New Nintendo Platform Teased at Conference, "NX"

[DanneSandin]

RolStoppable said:

DanneSandin said:

 

1. Shipping unfinished games for $60 and fixing them later... if the publisher feels like it. What's worse is that Sony and Microsoft subscribe to the same quality standard for their own games. Nowadays consumers are expected to pay a premium for console, games and online service, yet quality has gone down over time.

Shipping unfinished games is only the sympton of something else, namely having online connection. (And not having a Seal of Approval) And having online is far from anti-consumerism. It also means the publisher have the possibility to ADD new content or to tweak and improve some mechanic (even if the game itself is running just fine there might be some tweaks that can improve the overall experience). But I agree that the standards have fallen for the last few years, but Sony and MS have mostly shipped finished products. And paying for online is just wrong! But guess what? It's the consumers that's said they want it that way. Less then 10m people have said "I'm not buying in to this crap", and that's Nintendo fans. Close to 30m people have said "Hell yes!". It's just sad really.

2. Nintendo was able to maintain their family-friendly image, so it didn't really hurt them from that perspective. And when we look at the example of Sonic again (a non-bloody game), it's clear that the problem isn't "mature" games or a lack thereof. Nintendo loses out on people who are impressionable and gullible, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Third parties tend to take the path of least resistance and it's simply easier to sell games to an audience that has already proven that it is very prone to buy into marketing.

When I say it hurt Nintendo, I mean it hurt Nintendo's image with the "mature" audience. And that's what a lot of this discussion revolves around: Nintendo's relation to more adult gamers. Adult gamers don't want family friendly, safe and cuddly games. Well, most of them don't it seems. But I agree that most gamers are quite dumb, and that's why 3rd parties can sell half finished games and push mediocre games to new hieghts with marketing.

3. I am obviously talking about high selling games, because if we are talking about console sales, it's clear that the best-selling games move the most hardware. The thing is that Nintendo's family-friendly image is very valuable (expanding on point 2 here) because parents around the world trust the brand. Now what hardcore gamers want is a non-family-friendly image, so to even have a chance to appease them, Nintendo would have to completely destroy their family-friendliness. Mind you, at that point we are still only talking about a chance that hardcore gamers would change their mind. But it's highly unlikely that they would start to buy Nintendo, because over 30 years of history don't go away all off a sudden. Beyond that, there's no good reason why we should assign so much value to having hardcore gamers on board. There are plenty of other people out there who also have money, but show no hostility towards Nintendo's family-friendly image.

Is it really all that valuable though? How is their family friendly image paying off right now? It doesn't How did it pay off two gens ago? It didn't. The only time that image were worth anything was during the Wii era. And if parents trust the brand so much, why aren't they buying the Wii U for their kids? Let's remember that the initial ads for Wii U WERE aimed at kids and families, NOT the core audience Nintendo had said they were going after. Nintendo wouldn't have to destroy their family friendly image though; they could open up a daughter company that published western "mature" games. They'd be having the cake AND eating it too. Moms and dads wouldn't know that "Blood Storm: Rise of Vengeance" were made by Nintendo's subsidery, so they'd keep their image. Why wouln't Nintendo wanna go after the core gamers? They buy the most games, they spend the most dollars, they spend the most time of any gaming demographic out there. Most casual gamers have moved on and are playing mobile. How are Nintendo going to get them back to consoles? Like I've said so may times, what's needed then is a new Wii, and that's hard as shit to pull off. Nintendo have done it TWICE in their 30+ years in gaming, and one of those times they were HANDED the tech to make one of the consoles.

4. I already told you what suggests that this is a very likely scenario: Nintendo went after touchscreens for the DS because they had a certain goal in mind, and that goal necessitated that they experimented with any available technology. They also had a goal for the Wii, so if the people who had the motion control technology didn't contact Nintendo, then Nintendo would have contacted them to take a closer look at it.

Had Nintendo not been giving the motion control, the Wii might have been a lot more like the Wii U actually. At one time they were thinking about adding touchcontrols to the Wii. The DS influenced the design of the Wii, so without the tech from OUTSIDE, and it might have ended up a lot different.

5. Okay.

6. As long as Mario maintains a presence in the Nintendo catalogue of games, the perception of Nintendo won't change. This is closely related to point 3, so what you basically have to ask for is that Nintendo kills off Mario and other IPs altogether. Yes, this is insanity, but it's the only possible logical end of your argument in favor of appealing to hardcore gamers.

I don't agree with this assessment. I think NIntendo can change hardcore gamers opinion about them enough for them to buy the NX. Nintendo don't have to convince EVERY gamer to buy a NX, just enough to make it worthwile for 3rd parties to make GOOD ports of their games. But that means NIntendo have to have pretty decent specs in the machine.

7. Yes, most gamers aren't like that. They would buy Nintendo as a secondary console, if they already owned a PS or Xbox. And in that case, Nintendo is already selling to them, so Nintendo doesn't need to change to incorporate third party multiplatform games. It would be asking people to pay for redundancy (they already have a system that plays all the aforementioned third party games) which isn't an attractive proposal.

No, most gamers wouldn't buy Nintendo as a secondary console. Most gamers only have ONE console. If most gamers bought 2 consoles, the GC would have sold a shit ton more. 150m people bought the PS2, and only 20m bought GC, even though it only cost $99 at one point. If your theory is correct, the GC should have sold at least 50m units, so that 1/3 of all PS2 gamers had two consoles.