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After all these years Nintendo handheld hardware is still mostly terrible. Why?

joedick

Member
All Nintendo hardware since the wii has been terrible.

People want Nintendo games and happen to be willing to put up with Nintendo Hardware.

Nintendo would be seeing Pokemon GO levels of success with all of their IP if they were just willing to make them available to people, but Nintendo hates making games that are guaranteed to sell well so they do everything in their power to avoid it.

Nintendo has never used cutting edge tech, except maybe the Gamecube (and whether being slightly better than PS2 a year later qualifies as cutting edge is an argument for somebody else). And the Gamecube wasn't even a success for them.

I think the industry benefits from having options, having a third system do the same thing won't really help anybody.
 

atbigelow

Member
What's so strange is that Nintendo's console controllers are some of the most comfortable in history. And their handhelds are the complete opposite.
 

Two Words

Member
It's why it sucks so much that the Vita didn't take off as a platform. The Vita could have allowed for much better games if it had the same developer support as the 3DS.
 

Gator86

Member
Nintendo doesn't change because Nintendo doesn't HAVE to change.

As long as it has a diehard fan base that will support it's hardware and business decisions it will continue along the same path it always has.

Now this may not exactly be a good strategy to draw in new customer growth for the future given what it's competing against for the average gaming dollar, unless it sees a significant loss in revenue and customer base, Nintendo will have no real reason to stop being Nintendo.

Agreed with the bolded. Nintendo runs a tight ship, so they don't seem to have a lot of needless overhead. Selling nothing but overpriced, underpowered garbage hardware is also a nice stream of profit, when doing well, and limits losses when doing poorly. Nintendo's strategy is basically stick to those two things and hit on a gimmick once every decade (Wii, Pokemon Go) to refill that cash long enough to begin the cycle anew.
 

Rolf NB

Member
Japan.

Where handheld games are a thing.

Where handheld developers would rather cut their own heads off before developing a game for multiple platforms, let alone releasing multiple versions on the same day.

Where handheld developers throw all their weight behind the platform with the biggest install base, in self-inflicted absence of any empirical data about which platform might be the most promising sales wise.

Where, considering all the above, the software sales leader is decided and forever cemented by the hardware sales in the first 18~24 months.

Where, considering all the above, the first device that races to the bottom price wise is rewarded and reinforced to be the market leader for its entire lifetime.

Nintendo handhelds are well positioned to race to the bottom whenever necessary. Because Japan.
 
I don't really see the complaint or at least it being a full blown hate as "mostly terrible". Sure the system have at times taken a few step backwards and the revisions are a bit slow winded. But its hard to argue the price you pay vs the quality content you get. High price handhelds don't often work out, the vita is a great system but the cost and market plan kind of killed it.

You still can get great content on the device but Nintendo had the better plan of keeping cost low and letting the games speak for themselves. Cell phones have the unique ability of being a multi functional tool that almost everyone has, so the price can be naturally higher and still work. Some games are naturally going to be more awkward playing on the device thanks to limitations on the held hand. Monster hunter for example has always had an awkward control set up you had to get use too.
 

Eusis

Member
I'd like if they were to start making gaming centered android smartphones. Like the Xperia play. Because the dedicated handheld is all but dead at this point.
I have a feeling that may sound appealing but will ultimately be a trap. We generally only want our one phone and won't want to go to another for Nintendo games alone, especially when specs will probably be crap compared to the high end Android and iOS phones.

Making it more tablet-esque might work out though. Larger screen for those features, either Android support or aggressively courting developers and publishers, and make it look appealing as something that can do what a Kindle Fire or iPad Mini can do, in addition to playing Nintendo games and other higher end ones.
 

Pancake Mix

Copied someone else's pancake recipe
Nintendo has never used cutting edge tech, except maybe the Gamecube (and whether being slightly better than PS2 a year later qualifies as cutting edge is an argument for somebody else). And the Gamecube wasn't even a success for them.

I think the industry benefits from having options, having a third system do the same thing won't really help anybody.

Where did this come from? The SNES had a cutting edge sound system for 1990 designed by Ken Kutaragi (see below) himself, and other than its weak CPU it was pretty damn good.

fskdybR.jpg

The N64, despite its delays and storage limitations, was probably about as powerful for its era in 1996 as the GameCube in 2001. I mean, SGI and such. So I'm confused as to where you got your info from.
 

Pancake Mix

Copied someone else's pancake recipe
The SP was so amazing...

No 3.5" headphone jack built in really sucked though, and the early models (like the one I have) are front lit which doesn't look great. Luckily, Nintendo fixed both of those issues on all later portables (and the former had never happened before either), and the early models having any illumination on the screen at all was a huge step up. I still have my SP for GB and GBC games, though GBA games look better on the DS due to the backlight.
 

Jumeira

Banned
Why? Because they make good money with their current portable hardware paradigm. They're not looking to give us the highest quality, most technically superior experience, they want to put out something relatively cheap, accessible, and laden with some kind of typically superfluous gimmick.

Look at how they intended to follow up the Wii.

That's a piss poor reason still, to do the bare minimum and build distrust with consumers . The portable games themselves were overpriced too, major reason for my resentment towards Nintendo and thier consumer practice. They make little effort to make things convenient, hardware to online. They make great games but cut every and any corner they can, which is why I'd never want them to lead the industry.
 

dity

Member
768px-Nintendo_DS_Cropped_OF.PNG


The first DS had a good ergometry. But people don't buy it. So Nintendo made it worse to hold, but beaut and looking more like a smartphone. After that it sells like a hot cake.

About the power, it helps. For example, with the money need to make one PSP game, a company can made several DS games.

What happens next is 3DS trying to imitate the DS, but don't truly understand why that machine make success.
The original DS had the worst face buttons known to man. My thumbs still weep to this day.
 

javadoze

Member
I wouldn't say the same about Nintendo's other handhelds, but the 3DS is a bit of an odd mishmash of things.

That said, I'm counting the days for a new handheld announcement, seeing how recent games have been pushing the 3DS to its limit. In particular, I'll be excited when a new Monster Hunter game hits the NX handheld and is no longer hamstrung by the limited controls/hardware of the 3DS.
 
Because they want to sell a handheld that turns a profit with retailer/wholesaler cuts included at $200 dollars or less. We saw what happened when they tried to go $250. That comes with inherent limitations on design.

It's actually very easy to understand. Harder to accept I guess.
 

Malakai

Member
Resolution wouldn't have directly affected battery life, higher resolution screens only make a noticeable difference in electricity needs if they have to do something special to reach the high resolution. For example, iPad 3 was the "Retina display" iPad, its screen resolution quadrupled over iPad 2, battery life stayed the same. Yes, they used a battery that was almost twice as powerful, but that's because the CPU/GPU were twice as powerful.

For rendering ability, sure it would have used a bit more power (not double, pixel fill rate isn't the only thing GPUs do), but 400x480 isn't that much even with stereoscopic rendering. If Nintendo had designed 3DS with that in mind, they could easily have clocked the GPU a little faster, doubled its video ram, and made the device slightly larger so it could hold a bigger battery (they probably should have done that anyway). Sure it would have been more pricey to manufacture, but Nintendo showed us they had plenty of room to play with, when they dropped the price by $80 in the first year.

Why are even bring the iPad 2 and the iPad 3? The battery went to 25 Wh to 42 Wh. Also, I recall the iPad 3 had issues with heat and slow charging times due to the which lead to the iPad 4 being released six months latter. Furthermore, according to Anandtech "memory bandwith limitations" (something that SOC during that time period were suffing from especially the Tegra Lines). The iPad 3 had roughly 9% decrease in battery despite Apple doubling the complicity. And in the worst case scenario, it was a 14% decrease. And the games that were native on the iPad 2 wasn't ruining at native resolution on the iPad 3.
In some cases, the power draw was so great for certain games that the supplied power adapter couldn't even keep up the power demand.

The iPad aren't even dedicated gaming devices. Due to the iPad being tablets, Apple was able to double the battery size and have a rather large SoC to support a high resolution screen at the time of release for the iPad 3. In short, at the time of the 3DS intial release (2010 holidays), even if the the 3DS's screen was at a higher resolution there would have had been some type of unfavorable compromise.

Vita had almost 3 times the pixels as a theoretical 400x480 3DS screen, and its GPU was also doing quite a lot more things than 3DS' GPU, so it had reasons for its performance issues. But also, many great Vita games run at native resolution, it's the developers that really want to push console-quality graphics that end up having to make sacrifices. Rayman, for example, runs at native resolution on Vita, and looks gorgeous. 3DS isn't designed for console-quality graphics, it wasn't marketed as a portable console, so wouldn't have that problem.

Due to the nature of the 3D effect, requires a higher horizontal resolution than vertical resolution. So, it wouldn't have had been 400x480. It would have had been 800x480 before the 3D effect.
 

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
Are you going to pretend that the Motorola Droid - one of the most popular smartphones of 2011 - isn't "old as balls"?
Smartphones live on a different timeline. Nobody wants dedicated consoles to have a 1-2 year lifespan.
 

LewieP

Member
Smartphones live on a different timeline. Nobody wants dedicated consoles to have a 1-2 year lifespan.
Sort of agree, although there have been like 14 different Nintendo handheld devices over the last 20 years, even though the bulk of those are just iterations on the same basic hardware.

Everything Nintendo have said about NX suggests that one thing it will achieve is letting them iterate more on hardware without requiring segregating software libraries between devices. The 3DS XL and New 3DS were somewhat held back back having to keep the same screen resolution as the original model, there was no framework in place to have games run at a higher resolution on more capable hardware. Maybe that'll be a thing of the past with future Nintendo handhelds.

Devices will still likely receive support long after they're released, but they can take advantages of advances in tech more meaningfully without waiting 5/6 years for a generation to end.
 

Dremorak

Banned
On the train ever the last 6 years, I've played 1000s of hours on 3ds and ds and I also have slightly above average hand span.
I've never had a problem with comfort, while I agree they arent exactly ergonomic, thats never been a problem for me.

Also, in terms of build quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paCenhQLrtk

Nintendo devices are always built to last, over the years I have dropped them, sat on them, spilt water on them, and all of my nintendo hardware is still working today, so not sure what you were talking about there pal :)
 

Aiustis

Member
1) Doesn't bother me. I put in about 5 hours a day on it.

2) I agree battery life is terrible.

4) Never had a problem with my circle pad and I've had 5 3DS. (now those hinges...)

5) The price...that 3D screen. I actually really love the 3D so I really don't care about the price.
 
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