Of Course they will put more effort into handheld thant thet, Vita has incomparably better graphics than 3DS, and want be little addon accessory at any means.

We know what are main problems with sales this gen, and power of hardware is not one of them. Much more weaker 3DS is selling 5x better than Vita.

I didnt think Vita tech, but similar power of Vita. Who care if thech will be laughably far behind in 2017/18, if games still look good on NX handheld in that time.

I am not sure about 14nm, because next year 28nm will be still cheaper than 14nm, and Nintendo will aim affordable price, not last tech that will largle affect on price of consoles.

Honestly if that's what they want to do, they should just ask PowerVR for the old A8X chip which is 20nm (octa-core GXA6850). Going to 28nm might actually be more expensive and whatever chip they get won't be as power efficient. Or some other mobile processor like the Snapdragon 808 or something. 

They can likely get this entire SoC for about $30, probably less to be honest. Then a cheap, shitty screen for another $45. RAM is $20. Battery is $6. Cheap front/rear cameras $5. Sensors + NFC + WiFi is $20. This would easily be under $200 hardware cost. 

The Vita chip is actually 45nm I believe. So it's freaking ancient, it might actually cost Nintendo more or the same money to use a part that far out of order. 

This portable should be different, previous Nintendo handhelds were not designed to run the main Nintendo franchises. The Game Boy Advance was not made to run Super Mario Sunshine for example, the Vita was never designed to run the "real" Sony franchises either, just watered down spin-offs at best. 

So this portable should not fall in line with the previous portable upgrades, because far more is being asked of it. It will have to carry the company's traditional gaming brand as a whole. 

Console could then just be 2x-3x that, micro-console, maybe 600 GFLOPS, an OK-ish upgrade on the Wii U, cheap as dirt. That could be sold for as cheap as $169.99 or something. 

I am not sure that Nintendo will go for x86, better chances are for ARM, maybe quad-core Cortex-A53 for handheld and maybe Cortex-A57 or A72 for home console.

Like I said, Nintendo will certainly will not use same Vita chip, I was referring more to similar graphics.

If you look all previous Nintendo handhelds you will see that every man was very small upgrade to new handheld console, going from 3DS to Vita similar graphics would biggest leap for Nintendo handheld.

I think NX will throw a lot of pre-existing "rules" out the window, since many of them no longer serve any positive benefit to Nintendo. 

Handheld hardware was slow to evolve in the past because there was no massive push from vendors to have high powered mobile CPUs/GPUs ... smartphones and tablets changed everything. Now the rate of technological change is massive, and the cost of these components has become dirt cheap.  A8X is an ARM CPU by the way. 

In a way I think Wii U and 3DS represent the end of their hardware lines. NX is will take the company in a different direction and are part of a new lineage that isn't beholden to any of the past "rules". 

Also I think there is a danger is going too cheap ... now that Nintendo has smartphone apps to tap into the low budget/no budget gamer and entry level kids, I think you run the risk of those kids not really being interested in a dedicated Nintendo console if its honestly a cheap piece of junk. They can get enough of a fix of Pokemon or Mario for free on the iPhone and if the Nintendo dedicated hardware is underwhelming or even (sadly) less powerful than a lot of tablets/phones, You need to draw a bigger distinction between those low end games, so I think a higher end portable is probably the better play for Nintendo right now. 

"Cheap" is not helping Nintendo right now as the lower cost 2DS and regular 3DS models are not selling that great either. The people who are interested in 3DS choose the most expensive model. The problem becomes if you're asking for $40+ for a game ... you better damn well be bringing something really impressive to the table nowadays, or people will just stick to their phone/tablet and free games. 

That's what Nintendo needs to accept now. What the GBA or even DS were is irrelevant now, it's a completely different game with different rules. Nintendo did not have to justify the price of their games because they set all the rules in the past. They don't anymore. So if the arguement is, well you should want to play "real" games away from the house ... well ok ... but you undermine this arguement today if your hardware is (relatively) crap. 

Congrats on the Monster Hunter example. I take it you've also never made a video game before? They did a similar thing with PSP models. Guess what? developers had to pretty much treat both of those settings as two different platforms, and as a result, most developers didn't really bother with the added performance boost. It jiust wasn't worth the hassle. There's also texture differences between multi-platform PS4 and Xbox One games, and it requires making platform specific coding and testing on each platform to do such a thing. This is literally an example of the additional cost I am talking about. They didn't just make it work for 3DS or New 3DS and assume it worked on the other spec. They had to test it for each spec. Unfortunately I'm not sure if the "new 3DS" requires a brand new dev kit, or a firmware update for the same kit, but if its the former you can imagine the extra cost involved. Either way, you're talking about the same inputs and the same outputs, Both are handhelds with one only marginally faster than the other. That's completely different than a home console and a handheld console, both of which having different inputs (stylus for handheld, two extra shoulder buttons for home), both outputting at two completely different resolutions, both made to be viewed at completely different distances. They would literally need to be treated as two entirely separate platforms. The same code more or less runs on both platforms? So what? You have practically the same code running on PS4 and X1. The game code is not the problem. Its the engine that's the problem.

Yes, we do have games that are currently developed for 8 different platforms. It's not very common because its very very expensive to do. It happens very rarely because puting in any one change to the code would literally take a couple of hours of verification by a single developer (assuming they have one team working on all platforms) or they have multiple teams taking care of multiple platforms (which really drives up costs, the most expensive part of making video games is paying the people who do the work). Now you want to add more platforms to this, and drive up the costs even further. Again this is what I'm talking about. Just because some developers are willing to put out a game on 8 different platforms doesn't mean that the average publisher which is releasing games on 2-3 is willing to make the plunge to start developing on the equivalent of 5-6. That would literally double the cost of a lot of game development areas.

As for your last paragraph, that's literally fanboy level thinking. You simply do not know any better. A multispec platform doesn't have the same architecture, it has similar architecture. Take two processors, one is literally half the specs of the other in every way but "the same architecture" as the other. Do you think that the "half processor" can process the same command at half the rate? The answer is not necessarily. It may be the case for 95% of the commands you give it, but the half processor might take 2-3 times as one would expect to process the other 5% of commands. It depends on if that processor running at half the specs introduces bottlenecks not seen in the "full processor" because it has half the resources available to compute it. If that turns out to be the case, guess what? You need to develop a processor-specifc work around. These are the type of things I have literally lost sleep over trying to fix in some sweaty office at 3 in the morning hours before a deadline. Therse are real problems in the console video game world.

There is no reason to think that developing for these hypothetical NX specs would be any easier than developing for PS4 and X1. None at all. Both the PS4 and X1, have practically the same architecture as well. In fact the differences between the PS4 and X1 in terms of architecture would be a pretty similar comparison between the supposed different specs of the NX, except with the NX you'd have diffferent inputs and outputs per spec, which would make it more complicated to develop for a multispec NX. Again, best case scenario it would be like developing for PS4 and X1. Also about those developer kits. Do you think these things are made of hopes and dreams? Making a dev kit that can handle the different inputs, display at the different outputs, and "scale" down to different modes that replicate the actual hardware exactly isn't exactly a small feat, and it would be incredibly expensive to make.

I will keep stating and re-stating this. It is not that simple. At all. Everyone that thinks this is feasible glosses over major, major roadblocks as if they are arbitrary. They aren't, I assure you.

Here is a quote from Miyamoto from last year, I would post the whole article but my phone sucks at copying links.

"What I can say is, certainly, within Nintendo the fact that our development environment for our home console is different from the development environment for our portable system is certainly an area of stress or challenge for the development teams. So as we move forward, we're going to look at what we can do to unify the two development environments.

So, particularly with digital downloads now and the idea that you're downloading the right to play a game, that opens up the ability to have multiple platform digital downloads where you can download on one and download on another. Certainly from a development standpoint there is some challenge to it, because if you have two devices that have different specs and you're being told to design in a way that the game runs on both devices, then that can be challenging for the developer—but if you have a more unified development environment and you're able to make one game that runs on both systems instead of having to make a game for each system, that's an area of opportunity for us."

As for ur second paragraph, what makes u think Nintendo has any intention of competing with Sony/Microsoft in terms of power? If anything, the last decade or so should be a pretty good indicator that they care very little about going head to head in that aspect. It wouldn't be playing just handheld games at a higher resolution, it would simply be playing games.

The majority of Nintendo's IP play perfectly fine on either form factor. Mario platformers, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Metroid, Zelda, Xenoblade, Kirby, Yoshi, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, Luigi's Mansion, Donkey Kong, Mario & Luigi, Fire Emblem, Mario Party, etc. none of these series works on one but not the other.

Then just make a handheld. And maybe there is a console component or a home dock that allows the same games to be run at 1080P instead of 720P. 

Competing against PS4/X1 is an idiotic prospotion at this point, 3 years behind, they're never going to sniff Sony let alone catch Microsoft, so if scalable games are really impossible like you say, then it's time to focus on the handheld. 

Nintendo cannot support a PS4 level home console and a Vita++ level portable with a distinct library of games every year at the rate of 10+ discreet titles for each year. 

Nor can they continue making expensive HD games that 80% of their own audience will never play because they refuse to buy a Nintendo console themselves.

Make the handheld the primary variant. The console can be nothing more then what the PSVita + VitaTV is then if developers are too stupid to figure out how to make a game with two different graphical settings. Ultimately too this is a business, the publisher is the one who makes that call anyway, not the grunt developers. If a development house doesn't want to make two different versions, then fine. Just make the portable version and be on your way. It will still be playable on the console, it'll just be the same as the portable game. 

You act like there must be a Nintendo mega-console ... if its that much trouble, Nintendo will likely just not make one. The Wii is really their only big successful console of the last 20 years, and that came from a temporary influx of casuals. GameCube, Wii U ... even most people willing to buy Nintendo hardware were not willing to buy the console (GameCube was even the same $99.99 price point as the GBA for a long time, lol). Nintendo can't even get Nintendo fans to buy their console. If something has to give that's the first thing that's going to give make no mistake about it. 

All Nintendo talk about unifying hardware and software teams, same architecture, same OS, same platform, they even mentiond example of iOS and Android, is beacuse there will be no need like before to develop game separate for handheld and separate for home console, they will develop one game in same time for both consoles.

If Nintendo will benefit from that, there is no reason why 3rd party couldn't too.

Nintendo reorganized its R&D divisions and integrated the handheld device and home console development teams into one division under Mr. Takeda. Previously, our handheld video game devices and home video game consoles had to be developed separately as the technological requirements of each system, whether it was battery-powered or connected to a power supply, differed greatly, leading to completely different architectures and, hence, divergent methods of software development. However, because of vast technological advances, it became possible to achieve a fair degree of architectural integration..

For example, currently it requires a huge amount of effort to port Wii software to Nintendo 3DS because not only their resolutions but also the methods of software development are entirely different. The same thing happens when we try to port Nintendo 3DS software to Wii U. If the transition of software from platform to platform can be made simpler, this will help solve the problem of game shortages in the launch periods of new platforms. Also, as technological advances took place at such a dramatic rate, and we were forced to choose the best technologies for video games under cost restrictions, each time we developed a new platform, we always ended up developing a system that was completely different from its predecessor. The only exception was when we went from Nintendo GameCube to Wii. Though the controller changed completely, the actual computer and graphics chips were developed very smoothly as they were very similar to those of Nintendo GameCube, but all the other systems required ground-up effort. However, I think that we no longer need this kind of effort under the current circumstances. In this perspective, while we are only going to be able to start this with the next system, it will become important for us to accurately take advantage of what we have done with the Wii U architecture. It of course does not mean that we are going to use exactly the same architecture as Wii U, but we are going to create a system that can absorb the Wii U architecture adequately. When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems.

Still, I am not sure if the form factor (the size and configuration of the hardware) will be integrated. In contrast, the number of form factors might increase. Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform. To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples. Whether we will ultimately need just one device will be determined by what consumers demand in the future, and that is not something we know at the moment. However, we are hoping to change and correct the situation in which we develop games for different platforms individually and sometimes disappoint consumers with game shortages as we attempt to move from one platform to another, and we believe that we will be able to deliver tangible results in the future.

What we are aiming at is to integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform. They will also work to avoid software lineup shortages or software development delays which tend to happen just after the launch of new hardware.

Of Course, unified platform is totally new direction for Nintendo.

I still dont see Nintendo needs much stronger hardver than Vita for next handheld.

That doesn't make sense, bigger chances are if very hooked to smartphone games are that they will not pay high price for only gaming device, than consider cheap piece of junk. Because it not only about hardware, it's about totally different experience playing game on gaming only dedicated device and of course great Nintendo games. Also, Nintendo is making smartphone/tablet games specifically for those devices, and they cant compare with their console games in any way, like Nintendo said, they will use smartphones/tablets like bridge for their consoles.

2DS have completely different form factor than 3DS, its not just about price there, 3DS start to selling only after big price cut and new games, so yes, price of handheld today in world of smartphones/tablets is very important.

Nintendo accept new situation, that's why they unifing their platforms and that's why there are releasing mobile games. But realising expensive gaming handheld in era of cheap smartphones/tablets would be disaster. Vita is proof of that.

You do realize that Miyamoto is referencing downloadable titles, right? I extremely doubt Nintendo is gonna do away with physical even with NX, so with Miyamoto referencing downloadable titles, I'd imagine stuff like smaller digital-only content, virtual console, some retail games, etc. Full retail games? He doesn't mention that, unless Nintendo plans to make NX fully digital, which is highly unlikely. 

I didn't say Nintendo needs to have hardware at the level of Sony or Microsoft hardware, you're putting those words in my mouth. And yes, it would be playing Handheld games in higher resolution because there are certain things consoles have that handhelds don't have: spec advantage. You will not see technologically ambitious games from Nintendo anymore because they must take the lowest denominator into consideration: the Handheld. Games cannot be very complex because the Handheld wouldn't be able to handle them, all games will need to be at the level of the Handheld with only minor tweaks for the Console. Mario Kart 8 for example at the same level of fidelity and complexity would not be possible on whatever Handheld they come up with next, neither will the next Zelda. You will also not see increases in complexity of their current games, Splatoon 2 for example wont see an increase in online players or gralhical fidelity, especially considering that Nintendo is conservative with hardware specs. Considering Nintendo's philosophy regarding the differences between handhelds and consoles, I doubt Nintendo will merely want Handheld games in higher resolution for the Console. I'm not expecting a powerful Console, but it needs to be powerful enough to even bother purchasing. With no notable difference between the Console and Handheld, people will just choose the cheaper option, there will be no point to the Console.

There are differences among those IPs on consoles vs the Handheld versions. Mario Kart for starters has more racers, and the complexity of that game is much higher. Plus, there are features in Mario Kart 8 that aren't in 7 for technological reasons. Super Mario 3D World's levels are much larger in scale than 3D Lands, and the ability to play 4 player multiplayer at once, on the TV is only possible due to being on a stronger system. Smash Bros. Wii U has not only larger stages, but also the characters can be more complex, more action can occur on the screen, and the CPU/AI is more intelligent because Wii U can handle it. Mario Maker wouldn't be friendly on the smaller screen of a Handheld. Xenoblade needed extra cores of CPU power to run at all, and at a severely reduced fidelity. It's these power differences that allow these major gameplay mechanics to even be possible. During 3D Worlds development for example, Motokura stated that with the increase in resolution, they were able to express different and new ideas that they never thought of before. Miyamoto also commented on 4K with Pikmin, and stated that being able to see more details would make the game more fun. It's increases in power that bring about new ideas and larger scope-concepts. If theres no notable difference in hardware power, these ambitions and new ideas wont come about. Until handhelds reach the ability to match consoles at a reasonable price, the differences will always be noticeable, and should be noted.