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Soundwave said:
TheLastStarFighter said:

It wouldn't be exactly like that because the console market hasn't gone through a major change (the introduction of smart devices). Nintendo may have a plot to focus their casual games on smart devices while doubling down on a hardcore home console (Miyamoto himself has mentioned how they need that audience because it is less fickle) for their AAA teams.  We could even see Nintendo licensed tablets and phones taking the place of traditional handhelds. Not saying this is likely, but possible. I'm not ruling anything out for NX, except the recent patents indicate it's definitely not handheld - only.


I'm expecting realistically a 250-300 GFLOP handheld, and a micro-console that reuses that similar CPU/GPU tech in the handheld, just scaled upwards by a factor of 2-3x (so 600-900 GFLOPS). That should be enough to allow for some PS4 ports, still be cheap, and allow for decent scalability for all software titles so that they can play on both form factors. 

The lead on the Wii and Wii U has been promoted to the head of Nintendo's hardware division, and his philosophy is on low-power consumption, small form factor, etc. etc. So I wouldn't expect anything too crazy, while it's fun to speculate about a super-console from Nintendo I doubt realistically it's coming. 

It wouldn't really be able to compete with the PS4/X1 anyway, it's far too large of a headstart for the other two for Nintendo to be anything but a distant third place. They'd have to make a console comparable to the PS5/XB2, and release that before the other two. And that realistically isn't going to happen either. 

It would be expensive and Nintendo's designers probably don't even want to leave the PS3/360 graphics level, they're just getting settled in to that now (Sony/MS had 6-7 years in that zone, Nintendo won't leave after just 4, if they had their wish they'd probably continue on with that graphics fidelity for 3-4 more years). 

I'm not suggesting a super console or an expensive console here. I'm simply suggesting that the focus of NX is going to be the core gamer, and it's going to be a full fledged home console, no micro machine.  It may or may not be fairly powerful, it may or may not have a handheld variant. But I do have a suspicion that Nintendo has re-allocated resources from say a 40% handheld 60% home split (even though the cheaper to make handheld games sold more) to something like a 25% mobile 75% NX unified core platform.  The mobile games, if done right, could potentially exceed the profits of the former handheld division using less resources. The NX division, with greater resources than either previous dedicated device, could potentially compete better for core and western gamers.  I think that is going to be its focus.