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UncleScrooge on 12 February 2010
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Xoj said:
Tuulikk said:
Handheld cycle has never been a typical 5 year situation for Nintendo. One could argue that Game Boy to Game Boy Color was as much upgrade as DS to DSi. That way it would make 3 consoles with several revisions since the 1989.

I think it is up to Nintendo if they want to make the DSi market bigger or if they want a handheld with completable and maybe some features that can last a few years.

for handhelds, console are differents.

nintendo since the NES followed a 5 years cycle.

Nintendo never really "followed" some sort of cycle, though. They were always put under pressure to release new hardware because of competition. Ideally a console manufacturer wants their console to stay on the market as long as possible (which is why SONY is always talking about that 10 year life-cycle: they have to make up for the losses during the first years). Nintendo has always been the last company to launch its console, actually (since the NES, that is) but as soon as competition impacts their sales so much that they can't ignore it they launch new hardware. Nintendo let the Gameboy experience a 10 year lifespan because they could afford to and they waited to release the SNES as long as possible.

It doesn't really make a lot of sense to follow a 5 year lifecylce, where did this "X year cycle" thing come from? SONY said they wanted the PS3 to last 10 years to profit more which is completely reasonable but I don't think you can assume companies are following a certain cycle. It doesn't make a lot of sense. You should release your hardware whenever you expect to gain the most net income.

 

Back to topic: If Nintendo shows new hardware this year then because it sees tremendous room for growth in a lot of markets and because its old hardware doesn't perform well enough anymore. So basically this reduces things to a new handheld as the japanese market doesn't offer a lot of room for growth anymore. Some sort of "Wii Lite" might also be worth considering: Same console, different look. Announcing a new home console would be crazy with the huge amount of Wii games in development but some sort of Wii redesign could be possible (like the PS3 Slim) if they are able to reduce manufacturing costs by releasing a redesign.