RolStoppable said:
zorg1000 has maintained consistency in his position, but you have been all over the place. Over the past two years you've covered pretty much everything: Nintendo should make a $400+ system to compete with Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo should make a hybrid console, Nintendo should focus on handhelds and only provide a micro console for use at home, Nintendo will eventually shift to mobile as their primary platform of development, Nintendo should form an alliance with Microsoft or Sony, etc. So if something is reminiscent of something you said, it would be because of that. Nintendo has already announced a strategy to benefit from smartphones, so it's unlikely that they will have to run their handheld business at a loss in the future and that hardware sales of the next handheld will come in below the 3DS. The console side is far from a lost cause; the only thing that should be clear to everyone (sadly it still isn't) is that a Nintendo PlayStation won't work. And even though you have recently said things like "a third company competing for the same crowd is one too many" and "80% of Nintendo's games don't use the processing power of the Wii U", you still fantasize about a hardcore Nintendo console that launches alongside a Family Edition of the NX home console. |
I personally would like a hardcore console, but that's different from what I would if I was running Nintendo or what I think Nintendo will actually do.
I've said fairly consistently, NX will likely be a multi-device overarching platform with a shared software (and that means DS styled cartridges as physical games, which I got crap for saying) and using mobile style components that scale up and down. Similar to the PowerVR GPU line or the Tegra X1 mobile GPU which today can already push PS3+ visuals in a mobile power envelope.
The distinction of having a Family Console and Pro Console is just taking the concept a little further. We accept multiple handheld models ... if Nintendo truly is forsaking the old rules, then where's it written that there can only be one console config? That's more to make a point though, to get people to think a little more broadly about the concept. That I'm not so sure if Nintendo will do, but it's an option.
If you're going to abandon the traditional model, then I say embrace it fully, because in that scenario the more different you are from the quote unquote "standard rule book for making a console", likely the better off you are.
I don't pretend there's a magic silver bullet here though that will magically ensure Nintendo success. They have put themselves in a very bad position in a very competetive market, and they could fail too even with a reasonably good effort. I don't discount that possibility.
