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Forums - Gaming - Analyst: NX doesn't need to compete against PS4 & Xbox One to be successful

Soundwave on 21 December 2015
Jumpin said:
Soundwave said:

Also I think one misnomer that some Nintendo fans have latched onto is that somehow the audience that Sony and MS target is not "mainstream".

Here's a fact the PS3 and XBox 360 had a larger audience than the Wii collectively and even individually almost matched the Wii for userbase.

You can't just ignore this audience that IS the mainstream gaming audience. To ignore it is basically to admit you are aiming for a niche audience or attempting to compete head on with Apple/Google for $1 casual consumers (you'd be better off competing against Sony/MS in that case).

The idea that making a cheap-kids console is some safe haven for Nintendo is equally misguided ... there is tons of competetion in that space, in fact there are more casual/cheap-o games being made today than any other genre period and they're free or dirt cheap. 

Here's a fact, Wii was WAY more successful than Xbox 360 or PS3 on both the hardware and software because of the strategy it did use.

 

That's great. But it doesn't really help Nintendo now as the casual portion of the market has changed dramatically. It's like telling Madonna "why don't you make the same kind of music you did in 1984 ... that was when you had your best selling album" ... things have changed a little bit since then. In game cycles 10 years ago may as well be 20 or 30. 

And I wouldn't say it was WAY more successful ... Wii - 100 mill and dramatically fell off/fizzled out in its later years, PS3 - 85-90 mill, gained momentum towards the end, 360 - 85-90 mill was stronger in its back half than front half. 

Back to NX, I feel it needs to be a much bolder change, it needs to be *platform* ... not a singular (or even two) pieces of hardware IMO. There should be multiple entry points, you make your NX account, and then from that point on your NX library scales up and down however you want and you buy different NX models later on if you wish. Encourage devs to make games that can run on both the portable and home models when and where ever reasonably possible (it won't always be possible so don't force devs). 

There is no "traditional 5 year cycle" for NX either, IMO it should go on indefintely from launch, you simply buy new hardware later on to "upgrade". 

This will be much harder for Sony/MS to compete against, because it's very easy for them to out power the NX with PS5/XB2 1 or 2 years later if Nintendo launches in 2016 or 2017. 

Then we'll see a predictable cycle of the NX get "Dreamcast-ed". Nintendo needs to make a platform, not a traditional console and handheld (even ones that shares games). They need to be bolder and more adaptive. Yes I understand people are saying there are some technical challenges with this, but that comes with the territory of basically doing anything different. Nintendo can't survive as a hardware maker if they keep doing the same thing, so that makes the decision to embrace doing something new fairly easy IMO -- they have no other choice.