Saying japan isn't worth discussing is like saying canada, the UK, france, or germany aren't worth discussing. Japan sells the same or more than these countries. Sotware/hardware/console/handhelds
Japan is always worth discussing. I've long held the belief that, in some ways, Sony's heavily Western-focused 1st party lineup turns off many potential buyers of PS4 in Japan due to a thinner 3rd-party lineup of Japanese games than previous consoles that would fill the 1st-party void.
Some people, albeit a totally unquantifiable number, might actually buy a Nintendo console in greater numbers and beat back the "consoles in Japan are dead" narrative, if it was a console worth giving a shit about that offered the same Japanese 3rd-party games, as there would be nothing lost and a strong 1st-party gained in the eyes of the Japanese gamer.
It's entirely conjecture until it happens, but considering it only took a single generation for the console market in Japan to go completely sideways, a generation when Nintendo was at its absolute weakest after being at its strongest and when Sony was deviating more and more from being a console maker geared towards the average Japanese gamer, it's not the most "out there" idea anyone's ever come up with to explain the situation.
Yeah guys, Nintendo having the version of call of duty with slightly higher frame rates and shinier walls is going to make people want to forego purchasing it on their existing ps4 so they may rush out to buy a 400 dollar Nintendo core box so that they can avoid playing it with their friends. In this reality, the same people avoid gaming pcs for their graphical needs.
I'm not entirely sure anyone anywhere in this thread EVER said Nintendo would release a $400 core box, or anything close to that. So while I know you're going to extremes to make a point, you've basically blown past even the most radical of proposals made by the vast majority of the thread to do so.
I think Wii U = "Ok, ok I get it now" for Nintendo with the NX.
At this point, they damn well better have.
It is necessary because most people in this thread are blind. A parity machine is going to get Nintendo NOWHERE. A machine 20% better is getting them nowhere. Likewise 50% or 100%. They need something so far beyond PS4/XBO to capture that market it's impossible. Nintendo mindshare with "core" Western gamers has completely and utterly dissolved and it's Nintendo's doing.
The best they can hope for is to hit parity or a bit more, make a bit of cash and slowly change the attitude of gamers over a 2-3 generations.
This doesn't mean Nintendo is doomed or any crap like that, they will be successful and live. But if people here think Nintendo is going to rise from the ashes in the minds of Western core gamers and Western publishers they need a reality check. The only way that will happen with tonnes of cash put into marketing and buying ports for third parties.
You'll have to forgive me, I wasn't aware anyone in here was actually saying that these things magically solve all of Nintendo's problems. I'll require some cited examples of this that make it a large enough sample to apply to "most people".
If anything, people are saying it's the baseline they need to reach to even HOPE to achieve any sort of upswing from their current situation and to stop the hemorrhaging of their hardcore fanbase, who became rather exhausted with the Wii and Wii U years.
I'm optimistic, but I'm not stupid, this is Sony's generation to win. But Nintendo have to start making ground and changing the conversation sometime and the best time to start is right fucking now. Because as a Nintendo fan, Wii U being what it was is enough to make me walk if they don't start giving me what I want in their business approach as well as their software titles.
Probably because he felt that it was the only way people will get that it doesn't matter if NX has power parity and COD and FIFA and AC, it won't make any difference. I love Nintendo games but Nintendo as a brand 25-30 years ago was cool. It isn't now. It's for kids. And nerds who like to dress up as Link. And people who like Nintendo games to the extent that they're prepared to drop 300 on a console where they'll need to drop another 300 on a console if they want to play GTA or Bloodborne or Minecraft or MGS. I fall into the latter category. Most people don't fall into any of these categories.
And Japan, which isn't nearly as bogged down in these notions of Nintendo as a brand. But I forgot, we've already mentioned that Japan and all the gamers of that island nation aren't even remotely relevant to the discussion. Because... reasons?
It was a shit post, sure... But did my point come across? Would Nintendo better focus on trying to peel people away from the ps4 by doing what they *dont* do, or would they be better doing trying to appeal to a different audience?
Those aren't mutually exclusive things, you realize that, right?
To focus on both, you're going to have to quantify how developers like epd Tokyo and the Mario kart team etc etc to produce some expensive M rated aaa murder simulators with a ton of expensive marketing To attract that audience to the console. People who are suggesting that they just stick some ps4-like parts in the console and magic happens and all is well with the core market and all (or even most) western third party support returns really do need to face reality.
Point me to this plurality of people who think so. I'm curious where you think they are. Because an overview here is that people are conflating optimism and positivity with "ZOMG 100 MILLION SOLD CONFIRMED!!!", which is a fallacy of the highest order.
This is literally the very first console generation that does not feature a market leader with a shit ton of poorly-selling shovelware.
This is actually a topic that, on its own, could be discussed at length in another thread. We as enthusiasts hate shovelware. But with that software floating into the mobile space instead, what are console makers going to do without the revenue they make on licensing from that software? It's not like we'll buy more games to pick up that slack, because we've already seen that isn't happening.
I'm actually almost worried that the shovelware isn't there in the volume we'd normally see.
I don't think they are to be honest and I'm not talking about just this thread. I'm talking about Bosman and the other media I'm hearing/reading. The point being we know FUCK ALL about the NX. "industry leading chips" means next to nothing. I mean NOTHING. That could be anything from a cellphone chip to a high end discrete GPU.
Yep, developers in the console software industry are really going to call a cell phone chip an "industry leader". Makes total sense. No holes in that argument whatsoever.
Also, please point me to this media you're hearing/reading. Because Bosman isn't saying what you think he's saying.
Are you talking about SONY or Nintendo when you say "Trying to make it seem like hardware that's less impressive is part of their "DNA" is laughable, "
I'm talking about Sony. Clearly you didn't read what I wrote. I make no bones about how Nintendo's penchant to chase the casual gamer to the near-exclusion of the core was going to hurt them. There was an opportunity to do something with Wii U that they failed to do.
But I'm not going to sit and say that PS4 is a typical Sony design or a typical Sony business model. It clearly isn't.
Where did you hear that SONY knew what MS was targeting?
Please, even GAF knew what "Durango" was before Microsoft talked about it, Xbox One's spec targets were the worst-kept secret in the industry.
Yes they are forced to change. So lets look at the evidence. They have partnered with Japanese companies. They have got into theme park licensing. They have made Amiibos. They are making mobile games. Tell me where ANY of that means they are making a parity or + console?
...
Merging studios and the handheld+console divisions means nothing more than they can save money on OS and other software. Where does that point to parity+?
You argued that there was no evidence that Nintendo was changing its business model and therefore that meant that there was no possibility that they would make hardware at parity with current offerings. I refuted that assertion and that your evidence of impossibility was invalid. Nothing more.
And no one can argue that the alternative would bury Nintendo even deeper in the muck than they already are, so even self-preservation of their business would dictate that it's a strong possibility.
I will have to look at Bosman again because I don't recall him thinking "We'll get a PS4 NX". But either way my comment was broader. Nothing and I mean ABSOLUTELY nothing has shown us that Nintendo is going for a parity+ console. The only thing we have is "industry leading chips" which I've said before, at the moment, is worthless.
Based on a logical fallacy and not what you were originally arguing in the first place, but OK.
I'm not convinced the engineering effort was costly vs the money they saved by using beefed up old tech
Doing what they did with the architecture was basically bending PowerPC to do things it was never originally designed to do, at a time when no investment was being made to improve that architecture. IBM was leaving it for dead had Nintendo not asked for something new.
Yeah, it wasn't as simple as just dumping in more hertz and calling it a day like you think.
No it's not a necessity. Because there are infinite ideas out there and Nintendo are fucking smart motherfuckers. If anyone can find a new market and tap into it whilst generating massive profits it's Nintendo.
I'm a bit confused... you believe that Nintendo will come up with some secret-sauce way of driving people to buy their hardware, when they've only achieved that... twice in the console space (NES, Wii) in their 30 year history under VERY different and more highly favourable market conditions?
... K?
Whatever. I still don't think they will necessarily hit PS4 level. In fact, what I'm saying is that there is NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that really tells us that they will hit PS4 level. Again I'll say that "industry leading chips" means nothing. N O T H I N G. It's about as useful as Reggie talking about the Wii U and saying "Wii U will be 1080p". Everything thought "WOW! Awesome" because they expected X but it really meant Y.
And yet there's nothing that suggests the opposite, either, as most "evidence" that points to it can essentially be tossed over the shoulder now. You might recall, but the last time Nintendo had its worst-selling console ever and were hearing whispers that their handheld stronghold was in jeopardy, everyone expected them to "do what they've always done, only this time it'll work! Honest!" And then the Wii and DS happened and changed the way everyone looks at them, for better AND worse.
You're saying that historical evidence has value, but pick out the part where they're in an even WORSE situation than the GBA/Gamecube era and just as likely to turn their entire business on its head, just like they did the last time that happened. That seems rather convenient.
Everything we think we know about Nintendo can essentially be thrown out, at this point. There's no way to know what will happen by history alone. We can only base what will happen next by what we're hearing now. And what we're hearing now is painting a different picture than the Wii-era Nintendo we have retroactively determined that they always have been.
One would imagine that there will be game the portable will not run like Zelda and certain AAA games.
Perhaps, but they'd be as few and far between as possible.
Yes. Because the ps4 being a metric means you're going to have similar costing. I don't see a ps4 costing 200 dollars to build so they can sell for 250 in 6-9 months when they're going to start building these things. Especially considering the possibility that they're going for amd tech, which is on the same node that they've been since 2011. Your only possibility of a build cost to come anywhere close to your 250 figure AT RETAIL (which has to include retailer cut and ship/packing costs) is if they're not including an optical drive or onboard storage, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 in build cost.
Which, based on their business model, is a high likelihood. But more importantly...
My fear is that if they go for PS4 performance, they'll price them out of the one market they're good at controlling - the youth market.
Nintendo sets the retail price, the cost doesn't determine that. They've already eaten losses on hardware thanks to Wii U, they can just as easily do it again. Mid-cycle hardware is not intended to be sold at a loss, as that's when you recover any losses you might have taken at the start, but launch hardware is definitely intended to not make much money.
If it costs them $300 and they want to sell it for $250, nothing is stopping them from doing that, so long as their business plan allows that loss to be quickly recovered. It all comes down to what components they use, if their associated manufacturing costs decrease fast enough and whether Nintendo believes they can gain a healthy attach rate shortly after launch to recoup that loss.
They're not bound by fate to make money on the hardware they sell at launch; only to ensure it makes them more money than they lost by the end of the generation.
