Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said that the Mario creator will only adopt VR when the tech has embedded itself in the mainstream market.
While Sony pushes ahead with its own PlayStation VR headset, and Microsoft prepares to enter the market with next year’s Project Scorpio, Nintendo, it seems, is content to play the waiting game.
Speaking to Bloomberg West, Fils-Aime made clear the company’s stance, explaining via conference call that it’s not in Nintendo’s nature to invest heavily in a concept that’s still in its infancy.
“For us, we want to make sure that technology is mainstream,” he explained.
“We want to make sure the technology represents strong value to the consumer. So as an example, there was a lot of gyroscopic technology out there in the marketplace, but it took the Wii and the Wii Remote to really make it mainstream.
This time around, however, Nintendo doesn’t plan on giving VR tech a helping hand by integrating it into its own hardware.
That task has fallen to the likes of Oculus, HTC, Samsung, Valve, and Sony, and only when they’ve succeeded in cementing virtual reality in the consumer consciousness will Nintendo start to play ball.
“For us the technology has to be at a point where it can be mainstream, and then it takes content creating companies like us to really make things that the consumer wants to experience, that they want to jump into the particular technology,” added Fils-Aime.
“We want to make sure that our next content is going to be mass market approachable, and when something like VR is at that point, you can expect Nintendo to be there.”