Nintendo is working with San Francisco-based venture capital firm Scrum Ventures to find startups to work on inventive Switch accessories, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Openly searching for companies to partner with, let alone startups, is out of the ordinary for Nintendo. This is an approach other large tech companies have taken in the past though, with HTC’s Vive X accelerator program being the most notable example.
That said, Nintendo has forged successful partnerships with companies like DeNA in terms of its mobile gaming efforts like Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp — and of course Niantic for Pokémon Go — so this isn’t completely unusual for this new era of the company. Nintendo is also working with Universal on an upcoming Mario movie and an accompanying theme park.
Scrum is set to work with teams that aim to pitch concepts to Nintendo this Fall. Interestingly, the focus of the initiative is also on hardware ideas and not software, says Bloomberg.
Perhaps we’ll see more imaginative Switch projects like Nintendo’s upcoming cardboard Labo accessories come out of these partnerships.
Labo is set to be released on April 20th.
Source: Bloomberg
