Nintendo may start selling “computer software”

Nintendo's most recent fiscal-year disclosure made headlines for announcing a release window for the new "Nintendo NX" console and yet another Zelda game delay, but it also included news of serious corporate restructuring. The short version: Nintendo will soon involve a supervisory committee in making top-level executive decisions.

The company has begun rolling out more details about how that restructuring will work, and in doing so, Nintendo's Japanese arm has tipped its hand about possible new business plans. A Tuesday announcement included the company's amended articles of incorporation, expected to be approved by shareholders this June, and it included three new entries in its "business engagement" list: restaurants, medical and health devices, and "computer software."

Longtime Nintendo followers will recognize the second of those three entries, as Nintendo has publicly announced, then recanted, both a heart rate monitor (the Wii Vitality Sensor) and a sleep-tracking system. Meanwhile, a Nintendo-themed restaurant seems like a simple-enough expansion for a company that already operates physical businesses such as the Nintendo Store—though, clearly, we'd love to see an official Nintendo diner—and a pun-filled menu. (Kirby cream puffs, Sausage "Link"s, Moo Moo Meadows burgers, and on and on...)

NX as a productivity device?

The choice of adding "computer software" to that list, on the other hand, seems particularly curious—especially since Nintendo's existing list of engaged businesses includes terms that sound very much like computer software, particularly the broad term of "contents such as games, images, and music."

That list also revised an entry that used to say that the company would license the "use or reproduction of copyrighted works" and "trademarks." Now, Nintendo will license its "intellectual property rights."

These changes may very well be necessary to cross legal Ts and dot administrative Is for the kinds of electronic products the company has already been making and licenses it has been granting, or they may hint at a very weird Nintendo to come. That shift to the term "intellectual property" includes copyrighted works and trademarks in an umbrella that also may include such Nintendo-owned concepts as patents.

Is Nintendo setting its still-hidden NX up as a more open computing device platform for other hardware makers to sign onto? Is Nintendo planning to create and sell a phone-like system loaded with productivity apps? Is there some desire to put Nintendo's current wares on more devices beyond the company's announced smartphone push that requires such specific terminology? (Or, gosh, will we ever see Super Mario Maker make its way to PCs?)

It's hard to imagine the fiercely guarded Nintendo opening itself up to a wide swath of platforms, so some of that is incredibly wishful thinking. But if you asked us two years ago, we would have said the same about official Nintendo apps on iOS and Android.

Rumors continue to swirl about what shape the Nintendo NX will eventually take, including statements from Nintendo executives indicating that the NX will serve as a successor to neither the Wii U nor the 3DS. Whatever shape that new console will take, fans probably won't get to see anything until well after this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, at which Nintendo has confirmed the NX will not appear in any way, shape, or form.

Also worth noting: Nintendo's current engaged businesses include relatively dormant entries such as "office equipment and tools" and "sporting equipment," presumably from the Japanese company's hundred-plus years of existence (along with its genesis as a playing-cards company). Announcing more concepts does not necessarily guarantee that we'll ever see products like sleep sensors or businesses like Funky Kong's Surf 'N Turf Shack—but it certainly sets the table for their eventual existence.