...Yes, they are. Especially with the N3DS. Symetrical platforms capable of playing symetrical games like Smash 4, ResiRev, HRL, etc. with near identical play experiences. The NX will be the perfection of that.

No they are not "effectively" one vertical screen. Just because you can put the two screens together on a bugdet device doesn't mean they are functionally unified. You could do the same exact connecting with the Wii U and it's games would play exactly the same as 3DS games, only you wouldn't because TVs are a tiny bit heavier to move around than a 3DS is.

There's nothing wrong with the concept. Just the excecution. That's why it's being brought back on the NX home console, and being executed differently, as proven by the two recent patents.

When I play DS mode on the Wii U, I usually have the top screen on the TV and the bottom screen on the gamepad, because that's the way 99% of DS games are meant to be played and that's likely the way most people play DS games on the Wii U. There's very little reason to be playing most DS games while looking at both screens at the same time, and the types of games that tried to treat both screens as a single unified screen died out because the concept doesn't work. There are hardly any 3DS games like that anymore, and there will be even less NX games like that. Most dual screen games have the main action on the top and the map/hud/inventory on the bottom because that is by far the best use of that screen. Most Wii U games do it. Most 3DS games do it. Most DS games did it, and the only ones that didn't are part of that extinct brand of experimental early DS games that where merely trying to figure out the best ways to use the new format.

Nintendo aren't going to relegate BC for a handheld to an optional controller periferal attatchment when they can just make the handheld naturally compatible with literally everything other than most Wii games. That would be beyond stupid. And it wouldn't "cost pennies to produce." The circle pad pro was a $20 attachment, and this would be much more expensive to make and sell than that. And the CCP sold so porely that they had to sell an entirely new console with the same added functionality to make up for it, which sold exponencially better.

If you wanna play 15 year old games, then you can pay the extra $20 as far as I see it. The whole userbase and development community shouldn't have to be penalized with weaker hardware because some old fart wants to play a DS game from 2005. 

No one is going to buy a NX because it can play old games over what Sony or MS are offering, Nintendo needs to wake up and stop looking to the past to bail them out. 

If you like DS/3DS and don't want to pay $20 for a piece of clip on plastic ... great. Buy a freaking New 3DS. That's what it's there for. Enjoy it. 

I can't play GBA games on my 3DS, I don't complain about it, I don't need to play GBA games on my 3DS. It'd be a nice-to-have, but that's it, it's the last thing I think about when I use my 3DS. Most people don't care. The 3DS would not be selling any better if it had access to 12 year old GBA games. Nobody but like a tiny minority on the internet gives two craps about that. 

Nintendo should be asking themselves about the people who today AREN'T buying their hardware. Why aren't they. That's the audience they need to focus, not Nintendo fans. I'm sorry, yes they make a lot of noise on the internet, but they will all shut up and fall in line once you show a good Mario game, it's the other people that need Nintendo's attention. That should be the driving design principal of the NX ... and they should not be afraid to make changes to their "traditional format". Their "traditional format" is a fast lane highway to being a third party at this rate. 

If you're a gaming company designing a handheld around the ability to play old games, you're not going to force your consumers to then buy a $20 periferal just to play them, especially when they'll be readily purchasable on the marketplace.

Of course they wouldn't, by itself. That would be stupid for any company to thing. Thankfully, Nintendo are clearly taking strides to be less incompitant than you seem to think they are, since they aren't planning on merely releasing a platform with only legacy games and expecting that to sell on it's own. The NX will also have these magical things called "original games" and "better hardware" and "good marketing" and "good third party support" and "a better, more unified platform" that will, together, make people buy the NX over the competition. In other words, people don't buy the iphone over the android because of itunes, but it would be stupid to think it doesn't have a major pull in that decision.

You know, because consoles are complex devices that sell themselves with more than only one feature. You can say they need to "wake up" all you want. They won't. BC is staying. And not with some stupid periferal caveot.

Nintendo is not going to be making hardware in 7-8 years time if they do not make some radical changes. 

Backwards compatibility at the expense of hardware is an insane philosophy. 

MOST people don't want to play old games on their hardware period. If they did Wii U and 3DS should be selling a fuck ton better than they are. They're not. 

So if its just a minority portion of the userbase, I say "too bad, so sad". You want that feature that 80% of people don't use, then you can pay a little extra for it as far as I'm concerned. The majority of the userbase and the entire development community should not be saddled with crappier hardware because 10 people want to play an ancient Kirby game from the DS-era for 15 minutes. 

Even with a unified platform, which I do advocate for, I don't even think that is some silver magic bullet. They are still likely to lose marketshare overall even with that approach. Nintendo fans I think really are in denial about what's actually happening to Nintendo's market, particularily the handheld side of it. I think even Nintendo knows its really, really bad (which is why they caved to make smartphone games, something Nintendo fans overwhelmingly would have rejected, but they don't understand the business realities of what's happening). 

If there aren't 4-5 things about the NX that don't make you say "wow, I did not think Nintendo would ever do that" that's NOT a good thing. Nintendo fans needs to kinda understand here ... they cannot simply keep doing the same thing they are now. That's why I think the negative reaction to the Nikkei report saying NX will run Android apps for example is misguided. Nintendo *needs* to seriously look at ideas like that. 

They are making radical changes. An all digital "smart console" that is part of a unified platform is as radical as it gets, without being a bad idea. It wouldn't be at the expense of anything, because the console hardware they will have, that being a dual screen handheld and a console with a gamepad, are perfectly fine and even superior to configuration found in competing hardware, and since it'll be capably of porting DQ11, it clearly won't be sacrificing so much power that it won't get ports. All's well that ends well.

That line about people wanting less games on new hardware, which is what you're implying when you say that people don't want to play old games on new systems, is factually wrong. Steam is a triving platform primarily because it exists on hardware not limited by generations and is therefore able to have a library that transends generations, which is exactly what the NX will do with Nintendo games. The Wii U and 3DS had do start their VC libraries over from scratch. The NX won't be doing that. Not much more to say on that.

The unified platform, by itself, is definitely not a silver bullet. But everything Nintendo is putting together with the NX, with expanding it's brand through smartphones, multimedia coverage for its valuable IP, and the membership service, is most definitely going to result in a titanic resergence of Nintendo as a valuable brand, which will work wonders when they come out swinging next year with a new gaming platform that is unrestrained by the old definition of what it means to be a console. But that definition will be in reguards primarily to firmware, not hardware. I don't even think the NXDS will keep the "DS" name, but it will definitely keep the DS screens. Just like the Wii U isn't called the "Wii HDS," when that is really all it is.

And I'm not against the NX being able to run android. Never said it wouldn't, or it couldn't. I don't think that Nikkei article is accurate because I don't think Nintendo is letting Google take a peice of their profits from games made for their hardware, but I definitely think it would be a good idea to get those mobile guys making games for the NX primerily, and then porting down to mobile platforms, as opposed to the other way around. But again, I don't think it's happening because Nintendo likes having closed platforms. I personally don't see any issue with sharing those profits, but I definitely see Nintendo having that issue, which is why I think it's unlikely to be true. Nintendo are Apple, not Android.

Which is why I think a fully backwards compatible PS5 XB1-2 is coming in 2018. (new consoles every 5 years)

Will run the same OS on the same platform. Will really cut down R&D costs

Even with the "radical change" of the unified platform, I think they will still continue to bleed marketshare. I hope it doesn't happen but realistically ... this could get real ugly, real fast. It doesn't really change the kid who's now into playing games on the iPad from really saying "yeak OK, now I'll buy Nintendo because that was my problem with Nintendo, not enough Nintendo games". 

It will help them in some ways, but if they cannot stop the on going erosion of the portable market, they likely are done as a hardware market in a mainstream way. That's their bedrock, if that bedrock continues to crack, then everything they have as a hardware maker goes to shit. 

3DS is going to finish at 70 million probably, it may actually not even get to 70 the way its fizzling right now. And that's worrisome, but I could honestly see that going even lower next gen.

Hopefully not below 50 million, but can I say with any certainty that that won't happen? No. If anything the handheld market especially outside of Japan is in full free fall.  

Like I said I see it all the time when I travel for work at all the airport where you see dozens of kids playing on tablets/phones and like maybe once in a blue moon I see a 3DS. This isn't even a competetion anymore it's becoming a slaughter. These kids are nothing like 80s/90s/early 2000s kids, they are growing up with these mobile devices and they aren't going to give a shit about Nintendo dedicated hardware when they turn 12/13/14, just because Nintendo says they should. Even with Nintendo characters on iOS/Google ... I mean yeah you can get the "better" Pokemon on NX lets say, but that Pokemon iOS game does not look half-way bad at all. A lot of kids will just stay with the tablet/phone I think. 

The shipment totals for the 3DS for the last two fiscal years (8.63 million last year and a target of 7 million for this year) are really, really concerning they have not had handheld shipments that low since before Pokemon was created. 

It's not just Dragon Quest XI they need. If they can get other higher-end ports of even PS4 games like Kingdom Hearts 3, Resident Evil 2 REMake, MGSV, etc. that would help. That's why I think they should choose the most powerful chip they can, even if it means (likely) that they have to use a tablet form factor for thermal heat issues. They need all the NEW (actually relevant games to today's kids) games that they can get. If you have to rework your engine and jump through 50 hoops to get a game running on the NX portable, then we've seen that movie several times already and we know how that ends -- most developers won't even bother to try. 

I don't believe for a second that the smart phone market is cannibalizing handheld sales to the point where they will become a niche market. I think that the DS was an anomally much like the Wii and PS2 were, and that the 3DS is doing fine. Even if it does less than 70m, that is not indicative of any sort of decline, and a new, forward thinking handheld can do just as strongly, if not stronger than the 3DS.

You see kids playing on tablets and phones because parents buy tablets and phones for themselves and let their kids use them. The kids aren't playing on phones because they like phones better, they're playing on phones because parents give them phones to play one. Usually because it's their parents phones or because it's becoming more culturally acceptable to give children phones than it used to be. Doesn't matter. Many of those kids still have 3DSs. Enough to where there will likely be 70m by the end of the 3DS's life. You're seeing more kids playing games on phones now than in the 90s because in the 90s kids couldn't play games on cellphones. If there were decent games on cell phones in those days, you bet your bottom dollar they would be playing on those, and it would result in barely any lost handheld sales, because they aren't the same. It's just that 70m looks tiny compared to 1b. The handheld market is not in "free fall." The 3DS, when in its prime, was selling pheonominally, and it's dipping now because the platform is in desperate need for a generational upgrade. It has nothing to do with a downfall of the handheld market, and everything to do with the 3DS getting old and showing its age embarrasingly. That's all.

There will never be a day again where more kids play on dedicated gaming hardware than smart devices, because there are just more of them out there and, unlike consoles, they are nessecities. People have phones because they need them. That doesn't mean that handhelds are somehow obsolete. There will always be a large audience for those types of games that will absolutely never be replicated accurately on smart devices.

I never said DQX was all they need. I was merely using that as an example to show that the NX platform will be powerful enough to get 8th gen 3rd party ports. Clearly "jumping through 50 hoops" will not be an issue next generation. It's not "likely" that they'll use a tablet. It's 100% not happening. They'll use a chip powerful enough to scale down the home console ports, and it doesn't need to be much more powerful than the Vita to do that. The N3DS now can run the open world XBC. The NXDS doesn't need to provide the most technically impressive downports. They just need to run well enough, like HWL, Smash 4, SSF4, Sonic ASRT, etc before it. You look at the ResiRev2 comparisons between the Vita and the PS4 versions. That's the kind of difference you'll see. It looks good enough, and it runs. With how similar games are now to how they were last generation, that doesn't mean much at all. In fact, I'm sure the Vita now could get working ports of 95% of PS4 games. It doesn't need to be state of the art iPad 4 tech, and it's likely not going to be, even if it was a gaming tablet, which it won't be.

I agree that they need all new games, but not for kids. They already have relevant IP. Kid's aren't not playing them because this generation somehow "doesn't like" Mario or Pikachu anymore. They aren't playing them because parents are giving them other things to play. Mario is timeless, just like Mickey. Does Nintendo need Minecraft? Absolutely. Do they need Skylanders? Already have it. Angry Birds? Well, they need to work on the monetization of that, but it's there. That's not their issue. It's getting the platforms in kids hands, and that starts with parents and that starts with brand expansion. Amiibo are a great start, but what will really do it are the mobile games, the theme park, and the eventual major TV shows and films. Turning Nintendo into a cultural icon and a killer brand again.

I've had kids tell me straight up they like the iPad better than the 3DS, lol. My nephew and nieces when they come over, they want to play on the iPad first and foremost, they like it better than the 3DS. The games are easier to play and the larger display makes it easy to point and touch for kids. And when they're bored of the games they just switch on over to watching cartoons on it, it's an ideal device for a wide variety of media consumption. 

I don't really think these "poor kids" are being held hostage and being forced to play these tablet/phone games, lol. They genuinely like them. I know "hardcore game" fans cannot grasp this, but I really think it is the truth. We're the ones living in a bubble, not them. Most kids do not give a crap about the lack of buttons, if anything it makes the tablet more friendly and more approachable. When they get older and want "deeper" games, then they start to get into wanting a Playstation or XBox, as invariably kids get closer to 6th/7th grade, being "cool" becomes a life obsession. 

8th gen ports? I think they need 9th gen ports. As in Dragon Quest XI, not just X. Kingdom Hearts III. 

But what I think we'll actually get is another ho-hum Nintendo product, probably underpowered. They'll bundle it with Amiibo and try to sell it as a toy device. It'll have shared games, it'll do OK on the market nothing mind blowing. They would need another Wiimote type miracle revolution to significantly alter their fate now I think. The games will be fun though as they always are on every Nintendo hardware. 

When I was growing up, Mickey Mouse was basically irrelevant to me, Disney was largely as a whole irrelevant. Super Mario and Bart Simpson and the Ninja Turtles were the hot new thing then, no kid gave a crap about Mickey Mouse. It wasn't until Disney made The Little Mermaid that that started a new reinvention for the company that led to things like Aladdin and The Lion King and then they were relevant again, but not because of Mickey Mouse. 

If I'm a parent as well, I'm not stupid, I'm not buying them that Nintendo handheld. Why should I? So I can then be on the hook for my crying kids asking for $30-$40 games? Nah. Just giving them the old iPad and letting them play free games sounds a whole lot better. The kids aren't complaining and neither are the parents and I just don't think Nintendo has an answer to this. 

And I've had kids tell me they like the 3DS better than their smart phones. I work at a summer camp. Your anecdotes don't mean anything. I never said they were being held hostage or that they were "poor kids." I never said they didn't genuinely like them. I said that they aren't actively choosing the platform based off what they'd prefer, but what their parents give them. I loved playing online browser games on my computer when I was a kid. That's what I played the most, far more than superior console games or handheld games. I don't think I had a "poor" gaming upbringing because of that, and I don't think kids who only have access to tablets and phones have it either. Doesn't change the fact that that's the only reason kids play those platforms more. Not because they like them more, but because parents do.

And you're right. Parents aren't stupid. They are giving their kids more cheaper mobile experiences rather than handheld and console games. Doesn't mean either market is diminishing. There's still plenty of parents that definitely feel that a dedicated gaming toy is the right path to take, as proven by the wonderful 3DS sales. Nintendo doesn't need to kill smartphones. They just need to justify a parent buying both, which they already do fantastically now. They'll do even better with the NX and their new smart consoles.

DQ11 and KH3 are 8th gen games, not 9th gen. Don't know what you're on about there, so I'll just skip.

The unified platform is the "Wii like miracle." Not merely because the games will work across two platforms, but because of the antire modernization of the console concept with these "smart consoles." I think it'll definitely do better than the 3DS. Significantly so. And it'll also have an everlasting lifespan thanks to the way they'll make fraquent hardware upgrades much like Apple does with its iphones.

I don't know what alien era you grew up in, but I grew up in the crux of movies like TLK and TLM, and Mickey Mouse was still king of them all. He didn't need to be in the newest Disney movie to be, and I can't remember a single day in my entire life where he wasn't the king of relevancy, especially in my childhood. Everyone knows and loves Mickey.