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Soundwave on 05 July 2014
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JEMC said:
Soundwave said:
JEMC said:
foxtail said:

Research and Development expenses from latest financials -FY 2013 (ended March 2014)- below:

Year ended March 31, 2013 Year ended March 31, 2014 Year ending March 31, 2015(Forecast)
53,483 million yen 71,736 million yen 57,000 million yen

R&D expenses were around 53,000m yen a year from 2011-2013.  So they want to return close to that 2011-13 level of spending.

I guess that will put an end to the hopes (to call it something) that some had of Nintendo launching a new console in 2016.

Hard to gauge anything from that really, since YE March 2013 should be the highest since that's where the Wii U launched, yet it's lower than the following two years. 

I think Wii U is probably Nintendo's last "traditional" home console in a lot of ways any how. They will simply just make one handheld platform with a way to play that on the TV as a side functionality going forward I think and then branch off into the Quality of Life, licensing (movies, merchandising, etc.),  and the toy biz (amiibo) in the future as their alternate business pillars. 

I know you're very convinced of what Nintendo will do with its next home console, but until (further) proofs are revealed that support your theory, it's only that, a theory.

Also, you are contradicting yourself with my post. Given that you still want to believe that they will launch the next console in 2013, you point that YE2013 saw less R&D than YE2012 despite launching WiiU in 2012, but a console launched in 2016 will be included in YE2017, not YE2016. Unless they launch it in the fist 3 months of the year, something very unlikely.

I think the reasons for expending less is simple: they have been spending in Amiibo and their QoL branch. One will launch this year and the other... God knows how much is hardware and how much is software.


I do think they are releasing a new handheld gaming machine in 2016 no matter what. 3DS is simply not strong enough of a platform to justify a 5+ year console life cycle. 

I don't really see a contradiction in anything, sadly I don't think there is another console after Wii U in a traditional sense. Wii U is probably going to sell less than the GameCube. What would another "traditional" Nintendo console even be? It can't just be a PS4 equivalent (or somewhat better), by 2017, no one will care about that type of thing, just like Wii U is having problems because its like a PS3/360 that came out 6-7 years late. 

So it would have to either be a PS5 level equivalent, and I don't believe Nintendo is willing to go there and likely would face another tough jump forward in development budgets. I don't see it happening. I think they will just make a handheld that has roughly the capability of the current Wii U and allow that to be played on the TV in some fashion.  

I actually don't think hardware costs that much in terms of R&D unless you are doing somthing ridiculously new like VR or something. Game development costs more and that is part of their R&D spending I believe, that's why generally the biggest years of R&D spending for Nintendo come in year 2 of a console/hh life cycle, it's usually when they are developing the most games simultaneously.