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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Prediction: Nintendo's 9th gen console to be both home and handheld in one

fedfed on 24 January 2013

So what it will be a main hub in your living room and a Nintendo Pad fully touch screen 3D remote and play on the go?

So the U-nintypad will be game console, remote control, music player, video player, e-reader and portable HD Tvii.

POSSIBLE! I CAN SEE THAT!

 

My only Issue are games? Are games going to be only digital? Or the PAD WILL PLAY CARTRIDGE AND MAIN HUB DISCS?

 

Can maybe digital games be interactive between the two? The pad will need massive memory!



Switch!!!

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BlkPaladin on 24 January 2013
RolStoppable said:
I don't rule it out entirely, because it would be the next step in Nintendo's self-destruction.

1) Financially, it's not feasible. Packing in the required power for third party developers, keeping it at a portable size, have sufficient battery life and a reasonable price is an impossibility. For that alone it's already a completely bad idea to even attempt this.

2) It has no practical purposes on a massive scale. I give you that home console and handheld in one would be a neat idea for singles, but that's about it. Since this device isn't going to be cheap, it will erode Nintendo's handheld market. Parents aren't going to buy their kids such an expensive device. Additionally, the people this thing will appeal to the most are the same that buy both a Nintendo home console and a Nintendo handheld today. If Nintendo combined their home console and handheld in a single device, you wouldn't see Nintendo gaining sales from it, but the opposite.

It's such a bad idea. It's a really, really, really bad idea.

With the advent of stream services the tech itself in the controller/main unit doesn't have to be that cutting edge, if an idea like this is paired with streaming technology it becomes fesible, plus they can still sell and stand along handheld with all the funcationality of the portable controlllers and extra features like phone service. They could also team up with Samsung or another cell phone manufacturer to do this. But only time will tell this is still a good five or so years down the road.



kitler53 on 24 January 2013

a good idea that will, imo, be old hat in 5-6 years. apple, ms, sony are already taking steps in that direction.



Carpevi on 24 January 2013

Only when they realize that this will sell more than a handheld + console, not before. In other words, only when they lose a huge part on both markets (or lose one of them almost completely). I can't see this happening in 2018.



happydolphin on 24 January 2013

RolStoppable said:

Stream services require a good online connection, so a good chunk of the market would be surrendered by default. It would also mean permanent additional costs for the consumers that do use it.

But that still doesn't solve the problems of size and battery life. I guess you could argue that we will have super effective batteries at reasonable prices a few years down the road, but the size issue remains. So even if several technological miracles take place, it still won't be a good idea.

The question is, how good is the 3DS in your view in terms of performance*battery value and how powerful do you expect that hybrid to be in 6 years, and how are you so certain that the performance*battery value will be relatively low?



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Screamapillar on 24 January 2013

It'll be three years from now, four years at the most before we see a 3DS successor announced, and five years before a Wii U successor. If they were to announce a device that replaced a home console and a handheld system it would either A) be too early because Wii U wouldn't have been on the market long enough or B) too late because 3DS will have been on the market too long and sales would have long since dried-up.



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happydolphin on 24 January 2013
RolStoppable said:

For the 3DS it's very low. The 3D screen needs more backlight than a normal screen, so that's draining additional power. The chipset in the 3DS produces graphics that are comparable to the sixth generation, so it's two generations behind. The Vita's graphics are only one generation behind eight gen graphics and its battery life is very low as well. If you upped the graphics to expected home console standards (from a third party perspective), you probably wouldn't get more than two or three hours out of such a handheld and that's on moderate to low settings for screen light and the like. Another problem is the heat that is produced by cutting edge technology, so cramming it into a small case (if it's even possible to make it small enough) would most likely result in a high failure rate or at the very least a machine that runs so hot that it can't be held with bare hands for an extended period of time.

The reason why I am certain is because of past precedence. You just need to consider which technology was put into previous handhelds and how long their batteries lasted.

The battery point I can understand, but the tech in the industry as a whole (tablets, smartphones, handhelds, etc.) are all pushing for new battery tech. By then I'm pretty positive that something innovative will come this way.

About heat, had we looked at the 3DS 10 years ago, from a PC and PSU perspective, wouldn't we say the same thing? As tech advances, so does heat efficiency, right?

@screamapillar. I see what you mean, and that's why 6-year cycles have been industry standard, but if you look at the NES I believe it lasted almost 10 years in Japan, and close to 8 years here. The gameboy lasted almost what 12 years until the GBA?



happydolphin on 24 January 2013
RolStoppable said:

I have my doubts that better battery tech will be mature enough for massproduction at a low price by 2018.

Heat becomes less of a problem as tried and tested technology advances. That's why revisions of home consoles become smaller. But that's not what your idea is about. You propose to put cutting edge technology in the casing of a system that doubles as a handheld. This technology, at the time it hits the market, will run hot quite easily. When the Nextbox and PS4 get unveiled, expect them to be big consoles, just like their predecessors. It will take fans to cool these things sufficiently. The same will hold true in the 9th gen.

Take the Vita for example, it was able to pull off something close to 7th gen cutting edge 1 gen later.

If the next U is released a half a cycle later this time, assuming the U succeeds and can permit that kind of delay (like the Gameboy or the NES), then with an extra 3 years it could pull off something like the PS4 some time within 9 years.



Otakumegane on 24 January 2013
Screamapillar said:

It'll be three years from now, four years at the most before we see a 3DS successor announced, and five years before a Wii U successor. If they were to announce a device that replaced a home console and a handheld system it would either A) be too early because Wii U wouldn't have been on the market long enough or B) too late because 3DS will have been on the market too long and sales would have long since dried-up.


Didn't the DS last like 7 years? Pretty sure Ninty could get away with it as long as they kept releasing games for the 3DS, prolong the cycle a little.

(Though I don't think the handheld/console thing is a very good idea for 9th gen, 10th gen maybe.)



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happydolphin on 24 January 2013
RolStoppable said:

Then the system would have 8th gen technology inside of it. But that's not what you were suggesting in your OP.

In OP, I said a super-deluxe 9th gen handheld hybrid, I didn't mean for it to be equivalent to a 9th gen purely home console, but super-deluxe for a hybrid. It would be basically a really optimized handheld way ahead of its time. It would be what U is to the PS4, 1 gen later, in a handheld.

If you look at the U, the internal aren't large at all. it's the Disk drive that takes up most of the space. If we were to go back to OP I made the point that they basically have twice the engineers to make it happen. :)

I guess it all depends on what's possible and what isn't come then, but if the consolidation of the R&D centers is any measure of hope, I'd be optimistic, wouldn't you?