Soundwave said:
QoL will be out in spring 2015, I think Nintendo's already said that before, I think they will unveil it early next year and I think it will be more unconventional and pretty far removed from gaming than people think. I thought it was interesting in reference to QoL that Iwata stressed that Nintendo has only been a game company for about 30 of their 125 year history, so I think he's setting the stage for a product that is very different from their game business (and that's kind of the point -- they don't want to be at the mercy of a volatile, always shifting game market). The other Nintendo platform that "redefines" video games that Iwata mentioned would take two years, but that's a pretty good buffer gap there. QoL = spring 2015 New Nintendo gaming platform = spring 2016 Nintendo should move quickly if they are readying a fusion type device, because it could be old hat if they wait too long. The Wii U tablet probably seemed like a great too ... in 2008 or so, buy by the time Nintendo brought it to market by 2012, everyone and their grandma was saying "uh, I already have a tablet, what's so special about that?". Apple/Google I think are going to be moving to integrate their iOS/Google Play apps more and more with televisions in the next couple of years, Nintendo needs to move quickly on this if they want to not look they're late to the party again.
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Well, Iwata did say next fiscal year, but I thought spring 2015 seemed too early and a holiday boost made more sense. Here's there original QoL words back in Jan: "This new business will be launched during the fiscal year ending March 2016, which begins in April 2015. " Some website's were reporting April as a literal date, but nintendo was the time of the next FY. If your are right about your interpretation, would nextDS in late'16 count as two years?
I had more to say about QoL and I don't see it as a video game device in a traditional sense. Game on it will be Wii-series and Brain-age-like. I think Nintendo would want to position QoL as their main platform in emerging markets to get a big foothold in some traditionally non-console-gaming countries. Consoles may be niche in some countries but health concern is not. I'm expecting it to connect with smart devices, nextDS, nextNES, etc. Connecting to Nintendo devices would probably be recommended for best results. They will all share compatibility, connectivity, online, OS, dev sofware, and arch/ISA but each will have disctint differences (type of games/soft, target market, and form factor). That is my idea of Nintendo's unification or fusion.
I think 3DS' successor in late'16 or early'17 and late'17 for WiiU' successesor. I've seen your previous posts about Fusion, I'm wandering what did you mean by that? Because I don't think Nintendo would merge their handheld and consoles for the reasons Shadow1980 wrote. Nintendo themselves recently commented on this in Question/Answer#6:
"Currently, Nintendo has both the home console and handheld platforms, and we would see great results if both of these platforms performed very well; however, our business would become mediocre if one of them faltered, and if both of them were to falter, it would very negatively affect our business. We have decided to establish new business platforms not for being pessimistic about the future of the video game business, but to prepare for a challenging situation."-Iwata