You always do that. Someone talks about one aspect of something with multiple aspects, and you isolate that one aspect and act like they are saying that alone completely and singularly encompases what the thing they're talking about is about.

Yes Soundwave, standard console with only digital media is not a game changer for anyone. That's not even close to what the NX will be, so saying it's not a game changer is irrelevant. It's not a PS4/XBO/WiiU without a disc drive, and no one was ever claiming it would be. No, Nintendo aren't going to try and sell the NX on the basis of being digital only. No, the NX is not a game changer just because it's digital only. No, Nintendo isn't going digital to solve some giant problem with their software media. Being digital only is a means to an end. That's it. It's not the selling point. It's a screw in the machine. It's something absolutely nessecary to make the NX work. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Quoting because I agree.

Listen, if the savings come from the membership program, plese tell me how I'm going to get eased into it if I get no discounts at all from the very start.

Why don't you outline exactly what you think the NX's "membership program" is going to be and why it's so amazing? I doubt it will be as ambitious as you think it is. DeNA is helping them out, big whoop, DeNA is a small potatoes company compared to the likes of Microsoft and even Sony (still). 

Sony/MS have basically membership reward programs and full digital if that's what you want. Hell Sony even has a streaming game service (PS Now) that eliminates the need for game hardware altogether already up and running, not several years away. You can play PS1/PS2/PS3 etc. games on that. 

Outside of the obvious fact that there will still be sales, discounts, promotions, and price reductions outside of the membership program, it won't ease you in. Unless you've never bought a full priced game before in your life, that shouldn't be an issue. The membership discounts are rewards replacing the Club Nintendo rewards. You don't get rewarded for doing nothing.

I guess you have a point, since I'm actually an advocate of how Club Nintendo worked!

But I really can't get into the idea of an all-digital platform since I simply prefer buying physical media - my idea of a Club Nintendo replacement uses physical media as a means to ease people into digital media in the form of sales and whatnot, after all.

I guess I should really just be saying that you'll stand to alienate less people if you use physical media to ease people into digital media services - just like what PS+ and XBL Gold are doing now, but in different ways.

I made an entire thread doing that, which you commented on, months ago. I'm not going to do it again. Not in this thread. It's forming the core of the NX platform. It's likely even more ambitious than I think. When it comes to screws, it's by far the biggest one in the NX.

DeNA doesn't need to be a big company to be able to be a crutial aid in what the NX platform will be. Their experience with Mobage is enough. Doesn't matter that Sony and MS are bigger. They haven't tried doing this. You can have all the money in the world, and it means nothing if you don't use it.

And again, what Sony/MS offer is not what the NX platform and the membership will be. They aren't even remotely the same. PS+ and XBLG aren't even rewards programs. They are subscription services. You aren't being rewarded for anything and you aren't being incentivise to do anything to obtain anything. You pay a fixed rate to get a service. That's not what the membership program is. PS Now isn't what the NX will be either, so bringing that up is irrelevant.

You really think "rewards" are something Sony/MS can't do? If it's something that Nintendo even does (which I'm not even sure about, this is the same Nintendo that refuses to drop the price one penny on 95% of their 5+ year old games) and proves to have some success with, Sony/MS will simply copy it. 

PS + is already kind of like this, you pay an amount that is basically the cost of one regular game and you get a bunch of "free" games as a "rewards", it's just semantics in terms of labelling it differently. 

I doubt very much Nintendo will give discounts on their big tent pole games either (the Mario Karts, Splatoons, Mario 3Ds, of the world). 

Again, I think that most people, yes even the ones who prefer physical media, will just get over it when they see a game they enjoy on the platform. And as the NX gathers steam and is have a hardy installed base of people enjoying the platform, people who were initially reserved about digital media will give it a shot, and they'll realize how great digital is and how it aids the platform into being something it couldn't have been otherwise, just like with the iphone. Most people who buy the NX will not even once pay attention to the fact that it's digital only. When you use a smartphone, you don't constantly think about how it doesn't have a bluray player. But people watch the movies anyway, because Apple made it convenient and effortless to do everything on it.

People aren't going to look at the NX and think "OMG, that thing is digital only!" They are going to look at it and think "wow, that thing is so modern and convenient," and then people who think about it further will immediately understand how being digital only aided in that impression. It being digital only is only a big deal to hardcore gamers, but that's not where the NXs marketing focus will go at all, just like the first iPod didn't market itself by saying "fuck you if you like CDs!" It marketed itself by showing how convenient it is to be able to go through thousands of songs on the fly and near instantly, organize music by different catagories, create custom playlists, etc. But everyone who thinks about it knows that that was only possible because it was digital only. Digital only was a means to an end. But what an end.

That's what the NX's success will come from. Being modern and being convenient. That's all. The membership discounts and flexible pricing aren't an appology for being digital only - they are a natural luxury that being digital only affords. That's why I'm sure their biggest focus with the NX will be on the OS. Doesn't sound exciting at all, until you see it in action. I call it a smart console because that's basically what it is. Nintendo probably won't call it that, but that's the direction they're going in. Innovating not hardware or software, firmware.

Playstation and XBox are "smart" consoles too, they are very convienant to use and whatever feature a competitior may have for convienance sake is very simple to add into the hardware via firmware. 

I think this is kind of the problem sometimes (note I said sometimes) with Nintendo fans, they think Nintendo can or will do something soooo much better (ie: Miiverse is going to the Twitter of gaming!), the truth is Sony and MS are fairly competent companies, and generally speaking they will copy pretty much any notable feature. 

If you can play any video game of any reasonable complexity you can navigate and make use of virtually any console's features and really ultimately they all do the same basic shit, they're simple and easy to use, it's not like a PC. 

I'm sorry, I'm going Jesus mode on this one.  Either you accept digital only in your hearts, or be a heathen and change discs on your consol like a caveman.  Video game heaven awaits you with digital only.