, Nintendo actually steadied its position little by little. Although it was evidently lagging in the rhythm of launching new consoles, Nintendo concentrated more on managing the players' mindset. Whether it was launching a dedicated 'Nintendo World' exhibition area at Universal Studios, producing a Mario animated film, or various theme products closely related to players' lives... all represented attempts to develop products beyond just games.

All of this is not hard to understand because Nintendo was not originally a 'video game company.'

Although 40 years ago, it was nintendo that successfully defined the product paradigm of 'home video game console', when we look back at nintendo's 135-year entrepreneurial history, it originally started with hanafuda playing cards, later transformed into making a series of toys, and finally focused on game consoles.

From the beginning, nintendo was in the 'playing' business, or rather, the 'fun' business.

In the nintendo museum, which opened in October this year, nintendo used gamified design to encapsulate the company's hundred-year history into several exhibition areas. From hanafuda playing cards, to toys, to video game consoles, and then to each generation of game consoles and those beloved games, every exhibition area allows visitors to 'personally experience and play'.

Visitors who have been to the museum are nearly unanimous in praising the many clever designs and details. Since the opening, ticket reservations for the next two months have remained fully booked.

In recent years, we have entered an era of technological anxiety to the point of being out of control. More and more people are discussing whether 'technology has brought negative effects to life.'

In this process, nintendo, as a century-old store, a company with an entrepreneurial history longer than that of electronic computers themselves, has demonstrated its composure in development and its conviction in what it does.

At the Nintendo Museum, there is a dedicated area for the display of "Hanafuda cards". Hanafuda is a very old traditional card game from japan, and today's young people may not understand its rules and gameplay.

Therefore, Nintendo has installed cameras and projectors with image recognition capabilities on the ceiling. When players sit below to play Hanafuda cards, the overhead cameras will analyze the cards in real-time and guide players in learning the rules and gameplay of Hanafuda through AR projections.

Hanafuda is the starting point of Nintendo's entrepreneurship 135 years ago, and a fact is that those who played Nintendo Hanafuda cards back then have since passed away. Yet, Nintendo still passes the fun on to us 135 years later.

This may be the most important spirit of Nintendo.

Editor/Somer