What If The NX Console Is Portable Too?

[potato_hamster]

Soundwave said:

potato_hamster said:

Probably not the same dev kits. You better hope for third party's sake they each platform doesn't share one dev kit. The cost of such a dev kit would be signifcantly higher than the dev kits of other platforms. And yes, I maintain probably, because I've worked with Nintendo's developer tools and API. They are absolutely abysmal, and I do not have the confidence in Nintendo to make such tools well enough that it would actually be less work than using and working with the tools made for say, the X360 or PS4. So yes, I'll continue with "probably" because Nintendo needs to me prove to me they can actually make a developer friendly dev kit and tools package, much less one that can make developing for separate platforms easier. You might have that confidence but I certainly do not.

How on earth can you decide how much "extra effort" it will be, much less decide that it will be incomparaly smaller? It could be 50% less effort, or 80% less, or it might be 10% less. We can't possibly know that at this point. Making a game for the PS4 and X1 typically requires minor codebase changes, no asset changes, and is more of matter of optimizing the engines for each platform since the platforms are so similar in terms of both architecture and performance, and while this is non-trivial, it is less work than say, porting a PS4 game to the Vita (something I have actually done). These NX platforms, while the arcitecture will undoubtedly be similar if not a "scaled back version of identical architecture" has entirely different obstacles to overcome. These differences in processor speeds, cache sizes, ram sizes, bus speeds etc require additional work to accomodate these restrictions. You might need to redo all kinds of things such as 3D models, animation rigs, animation, AI, textures etc. so that the game will run acceptably on weaker hardware.  Making an iPhone 5s game work on the iPhone 4 also requires a lot of this work. That's why there are many apps out there for iPad that aren't found on iPhone or for iPhone that aren't found on iPad, or for iPhone 6 that won't run on iPhone 4. It's not a "little extra effort", considering you're likely millions of dollars in man hours to see it done.

The effort involved won't be "incomparably smaller". Let's be generous and let's say it'll 50% less effort than supporting an entirely new platform. Sure that's a comparative savings, but consider this. Let's say a developer wants to develop a game. It costs X to make it on PS4, an additional 0.8X to support it on X1 as well since the platforms are so similar. It'll still cost 1.35X to support it on NX (0.9X for NX since the architecture is so fundamentally different, + .45X for NX portable, because you need to support both). So, instead of spending 1.8X to make a game for PS4 and X1, it'll now cost  3.15x. That's almost double the cost of making a PS4/X1 game. Not exactly "very attractive", is it? The sales on that additional platform would have to justify the additional cost, and you're facing an uphill battle since it's more expensive to make an NX game than it is to make a game on any other single platform. I really don't think that is going to fly.

It'll still be better support than what Nintendo is getting now. 

Hell, the NX already has a far bigger third party catch (Dragon Quest XI) than the Wii U ever did, lol. 

Publishers (suits) decide what games are made and for what too, not the developers, the developers are just the grunts who get paid to do what upper management tells them to. So if NX sells well and has decent demographics, then the bigger publishers will make games for it. It's really not much more complicated than that. 

Also nobody said Nintendo has to make a console that's 10x better than the portable. It may be (knowing Nintendo) as small as 1.5x-2x gap and thus being able to be sold for very cheap. 

Just for clarity, when I was referring to developers above, for all intents and purposes, i was referring to publishers, development studios, or whoever makes the decisions on which platforms the game is going to support. Who makes that decision is up to the contract signed between publishers and development studios if they're not one in the same. But yes, I will fully admit that such an approach will make it easier for those making to the decision to support both NX and NX portable rather than just supporting one or the other, but the added expense if they don't have that choice will make it a much harder and expensive decision to support, as I outlined above. Nintendo has to very very careful here. Nintendo is not in a position to force terms on developers, and they need to bring great developer tools, better support and most importantly a very flexible platform development model if this is the direction they decide to go in.