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Nintendo - NX power - View Post

potato_hamster on 29 September 2015
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zorg1000 said:
potato_hamster said:


They absolutely can be, and Apple is a great example of what Nintendo will need to do if Nintendo wants to be successful with this approach. However, there is no making a game for the iPhone 6 and it "just working" on the iPhone 4, or iPad, or apple tv. You need to test every change on each phone, on each iPad, and on each apple tv. That costs a lot of time and money. You often times need to revise textures, 3D models, animations, UI, controls (for apple tv) etc for each one of those models. That also costs a lot of time and money. Let me put it to you this way - why is it that there are a plethora of apps and games that are available for the iPhone, that aren't available for the iPad or apple tv,  or vice versa? Because it isn't as simple as "scaling it down". It takes time and effort to develop for each platform, and that all increases development cost, and thus it makes developing for that platform as a whole more expensive.

Another thing that Apple allows you to do that Nintendo probably won't is they allow you develop for thatever device you choose. Want to make an app that just runs on iPhone. Go ahead. Just iPad? All the power to you. Apple TV and iPad? Have at it. Will Nintendo allow this though? Something tells me they won't. If they are pushing for a unified platform they're going to want every game to exist on every specification, otherwise what's the point if consumers have to buy each spec to get access to the full library, right? Well what that means is that there are added development costs to develop on NX that developers will not have to endure to develop for other platforms. It means that NX will be the most expensive platform to develop for. That is a very, very hard sell if you're Nintendo and you're trying to convince third parties to come to your platform.

Well look at the devices I just gave as an example, the new iPod Touch & Apple TV. Both of these devices have the same SoC, Apple A8, the only difference in specs is the CPU in the iPod is slightly downclocked and the Apple TV has an extra GB of RAM. Wouldn't it be pretty simple to develop a game that runs on either device? Another example could be 3DS vs New 3DS, we have already seen games that are compatible on both devices but run better on the New 3DS.

Also when talking about control schemes, the New 3DS & Wii U Gamepad are pretty much identical. 4 face buttons, D-pad, 2 control pads, 4 shoulder buttons, secondary touch screen, accelerometer, gyrometer, NFC compatible. There is no reason to believe that the NX Portable & NX Console will have completely separate control schemes.

I honestly believe ur making it seem way more complicated than it really is, why do we have games that are available on iOS/Android/Windows/Steam/PS3/PS4/Vita/360/XB1/3DS/Wii U and that's not even taking into account the dozens of different iOS devices, dozens of Android devices and dozens of PC setups. Ur looking at games that are playable on 50+ different devices, we see this all the time and now it somehow takes too much time/money to make a game run on 2 devices with minimal differences? I'm just not buying it.


If it is so simple, then the vast majority of games available for the apple tv would be available for the iPod touch and vice versa. But their marketplaces are dramatically different, and there's a varitey of legitimate reasons why. For one, the controls for each are dramatically different - ipod touch with its touchscreen, apple tv with a remote. Secondly one is a handheld device vs something designed to be viewed on a television 6-8 feet away, which means you have to redo a huge chunk of the UI, and I haven't even gotten into accomodating the differences in the hardware - an extra GB of RAM when it comes to consoles can make a dramatic difference.

Regarding controls, there's been talk about ditching the double screen of the DS, and going to a touch screen, which means accomodating that, but you're right - they could be very similar, and it could be a minimal issue. But if there is any variance you're obviously adding additional development cost.

It's all fine and dandy that you really don't see the difference between a PC game engine and a console game engine. A PC game engine communicates with the system's OS, which controls/APIs which control the CPU, RAM, GPU etc. The PC game engine never sends instructions to hardware itself. It communicates through the OS which handles communicating with the processor, and whatnot. Because of this, you can get endless compatibility, because the hardware manufacturers just need to develop drivers/apis that tell the OS how to communicate with the hardware. Consoles on the otherhand don't really communicate with the hardware in the same way, yes, there's an OS that handles things like menu systems, online networking, cameras, controllers etc, and there are sections of the hardware such as the CPU, GPU and RAM that are dedicated to OS use, and are off-limits to the game engine. Aside from that, the Game engine communicates directly with the processor, gpu, etc, and of course use the API for higher level commands. As a result, you can get more out of the hardware, because you can optimize for that specific processor, and that specific hardware configuration. If there's a bottle neck in that specific hardware specification, you can accomodate that.  For the most part, you have a level of control with the hardware that is a tier greater than you have with a PC. As a result you can get significantly better performance out of a console than you could with a PC with identical specs.

As I said, Nintendo could go in this direction, make more or less the Nintendo version of Android, give developers PC-style access to the hardware, and keep those costs down, but in doing so they would be putting heavy constraints on what can be done on the hardware. Games would perform worst than people expect in nearly every way you can think of. Third parties or anyone developing an engine would have less control, and as a result, would have to work closer with Nintendo to work through issues related to the Operating System, API, etc in a similar way to how nVidia or ATi works with Microsoft to develop their drivers and APIs. I really doubt that kind of change would be welcomed by traditional game developers, but it may attact the iOS/Android development crowd, as that is the type of relationship they are used to having with hardware manufacturers.

If that is the case, then you need to ask yourself if you think the world would embrace Nintendo's more powerful version of the Ipod touch and apple tv.