Nintendo's future plans include making developer assets "more transferrable," between operating systems
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has said the console makers has plans to expand developer capabilities in future hardware with tech such as Unity, JavaScript and HTML5.
Iwata said this will provide a diverse portfolio of developers which would be attracted by the various tech, and further plans on this expansion will be revealed at GDC in March.
The tech would also make it easier for developers to share their assets between platforms.
"Now is the time the development of video games for dedicated platforms requires a vast investment," he said in a prepared statement attached to Nintendo's latest financial briefing.
"Thinking of diversion of web services, creation of prototypes and development of independent label games, it has become more important to expand the range of software developers. At GDC to be held in March, we will show you some of our efforts to expand the range of software developers.
"They will include the development environment used for "Wii Street U" and some VOD services, where you can develop the Wii U software using web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript and Unity, a cross-platform video game engine used by many users.
Iwata reiterated the firm's plans to reorganize its development divisions in February, for the first time in nine years. Two divisions which have independently developed handheld devices and home consoles will be united to form the "Integrated Research & Development Division, which will be headed by Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director."
"Last year, we started a project to integrate the architecture for our future platforms," Iwata continued. "What we mean by integrating platforms is not integrating handhelds devices and home consoles to make only one machine. What we are aiming at is to integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform.
"They will also work to avoid software lineup shortages or software development delays which tend to happen just after the launch of new hardware. Some time ago it was technologically impossible to have the same architecture for handheld devices and home consoles and what we did was therefore reasonable.
"Although it has not been long since we began to integrate the architecture and this will have no short-term result, we believe that it will provide a great benefit to our platform business in the long run."