I actually feel there will be more than one Nintendo console this cycle. Nintendo can't make one box and have it appeal to every single part of the modern gaming demographic. NX will simply be a family of devices that encompasses all the different hardware variants. 

You can't make a machine suitable to the "kids market", which then has to be cheap and have it appeal to say core gamers because the hardware will be weak but they have trouble being taken seriously as a pure core device because basically 90% of their game portfolio are Disney-styled IP (this in part sank the GameCube).

It's better off just having separate devices, but they all play the same basic Nintendo franchise IP, the higher end core version can just be focused more on third party titles and the specific needs of the core players. 

Ohm you were responding to that. I hope tht isn't the case, cuz that is just really terrible... : /

I don't think it's as bad as you're making out to be. No one complained about when it happened in Smash, and very few people are complaining about HWL, and the ones that are are complaining that they have to buy the game again, which won't be the case with the NX.

That is true. I wasn't upset with Smash Bros, as I had both, but I am very upset with HWL, as I don't want to buy the game. I would be fine with buy it as dlc though.

I suppose with the NX, it would be complaining about having to buy a 2nd console rathen than buying the game again.

I just don't think it's that large of an issue. People expect exclusive feature between these platforms already just by the nature of their differences. This just incorperates those differences into the software. I think it's sneaky, but it's also simple, smart, and effective. Allowing people to buy it separately as DLC completely goes against the whole point of making these exclusive features in the first place.

I think HWL would have been better if there were some Wii U exclusive characters too, though this was probably done because the 3DS version is coming out so far behind the Wii U version.

I think there will not be 100% compatibility of Nintendo games, more likely 80-90%.

I disagree entirely. Nintendo are the once pushing this, and they will be the ones enforcing it. If any game will be exclusive to one platform, it'll be from the one off 3rd party who doesn't want to scale down their game to the weaker NXDS. 100% of Nintendo games, both first party and exclusive 3rd party, will be playable on both.

They will not artificially limit any one game to only one platform and cut it's potential sales in half for what is ostensibly no good reason. Nintendo will not look at the NX as two separate platforms, so they will not treat any of their software as if that was the case.

I dunno, there has been quite a bit of uproar for some of this, especially amiibo, and for good reason. Deliberating holding back hefty amount of extras and holding it to one version sounds really anti-consumer, which seems like Ninten would not want to do?

Though how would Nintendo even do that? There wouldn't be different versions, as they would work on either console...

Oh yeah, of course there it an uproar. I'm apart of it, but even I know that it's completely muted by the runaway success over Amiibo. There is no such significant uproar at all over what Smash and HWL did, however. Not enough to change anything, and I'm sure the same will happen with the NX. People will complain about it, because it's wrong, but that won't change anything, because it will work.

Nintendo does anti-consumer shit all the time. Like I said, Amiibo is exponentially worse than this is, and Amiibo are being put into more games every day. The entire way Nintendo handled Smash's DLC is anti consumer. Nintendo are no saints. This, by comparison, is absolutely nothing.

They will be different versions, just based of the same baseline game. They will just be extremely similar, from a skeliton POV. They can't be exactly the same simply based on obvious things like screen real-estate, game sizes, optimizations, etc. The HUD in some games, for example, must be different on the NXDS than it will be on the NX because of the nature of a smaller screen. That can't be done with 100% identical versions. Then comes the fact that more work will need to be done than a simple scaling up or down. The hardware is set, meaning there will need to be optimizations done to get the best out of the power given. They'd also need to do some serious compression for all of the NXDS versions of the game files, because a handheld simply does not have the capacity to hold that many console-sized games, space wise.

All a unified platform does is make it fast, easy, and cheap for the developer to do all this. Adding exclusive content to either platform merely requires telling the game what platform what content can appear on, the same way it will already do it for the versions of a game itself. That's why people thinking this will be a physical platform are legitimately nuts to me: especially carts. This kind of stuff isn't happening with cartriges. You aren't going to buy a cart, have it work onboth, and see the same kinds of differences you expect between a console and a handheld when you swap that one cart between the two. 

Maybe Nintendo will start doing payment plans like Apple does. They've literally outright said that they're changing their pricing model for hardware and software. My Nintendo already shows how they are changing software. They are not releasing the NX at a static price - at least not as the only option.

I wouldn't be surprised at something like this - A 12 month payment plan for the NX. You pay $100 upfront, and then only $15-$20 every month for a year. After that year, you've payed off the entire thing. There could even be a 2 year plan for less - $7-$10 a month. People do it with phones and tech all the time.