| Mr Khan said: Ease the Wii U out as they bring the "Fusion" in. Fusion handheld launches in March 2016, almost five years to the day after the 3DS. Fusion handheld is fully or near-fully backwards compatible with Wii U games, downscaled to 540p across the board. This way you can launch a few late-term Wii U games, but get people interested in buying them for the Fusion as well. Then in Q4 2016, the home side of the Fusion is introduced, which also works in the same architectural environment as the Wii U and the handheld, but instead is capable of pushing PS4+ levels of graphics (so native 1080p across the board, etc). The power gap will not allow for FULL cross-compatibility, due to the ability to run games that are not only higher res, but more complex on the home console, but it will functionally be the same game, just the "next gen" version of it (so, for instance, Nintendo develops games for both as if they were a multiplat developer making a PS4 and an X360 game: you can use the same code base, but still put a lot more stuff in the upper-tier version, with the added bonus that unlike the PS4-360 bridge, the architecture is similar). |
This is actually a very good idea. I had not really thought about how the handheld component would tie into all of this, and honestly you hit the nail right on the head. I wouldn't even be opposed to it being sold as one machine (as was rumored it would be). Released holiday 2017 but introduce it with Reggie talking about the new console, hiding the fact it's a home console/handheld hybrid. As he goes along it more or less comes off as a Wii U with better specs. Then have Miyamoto or Iwata (or hell, why not both) appear on screen outside in a park somewhere or something (where we get the idea he/they aren't near a home console) and the have a little banter back and forth which ends up with them going online and joining Reggie in a game. (Say Nintendo Land 2 or something.)
