Nintendo Headquarters
Image: Nintendo

Once upon a time, Nintendo was a little playing card company, located in a regular-sized office building in Kyoto, Japan. They're a bit bigger now, and you may have seen their boring-but-iconic Kyoto headquarters before: It's a big white cube covered in windows.

But it looks like there's about to be a second big cube next-door to the current one. That cube is being occupied largely by the Kyoto City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau, and Nintendo is planning to rent the 6th and 7th floor — adding another 8,500 square metres to their space — from May 2022.

Kyoto City
Image: Nikkei

There are also plans to build another building, on the premises of the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center, where the head office used to be. In a report from Nikkei, Nintendo spoke about their future plans for these new office spaces:

"Until now, game development was often outsourced, but we will increase our employment."

Kyoto Research Center
The current Nintendo Kyoto Research Center — Image: Google Maps / VGC

Chris Scullion of Video Games Chronicle sought out a Google Maps image of the Kyoto Research Center, predicting that the new building would probably be built in the small area of land next to the existing building.

The current state of Nintendo's game development offices appears to be in flux. Game Freak recently moved in with Nintendo in Tokyo, and in early 2020 Nintendo's four separate Tokyo offices were merged into one big one to "boost operational efficiency".

Around the same time as the Game Freak move, Nintendo also announced that they would be investing huge sums — profit from the Switch's success — into "organically expand[ing]" its game development ($880 million), as well as investing in non-game entertainment like the Mario movie ($440 million) and expanding their relationship with consumers (a whopping $2.64 billion). That last one includes things like Nintendo Switch Online, My Nintendo, and potentially even new services.

What do you hope Nintendo's next big move in the world of games will be? Let us know in the comments!

[source nikkei.com, via videogameschronicle.com]