As of this November, the Wii U will be two years old. Even as a healthy console, that would mean that it would be time to start developing its successor- as a console which barely has a presence in the market, introducing a successor as soon as possible is now paramount. So it is heartening to see that Nintendo are actually working on their next generation system already, and that, more importantly, it appears that they are learning from their mistakes this time around and planning to craft a console that rights the mistakes of the Wii U.
A new jobs listing by Nintendo is asking for a graphics engineer in the west to help Nintendo design their next hardware. “Nintendo Technology Development is looking for a lead graphics architect in the system-on-chip architecture group in Redmond, WA. The group is responsible for the architecture of Nintendo’s game console SoCs,” the job listing reads, before it proceeds to outline all responsibilities, which basically amount to designing the system.
The reason why this is a big deal is is because Nintendo is hiring someone from the west for this job- considering that Nintendo’s stubbornly insular, Japan-centric, and inward looking attitude is what caused them to misread the market as badly as they did with the Wii U, tapping in a western engineer to design their next hardware for them sounds like a great move. Especially since, as SOny demonstrated with the Mark Cerny led PS4, it can work wonders to get some fresh blood in.
