| Soundwave said:
Nintendo is not going to be making hardware in 7-8 years time if they do not make some radical changes. Backwards compatibility at the expense of hardware is an insane philosophy. MOST people don't want to play old games on their hardware period. If they did Wii U and 3DS should be selling a fuck ton better than they are. They're not. So if its just a minority portion of the userbase, I say "too bad, so sad". You want that feature that 80% of people don't use, then you can pay a little extra for it as far as I'm concerned. The majority of the userbase and the entire development community should not be saddled with crappier hardware because 10 people want to play an ancient Kirby game from the DS-era for 15 minutes. Even with a unified platform, which I do advocate for, I don't even think that is some silver magic bullet. They are still likely to lose marketshare overall even with that approach. Nintendo fans I think really are in denial about what's actually happening to Nintendo's market, particularily the handheld side of it. I think even Nintendo knows its really, really bad (which is why they caved to make smartphone games, something Nintendo fans overwhelmingly would have rejected, but they don't understand the business realities of what's happening). If there aren't 4-5 things about the NX that don't make you say "wow, I did not think Nintendo would ever do that" that's NOT a good thing. Nintendo fans needs to kinda understand here ... they cannot simply keep doing the same thing they are now. That's why I think the negative reaction to the Nikkei report saying NX will run Android apps for example is misguided. Nintendo *needs* to seriously look at ideas like that. |
They are making radical changes. An all digital "smart console" that is part of a unified platform is as radical as it gets, without being a bad idea. It wouldn't be at the expense of anything, because the console hardware they will have, that being a dual screen handheld and a console with a gamepad, are perfectly fine and even superior to configuration found in competing hardware, and since it'll be capably of porting DQ11, it clearly won't be sacrificing so much power that it won't get ports. All's well that ends well.
That line about people wanting less games on new hardware, which is what you're implying when you say that people don't want to play old games on new systems, is factually wrong. Steam is a triving platform primarily because it exists on hardware not limited by generations and is therefore able to have a library that transends generations, which is exactly what the NX will do with Nintendo games. The Wii U and 3DS had do start their VC libraries over from scratch. The NX won't be doing that. Not much more to say on that.
The unified platform, by itself, is definitely not a silver bullet. But everything Nintendo is putting together with the NX, with expanding it's brand through smartphones, multimedia coverage for its valuable IP, and the membership service, is most definitely going to result in a titanic resergence of Nintendo as a valuable brand, which will work wonders when they come out swinging next year with a new gaming platform that is unrestrained by the old definition of what it means to be a console. But that definition will be in reguards primarily to firmware, not hardware. I don't even think the NXDS will keep the "DS" name, but it will definitely keep the DS screens. Just like the Wii U isn't called the "Wii HDS," when that is really all it is.
And I'm not against the NX being able to run android. Never said it wouldn't, or it couldn't. I don't think that Nikkei article is accurate because I don't think Nintendo is letting Google take a peice of their profits from games made for their hardware, but I definitely think it would be a good idea to get those mobile guys making games for the NX primerily, and then porting down to mobile platforms, as opposed to the other way around. But again, I don't think it's happening because Nintendo likes having closed platforms. I personally don't see any issue with sharing those profits, but I definitely see Nintendo having that issue, which is why I think it's unlikely to be true. Nintendo are Apple, not Android.
