Milly Osworth
Member
Do we have a list of all the Project Cafe insiders on GAF? I'm curious if they are still around. Who was the French dude again?
Not "mature" but young male teenager. This is the biggest gamer group. But they want CoD & Co., so Nintendo will not try to reach them.
I find it borderline racist, this idea I seen a lot of GAF that only westerners know how to put together decent gaming hardware.
They're not coming back. FULLSTOP! There's fuck all NCL can do that'll bring back AAA publishers to Nintendo hardware. They should still foster an environment for them but expect most of the non 1st & 2nd party software from Indies, Japanese publishers and a select few mobile game publishers.
Do we have a list of all the Project Cafe insiders on GAF? I'm curious if they are still around. Who was the French dude again?
I find it borderline racist, this idea I seen a lot of GAF that only westerners know how to put together decent gaming hardware.
I don't know that Takeda's designs are bad per se, more that he's stuck in an old design paradigm and doesn't want to or know how to leave it behind.Ehhh, "Japan sucks now" is a pretty solid mantra for many gamers on GAF, especially after Mark Cerny turned Sony's console design around, but it's been present since the past generation.
Never mind that Japanese developers sucked last gen because they were trying to imitate a style of game that isn't their own in the superficial attempt to earn more sales on consoles that were decidedly not even remotely focused on the Japanese market.
No, it's just that they can't design a game or hardware for shit anymore because it doesn't pander to them in exactly the right way or because one man with bad design ideas happened to be Japanese.
Announce in 2016 but release in 2017 would kill the Wii U or even the 3DS at Christmas 2016
Idea man, which at the time was implying really good impressions about the WiiU and then you know what we gotDo we have a list of all the Project Cafe insiders on GAF? I'm curious if they are still around. Who was the French dude again?
Idea man, which at the time was implying really good impressions about the WiiU and than you know what we got
Means nothing, they are hiring all the time for people to work on their websites and online stores and stuff.I think it has.
FWIW, looking at Nintendo's job listings for Redmond list(ed) stuff about Linux and Flash from about 2-3 months ago. I have no idea what that means, though.
lol160 shaders.
Idea man, which at the time was implying really good impressions about the WiiU and than you know what we got
3) Thinking that Sony and Microsoft have some irreversible hold on 3rd-parties, like they each have boxes of blackmail photos of publishers and developers having kinky sex with hookers or giving some dude a handie at a truck stop. "Release a game on a Nintendo console and I send these to the press!"
They actually can't use it again. No new custom chipset designs are being considered for consumer use. It's essentially a dead end for consumer electronics now, so there is ZERO chance of a return to PowerPC.
Well, looking at how many former X360 (only?) users went PS4 instead of XOne this gen, makes me think that you can *steal* userbase from the competitors systems. Not that it will happen again, but it is certainly possible.No, it's not Sony or Microsoft that have this hold over 3rd parties. It's the gamer, the consumer, that has this hold over 3rd parties. And 3rd parties will follow the userbase that is viable for them. And by viable, i mean actually buying 3rd party software.
At this point it's pretty much a "chicken/egg" thing. No 3rd parties means no userbase. No userbase means no 3rd parties. And even if you manage to get both on board, you still need an incentive for the userbase to actually buy the 3rd party (multiplatform) games on the console. Because obviously a technically inferior version of a game that can be bought on different hardware, isn't going to sell as long as Nintendo consoles are mainly bought as a second system. So maybe Nintendo has to focus on 3rd party exclusives? But even those aren't selling gangbusters. Even Nintendo published games like W101 barely moved units.
So, you're right, this has little to do with Sony and Microsoft, but that doesn't make the problem any easier to solve.
No, it's not Sony or Microsoft that have this hold over 3rd parties. It's the gamer, the consumer, that has this hold over 3rd parties. And 3rd parties will follow the userbase that is viable for them. And by viable, i mean actually buying 3rd party software.
At this point it's pretty much a "chicken/egg" thing. No 3rd parties means no userbase. No userbase means no 3rd parties. And even if you manage to get both on board, you still need an incentive for the userbase to actually buy the 3rd party (multiplatform) games on the console. Because obviously a technically inferior version of a game that can be bought on different hardware, isn't going to sell as long as Nintendo consoles are mainly bought as a second system. So maybe Nintendo has to focus on 3rd party exclusives? But even those aren't selling gangbusters. Even Nintendo published games like W101 barely moved units.
So, you're right, this has little to do with Sony and Microsoft, but that doesn't make the problem any easier to solve.
Nintendo needs games that don't look like Saturday Morning Cartoons. They have plenty of those already. Mario, Kirby, DK, WW-style Zelda, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Splatoon. Fire Emblem is probably the closest they have to something outside of that box right now that they're using and is growing. But that's still not enough since FE isn't really realistic-looking enough for most people.
They have Xenoblade, but no one knows how long that can last but it's still not enough for a lot of people as it's only one brand.
I find it borderline racist, this idea I seen a lot of GAF that only westerners know how to put together decent gaming hardware.
Nintendo needs games that don't look like Saturday Morning Cartoons. They have plenty of those already. Mario, Kirby, DK, WW-style Zelda, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Splatoon. Fire Emblem is probably the closest they have to something outside of that box right now that they're using and is growing. But that's still not enough since FE isn't really realistic-looking enough for most people.
They have Xenoblade, but no one knows how long that can last but it's still not enough for a lot of people as it's only one brand.
Some guy doubling down on a rumour about a Diddy Kong Racing sequel, as though anyone still cares about that game, and mentioned a $150 pricepoint for NX.
This incited fever dreams in some people that a low price point on gaming hardware was all it took to bring back the casual market.
So basically, it's coming from nothing.
$150 drops a barrier. Singular.
It's a mix of bad ideas that cause this:
1) Thinking 3rd parties hold a legitimate grudge against Nintendo and eagerly await their failure in the hardware space, because if there's anything they want more, it's another potential competitor in the 3rd-party space for consumers' money! Makes total sense!!
2) Thinking that 3rd-parties are unnecessary for growth of the business (and as much as I love Nintendo, even I'm not that naive)
3) Thinking that Sony and Microsoft have some irreversible hold on 3rd-parties, like they each have boxes of blackmail photos of publishers and developers having kinky sex with hookers or giving some dude a handie at a truck stop. "Release a game on a Nintendo console and I send these to the press!"
When the reality is that there's no conspiracy, 3rd-parties are an essential part of the console business and Sony/MS don't hold a forcible monopoly on 3rd-party business.
They actually can't use it again. No new custom chipset designs are being considered for consumer use. It's essentially a dead end for consumer electronics now, so there is ZERO chance of a return to PowerPC.
I wasn't aware that each 3rd-party game came with its own Sony and Microsoft issued Hypnotoad that forcibly prevented people from making their own purchase decisions and could never consider buying a Nintendo product again.
Define "flagship IP" for me.
Nah, it's a safe bet that they'll get both. Pokemon is entirely playable as a home version, and for those who would want portability, boom, the game works in the handheld as well, or you could extend the "catch em all" mechanic to a smartphone companion app for the game.
As for Zelda or Xenoblade, slowly strip the effects away until you have a comparative game. (see: Hyrule Warriors on 3DS, but cheaper to do)
The Nintendo 64 generation represented a much more diverse first-party catalog thanks to EAD's awesome arcade sims in Wave Race 64, 1080 Snowboarding, and Pilotwings 64. Then you add the NOA sports projects in Kobe Bryant NBA Courtside and MLB Ken Griffey. The finisher was Killer Instinct and Goldeneye / Perfect Dark from RARE.
In the Wii / Wii U era they've thrown away those types of games and basically release sporadic hardcore niche Japanese games (Bayonetta, Devil's Third, etc) that haven't done anything sales wise that the above use to do.
I really miss their N64 era philosophy.
It would be nice if using and growing didn't mandate incest and face-touching.
- They bought their consoles not too long ago & it's mid-generation, they aren't gonna ditch them for a Nintendo console that even third parties likely won't touch. And on the off chance Nintendo does get third parties back, like I said, it's mid-generation. The market for those games have already made their choice.
- As for Pokémon, we both know how stubborn Game Freak can be. And if the console gets Pokémon by some miracle of God, Game Freak isn't gonna dedicate any R&D time to it.
Most of which will likely follow their friends into the bigger online communities like PSN & XBL.If they launch next year they will have at least half of total market without a current gen hardware to appeal.
You're right, it's not an easy problem to solve. But it is something that can be, in a variety of different ways, with varying degrees of success based on the market's current behaviour.
I'd love for someone to ask Iwata/Miyamoto why they've funded/made deals for all these Japanese-focused console games yet more or less ignored Western development since the early Wii days.
They've clearly tried to target the Japanese core gamer over the Iwata years by funding and making deals for various games. Granted I've loved a lot of them but clearly some of that money would have been better spent replacing their N64 output. Certainly in the Wii/DS days they had enough money to do both.
Well, the engineering manager and the lead architect for the NX chipset appear to be NTD guys.
I may have said this before, but Nintendo would be the last ones to go digital-only. Not only are there people with data caps, but also gamers with limited access to the internet. Plus the Xbox One already got shit for trying to pull something similar.This together with Takeda's comments about not being able to "just think about Japan" might be seen as positive indicators that they may be looking to shake things up a bit.
Yet, Iwata himself has recently reiterated that they do not intend to compete w/ MS and Sony in a race to the bottom. If they launch a comparably specced system, there's just no way they will be able to compete on price of hardware of depth of library.
Nintendo have no choice but to put together a small ~$199 box. It may be insane, but with the bold talk coming out of Kyoto about "not just throwing money out the toilet" I think they might jump into the digital storefront 100%, making them even less a competitor to MS and Sony in the eyes of consumers.
Looking at AMD's die sizes at 28nm, and figuring in a shrink down to 14nm/16nm, I can't see them fitting in more than 320 shaders or a .5 TFLOP class machine. That is if they want to keep die size and power draw around Wii U-level. Low power it is!
While it's technically possible for nintnedo to continue using a ppc design for their next console*, I don't think that would be really prudent in the long term. At this stage ppc poses the same disadvantages as x86 - the architecture is provided by a really tiny number of vendors (read: 1-2). Yes, everybody can license the ppc ISA, but that's a purely hypothetical advantage, as (a) not everybody can provide viable CPU designs, and (b) not everybody who can provide viable CPU design would be interested in making one for nintendo. This comes in stark contrast to the myriad of viable ARM vendors. Scratch that, the myriad of viable ARM SoC vendors (integration is paramount at this stage in consumer electronics).Do you think Nintendo would obstinately stick with PowerPC at this point Blu? I suppose any Power ISA core newer than the 750 with modern SIMD could satisfy their needs, but they'd have to have IBM or Freescale draw up a completely custom design again. Seems like a pretty big price to pay in order to have Backwards Compatibility with a system that didn't sell particularly well.
This together with Takeda's comments about not being able to "just think about Japan" might be seen as positive indicators that they may be looking to shake things up a bit.
Yet, Iwata himself has recently reiterated that they do not intend to compete w/ MS and Sony in a race to the bottom. If they launch a comparably specced system, there's just no way they will be able to compete on price of hardware of depth of library.
Nintendo have no choice but to put together a small ~$199 box. It may be insane, but with the bold talk coming out of Kyoto about "not just throwing money out the toilet" I think they might jump into the digital storefront 100%, making them even less a competitor to MS and Sony in the eyes of consumers.
Looking at AMD's die sizes at 28nm, and figuring in a shrink down to 14nm/16nm, I can't see them fitting in more than 320 shaders or a .5 TFLOP class machine. That is if they want to keep die size and power draw around Wii U-level. Low power it is!
Yup, well said.It's a mix of bad ideas that cause this:
1) Thinking 3rd parties hold a legitimate grudge against Nintendo and eagerly await their failure in the hardware space, because if there's anything they want more, it's another potential competitor in the 3rd-party space for consumers' money! Makes total sense!!
2) Thinking that 3rd-parties are unnecessary for growth of the business (and as much as I love Nintendo, even I'm not that naive)
3) Thinking that Sony and Microsoft have some irreversible hold on 3rd-parties, like they each have boxes of blackmail photos of publishers and developers having kinky sex with hookers or giving some dude a handie at a truck stop. "Release a game on a Nintendo console and I send these to the press!"
When the reality is that there's no conspiracy, 3rd-parties are an essential part of the console business and Sony/MS don't hold a forcible monopoly on 3rd-party business.
What Goldeneye was for the N64.Define "flagship IP" for me.
- They bought their consoles not too long ago & it's mid-generation, they aren't gonna ditch them for a Nintendo console that even third parties likely won't touch. And on the off chance Nintendo does get third parties back, like I said, it's mid-generation. The market for those games have already made their choice.
- As for Pokémon, we both know how stubborn Game Freak can be. And if the console gets Pokémon by some miracle of God, Game Freak isn't gonna dedicate any R&D time to it.
Most of which will likely follow their friends into the bigger online communities like PSN & XBL.
What Goldeneye was for the N64.
What Halo was for the Xbox.
What Uncharted was for the PS3.
Basically, a major system seller that will draw in a significant amount of new users.
The Nintendo 64 generation represented a much more diverse first-party catalog thanks to EAD's awesome arcade sims in Wave Race 64, 1080 Snowboarding, and Pilotwings 64. Then you add the NOA sports projects in Kobe Bryant NBA Courtside and MLB Ken Griffey. The finisher was Killer Instinct and Goldeneye / Perfect Dark from RARE.
In the Wii / Wii U era they've thrown away those types of games and basically release sporadic hardcore niche Japanese games (Bayonetta, Devil's Third, etc) that haven't done anything sales wise that the above use to do.
I really miss their N64 era philosophy.
320 shaders is an odd choice, AMD already makes 384 ALUs the standard, 5CUs just feels unbalanced and completely an odd choice for NST. 614GFLOPs with 384ALUs clocked at 800mhz seems reasonable for that price, as for wattage, that should fit the Wii U's ~35watt envelope, remember AMD has said that their new architecture has a ~50% reduction in power draw.
What is nice about the 384ALUs is that multiplats that do come, would run 720p just fine vs XB1's 768ALU, Nintendo could easily get away with 1GHz as well to push that performance a little higher.
Well, the engineering manager and the lead architect for the NX chipset appear to be NTD guys.
Quick question on the shader talk, how many does Wii U have? I can't find a solid source and it's bugging me.
I'd love for someone to ask Iwata/Miyamoto why they've funded/made deals for all these Japanese-focused console games yet more or less ignored Western development since the early Wii days.
They've clearly tried to target the Japanese core gamer over the Iwata years by funding and making deals for various games. Granted I've loved a lot of them but clearly some of that money would have been better spent replacing their N64 output. Certainly in the Wii/DS days they had enough money to do both.
Oh goodie, more Howard Lincoln era romanticizing.
Well, looking at how many former X360 (only?) users went PS4 instead of XOne this gen, makes me think that you can *steal* userbase from the competitors systems. Not that it will happen again, but it is certainly possible.
About those 3rd party exclusives ... using W101 as an example is not really a good one, because although from a 3rd party dev, was a new IP with a rather niche gameplay and presentation ... while that makes the game great as it is, it did not appeal the ppl who bring in the sales.
Now let's make a hypothetical situation and say Nintendo paid for GTA 5 exclusivity, that would certainly have driven sales of the hardware. Although there might be many people who would have sold the console after playing GTA, there could have been enough games who keep the console and get additional games.
Again, this was/is hypothetical!
Oh and imagine the outcry on NeoGAF, the servers would be deader then dead.
Looking at AMD's die sizes at 28nm, and figuring in a shrink down to 14nm/16nm, I can't see them fitting in more than 320 shaders or a .5 TFLOP class machine. That is if they want to keep die size and power draw around Wii U-level. Low power it is!
320 shaders is an odd choice, AMD already makes 384 ALUs the standard, 5CUs just feels unbalanced and completely an odd choice for NST. 614GFLOPs with 384ALUs clocked at 800mhz seems reasonable for that price, as for wattage, that should fit the Wii U's ~35watt envelope, remember AMD has said that their new architecture has a ~50% reduction in power draw.
What is nice about the 384ALUs is that multiplats that do come, would run 720p just fine vs XB1's 768ALU, Nintendo could easily get away with 1GHz as well to push that performance a little higher.
You might want to apply Occam's Razor here.
Japanese developers were the only ones willing to play ball.
I may have said this before, but Nintendo would be the last ones to go digital-only. Not only are there people with data caps, but also gamers with limited access to the internet. Plus the Xbox One already got shit for trying to pull something similar.
320 shaders is an odd choice, AMD already makes 384 ALUs the standard, 5CUs just feels unbalanced and completely an odd choice for NST. 614GFLOPs with 384ALUs clocked at 800mhz seems reasonable for that price, as for wattage, that should fit the Wii U's ~35watt envelope, remember AMD has said that their new architecture has a ~50% reduction in power draw.
What is nice about the 384ALUs is that multiplats that do come, would run 720p just fine vs XB1's 768ALU, Nintendo could easily get away with 1GHz as well to push that performance a little higher.
But we'd have to wait for at least 18 months before the NX launches, meaning by then the X1 would be 3 years old. This would seem like a repeat of "WiiU getting 360 ports" and we all know how that went (and how long it lasted).
The time might be right if they are unifying the handheld/console libraries. They now have methods to maintain a presence at retail w/ NFC cards and collectibles. I am sure they would love to eliminate the cost of printing discs/unsold product. I still see rows of brand new copies of Other M every time I walk into Walmart/Target. Nintendo could soften the blow to gamers by allowing licenses for 3DS/Wii U games to carry over and making it clear that your digital library will carry over to future consoles. Ditching the optical drive might even allow them to include something like a 120 GB SSD.
Yes, there are downfalls, but if Nintendo want to differentiate themselves from Sony/MS, it has the potential for payoff.
Yeah, maybe 384, just ballparking it. I can see it being essentially half an Xbone.
Wii U's hardware problems is found in the CPU, also Wii U launched 7 years after 360, not 3... Wii U in 2008? well that probably would have been a completely different story, 1GB of RAM for games alone would of been a huge uptick for developers IMO.
The time might be right if they are unifying the handheld/console libraries. They now have methods to maintain a presence at retail w/ NFC cards and collectibles. I am sure they would love to eliminate the cost of printing discs/unsold product. I still see rows of brand new copies of Other M every time I walk into Walmart/Target. Nintendo could soften the blow to gamers by allowing licenses for 3DS/Wii U games to carry over and making it clear that your digital library will carry over to future consoles. Ditching the optical drive might even allow them to include something like a 120 GB SSD.
Yes, there are downfalls, but if Nintendo want to differentiate themselves from Sony/MS, it has the potential for payoff.
Then why bother at all. Like i said in an earlier post, a couple of motives for going low power, small form factor, underpowered will likely not be as important. Consoles aren't doing well in Japan, so the form factor might not matter that much anymore. The gamepad is likely out, meaning that a large chunck out of the production budget is free'd up. The Wii audience isn't coming back, that blue ocean has turned into a red dessert.
I'm a pc gamer, I'm sure most people who want 3rd party games that are multiplatform won't be buying those games on Nintendo's console, their best option is to create a successful handheld again and have a shared development pipeline with the console to get 3rd party support from a strong handheld being targeted rather than putting out any high spec box which gamers who buy it won't be buying 3rd party multiplats on anyways.It doesn't matter how long the 360 was out when WiiU launched, it mattered how long it stayed a relevant platform AFTER WiiU launched. If the X1 has a cycle of only 5 years (since it is again in a much less comfortable position compared to the 360) than the NX will again be in the same position, supposedly getting easy ports from a console that's running on its last legs.
And the CPU being "the" hardware problem... The biggest for sure, but that doesn't mean a pimped WiiU GPU will warrant getting the 3rd party games we want 5 to 7 years from now.
320 shaders is an odd choice, AMD already makes 384 ALUs the standard, 5CUs just feels unbalanced and completely an odd choice for NST. 614GFLOPs with 384ALUs clocked at 800mhz seems reasonable for that price, as for wattage, that should fit the Wii U's ~35watt envelope, remember AMD has said that their new architecture has a ~50% reduction in power draw.
What is nice about the 384ALUs is that multiplats that do come, would run 720p just fine vs XB1's 768ALU, Nintendo could easily get away with 1GHz as well to push that performance a little higher.
Yeah but to be fair, having Wii U's power consumption is not that smart because it's... useless? I think everyone on this planet would consider ~60W to be low power as well, and with that wattage you have space for a nice 1TFLOP machine (640 ALU at 800MHZ). Put that with 6-8 A72 cores, 4GB HBM, 128GB flash memory and a cartridge slot (flash memory isn't as cheap as a disc, but it's still supercheap these days; they will probably use 8-16GB cartridges on the portable so having a ~32GB modified version for the home could be worth the trade off) and you have a quiet, modern, super small, balanced and quite powerful box, that supports every single engine on the market.
That's a better machine for third parties if the NX turns out to be successful and companies decide to publish games on Nintendo platforms again (this could be good especially for japanese publishers); also, it's good enough for 1080p/60fps first party titles with all the bells and whistles. You won't see the level of fidelity of Uncharted 4, and the average third party game won't run as good as on PS4, but Nintendo games will still look amazing on it (heck, they look great even on the Wii U) and portings will be easy enough to do. That's basically the opposite of what happened on the Wii U.
I know this isn't likely to happen, or at least that it's not the most common opinion, but i'd be perfectly fine with it (remember that the vast majority of people, even those who would never buy the console, want it to wipe the floor with the PS4), and i think it would be the sweet spot for them and for us gamers at... 269$? Should be doable in 2017, at small profit or at least at cost.
Which is odd because his actions might have been a part of why 3rd parties don't want anything to do with Nintendo.
This is blocked at work. Do you mind posting an excerpt?Which is odd because his actions might have been a part of why 3rd parties don't want anything to do with Nintendo.