| Soundwave said:
I think they have the software thing figured out. Wii U isn't going to get the next 3D Mario or the next Animal Crossing. Those two games are being held off for the next Nintendo portable launch window. The Animal Crossing producer had this sort of odd statement from last year where he said the Animal Crossing franchise as is was better suited for portables but they were considering the next one to be either on Wii U or "some other platform". That mystery platform that he was talking about is the 3DS successor I have to think. Architecturally too if the 3DS successor shares several things with the Wii U, it means development will be relatively snappy for Nintendo's dev teams already accustomed to Wii U development. If the 3DS successor is relatively comparable to the Wii U in hardware power and even design philosophy on the GPU side, for example the Mario 3D World team could transition to it for Mario Galaxy 3 with not a whole lot of issues. Theoretically really a new Animal Crossing and a new 3D Mario are overdue for 2016, the Animal Crossing team has been free for several years, even the spun-off portion of it doing Splatoon will wrap on that game in spring 2015. The main EAD Tokyo group responsible for the 3D Mario games has been free since fall 2013 when 3D World wrapped. Some worked on Captain Toad, but the bulk of the team has been working on something else -- IMO this will be a 3D Mario for the new Nintendo handheld. |
I still think that the Wii U will share some cross compatability with the next handheld, and I definitely have a hard time believing that 3D Mario won't be one of those cross compatible games as I don't see it ever possibly skipping the Wii U, so we'll have to agree to disagree on the bolded, as we've debated that point to death already.
As for everything else, I pretty much agree with you/believe that what you're saying is possible and even likely. It's freaking me out.
