-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Nikkei: Nintendo's NX platform will use an Android OS
- Thread starter duckroll
- Start date
if they're the same price, then i wonder the advantage of having two different mediums would be? just the ability to make more off the far fewer discs they would manufacture, i suppose?
Most of the services that would be required for gaming would be easily replicable.
There would be work involved with porting from Google Play services to Nintendo services, but I suspect DeNA's role is to minimize that work as much as possible, and it would also be far less work than porting to any of Nintendo's current platforms.
Yes developers won't be able to take a Google Play version of their game and ship it for NX with no extra work, but it would be far less work than what doing similar would be today.
Toadthemushroom
Member
That may be true, but mobile developers find support to be the primary issue and stumbling block to embracing a third platform, rather than the porting process itself. Even if Nintendo does make porting easy -- as Microsoft have done with Windows 10 -- it only solves one problem. For developers on mobile, porting is only one stumbling block -- offering long-time support for yet another platform is far bigger an issue to them. While you could point to big publishers in having the resources (Square Enix and LucasArts/Disney aside) to support their software on several platforms, the aim of adopting Android is to gather third party support. Nintendo already has those big publishers on their side, though I suspect they see the industry shift (Konami, Sega) to mobile platforms as something they can embrace.
See: http://mashable.com/2015/04/30/microsoft-build-developers/
I say one medium(probably cards) with downloadable assets for the higher quality console. Only having to manufacture, ship and stock one box has to be a key goal.
With stores cutting shelf space they can't seriously try to convince them to stock two versions of every game.
Of course they will be putting more emphasis on digital downloads. If they're feeling super-brave they might go DD-only with download codes at retail.
test_account
XP-39C²
Very surprising if true, but it would also make sense, in my opinion. I was actually thinking quite a while ago that this was a solution that Sony might use for their next portable system.
Downloading different versions of games goes against everything I speculated and Nintendos philosophy about unified syste.s. Both versions of the game will be on the physical media because there is only one version. It just scales depending on which device you're using. I think Nintendo woukd still like to keep old fans and casuals happy about just plugging in their game and playing without having to worry about all the online drama that Xbox One and Ps4 have
I dont really know how they go about doing it though.
Android development is awful, so no. I really hope it'll have as little impact on the development environment as possible if true.
I think you can lock down an android-based OS pretty hard, if you want to.
It's just that phone developers don't really care about it, nor they want to eliminate the "Install non-marketplace app" feature.
Nintendo will disable that in their fork, and i kind of doubt flashing the OS will serve anything - The fork won't be public, this isn't stock android.
Orakio Rob
Member
It's shocking at first, but it's Nintendo, guys. If this turns out to be true, you can bet the final product will have some kind of twist that will make it brilliant. At least I hope so.
"based on" could just as well mean they've just taken the source and made it into something completely different. ps 4 os is based on FreeBSD for example. just because they take advantage of android as a mature code base doesn't mean it will have any similarities for the end user.
That's all true for a phone/tablet - but for a console nintendo can build their own services on top of that - i'd say that'll be part of DeNa 's job.
It's also different with "normal/other" manufacturers who want to use android. Nintendo doesn't want/need anyone to know the basis is android, they don't need chrome, they don't need the google+ api, they don't need the GPS api of google maps etc. For normal manufacturers that's a problem, because software build for android won't run on their modified version anymore - but nintendo doesn't want that software to run on it's platform. They only want to allow software approved and verified by them - while still making it fairly easy to port to the platform.
Developers would still need to modify their code to run on aNXdroid, making use of nintendo's API's instead of googles.
I'd also argue that the main reason for choosing android ISN'T for mobile developers to embrace the platform, because like you said yourself porting isn't that hard. More importantly they won't have to write their own OS, which could easily take up a full year of internal devtime with a long periode of unstable builds and optimizations at OS level.
Building a 64bit multitasking OS from scratch isn't easy - and none of the console manufacturers are doing it at the moment. (PS uses freeBSD, MS uses windows8 kernel)
Indeed.
protomouse
Member
That's likely one of the reasons why Nintendo partnered with DeNA. They already have experience building and deploying such services on a large scale. Play Games Services is such a minuscule subset of the broader "Google APIs" - most of which games rarely ever touch.
It would most likely be a completely custom ROM, locked down to the hardware and unable to run unsigned code of any kind. Nintendo is going to be a pretty big target for Android "hackers", so they'd better get this right.
Not necessarily, but ARM is by far the biggest target for Android. Anyway, Nintendo going all in on ARM is something that many of us have predicted. If the Android rumour turns out to be true, and it's running on their home console, I'd say it at least implies that they're dropping PPC. That is, unless they want to maintain a fork for a platform no one in the consumer space longer cares about.
This doesn't mean much except that Nintendo made a good descion wrt maximizing their available software engineering talent, i.e. there is no reason to reinvent the wheel and all these guys are free to work on other stuff.
Sony's ps4 runs BSD, that doesn't mean ps4 is a server doing server stuff. Saying Nintendo is using Android as the bases for their next hardware tells us virtually nothing about it.
Sony's ps4 runs BSD, that doesn't mean ps4 is a server doing server stuff. Saying Nintendo is using Android as the bases for their next hardware tells us virtually nothing about it.
Theonik
Member
Vanilla Android is pretty secure. As far as real security is concerned it's usually vendor customisations that open up the platform to exploits. Samsung used to be notorious for this.
As for security in the 'Haha you thought this was YOUR hardware didn't you. fufufu' security sense, who knows. Nintendo hasn't been good at this for a long time.
I'm struggling to see how this is good for 3rd parties for a home console. This definitely seem to be striving for mobile parity with android phones and tablets. My initial reaction is mixed because it would be nice if it were more PC based than mobile based. We shall see what it ends up looking like. Very interesting indeed.
I was thinking about this, and yeah, taking out the whole Google APIs part of android is a ton of work, that I don't believe Nintendo will want to do.
On the other hand, they can just let it be a full android device, and just pre-load a Nintendo e-shop app on it. Other OEMs do it already; my galaxy note 2 has a Samsung apps store in it.
The trick would be how to make people want to be on the e-shop in the first place.
My best guess would be to just lock some part of the GPU to signed code from the e-shop. If the console/handheld has a d-pad and buttons too, that makes it more difficult to just take the game and port it to other android phones, without losing a lot in the way of usability. Again, make the buttons/dpad eshop exclusive. Sure, you'd be able to buy whatever game on the e-shop AND/OR in google play, but only from the e-shop you'd get the full NX experience.
This reminds me, does anyone have an understanding of Google's licensing terms? Do they have anything like gpl? More specifically, would Nintendo be required to open their specific android code up or allow google to use optimizations in the main android code base? Or can Nintendo do what they want with it with no obligations to android or the android community?
JailDesigner
Member
Isn't Android the worst OS for gaming? or for real time apps? I read that once in an emu forum regards kernel things, but I can't remember where nor I'm an expert.
SporeCrawler
Member
Nx is separate from nintendos app business. However it seems to me that it will be interconnected to it by running on android. lets not forget that this just means that NX uses an OS that is common in todays marketplace (like windows with dreamcast)
Based on iwata's quote about Wii U architecture. But that quote is so vague it could mean anything. It's this one:
Afaik it's not - you can compile a version of android without the google services included - as the google services need an explicit license from Google, while the android OS itself is open source.
3DS already runs on an ARM processor.
With all this talk about what type of media to use...if Nintendo wants to build a truly sleek portable gaming device they should consider ditching physical media entirely. Throw in a non-replaceable battery and you will save a ton of space and be able to meet consumers ever escalating demands for thin and light weight products.
Strange Young Man
Neo Member
Could the various people claiming disappointment elaborate as to why? Do you think Nintendo has the expertise to come up with something better than Android or would you have preferred they went with another external solution?
To me it signals Nintendo is finally trying something different and willing to part with some of their insular philosophy in favour of focusing on where their own strengths lie.
To me it signals Nintendo is finally trying something different and willing to part with some of their insular philosophy in favour of focusing on where their own strengths lie.
IIRC, Android can work with x86 architecture.
Jodast
Member
Android officially supports x86, ARM and MIPS. Nintendo could always port the AOSP code base to PPC if they wanted to keep the same architecture going forward.
DeNa will make mobile games for Nintendo, you mean.
Toadthemushroom
Member
My disappointment stems from how it just won't end well for Nintendo, given what their dedicated games business stands for and how it's meant to complement their iOS/Android offerings in a separate, distinct space:
Basically, I'm more worried if anything, here are the posts I've made about that -- I don't think Nintendo's strengths lie in trying to recreate Google's services (or ceding control to Google if they don't fork) so they can attract third party support.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=165993166&postcount=697
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=165993926&postcount=707
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=165994286&postcount=712
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
And your point is?
Link? I cant find anything official. Any device currently that have?
TheNamelessOne
Member
I still believe NX is a controller add on for playing Nintendo games on Android devices with a unified set of physical controls, regardless of the device itself.
That there is nothing WTF about nintendo's next handheld running on ARM? That's non-news and highly expected.
http://consoleos.com/
Download & install android on your PC right now.
Dr. Buni
Member
I hope. The idea of console and handheld sharing titles deeply interests me.
I'd be disappointed if it is a fork like Amazon's because the Fire OS just doesn't feel as feature rich to me and I worry if that'd be the case with the NX. If the NX runs something like stock Android with gaming enhancements and I could use my Google apps and Play store content alongside the eshop and Miiverse they'd guarantee a purchase from me as I'd be very interested in a device like that.
Actually Nintendo will provide content, DeNa the infrastructure.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
Nintendo's NX is handheld?
@that link, lol its not official. I am sure it works but dont think it would be stable. Anything official from any company? Google, samsung, sony, htc, lg?
There's a few phones, but here's an official Google device even:
http://www.google.co.uk/nexus/player/
Similar threads
- Locked