Milly Osworth
Member
When can we expect some actual leaks?
Joke: When Ubisoft gets Dev-Kits, that is comparable to a full scale official reveal by Nintendo and a Digital Foundry teardown. ;DWhen can we expect some actual leaks?
Wait, really?Joke: When Ubisoft gets Dev-Kits, that is comparable to a full scale official reveal by Nintendo and a Digital Foundry teardown. ;D
Real:
You never know with Nintendo, looks like Shin'en has already some Dev-Kits, but i doubt that they are leaking anything big/essential.
I think the best chance is when Nikkei is getting some information again, they are pretty on spot most of the times.
And yes, Ubisoft is actually a real answer, too! Stuff leaks all the time from them, be it their own games and so on.
Just speculation, based on an interview with their lead dev, was posted here earlier. He was making some cryptic comments of a futuristic racer on a "new handheld".Wait, really?
Can I have a link to this? Sounds interesting.Just speculation, based on an interview with their lead dev, was posted here earlier. He was making some cryptic comments of a futuristic racer on a "new handheld".
And given the technical results Shin'en seems to achieve on Nintendo systems, the thought that they might have some dev-kits came up.
He pretty much said he'd like to see fast racing on a new handheld. Really wasn't cryptic or a clue, just being overread by the hunger for news.
And even if it were a hint, doesn't mean they have a devkit.
He pretty much said he'd like to see fast racing on a new handheld. Really wasn't cryptic or a clue, just being overread by the hunger for news.
And even if it were a hint, doesn't mean they have a devkit.
Interviewer: Are there any plans to possibly release FAST: Racing Neo to any other systems or will it stay exclusive to the Nintendo Wii U?
Manfred: We currently have no plans to bring FRN to another system. However, i think a futuristic racer on a new handheld would be great.
Here is the post, where the Interview was posted:Can I have a link to this? Sounds interesting.
Fast Racing Neo interview:
http://www.wearejustgamers.com/inte...hinen-and-lead-developer-for-fast-racing-neo/
hmmmmm
Also bodes well if Wii U games can be ported to the new handheld (Hyrule Warriors excluded ;p)
If i remember correctly, the only Shin'en game that has appeared on another console, is Nano Assault for PS4, everything else is Nintendo-hardware only.The series is on home consoles already. Historically the next device would be a handheld. Hence interested in bringing it to a new handheld.
Clearly shin en is making f zero on the NX.
It might not be a hint but it's important that Shin'en flat out said the original FAST wasn't possible on the 3DS.
It could be a hint that the first FAST will come to N3DS.
I'm just throwing out numbers, you made the claim, so give us some numbers. From one search I found nand prices of $2.50 (avrge) for 8GB. 256gigabit chip prices seem hard to find If we went with just the cost of nand, using 64gigabit chips, we would need 4, so an average cost of $10.
http://www.dramexchange.com/
Tell me why I'm absurd.
It would seem that the low end of the SD market probably doesn't have much markup at all. Which makes sense, its probably similar to USB sticks. Since nand prices are so low, and its easy to get in the game, it forces margins way down.
I'm all for solid state, it definitely be cool, no spinning parts on the console would be sweet, probably make the console bill of materials cheaper too (and able to scale down over time better)
I just think some of us are forgetting why Nintendo was forced away from solid state with the gamecube in the first place. The current market price of solid state versus disk are not that different from then. Disks are literally pennies to make where as even the cheapest nand is dollars to make and goes up with density and speed, and then you need to make a product out of it (associated electronics and enclosure). For portables where you don't quite need as much storage Nintendo has stuck to their guns (probably also because a disk drive is hard to do for a portable with power consumption and size).
I would just be surprised if they went cartidge with the home console. Remember the development environment is what was said to be the dame for nx portable and home consoles, Iwata said that it didn't mean the actual games would run in both.
If they were to use NAND chips instead of ROM chips, wouldn't they also quite easily be able to save dlc directly to the cart? This would be really convenient and would also tie the lifetime of the dlc to the lifetime of the cart rather than the system, whoch would basically be the point where I'd be fine with buying DLC for (physical, of course) games.
I think the storage medium will be the most interesting aspect of NX. It's anyone's guess as to what they will do.
If I were Iwata, however, I would stick w/ discs for the home console and make the portable digital only with support for NFC purchases (via amiibo, cards, or whatever else they can think of). Maybe in the handheld, have a cartridge port just for a backup. I believe they have been using blank Gamecards and download stations in Japan retail for people who want to buy digital but have crappy internet.
Still, to concede shelf space at retail would be foolish, and it is still the bulk of their market. In a home console, size really doesn't matter. If you look at iFixit's Wii U teardown, Nintendo used a cheap and bulky BD-ROM in Wii U, seemingly because they already had a slightly larger motherboard. Nintendo can still make a console smaller than Wii U with a disc drive included.
As has been mentioned, discs cost pennies to press vs. dollars for NAND. This is actually a huge difference, and as a businessman, I would want the cheaper solution.
The only problem would be to devise a system where if you sell your disc, you lose access to your digital copy (which would come for free presumably). That is unless Nintendo do something evil and carry on the way they sort of do now. If you buy physical, you can sell your disc, but it does not come with cross play. If you buy digital, perhaps only then have cross play as a free feature.
They're gonna have a tough time shaking their fidher-price image with a 540p device in 2016.
Tell that to Sony when they did the same thing in 2012 when a 720p handheld screen was already a well-matured technology.
He pretty much said he'd like to see fast racing on a new handheld. Really wasn't cryptic or a clue, just being overread by the hunger for news.
And even if it were a hint, doesn't mean they have a devkit.
Exactly, massive 2+2= 5 there.
Tell that to Sony when they did the same thing in 2012 when a 720p handheld screen was already a well-matured technology.
That's pretty cheap. Still dollars.The spot price quoted on DRAMExchange for a 16GB microSD NAND chip with controller and card construction is $3.50. So a higher capacity does not equal an exponential increase in cost.
Optical media is cheaper because it's cheaper/easier to press some layers of material together than it is to semiconductor fab and manufacture electronics.Optical media can only be cheaper if the designed replacement becomes an industry standard for the entertainment industry as a whole, and for those of you not paying attention, there's no appetite for a new physical media type; not even Blu-Ray is seeing the desired amount of traction in the industry as was hoped for. So Blu-Ray is basically the last bastion of optical media.
<snip>
Blu-Ray production is not "pennies", contrary to popular belief, even when being produced in the 100,000 or more range. They suffer from lower production yields than DVDs do and higher license fees to pay than DVD authoring.
One quote of many:
Expanding on this:
Iwata has spoken repeatedly about how he wants the handheld and console (and possibly other form factors) to share the same architecture / OS. Whether or not it'll be buy-once-play-anywhere hasn't been confirmed -- it's possible that Nintendo just wants to streamline porting from one platform to another -- but expectations are for a shared (or mostly shared) library.
Using Apple as example is quite silly.
The smart devices are using the same architecture and chipset series because they have all the same form factor.
While Apple's Macs are running x86 architecture.
Apple would never try to use A8 on crack to power a stationary system.
Not that one would need the same architecture to archive transparency between the systems. Japanese developers are developing just fine for PS3/PS4/Vita at the same time because stuff like same API, engines support and similiar graphical feature set.
a) it was oled
That's pretty cheap. Still dollars.
Optical media is cheaper because it's cheaper/easier to press some layers of material together than it is to semiconductor fab and manufacture electronics.
For example, as I mentioned the consumer can purchase a spindle of single layer blurays for 50c each. I did a quick search and I found some random bluray duplication services for 85c which includes printed labels and a sleeve in quantities of 1000, Nintendo would probably have much better rates given they're quantities and buying power, or their own internal presses.
Yes, dual layer's are more, and future quad layers are more still, but given Nintendo, I'll bet 25GB's is plenty for them.
Lol, you will never come clost to the costs of a BD with anything solid-state storage related.
Just the idea that could run with anything else than BDs for a stationary platform is naive at best.
Lol, you will never come clost to the costs of a BD with anything solid-state storage related.
Just the idea that could run with anything else than BDs for a stationary platform is naive at best.
how about my idea of 'cart +'? all games are on NX handheld carts. If you want to play on the home console, you plug the cart in and play. If you are offline, thats it - it uses the handheld assets but upscales to 1080p maybe with AA etc.
If you are online, the console downloads an update to the built-in HDD (or USB attached depending on how cheap Nintendo are), which updates the graphics etc
how about my idea of 'cart +'? all games are on NX handheld carts. If you want to play on the home console, you plug the cart in and play. If you are offline, thats it - it uses the handheld assets but upscales to 1080p maybe with AA etc.
If you are online, the console downloads an update to the built-in HDD (or USB attached depending on how cheap Nintendo are), which updates the graphics etc
how about my idea of 'cart +'? all games are on NX handheld carts. If you want to play on the home console, you plug the cart in and play. If you are offline, thats it - it uses the handheld assets but upscales to 1080p maybe with AA etc.
If you are online, the console downloads an update to the built-in HDD (or USB attached depending on how cheap Nintendo are), which updates the graphics etc
how about my idea of 'cart +'? all games are on NX handheld carts. If you want to play on the home console, you plug the cart in and play. If you are offline, thats it - it uses the handheld assets but upscales to 1080p maybe with AA etc.
If you are online, the console downloads an update to the built-in HDD (or USB attached depending on how cheap Nintendo are), which updates the graphics etc
So you're suggesting that they pay twice for 2 different media types that can't be swapped between hardware, instead of paying for 1. And that somehow, paying for 2 media types instead of one is less expensive.
As long as Nintendo makes a handheld, discs become an unnecessary expense when there is now a more elegant solution that aligns with their current "ecosystem" mantra with NX. Were it just a console we were talking about, the argument couldn't even be considered.
Perhaps it was foolhardy of me to suggest that NAND chips cost practically nothing, since that only applies to the original NAND chip manufacturer itself and they don't pass that low cost on. But the fact remains that 1 solution is cheaper than 2 in every conceivable way possible.
But hey, if you want them to do things the most expensive and least elegant way possible, by all means, I won't suggest that they can't. Only that they shouldn't.
It works, but it doesn't really work both ways, which makes it not ideal. And you'd need 2 physical media readers in the console for that to function to begin with.
People are overthinking Iwata's words again.
Why should Nintendo wants that both systems share the same game library if Smash proved for them that they can sell the "same" game successfully on two different systems?
There is no way you can justify using a storage that is easily >100x more expensive than a BD if factors like portability or form factor aren't important.
It's neither elegant nor cost effective.
Except they didn't. Handheld owners bought the handheld version, console owners bought the console version, and the amount of overlap is negligible.
With Iwata's method, the consumers do the exact same thing and buy the game in the same quantity and same methods they would regardless and Nintendo ends up spending less time, money and resources to make it happen.
That's why.
If the NX is a home console and on the go hybrid (a two devide system, basically) - I could see it. You figure 15 mil at least for the handheld goers and even if they have almost no home console market, expecting 5 mil to sell to that market is reasonable.
But 20 mil first year? Neither a handheld or home console on it's own is likely to pull that off.
Not to mention less money spent on server maintenance, update and DLC costs for both.
EDIT:
One thing puzzles me. How would game pricing work for cross-compatible v. non-cross compatible games work? Seems like a big problem.
That's really the part we don't know yet. Nintendo could decide to flat-rate the physical copy at a console game price and offer the handheld versions only online for a reduced rate for those who want that.
But such an issue makes the assumption that anyone who's on board with making games for NX would want to make something exclusive to one or the other, though, and if the rush for developers to make game multi-platform has taught us anything, so long as it's cheap to bring a game to another hardware platform, no one is going to say no to the option.
Nintendo will still charge you $60 and $40 for home console and handheld. They will not devalue their software by giving you a discount for buying both handheld and home console version. Pricing will never go down significantly for Nintendo's games unless retailers want to get rid of excessive stock.I'd assume they'd do $40 for single platform retail or digital OR the option for $60 for cross-platform digital. If they did $60 for retail on a handheld game sales would bomb.
People are overthinking Iwata's words again.
Why should Nintendo wants that both systems share the same game library if Smash proved for them that they can sell the "same" game successfully on two different systems?
Unnecessary Accessory, Ho!Not joking about the possibility
I think we'll here something around October. It seems like a lull in Nintendo's schedule and a good time for things to come out.
Part of me, in the back of my mind is saying 'Handheld in Japan, Console in the West next holiday' and then you flip-flop that scenario for the Spring. I have no idea if that's even feasible.
Well I was thinking that originally too - and it is a very nintendo approach, they are not against having us pay again (and again) for the same games. But they need to be really careful because they risk a huge backlash from those misinterpreting their comments if they do this. The sooner they clarify the better.
I think it makes sense to have one SKU for both platforms though. Helps to consolidate retail shelf space (where they are often getting squeezed out), and encourages hardware purchases if your handheld software works on the home console too. Given that Nintendo will probably make profit on the hardware, that isn't a bad thing.
So I think it could go either way - you're right that their description could simply be 'it is more efficient for our software development but we aren't passing any of that saving on to consumers' but I hope not.
There've been more than a few rumors over the past couple of years of apple experimenting with Ax designs for notebook form factors. Given how capable A8 has proven to be (~haswell IPC) I think that we're not far from actually seeing an Ax non-iOS product.I think their A series SoC are more limited by power consumption and heat dissipation issues given by the form factors they are in, their own proprietary Cyclone micro architecture is quite nice indeed. Apple is likely running internal OS X builds on A8X and future (A9X chips running at >2 GHz in a tri/quad core configuration which is more than enough to run OS X decently unless you are using it as an audio/video/development workstation). MacBook Air and Mac Mini could be future targets for example.
Some of the responses when I asked a similar question a couple days ago:One thing puzzles me. How would game pricing work for cross-compatible v. non-cross compatible games work? Seems like a big problem.
Honestly, if the games are developed on the "base hardware", i.e. the handheld, I suppose they'd cost the same as they currently cost on...3DS, because they're using that as the base and, from there, given that the platforms should share basic architectures and coding languages, it should be very easy to (possibly) up-port them (better resolution/textures/framerate) for the TV screen. Instead, I could see console exclusives games, that are specifically developed for the beefier hardware, to have an higher price.
I think most NX games will cost $40 but certain titles (like Zelda and 3D Mario) will be priced at $50. If Nintendo is really aiming for $149-$199 with NX hardware, I think $60 games would be a mistake. They'd be nothing but trash, really.
100 % agree.
You already see here in Europe new WiiU titles costing as much as 3DS games. Captain Toad, Kirby, Splatoon, Yoshi all launched for around 40 Euros. There will be 50 expectation like a new Zelda but the regular games will be around 40.
The main point is that Nintendo can't make a hybrid system without that it would hurt the handheld or console version. A weak console offspring would be dead on arrival while a high power consumption could hurt the handheld.
It's all about streamlining the software development process. If all NX platforms can run the same API, engines and tools it would be the logical evolution of what we are seeing on Sony platforms in Japan - where basically every game is realeased for all three systems or at least PS4 and PSVita. Nintendo wouldn't also need to run the same hardware or even architecture to archive that.
Iwata called the systems "brothers" for a reason.
Yup - a little bit over-eager, but it's an unusual thing to say so it's not surprising it got pounced on.
That said, do we have any idea when Shin'en got their hands on Wii U kits? They were in at launch with Nano Assault, so they must have had reasonably early access - have they ever commented on it?
EDIT:
Actually, looking at the quote again, it does look awfully like a coy hint.
The question doesn't mention handhelds - let alone "new handhelds" - just other systems, so Manfred's response is odd unless you read it as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more hint at a future platform that he knows something about.
Perhaps Matt answering that silly question in another thread is more useful than I initially thought. If the NX is not weaker than the Wii U, we are either talking about a very powerful portable (unlikely), or that the NX at least has a console counterpart.
didnt he talk about resolution before also? so does add some confusion