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[Fourth Storm]

Thanks. Considering how cheap and small it is, Nintendo could theoretically put the CPU into their next-gen console at a very low cost and use it for partial BC with the Wii U/Wii/GCN game and other things when playing its original games. They already made similar choices with the DS and 3DS. The biggest issue with Wii U compatibility would be the Gamepad. If they desperately want BC without having a controller with a screen, they could make alot of OS and Game patches to deal with most of them.

Centering their next console around hardware BC would be an even more grievous error next round than this one. I guarantee the return they make on late sales of Wii U games will not make up for all the R&D and possible Frankenstein outcome of a system BC with Wii U. Espresso is not even the sticking point, and certainly isn't a bad core, although I wonder if Nintendo could even get AMD and IBM to play nice like MS did with the 360 SoC. Trade secrets and whatnot...

 

[lwilliams3]

Getting back to Latte



http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2014/console-hacking-2013-omake.html#idc-cover

Thanks for the link. Nice info, though its too bad he doesn't really want to investigate further.

They're not going to get 3 years of support though. They're not going to have 3 years of amazing sales. They'll get a launch with a bunch of half assed up ports, and then devs going ohhh well our tech is moving to this and the Wii U 2 doesn't support that. They'll get MAYBE a year of half assed ports and then nothing.

At least coming out at the same time with a machine that is CLOSE (not not fucking half their performance) but CLOSE to their performance means it's at least possible and cheap to do the ports. Which means it's less of a risk for 3rd parties, specially less than supporting some middle generation platform. Just like the fucking Wii U is.

How do you figure it'll be 3 years with out a drought, every console has a drought, coming out mid generation won't stop that.

No consomers aren't going to go ohhh Nintendo offers the best console experience a few years later, they'll go Ohh Nintendo late to the generation again with this mid gen console crap.

Seriously, releasing a console in 2016 is going to piss of folks who bought a Wii U in 2012, and cause even more people to take a wait and see approach. Specially developers.

It's a terrible fucking idea, and it's miss-reading the market completely.

The market doesn't want consoles to stand apart by hardware choices, they want it from 1st party software.

Nintendo's best course of action is to make it so that porting a game to their platform costs pennies, then it becomes a no brainer for 3rd parties. Because if it costs pennies to port, then selling even a small amount becomes profit.

No one, not the consumer market, not developers, NO ONE is going to jump on a mid gen console. Specially not coming off of the Wii U. You are literally asking them to go down the Sega route.

Match MS and Sony next gen, and show games that all they need to own is a Nintendo console. Show them it can run all the next gen engines, and that 3rd parties have no problems putting their games on there. Show them that along with all the 3rd party titles they want, running just as well as on the competition, they also get the crowning gem of Nintendo 1st party titles.

This is what the market is asking from them, how many people say they won't buy a Nintendo console because the hardware is some mid gen thing. You may not think those people are important, but obviously there's a lot of them in the market considering the PS4 has already outsold the Wii U. Even with the Wii U's SUPERIOR line up.

Well, at this time, it doesn't look like the Wii U will have years of great 3rd party support either way. It is unfortunate to say, but the Wii U is currently a black hole to Nintendo's profits. Waiting for 2018 to compete against the other systems with a comparable-powered console will not be pretty... and expensive. They need a solution to get back to profitability as soon as possible. If they do something similar to what we are theorizing, I guess you could label the system as a "3rd pillar" instead of replacing the Wii U.

As people noted before, there is more to why Wii U isn't getting that much 3rd party support than power. Even if it was very easy to port, they may still not port it. 4k or whatever games will be expensive to make. Also, making a system designed to seamlessly handle PS5 ports will likely not go along well with integrating the architecture of their upcoming portable.

Centering their next console around hardware BC would be an even more grievous error next round than this one. I guarantee the return they make on late sales of Wii U games will not make up for all the R&D and possible Frankenstein outcome of a system BC with Wii U. Espresso is not even the sticking point, and certainly isn't a bad core, although I wonder if Nintendo could even get AMD and IBM to play nice like MS did with the 360 SoC. Trade secrets and whatnot...

Yeah, I also believe it would be best if Nintendo sacrifices BC with the Wii U.. though I did wonder if AMD and IBM would be willing work with each other to find a solution.

Using AMD for the GPU probably will not be an issue, though it will depend if Nintendo wants as much embedded RAM in it. The issue I see with that is how architecturally different that would be to whatever type of GPU the portable system will have.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Ok, so it has nothing to do with power or price, but because people just don't like Nintendo?

I'd like to think that, as a brand, Nintendo hasn't dropped that low. If they had offered a comparable system at a comparable price to what Sony and Microsoft released, they'd have sold more units. The problem with the Wii U is that it underdelivered in terms of power and expectations, so the average non-fanboy gamer (who just wanted something new after such a long generation) chose not to buy it because it seemed to offer nothing more than what they already had. That's assuming they even heard about the launch since Nintendo certainly didn't advertise the thing as though it were something new... or that it existed...

Had they released a system powerful enough to come out of the gate making the PS3 and 360 look dated and actually marketed it, people would've had incentive to buy. Instead they released a weak system that had trouble running last gen games.

I like my Wii U and all, but it fell far short of what they needed to release. They spent too much time and energy on aspects that, in the long run, were just expensive distractions. They could've released a much more powerful system for the same price had they not felt the need to neuter the console to make it fit in the form factor they'd chosen early on.

Nintendo's woe's aren't because they're Nintendo and people don't like them. Their problems are directly related to terrible choices made during development. The Goodwill was there, they had a good hype building a year before release... It's just too bad they had already shit the bed while designing the console...

Nintendo's problem is image. Its a double edged sword. They have the image of a family friendly, children focused company. People are not willing to buy a $300 + device from them. They want their consoles to be cheap gifts.

 

[Apophis2036]

Thanks for the Gamecube cost replies .

Aren't the new gen fairly underpowered compared to current computer specs anyway? Nintendo could take a bet and try to utilise the newest stuff, taking a deep hit but potentially wowing enough people that they will want to convert over. Price is obviously an issue but they've shown with the Wii that if you can make it something that people really want, maybe by being the first people to get something really interesting out there, people will buy. I like the idea of VR (and I do think a collaboration with Valve would be interesting) and if Nintendo could be the first guys with a true mass market solution (a console beefy enough to power the headset and good VR) then they might be on to a winner. At the moment Valve are positioning themselves to be the primary contenders, I think Nintendo needs to invest a lot into being able to challenge them, if they can't join them.

While a generational leap over PS4/Xbone would be appealing to third parties (and most of us) it would serve next to no purpose for Nintendo imo. Nintendo are struggling to get to grips with developing on a ~200GFLOP GPU, what would it be like working with a 4TF GPU ?.

There is also the issue of rising development costs, I don't think Nintendo want to go anywhere near $100+ million projects and with a 4TF GPU you would probably be talking double that for a realistic looking Zelda / Metroid game for instance.

I think the best option from a price / performance / third party point of view is to simply match PS4 (which in itself is a decent bit more powerful than Xbone) for release in Winter 2016. They would be able to launch at around $249 and the budgets / software development times wouldn't be too insane. They would also have three years in the market before Sony and MS released their next consoles.

I do like the idea of a very cheap third system which plays VC games for $99 though. If they offered NES/SNES/N64/GB/GBC/GBA games for sensible prices they could make an absolute fortune off the back of a bunch of old roms.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Thanks for the Gamecube cost replies .



While a generational leap over PS4/Xbone would be appealing to third parties (and most of us) it would serve next to no purpose for Nintendo imo. Nintendo are struggling to get to grips with developing on a ~200GFLOP GPU, what would it be like working with a 4TF GPU ?.

There is also the issue of rising development costs, I don't think Nintendo want to go anywhere near $100+ million projects and with a 4TF GPU you would probably be talking double that for a realistic looking Zelda / Metroid game for instance.

I think the best option from a price / performance / third party point of view is to simply match PS4 (which in itself is a decent bit more powerful than Xbone) for release in Winter 2016. They would be able to launch at around $249 and the budgets / software development times wouldn't be too insane. They would also have three years in the market before Sony and MS released their next consoles.

I do like the idea of a very cheap third system which plays VC games for $99 though. If they offered NES/SNES/N64/GB/GBC/GBA games for sensible prices they could make an absolute fortune off the back of a bunch of old roms.

In retrospect what Nintendo should have done was offer something more akin to the Xbone in power and said fuck it to their software. Just make it run at 1080 p. Don't bother fiddling around and dramatically increasing dev costs and times just to get "HD". People don't care how pretty a Nintendo game is, they care about how it plays. That's a bonus. Let the third parties worry about the awesome looking games. Considering it was released on a year before the Xbone and PS4, and the PS4 is 50% more powerful than its rival, it stands to reason that Xbone level performance could have been relatively affordable last year if Nintendo chose to go that route. Microsoft sacrificed performance to afford to throw in a camera with the console.

 

[Argyle]

Sorry to dredge this up, but now with the new fail0verflow update (http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2014/console-hacking-2013-omake.html#idc-cover), they've clarified a bit...

I hope that now people can stop posting about how they think the old GameCube GPU is behind all the magic of the Wii U...Looks like there are two GPUs there and they look pretty separate to me.

I would definitely not read too much into that diagram. As Storm noticed (good eye), it did not even get the L2 config right.

I don't think the GX denotes an actual gpu but the sanctioned mem pools dedicated to the Wii functions.


It's a diagram from fail overflow seems odd that they'd have a mistake like that.

Which would be implying that this diagram is anything more than what someone pieced together from what we already know. Like Fourth said, it uses names that were made up by people not in Nintendo (Starbuck was made by FailOverflow and Marcan I think), and has a few inaccuracies.

Not saying your point is wrong, just the "I hope now people can stop ____", since this isn't any more official than this thread.

Here's the relevant bit of their blog post:

GX

Why is the GX a separate block and not a compatibility mode of the GX2? To be fair, I don’t have hard evidence that they do not share absolutely any hardware, but this goes back to common sense. The GX is completely different from the GX2/R7xx. Adapting the R7xx to look like a GX and be fully compatible at the register level (remember, Wii games run on bare metal) is a humongous task, and completely unrealistic to do and validate. If they were to do it that way, you’d expect some kind of complex configuration, perhaps involving firmware or special shaders, to switch to vWii mode - none of which is present in cafe2wii.

Meanwhile, the process node upgrade means that they can easily fit in the entire GX. On the Hollywood, the 3MB of 1T-SRAM took up half of the die. On the Latte, they’re just two small blocks in the corner (and one of them is even SRAM now). They could easily fit in the rest of the Hollywood in the remaining logic area above the big MEM1 block, and have the entire right hand half of the die left for the R7xx and the new SoC peripherals. Instead of the impractical task of implementing perfect hardware emulation on a completely different GPU architecture, they did the easy thing: throw the old hardware in there, and reuse the easy bits (TMEM and EFB) as handy MEM0 memory in Wii U mode. MEM0 is even mapped at the same address where the direct EFB access used to be on the GC and the Wii, so it probably is the same hardware, with the pixel format mapping turned off and instead presenting the memory as flat RAM. In Wii U mode, it is used mainly for the Cafe OS kernel.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Interesting. Marcan seemed to imply otherwise previously. Or maybe I just misunderstood. This makes sense though. Anyone wanna try finding GX on the die? I have an idea...

 

[cartman414]

The other thing about using a mobile SoC in a console (sorry, just posting as I mull things over on this snowy east coast day) is that it would probably end up actually costing more than its worth. Those components are fine-tuned for low-power consumption. All their R&D go into enabling them to stick those semiconductors into tight spaces. Seems like a waste to me. Especially since we are talking about the difference between a theoretical tiny $99 console and a still-small $199 console (still achievable with an AMD APU) that can attract the best of mobile and console development.

This is already part of the crisis with the WiiU: it doesn't matter nearly as much that the parts are low spec; much of that money went into shrinkage and power savings.

 

[lwilliams3]

This is already part of the crisis with the WiiU: it doesn't matter nearly as much that the parts are low spec; much of that money went into shrinkage and power savings.

Not really. None of the parts were aggressively shrunk down, and its specs are efficient and conservative. The most money definitely came from the Wii U Gamepad. It does what it is suppose to do very well. The issue is that it was not cheap and its, ultimately, the Achilles heel of the system in terms of pricing.

 

[z0m3le]

Not really. None of the parts were aggressively shrunk down, and its specs are efficient and conservative. The most money definitely came from the Wii U Gamepad. It does what it is suppose to do very well. The issue is that it was not cheap and its, ultimately, the Achilles heel of the system in terms of pricing.

I disagree, I think the 35+MB of edram, the format of a mcm and the low power casing was the main design costs of this system, yes the gamepad costs Nintendo somewhere between 50 and 100, but honestly that will effect the price of the console more in the later years of the device than right now, which is why Wii U's replacement could come sooner than we previously thought. It certainly isn't reasonable to keep such a high priced system selling so poorly on the market until the next cycle is ready (2018-2019 minimum) 6 years with this console will cost Nintendo every year, unlike previous hardware able to come down drastically year after year, the Wii U will cost atleast $200 to build for the next 4 years IMO.

A PS4 level hardware with a higher clock due to smaller process nodes/better process efficiency could end up costing the same price in only 2 years.

 

[tipoo]

Interesting. Marcan seemed to imply otherwise previously. Or maybe I just misunderstood. This makes sense though. Anyone wanna try finding GX on the die? I have an idea...

*waggles finger around area with tiny eDRAM and eSRAM blocks*

There, does that count?

 

[MegalonJJ]

I came across an article dubbed "Nintendo Fusion" which purports to have "rumoured specs" for the handheld and home console successors. I wanted to ask, has this been posted before and confirmed as garbage click bait, or is it worth posting?

 

[Nostremitus]

I came across an article dubbed "Nintendo Fusion" which purports to have "rumoured specs" for the handheld and home console successors. I wanted to ask, has this been posted before and confirmed as garbage click bait, or is it worth posting?

There were a couple of threads, both locked. It read like a fan-fic tbh.

 

[Ishida]

I came across an article dubbed "Nintendo Fusion" which purports to have "rumoured specs" for the handheld and home console successors. I wanted to ask, has this been posted before and confirmed as garbage click bait, or is it worth posting?

It claims that Nintendo's next home console will have 4.5TFlops of performance... That alone should be a hint the whole thing his bullshit, brah.

 

[tipoo]

I came across an article dubbed "Nintendo Fusion" which purports to have "rumoured specs" for the handheld and home console successors. I wanted to ask, has this been posted before and confirmed as garbage click bait, or is it worth posting?

There was so much wrong with that, it was just a fanboys wet dream who didn't even know that much about such things, making such mistakes as "AMD Adreno".

 

[MegalonJJ]

Ah, okay cool. Yah, thought it was rubbish.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Yeah, I also believe it would be best if Nintendo sacrifices BC with the Wii U.. though I did wonder if AMD and IBM would be willing work with each other to find a solution.

Using AMD for the GPU probably will not be an issue, though it will depend if Nintendo wants as much embedded RAM in it. The issue I see with that is how architecturally different that would be to whatever type of GPU the portable system will have.

Yeah, it's issues like that which make me lean against a unified architecture. What it sounds like Nintendo is actually doing is adapting its own "engine" to be compatible (or more compatible) with all its hardware - or at least next gen. This is not quite a unified architecture as we think of it, but would allow for much easier porting between systems. They could release their games across all their platforms or just transfer certain assets and create new games out of them. We might see some cross-buy opportunities with them evaluating their business structure and all, but as I've said before, I think Nintendo still believe that their are important differences between home and handheld.

*waggles finger around area with tiny eDRAM and eSRAM blocks*

There, does that count?

I suppose it does, haha, but I was thinking more of the logic portions. My best guess for that is the 'O' block on Latte (hmm, pics seem to be broken in the OP) as it seems about the right size, has alot of "mystery logic," and some SRAM for registers possibly. Strange that they would go about it like that granted the comments from Nintendo about modding the new parts to work like the old, but Marcan knows his stuff, and that quote is still true when it comes to things like the 1t-SRAM, MEM2, and Hollywood VI.

 

[prag16]

I disagree, I think the 35+MB of edram, the format of a mcm and the low power casing was the main design costs of this system, yes the gamepad costs Nintendo somewhere between 50 and 100, but honestly that will effect the price of the console more in the later years of the device than right now, which is why Wii U's replacement could come sooner than we previously thought. It certainly isn't reasonable to keep such a high priced system selling so poorly on the market until the next cycle is ready (2018-2019 minimum) 6 years with this console will cost Nintendo every year, unlike previous hardware able to come down drastically year after year, the Wii U will cost atleast $200 to build for the next 4 years IMO.

A PS4 level hardware with a higher clock due to smaller process nodes/better process efficiency could end up costing the same price in only 2 years.

Yeah, this makes sense; a combination of factors. I agree that it's not so simple as what many say "ditch the gamepad and sell it for $200".

I'm a huge fan of the concept of the gamepad. I'm hoping they retain compatibility with the gamepad for the Wii 3 (and sell it as an accessory perhaps) for offTV play and enhanced functionality for certain games. I'm also hoping Wii remotes are still supported (for FPS mainly) but that may be a lot to ask.

A late 2016 console makes a lot of sense for all the aforementioned reasons in the last few pages.

Despite Shin Johnpv's adamance, I think he's wrong. A "Wii HD" in late 2010 is definitely something many people would have wanted. Certainly more people than want a Wii U in it's final state. With a couple different design choices (including no gamepad) they probably could have sold it for $300 with a Wii remote plus in the box.

The hypothetical Wii 3 in 2016 definitely would have a great chance to be a much different situation than the Wii U in 2012; it'd be more analogous to a gamepad-less Wii U in 2010 (with the gamepad introduced as an accessory perhaps in 2012 or 2013).

 

[AzaK]

Yeah, it's issues like that which make me lean against a unified architecture. What it sounds like Nintendo is actually doing is adapting its own "engine" to be compatible (or more compatible) with all its hardware - or at least next gen. This is not quite a unified architecture as we think of it, but would allow for much easier porting between systems. They could release their games across all their platforms or just transfer certain assets and create new games out of them. We might see some cross-buy opportunities with them evaluating their business structure and all, but as I've said before, I think Nintendo still believe that their are important differences between home and handheld.
.

Which brings us back to the unified platform idea that Iwata mentioned a while ago. Get all their tools and engines scaleable and multiplatform, including OS - everything. Then it won't matter as much as to what hardware they chose.

 

[tipoo]

Strange that they would go about it like that granted the comments from Nintendo about modding the new parts to work like the old, but Marcan knows his stuff, and that quote is still true when it comes to things like the 1t-SRAM, MEM2, and Hollywood VI.

Nintendos comment still holds true for a lot of things even now knowing GX1 was a seperate block, ie there's no Wii CPU, they just drop the clock and caches and two cores on the Wii U processor, they also share a lot of registers etc. It sounds like this was just the easier way to go about it, given how the GPUs are essentially completely different architectures by now.


Now, I'm still wondering if the Hollywood bits do anything at all in Wii U mode.

I thought I was just having browser issues with the OP, but yeah it's broken for me too. The high res image is still there, but not the annotated blocks.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Despite Shin Johnpv's adamance, I think he's wrong. A "Wii HD" in late 2010 is definitely something many people would have wanted. Certainly more people than want a Wii U in it's final state. With a couple different design choices (including no gamepad) they probably could have sold it for $300 with a Wii remote plus in the box.

The hypothetical Wii 3 in 2016 definitely would have a great chance to be a much different situation than the Wii U in 2012; it'd be more analogous to a gamepad-less Wii U in 2010 (with the gamepad introduced as an accessory perhaps in 2012 or 2013).

Who wanted it? Pachter and about 100 people on Neogaf? The 100 million people who bought Wiis didn't want it. It'd probably be the same amount of people that bought a Wii U. Mid generation consoles are NOT the key to success. You're putting yourself in a REALLY shitty position. Because you're taking a super gamble that nothing is going to drop in the GPU space that makes bringing things to your mid-gen console extremely difficult.

It's bad business sense, it's not what 3rd parties want. Why do you think the XB1 and PS4 are using almost identical parts? Because that's what 3rd parties want. They want the ability to port across systems to be as EASY as possible.

A mid gen console is going to leave you in the same place the Wii U is in. More power than the previous gen with some newer features, but not enough power to run games from the new gen.

It's not where they need to be next gen.

Their focus for next gen should be on working with 3rd parties and making a system those devs want.

 

[TwilightPrincess]

Who wanted it? Pachter and about 100 people on Neogaf? The 100 million people who bought Wiis didn't want it. It'd probably be the same amount of people that bought a Wii U. Mid generation consoles are NOT the key to success. You're putting yourself in a REALLY shitty position. Because you're taking a super gamble that nothing is going to drop in the GPU space that makes bringing things to your mid-gen console extremely difficult.

It's bad business sense, it's not what 3rd parties want. Why do you think the XB1 and PS4 are using almost identical parts? Because that's what 3rd parties want. They want the ability to port across systems to be as EASY as possible.

A mid gen console is going to leave you in the same place the Wii U is in. More power than the previous gen with some newer features, but not enough power to run games from the new gen.

It's not where they need to be next gen.

Their focus for next gen should be on working with 3rd parties and making a system those devs want.

The Problem of WiiU was not only that it was midgen, it came at the end of the gen, with nearly no visible improvements. People cried out loud for new hardware the last years, the cycle was a bit too long. I think Nintendo could have got some nice piece of the cake, if WiiU came earlier and would have been really stronger in raw power, wich would have been possible easily... I am not going that far, that it would get every PS4 game, but at least it could get some. Nintendo could have hyped it as real next gen and perhaps sony or microsoft would have bitten and released new consoles faster (weaker consoles than we have now).

But Nintendo went with small, low energy and an expensive pad with screen. Instead they could have done a nearly 1 teraflop console wich would be able to get multigames and perhaps some exklusives at the beginning.

So you are right in that Nintendo should make some hardware that devs want to work on. i only think it could be mid gen as well, as long it does improve graphics (and launches with the right games). But that depends on the lifecircle of the next gen consoles, i don´t think they will last as long as PS360 did.... and i don´t think Nintendo will be part of the hardware race in the next years to come.

 

[z0m3le]

Who wanted it? Pachter and about 100 people on Neogaf? The 100 million people who bought Wiis didn't want it. It'd probably be the same amount of people that bought a Wii U. Mid generation consoles are NOT the key to success. You're putting yourself in a REALLY shitty position. Because you're taking a super gamble that nothing is going to drop in the GPU space that makes bringing things to your mid-gen console extremely difficult.

It's bad business sense, it's not what 3rd parties want. Why do you think the XB1 and PS4 are using almost identical parts? Because that's what 3rd parties want. They want the ability to port across systems to be as EASY as possible.

A mid gen console is going to leave you in the same place the Wii U is in. More power than the previous gen with some newer features, but not enough power to run games from the new gen.

It's not where they need to be next gen.

Their focus for next gen should be on working with 3rd parties and making a system those devs want.

What third parties would need is for Nintendo to make exactly a ps4 with higher specs so that they can just drop code on it and watch it run. That is what we are talking about, not a Wii U but an amd apu with enhanced shaders released just as ps3 and xb360 support dry up, that is the best time to release this. Nintendo can join the next cycle after that like you are talking about, but not with the imagine of weak hardware, one with the image of premium hardware at the same price as their competitors.

Competing with Sony and Microsoft is possible for Nintendo if third parties can drag and drop their games right into your box. 1st party has always been the selling point, but people have always had to choose between Nintendo and everyone else. This is their best chance to eliminate that.

Wii U wasn't mid Gen btw, it was prior Gen performance at the dawn of a new Gen

 

[Nostremitus]

Nintendo's problem is image. Its a double edged sword. They have the image of a family friendly, children focused company. People are not willing to buy a $300 + device from them. They want their consoles to be cheap gifts.

Image lasts as long as the next console along with a major advertising campaign. Just look at the Xbox brand, or the difference between the Playstations 1, 2, and 3... If nintendo were to have released a comparably powerful console and followed through with advertising the hell out of it during a time when they had no competition and people were craving something new, they could've had a completely different scenario on their hands...

 

[Shin Johnpv]

What third parties would need is for Nintendo to make exactly a ps4 with higher specs so that they can just drop code on it and watch it run. That is what we are talking about, not a Wii U but an amd apu with enhanced shaders released just as ps3 and xb360 support dry up, that is the best time to release this. Nintendo can join the next cycle after that like you are talking about, but not with the imagine of weak hardware, one with the image of premium hardware at the same price as their competitors.

Competing with Sony and Microsoft is possible for Nintendo if third parties can drag and drop their games right into your box. 1st party has always been the selling point, but people have always had to choose between Nintendo and everyone else. This is their best chance to eliminate that.

Wii U wasn't mid Gen btw, it was prior Gen performance at the dawn of a new Gen

Doing a half step console is a mistake, a PAINFULLY obvious mistake that isn't going to help them.

They need to be there at the same time the PS5/XB2 are with a matching console. Give 3rd parties what they want then. Start working now to figure that out. A half step in 2016 is a terrible idea. It serves no real purpose other than to get end of this generation 3rd party titles for people who only own Nintendo consoles. Which will be LESS if Nintendo kills the Wii U at the end of year 4.

They have so much bad press, and bad feeling toward them already. Spitting in the face of your few die hards that are holding on by killing a system early is going to loose even more of them.

Ride out the Wii U, release strong software like SM3DW, and more in that vein. Let it be a fan service platform with things like Metroid Prime 4, Super Mario Galaxy 3, F-Zero WX, Star Tropics, or a new Earthbound. You know you're not going to hit the highs of the previous gen so worry less about sales and focus on giving the fans what they want. Show the few die hards you have left that you're going to stand by their support and give them the same quality and amazing software people have come to expect from them. All the while in the background working with 3rd parties and REALLY striving hard to find out and deliver on what the next generation of consoles is going to be.

While I LOVE pointer controls, enjoy motion controls in games like SS, and find the Wii U gamepad interesting, it's time to stop trying to revolutionize the industry through input and do it through software.

Match the PS5/XB2 in hardware specs, give it a standard controller, and then dominate through software that people HAVE to have, with no excuses of "motion controls" or "weak hardware".

 

[krizzx]

My take on this "Nintendo should release a new console" business. I have never so much as humored the idea the Wii U is the next Dreamcast. It is imply for the fact that Nintendo has done none of what screwed SEGA with the Dreamcast from what I see.

People say that EA leaving not supporting the Dreamcast hurt it but that was false if you look at it. SEGA just made their own sports games. NFL2K and NBA2k which became just as popular as EA's and made even more money for SEGA. 2K sports probably would have overtaken EA's title franchises by now (they were head to head in sales if my memory serves) but EA bought exclusives contracts that pretty much killed the competition.

SEGA pulled the plug on the Saturn early, burning all developers who have games in development for the console as well as the customers who bought one, and released a console that had more advanced hardware, but not more advanced enough for the other incoming consoles, a recently acquired bad reputation and few games to show this off. People are asking Nintendo do to this same thing.

SEGA scapegoated and demoted their best people for single mistakes(Yu Suzuki and the man in charge of promoting the Dreamcast) and removed popular icons(like SEGATA Sanshiro). People want Nintendo to fire Iwata for one small loss in comparison to the billions he has made the company.

Everything SEGA did wrong is what people are advising Nintendo to do. Its ludicrous.

Discontinuing their console early would put them in a far worse position than they are now from every logical and rational angle.



Secondly, the biggest issue I've seen "verfiable" devs raise was that their titles don't sale on Nintendo hardware.

Name association is probably one of the biggest driving forces in game sales. That is why new franchises never come close to the sells of long running series like GTA and Call of Duty.

No one associates the majority of third party titles with Nintendo. Even if Nintendo made new hardware that was twice the power of the PS4 and half the price, its not going to make people suddenly choose Nintendo's hardware over Sony or Microsoft which have huge online communities and friends lists that have been built for near a decade.

 

[Wishmaster92]

What third parties would need is for Nintendo to make exactly a ps4 with higher specs so that they can just drop code on it and watch it run. That is what we are talking about, not a Wii U but an amd apu with enhanced shaders released just as ps3 and xb360 support dry up, that is the best time to release this. Nintendo can join the next cycle after that like you are talking about, but not with the imagine of weak hardware, one with the image of premium hardware at the same price as their competitors.

Competing with Sony and Microsoft is possible for Nintendo if third parties can drag and drop their games right into your box. 1st party has always been the selling point, but people have always had to choose between Nintendo and everyone else. This is their best chance to eliminate that.

Wii U wasn't mid Gen btw, it was prior Gen performance at the dawn of a new Gen

Thank you for speaking so much sense. I agree with this whole post, let's hope Nintendo wakes up.

 

[kingkaiser]

Who wanted it? Pachter and about 100 people on Neogaf? The 100 million people who bought Wiis didn't want it. It'd probably be the same amount of people that bought a Wii U.

The 40 to 60 million strong hardcore gaming crowd, who was already sick of the overlong 7th generation, but didn't want to inverst in a gaming pc?

The wii-mote even proved to be the "to go" controller for the beloved FPS genre, it could have been something new and fresh for a lot of PS3 and 360 only users and a lot of them might have jumped at it very willingly.

A Wii HD with the right marketing could have been a huge succes, or at worst a GameCube 2...instead we got VirtualBoy 2...

Mid generation consoles are NOT the key to success. You're putting yourself in a REALLY shitty position.

Well, a last generation console with heavy emphasis on a gimmick is not the key either, especially if the gimmick is so poor the very own creator's weren't too sure about it...

 

[guek]

What third parties would need is for Nintendo to make exactly a ps4 with higher specs so that they can just drop code on it and watch it run.

My man

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Nobody is going to give a shit about a higher spec PS4 when the PS5 and XB2 are on the horizon.

This generation is lost, time to prepare and regroup for the next.

 

[Saint Gregory]

Nobody is going to give a shit about a higher spec PS4 when the PS5 and XB2 are on the horizon.

This generation is lost, time to prepare and regroup for the next.

Yep. It's going to be long and very painful but Nintendo has to ride it out. Hopefully they can devote most of their energy towards identifying and fixing everything that went wrong while still supporting the Wii U with software until next gen.

I think that their best bet would be to strike a major partnership with a western 3rd party who can help get them up to speed with the modern industry before they launch another handheld or console.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Nobody is going to give a shit about a higher spec PS4 when the PS5 and XB2 are on the horizon.

This generation is lost, time to prepare and regroup for the next.

That's why time is of the essence. They can't wait any later than 2016. Not that there is a chance.

 

[krizzx]

I'm still in the camp that says they only need more regular releases of big name software.

If they properly pace their major titles within 2 weeks of each others with other in between, then they could create a stable atmosphere for the hardware that would give customers something to look forward to on the horizon.

All of this silence on all of their titles is doing them no good. Their are at least 5 titles in development for the console that I've heard noting about in ages. They really need a Nintendo Direct to reassure people that things are still progressing behind doors.

They still have
Bayonetta 2
Mario Kart 8
The "Proper" Wii U 3D Mario game
Monolith's X
Yoshi's Yarn
The Next Zelda "Proper"
Hyrule Warriors
Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei

Then there is Fast Racing Neo, and their other game.

Pace them in 2 weeks. That would guarantee 5 months of steady releases.

 

[joesiv]

That's why time is of the essence. They can't wait any later than 2016. Not that there is a chance.

Well, IMO it's more about being at the very least 2 years before the launch of PS5 XBtwo, hopefully fully launched prior to them even officially talking about the next consoles (maybe 3 years prior to launch?). If this generation goes 6 years, that gives Nintendo some time.

While, it might be a bit dreamcasty, the key IMO, is to get thirdparty support for that first year, and hopefully get the console sales to a point where it hits critical mass, so that it has momentum and enough install base to be strong enough for when the eventual next gen comes.

Though, not sure if it'll matter, since third parties still probably will snub Nintendo, since "nintendo buyers only buy nintendo games", which is actually pretty accurate if you look at the numbers.

 

[Xun]

I'm still in the camp that says they only need more regular releases of big name software.

If they properly pace their major titles within 2 weeks of each others with other in between, then they could create a stable atmosphere for the hardware that would give customers something to look forward to on the horizon.

All of this silence on all of their titles is doing them no good. Their are at least 5 titles in development for the console that I've heard noting about in ages. They really need a Nintendo Direct to reassure people that things are still progressing behind doors.

They still have
Bayonetta 2
Mario Kart 8
The "Proper" Wii U 3D Mario game
Monolith's X
Yoshi's Yarn
The Next Zelda "Proper"
Hyrule Warriors
Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei

Then there is Fast Racing Neo, and their other game.

Pace them in 2 weeks. That would guarantee 5 months of steady releases.

Indeed.

Thankfully though a Direct should be coming next week, but I could be wrong.

 

[Deactivision]

I'm still in the camp that says they only need more regular releases of big name software.

If they properly pace their major titles within 2 weeks of each others with other in between, then they could create a stable atmosphere for the hardware that would give customers something to look forward to on the horizon.

All of this silence on all of their titles is doing them no good. Their are at least 5 titles in development for the console that I've heard noting about in ages. They really need a Nintendo Direct to reassure people that things are still progressing behind doors.

They still have
Bayonetta 2
Mario Kart 8
The "Proper" Wii U 3D Mario game
Monolith's X
Yoshi's Yarn
The Next Zelda "Proper"
Hyrule Warriors
Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei

Then there is Fast Racing Neo, and their other game.

Pace them in 2 weeks. That would guarantee 5 months of steady releases.

I don't think there's any way they could sustain a pace like that. Even granting the incredibly unlikely possibility that all of these games are ready to roll out on such a schedule, they'd be left with nothing once it's over.

They do need to spend more energy generating hype over these upcoming games, though, and drop the secrecy about release dates. It would also help to know a bit about whatever projects they've got cooking that they haven't told us about yet -- the NES Remixes and Dr. Luigis of 2014. I assume they want to save some surprises for E3 and beyond, and I'm a patient person who enjoys being surprised, but they really can't afford to be coy any longer.


Edit: sorry, didn't realize how OT this is. Forgot what thread I was in. I hope we can stick to the subject of hardware as that is a much more interesting conversation IMO.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

*reaches into fridge*

Wha- what is this? A GPU thread? For the Wii U? I bought this like a year ago, didn't I? When did this exp- oh Christ! I should have tossed this months ago! There's like a film of weird general Nintendo speculation growing on top! Yuck!