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Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has stated that although the company is considering what steps to take with future console development, the Switch will be the company's focus for quite some time yet.

Speaking to investors in a Japanese Q&A – which has been translated by our friends over at VGC – Furukawa said:

The Nintendo Switch will soon have been on sale for three years. We feel it is a different kind of console than the ones we have previously released. In addition to the flagship Switch model, we also released the Nintendo Switch Lite which can only be played as a handheld. This allows the user to choose a console to fit their lifestyle. We are also looking into the current market and feel there are many different ways to think about future console development. On the other hand, software is also very important. So in the short term, while the Nintendo Switch install base continues to expand, we must place a lot of focus on that. By placing our main focus on the Nintendo Switch, we feel we can have a very different (longer) hardware life cycle than previous Nintendo consoles.

Switch has sold 52 million units since its launch in 2017, and could be in with a shot of surpassing the Wii's total of 102.63 million units, making it Nintendo's most successful home console ever. However, to achieve that goal, Nintendo has willingly sacrificed its second pillar; at the same time the Wii was posting those kinds of sales figures, the Nintendo DS was selling over 150 million units.

How will Nintendo maintain interest during the Switch's prolonged lifespan? Easy – with new software, as well as a focus on making sure new buyers are aware of past titles, according to Furukawa:

The most important thing [for us] is whether we can maintain the momentum of Nintendo Switch. In addition to continuously introducing new software, we believe that it will be very important to continue our efforts to sell titles that we have released so far.

What do you make of Switch having a longer-than-normal lifespan? Let us know with a comment.