Nintendo NX rumours and debate

[niphilim222]

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/223824-nintendo-nx-console-coming-this-christmas-with-new-zelda-game-report

 

Looks promising. So what do you think :confused:

Edited March 6, 2016 by niphilim222

[JimboUK]

I hope they don't go for gimmicks again, they got lucky with the Wii in the early years but the novelty wore off and it's been downhill ever since. I don't know what the future holds for Nintendo, even their loved first party titles are starting to feel old and tired, they need to get the genuine gamers back, the ones who spend the money, another Ocarina of Time rehash or Mario Kart isn't going to do that.

[obobski]

I hope they don't go for gimmicks again, they got lucky with the Wii in the early years but the novelty wore off and it's been downhill ever since. I don't know what the future holds for Nintendo, even their loved first party titles are starting to feel old and tired, they need to get the genuine gamers back, the ones who spend the money, another Ocarina of Time rehash or Mario Kart isn't going to do that.

 

Agreed - something more like the N64 (which was every bit a competitor to the original PlayStation) would be very welcome competition to the PlayStation/Xbox back-and-forth, as opposed to yet-another rehashing of the GameCube/Wii and their associated games. Granted, even if NX is designed to be comparable to XB1/PS4, I've seen rumors that Sony/Microsoft are already on track for their next-gen hardware and the push is towards VR and 4K.

 

Found this for a bit more:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/nintendo-nx-release-date-news-and-rumors-1289401

[JimboUK]

 

I hope they don't go for gimmicks again, they got lucky with the Wii in the early years but the novelty wore off and it's been downhill ever since. I don't know what the future holds for Nintendo, even their loved first party titles are starting to feel old and tired, they need to get the genuine gamers back, the ones who spend the money, another Ocarina of Time rehash or Mario Kart isn't going to do that.

 

Agreed - something more like the N64 (which was every bit a competitor to the original PlayStation) would be very welcome competition to the PlayStation/Xbox back-and-forth, as opposed to yet-another rehashing of the GameCube/Wii and their associated games. Granted, even if NX is designed to be comparable to XB1/PS4, I've seen rumors that Sony/Microsoft are already on track for their next-gen hardware and the push is towards VR and 4K.

 

Found this for a bit more:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/nintendo-nx-release-date-news-and-rumors-1289401

 

 

I think it needs to be more powerful than the PS4/Xbone, those to two systems were out of date on release and are falling further behind by the day, I can't see them hanging around as long as the PS3/360 did. It also needs good third party support and that's become a real issue because of the way Nintendo deals with third parties, some of things I've heard about early Wii-U dev kits beggars belief, they didn't work, Nintendo kept changing the spec, Nintendo in Japan refused to speak to western developers instead forcing them to use Nintendo of America or Nintendo of Europe as go a between, sometimes it would take weeks to get an answer to a simple question, a lot of third party developers gave up in the end.

 

What bothers me from the article you linked is....

 

 

"As far as NX goes, I've said it's different and obviously a new experience," Kimishima said. "That being said, I can assure you we're not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. It's something unique and different. It's something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base."

 

Gamers are a conservative bunch, they like to grab a standard controller or keyboard/mouse and play the game, they don't want to be waving their arms around, looking at second screens or anything else, there's a reason why silly add ons like the Powerglove, Kinnect and Playstation Move fail, it's not what people want, third parties don't like it either because they have to make different versions of their titles for the platform, if Nintendo want to be different then the difference needs to be in the games. Another thing is the obsession with portable gaming, that's a market dominated by Apple and Google, the dedicated handheld is going to go the same way as MP3 players, do they really want to find themselves in competition with Apple? a company worth more than Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo combined?

 

One thing is for sure, Nintendo can't afford another failure, with the dedicated handheld market shrinking and nothing else to fall back on they'll end up going the way of Sega.

[obobski]

 

 

I think it needs to be more powerful than the PS4/Xbone, those to two systems were out of date on release and are falling further behind by the day, I can't see them hanging around as long as the PS3/360 did. It also needs good third party support and that's become a real issue because of the way Nintendo deals with third parties, some of things I've heard about early Wii-U dev kits beggars belief, they didn't work, Nintendo kept changing the spec, Nintendo in Japan refused to speak to western developers instead forcing them to use Nintendo of America or Nintendo of Europe as go a between, sometimes it would take weeks to get an answer to a simple question, a lot of third party developers gave up in the end.

 

 

No idea on the devkit side, but honestly I don't buy the whole "console stagnation" bit for a minute. PS4 and Xbox One were not "out of date on release" and I don't see any indication of them "falling further behind by the day" - PC graphics and CPUs really haven't moved since 2013 either; sure the PS4 and Xbox One aren't going to be as "fast" as a TOTL gaming PC but its not an apples-to-apples comparison (and was never meant to be); the same was entirely true for the Xbox 360 and PS3 (and Xbox and PS2). As far as I'm aware they're progressing through their design lifecycles as intended - the only thing that I'm somewhat surprised hasn't occurred is a mid-life shrink and refresh, but that's a broader issue that everyone else is running into as well.

 

As far as "it needs to be more powerful to sell" - the Wii and PS2 are both fantastic examples of how much that doesn't matter in the least. It needs to be a decent piece of hardware with support behind it from both the manufacturer and third-party developers though, which Wii and PS2 had in spades. If the NX can get that balance right, it doesn't really matter if they keep going down the same road with PowerPC, or decide to move over to another platform, at least if you're basing it on past history.

 

 

 

 

 

Gamers are a conservative bunch, they like to grab a standard controller or keyboard/mouse and play the game, they don't want to be waving their arms around, looking at second screens or anything else, there's a reason why silly add ons like the Powerglove, Kinnect and Playstation Move fail, it's not what people want, third parties don't like it either because they have to make different versions of their titles for the platform, if Nintendo want to be different then the difference needs to be in the games. Another thing is the obsession with portable gaming, that's a market dominated by Apple and Google, the dedicated handheld is going to go the same way as MP3 players, do they really want to find themselves in competition with Apple? a company worth more than Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo combined?

 

One thing is for sure, Nintendo can't afford another failure, with the dedicated handheld market shrinking and nothing else to fall back on they'll end up going the way of Sega.

 

 

Steve Jobs once famously said: "people don't know what they want until you give it to them" - Wii was derided for its motion control, lack of DVD playback, lack of a hard-drive, diminutive size, etc, and yet it outsold the more traditional, controller-based, hard-drive equipped, high-performing, etc PS3 and Xbox 360. I don't think its fair, therefore, to insist that "more of the same" is what will consistently sell. Similarly, a lot of big names within gaming and the broader PC industry are betting pretty silly sums of money on VR (which, at least from casual observation, does appear to be gaining significant momentum among gamers as well - as in, big companies like AMD, nVidia, and Steam aren't blindly going down this path, they're responding to what their (likely very expensive and very detailed) market research tells them), which is decidedly a transition away from "grab a controller and play the game."

 

As far as Sega - what's so bad about getting out of the hardware business? They're still profitable, they still make games, etc - they've just changed with the times (and decided to let someone else assume the massive R&D and support costs associated with a hardware platform). I don't think there would be anything wrong with Nintendo shifting away from hardware manufacturing either - they make good games, and that's largely why the hardware even matters in the first place. If the NX is a dud, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo really did go that route, and I don't think gamers would be the lesser for it. If anything it'd get Nintendo IP off of Nintendo hardware, and make things more flexible (and we may even get more game releases out of it).

 

As far as the mobile gaming thing - they are already moving into iOS and Android development; again why try to re-invent the wheel - let Apple expend their fortunes developing and supporting a hardware platform.

[JimboUK]

 

I think it needs to be more powerful than the PS4/Xbone, those to two systems were out of date on release and are falling further behind by the day, I can't see them hanging around as long as the PS3/360 did. It also needs good third party support and that's become a real issue because of the way Nintendo deals with third parties, some of things I've heard about early Wii-U dev kits beggars belief, they didn't work, Nintendo kept changing the spec, Nintendo in Japan refused to speak to western developers instead forcing them to use Nintendo of America or Nintendo of Europe as go a between, sometimes it would take weeks to get an answer to a simple question, a lot of third party developers gave up in the end.

 

 

No idea on the devkit side, but honestly I don't buy the whole "console stagnation" bit for a minute. PS4 and Xbox One were not "out of date on release" and I don't see any indication of them "falling further behind by the day" - PC graphics and CPUs really haven't moved since 2013 either; sure the PS4 and Xbox One aren't going to be as "fast" as a TOTL gaming PC but its not an apples-to-apples comparison (and was never meant to be); the same was entirely true for the Xbox 360 and PS3 (and Xbox and PS2). As far as I'm aware they're progressing through their design lifecycles as intended - the only thing that I'm somewhat surprised hasn't occurred is a mid-life shrink and refresh, but that's a broader issue that everyone else is running into as well.

 

As far as "it needs to be more powerful to sell" - the Wii and PS2 are both fantastic examples of how much that doesn't matter in the least. It needs to be a decent piece of hardware with support behind it from both the manufacturer and third-party developers though, which Wii and PS2 had in spades. If the NX can get that balance right, it doesn't really matter if they keep going down the same road with PowerPC, or decide to move over to another platform, at least if you're basing it on past history.

 

 

 

 

 

Gamers are a conservative bunch, they like to grab a standard controller or keyboard/mouse and play the game, they don't want to be waving their arms around, looking at second screens or anything else, there's a reason why silly add ons like the Powerglove, Kinnect and Playstation Move fail, it's not what people want, third parties don't like it either because they have to make different versions of their titles for the platform, if Nintendo want to be different then the difference needs to be in the games. Another thing is the obsession with portable gaming, that's a market dominated by Apple and Google, the dedicated handheld is going to go the same way as MP3 players, do they really want to find themselves in competition with Apple? a company worth more than Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo combined?

 

One thing is for sure, Nintendo can't afford another failure, with the dedicated handheld market shrinking and nothing else to fall back on they'll end up going the way of Sega.

 

 

Steve Jobs once famously said: "people don't know what they want until you give it to them" - Wii was derided for its motion control, lack of DVD playback, lack of a hard-drive, diminutive size, etc, and yet it outsold the more traditional, controller-based, hard-drive equipped, high-performing, etc PS3 and Xbox 360. I don't think its fair, therefore, to insist that "more of the same" is what will consistently sell. Similarly, a lot of big names within gaming and the broader PC industry are betting pretty silly sums of money on VR (which, at least from casual observation, does appear to be gaining significant momentum among gamers as well - as in, big companies like AMD, nVidia, and Steam aren't blindly going down this path, they're responding to what their (likely very expensive and very detailed) market research tells them), which is decidedly a transition away from "grab a controller and play the game."

 

As far as Sega - what's so bad about getting out of the hardware business? They're still profitable, they still make games, etc - they've just changed with the times (and decided to let someone else assume the massive R&D and support costs associated with a hardware platform). I don't think there would be anything wrong with Nintendo shifting away from hardware manufacturing either - they make good games, and that's largely why the hardware even matters in the first place. If the NX is a dud, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo really did go that route, and I don't think gamers would be the lesser for it. If anything it'd get Nintendo IP off of Nintendo hardware, and make things more flexible (and we may even get more game releases out of it).

 

As far as the mobile gaming thing - they are already moving into iOS and Android development; again why try to re-invent the wheel - let Apple expend their fortunes developing and supporting a hardware platform.

 

 

We're in 2016 and as PCs are starting to shift towards 2K and 4K these contraptions are struggling to manage to 1080p, have a look at budget PC Digital Foundry built, it's an i3 with a 750ti and it regularly outperforms both the PS4 and Xbone, Ubisoft and others are already complaining about the CPU causing bottlenecks. This is the first generation of consoles that haven't led to games that have required me to upgrade my PC, usually when a new generation of consoles comes along they catch up briefly with PCs, not this time though, what we have is a comically bad netbook CPU coupled with an aging GPU.

 

On the Wii and PS2, other factors played into their success, the Wii brought in casual gamers and sold by the ton, then those casual gamers left for Facebook and Farmville, after that they couldn't give the things away and investors ran for the hills. The PS2 sold off the back of the hugely successful PS1, it had a DVD player which was a big deal at the time and its only real competition was the Dreamcast, a great console that was dead in the water from day one, Megadrive add ons and the Saturn had already put people off Sega.

 

Nintendo cannot afford to put a weak console out there and rely on gimmicks again, they must win back core gamers, the people who spend the money. The Wiimote was alright but it didn't appeal to core gamers just as the Kinnect didn't, in fact I can't think of anything like that that has. Nintendo need third party games, they need Call of Duty, Battlefield and the big sellers and they need them to be better than they are on existing consoles or people aren't going to bother. Release a system that can do 1080p @ 60FPS on titles where the PS4 and Xbone can't, that'll get peoples attention, a lot of console gamers are starting to realise that 900p @ 30FPS isn't very good, third parties will like it too, they won't have to butcher multiplats to make them run.

 

As for Apple, Nintendo used to have something that Apple have now, that's a loyal userbase, however Nintendo turned their backs on them with the Wii and then let the remaining ones down with the Wii-U. Apple are also very good at spotting what people want, Nintendo used to be like that but these days they sit their in their ivory tower completely detached from reality. I fear for Nintendo, I can see them going the way of Sega, a once household name that now struggles to turn a profit.

[obobski]

 

We're in 2016 and as PCs are starting to shift towards 2K and 4K these contraptions are struggling to manage to 1080p, have a look at budget PC Digital Foundry built, it's an i3 with a 750ti and it regularly outperforms both the PS4 and Xbone, Ubisoft and others are already complaining about the CPU causing bottlenecks. This is the first generation of consoles that haven't led to games that have required me to upgrade my PC, usually when a new generation of consoles comes along they catch up briefly with PCs, not this time though, what we have is a comically bad netbook CPU coupled with an aging GPU.

 

 

First, "the shift to 2K" is kind of marketing fluff (basically nothing in consumerland uses 2K (I'm probably like one of six people who actually bought a 2K monitor) - 1080p has been more or less standard for almost ten years now (and if you go back you'll find people talking about "we're in 2006 and as PCs are starting to shift towards 1080p and QHD" or "we're in 2002 and as PCs are starting to shift towards UXGA/QXGA/9MP" and so forth - "high resolution" is nothing new), and 4K is still a long ways off for most users (for a variety of reasons). Also, by what metric are you claiming that system is "regularly outperforming" those consoles - they're running all the same games, and that's their purpose. I've not seen any serious benchmarks on consoles, but I know there's a litany of "Reviews" out there that make all sorts of suppositions about "what the console is rendering at" including the oft-regurgitated "its all at 30FPS all the time" and "its never 1080p at any time" claims - neither are really accurate. Here's a list of at least some games on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and the resolutions they're internally rendered at, and what their frame-rate targets are:

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates

 

Keep in mind if we're adding an HDTV to the mix things can get muddled even further. Overall I would also add that complaining about internal rendering resolution in the era of high quality video scaling doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

 

Random technical nitpick:

They do not use "bad netbook CPUs" or "outdated GPUs" - they're built around AMD's Jaguar x86 logic and GCN (and all of that is in a single APU); more up to date, internally, than many desktops these days. They aren't built to win mindless benchmark competitions, but for their intended purpose they're probably as sophisticated/efficient as you can get - sure the bigger and badder GCN chips (like Hawaii and Fiji) can handle more "stuff" but their power consumption (and cost) is significantly higher too.

 

As far as Ubisoft complaining about "CPU bottlenecks" - not to be dismissive but I honestly attribute this to yet another example of developers ardently refusing to adopt multi-threaded coding/design (and/or being "new" to the platform). Xbox One and PS4 are both equipped with eight core CPUs (which very few desktops have), and the performance of those CPUs will live and die by use of parallelism. PlayStation 3 was largely a similar experience, and various developers would rail on and on about how "bad" Cell was, largely because they couldn't make it work, or refused to invest the time (and if you look at, for example, the evolution of Grand Theft Auto IV to Grand Theft Auto V or Oblivion to Skyrim you can see what experience and platform maturity can mean for a developer).

 

And again, just because something happened "in the past" doesn't mean it has to happen "in the future" - everything has been pretty well stagnant since around 2008/9 and it isn't surprising that those with nice PCs haven't needed to upgrade since 2013-ish (anecdotally: I used the same PC from 2008 to 2015 with no complaints or want of higher performance, and built a new one largely because I wanted to). That isn't "the consoles fault" that better hardware hasn't been developed; its stagnated all over.

 

 

On the Wii and PS2, other factors played into their success, the Wii brought in casual gamers and sold by the ton, then those casual gamers left for Facebook and Farmville, after that they couldn't give the things away and investors ran for the hills. The PS2 sold off the back of the hugely successful PS1, it had a DVD player which was a big deal at the time and its only real competition was the Dreamcast, a great console that was dead in the water from day one, Megadrive add ons and the Saturn had already put people off Sega.

 

 

On PS2: GameCube and Xbox weren't factors at all? Honestly I don't think Dreamcast was "real competition" for PS2 (or anything else for that matter) - the Xbox was also a DVD player, and had a lot of very popular, very successful exclusives (and, PS2 aside, did very well for itself). The same was true for GameCube (even without DVD playback). But neither of those were able to survive the release of next-gen consoles and go on to sell a another ~80 million units for another five years (and "it has a DVD player" makes a lot less sense in 2008 or 2009, or even in 2004-5, when commodity players were already cheap as chips, but PS2 was still selling quite well). To put some numbers to this: PS2 during 2006 sold around 15 million units worldwide (Xbox 360 was launched in late 2005; PS2 roughly outsold it anyways (Xbox 360 had shipped around 12 million units by spring/summer 2007 - so closer to two years)) - in 2002 it sold around 25 million units just as a point of reference. Point being, I don't buy the "DVD player" argument to explain PS2's success - sure it may have mediated some early sales or pre-orders but remember that PS2 had a very high launch price (and very poor early availability due to demand), and DVD wasn't insanely prevalent. I'm not dismissing it as a factor but I don't buy it as the primary driving force behind PS2's success.

 

Wii and "casual gamers" is more interesting, and while I don't like the phrase "casual gamer" (for two reasons: 1) there is actually a genre of games known as "casual games" which has little to do with what most people are meaning when they talk about "casual gamers" and 2) its usually a derogatory phrase couching a Scotsman fallacy), I will say from casual observation that the Wii does tend to pitch itself to "new markets" - audiences that historically don't fit into the bloodbath first person shooters, high fantasy role playing games, or sports/driving simulation games that are traditional fare for gaming. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with that, but it is different. I'd largely buy your argument based on the best-selling games for Wii being games that fit into that definition; things like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Party, etc followed largely by platformers (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy), as opposed to more conventional series like Call of Duty or Need for Speed (which actually do exist on the Wii).

 

 

 

 

Nintendo cannot afford to put a weak console out there and rely on gimmicks again, they must win back core gamers, the people who spend the money. The Wiimote was alright but it didn't appeal to core gamers just as the Kinnect didn't, in fact I can't think of anything like that that has. Nintendo need third party games, they need Call of Duty, Battlefield and the big sellers and they need them to be better than they are on existing consoles or people aren't going to bother. Release a system that can do 1080p @ 60FPS on titles where the PS4 and Xbone can't, that'll get peoples attention, a lot of console gamers are starting to realise that 900p @ 30FPS isn't very good, third parties will like it too, they won't have to butcher multiplats to make them run.

 

 

If they're seriously intent on staying in the hardware business, I'd agree with you here ("it doesn't play movies, it doesn't play DVDs, it can't stream in HD, it doesn't have high resolution graphics - we're saving you money!" honestly doesn't work in the era of $30 streamers and $50 Blu-ray players). That said, the recent obsession with throwing random numbers out in marketing really bothers me (and this isn't directed at you, its directed at the marketeers that've just gone crazy in the last few years) - "oh this one has more megapixels, it must be BETAARRR!!! BUY IT NAO!!!!"

 

But yes, if NX were to take a more "beefed up" approach to the PS4/XB1 platform (which is entirely possible, if they're willing to deal with the cooling and power requirements that accompany that), and let third party/multi-platform releases come in quite easily, I'm sure it would turn more than a few heads. That said, how apt are developers going to be to "crank things up" just for NX (especially coming in half-way through the current cycle)? There wouldn't be any real capacity to have like "HD re-remaster" of a given game from Xbox/PlayStation to NX - the performance gains even to a "high end gaming PC" just aren't significant enough to discuss order-of-magnitude differences, and I doubt Nintendo wants to sell a $1000+ box either.

 

As far as "Call of Duty will save them" or whatever else - GameCube had a lot of those games, Wii had a lot of them at launch too; they didn't stick around very long (at least that I remember). I don't know what the explanation for that is - I do remember when the Wii was first announced, it had a lot of big AAA titles associated with it that are more frequently thought of as being "PC games" or "Xbox games" - Call of Duty, Star Wars, Red Steel, NFS, etc but that appears (at least from casual observation) to have shifted dramatically over its lifecycle, whereas Xbox and PlayStation in 2016 largely are selling the same kinds of games they had in 2006. Like I said, I don't know why that shift occurred; if Nintendo's relationships with developers is to blame, that's entirely on them, and not on the userbase, but OTOH it may simply be that people didn't want to buy those games (or buy those games on the Wii) and in that case, it's Nintendo displaying good business sense and responding to what their customers want.

 

 

 

As for Apple, Nintendo used to have something that Apple have now, that's a loyal userbase, however Nintendo turned their backs on them with the Wii and then let the remaining ones down with the Wii-U. Apple are also very good at spotting what people want, Nintendo used to be like that but these days they sit their in their ivory tower completely detached from reality. I fear for Nintendo, I can see them going the way of Sega, a once household name that now struggles to turn a profit.

 

 

I think Nintendo was the only real offering/competition for so long that its hard for them to deal with being second-best. All of the companies they were in competition with, prior to Sony and Microsoft entering the videogaming arena, were largely examples of chronic mismangement and bad business sense. But Microsoft and Sony are different, and just having the least suck-tastic/most stable/most affordable/etc box on the block isn't going to cut it in direct competition with them. That said, I don't think Nintendo exiting the hardware market would spell their doom - SEGA had a lot of other problems associated with it that led to multiple consecutive quarters of losses - they'd probably do quite well as a third-party dev/publisher/content provider along the same lines as EA or Valve. I mean, honestly, Nintendo hardware or not, Mario games will sell, Donkey Kong games will sell, Zelda games will sell - why do we need to play proprietary hardware favorites? Write once, run everywhere, please and thank you!

[niphilim222]

http://ca.ign.com/wikis/nintendo-nx/NX_Rumors

[Austin5098]

The nx will probably be a family friendly toaster-xbox hybrid

[TheGreatFalro]

The nx will probably be a family friendly toaster-xbox hybrid

The NX was the codename for the Switch (which has already come out), and this post is from 2016. A little late to the party, are we?