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[Nanashrew]

and the ds was only a third pillar.

Iwata reportedly announced the NX so prematurely to quell speculation that Nintendo is no longer making traditional hardware. It's going to be a console and/or handheld hybrid.

NX announcement was to tell investors they're now more excited to stay in dedicated hardware than ever.
Nintendo is looking into free-form LCD screens.
Iwata talked about multiple form factors.
Used iOS and Android as an example of multiple devices with their own ecosystem.
Iwata said expanding on existing hardware is dull.
Nintendo wants their systems to be like brothers in a family.


I'm honestly not seeing this hybrid theory or going all mobile as a substitute for handheld when Iwata keeps stating otherwise.

 

[Chindogg]

NX announcement was to tell investors they're now more excited to stay in dedicated hardware than ever.
Nintendo is looking into free-form LCD screens.
Iwata talked about multiple form factors.
Used iOS and Android as an example of multiple devices with their own ecosystem.
Iwata said expanding on existing hardware is dull.
Nintendo wants their systems to be like brothers in a family.


I'm honestly not seeing this hybrid theory or going all mobile as a substitute for handheld when Iwata keeps stating otherwise.

Iwata also stated that future devices will use Wii U's OS as a foundation yet here we are with the Android rumors.

 

[Oregano]

the ds was first shown in 2004 and released in 2004.

i think the 3ds was originally slated for a 2010 release, but wii u development forced people working on games for that device onto the console instead, resulting in a delayed launch, a poor effort from nintendo at the start, and rushed games in mario kart 7 and 3d land.

nintendo bringing up the nx in march 2015 is like them first talking about the wii u in march 2011 when it was project cafe. if there are details such as this being discussed (when nintendo said that they would talk about it in 2016), then i think in another era they would have shown it off this year. the day of showing hardware super early is gone. they won't show hardware unless they're releasing it within the year at this point.

Yup, plus the Wii U was hurt by being shown at t won consecutive E3s. Bet they don't want to repeat that.


Anyway I was saying Nintendo would be looking to copy the Kindle platform for NX but I never thought they'd go Android based.

 

[Game4life]

or the ds or the wii.

ds is not a home console. The same rules do not apply for handheld and home consoles. As for the wii it had a hook. If this console is going to need a major hook for it to work. Good VR is out of the question in this case so what is its hook going to be?

If there is the same power difference as it exists between the Wii and ps3 or WiiU and PS4 even in the next generation console space than I dont know how Nintendo hopes to court the traditional third parties that have brought Sony and MS success.

 

[Milly Osworth]

Nintendo needs big changes, sooooo... Sounds good to me.

 

[Aru]

Like this:


I have one and it work wonder. But I don't think Nintendo would adopt that, though. How can I put it, it feel to brash for Ninty.

Sounds like a standard Nintendo thread. ^^



Jesus, it will never die eh? There is no hybrid.

I'm not talking about something like that. More like the iPad in fact: use it as a tablet, and connect it to the TV with an HDMI cable and use a bluetooth controller with it.

Making 2 separate devices could also work to keep the costs lower, but I'd really like the all-in-one device approach.

 

[Bill Rizer]

Well, Android as OS doesn't mean it can't use a powerful hardware for the home console, right? Or is Android strictly connected to portable devices?

 

[Nanashrew]

Iwata also stated that future devices will use Wii U's OS as a foundation yet here we are with the Android rumors.

He did! It will probably be for VC and all the stuff they're working on for future systems.

It of course does not mean that we are going to use exactly the same architecture as Wii U, but we are going to create a system that can absorb the Wii U architecture adequately. When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems.

 

[E-phonk]

Iwata also stated that future devices will use Wii U's OS as a foundation yet here we are with the Android rumors.

He didn't. Here's the quote:

In this perspective, while we are only going to be able to start this with the next system, it will become important for us to accurately take advantage of what we have done with the Wii U architecture. It of course does not mean that we are going to use exactly the same architecture as Wii U, but we are going to create a system that can absorb the Wii U architecture adequately. When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems.

Architecture could mean a lot of things, but it never specifies OS or hardware. It could be about API hooks and porting the WiiU API to android/ARM for all we know.

Well, Android as OS doesn't mean it can't use a powerful hardware for the home console, right? Or is Android strictly connected to portable devices?

Android at it's core is a general OS, it can run on anything, although it's optimised for ARM based devices. It runs on the raspberry PI 2 for example, just like linux and (arm) Windows10 does. There are android builds (by the community) for X86.

Java?
Trash

Android doesn't use a virtual machine.

 

[mStudios]

Java?
Trash

 

[hongcha]

This makes sense, and I don't doubt the Nikkei report. The terribly flawed concept and execution of the Wii U destroyed their third party support on the home console market, and using an established OS such as Android, which is different from their competitors (Sony and MS), is a good and safe way to get some decent third party support back with NX.

 

[gofreak]

A custom android fork could end up being anything really. I guess if ease of porting is the concern it can't be too custom at a lower level. But if the business strategy is the same - e.g. this would be a walled garden for content - most of the significance here would be developer rather than consumer facing.

Well, I guess except for the implication that the system would be welcoming a lot of android game ports. And probably not so many ports from PC/other consoles.

 

[Clefargle]

Im not sure but its something I thought about for a while. I think a split controller that has soft pads on the left/right sides for the phone to sink into slightly and an adjustable back brace for tension might be the solution. It would fit a majority of modern phone sizes.

EDIT: baterism's pic is basically the idea in my head but I would expect nintendos solution to be more elegant and friendly looking.

I was thinking about this last weekend, it makes too muh sense

 

[Chinpoko_Master]

Very surprising if true. It's hard for me to imagine a company like Nintendo embracing a platform as open as Android.

However, I think it could also be pretty awesome. It just depends on their execution. They would obviously need to find a solution for piracy. I'm guessing DeNA somehow fits into that.

Who knows what NX will end up being, but I could see Nintendo doing something like the Vita and Vita TV where you have a console and a portable console based on the same hardware and games are built with compatibility across both in mind. Future backwards compatibility would be simplified due to future platforms sharing the same OS and architecture.

Using mobile hardware components would also fit in nicely with Nintendo's strategy of making small, low cost, low power consoles. Right now, they could probably make a micro-console that's roughly as powerful as the Wii U for $99-$149. As someone who has been pretty stingy about buying Nintendo consoles solely for Nintendo games, I would totally buy that as long as their software retains its quality. It would also be a pretty killer price point for a new console in this day and age.

But yeah, it's fun to speculate.

 

[AniHawk]

Good VR is out of the question

why?

If there is the same power difference as it exists between the Wii and ps3 or WiiU and PS4 even in the next generation console space than I dont know how Nintendo hopes to court the traditional third parties that have brought Sony and MS success.

i doubt nintendo is going to court those third-parties unless they're making games that do well on nintendo platforms.

 

[cheezcake]

"Fallacy". Clearly you have never worked at a software company

I wasn't referring solely to source code either.

What are you referring to other than source code?

And no I'm still at university so I haven't but it's pretty common knowledge that software being open source vs closed source has basically no effect on the underlying security of the system.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Well, Android as OS doesn't mean it can't use a powerful hardware for the home console, right? Or is Android strictly connected to portable devices?

Correct. Android is just an operating system.

It has little baring whatever hardware configuration used. They could make a console or device at PS4 level of power or comparable to a md to high gaming PC and still have the Android OS on top.

 

[John Bender]

Android????

Hm, I don't know.....
Piracy-rate will be high. Don't know how I feel about this.
But Nintendo is horrible at creating a good OS+Online-Structure, so maybe it's for the best.

Nintendo Smartphone coming, too?

 

[AgeEighty]

This makes sense, and I don't doubt the Nikkei report. The terribly flawed concept and execution of the Wii U destroyed their third party support on the home console market, and using an established OS such as Android, which is different from their competitors (Sony and MS), is a good and safe way to get some decent third party support back with NX.

How do you figure? The economics of game development being what they are, third parties will be looking for something that removes as many roadblocks as possible from the act of porting. Basing the console on Android isn't going to accomplish that for AAA games, only for mobile games.

 

[Jackano]

Very good news!

I called for it for a while now so I'm very happy.
It's solid, open-source code (so customizable) that will replace the shitty OS they had on Wii and Wii U.

 

[OmegaDL50]

How do you figure? The economics of game development being what they are, third parties will be looking for something that removes as many roadblocks as possible from the act of porting. Basing the console on Android isn't going to accomplish that for AAA games, only for mobile games.

Android does support both Unity 5 and Unreal 4.

If any developer uses either of these engines for development and the NX hardware is capable enough, then porting to it wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Earthpainting]

Does this mean Metal Gear Solid 6 will be exclusive?

Too soon, man. Too soon.

And no I'm still at university so I haven't but it's pretty common knowledge that software being open source vs closed source has basically no effect on the underlying security of the system.

This is correct. Nintendo wouldn't even think of dipping their toe into the Android pool if they didn't think it could be sufficiently locked down to protect their software.

 

[FlutterPuffs]

Oh

Shit.

This is fantastic. Adopting an OS architecture rather than build one (let's face it, not one of Nintendo's strong points) is good news for everyone.

It doesn't mean it will be focused on tablets and smartphones fellas, it probably means there will be better integration between Nintendo's next handheld and next gen console. Be smart.

 

[hongcha]

How do you figure? The economics of game development being what they are, third parties will be looking for something that removes as many roadblocks as possible from the act of porting. Basing the console on Android isn't going to accomplish that for AAA games, only for mobile games.

Who said anything about AAA games? I don't think Nintendo cares about that anymore, outside of their own first party games. They just want more third party games, and they seem to be headed toward integration with smart devices. Android OS has the potential to allow a fluid connection between home and portable devices and software. If we look back to the Wii, we note that it had good third party support but lacked the big third party AAA games that were published on the PS3 and X360. However, we also note this did not hurt Nintendo's incredible financial success with the Wii.

 

[Swifty]

Very surprising if true. It's hard for me to imagine a company like Nintendo embracing a platform as open as Android.

However, I think it could also be pretty awesome. It just depends on their execution. They would obviously need to find a solution for piracy. I'm guessing DeNA somehow fits into that.

Who knows what NX will end up being, but I could see Nintendo doing something like the Vita and Vita TV where you have a console and a portable console based on the same hardware and games are built with compatibility across both in mind. Future backwards compatibility would be simplified due to future platforms sharing the same OS and architecture.

Using mobile hardware components would also fit in nicely with Nintendo's strategy of making small, low cost, low power consoles. Right now, they could probably make a micro-console that's roughly as powerful as the Wii U for $99-$149. As someone who has been pretty stingy about buying Nintendo consoles solely for Nintendo games, I would totally buy that as long as their software retains its quality. It would also be a pretty killer price point for a new console in this day and age.

But yeah, it's fun to speculate.

Speaking as a game dev, an ideal platform for me would a handheld and a home console that shares the same architecture but simply had different horsepower. That way if you target one of those platforms, you automatically would have a no fuss build target for the other platform. Then the only work needed to optimize would be to adjust the quality of the shaders and assets shipped between both SKUs while still maximizing the power vs portability advantages between platform form factors.

 

[ersocaster]

I think it's much more likely to be pure Linux based, with "Android" simply being a placeholder since it is currently the most versatile distribution of Linux.

 

[Clefargle]

It not going to be android.

you are insane if you think nintendo will go anywhere near android for their platforms. If they used anything remotely resembling android, it would be the most quickly hacked system since the PSP (where homebrew was a thing in its first week). not in a million years.

Nonsense.

I'm a pretty big Android advocate... there is no way in hell Nintendo would touch Android.

Lock this shit please. GAFers are usually better than this.

Nintendo uses ARM already.

get out of here with that weak game

It won't be Android. It's not nearly secure enough for Nintendo.

Crow train, now boarding!

 

[big_z]

But the DS was clearly a dedicated gaming device with (mostly) traditional games. Nintendo's mobile collaboration with DeNA sounds like nothing of the sort.

That being said, your concept doesn't sound that off base. I just don't think Nintendo is going to want to take that radical of a shift with it's handheld gaming branch, at least not so soon.

3DS will ride into the sunset at the end of 2016 and mobile will being replacing it. There is no need for handhelds when Nintendo will try to unify how your phone becomes part of the nx experience. Maybe you play animal crossing house arrest or the island mini games on your phone while on the go then play the full game on your nx.

Remember when iwata said Nintendo was in the process of unifying its platforms and game development process. Well DNA is there for account stuff and with NX running on ARM it allows both mobile and console games to run the same engines/assets. Think 3Dland and 3Dworld but instead of each game running its own engine Nintendo could make both on the same engine, the only difference is the hardware power allowing for more on the console side.

Just like we bought the WiiU?

I edited out the price from my original ign email. I would guess Nintendo is aiming for $199-$249 max with the NX. They want the mass market friendly pricing that help move wiis like crazy.

They fucked up with the wiiu not only with price but also naming, marketing and other stuff.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I'm not the technical guy to do this, but someone might need to explain what "based on android" means XD

Everything and nothing in particular, like PS4's OS being Free BSD based is nothing special in and of itself (although cool from the BSD fans' point of view ).

 

[E-phonk]

How do you figure? The economics of game development being what they are, third parties will be looking for something that removes as many roadblocks as possible from the act of porting. Basing the console on Android isn't going to accomplish that for AAA games, only for mobile games.

While choosing for android has little significance on porting itself, a big advantage is that a lot of the android API's are very well documented. If nintendo would've written their own OS and SDK, they also have to build a support desk for this and write the documentation for it.

They failed with this for the WiiU, if you remember the dev comments:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story

Having worked on other hardware consoles, I suppose that we were rather spoilt by having mature toolchains that integrated nicely with our development environment. Wii U on the other hand seemed to be trying at every turn to make it difficult to compile and run any code. Nintendo had provided an integration of their development tools into Visual Studio - the de facto standard for development - but it didn't work, not even close. So time was spent trying to get this fixed up, while reporting the issue to the platform holder. Eventually we received a solution from Nintendo via another third-party company who had also been working on this issue for a while.

So now we could make the code visible in Visual Studio and get it compiling, which was good, but the compilation times were really slow, even for minor changes. Then it had to do the link step, at which point you could happily get up, make a cup of tea, have a chat and get back to your desk before the link was complete. Link times were measured in multiple (four or more) minutes on Wii U compared to around one minute on other platforms.

Porting isn't that hard, porting on a undocumented, not well supported and unoptimised API is.

Android????

Hm, I don't know.....
Piracy-rate will be high.

That has literally NOTHING to do with it. There is no reason why they couldn't put a custom encryption/verification model on top of android and only allow encrypted/signed apps to run.

 

[jackal27]

As a huge Nintendo fan, I am extremely excited about this. I trust Nintendo a lot and I feel like if they decided to use Android, they'd do it right. Can't wait to see of a reveal of what is actually happening with the NX. Pre new Nintendo hardware is such an exciting time.

 

[Chindogg]

3DS will ride into the sunset at the end of 2016 and mobile will being replacing it. There is no need for handhelds when Nintendo will try to unify how your phone becomes part of the nx experience. Maybe you play animal crossing house arrest or the island mini games on your phone while on the go then play the full game on your nx.

Remember when iwata said Nintendo was in the process of unifying its platforms and game development process. Well DNA is there for account stuff and with NX running on ARM it allows both mobile and console games to run the same engines/assets. Think 3Dland and 3Dworld but instead of each game running its own engine Nintendo could make both on the same engine, the only difference is the hardware power allowing for more on the console side.


I edited out the price from my original ign email. I would guess Nintendo is aiming for $199-$249 max with the NX. They want the mass market friendly pricing that help move wiis like crazy.

They fucked up with the wiiu not only with price but also naming, marketing and other stuff.

Nintendo's not going to ditch their most profitable platform to split money with Google and Apple alone.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Speaking as a game dev, an ideal platform for me would a handheld and a home console that shares the same architecture but simply had different horsepower. That way if you target one of those platforms, you automatically would have a no fuss build target for the other platform. Then the only work needed to optimize would be to adjust the quality of the shaders and assets shipped between both SKUs while still maximizing the power vs portability advantages between platform form factors.

This assumes that the performance delta between them is moderate or that you would not be pushing the home console a lot though.

 

[Oregano]

3DS will ride into the sunset at the end of 2016 and mobile will being replacing it. There is no need for handhelds when Nintendo will try to unify how your phone becomes part of the nx experience. Maybe you play animal crossing house arrest or the island mini games on your phone while on the go then play the full game on your nx.

Remember when iwata said Nintendo was in the process of unifying its platforms and game development process. Well DNA is there for account stuff and with NX running on ARM it allows both mobile and console games to run the same engines/assets. Think 3Dland and 3Dworld but instead of each game running its own engine Nintendo could make both on the same engine, the only difference is the hardware power allowing for more on the console side.






I edited out the price from my original ign email. I would guess Nintendo is aiming for $199-$249 max with the NX. They want the mass market friendly pricing that help move wiis like crazy.

They fucked up with the wiiu not only with price but also naming, marketing and other stuff.

Why would Nintendo drop handhelds and keep home consoles? The home console is the dead weight to Nintendo.

 

[OmegaDL50]

http://www.develop-online.net/tools-and-tech/the-top-16-game-engines-for-2014/0192302

Android is covered in alot of these and most of them are the AAA dev engines too.

CryEngine, Unity, Unreal, Havok.

Not listed but have Android support, Source 2, Libgdx, and a few others.

Seems flexible enough.

 

[Panajev2001a]

A custom android fork could end up being anything really. I guess if ease of porting is the concern it can't be too custom at a lower level. But if the business strategy is the same - e.g. this would be a walled garden for content - most of the significance here would be developer rather than consumer facing.

Well, I guess except for the implication that the system would be welcoming a lot of android game ports. And probably not so many ports from PC/other consoles.

Well, luckily for Nintendo Visual Studio is adding mobile platforms support so third parties will not need to choose between Android Studio for NX and Visual Studio for PS5/Xbox Two .

 

[ash_ag]

Excellent news! Android is an incredibly robust OS, and I feel its use will allow them to employ their resources on the things that matter most for a gaming platform. I never had a big problem with Nintendo OSes' backend or frontend, but using a more mainstream and widely adopted solution seems like a much better option. They won't have to spend time and money on making things like media apps, which some people deem important, either.

It may also be what it takes to succeed in Japan. They have been attempting to bring many popular mobile games like P&D on 3DS lately, and making it easy for developers to port their games on NX could prove serviceable.

I highly doubt it's Android.

It definitely sounds like ES. Google and Nintendo have been working on it for at least a couple of years now.

ES has been in works for over 10 years now, and while Shiki Okasaka (its main creator) has worked for both Nintendo and Google during that time, I believe it is mostly his own project. He founded his own company called Esrille in 2010, which is where ES, Escort (ES's web browser, also available on Linux) and all other under-the-hood technologies are being developed now. It's not quite clear what might come out of this, but it's definitely not going to be on NX (or any other mainstream system for the foreseeable future).

 

[E-phonk]

Well, luckily for Nintendo Visual Studio is adding mobile platforms support so third parties will not need to choose between Android Studio for NX and Visual Studio for PS5/Xbox Two .

There are WiiU add-ons for visual studio too (although indeed, the new visual studio supports ARM/Android builds a lot easier)

https://www.incredibuild.com/incredibuild-for-nintendo-wii.html

 

[leroidys]

What are you referring to other than source code?

Known bugs, mobile devs not writing exploitable code, operating system behavior- memory management, scheduler, etc., maybe even drivers.

And no I'm still at university so I haven't but it's pretty common knowledge that software being open source vs closed source has basically no effect on the underlying security of the system.

I work at a company that ships a custom *nix, and let me just say that it's unfortunately not a purely academic concept. That's kind of besides the point though.

 

[Pez]

What is everyone saying the future will be?

Mobile.

What is Nintendo building?

A home console built on a mobile OS supported by their properties.

Interesting.

 

[Larogue]

First we heard that it was gonna use ARM.

Then there was news that its gonna be tablet type of console.

And now it makes sense hearing that its gonna run on Android OS.

 

[AniHawk]

Well whatever it takes to get "some" third party support other than lego games

they have a lot of third party support, and a lot of it comes in the way of exclusive games too. i think this would be a way of merging their libraries so that the 'console' side sees it too.

 

[KooopaKid]

Excellent news. Basically confirms a common library across devices. I can see the NX "saving" traditional gaming in Japan or at least making it more accessible and wide-spread again.

 

[big_z]

Why would Nintendo drop handhelds and keep home consoles? The home console is the dead weight to Nintendo.

Dedicated handhelds are trending to become a thing of the past. There's no point in releasing another handheld that might reach 20 million users when you can put your games on mobile and reach 100's of millions.

Consoles have a future but the problem the industry is currently facing is creating new generations of console gamers. Most kids play bad mobile games, burn out and never move onto a console. NX will be an attempt to cross that gap with both the mobile and NX experience benefitting each other.


EDIT: nice, theres a banner ad for dick insurance on this page.

 

[ArtHands]

What is everyone saying the future will be?

Mobile.

What is Nintendo building?

A home console built on a mobile OS supported by their properties.

Interesting.

Android is more than a mobile OS.

 

[Easy_D]

Everybody freaking THE FUCK OUT about this must either be too young to remember or don't know that then Dreamcast runs

Spoiler

(is compatible with)

Windows CE.

You mean it actually is time to freak the fuck out?

 

[AniHawk]

lego games are the most consistent games to be released year after year on Nintendo platforms... please name another?

monster hunter, dragon quest, sonic?

 

[Linkup]

Google and Nintendo finally working together again is promising.

One step closer to Nintendo VR becoming real.

 

[bearythebear]

If they're talking about OS now, is the system gonna launch relatively soon? by 2017?

 

[AniHawk]

ok forgive me... HOME CONSOLE

did you even read my post? the whole point of this is so their handheld third-party support also shows up on their console.