Does anyone remember what leaks were saying about the Wii U/Project Cafe? Might be interesting to compare between the two.

You can find out by listening to the podcast.

But no. Well kind of. But no. Ish.

Regardless of the validity on any of the rumours, is it safe to say that no other console have been talked about this much prior to being officially announced? Or am I just noticing this now because I'm more involved in forums? :/

Bumping this as I locked the other thread and updated the OP.

I'd say it's latter - it's pretty much like this every time, filled with all sorts of wild speculations and rumours.

N64/Project: Reality probably would have been through the roof if the internet existed in the same way back then. 

At the same time a lot of this speculation/rumors is driven by Nintendo annoucing a system and then saying virtually nothing about it for even a year. 

The N64 had unparralled secrecy I thought, but even there we got tib-bits now and again. 

I guess with GameCube/Dolphin it might be a little similar ... announced in May 1999 and nothing major released on it until August 2000 more or less. 

So I just talked to a tech friend about the SCD patent and one thing was made very clear - there's no way something like what was described in the patent would be able to be less than $300 and not be shit. The amount of power it would take for something like this work well as described would be very expensive.

Which is why the rewards for owning one are there. This is very likely going to be a niche product being sold "for the greater good." The more of these are sold, the more powerful the collective network will be. This is really huge because at some point it would be powerful enough and most importantly close enough to the general user where it would VASTLY improve the amount of computing power available to the common user.

One thing that wasn't mentioned in that podcast was how reliant each individual SCD is on your internet connection. This is obvious, but if your internet connection is shit, your experience with it will be much worse, and those connected to you SCD will have a worse experience too. Think about it. When the host for a server on an online game has a shitty connection, everyone suffers. Same concept, only it effects the quality of the extra computing power you get.

Reading this patent more, the only way I can see this being marketed is in a similar way that a router is, except you WANT to share it. But I don't think this as being something most people are expected to own. The point have the few build this infrastructure for Nintendo, something that is kind of scummy, if you think about it. It's kind of their way of deferring the costs of maintaining dedicated servers to the end user. But this thing is really for adding computational power to the games that talk advantage of it. I assume that all games would run without it, but I can't even fathom how much the experience would improve if an infrastructure like this was built successfully.

I'm going to pick his brains some more about this. I know it's a bit off topic, but this is exciting stuff. If this stuff is true, it might not matter if NX is weaker than the competition. This would make up for that easily.

I think to understand the SCD you need to understand the Japanese market first and foremost.

In Japan there is higher speed internet (fiber optic) because it's such a small country and much easier for Nintendo to distribute servers country wide. Homes are also just naturally closer together.

So the SCD concept could work fairly easily there, especially if the portable is more common place. People who buy the SCD get bonuses like free Nintendo points and possibly free games if they buy the SCD and other people utilize the power of it.

That's right in the patent. That means for Nintendo this could be a cheap way to make sure buyers who only purchase the portable version of NX can still enjoy the higher end console graphics while at home by being able to "borrow" horsepower from nearby SCD units.

In the US/Europe, SCD would likely be more of just a standard add-on for those who want it and be their answer to the PS4K issue. Nothing wrong with that either.

NeoGAF is hardly a "reputable source" for anything more than pure rumor and speculation.

Having said that, I still think the concept of one unified portable/home console system, makes sense and if done right could be a really good idea, so I hope that is true.

Some people would, and that's all that needs to happen for it to be successful. It's just the beginning.