Nintendo Talks Business Logic, and How Happiness Matters Instead of Innovation

While Nintendo is doing incredible business with its Switch console at the moment, it has a very simple business logic that's working in its favor -- even if it's not always striving to innovate.

The Guardian recently spoke with Nintendo's Shinya Takahashi about the company's focus, and how it manages to turn heads, even if it doesn't always strive to go for inventing new ideas first. "People always ask us whether we take risks on purpose," he said. "But to us, we don't really take risks – we just keep trying new things. The thinking that guides us is: what can we do to pleasantly surprise players? It's not that we're consciously trying to innovate; we're trying to find ways to make people happy. The result is that we come up with things other people have not done."

This comes on the heels of the company's release of the Nintendo Labo kits, in which consumers can create their own experiences using cardboard set-ups, from a homemade piano machine to a robot suit that lets them trash their way through a city.

But Takahashi explained how doing (mostly) everything in-house with the creation of games has been a step in the right direction for Nintendo. "This is the advantage we have at Nintendo as a software/hardware integrated organisation – when we do research for our new hardware systems, our software developers, our artists, our programmers and our hardware engineers all get together and decide what we should aim for. We've been doing that for many years," he said.

The company also strives in the recruitment department, trying to find the right talent for the right projects -- which in turn pays off in dividends for the company. "The bottom line is, the quality of the end product that those students created doesn't really matter to me," he concluded. "How they kept their focus, what they thought throughout those years...that's what important to me. We like our staff members to be as creative as possible -- and creative people should not just listen to their bosses saying 'Yes sir', or 'Yes ma'am'. I want them to always ask themselves, 'Is this direction correct?'"

It's different than the way most companies think, but there's no question Nintendo's direction with the Switch has been in the right direction -- and it's bound to only get better as we see what it's up to for E3, with games like Super Smash Bros. and Metroid Prime 4.

(Hat tip to NintendoLife for the details!)