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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo NX: Hardware Specs, Games, Third Party Support And Everything You Need To Know

Miyamotoo said:

I think Steam Boy could play almost any PC game in 720p, depending of game itself it will be low, mid or high settings, but in time it will be weak, beacuse it will play PC games, not console games.

And, like I wrote, we all know that games made for consoles requires much weaker hardware specs than PC games.


Never. If thats true, i would really be impressed. But im 100% true its not possible yet. Mabye in 2020+



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Wyrdness said:
AZWification said:

Digital only? Oh, boy... I really hope Nintendo won't go in that direction with the NX.. :/


It's not saying digital only it's saying digital with some kind of non disc format as a memory card of some sort is indicated in the patent something a digital only device doesn't need.

 


It looks like it's saying digital only. The Memory card seems to be just that ... the memory card slot (SD Card). The game data is stored on the HDD in the diagram. That's just my take from reading the patent. 



JEMC said:
Miyamotoo said:
JEMC said:
Miyamotoo said:

In case that @Soundwave mentioned, itins simple portable, its something between home and handheld console, home and handheld in one device, portable that can stream games wirelessly to the TV, that definitely would worth around $250 price point.

A handheld that connects to the TV to play games on it is not a home console. Otherwise, the PSP, which you could connect to the TV with a simple components cable, could also be called a home console... and it wasn't.

And the device you both mention is maninly a handheld console, so its capabilities (like battery life) and price will be judged accordingly. At then, the $250 price point will make it fail like it did with the 3DS.

Also, both you and Soundwave don't remember or ignore that not so long ago Nintendo said (unfortunately, I could not find a link to the exact statement) that while in Japan the handheld market is still viable unlike the home consoles market that has shrunk a lot, in the west the situation is the complete opposite and is very home console orientated. Therefore, the most logical approach would be to only launch the NX handheld in Japan and the NX home console in the west, as that's what the market demands.

Will Nintendo do it? Of course not! It's ridiculous! It's almost as ridiculous as to think that Nintendo will launch a device to work as a portable and home console, but gives a gimped experience to one or both group of users: handheld gamers could get an overpowered (to get higher than Wii U level of graphics) machine that as a result has a low battery life or home console gamers could end with a weak machine (because it will have improved graphics compared to the 3DS, but they will still be far, far away from the competition).

PSP could connect to TV and played game only on small part of TV and game looked pretty bad. NX could basicly do what Wii U doing, 720p on TV and 720p on device itself.

Like I wrote, that wouldn't be just handheld, handheld that can act like home console, so you really can't compare that with 3DS and 3DS price point.

Define home console, whats a main point of home console!? Playing games on your TV and staying at home, this will be some sort of mobile home console or if you like handheld that acts like home console.

That is probably main reason why Nintendo will be probably do this, because in Japan people can use this device like classic handheld and at West like clasisic home console, this is a device for handheld and home console users, it will targeting both in same time.

Like Soundwave mentioned, maybe there will be some optional device, dock or some sort of addon for 1080p and reacher graphic.

PSP games looked bad because of the resolution, just like Wii games looked bad (with a lot of jaggies) on big screens. That doesn't go against my point.

Yes, I can compare NX and 3DS if NX ends up being a handheld that connects to the TV. It's just another handheld feature.

I'll be honest, I no longer can define what a home console is. Since the PS2 era, the line between a home console and a multimedia device started to blurry. With the PS3/Xbox360 that line became even more blurrier and in this gen... well, remember the discussions about the back then xbox720? Oh, 2014. Well, you could be here as a lurker, there were a lot of people and analysts (what a surprise) that believed that it would be a media center that played videogames rather than a videoconsole with media capabilities. And then with Wii U having a screen that makes TVs unnecessary...

Your last two points lead to me to my final point: price, audience and resources management. If it's a 2 on 1 kind of device, Nintendo will have to sell them the whole package, not only the "console" but also a controller and a docking station. Because of course there will be something to connect the console to the TV, not all TVs have wifi and even then, Nintendo used propietary chips to send the data between the WiiU and the GamePad, so they weren't confident on regular wifi connections to work properly. That increases the price.

Also. there won't be an addon to increase the power. Just think about it, to do that you need to go two ways:

1-The handheld has powerful enough specs to run the games on TV at higher resolution or with extra visuals. It runs at full speed when docked and at 50-60% when used as a handheld.

That means means that instead of buying 15 millions of low spec and cheap chips for the handheld and 5 millions of higher specs and more expensive chips for the home console, Nintendo will be forced to buy the whole 20 millions chips of the more expensive kind because they won't know who will use it only as a handheld or who will the 100% of it. More expensive chips make a more expensive machine.

2-The station or addon has its own hardware. That can work two ways: A-The station has the hardware used to run the games on TV, making the handheld little less than a storage device; or B-The station has a set of hardware that, when you connect the machine, works with the hardware of the handheld and together have enough power to run the games at high/very high (to use PC nomenclature).

The problem with that is that going any of those routes is ridiculous. If the station has the hardware tu run the games, there is no need at all for the handheld, so it can be sold separately as a true home console. And I won't even talk about sharing hardware to run games, I can't even imagine how hard it would be to develop any kind of game for a system with two CPUs (not CPU cores, but two individual and not directly connected CPUs) and two GPUs in the same situation. It's not only that third parties would stay away from that monster, it's that even for Nintendo that would be too expensive to even consider it.

None of those options is a good or even intelligent approach. 

 

And now, think about this: if you start to add all those extra expenses (the complete package and the expensive or the extra hardware included), you end with a machine that is far from cheap.

Yes PSP game looked bad because of resolution and take only part of TV screen because of that nearly nobody used that function, NX would probably have resolution 720p on TV.

"Yes, I can compare NX and 3DS if NX ends up being a handheld that connects to the TV. It's just another handheld feature."

-If you have good image on TV (expecting at least Wii U IQ) handheld basically acts like home console too, so you can easiyl compare NX with Wii U too, not just with 3DS.

Nintendo can include in package only some sort of USB-HDMI dongle for conecting NX hybrid device.

I am not sure about optional device, add on, dock or something similar, but hybrid device, handheld that acts like home console in same time, have sense for me.



Soundwave said:
Wyrdness said:


Everyone should check this new patent out:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1099932

"An example system includes an internal hard disk drive storing a program and/or data, a communication unit transmitting/receiving a program and/or data via a network, and a processor executing a program stored in the hard disk drive to perform game processing. The example system is not provided with an optical disk drive for reading out a program and/or data from an optical disk.

A controller with a screen is also mentioned."


I wonder if the screen on the controller might be the answer to the riddle of why Nintendo signed a deal with Sharp for free-form LCD displays ... maybe a GameCube-ish shaped controller with a screen underlay?

The no disc drive I expected for a while, but the patent makes it sound like game data is loaded from the HDD ... so uh ... digital only?

Maybe games on SD cards, like 3DS.



To be honest this sounds fairly ... boring.

Screen controller, no disc drive ... so what exactly is new here? I know it's just a patent, I'm not even sure what exactly is being patented here as there isn't any type of new idea there as far as I can see.



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Soundwave said:


It looks like it's saying digital only. The Memory card seems to be just that ... the memory card slot (SD Card). The game data is stored on the HDD in the diagram. That's just my take from reading the patent. 


You don't need SD cards and such on digital only consoles or any kind of memory card especially with external HDD support on top of the internal HDD.



Still the most important questions are open:

- What about handhelds, the only place where Nintendo can still make a mayor impact easily.
- Where is the markt place for the home console? The PS4 seems to have everything on lock-down for the next 5 years. Where could N be going? Bigger, betterer, cheaper?



Soundwave said:
To be honest this sounds fairly ... boring.

Screen controller, no disc drive ... so what exactly is new here? I know it's just a patent, I'm not even sure what exactly is being patented here as there isn't any type of new idea there as far as I can see.


The design is a combination of ideas from their previous platforms, the's actually quite a bit in there if you read the Patent Claims.



I think the significant thing is if the controller is basically just a gamepad with a screen on it (albeit maybe with a Sharp free form different type shape) ... I wouldn't be counting on crazy sales based on a controller gimmick then.

So I guess being able to share games between the handheld and home console would be the new thing they hang the entire platform on. 

If it has an internal HDD and screen-based controller though ... that doesn't indicate a cheap console to me. 



Soundwave said:
zorg1000 said:

I think one problem is that Nintendo felt they needed to "redefine" gaming again when there was no need to. Wii U didn't need a brand new controller, it needed a simple to understand controller that was accessible to everyone, so an upgraded Wii Remote would have done the trick. The Gamepad went right back to the complex control scheme that Nintendo abandoned with the Wii, that's taking a step backwards.

Upgraded Wiimote would not have done the trick. 

It doesn't address anything with regards to casual players and many kids preferring smartphones/tablets. 

The Wii U comes with a Wiimote bundled as standard in Japan for example, and that's the worst selling market for the system. Wiimote was showing signs of feeling old/outdated by around 2010, so that whole gravy train was slowing down years before the Wii U even came out. 

If I'm a casual gamer .. explain to me why I should pay $30-$50 for a game period today. That's your central problem. A controller isn't changing that, because a multitouch screen is as intuitive or even moreso than a wand controller is. So the whole "barrier to entry" issue has been taken away ages ago, no one really cares about that anymore, today anyone can play simple video games if that's what they want. 

Truth be told a touchscreen is probably easier/more intuitive to use than a wand controller is. I have to constantly explain to my 5-year-old niece that she needs to point the Wiimote at the sensor bar for it to register, or she has to re-sync the controller, or that she needs to press B or A or whatever, but with an iPad, she just jumps in and can use it by herself and can play games on her own. 

The Wii was successful with casuals but in a time period where it basically had no competitor to worry about. Once things like the iOS app store and Kinect and the iPad starting arriving, it's sales start to decline (circa 2010). And I don't buy that it's because Nintendo stopped releasing "big games" the Wii sold even during periods with weak releases (ie: holiday 2008 with just Animal Crossing and Wii Music which didn't really even take off), and the Wii was never really dependant on franchises like Metroid or even 3D Mario to sell well in the first place. A "big" game for the Wii was Just Dance, which it was still getting. 


There is no proof that people simply got bored of the Wii Remote, yes things like Kinect & Smart Devices started to eat into that market but that doesn't mean the ship had sailed, if that were the case than Wii wouldn't have sold another 20 million post-2010 when it basically got no support outside of Zelda & the Just Dance/Skylanders combo every holiday.

Holiday 2008 did not have weak releases, those games u mentioned, Animal Crossing: City Folk & Wii Music along with Guitar Hero: World Tour were all big releases that averaged about 4 million sales each on top of evergreen titles like Wii Sports/Play/Fit, Mario Kart still moving units.

This is why I hate the "casual" term, u are referring to all casuals as a single group of people who all share the same opinions/tastes, that's not how it works. Based on how ur talking, this is the video game market.

Hardcore-$60 AAA console games

Casual-free/$1 mobile games

Im sorry but ur pretty ignorant if u dont think there is any type of middle ground between those 2 markets.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.