| Declan said: With just one system to focus software on, Nintendo should be able to maintain a steady supply of new first party releases, with AAA ones like Pokemon, Mario and Splatoon appearing at regular intervals. This should generate good and steady hardware sales, which in turn should see improved third party support (relative to the WiiU at least - you could argue that 3DS third party support is OK). Assuming it's not too expensive, l can't see the NX doing badly at all. |
The main issue are indeed the price and the compromise between home console and handheld. We can consider it like a better 3DS (but even the 3DS is not selling well compared to the DS), but it could be more expensive, more powerful but with less autonomy, maybe even more "chunky". A "powered-up" handheld console can have big drawbacks, especially for a younger audience and against mobiles and tablets.
We already know that the home console audience is not interested enough in the Nintendo IPs to buy their consoles massively if it doesn't have enough other things going for it (power, third party...).
It's all about balance here : they need to find the perfect point to use the strengths of both handheld and home consoles (price, power, autonomy, dev support, ergonomics...), and then need to explain and market it to at least 2 different audiences. It can be a huge success if they manage to do it flawlessly, but it can also be one of the biggest failures ever (on 2 markets) if anything goes wrong. Nintendo hasn't been that great in the last few years, so I'm curious but a bit pessimistic about it...
