Nintendo President Shuts Down N64 Classic Rumors

With the monumental success of the SNES Classic and NES Classic, the N64 Classic looked like a sure thing. However, in a recent interview, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President, shut down any hopes of the system coming any time soon. Why is Nintendo not pushing forward with this surefire idea?

N64 Classic Rumors Shut Down

Reggie Fils-Aime stated that while he “would not ever rule something out… what I can tell you is certainly that’s not in our planning horizon.” The Nintendo exec continued, “We were clear when we did the first two Classic series that, for us, these were limited-time opportunities that were a way for us as a business to bridge from the conclusion of Wii U as a hardware system to the launch of Nintendo Switch.”

“That was the very strategic reason we launched the NES Classic system,” Fils-Aime clarified. The president went on to clarify that the company understood that people were excited to engage with older Nintendo games. Fils-Aime stated that Nintendo plans to continue supporting its legacy content through the Nintendo Online subscription service.

Nintendo Online

The subscription service, which is around $20 per year, is a service for the Nintendo Switch. It is required to play games like Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 online. It also comes with a selection of NES titles that are updated with a few new entries each month. Currently the only games available through the service are NES games that are roughly 30 years old.

At time of writing, there is no way to play other legacy content on the Switch. Fils-Aime indicated that fans of retro Nintendo games would see that type of content through the online service. However, the Virtual Console, the emulation offered on systems like the Wii, has yet to come to Switch. In the meantime, Nintendo fans must simply patiently wait to see when Nintendo will roll out anything other than 30-year-old games to the system.

For context, it took Nintendo until the tail end of the Wii U’s 5-year lifespan to begin rolling N64 game out. We hope that this situation doesn’t repeat itself with the Switch.