Speculation on the next Nintendo Console

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

catofellow said:

bdbdbd said:
@catofellow: Looking at the historical trends, Xbox 720 will be released in 2009.

Wiis advantage is the games. No matter what Sony and M$ put out as controllers, Wii still has the games.

For the price advantage, the advantage wasn't Wii being cheap, but the competitors being expensive. Even that 360 has been the cheapest console for half of Wiis lifetime, it didn't gain similar momentum. The sell-out for 2 years was NA specific thing. Nintendo likely isn't going to ramp the price high because it would create a barrier for consumers to get the console.

The controller problem is easilly avoided with controller emulation.

Large storage costs money and raises the price of the console. Smaller flash storage is cheaper and overall it's also faster.

Looking at historical trends of 1 console?  C'mon man!

How is the Wii advantage the games?  Don't the other consoles have games as well?  Yes, I am being sarcastic, but you aren't really making any point here.  Many people prefer the games on the PS3, Wii or Xbox 360, and still other like DS or PC games best.  

As for the price advantage, I agree with you, the problem is the competitors were too expensive.  This will not be true by 2011.  Wii has outsold the 360 despite average price parity because it offered motion controls, which was a new innovation.  With Natal coming out next year, 360 will have their own innovation, which is the most advanced hands free controller.  Also, 1 Natal will offer playability for 4 people.

Flash storage is not cheaper byte for byte.  An SSD of around 16 GB will cost around $50, where a 1 TB HDD will cost around 75.  Yes you could get flash memory for cheaper, but is will not be faster than an HDD.

Yes you could emulate the GC controller but why bother?  The GC is simply not important enough of a selling point.  There is no doubt it could be done, but to the extent that it add even $10 dollars to the price of the console, why bother?

Wii's 'advantage is games' is simply because Nintendo Internal released 5x as many games (and better quality games) in the first 2 years than on the GC.  By the time we already had Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, WarioWare Touched, Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Galaxy, etc....what did the GC have?  Pretty much Pikmin, Smash Bros Melee, Animal Crossing and a few third party titles, with the promise of more to come later.  In other words, Nintendo made the Wii about gaming from the beginning.  And they're still producing good games at a rate that is far surpassing the GC (and may surpass the N64).

As for Nintendo not having a price advantage and 'unique' advantage in the next gen...why not?  MS is banking on Natal to be their answer.  How do we know Nintendo isn't developing something even more interesting?  Or if Nintendo is even going to focus on Motion controls with their next console?  Or if Natal will fizzle and never catch on with XBOX fans and developers (a very strong possibility).  There's too many variables to say that Nintendo is at a clear disadvantage next to Natal right now.

As for GC compatibility, I agree, it'll probably be gone in the next console.