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Nuvendil on 11 January 2015
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zorg1000 said:
Nuvendil said:

There has never in the history of consoles been a console that sold that was weaker than the strongest previous gen console.  The Wii was more powerful than the Xbox.  And I firmly believe the Wii U successor must be more powerful than the PS4 by some margin.  And your proposal ensures that neither the home console nor the handheld unit will be more powerful than either of their most poweful previous gen competition (PS4 and Vita).  Such a console would be a disaster.  People may buy a modest upgrade, but no one buys a downgrade.  Heck, at $199 I don't even know if the thing would be as powerful as the Wii U and 3DS; you're asking for a package deal so each would have to be around $99 and that's bonkers for new hardware.

And with hardware prices falling passing the PS4 in 2017 or 2018 wouldn't even be difficult for Nintendo anyway so why not?  With the law of deminishing returns in full effect, now would be the worst time to bow out of the hardware race.  If they can be 75-100% more powerful than PS4 next gen - which would be easy, BTW - , Sony and MS would have to go a looong ways to get a worthwhile graphical edge over Nintendo.  

Just because it has never happened means it never can? And I said in another post that I think the handheld version will be more powerful than Vita. And no I'm not asking for a package deal. I think they will have a seperate handheld and seperate console but with the same architecture, operating system, online infrastructure that can share a library and offer cross-buy/cross-save.

Handheld version-between Vita & Wii U in terms of power, similar to 3DS being between PSP & Wii. Able to handle Wii U level visuals on a smaller  screen and lower resolution. Sold for $199.

Console version- slight increase over Wii U in power, similar to the increase from GC to Wii. Extra power allows it to run games at higher resolution with maybe some extra graphical effects. Sold for $199.

This let's Nintendo increase their software output by not having to make games for 2 completely different pieces of hardware, instead of having to make 2 seperate versions of nearly every franchise, Nintendo can now start to pump out new ip at a faster rate. This also ensures that the console will have 3rd party support since it will have all the same games the handheld has.

The Wii was at least twice as powerful as the GameCube and more powerful than the PS2 and the Xbox.  That "modest power upgrade" was a 100% increase and, again, more powerful than all 6th gen offerings.  And it would not help NIntendo's output that much at all because they still have to cater to two demographics which clearly don't overlap as much as people think.  Having the same games on both would not help all that much as many handheld franchises clearly don't interest those who don't buy the handhelds but do buy the consoles.  Same for the other way around.  I do agree with unifying the underlying structures of the consoles, but that can be done without compromising the progress of their home console offerings.  If the programming techniques are similar to each other then that will already allow for a very fluid workforce that can drift between platforms freely, allowing for a hihgly efficient development process in general.  A better investment would be expanding their output capabilities with more teams while maintaining the efficiency of individual teams.