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Soundwave on 04 May 2016
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MohammadBadir said:
Soundwave said:

That's a good question actually.

The console should go a little more upmarket in that case and be able to run some high end third party games that the portable won't be able to handle.

Beyond that though, I don't think it's even a choice so much. If you want a PS3-style portable and a PS4-style console, developing for both is not feasible because development costs are so much higher, it'd basically be like asking Nintendo to make two consoles. Even Sony/MS would buckle and break trying to support two systems like that, no chance in hell Nintendo "never met a delay I didn't like" would be able to satisfactorily support two systems.

Look at the 3DS and Wii U as is ... you have angry people on both sides right now saying they're not getting enough content. It will get worse as time goes on, the whole Nintendo console-handheld dynamic was never designed for such development requirements, it was all fine and dandy when portable games were just small little things that could be knocked out by a group of 10-15 people if need be. That's impossible now. Realistically a PS3/360 level Mario Kart would require basically the same staff as the PS4-XB1 version.

You can't just treat the portable like some kid-brother second thought anymore either. The portable is where the majority of Nintendo fans are and have been for several generations now running. So if the portable has the technology, then it deserves its own Mario Kart, 3D Mario, 2D Mario, 2D Zelda, yes now even 3D Zelda, Animal Crossing, etc. etc. etc. Something has to give.

Nintendo can't survive forever with their content split in half the way it is, while there are potential downsides to unifying there are also practical reasons why its needed now.

I've never really argued against the idea of 2 platforms with similar development environments and some shared games, I'm just against the idea of 2 platforms with close specs and a completely shared library. I understand that Nintendo's not gonna be able to support 2 platforms at once in the current scheme of things. The 3DS and WiiU have completely different architectures and development environments, and that's the main problem IMO. By having a unified development environment, they could overcome that and increase game output, but we can't really pretend that an NX with barely any 3rd party support could survive, we've seen what happened with the WiiU. The NX console needs to be a good speced machine, with decent marketting (Nintendo now has the chance to at least shed their kiddy image a little bit since they're dropping the Wii brand), it needs to be easy to develop for so 3rd parties could profit even from initially low sales (which would increase if a steady 3rd party output remains), and with a unified architecture with a later released handheld, indies could port with ridiculous ease and some shared games (or even more shared "base" games like a 3D Mario or Mario Kart), I think it could be a sweet deal.

I think the consumer has overwhelmingly chosen not to buy both systems anyway. Most people don't *want* to have to buy two systems (thus paying like $500) just to play Nintendo games.

At some point Nintendo just needs to accept that and they probably have I think. The 3DS has 50 million owners, at best 13 million chose to buy a Wii U. Even with the GBA, 60 million GBA owners chose not to buy a GameCube. People don't like buying two pieces of hardware to get the same franchises.

Nintendo should just accept that, trying to force people to buy two hardware components in today's day and age is very hard. Just have a unified platform and let people buy the hardware that works for their life style, you can't dictate to people like it's 1989 anymore, people have too much choice and are too well informed these days.

Bottom line too is most money is made from *software* sales too, the hardware has always been sold at razor thin margins ... so who gives a crap if person X/Y/Z buys two systems or one, the point is to sell games not to get their allegiance in being a "real" hardcore Nintendo fan or something.