Nice reading.. And theorys.. Keep up :)

Btw.. I think the "hybrid" will happend..

But also that Nintendo will do a next (real) gen home consol.. based on VR..

Nintendo has all the component.. Motion controll, Lag less wireless gyro controlled screen.. And the fact that they have worked on it longer than any other consol maker... and even made a VR product for the public.. years back..

I'm 99% sure Wii-R will happend.. and i think we need to adress this when we talk Nintendo next gen to..

(It makes no sense just to talk about.. ms/sony/facebook or samsung when talking VR in few years..
When Nintendo believed in all the other elements to use in VR.. and "testet" the tecnology years ago.. Who can sell alot of old games again (in VR versions) And who are the ones who every single time.. analog - wireless - rumple - motion - touch - glasses free 3d And the gyrocontrolled wireless second screen (just to name some) gave us the new ways to game)

"we don't expect to see the firm releasing the exact same games on both systems; rather we expect to see titles similar to its existing efforts, tailored and refined for each audience - just with a common architectural underpinning that makes behind-the-scenes development that much faster."

Totally agree with this. they will just make software development faster.

Fixed!

I'm really looking forward to see if they can pull off both third-party friendly console architecture that is scalable enough for their next handheld - which will be quite a task, if they decide to pursue that path.

Considering that next gen PS and XBox are expected to have around (current tech) 15TFLOPS GPUs, IMO, Nintendo can't go under at least 5TFLOPS if they expect 3rd parties to relatively easily port their games - and that would, again IMO, call for handheld that is at least as powerful as iPad Air 2 or nVidia Shield Tablet (or maybe even more).

Needless to say, in this scenario, both console and handheld would be fairly expensive for Nintendo's design philosophy, so I'm more inclined to believe that we will see less powerful hardware, and most likely again lack of 3rd party support.

Honestly, I'm hoping I'm dead wrong and they eventually manage to make something that is scalable, yet powerful enough for 3rd parties.

So what the article says is that Nintendo will still launch both a handheld and a home console that will be independant from each other but that will share the architecture of their hardware (that doesn't mean that they will have the same specs) and OS to allow devs that work on both devices to develop or port their games to one platform or the other with ease.

That will greatly help indie developers with their eShop games and also Nintendo which I hope uses that extra time to bring new games not more entries if the same games (for example the Mario Kart team to make a Mario Kart game and then a Diddie Kong game or another arcade, racing, game instead of 2 Mario Kart games).

I agree with that, but I don't think that there are many doubts of Nintendo going with AMD again.

They have to drop backwards compatibilty on a hardware level, that is the most important thing.You can not move forward if you're restricted by older tech. If they could manage software emulation that would be nice otherwise they have to let it go.

I've been thinking about Nintendo's next console a lot recently, they could gain so much if they design the system appropriately and were willing to risk going for a more core market. I will probably create a thread for it tonight but this is what i imagined would be a killer system which could surpass the N64 in terms of profitability.

Nintendo/N9:

-x86 Architecture,
-14nm chip, 7TF GPU, CPU on par with i7, 16GB Ram
-1.5TB HDD
-Gamepad successor with a smaller 5'' screen and traditional form factor (think Dreamcast x PS4 controller), built in mic for voice recognition and built-in camera for eye tracking and gesture recognition.
-Emphasis on console physical design unlike the Wii U.
-Launch: 2017
-Price tag: $449 at launch, $349 by the time X2/PS5 arrives.

Nintendo said they don't like the idea of people wearing a helmet and being socially isolated.

I want to say 9TF but maybe overkill considering diminishing returns

Well, unless they can pull a Wii type surprise every gen, IMO, it wouldn't be such a bad idea for them to reconsider their overall strategy, image and how much 3rd party support is essential for mainstream gamers.

In my view, they still have pre-teen audience pretty much locked (at least in home consoles), but, except for Nintendo fans, they pretty much lost T+ audience to MSony. Considering they don't make/publish much games that caters to that audience, 3rd parties are the way for them to make a console that is famlily oriented - and by that I mean console that has games for little kids, teens and parents as well.

But as I said, I fully expect them to ignore 3rd party requirements next time too, but hoping I'm wrong on that as well.