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Soundwave on 30 September 2015
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Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:
I'm kind of the opposite mind.

If the handheld is weak in terms of specs ... people are going to scoff at buying it to play $40 games.

If you want to sell $40 portable games in today's market they better damn well be very high end games in the era of free smartphone games.

I think they need to go upmarket, not with a cheapo handheld. This is a narrow view of thinking.

If cheap handhelds were the answer here, why is the 2DS and cheaper regular 3DS models floundering more or less and not giving the 3DS the boost that it needs sales wise?

Also the unified platform thing doesn't work if the handheld can't run any of the super-awesome console games without having to be completely remade basically because the power gap is so large. That's not a unified platform. That's the same shitty situation they're in now.

Last Nintendo gen was most successful gaming generation ever, handheld had $150 launch price and console $250 launch price, thats one of reasons why those handheld and console were so popular. This gen we had $100 higher launch prices for both devices and that's one of reasons why they failed. Nintendo is always aiming for wider possible audience for their products, but that doesnt have sense if price of products isn't affordable.

I am pretty sure Nintendo with NX will again aim for affordable products with NX.

Probably I'm just saying that in and of itself is not some magic bullet. 

Today you can get tablets for $99.99 ... decent ones too, this one has an 1280x800 8-inch screen + a decent processor and 1GB of RAM:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-iconia-tab-8-8-intel-atom-16gb-silver/3261023.p?id=1219575793840&skuId=3261023

This is common place today. With free games. So good luck competing on budget market with $40 games, Nintendo. 

Even the PS4 will be an "affordable" $299.99 likely by fall 2016 too. 

The DS actually increased in price over time too. The Wii was ridiculously overpriced, it was a $99 GameCube overclocked with a cheap new controller thrown into the box and a tiny amount of flash RAM and a cheap WiFi chip. Those sold because people wanted those products. Not because of price. 

The 3DS and Wii U are the cheapest "current gen" handheld and console on the market right now.