Enjoy a hearty laugh while falling off the track because you were busy looking down at the controller.
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Nintendo Patent Application - Handheld (or controller?) featuring a free-form display
- Thread starter Disorientator
- Start date
butman
Member
What's the difference between "the actual gaming market" being on PS4/XBO and the "old Wii crowd" being on phones. Neither evidently give two shits about Nintendo hardware anymore.
Hint: You're part of one of those groups and thus think it's a better idea to cater to you.
Just as a notice, Nintendo has worked on several partnerships this gen with third parties (I'm referring to titles like Bayonetta 2, Hyrule Warriors, Lego City Undercover, #FE - and such parternships are what I'm eager to see come back next gen, maybe even more numerous). Morevoer, they recently completely revamped their developers' portal (now it's modern + it hints at much better comunication for in-development projects), they're keeping on improving their relationships with indie developers, and they're (seemingly) a Khronos' contributor, the second highest role in terms of relevance. Plus, we shouldn't forget the support 3DS gets from Japanese third parties (even if it's down compared to the recent past...but it's what happens when your console is nearing 5 years since its launch AND doesn't allow multi-platform releases that are cheap to develop, like Vita).
So, yeah, while there have been several hints about Nintendo trying to catch a bigger audience again, it doesn't seem like they're ignoring the more traditional audience. Actually, some of what I've listed signify an improvement compared to what Nintendo was used to do.
So, yeah, while there have been several hints about Nintendo trying to catch a bigger audience again, it doesn't seem like they're ignoring the more traditional audience. Actually, some of what I've listed signify an improvement compared to what Nintendo was used to do.
The former still has an interest in buying dedicated gaming hardware while the latter are perfectly satisfied with general purpose devices that happen to play games.
Catering to the same market is making it contract, and that no one seems at all willing to get casuals invested in gaming says a lot in where this industry will be headed unless something major happens from studios or hardware manufacturers to get a huge resurgence of casual players coming back. The casual crowd is important to the market or else you'll never see 100 million units sold of any given console again.
Also where the NX is going, you may not even have to upgrade the system and reset the userbase every generation, because resetting to zero each gen is costing many money, especially Japanese publishers now who have this wait and see attitude towards console.
Also where the NX is going, you may not even have to upgrade the system and reset the userbase every generation, because resetting to zero each gen is costing many money, especially Japanese publishers now who have this wait and see attitude towards console.
I posed roughly that question to people who have no interest in current or old Nintendo games in another thread, this is the response:
The core audience is LOOOONG gone.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
A counterpoint is bait now?
The difference is that the actual gaming market still buys consoles and if they don't at least try to make a system that appeals to that crowd then it will fail. Just like the Wii U did. Better to go after the market that is more likely to buy the system than to take another risk on some gimmicky shit in an effort to try and catch lightning in a bottle again. Anything less than trying to appeal to gamers in my mind is going to be
at best. Might as well at least try.
Who has made a console for the expanded market since the Wii?
Touché but to the average consumer consoles aren't just dedicated hardware. They arguably haven't been since the PS1 doubled as a CD player. I'd also wager that's a much issue for handhelds than stationary consoles.
The difference is that the actual gaming market still buys consoles and if they don't at least try to make a system that appeals to that crowd then it will fail. Just like the Wii U did. Better to go after the market that is more likely to buy the system than to take another risk on some gimmicky shit in an effort to try and catch lightning in a bottle again. Anything less than trying to appeal to gamers in my mind is going to be
at best. Might as well at least try.
The Wii U was more gamer focused than the Wii and it evidently didn't help at all.
Not to mention Nintendo tried the gamer focused thing back when they were in a better position to do so and those consoles were failures too(although to a lesser extent than the Wii U).
Nintendo tried to catch the attention of the same 'expanded market' with the Wii U and they did not give a damn. They have moved on to their phones and do not give a shit about Nintendo hardware anymore. Meanwhile, the other consoles are selling like hot cakes. That is the market they need to be going after, not the one that is long gone.
It was under powered and came at the end of a generation, plus gamers wanted nothing to do with the gamepad. They were ready to move on to PS4 and Xbox One and so were developers.
The moment Nintendo tried to enforce a proprietary format for their own benefit at the expense of better collaboration with their third party partners that would have resulted in a bigger and more varied software library for the consumer was when they stopped being gamer focused.
So the NES?
Refreshment.01
Member
Well basically interface simplification has been their drive with the DS, Wii and even the Wii U. Yes that Wii U, since it was an attempt to acomodate a wider spectrum of gamers.
But that's the thing Anthony, you can't dismiss the software that actually proved the concept because it doesn't tickle your fancy, that's not how objective and reasonable judgment should work.
The software that demonstrated the possibilities of the Gamepad was present since day one.
ON TOPIC:
People are making the exact same mistakes as with the Free Form Display thread.
You are considering the design because how it looks and not for any practical reasons. Something presented as what we are seen from the patent and the user mockups would only have a marginal uses on a handheld device. On a console it would work exactly like the Gamepad with the caveat that the FFD would go to waste completely.
Also what's the point of having a FFD if you are going to plastered it on top of a traditional controller? There are ton of potentially interesting form factors this technology could open up.
They tried to go after both the core and the expanded at the same time resulting in a system that neither wanted. The Wii u was just as much trying to catch the attention of the core with it's full modern twin stick, 10 button (two of which are basically hidden, REAL friendly to the expanded audience that!) controller and hoped that throwing a touch screen on it would keep people from feeling it was too complicated* it probably did the opposite.
No the Wii U says anything it's that you have to choose one or the other, and well the expanded market are less likely to have active negative feeling and mistrust to Nintendo then the core, just indifference.
*Yes modern controllers as being so complicated as to be a barrier is a thing, no clue how big since I don't think a study has been done, but a thing none the less
Cyborg
Member
Yup. My main concern
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
Mario Maker is a pretty poor argument for the GamePad considering it makes complete redundant use of the 2nd screen, and would work just fine on a single-screen handheld
Zombie James
Banned
How in the world did the Wii U target the core audience?
DownGrader
Member
Go Go NX Man!
The only good thing in this rather sad thread. Thanks.
Well... in terms of controllers, it definitely tried. Wii U is the first Nintendo home console which uses industry-standard buttons layout, complete with clickable sticks with perfect circle rotation, as well as 8-axis gyroscope as an answer to Sony's Sixaxis. The only thing missing are analog triggers.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
Nintendo says a lot of shit and not all of it holds true forever.
I personally don't think they'll use touchscreen buttons either, but you never know
Interface simplifications started much earlier, I think. Wii was just going a whole new route and a simplification of a new format. The Gamecube controller for example has a very simplistic and readable interface with the A button as the center focus and the B button smaller as a side button, and X and Y as jelly beans like supplemental buttons used for various things.
Agent Unknown
Member
So if taking this at the patent's wording itself, if this thing really came to fruition, NX would have either a handheld or a controller with no face buttons? Just sticks with the right stick somehow being used as a new type of input typically assigned to buttons?
The actively promoted the full tablets having all modern controls as a feature for the core and tried to use things like games made by Platinum as a lure. Along with making deals with EA (fell through but they tried) and Ubi.
Like I said the Wii U failed to get either and I wouldn't be surprised if each side sees it as a console aimed at the other and offed nothing for them.
Touche, but you know I was talking about the N64. Yamauchi's crap was at least justified in the NES and SNES days due to the previous state of the market and because technology wasn't yet at the point where CDs were a suitable replacement for carts without the need for an extra peripheral.
Refreshment.01
Member
Of course, but the Wii and DS featured alternative technologies that allowed for further simplification of the interface. That's why i gave precedent to them.
It is weird how conventionalism can get in the way of progress some times. i mean the GC face button layout is far more intuitive and logical than the diamond shape one. It is a shame it didn't caught on.
BUt Mario Maker is a home console game.
Besides is just one of many examples.
Arkam
Member
Dropped motion controls in favor of a much more conventional gamepad and had a system that was capable of putting out a good looking games on an HD screen.
They basically did everything that was asked of them... just too late and the target moved.
Patent is saying what the screen can do and how it could be utilized. There are also screens that The_Lump posted a page or two back from the patent showing that the screen could even be cut differently and into other shapes. We really don't know what the end product will look like and can only really speculate with other patents like the scroll wheel patent etc.
I honestly don't believe that Nintendo will get rid of buttons with everything they've talked about when it comes to buttons and the importance of pressing a button though.
Definitely. GC layout is just really good and more focused with how we traditionally use and interact with buttons than the diamond layout ever will be. I wish we saw more of it.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
It didn't need to be.
One of a handful of examples that truly needed the GamePad. The vast majority of games could be retooled to work without it, without suffering much consequence.
Fourth Storm
Member
The other thing is if Nintendo create a system marginally more powerful than PS4, it will end up being more expensive than PS4. Let's say $350 next year. We'd be in Wii U territory again. And let's not forget that for months after its release, most people still believed the Wii U was a decent bump up from the PS360 in GPU at least. Most people aren't really good judges of graphical fidelity, so releasing a console which is slightly more powerful than PS4 would be "throwing their money down the drain." Exactly what Miyamoto and Takeda have said they would not do. If they're going to fail, they want to fail on their own terms.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
And that's the problem. You don't need it, which is partially why the market didn't care about it.
And we're talking about a game that made some of the best use of it! Doesn't exactly bode well for the rest of the library if one of the key examples is still "not a necessity"
Something too is that this controller screen doesn't have to be exactly like what you see on the TV. If the screen still comes around the buttons, they can much more easily place icons near them and within reach to like say, super jump to your team mates in Splatoon 2 without extending your thumb so far over to the screen, or open inventory and free up a physical button for more action.
This bears repeating. A sensible developer won't place important elements of a game's interface under your thumb. The screen wraps around the analog stick to allow ring selection of options among other things. In addition, if the screen is close to the sticks it'll make occasional use of the touchscreen much more convenient. With the Wii U pad (and 3/DS) you'll often need to release one side to use the touchscreen. With a design like this, you can just swivel your thumb.
Anyway, I couldn't imagine Nintendo backing away from screen-enabled controllers because it would really feel like a step back at this point. If they port or develop Mario Maker for their next console they're going to have to go back to clumsy editing controls using analog sticks or the d-pad? That would pale in comparison to the Wii U's version. What they seem to be shooting for is something that looks and feels more like a traditional controller but still has a screen. I think that's a great goal and I hope they can pull it off.
Fourth Storm
Member
Also, don't forget the patent also shows the controller in a vertical orientation. Held in that manner, the space blocked by your thumbs in the horizontal position would be visible.
go big or go home
Presumably if they can do hardware upgrades fast like DS > Lite > i, with a new box coming every 2 years but it staying the same name but only with spec bumps on the same architecture, the initial hardware box wouldn't matter as much as future ones.
Fourth Storm
Member
I'd also be pretty surprised if they don't at least support the Wii U Pro and rebrand it for NX. That's a very near perfect affordable traditional controller.
The cloud computing patent throws everything for a loop if that's going to be a major part of their platform. They mention renting the supplemental computing device, daisy-chaining the suckers together, and more wackiness. They're thinking outside the box and I like it.
Refreshment.01
Member
Why bother to release a home console them? Just stick with the handheld part of the busyness and support other platforms for games they consider would work better away from handhelds.
i meam most Wii U game concpts can easily be done in the 3DS.
And that ends the argument right there. There are games that used the Gamepad substantially. Just like some Wii games used the remote in fundamental ways even taught the majority of the Wii line up could work with traditional controllers.
And really what did we expect? The console is mainly supported by one developer and everyone wanted all games to make a revolutionary use of the input system. That's quite a tall order to fullfil.
In the end the Gamepad concept as an interface method in general proved itself as really useful and convenient evolution of the pad. What Nintendo should have done was a more "polished" product since day one, as there were some obvious kinks that should have been ironed out. But that has more to do with a possible "greedy" busyness practice on Nintendo's side more than they not been aware of some of the flaws.
Strongly agree with this statement and think it would be the right way to go for Nintendo. It's a very Apple like (iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch) move and could keep them up to pace with the other console manufacturers.
Sony looks to be doing the that very thing based off of comments by Masayasu Ito, Sony Computer Entertainment Senior Vice President. A PS4 4.5 could be coming soon.
Milly Osworth
Member
20 days until 2016.
finalflame
Member
Considering how well the GamePad works for what it is (a constant video stream and input over a wireless connection), I'd say it's a very, very polished technology. It works really well, it just wasn't fleshed out enough and given a reason to exist.
Fourth Storm
Member
Question: Do people and companies know when they file a patent approximately how long it will take until it goes public? All these recent discoveries almost scream of Nintendo trying to covertly build hype without making any proper announcements.
I have been wondering the same thing, I am sure they know we know about the patents but I do not think they thought of it as a way to build up hype for the NX.
I would hesitate to compare this to smartphone controls. Having physical, clickable analog sticks and shoulder buttons puts this in a whole new class. Consequently, the sticks also give your hands a tangible reference point from which to move your thumb should you want to hit a touchscreen button, unlike a touchscreen-only scheme where your thumb can accidentally drift away from the button layout and distract you from the game.