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Forums - Nintendo - Will Nintendo's next handheld and console use Power PC like the Wii U?

spemanig said:
Soundwave said:

The issue is still in that case, using say an ARM + Qualcomm GPU is far more efficient and cheaper than trying to shoehorn/downsize the Wii U chip literally.

It's just not possible. I think the eDRAM on the Wii U would be another killer too. 

If they want Wii U type performance that runs at a lower resolution, like say 960x540 ... yeah sure that should be doable by middle of 2016 for $200-$250.


Why couldn't that just run Wii U games then, but downscaled to fit with the hardware? Why can't Nintendo have the Wii U's infrustructure be the start of this "unified OS" and "games on multiple playforms?" Why couldn't the Wii U and it's library and OS be the base for which all future platforms are based?

Because I just told you, you literally cannot take the Wii U chip and put it into a handheld. It isn't feasible. It would have to be a completely different chip. 

Assassin's Creed IV runs on a Wii U, but that doesn't mean it has the same chip as a PS3. It just means they ported the game to a different chipset. 

The best thing Nintendo could do right now is greenlight Super Mario Galaxy 3, Animal Crossing Next, and Mario Kart 9 for this new handheld platform now with the aim of the games being ready in 2 years time (summer 2016). They should then launch that handheld then and maybe suppliment the lineup with certain Wii U and 3DS ports (DKC: Tropical Freeze, Youkai Watch 3 HD, etc.). 



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backwards compatibility is pointless if you can't make it easy for devs to port.

keep your old consoles, play the games how they meant to be originally.



 

 

zorg1000 said:

Every single game has to be AAA quality?

Im pretty sure 3DS has sold over 40m in a little over 3 years due to Nintendo games, Japanese 3rd parties and family friendly western titles. When was the last time AAA western games were the driving force of any Nintendo platform? Oh ya never in there 30 or so years as a hardware manufacturer.


No, but a lot of them do. Most of the 3DS library wouldn't last a year on a home console. Nintendo's hardware has been on a decline for the 30 years they've been a hardware manufacturer. Guess why.



Soundwave said:

Because I just told you, you literally cannot take the Wii U chip and put it into a handheld. It isn't feasible. It would have to be a completely different chip. 

Assassin's Creed IV runs on a Wii U, but that doesn't mean it has the same chip as a PS3. It just means they ported the game to a different chipset. 

The best thing Nintendo could do right now is greenlight Super Mario Galaxy 3, Animal Crossing Next, and Mario Kart 9 for this new handheld platform now with the aim of the games being ready in 2 years time (summer 2016). They should then launch that handheld then and maybe suppliment the lineup with certain Wii U and 3DS ports (DKC: Tropical Freeze, Youkai Watch 3 HD, etc.). 


I don't see why they can't just do what iOS does. It's obviously possible to some capacity.

And that's not going to happen, nore would it be anything other than a completely destuctive idea.



zorg1000 said:
Alot of people in here are talking about porting from PS/Xbox/PC to Nintendo's next console/handheld but if they do go with a unified approach where all games run on both platforms then do they really need the major 3rd party titles?

I kinda think thats a major reason for going with this strategy so that they can essentially support themselves without the need of 3rd parties, of course they will still be welcome but not absolutely necessary, its not like Nintendo home consoles have really gotten excellent 3rd party support for the last 20 years and when they do the games usually sell much worse than the competition.

Nintendo has excellent software output, the only problem is that they are spread out across two seperate platforms resulting in droughts but if all the games released on there handhelds were also on there consoles and vice versa then Nintendo may honestly be able to pump out an exclusive every month. Combine that with the fact that Nintendo handhelds always have excellent support from Japanese 3rd parties and u have devices with a steady stream of high quality software.

I dont see Nintendo doing a exclusive every month. Also the successors will be having higher resolution games than the current 3DS and Wii U, so it will require more development time/cost. Also gamers wont be supporting the same IPs for long time when others are moving with diverse games with their exclusives and 3rd parties. I really doubt nintendo future in both Handheld and Home console. They can only have success in Portable (only if they have cheap and providing software library llike 10 exclusives every year because there will be no 3rd party for future due to they are attracted mobile install base for portable games) and Console is impossible due to PS/Xbox which solidified their position with trust from 3rd parties, gamers and prepared network/First party teams to pump games at reasonable pace for next gen.



GAMING is not about spending hours to pass/waste our time just for fun,

its a Feeling/Experience about a VIRTUAL WORLD we can never be in real, and realizing some of our dreams (also creating new ones).

So, Feel Emotions, Experience Adventure/Action, Challenge Game, Solve puzzles and Have fun.

PlayStation is about all-round "New experiences" using new IP's to provide great diversity for everyone.

Xbox is always about Online and Shooting.

Nintendo is always about Fun games and milking IP's.

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Either way, anything anyone suggest here is just not going to happen (Nintendo going x86, Nintendo making a handheld equal to the Wii U)

If anything, the next home console will be similar to the Wii U with more boom on a level only slightly higher than the PS4. A lot can happen in 5 years too. Hell there could be no PS5. All we can do is speculate and know that the fusion specs were false. :)

What i'm hoping is Nintendo have main console with a portable console that doubles as a controller like the WIi U :). Insta-success. Simple to market too. BC to Wii U and Wii, multi-use accounts. etc etc etc... .what WE need is someone to make a thread for fantasy features. for the consoles or for someone to link to one because i got weird ideas in my head.

Like uh... x-ray goggles on XBO etc lol



spemanig said:


But Sony and Microsoft don't, which causes an issue for ports, right? And they can't make x86 and PowerPC scalable? I don't think they'll drop BC for anything. The last time they did that was with the GCN. Dropping BC would go against everything they said in January.


It doesn't really matter what Sony and MS do. If Nintendo wants a system that is scalable from handheld to console on the same architecture where it is trivial to port games between the two they will most likely not be able to compete with the next round of consoles from them anyway. And Nintendo have shown they really don't care about 3rd parties with the design of the Wii U. ARM is a widely used architecture that has lots of documentation and mature tools, the CPU architecture doesn't really make a huge difference in programming these days anyway.

Sure you can make any architecture scalable if you are willing to spend enough money. I doubt Nintendo want to spend hundreds of millions to have IBM or another PowerPC partner design a whole new generation of PowerPC CPUs just for their own uses. You have to realise that PowerPC is a dieing architeture, there isn't much of a future in it IMO. The only company that has managed to scale an X86 chip too anything even close to ARM in terms of power effeciancy is Intel and they don't license out their designs so Nintendo would have to buy chips directly from Intel at a premium and that would mean they would be able to make fewer modifications to the architecture which they like to do.

ARM is really the most logical choice for a scalable architecture that is targeting mobile and home console.  with them going for a unified acount based system next gen it makes sense tohave a clean break and start over so they can easily keep BC in the future. I doubt backwards compatability with the Wii U is worth the investment given the costs involved for the gain they would get from it. They can always sell you the same stuff again as they like to do, I mean they broke backwards compatability with the gamecube for no real reason (homebrewers even managed to create a hack that lets you play the games on Wii U), and they are happy to sell remasters of those games.



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amak11 said:

Either way, anything anyone suggest here is just not going to happen (Nintendo going x86, Nintendo making a handheld equal to the Wii U)

If anything, the next home console will be similar to the Wii U with more boom on a level only slightly higher than the PS4. A lot can happen in 5 years too. Hell there could be no PS5. All we can do is speculate and know that the fusion specs were false. :)

What i'm hoping is Nintendo have main console with a portable console that doubles as a controller like the WIi U :). Insta-success. Simple to market too. BC to Wii U and Wii, multi-use accounts. etc etc etc... .what WE need is someone to make a thread for fantasy features. for the consoles or for someone to link to one because i got weird ideas in my head.

Like uh... x-ray goggles on XBO etc lol

Its not easy to make portable and home console as single device because of the cost and the power required for each. They need to have more power than PS4 by 50% in 3 years and price should be around 300$ because by that time PS4/Xbox one will be 300$ or less with huge library. Its really difficult for Nintendo to provide Portable/Home console in a single package at affordable price. Also they need to prepare good library for launch and 2 years like 15 games and gain 3rd party, still its a doubt because PS/Xbox might see their successor in 2 years later after Wii U successor which will be more powerful and might be able support 4k/VR etc., which Nintendo again fails to catch up. The main problem is that Nintendo is a gen behind from PS/Xbox in everything and they are losing market share, support from 3rd parties, portable market is shrinking due to mobiles, Home consoles have huge competition and unable to produce enough games due to the increased development cost/time for higher resolution games.



GAMING is not about spending hours to pass/waste our time just for fun,

its a Feeling/Experience about a VIRTUAL WORLD we can never be in real, and realizing some of our dreams (also creating new ones).

So, Feel Emotions, Experience Adventure/Action, Challenge Game, Solve puzzles and Have fun.

PlayStation is about all-round "New experiences" using new IP's to provide great diversity for everyone.

Xbox is always about Online and Shooting.

Nintendo is always about Fun games and milking IP's.

zarx said:


It doesn't really matter what Sony and MS do. If Nintendo wants a system that is scalable from handheld to console on the same architecture where it is trivial to port games between the two they will most likely not be able to compete with the next round of consoles from them anyway. And Nintendo have shown they really don't care about 3rd parties with the design of the Wii U. ARM is a widely used architecture that has lots of documentation and mature tools, the CPU architecture doesn't really make a huge difference in programming these days anyway.

Sure you can make any architecture scalable if you are willing to spend enough money. I doubt Nintendo want to spend hundreds of millions to have IBM or another PowerPC partner design a whole new generation of PowerPC CPUs just for their own uses. You have to realise that PowerPC is a dieing architeture, there isn't much of a future in it IMO. The only company that has managed to scale an X86 chip too anything even close to ARM in terms of power effeciancy is Intel and they don't license out their designs so Nintendo would have to buy chips directly from Intel at a premium and that would mean they would be able to make fewer modifications to the architecture which they like to do.

ARM is really the most logical choice for a scalable architecture that is targeting mobile and home console.  with them going for a unified acount based system next gen it makes sense tohave a clean break and start over so they can easily keep BC in the future. I doubt backwards compatability with the Wii U is worth the investment given the costs involved for the gain they would get from it. They can always sell you the same stuff again as they like to do, I mean they broke backwards compatability with the gamecube for no real reason (homebrewers even managed to create a hack that lets you play the games on Wii U), and they are happy to sell remasters of those games.


Is there a way for them to use ARM while keeping BC? I still seriously doubt they're letting that go. Not with their plans to "absorb the Wii U's architecture."



Nintendo software is relatively easy to support, either a powerful of enough ARM or a streaming, should keep BC. They could also just create a Wii U to Fusion compiler and then have the Fusion read Wii U discs and download the Fusion versions, similar to how FFXIV is converted from PS3 to PS4. Problem is that the Wii U version could no longer be used and the game becomes digital, and someone would have to pay for this service cause porting these games and hosting the converted version won't exactly be cheap
IMO this is what PS Now should be, I might pay a fee for conversion. Ironically, this is kinda what TLOUR, minus the DLC, uprezzing would probably be another fee.
And truly, with this kind of service you wouldn't need the original copies since every one of the games from previous generations would become digital and ported to the new console.
But this would require a much beefier network architecture for Nintendo. An ultimately beneficial thing because Nintendo is barely coming in to mid 010s in terms of Network and Policies. it would prioritize SW more than HW but that is probably the best direction imo.



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