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[Relaxed Muscle]

Some people in here are acting like this is a unique position for Nintendo. The Wii was the anomoly for Nintendo, not the Wii U.

The Wii U is definitely their worst selling console at this point, but its still in the realm of where they usually are. 25-40m is where Nintendo usually is, not 100 million or anything like that.

So its not like Nintendo is going to be looking at the situation as something unique that needs to be rectified. I doubt they even consider themselves to be direct competitors with Sony/Microsoft due to them going after different audiences. So I don't expect them to potentially break the bank just to be on par with the current consoles out there right now. People act like the stuff inside the PS4 is something you can go onto the market and get right now. If that were true you would not see companies having such trouble making a legit PS4 sized PC that runs cool and at less then 200w power usage.

PS4 is a custom APU based around current AMD PC equipment. The CPU/GPU is on the same chip. You don't get that in PC's yet.

It will be very costly for Nintendo to try and match up and do the same thing. Especially people thinking they could build a system with even smaller form factor with even more power lol. Not going to happen.

Wat?

http://www.amd.com/es-es/products/processors/desktop/a-series-apu

 

[IAmRandom31]

Wat?

http://www.amd.com/es-es/products/processors/desktop/a-series-apu

common knowledge man

The PS4, on the other hand, houses an integrated CPU/GPU custom AMD chip—the “Jaguar” CPU is not available for purchase yet and the GPU side of the equation is said to be similar to AMD cards running in the $200 price-range. The secret weapon here isn’t either the 8-core CPU or the GPU, but rather how the two are paired.

Both the processor and the graphics card are built into the same chip and both tap into that 8GB of DDR5 memory at once—it’s a “unified memory” setup as opposed to the system your PC uses, with the CPU utilizing your DDR3 system memory and your GPU harnessing the more robust GDDR5.

The PlayStation 4 uses a semi-custom accelerated processing unit (APU) developed by AMD in cooperation with Sony and is manufactured on the TSMC 28 nm process node.[15] Its APU is a single-chip that combines a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), as well as other components such as a memory controller and video decoder/encoder.[16][17] The console also includes secondary custom chips that handle tasks associated with downloading, uploading, and social gameplay.[18][19] These tasks can be handled seamlessly in the background during gameplay or while the system is in sleep mode.[20]

 

[Azoo]

What type of hardware Nintendo should go for entirely depends on their software strategy and the kinds of gamers they want to attract.

So, do you think Nintendo should try to establish an ecosystem where 3rd party games like the ones that typically dominate E3 can thrive sales wise? Since I don't think they can sucessfully do that, there is no need to release competitive hardware.

Considering the lack of third party combined with archaic decisions were the reason the Wii U had such a fall, I don't think there's any other choice for them other than to get into the competition.

Why would a company only thrive on their first party content and attract only a small to moderate sized crowd when they can bring in the third parties and raise power and ease-of-access to attract bigger crowds?

Loads of people look admiringly from a distance at Nintendo's franchises, but never even bothered buying a Wii U because it didn't give them anything besides that. Things like that are part of the reason Nintendo dropped from the top 100 of global brands for the first time in 14 years; if you shut yourself in and show no signs of wanting to compete or support other things besides your own work then the grand majority who don't know or care about what came before are going to ever know or care.

More support and more power from Nintendo's end would be anything but a mistake. There's really no negatives that could come out of it.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

common knowledge man

The uniqueness here is the unified memory pool, not the GPU+CPU combo which is widely avaliable in the PC space.

 

[RM8]

People act like the stuff inside the PS4 is something you can go onto the market and get right now. If that were true you would not see companies having such trouble making a legit PS4 sized PC that runs cool and at less then 200w power usage.

Not really related to the NX and I don't think it'll be a powerhouse, personally, but the Alienware Alpha is smaller and less power hungry than PS4, and it often outperforms it too. Again, not really related to the NX since a Nintendo Alpha would be unrealistically expensive for a console.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Yeah, their apus have been in budget laptops for years now. They are less important in the PC space, since energy consumption isn't as important an issue.

There was even a news story from around 2013 stating that they would sell something very similar to the PS4 APU. Whether Dell, Toshiba, HP, and the like chose to bite is a different matter entirely.

 

[IAmRandom31]

Not really related to the NX and I don't think it'll be a powerhouse, personally, but the Alienware Alpha is smaller and less power hungry than PS4, and it often outperforms it too. Again, not really related to the NX since a Nintendo Alpha would be unrealistically expensive for a console.

im talking about manufacturing and production costs for Nintendo if they went to build a custom system that was equally as powerful as the PS4.

so yeah, it is related to the NX, which is why I talked about it

 

[crinale]

The less "Japanese" NX becomes, more chance it would be successful (and I mean hardware wise, including design supplying parts and such).
It's interesting to see how Nintendo would position itself among industry circles in Western Japan, especially Kyoto area.

 

[Ryaaan14]

Hey let's finally make a more powerful unit but have some handheld fuckery involved to make it a pain in the ass for third party ports

 

[Paracelsus]

Nintendo didn't need to court a niche nor break new grounds, they needed all third party titles, to move Mario and Zelda into the upper midcard and their platform to do everything the direct competitors do and more. Joe wants Witcher 3 and Mario and Fallout 4 and Zelda, and you must give all of those to him. Nintendo needs to break from the stupid "you buy N consoles 4 the N games" image, which is nothing but elitist garbage.

Nintendo had to stick to their guns but also double down on them. Yes, we have our cornerstone series, we do have our trendy gimmick, but we also can offer you the same mainstream offer PS4 and XB1 do. It's not like Nintendo couldn't afford to match the graphics.

Hey let's finally make a more powerful unit but have some handheld fuckery involved to make it a pain in the ass for third party ports

If handheld market over the years is anything to go by, the handheld side of NX is to keep the japanese market alive. No way on earth they are gonna enforce it on western developers when they couldn't care less to make games for DS, PSP, 3DS or whatever.

 

[StevieP]

the reason is oddball, very low power hardware, developed without regard to their needs.




And those things would not change with a more traditional approach to hardware, at least in the home space.

No it isn't. There have been plenty of both oddball and lower power success stories in the traditional space, spanning multiple generations. Demographics and ecosystem is what matters a heck of a lot more than hardware power. Where a bean counter thinks there is money to be made, there will be a game. Things like scaling assets and engines, needing multiple discs, etc etc - none of these things are hurdles that can't be overcome (and have been overcome many times) if the publisher thinks there's money in it, and that opportunity cost allows it.

 

[Markoman]

We already have that. PC. Console. Handheld. Phone. Tablet. Set top box. Internet portals. The only problem is certain developers capable of allocating their resources to those platforms, are not doing so. Part of the problem may lie with the consumer base on some of those products tbh. I.e even if Activision could make a comparable COD for tablets, would COD players on PS4/XBO go play it there?

If you mean a world where tech is so ubiquitous so that it's essentially standardized by some industry committee like CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, that'll probably never happen. Or if it does, only very briefly. ARM and x86 have taken over but the proliferation of different OSs will continue to keep that at bay. And even if that homogenizes, other computing advances like quantum processing entering the consumer market will just reset things back to the fragmented state we used to see with earlier classical computing anyhow.

Yes, it's the second part I was talking about. I know, I know that may sound too unrealistic to ever happen, but look how the industry has changed in the last 15 years or so:
Many Mid-tier pubs running out of business whilst the big-boys keep on growing - EA, Activision, Ubi...
What will happen when one of the console makers leaves or is forced leave the hardware-business and tries to push this idea forward in conjuncture with the already powerful publishers?
I'm not saying this will happen in the next 10 years, but digital distribution will become more and more relevant. It is just a matter of time that things will change drastically.

I still stand strongly by my credo: three console-plattform-holders are not good for the customer.
When people talk about healthy competition being good for the customer they only adress the price-aspect. No one talks about the fact that I have to buy 4 machines essentially doing the same thing -playing games- (with one -PC- doing it better than the others) just to be able experience everything the medium has to offer.

To give Nin some credit - if they manage to get the ecosystem right they will be prepared for the worst case scenario: being forced out of the hardware-business

 

[LewieP]

Say Nintendo ditches optical discs and instead uses card media. Each card works on either NXgo or NXhome. How would they price the games? Suddenly, hand held games just got a lot more expensive.

I imagine they would continue to have a variety of games at a variety of prices.

Larger scale games would be like a full price Wii U game now.
Smaller scale games would be like a full price 3DS game now.
Plus a selection of eShop only games appropriately price.s

 

[kiguel182]

I don't see anyone but the loyal buying into that in much the same way as the Wii U. They would tragically be doing the same thing again, when instead, they could easily release a system that is on par or close to current-gen for $300 by the end of 2016. That would surely turn more heads than another weak system released mid-cycle.

I'm on the other side. I don't see anyone buying an expensive system when they can buy a PS4.

Nintendo has a lot of strengths the others don't have, focusing on that should be a priority.

They had the right idea with the Wii and went back with the Wii U. A cheap system with great games, family friendly stuff is the way to go imo.

Nintendo can't become the best machine for AAA third-parties so why not focus on the stuff the PS4 and X1 don't do?

 

[PdotMichael]

What type of hardware Nintendo should go for entirely depends on their software strategy and the kinds of gamers they want to attract.

So, do you think Nintendo should try to establish an ecosystem where 3rd party games like the ones that typically dominate E3 can thrive sales wise? Since I don't think they can sucessfully do that, there is no need to release competitive hardware.

So your masterplan is based on the idea that Nintendo should have nothing instead? You know that Nintendo was openly unhappy with that situation after the GameCube and WiiU?

Are you secretly a Sony/Microsoft fanboy?

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

I'm on the other side. I don't see anyone buying an expensive system when they can buy a PS4.

Nintendo has a lot of strengths the others don't have, focusing on that should be a priority.

They had the right idea with the Wii and went back with the Wii U. A cheap system with great games, family friendly stuff is the way to go imo.

Nintendo can't become the best machine for AAA third-parties so why not focus on the stuff the PS4 and X1 don't do?

Is a shame that Nintendo strenghts resonate with the people who aren't playing consoles at all, and they are happy with their F2P/low cost games on a variety of systems that aren't consoles at all.

 

[PdotMichael]

Some people in here are acting like this is a unique position for Nintendo. The Wii was the anomoly for Nintendo, not the Wii U.

The Wii U is definitely their worst selling console at this point, but its still in the realm of where they usually are. 25-40m is where Nintendo usually is, not 100 million or anything like that.

So its not like Nintendo is going to be looking at the situation as something unique that needs to be rectified. I doubt they even consider themselves to be direct competitors with Sony/Microsoft due to them going after different audiences. So I don't expect them to potentially break the bank just to be on par with the current consoles out there right now. People act like the stuff inside the PS4 is something you can go onto the market and get right now. If that were true you would not see companies having such trouble making a legit PS4 sized PC that runs cool and at less then 200w power usage.

PS4 is a custom APU based around current AMD PC equipment. The CPU/GPU is on the same chip. You don't get that in PC's yet.

It will be very costly for Nintendo to try and match up and do the same thing. Especially people thinking they could build a system with even smaller form factor with even more power lol. Not going to happen.

It is, just a hardware deal with AMD far away. ~10 million hardware units every year and you would get whatever you want from AMD.

 

[crinale]

It is, just a hardware deal with AMD far away. ~10 million hardware units every year and you would get whatever you want from AMD.

And this is where Nintendo is really competing with other first party devs, not at the software market. The more bulk you order, more cost effective it becomes and lowers the BOM. That's one of the reasons at current state Nintendo would have difficult time to build machine as powerful as PS4/XB1 with the same base cost (and by looking at how older Nintendo folks (many of who are gone now ;( ) were already aware of this from very beginning too).

And remember this rule applies to all parts like memory chips where Sony & MS also place order to many firms in huge bulk, thus getting discounts. Heck even non semiconductor parts the same can be applied too.

 

[fabricated backlash]

Yes, it's the second part I was talking about. I know, I know that may sound too unrealistic to ever happen, but look how the industry has changed in the last 15 years or so:
Many Mid-tier pubs running out of business whilst the big-boys keep on growing - EA, Activision, Ubi...
What will happen when one of the console makers leaves or is forced leave the hardware-business and tries to push this idea forward in conjuncture with the already powerful publishers?
I'm not saying this will happen in the next 10 years, but digital distribution will become more and more relevant. It is just a matter of time that things will change drastically.

I still stand strongly by my credo: three console-plattform-holders are not good for the customer.
When people talk about healthy competition being good for the customer they only adress the price-aspect. No one talks about the fact that I have to buy 4 machines essentially doing the same thing -playing games- (with one -PC- doing it better than the others) just to be able experience everything the medium has to offer.

To give Nin some credit - if they manage to get the ecosystem right they will be prepared for the worst case scenario: being forced out of the hardware-business

On the other hand, you are not entitled to get everything the medium has to offer on a single device. It would be nice in theory, but the negatives heavily outweigh the benefits. If we're talking about competition, the need to improve ones products is actually bigger, the more players there are. In the end it's still a benefit to customers if there is more choice, not less.

The industry is already homogenic enough, no need to make it even more rigid.

 

[sörine]

That other markets are happy playing their iDevices and android games.

Nintendo's making games for them too now. They got that covered.

 

[Fess]

I doubt they even consider themselves to be direct competitors with Sony/Microsoft due to them going after different audiences.

While I agree when it comes to Wii I think they have tried to go back to core gamers now, at least they said that during the WiiU reveal, they gave WiiU that name to state that this console was for U (you), the core gamers.

 

[Trevelyan9999]

That's too late if they are really gonna bring it in 2016.

If by February we got no official News, then it's not gonna release until 2017

Reports indicated Square-Enix and possibly EA got dev kits early in June of this year at E3. Nintendo could most likely release the NX in November 2016 with 1.5 years for devs to learn and port games to the new console in time for launch.

Also looking at the new dev page they have, it looks like the Dev Kit Software is really user friendly and porting games could be as easy as dumping code and recompiling some parts to use the new controller. Not to mention if the NX is just a bit more powerful than PS4, developers could easily do this without much optimizing, hence making it even more easy for them to port and make a quick buck.

I think this is part of the goal of making the NX more powerful, it will basically give them more market share and games on the platform.

 

[4Tran]

im talking about manufacturing and production costs for Nintendo if they went to build a custom system that was equally as powerful as the PS4.

so yeah, it is related to the NX, which is why I talked about it

A lot happens in three years, and that time should make it fairly easy to build something equal to the PS4 with a similar or lower BOM. Sure it requires a good design team with some clever ideas, but these are available for hire. It wouldn't be that hard for Nintendo to go this very path - the only question is whether they have the willingness to do so.

 

[sörine]

Is a shame that Nintendo strenghts resonate with the people who aren't playing consoles at all, and they are happy with their F2P/low cost games on a variety of systems that aren't consoles at all.

I mean, to put things in perspective Nintendo will still have sold 70-80m units of hardware when this gen's over. A lot has been made of the casual exodus to Android and iDevices but there's still a sizable niche interested in Nintendo hardware as well.

 

[Armadilo]

I think theirs a chance of something happening at this years Video Game Awards, maybe a tease as for the last couple of times Nintendo has done something at the VGA's. Maybe in December or Early 2016, I hope and wish

 

[4Tran]

And this is where Nintendo is really competing with other first party devs, not at the software market. The more bulk you order, more cost effective it becomes and lowers the BOM. That's one of the reasons at current state Nintendo would have difficult time to build machine as powerful as PS4/XB1 with the same base cost (and by looking at how older Nintendo folks (many of who are gone now ;( ) were already aware of this from very beginning too).

And remember this rule applies to all parts like memory chips where Sony & MS also place order to many firms in huge bulk, thus getting discounts. Heck even non semiconductor parts the same can be applied too.

I've heard that you can get preferential pricing as long as you're buying a million units a month.

I mean, to put things in perspective Nintendo will still have sold 70-80m units of hardware when this gen's over. A lot has been made of the casual exodus to Android and iDevices but there's still a sizable niche interested in Nintendo hardware as well.

Those numbers also tell us that Nintendo has dropped 2/3 of their customer base. It's actually a negative sign.

 

[Palingenesis]

The uniqueness here is the unified memory pool, not the GPU+CPU combo which is widely avaliable in the PC space.

It's not unique anymore, as AMD's Carrizo APUs are HSA 1.0 compliant.

 

[AdanVC]

That's too late if they are really gonna bring it in 2016.

If by February we got no official News, then it's not gonna release until 2017

Yeah I hope they reveal the platform as soon as 2016 begin. With a major Nintendo Direct that it could be also the big return of them. It could be possible since Nintendo has done a Nintendo Direct on January or February since the last 3 years or so.

Reports indicated Square-Enix and possibly EA got dev kits early in June of this year at E3. Nintendo could most likely release the NX in November 2016 with 1.5 years for devs to learn and port games to the new console in time for launch.

Also looking at the new dev page they have, it looks like the Dev Kit Software is really user friendly and porting games could be as easy as dumping code and recompiling some parts to use the new controller. Not to mention if the NX is just a bit more powerful than PS4, developers could easily do this without much optimizing, hence making it even more easy for them to port and make a quick buck.

I think this is part of the goal of making the NX more powerful, it will basically give them more market share and games on the platform.

This is very exciting what the hell! Please let this be true. Just imagine if Square announces that FFXV is also releasing on NX? Dream come true I tell you. The big return of a main FF game on Nintendo consoles after 20 years

 

[jroc74]

The uniqueness here is the unified memory pool, not the GPU+CPU combo which is widely avaliable in the PC space.

Yeah...I mean it looks like some forgot about integrated graphics....which has been around for many, many, many years...

 

[crinale]

I've heard that you can get preferential pricing as long as you're buying a million units a month.

Good point, though the key is how much benefit can company A get when it places an order to company B by getting "preferential" pricing. The amount of unit itself is the biggest deciding factor, sure, but how much trading those companies do as a whole also plays a large role too.
And again APU may take up a large chunk of BOM but there are other things add up to make entire thing..

 

[Aaron Strife]

Yeah I hope they reveal the platform as soon as 2016 begin. With a major Nintendo Direct that it could be also the big return of them. It could be possible since Nintendo has done a Nintendo Direct on January or February since the last 3 years or so.



This is very exciting what the hell! Please let this be true. Just imagine if Square announces that FFXV is also releasing on NX? Dream come true I tell you. The big return of a main FF game on Nintendo consoles after 20 years

FFXV launch title for NX with exclusive Nintendo shit

KH3 coming for NX with exclusive Mario world (replaces Chicken Little world in the other versions)

 

[Trevelyan9999]

Yeah I hope they reveal the platform as soon as 2016 begin. With a major Nintendo Direct that it could be also the big return of them. It could be possible since Nintendo has done a Nintendo Direct on January or February since the last 3 years or so.



This is very exciting what the hell! Please let this be true. Just imagine if Square announces that FFXV is also releasing on NX? Dream come true I tell you. The big return of a main FF game on Nintendo consoles after 20 years

A mainline Final Fantasy game would not be too hard to accomplish, didn't you hear that they are already considering FFXIV for the NX?

 

[PdotMichael]

But who needs third party games?

Nintendo should stay in their Nintendo games only niche and put their focus on handheld gaming!

 

[ramparter]

That's too late if they are really gonna bring it in 2016.

If by February we got no official News, then it's not gonna release until 2017

Yeah, let's pretend it wasn't E3 2013 when we found most stuff about PS4, One.

 

[Markoman]

On the other hand, you are not entitled to get everything the medium has to offer on a single device. It would be nice in theory, but the negatives heavily outweigh the benefits. If we're talking about competition, the need to improve ones products is actually bigger, the more players there are. In the end it's still a benefit to customers if there is more choice, not less.

The industry is already homogenic enough, no need to make it even more rigid.

Please name one benefit of having 3 consoles vs. the negatives of having a handful of companies doing the hardware and the rest doing the software/content. You talk about the improvement of products, but are you really getting the best value for your $$$?
Let's look at MS for example. They sold a console that is spec-wise inferior to the PS4, added Kinect and sold it for 500$ - well, that didn't work out. They wanted to sell you their vision which for many of us wasn't the best thing out there. Let's say they had built a 500$ One without Kinect but with more power instead that will let you play Halo 5 at 60fps in splitscreen - that's an improvement. MS advantage is their OS/service/server-ecosystem and depending on personal taste their exclusive Software. If they were able to take all of this to PC with people following them, then their products will vastly improve - looking at Xbox One solely as a hardware-device, I see absolutely no benefit.

My argument is that people buy the vision/long-term plans of big companies like MS/Sony and still think that's the best thing possible. I fully comprehend why the situation is like it is now: Two big players fighting for the living-room and that's the only reason why there is no incentive to change the status-quo.

 

[sörine]

Those numbers also tell us that Nintendo has dropped 2/3 of their customer base. It's actually a negative sign.

Right, but the figure is still sizable. It's a heavy drop but this is in the face of an unparalled smartdevice boom disrupting the gaming industry (which also impacted Nintendo the hardest due to demographics) and despite that Nintendo still has a large addressable audience for NX.

 

[AmyS]

Reports indicated Square-Enix and possibly EA got dev kits early in June of this year at E3. Nintendo could most likely release the NX in November 2016 with 1.5 years for devs to learn and port games to the new console in time for launch.

Also looking at the new dev page they have, it looks like the Dev Kit Software is really user friendly and porting games could be as easy as dumping code and recompiling some parts to use the new controller. Not to mention if the NX is just a bit more powerful than PS4, developers could easily do this without much optimizing, hence making it even more easy for them to port and make a quick buck.

I think this is part of the goal of making the NX more powerful, it will basically give them more market share and games on the platform.

whoa really?

So I'm assuming this is a page for developers who received the NX SDKs, and from your post, it sounds like NX might be more powerful than PS4 but there aren't any specifics. You are personally thinking it could be? That or the dev page is implying so, without detail.

Am I reading this right?

 

[Father_Brain]

Right, but the figure is still sizable. It's a heavy drop but this is in the face of an unparalled smartdevice boom disrupting the gaming industry (which also impacted Nintendo the hardest due to demographics) and despite that Nintendo still has a large addressable audience for NX.

That strikes me as an overly sanguine assessment, given the lack of evidence that the shift to mobile isn't an ongoing trend and won't continue eating away at the dedicated handheld market.

 

[ultrazilla]

So what's the consensus on the physical delivery method for games? I'm going with cartridges. The kinds of memory that would be used have come way down in price and it makes sense if the console is truly a home system/hand held hybrid where you could plug the cartridge in the controller(handheld on the go) or the system(for bumped up specs, graphic options?). I can't see full size cd or blu ray discs. The smallest I *could* see would be the Gamecube size discs.

However, Nintendo could also utilize a system(which has been talked about) where you buy one copy of the game and get the portable or console as a digital download aka cross buy.

I'd love to see the comeback of cartridges on a dedicated home console.

 

[wild wild rice]

Should people really expect this to be in the realm of PS4's power, let alone beyond that?

 

[4Tran]

Right, but the figure is still sizable. It's a heavy drop but this is in the face of an unparalled smartdevice boom disrupting the gaming industry (which also impacted Nintendo the hardest due to demographics) and despite that Nintendo still has a large addressable audience for NX.

"Still sizable" would be fine if it was a stable figure. However, the handheld hasn't scraped bottom yet, and it's trajectory is ever downward. There's even a distinct possibility that the console will also dip lower than the Wii U. The NX figures could easily end up being 40 million or less, and that would be a disaster.

 

[Trevelyan9999]

whoa really?

So I'm assuming this is a page for developers who received the NX SDKs, and from your post, it sounds like NX might be more powerful than PS4 but there aren't any specifics. You are personally thinking it could be? That or the dev page is implying so, without detail.

Am I reading this right?

I am basing it on what the report from the WSJ said, that the NX would have "industry leading chips" in direct reply to the fact that the Wii U was not able to compete with the PS4/XB1, logic suggests that due to this the NX would in fact be more powerful than the PS4. It didn't say "industry tying chips" lol, it's just funny how simple a quote that was but people still think there is no way the NX could out perform hardware that would be 3 years old by the time they release it.

Nintendo saw very painfully right away what a lower spec console does for them in relation to ports....it gets them nothing.

Here is the new revamped Developer Site Nintendo just opened: https://developer.nintendo.com/

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Nintendo's making games for them too now. They got that covered.

Is a highly competitive market, it needs full attentions and resources to succeed, not half assed efforts.

Let's see how well covered they have it...

I mean, to put things in perspective Nintendo will still have sold 70-80m units of hardware when this gen's over. A lot has been made of the casual exodus to Android and iDevices but there's still a sizable niche interested in Nintendo hardware as well.

I guess is an half filled/half empty glass situations.

You see 70-80m units sold, I see more than half marketshare loss in one gen and puts Nintendo in GC-era.

Mobile gaming is growing and growing and I don't see 3DS-level sales guaranteed for the next installment, their marketshare is trending downwards after all.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

Nobody's going to pay what one of those phones costs un-subsidised for a handheld.

You can get a Moto G with a 720p screen and Snapdragon 410 for like $200. Phone costs have come way down and the margins on phones are huge.

 

[sörine]

That strikes me as an overly sanguine assessment, given the lack of evidence that the shift to mobile isn't an ongoing trend and won't continue eating away at the dedicated handheld market.

It likely will but then from all indications NX won't be a traditional game platform in the classic sense either. It could be designed to help meet those consumer needs in different ways, we just don't know yet.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

Some people in here are acting like this is a unique position for Nintendo. The Wii was the anomoly for Nintendo, not the Wii U.

The Wii U is definitely their worst selling console at this point, but its still in the realm of where they usually are. 25-40m is where Nintendo usually is, not 100 million or anything like that.

So its not like Nintendo is going to be looking at the situation as something unique that needs to be rectified. I doubt they even consider themselves to be direct competitors with Sony/Microsoft due to them going after different audiences. So I don't expect them to potentially break the bank just to be on par with the current consoles out there right now. People act like the stuff inside the PS4 is something you can go onto the market and get right now. If that were true you would not see companies having such trouble making a legit PS4 sized PC that runs cool and at less then 200w power usage.

PS4 is a custom APU based around current AMD PC equipment. The CPU/GPU is on the same chip. You don't get that in PC's yet.

It will be very costly for Nintendo to try and match up and do the same thing. Especially people thinking they could build a system with even smaller form factor with even more power lol. Not going to happen.

If by "usual territory" you mean downward slope, well you might be right. But that figure you give isn't too accurate. Wii U isn't getting anywhere near that number at this rate; it will barely even reach 15 million lifetime and that is probably some years away.

 

[4Tran]

Should people really expect this to be in the realm of PS4's power, let alone beyond that?

It's well within Nintendo's capability to build a fairly powerful console. However, it's not in their business character to do so, and it's not a good fit for the kind of software they make. So it's going to depend on whether Nintendo thinks that times are desperate enough for them to abandon their old principles.

 

[PdotMichael]

Should people really expect this to be in the realm of PS4's power, let alone beyond that?

It would take some engineering power to do something weaker.

But Nintendo designed the WiiU, so everything is possible.

 

[StevieP]

That strikes me as an overly sanguine assessment, given the lack of evidence that the shift to mobile isn't an ongoing trend and won't continue eating away at the dedicated handheld market.

It won't just affect the handheld market. Unless Sony has a plan to attract casual consumers to the ps4, the 3ds may be the highest selling 8th gen dedicated platform. The 100 million mark has, in the past, only been broken on the backs of the more casual consumer. Not the more hardcore that currently dominate the ever dwindling and consolidating software support of first and third party publishers still invested in the traditional hardware ecosystem.

 

[crinale]

Ultimately company's goal is to make revenue & profit, not just sell xx million units, so even NX install base goes lower than this gen Nintendo still may come up with some means to make revenues (Honestly I think both MS & Sony has steered their way to that direction).