"Going forward, we will expand these initiatives and would like to bring not only Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, but also new characters, to the world."
That's Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's Executive Fellow and Representative Director, speaking at the company's recent investor Q&A. The English translation of the session was published this week, and buried inside a fairly routine strategy discussion is something worth paying attention to: Nintendo is actively planning to introduce original IP outside of video games.
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How Nintendo got here
The strategy didn't appear overnight. Miyamoto traced it back more than a decade, to conversations he had with the late Satoru Iwata about what Nintendo should become long-term. His initial instinct was caution. He worried that taking game characters outside of games could box them in creatively, imposing limitations on future game design.
The shift came during the Wii era. Miyamoto described a realization that dedicated gaming hardware alone could only reach so many people, while smartphones, movie theaters, and YouTube opened up a much larger potential audience. The logic followed: introduce Nintendo characters to regions and consumers who had never picked up a controller, and game sales would eventually follow.
That thinking has been playing out for years now. Pikmin Bloom, the mobile app, gets a specific callout as a success story, particularly in South Korea and Taiwan. The animated short Close to You is mentioned as another experiment Nintendo is keen to pursue. The IP business, Miyamoto noted, now has high profit margins and has grown into a meaningful pillar of the company's global expansion.
What "new characters" actually means
Here's the thing: Miyamoto's comments are deliberately vague, which is standard Nintendo investor-speak. The phrase "new characters" could mean a few different things.
One reading is that it refers to Nintendo franchises that haven't yet made the jump to film or non-gaming media. Star Fox fits that description, especially after Fox McCloud's role in the Mario Galaxy Movie. Metroid, Fire Emblem, and Pikmin are all sitting in that category too.
The other, more intriguing reading is that Nintendo is considering building original IP specifically for non-gaming formats, characters created for movies or series rather than games first. That would be a genuine departure from how Nintendo has operated for decades.
The timing of the comment matters. Miyamoto made this statement directly after discussing Pikmin Bloom, and Nintendo did recently introduce a new character on mobile with Masky, the mascot for the Pictonico app. Small moves, but they point in the same direction.
Nintendo's IP machine is already running
The foundation is already there. The Super Mario film grossed over $1.3 billion globally, making it one of the highest-earning animated films ever. That success gave Nintendo real leverage in Hollywood and with streaming platforms, and the company has been deliberate about not flooding the market with low-quality adaptations.
Miyamoto's framing of these initiatives as "sowing seeds around the world" suggests Nintendo is thinking in decades, not quarters. The goal isn't just merchandise revenue. It's building brand recognition in markets where gaming penetration is lower, then converting that awareness into hardware and software sales down the line.
For players already deep in the Nintendo ecosystem, this is mostly background noise. But for anyone curious about what the next wave of Nintendo content looks like beyond the Switch 2 game lineup, it's a signal worth tracking. If you want to stay across everything Nintendo is releasing right now, the complete Pokemon Legends Z-A Wild Zone guide is a good read while the broader IP picture develops, and the best Mii ideas for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream shows just how far Nintendo's character-building already extends into everyday player creativity.
The specifics of what these new characters look like, and whether they'll ever make it back into a game, remain open questions. What's clear is that Nintendo is no longer treating its IP as something that exists only inside a cartridge. For more on Nintendo's current game releases and what's worth playing, check out the latest gaming guides covering the full Switch 2 lineup.
