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Soundwave on 19 August 2014
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Cheebee said:
Soundwave said:


Once Nintendo announces a handheld successor, it's pretty much over for Wii U development IMO. 

They will have to shift most of their resources to support the handheld, which will likely have Wii U level graphics itself. 

The only upside to that is they might be able to port some of the handheld and Wii U titles back and forth. 

But it will probably be a lot like what happened to the GameCube after the DS launched -- Nintendo's internal support for the GameCube fell off a cliff.

IMO the 3DS successor IS both the successor to the 3DS/Wii U also ... it's one and the same thing. Unified.  

There are a few very interesting articles out there about interviews with Iwata, in which he actually very clearly says there will be separate handheld and home systems after 3DS/Wii U.

Also, that they will share a very similar architecture/OS, and porting of games and assets will be very easy and streamlined between the two. He's cited Nintendo need to move toward a business like Apple/Android, where there's a single OS and apps/games can work on a 'family of systems'. He even went on to say there might me multiple (as in more than 2) systems, but that that would remain to be seen (like how smartphones and tablets get new versions every year, but old apps/games still work). He mentioned such a strategy will be needed to be abe to produce enough games from launch, and shorten development cycles, thus avoiding droughts.

I linked to said articles a few times in the past on these forums - I'm too lazy to go look them up now, but they should be very easy to find on Google.


A handheld + home VitaTV like box are "seperate" devices but still linked. 

Just like iPod Touch + iPhone + iPad are seperate but have the same OS and similar chipset architecture and the same app ecosystem. 

So what Iwata has said doesn't really go against what I've said, in fact if you read his overall comments more carefully, they're much in line with what I'm suggesting. 

Miyamoto has also commented in the future they'll make one game but it'll work on multiple hardware. Iwata has also said Nintendo needs to adopt the iPad/iPhone style format, where you have one ecosystem just playable over different form factors. 

IMO you'll have a "Nintendo handheld" launch in spring 2016 or thereabouts. This effectively IS the next generation Nintendo format launch. 

Then in the later months you'll probably see a Vita TV like home device which lets you play the games on your TV if you wish. But same library, I think even same chip components, it'll just be scaled a little bit so that the handheld plays Wii U quality graphics at 960x540 30 fps (for example) whereas the TV version has dual/triple chip so that it can run the same game at 1080p 60 fps. But even that isn't very different from the iPhone/iPad, where the iPad apps run at a higher resolution and it has a slightly better chip.