Nintendo's Ability to Move On

[stewacide]

I don't think moving on is a *problem* for Nintendo: they have two very good options available (as I see it MS and Sony have only bad options going forward). 1. Milk the Wii for a full generation: keep cutting the price to under-cut the competition ($50 Wiis in 5 years!!!) and built up a massive userbase. This would make the conquest/casual/lapsed gamers happiest since it would keep things simple, but it presents the danger of losing the 'hardcore' gamers' interest. 2. Compress this generation, and launch a WiiTwo in 3-4 years, while keeping the Wii as a 2nd pillar on the console front (like Nintendo has done with the portable systems). Maintaining the $250 USD price-point they could launch a new system in a couple years that'd be marginally more powerful than the 360 and PS3, while pushing the current control scheme forward and still have room for a tidy profit. As for what a WiiTwo would look like... - A new architecture is an absolute must. A multi-core CPU seems likely, but I'm not convinced Nintendo wouldn't buck the industry trend in the interest of keeping things simple for developers. I'd also expect a discrete fixed-function graphics chip: more generalized graphics processing in the mold of the Cell and Intel "CGPU" should be coming online by then, but the bang-for-buck won't. - I highly doubt they'd attempt software backwards-compatability: despite being something Nintendo has always resisted, they'll likely end up including the entire Wii chipset for Wii/GC backwards compatibility. They could get some utility out of this by running the OS and networking threads on the Wii chipset (something the 360 and PS3 currently dedicate cores to). - I'm not sure if they'd move to a next-gen disc format or not: I'd think the prices would be down to earth by then, but I'm not convinced it's something that's needed (Nintendo would rather have some games published on 2 or 3 discs than saddle every system with the added cost). - On the control side, I can think of a few natural extensions, besides increasing the fidelity of everything that's already there. * Adding an IR camera to the sensor bar (like the camera already in the Wiimote) and IR lights to pick up to the nunchuck and Wiimote would allow the Wii to sense absolute movement (not just relative like now) on the frontal plain. This would open up HUGE possibilities: essentially allow the Wii to do a lot of the far-out 1:1 controls a lot of people figure it can do now but can't. The only technical challenge would be getting the wiimote/nunchuck to 'eminent' IR reliably: likely would require some sort of IR-transparent/light-eminating plastic for the casing. * If you're including a camera to pick up the controller movement (via IR sensing), might as well give it full-colour capability as well for EyeToy functionality. * A microphone in the Wiimote is a no-brainer, especially with the DS already having one. ...I'm sure Nintendo has to be thinking of the same thing. They've left themselves a nice space to advance the interface while keeping it basically the same and without affecting backwards compatibility. The same can be said of the DS: the obvious advancement there would be to allow the touch-screen to sense multiple points of contact with the players fingers (a la the iPhone), and possibility a second touch screen...