| Soundwave said: There's nothing stopping them from making two Mario Karts, it's just the way it is now, those teams have no choice but to work on the same franchise for like 4-5 years straight. The portable *has* to have a Mario Kart, and then the console which probably is selling even worse than the portable obviously also needs a Mario Kart. So there's no choice given to those developers, they're stuck basically working on the same thing for a half-decade where at least in a unified structure, maybe the NX still gets two Mario Karts, but in between now the team has the luxury to develop something else, like maybe (gasp) a Splatoon type idea. I think regarding price, the best thing they can do is to up the value proposition of the next handheld. Let it run Android apps/games, Nintendo can pick and choose which ones are available through their eShop and even take a small cut of profit from downloads. But this gives the system a lot of value, because that regular Android tablet doesn't play Nintendo games, but now suddenly you have one device that has both. I also think letting the portable be a mini-console in and of itself (can stream to a TV) wouldn't be a bad idea too. A lot of people simply don't want to buy two seperate Nintendo devices, not everyone has $500 lying around to play Mario. So if you have a good chip in the portable, it'll be able to display good graphics on a television. So now I think you can charge $249.99 to launch instead of $199.99, you have enough value, just make sure you launch with *strong* games, no more launching with Nintendogs and nothing else for 6 months nonsense. Start with Zelda day 1, Smash All-Stars wouldn't be bad the following month, then Mario NX 2-3 months later, come out swinging. Throw in a free Amiibo too. For $250 this blows the shit out of a $200 3DS XL and this is good proactive evolution of Nintendo's portable brand in the wake of low-cost cheapo tablets, you have to differniate now from them too and there is no product like this on the market. In a year you'll be able to drop to $199.99, but you'll have a platform that has sooooooo much more developer support because you chose a powerful chip that lets devs actually bring over the content they're making in the modern generation, rather than having to rework a game from scratch for the portable. |
I don't know what's your issue with Mario Kart (or other major series like 3D Mario, Zelda). So between console and handheld we get a new entry every 3-5 years. Is that too frequent? It sure isn't for me, cause these series are my main interests in gaming. Also, since we're talking efficient use of Nintendo's teams, it makes a lot of sense to keep one team working on one franchise.
Generally you're sounding somewhat dismissive when you state people can "get their Mario fix" cheap or "not everyone has $500 lying around to play Mario". When I say AAA Nintendo titles, I'm thinking game changers like Mario 64 or Mario Galaxy, and masterpieces like console Zelda entries. A game like Galaxy is totally worth buying a system for. MK8 is in the same league. It annoys me when all things Mario are just summed up as "bit of jumping'n'running, same old, should be free on smartphones".
Regarding Android I have no opinion, I'm not following smartphone gaming at all. Not sure how this should make a difference when every human being owns an Android phone anyway. Nintendo's 40-60$ pricing will look even worse when you've got a myriad of 1$ games right there on the same app store. In terms of the system's price/performance your scenario is wishful thinking. 250$ for a machine that's both portable and producing console graphics above Wii U quality? 3DS is somewhere between N64 and GC, NX would have to surpass GC, Wii, Wii U AND be massively more power efficient. Oh and 1/3 the price of an iPhone.
