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Soundwave said:

 

"I'm talking about games like COD or GTA or Uncharted or Halo or Destiny or whatever ... I mean sure I think it can be reasonably said that it's been almost 20 years since Nintendo has been able to create anything themselves that would fit into that demographic appeal. GoldenEye was the last time really. "

Ok... and..?  That demographic is not the entirety of the Playstation market, nor is it vital for a successful console.  If your point is they don't make M rated games or shooters, then fine, but that's not what they do, nor what they need to.  

They're just not very fucking good at appealling to teenage boys and college age players. They never really have been either, their marketing has always sucked for this group. And beyond that they have no shown any track record of being able to make and market successfully games for that group. 

Smash Bros is definitely popular among the college crowd, as is Mario Kart, among others.  College is not just COD players nor are teenage boys.

Yeah they were able to kinda change the rules of the game for a little with the Wii fad, but that was never going to last forever, and even on the Wii, a system that sold 100 million units, Metroid Prime 3, Sin & Punishment 2, Xenoblade, The Last Story ... none of these types of games broke out to sell even 2 million copies. Not even 2 million. They would've probably sold about the same on the GameCube. 

Yeah... because those were niche games..?  You say "not even 2 million" like every game is supposed to sell 2 million.  Sin and Punishment was a sequel to an obscure on rails shooter from the N64.  Last Story and Xenoblade were JRPGs that weren't supposed to release in the west.  

Are there a lot of on rails shooters and JRPGS selling through the roof on the PS3 and XBox 360?  Outside of Final Fantasy what JRPG franchises are setting the world on fire?  I'm not sure what you're trying to show, because again you're using vague terms like "these kinds of games", but these are bad examples.  Metroid Prime 3 is the only game you can really say underperformed, and even that's debatable.

Well I mean you can say "well I'm not saying go against MS/Sony, but it's better than X" ... well then basically you kinda are saying go against MS/Sony. 

No, I'm not.  If I said, "I'd rather have sex with Rosie O Donell then have my balls dipped in boiling corn oil" then am I saying that I want to have sex with Rosie?

Nintendo's in a tough spot really because there is no clear audience for them, but going after kids and Japan makes some degree of sense. 90% of their popular IP are mascot cartoon characters. I mean if you can't get kids, then really ... you never had a future in the dedicated hardware business anyway. It's like a person who is quite smart but not very good looking thinking they should go into a modelling career ... it's just not where their natural talents probably lie. 

That's not a viable strategy.  Kids should be a part of their strategy, but kids alone are not going to keep them afloat. But, even if we agreed on that, I don't see what makes the rumored NX especially appealing to children.

zorg1000 said:

Like I said, the support will likely come from a combination of Japanese, indie & family friendly titles which are all 3 categories that Nintendo gets solid support from. Basic western support similar to what Wii U had initially would certainly be welcome and would give NX a pretty well rounded library.

Not really.  Indie support is better relative to their retail product support, but they still lag incredibly far behind their competitors.  Ditto for Japanese games.

Its not that Nintendo cant release a powerful device with the intention of getting PS4/XB1 ports, its that they wont and shouldnt. Why would people buy a device released in the middle of the generation to play games that are on devices they already own? They wont and it will then be Nintendo games that are the only major differentiator.......so basically Wii U, a device late to the party designed to get ports with a few big exclusives each year.

I totally agree.  It's just that their (rumored) alternative is an even worse strategy.

There are certainly many benefits for gamers by going with a unified system. One of which is being able to play all your games on a single device instead of having to buy 2 seperate devices to get full access to the Nintendo ecosystem.

We don't know the price of the thing, so we don't know how much of an advantage this will be.  Considering the prices of Nintendo's handhelds, this isn't a huge selling point.  

For example, lets say someone is interested in Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Monster Hunter, Splatoon, Mario Maker, Bayonetta & Xenoblade X. That person would need to spend $500 in hardware to play those 8 games and would have to own 2 seperate devices and they couldnt play half those games on the go or the other half on the TV. They may pass on getting either device, but if they had the option to buy a single $250 device that played all 8 of those games on the TV or on the go, wouldnt they be more likely to go with that option? I certainly think so.

Five hundred dollars in hardware?  Wii U is only $300 and will come with one of the games they want.  2DS is 100.  So that's 400.  There's no real indication that the NX will be $250.  That's just an assumption you're throwing in to shift the balance.   Playing handheld games on a TV is nothing to write home about, since you could accomplish that with an HDMI out.  Playing your home games on a handheld is nice, but not worth the gimped graphics.

More importantly though, in your hypothetical, you're talking about someone who is already interested in Nintendo products.  If the person was that interested, they'd probably wind up with  a Nintendo system either way.  Maybe a few more would buy it this way, but not a whole lot more.

If Nintendo is going to be successful, they need to reach outside of the people who are already interested in their games.  And this is not going to do it.