But you see, that's just it - if you had said "all of these will be at E3", and hadn't described it as a prediction, I might have said it was unlikely enough to make it into the "could be proof" realm (although the other issues would still remain).

Like I said, something that might be convincing is a specific hint - something that is clearly and obviously accurate if it does show up, but which is completely cryptic now. For instance, suppose that you'd known ahead of time about the second Wii Zelda adventure. You might have said something along the lines of "a classic franchise will be heading skyward". Now, there's really no way, before hearing of Skyward Sword, to know that this is what is being referred to, but once it's announced, it's absolutely clear that it's what you were referring to. It doesn't give away anything ahead of time, but it demonstrates after announcement that you knew about it, because "skyward" is an unlikely word to show up in a game title.

But I dno't know anything about the names of the games being made, so those kind of hints is REALLY hard to make... Head over to my PS4 prediction thread and check out my predictions; I tried being cryptic, but... Well... I've some good guesses and some not as good ^^ But I think that reading this thread AND the PS4 thread the hints should add up...

On the flipside, going "a franchise from the PS1 era will make a return" is entirely generic - it coming true doesn't prove a thing, because anybody could guess that part, and if it doesn't explicitly come true, it could be easily hand-waved away using arguments like "Oh, I was referring to XYZ, which originated in the PS1 era and hasn't been seen for a few years". Kind of like how most horoscopes work - I just called up Aquarius on a horoscope site, and it says for today "He or she may see what you don't want to see". Not exactly an iron-clad prediction, that. The fact that you also don't know how your source knows these things is also a bit of a warning light, I must say.

I wish you could have told me all of this BEFORE I made that thread :P I think it's too late to change the hints now... I'm coming to think of a couple of hints now... damnit!

And coming back to the actual claim again, like I said, there's the problem of WHY Nintendo would do it. What possible benefit would Nintendo have for doing such a thing in the first place, when they've clearly been working so hard to address the third party issue over the last few years? It would be like Nintendo intentionally sabotaging their own efforts. A far more likely scenario is that the rumour of this thing happening originated from someone who has a stake in Sony (or maybe Microsoft), and isn't actually true. If it were true, there'd be at least one instance of it being leaked to the media already - it's way too big a deal for you to be the first to find out about it.

I don't know what's in it for Nintendo by doing this, and I don't know why it hasn't been leaked. That's why I'm trying to let this thread just... fade away... I'm trying to not reply to everybody writing here anymore.

Yes, I think they would have moved anyway because the game they wanted to make would not have fit on a cartridge.

FF7= 3 CD-roms, total game size roughly 1.8 GB according to Sony. N64 cartridge=64MB

http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Squaresoft%20and%20FF7.htm

This article features some interesting tidbits of what happened. Presumably Enix's Dragon Quest left Nintendo for the same reason.

Of course, there was a financial aspect as well, plus Nintendos relationship with Square seemed somewhat infectious at the time. In this case, though, I believe the technical limitations was the main reason for the split because it inhibited their artistic vision for the game.

1) When Sega went third party after dominating their own platforms' sales, they were everywhere too. But nobody considers third party Sega to be as strong as first party Sega. Not even close. It's not hard to imagine that Nintendo would be weakened as well after having to scale back their operations in order to survive as a company.

2) Games that take advantage of any given hardware pretty much always resonate better with the audience, because they convey the message that the developer was serious about making a good game. Games don't have to be exclusive to accomplish this and nowadays it's unreasonable to expect exclusive third party games on home consoles. This goes doubly so for the Wii U, because its sales levels are atrocious.

3) Your assumption is correct. Quality games spur sales of other games, because consumers are satisfied and usually want more whereas bad games might put off consumers from buying video games altogether.

4) I try to keep my posts as short as possible, it's just that certain subjects require several paragraphs to form a coherent argument and address possible questions in advance.

I will now claim two things: Cobretti2 lives in Australia. DanneSandin has sex with sheep.

If only one of these things can be proven to be true, then the other is true as well.

Yes, Nintendo has stronger IPs than Sega, but most of them aren't similar to third party games. Additionally, third parties couldn't care less, if LBP sold less. Lastly, much of Nintendo's success is attributed to them making their own hardware. With this advantage being removed, as well as Nintendo being crippled from being forced out of the hardware business, Nintendo should be nowhere near as strong as they are today anymore.

Assuming that Microsoft's console also ends up with 8 GB of RAM, that is what happened to it.   With both of them having that much RAM, third-party codes to that and won't bother with Nintendo's offering.  This change makes a difference.

Once again, if the PRICE PER MB of cartridge ROM matched CDs, what would be the point of moving?

The number you quoted is ADRESSABLE cartridge space. Look up memory mappers to see how the NES bypassed it's 32KB space limit.

As Yamauchi said, they could fit ANY size game on a cart, and he was right...to an extent. The only thing holding them back WAS cost.

Actually, I'm going to admit you're theoretically right since it could've been possible to change carts. 1.8 GB on 64 MB carts means about 30 cartridges. So, yes, in that sense you are correct. However, if the N64 would have had a CD-ROM they probably would have released it on that platform, which again, makes it a technical question. N64 with CD-ROM=FF7 (possibly), N64 without CD-ROM=no FF7 (fact).

Here are some quotes to ponder in the meantime.

Yoshinori Kitase (director of FF7):

"But as our goal was to develop the next-generation RPG we came to the conclusion that only a high capacity mass storage media would facilitate what we wanted to achieve. This meant CD was the only option and so from that perspective, PlayStation was the only choice."

http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-final-fantasy-vii/

Hironobu Sakaguchi:

"As a result of using a lot of motion data + CG effects and in still images, it turned out to be a mega capacity game, and therefore we had to choose CD-ROM as our media"

http://www.lostlevels.org/200510/