Again, I make console video games for a living. I'm not sure what kind of experience you have (it appears to be PC games to me, based on your "slider" comment"), but every time I've worked on a game, part of that work has been developing the engine. Now granted, there are people that do far more work, or exclusively work on the engine than I ever have or likely ever will, but that engine development is part of the game development. It's not like you just order a game engine from a company and it "just" work. They have to be optimized for the console and the game you're making. The "coding team" as you call them handles things such as Engine, AI, UI, controls, game modes, etc. These things do have specialists within the "coding team" that tend to focus on one of those major categories, but we all get our fingers in all of those pies. Also, nice touch on glossing over the enhancement, refinement or development of new engines as "gradual iteration" on past code. I'm sure folks at Naughty Dog that went from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 3 on the same engine would love to have the years-long work of dozens of people as "gradual iteration" trivialized in such a way.

In console game development there are no sliders. Those optimizations, those ideal settings are hard coded per console, and a team needs to figure out what they are and tweak and retweak the engine as development, and things like memory budgets shift. I also don't know what kind of teams you've worked on but based on my experience, it's not always artists that have to re-do 3D models, or rigs when optimizing them for a different platform. I've done work such as that as a programmer. It certainly isn't trivial and it certainly is platform specific. I mean in all seriousness look into how much work that has to go into an "HD" remake of a game that is already made. By your comments you must think it takes a handful of people a few months to churn one out, that is of course, after that engine work is trivially done.

Its absolutely hilarious to me how you trivialize all this work you've apparently seen colleagues slave over for months if not years. Great job. May I ask what you do in terms of video game development? It sounds to me like you're either an audio engineer (who quite literally use the tools other people develop for them while they mess with audio), an intern who doesn't know any better, or maybe low-level production who has little to no programming experience, if you're not blatantly lying. You've certainly not worked with Nintendo if you seem so confident they can develop a "solid and straightforward API". They might have been making video games for over 30 years, but to date this is something they have never ever done.

Thats whole point on NX, its much easier, simpler and faster to make one same game or app for iPad and iPhone than make one same game for 3DS and Vita or Xbox360 and PS3 and probably PS4 and XboxOne.

I think Nintendo first will launch NX handheld and NX home console (probably in same time), few years later they will launch new NX device may be successor to previous handheld and home console and maybe complete new kind of devices.

Point is that successor to previous NX handheld and home console or complete new kind of device, will have support for all previous NX games out of gate, retail, digital and Virtual Console releases, also, because identical architecture, probable same API and OS, it would be very easy for Nintendo and all 3rd party to continue to make same game for those devices as well as naturally for new NX device. We already seeing developers making games for PS3 and PS4 or Xbox360 and XboxOne, this would be incomparably easier, simpler and faster to make same game for current NX device and previous NX device, it would be more similar like making iPhone 5 app that works on iPhone 4 too.

Another "what if" ... what if the console is more like a home dock, if they're using mobile-style components, something akin to a micro-console.

800 GFLOPS for that, priced very cheap, say $179.99 launch price, can be brought down to $149.99 in about a year without much fuss.

Since it would just be a similar chip to the one in the handheld and same type of RAM and what not, Nintendo could probably get a very nice deal on the chip as a bulk order, and since the console has no LCD screen/battery to worry about, it could be cheap for people.

And maybe the handheld can "dock" with the console somehow, increasing performance further.

That would be a little different anyway. Just another idea. For people who just want to play a little Mario Kart and are curious about say Splatoon ... no need to force them to have to pay $200+, maybe you could find some audience on the lower end.

It's easier to make a budget console than a handheld because the console doesn't have to have an LCD display and a battery, LCD touch panel in many cases costs more than a chipset/RAM or any of that stuff. 

So you claim, anyone on the internet can claim to be anything they want, but it doesn't make it true, I can't buy your claims based on your posts.

I'm not going to make X, Y or Z claims, my knowledge speaks for itself.

Naughty Dog can't possibly be used as an example of what we're talking about here, since they make exclusives, not multiplats, the only time a game of their's gets moved to another piece of hardware, they basically have to remake it, because it was made for a lower end system in the 1st place (they don't port down). Hell The Nathan Drake collection is an example of a group of games being completely remade, because the PS3 releases were made to only be on that one platform, SCE and ND decided later that they wanted to put Uncharted 1 to 3's single player campaigns on PS4, X86 is also very different from RISC, so code has to be re-written to make those games work on PS4.

Even if you do work in the industry, as a developer that makes console games, that doesn't mean you're in a position to comment about porting titles and how that work can be made as seamlessly and efficient as possible from a productivity perspective.

3rd party developers want the process to be as easy as possible, hence why they use a game engine that will allow for asset/feature scaling and one that can incorporate various different APIs.

I'm most certainly not talking about PC specific development, what I'm talking about is the easiest and most logical way to make a game that can work on a host of different platforms, including PC and console, in this case console and handheld.

As I said iteration happens over the life of a game engine and over the time developers work on each generation of hardware, so if you do work in the industry (in a position to grasp this stuff) then you would know that when I say "Alterations are just options within the game engine", I'm talking about how assets are first and foremost made to the highest standard they're going to be needed at (high end PC level in the case of games that come to PC, PS4 and XB1, etc), then those core assets are altered, artists don't make a single set of assets for each platform, they build everything that will go into the game and then work from there, porting down to the weaker systems, with less resources.

Coding is something that is specific to each platform, but it's not the case that you build entirely new code for everything for each platform, per game, besides in your 1st game on that platform, unless your initial code was absolutely rubbish or you've discovered an entirely new way of doing things and that yields far better results than an older method. No you make one version of your code and over time rework it to get more performance per platform.

You're making it seem like each game gets made from scratch for every platform it's going to be released on, which definitely isn't the case.

Hey whatever man, you don't have to believe me. That's not going to take my name out of the credits.

Of course every platform isn't redone from scratch. In fact I've said quite the opposite, that I'd say between PS3 and Xbox 360 the codebase was about 80% shared, and with the PS4 and X1 even more is shared since they are so similar. However, it still remains that for each platform you need to make non-trivial, non-significant modifications to the code base, engine, 3D models, animations, AI etc to optimize those for a platform. Depending on how well the engine is optimized (which is probably the least trivial part of game development) it can be easier, but you still have to make platform-specific revisions. And yes, you're certainly right that as you make more games, especially using the same engines, those platform based engine adjustments lead to less and less work, as you definitely don't need to reinvent the wheel, but my original point remains:

No matter how you slice it, there's no way on earth you make one game, for say the NX home, and Nintendo provides an API that makes that game automatically work perfectly on the NX handheld, or vice-versa. It simply isn't going to work that way. Every different version of the NX is going to require extra work, and extra testing. and add extra expense to develop for as a result. Yes, it'll probably be less work to do so than it was to make a game for both PS3 ans X360,  but at the end of the day it will be cheaper and take less time to make one game on PS4 than it will to make that same game to run on all the versions of the NX handheld. That type of additional cost will only be tolerable if the platform sells like gangbusters, and it's going to be very very hard to gain traction when the initial investment is higher compared to other platforms.

I know I don't have to believe you, your comments didn't sound legit, hence why I said I didn't. TBH it doesn't really matter who works where, what matters is the issue we're discussing here.

When I say "trivial" I'm speaking relative to building a whole game from scratch. I think for the most part we're in agreement that the difficult part in all of this is just making the game.

Relative to the years of work it takes to formulate your concept and actually make something that could be released on a single platform, moving that game over to another system would be a very tiny fraction of the whole development of the project, that's what I mean by saying it's trivial. Modern engines make the studio's lives so much easier compared to how things used to be in the past.

Now in a system like NX we're basically talking about the console having the full experience, both platforms share the exact same type of CPU, the exact same type of GPU and the exact same type of memory, the only difference is that the handheld or weaker version of that platform has fewer resources. The most ideal situation if it's possible is that NX handheld could basically just run the game at 480p 30FPS, with everything else equal to the home console, in that case the development teams making games for NX knows that the rendering pipeline will always need the option to disable 1080p and enable 480p, so it's built in as an option at the start of development on NX, from then on the action of tweaking the game to run on the handheld is simple, it becomes a trivial stage of development in relation to the whole development of the game.

Maybe Anti-Aliasing and Anisatropic Filtering are turned off if need be, but the amount of work to make that run on the handheld wouldn't be massively extensive, a small team of people could make that happen in a very short space of time, compared to how many were required to build the whole complete game and get it running on the console.

If we're talking about just Nintendo's own exclusives, for NX then customers now being able to buy a copy of that game on a system with a larger install base are likely to allow Nintendo to move significantly higher numbers than if the game was only available on the console. It's basically a business no brainer to remove the barriers between handheld and console to get software to move more units.

The expense to make the game run on the weaker system is going to be small compared to the whole development of the complete game.

The whole NX idea is one big opportunity for Nintendo to move more software, the portable is cheaper than the home console, so that platform has a significantly larger install base relative to the console.

The appeal of the console increases because people know from day one that all software available to NX is going to be available on either the handheld or console. It's all extra sales for Nintendo, for not much extra work per game released and they reduce software droughts to either system, which will help to raise the incentive for people to invest in this new Nintendo platform from the launch of the platform.

The potential extra sales massively outweigh any small additional costs for porting that is going to be accounted for by opening up where software is going to be available. There really aren't any negatives here.

Yeah agreed, even for third parties I think they prefer this setup.

Nintendo in the past: the handheld had all the userbase, but the console had the power to run more modern types of games.

Instead of 10-20 million Wii Us/GameCubes to sell to (lets remove the Wii, because that was largely driven by casual gamers that had very different tastes and since Nintendo hasn't been able to hold them, they likely no longer factor into the equation).

Versus ... 50-60 million NX owners, even assuming another round of decreases from traditional handhelds. I'd rather sell to the NX model than the Wii U-3DS/GameCube-GBA model, where if I make a console game for Nintendo I have to live with the fact that 20 million or so is the audience roof.

50-60 million is enough customers to get at least some decent third party support, if you go beyond that, even better.

Look NX is not going to be a PS4 killer most likely on the console side. It probably will never even get close to the XBox One due to the three year head start the other will have. But if it can leverage the Japanese 3DS third party support and add more Japanese support because it has the power now to enable like a Resident Evil 2 REMake and Dragon Quest XI to come to the system (for example), that's a good start. I don't know if Nintendo will get all the great Western third party games, but I think the likes of EA, Ubi Soft, and Activision will come back with some OK support if the userbase is more in line with the 3DS.

Not every dev needs a gun to their head to optimize every game perfectly for each platform either. There's nothing wrong IMO with some games simply being just built for the handheld spec and then running at 1080P + anti-aliasing + 60 fps on the console.

OK, NX will probably have handheld and home console that will probably have same type of CPU, same type of GPU, same type of memory, same OS, same or similar API, devs kits and code base, it will basically be one same platform with two devices that only have different power, and you are saying "it'll probably be less work to do so than it was to make a game for both PS3 ans X360"!?

Making one game for NX handheld and home console it will be incomparably require less work than making same game for PS3 and Xbox360, it will be much more similar making same game/app that works on iPad and iPhone.

So basically developers with little extra effort (that is incomparably less than making same game for another platform) will have one game on two console devices, I think that will be very attractive for 3rd party developers.

No one said that wouldnt require extra effort, but that effort will be incomparably smaller than making game for completely different platform or making game for Xbox360/PS3, Vita/3DS or even PS4/XboxOne. Thats the all point.

Probably not the same dev kits. You better hope for third party's sake they each platform doesn't share one dev kit. The cost of such a dev kit would be signifcantly higher than the dev kits of other platforms. And yes, I maintain probably, because I've worked with Nintendo's developer tools and API. They are absolutely abysmal, and I do not have the confidence in Nintendo to make such tools well enough that it would actually be less work than using and working with the tools made for say, the X360 or PS4. So yes, I'll continue with "probably" because Nintendo needs to me prove to me they can actually make a developer friendly dev kit and tools package, much less one that can make developing for separate platforms easier. You might have that confidence but I certainly do not.

How on earth can you decide how much "extra effort" it will be, much less decide that it will be incomparaly smaller? It could be 50% less effort, or 80% less, or it might be 10% less. We can't possibly know that at this point. Making a game for the PS4 and X1 typically requires minor codebase changes, no asset changes, and is more of matter of optimizing the engines for each platform since the platforms are so similar in terms of both architecture and performance, and while this is non-trivial, it is less work than say, porting a PS4 game to the Vita (something I have actually done). These NX platforms, while the arcitecture will undoubtedly be similar if not a "scaled back version of identical architecture" has entirely different obstacles to overcome. These differences in processor speeds, cache sizes, ram sizes, bus speeds etc require additional work to accomodate these restrictions. You might need to redo all kinds of things such as 3D models, animation rigs, animation, AI, textures etc. so that the game will run acceptably on weaker hardware.  Making an iPhone 5s game work on the iPhone 4 also requires a lot of this work. That's why there are many apps out there for iPad that aren't found on iPhone or for iPhone that aren't found on iPad, or for iPhone 6 that won't run on iPhone 4. It's not a "little extra effort", considering you're likely millions of dollars in man hours to see it done.

The effort involved won't be "incomparably smaller". Let's be generous and let's say it'll 50% less effort than supporting an entirely new platform. Sure that's a comparative savings, but consider this. Let's say a developer wants to develop a game. It costs X to make it on PS4, an additional 0.8X to support it on X1 as well since the platforms are so similar. It'll still cost 1.35X to support it on NX (0.9X for NX since the architecture is so fundamentally different, + .45X for NX portable, because you need to support both). So, instead of spending 1.8X to make a game for PS4 and X1, it'll now cost  3.15x. That's almost double the cost of making a PS4/X1 game. Not exactly "very attractive", is it? The sales on that additional platform would have to justify the additional cost, and you're facing an uphill battle since it's more expensive to make an NX game than it is to make a game on any other single platform. I really don't think that is going to fly.