With how close Japan is to Southeast Asia, you’d think this would’ve happened ages ago. But I guess better late than never, right? Nintendo has just announced the establishment of Nintendo Singapore, with the goal of accelerating the company’s business in Southeast Asia.
Nintendo Singapore was established on Sept. 26, 2025, and is headed up by Managing Director Takahiro Miura. The entity has a capital stock of SGD $8,000,000. In addition to that, the company has also stated that they’re considering establishing a local entity in Thailand — also with the aim of accelerating business — though nothing concrete has been confirmed just yet.
As for what this means for Singaporean players like myself, hopefully it means proper eShop support in the region, which, if you can believe it, is still not a thing to this day. Because there’s no official eShop in Southeast Asia, players in the region are basically forced to buy games from other countries’ eShops, which can make things very complicated and potentially more expensive depending on currencies and exchange rates. It’s also a bit of a conundrum for players who have been doing this for years and have established a large library of digital games. I could certainly see it being very difficult to suddenly switch over to the Singapore eShop, for instance, and abandoning the large digital library you’ve built up on another account.
Nintendo has had a pretty strong 2025 so far, with the launch of the Switch 2 and strong first-party games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. There’s plenty more to look forward to this year, including the highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
