Soundwave said:
Lets wait to see the specs, it could run even XB1/PS4 games portably, just at a lower resolution. 960x540 is 1/4 the pixels of a 1920x1080 frame, a 400-500 GFLOP Nvidia GPU could certainly run PS4/XB1 ports on the go. The home dock could then run those games at 1080P. That to me makes a lot of sense. Dragon Quest XI and Zelda: BoTW both are announced for the system, both are huge games. You're wrong about the cart size, 32GB is 32GB, Nintendo hasn't used that metric since like the 1990s, there are already 3DS games larger that are like 4GB. 32GB cards are dirt cheap these days, wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo is able to get those for as cheap as $1 a pop. |
I'm fairly sure I'm right about cartridge sizes. Normally when Nintendo announces a portable console they give cartridge size information in gigabits not bytes and early 3DS games can be as small as 128 megabytes looking at rom sites. Mario 3D was 512 megabytes but even if wrong there has been no dramatic change between generations in cart sizes, its more evolution and slight cartridge size increase rather than radical change. I.e. if 3DS was small capacity 128 megabytes, middle 512 megabytes and large 2 gigabytes then probably the next generation will come in at 512 megabytes, 2 gigabytes and 4 or 8 gigabytes top capacity and that would work with the claimed capacities in bits converted to bytes. I dont' think this is surprising as Nintendo still has to pay market value by memory capacity for cartridges. Its not going to be economic to make true 32 gigabyte or 64 gigabyte games. There is no way Nintendo can compete with the capacity of games for ps4, pc or xbone. Also with cartoon graphics like Zelda and Dragon's quest you don't have the need for such capacity. If the game isn't attempting to look realistic requiring huge texture resources then clearly the game code can be much smaller.
I'm not interested in buying into a system with cutdown ps4 and xbone games at lower resolution just to take them on the move because portable gaming isn't important to me. There may be others that see that as a huge selling point and I hope they do but I'm not interested in that.
The only reason I'll buy an NX if its as the eurogamer information has stated is NX exclusive games that I feel I must play. However I've come to realise more recently that I'm buying more games than I have time to play and must cut back so they must be pretty much amazing. Zelda U looks like a game like that but I'll use my wii u for that one. Nintendo are doing a lot of re-releasing of games that I don't need so really it would need to be another huge mario or zelda game. The NX may get a new Zelda game many years in so won't have to buy a NX for that for many years. A new Mario game might temp me but Mario 3D wasn't for me the same quality as something like Mario 64. I think there is a strong possibility that the NX will be far less appealling to me than even wii u. Even now I find both xbox 360 and ps3 both technically and in the software range superior to wii u.
Anyway I think people need to have realistic expectations of what the NX will be. Even if the NX has the latest Nvidia chipset its unlikely to be full speed and game cartridges will limit its scope. It's based on hardware more common to android devices than mainstream consoles and is more likely to get enhanced android ports rather than cut down ps4/xbone ports. It would be huge work to take a top ps4 title and cut it down for NX and the NX may be a more niche console anyway that would not merit it. At least the wii u was a very similar console to ps3 and xbox 360 and so porting from those was easy except for the weaker cpu and lack of hard drive for some games. The NX architecture only enables easy porting of android code. It's highly likely Nintendo are trying to benefit from a fixed platform that can get enhanced versions of android games easily. That's where NX multi-format support is likely to come from. Don't get me wrong these android ports may be amazing and the ultimate versions of such games but pushing the boundaries of games will be done elsewhere.
