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Soundwave said: They can still make the occassional wacky/"innovative" game that can only function with a console controller. A lot of people may have thought the Wii was giving up too, Nintendo abandoning competing with Sony/MS to recycle the GameCube for a motion controller. They can't continue on the way they are now. Approximately 300 GFLOPS is plenty for physics and AI even on a portable platform particularily for the games Nintendo makes. The fact is their last remaining strong hold, the portable market is also under attack. They can't afford to have their software library split between two platforms any longer, this is like an army that's suffering heavy losses trying to hold two fronts. Beyond that it's not "giving up" to acknowledge you can't support two high-end platforms at once. That's just accepting reality. Supporting the Wii/DS is one thing when development costs of those platforms was low, but they can't even hack it with a PS3-level console and a PS2-level handheld today. This is supposed to magically get better with a PS4-level console and a Vita++ level handheld? Yeah no. Nintendo also says a lot of things, like how they'll never make smartphone games. Sony wouldn't be able to support two platforms like that at once either, the PS4 is like almost 3 years old and it feels like just now is Sony finally "warming up" with their development teams. There's no chance Nintendo could juggle that while also having to make several high end handheld games per year on top of that. And yes, the one thing people don't talk about right now is that quite frankly it's terrible business to have your highest end/most expensive games only available to 20% of your fanbase. 80% of Nintendo hardware buyers this gen won't be playing Splatoon, Mario 3D World, Legend of Zelda U, Mario Maker, or Mario Kart 8. That just isn't smart business any way you spin it and it has to change. |
Wii was a new console with a new concpet. If the NX console plays only handheld games, then it's not a console that has a new concept. I'm pretty sure Nintendo's gonna want to innovate in some way. If they have to keep the handheld under their eyes with each game, then they can't innovate the way they want, because they will need to restrict the game so that it could be played on the handheld. Simply adding motion controls to the same gameplay won't be enough, a game cannot be centered around controls like that if the handheld is always under consideration.
That's what some people thought before when they saw Wii graphics, they thought it was okay. Then Wii U astounded people, Mario Kart 8 looks amazing, and is far more complex than Mario Kart Wii, it's these vast differences in power that allow them to do new things. The won't be able to do new things with Wii U + power. By the way, physics and AI is done mainly on the CPU, the GPU isn't very good at doing calculations like these. You said something that was off, 300 GFLOPS of what exactly? A 300 GFLOP CPU will not only be impossible on a handheld, it'll be also EXTREMELY unlikely on a console at a fair price. It'll have 3 times more GFLOPS than the PS4 CPU for example. GPGPU on a GPU will only do so much, it's the CPU that does most of the physics calculations. Don't expect physics calculations on a GPU from Nintendo.
They weren't able to handle Wii U well because not only was HD new to them, the development for a multi-core processor and shaders was completely different fhan from Wii. 3DS awas also completely different to develop for compared to either Wii or DS. They're switching between the different architectures of 3DS and Wii U and that's causing problems, but if they could have the same dev environment, things would be easier. Don't forget that they've never developed for an HD console before, they're good with that now. IT's not that they can't handle developing for two systems, it's that the rocky start they had with the new stuff, caught them completely off guard. A 100% shared library isn't necessary.
Nintendo changes their minds sure, but this idea of consoles being different was quoted when they began integrating their development teams. Why would they suddenly change their minds now? As for the smartphone thing, they're still not going to be doing what people want them to do, you won't see a full Mario Kart or Zelda game there, not sure what that has to do with this.
The reason for having exclusive games is to get people to buy your products. If people want Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, etc, then they will buy a Wii U. If not, then they'll miss out on those games. They failed on Wii U, they simply need to try better next time. When talking about what makes business sense, you need to also take into their account their financials, and see the money coming in and out. Their Hardware makes more revenue than software, even now, and if the NX console sells less than Wii U while also being cheaper, not only do they end up making less money from hardware, but the supposed "increases in software" won't make up the losses. If they make a game playable on both devices, they cannot price it at a console price, $40 would be reasonable. A $40 Mario Kart 7 and a $60 Mario Kart 8 will make them more money than a Mario Kart 78 that sold the same amount at $40. They'd also be ignoring the double dippers, I'd say for example at least 2 million people have bought both Mario Kart 7 and 8. Nintendo will lose that for all their games. When talking about business sense, it needs to also make financial sense. Making less revenue on games isn't better business sense for any business that's doing their best to expand.
| potato_hamster said:
This is literally what iOS does, the API being the same, arcitecture being identical, but running at different speeds and have different resolutions. However, I still find it laughable that you just trvialize these optimizations as "the way you turn of settings on a PC game". It isn't that simple. You still have to handle the different control schemes. You still have to handle the different outputs. You still have to redo textures and simplify animations, AI, etc to run just as well off of more limited resources. These are things you need to do going from an iPad game to an iPhone game, or going from a game optimized for iPhone 5 to one that can run off of iPhone 4. These aren't trivial things to do. Again, it is not that simple. |
The bolded is especially important. Each game will have to simplify AI, animations, physics for the handheld if it is to run on a handheld, that isn't something that's just "turned off", and isn't scalable as easily as people think.
