By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 19 January 2015
Edit Thread

No one's really done a microconsole properly though. Only Sony has tried and really all they did was throw the Vita chipset (a very unpopular system) into a small box and called it a day.

Nintendo could do considerably more with the concept and it would have several advantages.

- It would be fairly cheap, probably $200 to start with and scale down in cost very quickly, allowing Nintendo to just focus on selling games and Amiibos. Win for Nintendo and consumers.

- If they use the same processor as the handheld it saves Nintendo a ton of money on R&D costs making the hardware profitable basically overnight. Win for Nintendo.

- Being so small and without a disc drive would make it whisper quiet ... a small thing, but seeing as how the Wii U sounds like a wheezing fat kid trying to get up a flight of stairs sometimes, it would be nice to go back to quiet consoles (N64, SNES, etc.). And it would be nice to be able to put your console in your pocket (literally) if you need to take it to a friends house.

- Microconsoles to date have been fairly underpowered, most don't even come close to PS3 in performance, but that's changing now. The new Tegra chip has PS3/360 style performance, but 2016 Nintendo could have something comparable to the Wii U for the handheld and then they could put 2-3x the CPU/GPU cores for the consoles variant. The result would be something considerably more powerful than a Wii U. Plenty of horsepower for Nintendo.

- Having ALL Nintendo software in one place would ensure far fewer droughts and open up Nintendo's dev teams to make more original IP since they wouldn't have to make multiple versions of each IP (2x Mario 3D, 2x Mario 2D, 2x Smash Bros, 2x Mario Kart, etc.) for two separate platforms.

Sure some people will gripe about it ... then Nintendo will show Mario Galaxy 3 and Monster Hunter 5 running at 1080p on the system with somehwhat better than Wii U graphics, being able to play on the road or at home seamlessly, and most Nintendo fans will run to pre-order one.