Is Nintendo Tapped Out? Shigeru Miyamoto Admits the Console Market Has Reached Its Ceiling.

Every long-running franchise, whether it be a movie universe, a sports dynasty, or a book series, has a point at which its leaders must sit quietly and consider an issue that no one wants to voice aloud. Mario’s creator, 73-year-old Shigeru Miyamoto, reportedly came to that realization recently. Additionally, he stated clearly and without apparent discomfort in a recent interview with Polygon that Nintendo can only reach a certain number of people with its own consoles. Admitting that is a striking thing. If you’ve been paying attention to the numbers, it’s also entirely accurate.

Because they come directly from Miyamoto, his exact words have a certain weight. Working out of Nintendo’s renownedly modest campus in Kyoto, a city more known for its temples and traditional crafts than for its billion-dollar entertainment franchises, this man has spent more than 40 years influencing how the world views video games. In 1981, he designed Mario for a Donkey Kong gaming console. Zelda was constructed by him. He was thinking about gardening when he made Pikmin on the spur of the moment. It means something when someone with that background says the hardware model has a ceiling after looking at the business he helped establish.

He is largely supported by the console market data. Over the course of its existence, Nintendo’s Switch sold over 146 million units, making it one of the best-selling gaming devices in history and ranking comfortably alongside the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS. Despite its strong sales, the Switch 2 isn’t revolutionizing what’s feasible. The explosive audience expansion that previous console generations produced is no longer occurring. Most people who desire a specialized gaming device already own one. Although Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can compete with one another for consumers, increasing the overall number of console households has proven to be extremely challenging. Miyamoto’s reference to a ceiling is not merely theoretical. The sales curves show it.

What’s intriguing is Nintendo’s response, which is to completely reframe the question rather than panic. They seem to be asking a more general question than how to increase hardware sales: how can Nintendo become a part of someone’s life even if they never pick up a controller? In 2023, the Super Mario Bros. Movie brought in $1.36 billion at the box office worldwide, more than any single Mario game has ever brought in. It’s obvious that Nintendo’s boardrooms felt the impact of that number. A live-action Legend of Zelda movie is slated for 2027, while the Super Mario Galaxy movie is currently showing in theaters. Observing all of this, it seems more like Nintendo is developing a media company with a gaming division rather than the other way around.

Although it’s accelerating, this change didn’t start overnight. Ten years ago, Tatsumi Kimishima, the former president of Nintendo, noticed that fewer young people were using games as their first Nintendo experience. That was the justification for Mario-branded toothbrushes, yes, real toothbrushes, as well as a push into licensed goods that at the time seemed a little strange. Nintendo formally referred to itself as a “entertainment” company in 2016 instead of a game company. The recent remarks made by Miyamoto are not a novel approach. They are a more lucid expression of a shift that has been subtly developing for many years.

Perhaps the most tangible example of where this is going is Super Nintendo World, which is currently open at Universal parks in Florida, California, Japan, and Singapore. You’re not interacting with Nintendo via a screen at all when you stroll through those parks. You’re navigating a steel and foam version of the Mushroom Kingdom with expertly designed sightlines while wearing a Power-Up Band on your wrist and tapping question blocks with your fist. Nintendo’s intellectual property is presented completely without a console. The experiment is that. It appears to be effective.

The idea that the company’s gravitational center is shifting away from what they initially loved may cause some devoted Nintendo fans to feel a little uneasy about this change. However, Miyamoto’s framing implies that he has a different perspective. He told Polygon that instead of asking what game Nintendo is going to release next, he wants people to ask what world Nintendo is going to explore next. That reorientation is subtle but significant. Instead of being the defining product, games become one output among many.

Nintendo is not the only company doing this. PlayStation adaptations, such as Twisted Metal and The Last of Us on HBO, have shown that gaming intellectual property has genuine cultural significance outside of the controller. Microsoft’s Minecraft is being treated like a theme park. The entire industry is testing the value of its worlds and characters when they are detached from the original hardware. With more cherished characters and a longer history of considering the audience in a different way than its rivals, Nintendo is just further along in that process.

It’s still genuinely unclear if the films, parks, and animated shorts will eventually attract new players to the games or if they will merely take their place as Nintendo’s main cultural output. Miyamoto appears at ease with not yet knowing the solution. The man who created Mario from a carpenter character in an arcade game doesn’t seem overly concerned about the possibility that his largest audience may now find him in a dimly lit movie theater rather than on a television screen at home because he has built his career on pursuing curiosity wherever it leads.