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HappySqurriel on 04 February 2010
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naznatips said:
HappySqurriel said:
Millennium said:
Some employee at some publisher? Not a chance. This is just another hoax, even less reliable than Pachter's usual garbage. Nothing but another troll trying to tank Wii sales.

While I agree that this is a unbelievable rumour, rumours like this can be started by low level employees at large publishers who don't understand what they're seeing ...

In theory, Nintendo could approach a couple of major publishers to get feedback on the current state of their next generation hardware; and, while this is a different approach to what Nintendo usually does, this isn't that unusual being that Microsoft and Sony have done this in the past. There goal from a effort like this (beyond improving third party relations) would be to get feedback on the hardware, finalize the specifications, and to begin releasing early dev-kits for the middle of 2010; with the intention of releasing a system Q4 2011.

Now, the technical staff (and many of the support staff) will know that it will take 18 to 24 months to make a decent launch game for a next generation system, and if they began today the game would not be ready until late 2011; but the low level data-entry clerk hears about Nintendo showing off next generation hardware and writes an email to their favourite blog and expects a system to be released in the next 6 months.

Understand however, that Nintendo would not be doing this. There isn't the slightest chance in hell they have something they are trying to release in 2011. I garauntee you the DS will get minor upgrades for at least 3 more years, without a system change, and maybe 4 or more. This is Nintendo's iPod. Just like you get 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 15th generation iPods, you will get small upgrades on the DS for years.

As for the Wii, they've specified many times that there's a big problem with the market model of a 6 or 7 year console life cycle, and all consoles should be lasting much longer. This is one topic Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all agree on. The only reason these rumors are popping up now is foolish people go "Oh hey, this generation's been going for 5 years, it's about time to start another. I bet we can make a rumor and troll for attention and there's a good chance it will be true." Unfortunatley for them this generation is very different from past generations. Not a single one of the companies benefits by moving to a new generation, and none of them will for at least 3 more years, and probably more than that. So sorry for those of you who are getting bored with the current platforms. They will be around a long time.

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but a company like Nintendo could engage in consultations with large third party publishers and developers even though there system has no immediate plans for release. In an odd sort of way, this is (potentially) a pretty good way to spend some money in an attempt to encourage third party support down the road; basically, you convince the major middleware providers and large third party studios to port their software to your system and generate (somewhat) real world performance demos, and you use these demos to design your hardware for optimal performance.

The generation of these demos, and the continued consultation, would not be free but the total cost would be somewhere in the range of 1 or 2 paid for exclusive games. The end result would be that when you released your system most major third party publishers would have their tool-sets already running on your system, their main developers would be familiar with the hardware, and you could (hopefully) get some developers to have a feeling of ownership of your system because they were a part in the development of it.