| Soundwave said:
Seeing as how the New 3DS seems to have gotten off to a decent launch, but it was primarily marketed towards adults it seems. The TV marketing was on Better Call Saul/Walking Dead, the commercials for the first time in a long time actually mention processing power, and they pushed games like Monster Hunter and Majora's Mask, which Iwata has said has a mostly adult fanbase (as in the kids who played MM back in the day are now adults). With the competetive market being what it is today -- lots of cheap tablets and hand-me-down smartphones for kids with $1/free games, I think maybe Nintendo ought to look at going upmarket (high end) for their next handheld at least initially. Have a very high-end chipset. Don't cheap out on RAM. I'd say try to keep the price between $200-$250 ... $229.99 maybe is a sweet spot where the extra $30 lets you buy a lot more in terms of tech components but it's fairly easy to knock $30 off the price 8-12 months down the line (so long as you don't invest in some kind of crazy gimmick). Cool looking design, don't make it look like a toy. Front load the system with games more enthusiast gamers would want. Mario Galaxy 3, Hyrule Warriors 2, Bayonetta 3, Monster Hunter 5, cut a deal with a Western developer to have a really good FPS. Bury the hatchet with EA, get FIFA, Madden, and Star Wars. Maybe even bring back Nintendo Sports (NBA Courtside starring LeBron James or Kevin Durant?). New Ninja Gaiden from Itagaki as exclusive, Xenoblade X port, etc. Keep the New 3DS around as the budget/kids option for a few more years. $129.99 for the standard N3DS, $169.99 for the N3DS XL. Make more DS and GBA back catalog games available too for N3DS, that should provide hundreds of additional titles to play. |
They need to logically evolve the 3DS, one of the reasons the Vita doesn't do so well was the initial high cost of development.
A bump up to a 720p top and 480p bottom screen would be logically, you can do more with decent processing power and the battery won't take as much of a hit if they would opt for something like a 2K/1080p config. And the touch screens needs to be resistitive, not capacitive for obvious reasons.
I hope they definatly use an ARMv8 chip, but that seems likely, with the speed of advancements in ARM technology, the next handheld wil definitly be worthwile power wise, just don't expect costum high-end ARM cores. As for GPU's, there is a lot of choice for mobile GPU's, from the basic Mali and Adreno graphics to Power VR.
As for RAM, with LPDDR4 around the corner, and the 3DS's lifecycle not at it's end, it's reasonable to guess that's what they'll adopt. Probably not a lot of RAM, but the higher bandwith will help a lot. I'm guessing a 2GB LPDDR4 config.
Don't expect a powerhouse, it wouldn't be logical, but with some specialised hardware, I'm sure Nintendo will deliver us something good.
Note, this is all just speculation on my end.
