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Soundwave on 12 September 2014
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Vena said:
Soundwave said:

Yeah I just threw the Snapdragon in there because it seems to be the standard smartphone/tablet GPU of this era. 

The pro of it though is that Nintendo could probably get such a component at a very low cost, combined with the 3DS chip which is probably quite cheap it would help keep costs low. I think that's going to be one of the big take aways for Nintendo this gen ... using heavily customized components and chipsets is really not a great idea because they don't scale in price well (they don't have much flexibility in the Wii U price it seems either). 

Plus having these kids snap up a budget tablet could also be a large boon to amiibo toy sales. 

I think such a product would be a far better idea than "New 3DS" alone. But I think Nintendo is still to scared by the mobile app industry to do this. It would be interesting for sure though. 

The key to any tablet entry is to NOT go head to head with Apple. A tablet in the price range of $139-$169 would be way cheaper than Apple's lowest priced iPad mini. I think they can compete against the lower price tablets, as a game vendor they also have one huge advantage too -- they can sell their hardware without a big profit margin because they can make money on software + amiibo toys. 


Watching this most recent treehouse is what Nintendo needs to do more of... Anyway.

The 3DS isn't custom, its just underclocked. Its a standard ARM11 MPCore. The WiiU is but, as is becoming rather apparent, I don't see PowerPC lasting unless IBM strikes a great deal with Nintendo or something. They'll likely keep the WiiU chip around in their next console to guarantee the reverse compatability and, by then, the chip production for it will be dirt cheap.

I just don't know how easily they'd gain mind share in the market, kids or otherwise, since the phone/tablet market is more saturated than a sponge in the pacific. And, yes, it would be better than a lone n3DS but its just not the time to introduce it right now. The n3DS is just to hold over the market for a year or two, it would make more sense to launch anything and everything new as one whole big "idea" for the consomer base to know about.

Never said to compete with Apple, just saying that the market is flooded.


I think for the Fusion they may be waiting until well into 2016 because the chip tech that they want probably is a bit too expensive for the immediate future. 

They probably want a 20nm mobile chip that can approximate Wii U graphics (or gulp ... more?). I can then see them taking that chip, putting 2-3 of them together in a small box, and voila, there's your console variant that can run the same games at 1080P for TV play. 

A budget tablet in the meantime might not be a bad idea but it could also muddy the market too with too much product. Then again, you can say the New 3DS is doing just that, so why not?

Ugraded ARM CPU + 3DS GPU (cheap) + Snapdragon 800 (or other suitable dated/cheap smartphone GPU) + 512MB of RAM wouldn't be bad though. 

It should be able to emulate all Nintendo platforms prior to the GameCube easily and have access to hundreds of DS/3DS games, and even allow for GCN/Wii ports (not without effort though). 

The angle I would play up is I'd ship the tablet with a "Nintendo Learn" educational suite of software for kids/adults. That way you can kinda really make it hard for parents to say no to it (lol). Maybe even also start with a free amiibo toy included (get the kids hooked on it) too.