Yeah...the conversation has certainly shifted quite a bit. Oh well, I'm not complaining, plus it is still somewhat relevant to the original topic lol.

Third party devs would find it easier to port a game to ARM based architecture or X86? I'm sure Nintendo want third party support this time.

SD Cards could reduce the cost of the system, rather than systems having a disc drive and a HDD, the platform could just use SD Cards, for both a handheld and a console.
Just using SD card readers would reduce the costs of the platform and Nintendo can sell their own branded version.

There are benefits in the form of read and write speeds, flexibility of the sheer size of a card being tiny.
The only issue is in the cost of the actual physical medium. 32GB SD Cards cost like £7.99 at retail, vs like £0.35 for a 25GB Bluray Disc.
Maybe if Nintendo can get the cost per game card down to under a pound then it would be a viable option.

Maybe a supplier can make Nintendo a good deal for their cards. Hopefully this doesn't drive the cost of games up, to cover the cost of the physical game storage.
It'd be nice if Nintendo could release a platform that doesn't have loading times at all and near instant game saves.

Seems like NX is launching this year. I don't see why this couldn't mean both the home console and a handheld will release this Fall (the hardware and software to make a unified platform exists).
Microsoft have done fine by announcing in May 2013 and releasing that November, hell if Nintendo have a clear message, some good launch games, a reasonable price for the systems then they'd be fine just announcing at E3 and hitting everyone in the face with NX.

A home console with an AMD 8 core Puma CPU at 2.4GHz, along with a 2.76Tflop GPU and 8GBs of GDDR5 clocked at 264GB/s would be pretty cheap, like no more than £350 (not bad for a system with 50% more power than PS4).
Handheld with around 1/10th of the performance would be capable of running the same games at 480p, with some reductions in graphical settings (AA, AF, Texture detail, Geometry levels and Particles), but the same core experience is easily doable at £200.

Nintendo could even still go all digital and still sell games through retailers doing the downloading for you and you take an SD Card or Flash Drive to Gamestop, Game or whoever your local retailer is.

It was a pain in the ass to reinstall games on your new PC or on a friends PC or transfer the games and save data to another PC. These actions got a lot more convenient with Steam and cloud saving.

Devs are used to develop for both kind of processors, and most game engines like Unreal Engine support them.

That said, the advantage of ARM processors is their low power consumption while x86 processors give more performance, so in my opinion Nintendo should use an ARM processor for the handheld (as they are doing right now with the 3DS) and an x86 CPU for the home console.

i knew it

Because it's not instant. You have to physically move the cards between two systems. Doing that over a library of dozens of owned games equivalent to changing the channel manually on the TV versus using a remote. The issue is only compounded when you factor in that one of the hardware excuse is meant to be portable.

I don't really understand the second question. It just is. That's what Nintendo is going for with a unified platform.  That's like asking why Apple expects you to own an iPhone along with an iPad. They just do. That's just how the systems are designed. They're built to complement each other. It's just in the nature of shared platforms. They have to be builted to work seamlessly with each other  because that's the expectation when they run the same OS and play the same software.

Because it's not instant. You have to physically move the cards between two systems. Doing that over a library of dozens of owned games equivalent to changing the channel manually on the TV versus using a remote. The issue is only compounded when you factor in that one of the hardware excuse is meant to be portable.

I don't really understand the second question. It just is. That's what Nintendo is going for with a unified platform.  That's like asking why Apple expects you to own an iPhone along with an iPad. They just do. That's just how the systems are designed. They're built to complement each other. It's just in the nature of shared platforms. They have to be builted to work seamlessly with each other because that's the expectation when they run the same OS and play the same software. You can't build a family of systems that don't interact like a family.

I think that's a fair point. It's still not even remotely as convenient as having an entire library of games instantly accessible without the need for switching physical media in and out between hardware SKUs one by one.

You want to know the whole truth about the NX?

NX software is primarily an OS based on the OS of the WiiU (remember that the WiiU uses an ARM processor to touner the OS, not the PowerPC that runs the OS). This OS is probably developed to run on ARM as well as on X86 ...

NX is then a hardware into 2 parts:

- A portable console, that part will surely be a portable WiiU (a powerful ARM processor will replace the PowerPC, as Microsoft emulates the PowerPC of the X360 with the X86 of Xboxone, Nintendo emulate the PowerPC of WiiU with ARM on the NX )

- House module ... this is where some make mistake ... and it is even the center of the NX strategy! this is not a game console! Part of the house is ... a SERVER! and it is this part that is the new concept!



A server ??? you say WTF !!! ???

I'll explain how and why I came to this conclusion.

At first, I thought as some here that NX would be a handheld very close to the WiiU order to welcome their games, SSB, Splatoon Mario maker, MK8, Zelda WiiU .... in the launch window .. .

Iwata said:

"It Will Become importance for us to Accurately take advantage of what we-have done with the Wii U architecture"
"It Does not mean of course we are going to That uses exactly the Sami architecture as Wii U, we are going to aim create a system can absorb That the Wii U architecture adequately. When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices no follow Will be completely Call different, and They Will Become like brothers in a family of systems. "

I was thinking of a kind of inverted WiiU, APU, RAM, memory contained in the gamepad, the latter stream the second screen to the TV using an HDMI-connected case ... only the storage cartridge was problematic. ..

And one day ... STATIONARY GAME APPARATUS, GAME APPARATUS, GAME SYSTEM, AND RECORDING MEDIUM SPEED CONTROL METHOD

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20150231511&OS=20150231511&RS=20150231511

And there! enlightenment! it is not a home console without an optical drive, but a SERVER!

look at this block diagramm:

http://images.p-nintendo.com/o/2015/08/55d7aa078f24c7.jpg

You can see HDD, can connect an External HDD, 2 blocks type flash memory, two communication units (1 wireless, 1 which seems connected by cable to server ...) and in the middle one CPU that identifies, selects and rule their speed ...
Nintendo never puts network card or HDD in its consoles ...

You tell me ... what what binds the WiiU handhelp with this server?
Well another patent refers to this "RECORDING MEDIUM", it comes to this patent:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20150253932.pdf

On Fig.2:

http://abload.de/img/fig2kuqtr.jpg

as we can see, the game program comes from the "RECORDING MEDIUM" goes through the RECORDING MEDIUM LOADING UNIT to be stored in non-volatile memory in a portable console.

You begin to understand? Nintendo will sell a portable console (probably WiiU handhelp) and use a house module> WiFi HDD for storing games and display on TV.


But this is only the beginning! ;) If you look at that other patent:

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=8&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Nintendo.AANM.&OS=AANM/Nintendo&RS=AANM/Nintendo

it seems obvious that this "Supplemental Computing Devices For Game Consoles" = "GAME STATIONARY APPARATUS"

This is a server that is used for storing games data; for display on TV screen via HDMI; For Online (massively multi-player) and finally to Cloud Computing (virtualization, shared and remote calculation)

The new concept behind the NX is actually a system CLOUD COMMUNITY! Nintendo will sell online as material (unlike Sony and MS who sell it as service) and small personal network servers form the online infrastructure of Nintendo.
In the latter patent it is even expressed a system of cloud mining, but we will not win the bitcoins but Nintendo Points on MYNINTENDO ... more leave us our server available to the community, the more you will win Nintendo Points ...

In short, NX is a portable WiiU ($ 200) + a small personal server (100 to $ 150) for storing games, the display on TV, online gaming, a system of cloud computing ... They will sold together, but I think the server is also sold alone for the WiiU and integrate it into the NX system ...