| dongo8 said:
Spemanig, I love how you are speaking in cryptic future-tense like it is some kind of conspiracy theory haha. Although I think a lot of your theory holds water, the all digital portion completely loses me. Nintendo would not push it's audience away like that. They were last to the HD party, last to the online party, last to the disc party, and last to the DLC party. Why would they be first to the all digital party? Nintendo is a leader in console innovation, but usually pertaining to hardware changes on the console - namely the controller. They won't be the first to alienate their fans with an all digital console. The reason this is possible with iPhones as well as other mobile devices is because they are linked to some other form of internet (the "G" network), and unless the NX is going to have a contract with a wireless provider to link to their network, I do not see all digital as a possibility this time around. Maybe next time around, maybe, but I have to say in my mind it is a small possibility, not a certainty. |
If I wasn't confident in my predictions, I wouldn't make them lol. None of the other NX stuff makes sense without being all digital. Phyisical media is a road block to concepts like a unified platform. It makes the whole thing slow and clunky when it's supposed to be simple and streamlined. Nintendo isn't pushing anything away because most people would deal with it. Everything they've been doing and saying since January of 2013 has been pointing to this. Nintendo wants you to look at a library of digital games on your system and be attached to those, picking and chosing what you want to play the same way you open and close apps. If my predictions are correct, they will have an extremely impressive OS, being able to have multiple games open at once. Tired of playing Smash? Just press the home button, go to another game, and play that. Then do the same thing again, and again, and again. All your games are suspended until you click them again, so you never have to boot them up again as long as you don't turn off your system, which you won't need to, since it'll have that sleep mode they just patented so we know it'll be apart of the console. That's what they're selling you. Not a clunky system of the past where you swap out discs and carts from one system to another and boot up every game every time you swap a disk. That kind of streamlined, optimised experience is absolutely impossible with physical media.
Why wouldn't they be first to the digital party? It's not like they haven't been aggressive in learning the digital age. They've been testing the waters for years now, and they've been talking about it too. The DeNA purchase is the final indicator. Any remaining lack of understanding of that space is being worked on with those guys. You keep saying that it will alienate their fans, but it won't. You're acting like all digital lowers the quality of the console, when it does the exact opposite, and when Nintendo comes out with the actual hardware that proves that and people get it in their hands and love it, and they will because it's an expertly excecuted modern idea, people will immediately understand why it's a good idea, just like they're doing now with Nintendo going mobile already, and they will jump in head first. Last year those same Nintendo fans, including me, were screaming up the wall about how Nintendo going mobile would be suicide, and now most of those very same people, including me, are gung ho for it now that Nintendo has presented how they'll accomplish it and it actually makes proper sense.
Steam doesn't use a data plan. Netflix and Hulu don't use data plans. Kindle uses one, but it's free and integrated into the price of all ebooks. The NX console doesn't need a data plan to be successful because it will just be docked into your home network or wifi. The NXDS frankly does because as it's a portable device it will need to be able to connect anywher, but as I mentioned with the Kindle example, there is a way to give handheld gamers that data for free by integrating that cost into the price of their games and the hardware.
And that's exactly what they'll do, as the idea was specifically mentioned by Iwata in an interview a few years ago in which he specifically mentioned including data into the costs of games/the hardware as an example of Nintendo handhelds in the future, specifically referencing Kindle. "I'm interested because it's a new business model in which the user doesn't bear the communications cost," he told the Financial Times. Like he literally said that it's an option for the future of their handhelds. The NXDS will not get away with not having a persistant online connection when smart devices all around the world have been doing it for so long, and adding a small invisible "data tax" on their games and/or hardware is the most Nintendo way of accomplishing this.
But yeah, that's only for the handhelds. Like I said, the console won't have, and won't need a data plan. So yeah, all digital is still entirely viable and is happening full steam ahead.
