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When it comes down to the Nintendo Switch and its strategy for success, the big N can point to early results and claim to have got it right so far. Of course, a strong start means little without long-term sales, which was a core focus in an interview that Nintendo of America corporate communications director Charlie Scibetta recently gave to GamesBeat / VentureBeat.

Scibetta talked a little about how the Switch concept is winning over consumers so far, in particular the range of play options it offers courtesy of its "portability".

It’s working great. In our concept video we showed back in October, we showed people in an airport. That’s what we’re seeing. All those scenarios of people playing after they have a pickup basketball game, playing in the airport—a lot of time that’s the best time to game. You don’t have any distractions. You’re on a flight and you can dedicate that time to whatever you want. In our case they’re doing that with the Switch. It’s gratifying, because what Nintendo has always tried to communicate in our games is the joy and the social aspect to it. Especially with something like Kart, you’re seeing people do these local LAN tournaments. The system enables you to do that.

You and I could play against each other in our own houses 3000 miles apart, and that’s fun, but I think it’s a lot more fun to have everyone around a table laughing, elbowing each other, having a good time. People are responding to that. Developers are responding to that, the gameplay dynamic the Switch allows. Public social fun.

The bet was that this kind of gameplay is something people want to do. It’s one of the nice things about Nintendo. It wasn’t as if people were screaming for this – we’ve gotta have this, please give it to us. It was our developers thinking, we believe this will work. The same way the Wii worked. Nobody told us that we had to have motion control in our gaming experiences. Then they played Wii Sports and it was fun and it worked.

A big focus from Nintendo is on reminding players that there are major retail releases arriving on a regular basis, part of a 'drumbeat' approach.

Games. If you want to be able to play games and not have a dry spell between any of the big launches, we think Nintendo Switch is a good place to be. We have a nice drumbeat of first and third party. You’ll never have to wait long.

Just as you get through a game and you’re starting to put your head up, put the periscope out to see what else is out there, hopefully we’ll have something right there for you. We’ve announced a nice lineup through this year, and next year we have some big games coming with Metroid 4. 2018 [Ed’s note: Nintendo clarified later that Scibetta meant “2018 and beyond” here] will be around Metroid, Kirby, Yoshi, and a new Pokemon game has been announced. We feel good about the lineup for this year and beyond.

We said that at launch. People were saying, why aren’t there more games at launch? We said, we think we have a good amount at launch, but this is not the end of it. There will be great games coming every month for the rest of the year. We think that’s a better way to do it than to front load it all on day one and then have three months where nothing comes out.

Scibetta also emphasized that Nintendo is open to supporting cross-platform play, which isn't even 'new' to Switch games - some 3DS and Wii U titles of various kinds have done this. It's all about accommodating what the audience wants.

Our publisher and developer relations team is always talking to different companies and seeing what we can work out. I’m really happy just as a gamer, let alone working for the company, that that’s going to be possible, that cross platform play. We’re trying to be more flexible as a company. We’re reaching out to try and get people to interact with our IP. In this case Rocket League is their IP on our system, but we’re trying to get people involved with us in any way we can, whether that’s on mobile now, or through Universal Studios parks, or through licensing deals like Vans.

Once you can play the games and interact with the characters — if you’re a fan already you know it exists on our dedicated systems, but say you’re somebody in another country that doesn’t have access to those dedicated systems. You have a phone, though, and you can play that way, and all of a sudden you’re in our world. We’re trying to be more flexible and bring more people in. In the case of Rocket League, it’s just being flexible and working with them to make their game come to life on our system. If people want to play cross platform, we want to enable that.

Let us know what you think of Scibetta's remarks, and the company's broad strategy with Switch to date, in the comments below.

[source venturebeat.com]