If its not as powerfull as an 8th gen console, then its suicide for hardcore gamers, and I really doubt 3rd party support. They will only keep nintendo loyal fans, and they are less every year. And parents looking for some cheap stuff for kids. Sad, really sad...

Almost gen 7 games on a gen 9 console. Great...
Unless it's a handheld, then noice :3

re: "3rd party support" & console power

Even a fan like me who'd love to see Nintendo return to glory, receiving major 3rd party support would be just a bonus.  The whole point of "Fusion" is to not rely on outsider developers as much as past consoles.

IMO Most Ninty fans that desire as much graphical power as possible, is to see Zelda, 3D Mario, Metroid, Fzero and yes  Starfox  take it to the next level. Those titles deserve big budgets. ppl who say "well nintendo doesn't need much power" are lying to themselves.  If Nintendo can't receive big third party titles, the onus becomes on them to provide those big quality games..  Otherwise, they risk being squashed and lost in the middle of the high end console and low end phonepad gaming.   NX doesn't have to match PS4 specs , but a sizable jump over Wii U would allow Nintendo to make their own big time games.  They can still have their lower budget goodness too with yoshi, toadstool etc.  The vast success of PS4/XB1 should show NIntendo that people value quality tech (even if its "boring") and will pay for it.

That  gamecube-looking Starfox Zero E3 showing, opened my eyes once again, that power can't be sacrificed, especially for a company that values 60fps gameplay.  Nintendo needs to get its standard right (doesn't have to be ps4 level) and stop cutting corners.  Nintendo should have confidence in their product, and sign a contract with their chip manufacturers that guarantees at least 50 mil in orders (hopefully what that AMD rumor becomes), instead of buying in chunks on demand that only keeps prices high, and in turn keeps the console price high.  Nintendo can easily put out a powerful (enough) console by next yr or '17 if they prioritize and have the right business approach.  

Last time Nintendo failed (GCN) they curled in a fetal position, upclocked specs, got a new coat and rebranded the console to "Wii".  Have a bad feeling Ninty could do the same, uptick the ram and gpu a bit and call it NX, then pray the gimmick + unified sw approach saves them.

But, and that's my biggest doubt with all the theories of a handheld and a home console sharing the same hardware design, wouldn't an x86 based handheld be too power hungry? Because the autonomy of the 3DS is rather low despite using an ARM chip, and ARM has quite a big advantage over AMD in power efficiency.

And that makes me wonder: could an x86 processor emulate an ARM one?

Because if it can, it would make more sense for Nintendo to launch the handheld version of NX with an ARM based APU and use an x86 APU for the home console. That way, you are offering the publishers 3 options: 1-Develop their games for both platforms. Of course, that would mean developing for an ARM CPU, but the home console could run the game at a higher resolution and maybe even higher graphics quality thanks to its more powerful GPU; 2-Develop only for the handheld. It would limit the market without a good reason except for the development being maybe cheaper and shorter or because they want to take advantage of the "gimmick" it will have (like the dual screens, 3D display or whatever Nintendo comes up with next); and 3-Develop only for the home console. That will allow developers to make use of the full potential of the hardware (whatever it is) as well as also use whatever new trick Nintendo has decided to use.

I think that going this way, Nintendo would cover most of their bases without incurring in too many extra costs and without upsetting any of its customers. But of course, that's only if an x86 processor can emulate an ARM one.

i find it interesting that youre willing to make a statement like this considering how much you seem to like rocket league. do you think rocket league requires all the power that is in a PS4? how powerful a system do you need to run games like that?

Something a bit more powerful than PS4 since even there you have framedrops when the weather kicks in. The Wii U woudn't even come close to getting RL to a smooth 1080p60.

really? the wii u wouldnt be able to get rocket league to 1080p 60fps? i usually take peoples word when they say stuff like this, as i dont know much about tech, but i find that extremely hard to believe considering most of nintendo's games achieve this.

It really doesn't have to be as powerful as the PlayStation 4. All I want is great games. If we are really stating that powerful hardware and graphics do create a great game, Shovel Knight is one of the worst games of all time using said logic.

It's really simple though. If it's not able to run at a persistant 1080p60 on PS4 it won't be close to that on Wii U. While RL runs 1080p60 99% of the time there are drops below, which means that's quite close to the edge.

Basically there is more behind RL than it looks and it will never ever run that well on Wii U.

Main reasons why Wii U dont have third party support is terrible sale and not good architecture for porting. NX easily could fix those two things.