bunchanumbers said:
Nintendo is pulling a bait and switch on a massive level. It is a 720p tablet. Nothing more. A Nintendo branded tablet. What a gimmick. |
Agreed. This is terrible. I think it will be the end of Nintendo hardware, and deeply harmful to the company, provided it goes for the expected price of $299 or higher.
What they should have done IMHO :
Have a unified platform (scalable games so that they could play on both a handheld and home console model of the new hardware releases that I describe below)
Tablet model with weaker AMD APU (~50% GPU power of Xbox One, at 1.75Ghz clock on 14 or 16nm), 8GB of shared memory, 128GB storage for digital games, cart slot, 6" 720P screen, $199 with game.
Home model with same series of APU but with GPU portion ~100% of X1 power or within 10% + or -, same clock speed and memory so that games would only need to scale resolution or AA/AF and other easy to optimize settings to hit identical FPS and not have to code two versions of any games. Also $199 with game. 1TB HDD in this one for digital games, but use same cart slot and have the EXACT same retail games work on both, and digital purchases automatic cross-buy for your user account on both home and mobile systems if you own both.
Why do I say this? Because credible reports have the NS at 1/3rd the performance of the Xbox One, with half the memory, small storage capacity, and low resolution display. This is a deadly combo, because it basically eliminates Nintendo YET AGAIN from AAA multiplat support. The multiplats which do come will look awful compared to PS/XB, and more likely we'll see few if any meaningful ones even released. This will be WiiU part two : great for Nintendo's own IPs and a handful of other JP games that sell pretty badly in the US. Mainline Mario/Zelda/Kart/Pokemon will sell fine to great, most other stuff will sell .. poorly.
Beyond frustrating :(
