Soundwave said:
It could "flop" ... 2/3 of Nintendo's last consoles did basically flop. 3/4 of them dissapointed. 4/5 of their last consoles have had declining sales.
I do think NX will improve over the Wii U/3DS era in considerable ways, but that doesn't guarantee higher sales. The GameCube improved on the N64 in several ways and still managed to sell less.
I think one of the problems Nintendo has is even if NX as a hardware is a good sized improvement and even if it has a better library early on than the Wii U did ... Nintendo is still very much out of touch with what the core of the console business is *today*. They don't have any Western executive who understands the Western market which is 90+% of the business now. They don't have any IP that's specifically a bit hit with older gamers aside from their faithful portion of fans. They don't have a COD, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Halo type franchise though that appeals to modern gamers, virtually everyone in the console business does and those are the types of IP that drive the market today, look at the NPD top 10 software chart, look at any Euro chart.
That and the competition is simply too fierce now I think. Sony/MS have one end of the market served, Apple/Google are incredibly successful with the casual market. There is not much left in between, Sony is very good at getting "middle core gamers" and kids too, you don't sell 40 million units in under 2 1/2 years with just "hardcore gamers".
And yes the mid-generation release could be problematic for Nintendo. Is this thing even going to match the PS4.5? If not, it will be another Nintendo consoles that's pretty much outdated right at launch. Personally I'll be happy with Nintendo games in even PS4-tier graphics, but the general audience may not be impressed with that at all seeing as how they're already used to PS4-tier graphics for several years now.
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In a way though, the bar for Nintendo is not high. Unless they really dropped the ball, it can't be worse than 13-14 million. They would have to have no intriguing games at all, zilth marketing, and no features that intrigues anybody but the very few millions. Plus, who knows what their handheld audience could do. 58 million 3DS owners are still Nintendo fans technically, at least the majority of them, so who knows if they get involved in investing on the NX. But then again, we don't know anything about it, just assuming its a next-gen console. We'll also have to see how Nintendo's new ventures (mobile, films, theme parks, amiibo, etc.) will affect the NX as their purpose is to not just generate money, but increase awareness of Nintendo's IPs.
