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JWeinCom on 25 August 2016
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Soundwave said:
JWeinCom said:

No, I'm thinking it in exactly the right way.  A system that will have Nintendo games and not much else. 

I'm not sure why you'd expect the system to have strong third party support.  Japanese support for the Wii U is nonexistant, and I'd hesitate to say the 3DS has strong third party support.  The biggest supporters have been Capcom and Squeenix, but even that has involved heavy promotion from Nintendo, which went as far as publishing certain games (Bravely 1/2 and Monster Hunters) in certain regions.  The third party support isn't bad, but it's not great either.

As for Nintendo pushing for a device that could get third party support, I don't think that's unreasonable at all.  The XBox One and PS4 weren't even cutting edge when they came out three years ago.  By now, it should be trivially easy to match them.

This kind of reminds me of the XBox One launch with its focus on multimedia.  Those features made a lot of sense for Microsoft to be excited about, but they weren't what gamers wanted or needed.  Same here.  It definitely makes sense for Nintendo to want to have a unified system, but the benefits for gamers aren't quite there. 

A simple question.  Outside of the existing base of 3DS and Wii U owners (probably around 60-65 million) who exactly is this going to appeal to?  How is this going to bring in new players?  As a fan of Nintendo games, I'll buy the product, and I'll probably love it.   As a fan of Nintendo as a company, who wants them to stay in the dedicated hardware industry, I hate it.  Of course, that's all assuming the rumors are true.

In a word: kids. 

Remember you were a kid once too, I imagine you probably had a Nintendo system or two (or three). 

Kids today don't. That's Nintendo's main conundrum, that more than any other issue is what keeps them awake at night I think. 

They need to get at least some of the kids playing on tablets to come back. How are they going to do that? I think they have to embrace and allow Android games and apps onto the NX. It's a gaming tablet, full stop, and since Nintendo doesn't need to profit on the hardware, they can undercut many tablet manufacturers. 

If you're a parent would you rather spend $269.99 on that NX that comes with 2 Amiibo toys, or the $399.99 iPad Mini 16GB? One is a hell of a lot cheaper and even doubles as a home game console, Nintendo won't slow Apple but there are plenty of cheap-o Chinese tablet makers they can take sales away from. 

Mind you, I don't know if Nintendo will be successful in this gamble, but I think that is basically their thinking. 

The person who wants a 50 dollar chinese tablet will just buy that.  And between the chinese knock offs and ipads, there is a wide range.  Samsung tablets are under 200 already.  Fire tablets are 50.  They can already connect to your TV, and that technology is going to get better as time goes on.  That's not to mention that there are already plenty of hand me down tablets, ipods, and so on.  Plus, they'll be getting phones between 9 and 13, which leaves Nintendo an incredibly narrow window.  There's no reason for this product to exist if it's just going to do what other products already do... and I don't think that's Nintendo's strategy.

Trying to attack the mobile market head on would probably be the worst thing Nintendo could do, and it would be against their general strategy.  Nintendo tends to favor blue ocean strategy, and the tablet market is the reddest ocean you can find.  If Nintendo wants to compete directly with other companies, they're far better off competing with Sony and Microsoft.  That's not the best idea either, but it's way better than going against Apple, Samsung, and about 50 other companies in a market that Nintendo has little experience in.