| Soundwave said: Show me the quote where Iwata says their next console will have backwards compatibility. The R&D cost for putting something like Mario Galaxy 2 on the eShop is virtually nill. There was some logic in the Wii U having backwards compatibility because the Wii sold 100 million units, but the Wii U (going to be Nintendo's worst selling console)? I wouldn't bet the farm on that one. |
They did it with the Gamecube on the Wii. Worst selling Nintendo console at the time. Retained backwards compatability. Galaxy's situation is different. Nintendo is making Wii games digital for the first time. They aren't wasting R&D because they'd never done that before with that system. Same with when they release the GCN VC. Needing to waste recources remaking the same NES games for different systems is a waste of resources. And you can tell because $1 to upgrade a title from Wii to Wii U isn't enough to make anything. It's just to cover the cost of redoing the work 3 or 4 times when they could have been using those recourses to make the Wii VC library even bigger, meaning there's more for people to choose and they make more money.
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There are no quote word for confirming BC the same way there are none confirming no BC, but there are quotes that flat out say:
"...we tried to encourage consumers to upgrade from an existing handheld device to a new handheld device, or from an existing console to a new console, by providing backward compatibility that enabled them to take their software assets from their existing system."
They clearly state here the importance, to the company, of BC to encourage consumers to upgrade.
"However, we became disconnected with our consumers with the launch of each new device as we could only form device-based relationships."
Key word. Only. They value backwards compatability as an integeral was to get consumers to upgrade from console to console, but they need a unified platform, on top of backwards compatability, to be able to truly encourage consumers to upgrade.
Just like Apple does with iOS. They have a unified platform, iOS, that is backwards and cross compatible with any other iDevice. Nintendo already said that they Nintendo Network is their "unified platform." With the Nintendo Network, they want you to have a relationship with the platform, not with the Wii U. How do they do that? By tying your software to you NNID, not to the Wii U. Just like itunes is tied to your Apple ID, not your iPod.
You form a relationship with the platform through the software you already own. If software is tied to Nintendo Network, the next console literally must be backwards compatible, or it goes against the entire point of a unified platform. And they said:
"On Wii U, we launched Nintendo Network IDs, which are abbreviated as NNIDs. This is the first step of our efforts to transform customer relationship management from device-based to account-based, namely, consumer-based, through which we aim to establish long-term relationships with individual consumers, unaffected by the lifespans of our systems."
NNID's on Wii U is the first step towards becoming account-based. The Wii U NNIDs, and everything tied to them, will be the first step in establishing long term relationships, UNAFFECTED BY CONSOLE LIFESPANS.
That's plain english. If all your Wii U software is tied to your NNID, and Nintendo wants to have a long term relationship with you regardless of what system you own through that very same NNID, the best way to NOT do that is by telling you that the $1,000 library of games you build can't be used on the next console. That goes entirely against the entire point of an account-based platform.
If the entire purpose of a unified platform like Nintendo Network is to have a shared library of software across various hardware, and Nintendo explicitly stated that the Wii U will be the first piece of hardware that will be apart of that unified platform, then that means that the Wii U's library of games will be a part of that shared library, since that is the whole point of a unified platform. Which means that when the next Nintendo hardware comes out that is also part of that unified platform, it will also share that same library, because that's what unified platforms do, which means that it will be backwards compatible, because that's what backwards compatability means.
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140130/03.html
There's literally no quote in Nintendo's modern history that even slightly alludes to them abandoning BC. Now it's your turn. Don't come back without quotes from Nintendo confirming or hinting at the next console not being backwards compatible. No convincing quotes? No response.
