DonFerrari said:
MrCkurab said:
For all those asking why they didnt show at E3, I've got another theory:
Its simply not ready yet.
Here is what I believe could have happened:
- End of 2012: Wii U is released. Sales are mediocre at best, but no one is actually worried. They still have a whole year.
- Beginning to mid 2013(?): First concepts for the next home console are made, but progress is slow. With the Wii U just out there is no need to hurry.
- End of 2013: Xbox One and PS4 are released, the latter is a huge success quickly surpassing the Wii U and leaving its competition in the dust, despite possible problems in form of the blue light of death and the playroom scandal.
- Mid 2014: Crisis at Big N: Despite several well received high profile games like Pikmin 3, Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8, not to mention a price drop, new bundles, special offers, and a incredibly well received E3 showing the Wii U is hardly gaining any steam. The possible need to release the next console much earlier is considered for the first time.
- End 2014: Crisis part 2: Despite more great games and other trys to winning over consumer, its become obvious that the Wii U has no chance against the competition. Project NX is accelerated and revised to make sure the mistakes of the Wii U will not be repeated, simultaniously other Buisness opporturnities are sought after to stabilize Nintendo (Mobile, Movies, Theme Parks, etc...)
- Beginning of 2015: While announcing there partnership with DeNA Nintendo also announces work on NX, at that point probably just past final prototyping.
Let's crunch some Numbers:
In general a console needs at least 4-5 years from concept to product, often longer! Even in the best scenario NX has been in development for just a bit longer than 3 years, likely with several radical revisions and changes along the way. While the schedule was likely revised for the shorter timeframe as well, there are still the games. A good, solid AAA game takes at least 3 years. And we are talking about Nintendo AND new hardware here!
Yes, they probably took some Wii U games and started developing them for NX instead, but in the same time they still needed to make games for Wii U, 3DS and now mobile too, all the while keeping NX as secret as possible.
In case you havent noticed: Thats a ton of work to do in three short years!
Its very likely that there is still lots to do!
All this is even more interesting if you consider one of the Wii U's biggest failures: Its catastrophic first impression upon consumers.
"What is this? Another Wii Add ON? Some HD Handheld? A Nintendo tablet?"
Nintendo is aware of how badly they screwed up back then.
The obvious lesson is to make sure that this time, the first impression is a good one, like the PS4 did it back in 2013!
So the reason why we didnt see NX at E3 was likely that Nintendo still isnt confident that it will deliver a worthwhile first impression, and wasnt ready to risk a repitition of Wii U @ E3 2012.
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Errrrr... no way in hell a console take 5 years to be developed and released.
They seem to take 5 years because after release of a console the P&D team start to look at what they want to be their next console. So I would cut it down to less than 2 years for the console developing (with 1 year already having prototypes and specs).
And games for new gen are developed at target specs and only after having dev kit it's optimized for it... so nope, that shouldn't impact that much the release of games for NX or even the console itself.
The only reason for several postpones on the console itself would be wanting technology not mature enough to be part of the console or not knowing exactly what you want to dev.
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Ehhm, yes they do.
From the first concepts to final release the standard time is about 5 years, give or take a few.
Yes, if you want/need to be faster that is quite possible, and yes, the first years are very slow with a small team as the new console isnt priority yet. But under normal circumstances you can assume that the work on a new console begins about 6 month after the release of the last. Only notable difference in the last decades was on of the old Xbox-models if I recall correctly.
This process can be accelerated, eg. put more people to it early on, dont experiment that much and specify the prototypes faster, etc...
but the balancing of features, tech, price, specs, software, os, games, etc... still takes a whole lot of time.
At the same time the whole thing must be communicated with third parties, you need to prepare marketing, and you have to take care of your current buisness, as I said a f*ckton of work that needs to be coordinated between a myriad of people and companies and subsidiaries and much more.
There are hundreds of reasons why a console is or can be postponed, same with games, especially if they are developed for new hardware, trust me, I actually work in game development, I know this stuff! Its fun yes, but it sure as hell aint easy!
