Nintendo NX Console

[ctophil]

Hey Guys,

Although Nintendo hasn't released a console I really liked since the SNES, I still continue to support them. Sure, the Nintendo Wii sold more consoles than the NES, but that's because the game industry has gained a larger audience since then, and it was a console geared towards the mainstream. The Wii generation felt very similar to the Gamecube and N64. There were only a few games that stood out, since Nintendo developed them. Third-party support were slim and of low quality for the past 4 generations of consoles.

Fast forward to the present and future. Their next generation console, Nintendo NX, will launch March 2017. You would think with that kind of an announcement, they would unveil some details this E3. But that won't be the case. I assume Nintendo is doing this to keep the Wii U and 3DS from dying a quick death. The other big rumor going around is that the Nintendo NX will be a cartridge-based console. You heard it right. Nintendo's Chinese manufacturer of carts for their portable systems have briefly stated that they just got a large influx of orders for carts for Nintendo's new console. Could this be true? If so, it would certainly be a good thing, since you don't have to install games onto the hard drive like the current generation consoles. Carts load games extremely fast, and it could be a way for Nintendo to combat complaints of waiting for games to install.

Read the article here: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/05/rumour-nintendo-nx-to-drop-discs-for-cartridges

Another weird thing going on is that Nintendo said the new Legend of Zelda coming to Wii U and NX will be the ONLY game at this E3. They are already abandoning the Wii U before the NX comes out. You can feel the desperation at Nintendo. I only wish them the best with the NX. What do you guys think?

[kitsunebi]

Not entirely sure why you think reverting to cartridges would be a wise move. Surely you remember how doing so with the N64 was cited as one of the main reasons they lost the market lead to Sony.

[E-Day]

flash based media. It's more durable, faster, doesn't rely on a mechanical component to read it, and isn't limited by a predetermined standard as far as capacity. Memory wasn't as cheap in the N64 days, or as fast, as it is now.

[Sean697]

I'd be shocked if the have cartridges. This rumor started when Nintendo;s patents listed an optical drive -less gaming platform. And people refuse to believe it could mean a digital only platform. I'm more inclined to believe digital only. Although flash would make sense being how cheap it nowadays. I mean flash equivalent of Blu Ray storage is close to being pennies nowadays,

[twiztor]

haven't considered it much, but i wouldn't be surprised to see a cartridge-/chip- based system (think Nintendo DS) but where the games are actually downloaded. You can only DL the game if you have the chip/cartridge inserted into the system and have the DL code in the packaging. Good for one download and linked to your Nintendo ID. i mean, it's not what i would want out of a system, but at this point, Nintendo doesn't really understand the market anymore anyway.

i'm a diehard Nintendo fan, but the Wii (despite being the greatest selling system of all time) and especially the Wii-U were pretty much failures in the video game community. Unless the Big N gets some serious third party support i feel like we're headed down the same path.

[Areala]

So...Nintendo is either delivering games stored in flash memory, or else they're re-creating the PSP-Go. I'm not sure either one is the best choice at this point, but as always, history will tell the tale better than our prognostications.

*huggles*
Areala

[landamo]

This whole NX thing reminds me of Sega in the late 90s, and even though the Dreamcast was a great system it did not work out very well for them. Hopefully Nintendo fairs better than it's former rival. I for one would really like to have a Nintendo console once again be my main console, something that hasn't been the case since 1995.

[ctophil]

Here is a complete Wiki on current Nintendo NX rumors: http://www.ign.com/wikis/nintendo-nx/NX_Rumors

It seems Nintendo is going to push more games to come out in the next generation. So, the Nintendo NX library won't be as sparse as the Wii U. Though Nintendo hasn't been successful with their main hardware business in the past generation, they have a huge amount of cash reserves and some very talented developers working for them. Unlike Sega, Nintendo has been around for over a 100 years and got some experience under their belts. Therefore, they won't come crashing down anytime soon.

[kitsunebi]

Unlike Sega, Nintendo has been around for over a 100 years and got some experience under their belts. Therefore, they won't come crashing down anytime soon.

I'm not disagreeing that Nintendo is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, but a lack of experience was not the cause of Sega's problems. Sega has been making games since 1940. Nintendo had existed before that, sure, but they didn't get involved with any kinds of games outside of playing cards until 1966. So even if we pretend that Sega ceased to exist at the end of the Dreamcast era and discount all of the games they've made since dropping out of the hardware business, Sega still has more years of experience in the games market than Nintendo does.

Just sayin'.

[Zalmute]

I think it would be very interesting to see if they could make carts work again. I would presume that they would be about the size of a 3ds card or maybe a little larger. I'm not married to disks so I would be curious.

[RetroDefense]

I'd prefer a cart/card based system vs. optical drive. The less moving parts, the better.

But if digital only or some kind of online-dependent hybrid, I'll pass. Which is saying something as I've been a huge Nintendo fan since my introduction to the NES.

Nintendo's current DRM attitude is far too heavy-handed for any digital-reliant system to be successful. As Areala mentioned, it'd essentially be another PSP-Go.

Can't imagine they'll go this route though. I'm sure they're aware of the Xbone fallout.

[RetroDefense]

The CUPodcast mentioned Gamestop confirmed physical NX media recently.

[orthicviper]

Nintendo probably still wants to continue their "blue ocean" strategy where they try to attract new types of gamers that were not much of gamers before. I can't think of what awesome new way to play games there is except for VR and I thought they were going to do VR/AR as their next trick but lately I've been doubting it so I'm growing skeptical again of their potential for success. They sohuld have known Wii U wouldn't be a hit I mean people don't want piss poor graphics unless there's something really new going on and Wii U just didn't have it also their gamecube/GBA connectivity didn't amount to much as far as I know so I just don't get how they expected the Wii U to do well as I knew a year before it's release it was going to fail.

I think the only way Nintendo could have had a chance this time is if they marketed the NX as a hardcore gamer platform where you could play Nintendo's awesome exclusives and have bad-ass hardware to go along with it. It should be a black system to show the old company if purple game systems with handles on them and baby-like sound system sound effects are over and they are ready to cater to their original fans who are adults now. Since that wont happen I think they are about to end up like Sega. Can't wait to buy Super Mario Galaxy 3 on a Steam summer sale for $5.

[twiztor]

I think the only way Nintendo could have had a chance this time is if they marketed the NX as a hardcore gamer platform where you could play Nintendo's awesome exclusives and have bad-ass hardware to go along with it. It should be a black system to show the old company if purple game systems with handles on them and baby-like sound system sound effects are over and they are ready to cater to their original fans who are adults now.

GTA: Mushroom Kingdom, here we come!

MK Fatalities in Smash Bros!

a Metroid FPS that only exists for multiplayer, and you can't create an account without using cursewords as a username!

a Legend of Zelda that may as well be Uncharted 7!

i'll pick up a NX eventually. probably not at launch. i typically wait for the first price drop or the introduction of a black/dark gray system. i don't understand why they keep launching with white systems. Plus by then there's usually a few good games for it, since they haven't had a strong launch lineup in years.

[Zalmute]

Nintendo probably still wants to continue their "blue ocean" strategy where they try to attract new types of gamers that were not much of gamers before. I can't think of what awesome new way to play games there is except for VR and I thought they were going to do VR/AR as their next trick but lately I've been doubting it so I'm growing skeptical again of their potential for success. They sohuld have known Wii U wouldn't be a hit I mean people don't want piss poor graphics unless there's something really new going on and Wii U just didn't have it also their gamecube/GBA connectivity didn't amount to much as far as I know so I just don't get how they expected the Wii U to do well as I knew a year before it's release it was going to fail.

I think the only way Nintendo could have had a chance this time is if they marketed the NX as a hardcore gamer platform where you could play Nintendo's awesome exclusives and have bad-ass hardware to go along with it. It should be a black system to show the old company if purple game systems with handles on them and baby-like sound system sound effects are over and they are ready to cater to their original fans who are adults now. Since that wont happen I think they are about to end up like Sega. Can't wait to buy Super Mario Galaxy 3 on a Steam summer sale for $5.

I dunno, just being the exact same as the other guys may not work as much as you think it will. Fans whom already left probably won't return just because the graphics are better and those whom left because of the console color probably weren't adults anyway.

I think it's in Nintendo's best interest to keep doing things differently, however they need to also not be so different that 3rd party developers aren't completely alienated.

[kitsunebi]

Frankly, I feel like Nintendo is only releasing consoles out of stubbornness at this point. The reality is that console gaming is dying in Japan. Microsoft and Sony can survive in the overseas markets on the sales of western titles, but Nintendo has pretty much depended entirely upon its first-party stuff for some time now, so it's fair to say that Nintendo's performance in Japan will decide its future. For a long time now, that future has been shifting towards handheld gaming, and now that they're entering the mobile game market, the writing may be on the wall for the stand-alone console. Not even stuck-in-its-ways-Nintendo can ignore the massive reaction (and dramatic boost in stock prices) the launch of Pokemon Go has caused.

[Data]

There are three new consoles on the horizon. Playstation 4K or PS4 Neo or PS 4.5, Xbox One Point Five, and Nintendo NX.

All three of these consoles are attempting to update the old resolutions of struggling 1080 P 60fps and in Nintendo's case, 720P as well as the future attempt at reviving Virtual Reality. Remember 1991? It was the cost of these units and limited capabilities of the time which prevented them from succeeding commercially besides in custom military training applications.

Wii U used an old 3 core 45 nm IBM Power PC type CPU from 2011 clocked at 1.24 Ghz and paired with an equally underwhelming old AMD APU.

Playstation 4 and Xbox One share the same AMD APU 28nm 8 core paired with Radeon 7000 GPU. Both consoles are very close in most games at providing 1080P 60 Fps with the exception of a few Tripple A games getting better resolution on Playstation.

If the rumors are true then all three consoles will replace the CPU GPU combination with AMD's 14nm Finfet Polaris GPU and Zen CPU.

A rough estimate judging by what has recently been released from Nvidia 1080/1070/1060 and AMD RX 480/470/460, we will get a bump to 1440P resolutions 60FPS instead of 1080 as well as the ability to do 4K. We will not see AAA games running 4K 60FPS on these new consoles. It is not possible for under 1000 dollars but 1440 is what all the PC gamers are using as the new norm.

This can be accomplished at a cost of roughly 750 dollars in a PC if you didn't have to pay for Windows.

As for the medium of which games are sold in stores I believe Nintendo is going to find that the best performance per dollar is still going to be digital download to hard drive utilizing account verification or on optical medium where the disk is used as a key to verify ownership.

SDHC drives could work as an initial install method but the cost is far too high for games larger than 32 GB and the cost is also too high for transfer speeds higher than what is currently used on blu ray.

I would say we stick to digital download or optical media to install the data to a hard drive. They should use a Hybrid drive such as a a Seagate 1TB which currently retails for 96 dollars. This Hybrid drives has 8 GB of flash memory which reads and writes at the common SSD speeds of 560 MB/s compared to the current Blu Ray transfer speed of 6.75 MB/s and the very top end SD card with the new Video Speed Class rating of V90 having maximum 90 MB/s.

Hybrids are perfect for a console because you only ever play one game at a time and once it's in the Flash section it has a tremendous advantage over any other system currently.

One example is loading levels on Grand Theft Auto 5 on Xbox One. It takes 88.6 seconds to load a big level with the Xbox One's built in 5400 rpm 500 GB drive but it only takes 26 s on hybrid and 24 on Solid State Drive.

[formisc1]

I think if the cartridges were of sufficient size, it could be a good move. disc based medium has a problem of latency that why you see games for PS4/XB1 requiring installation.

[Data]

I think if the cartridges were of sufficient size, it could be a good move. disc based medium has a problem of latency that why you see games for PS4/XB1 requiring installation.

I already said that the cost of cartridges would be prohibitive.  If you want to get rid of this "latency" you would need spend $65.00 American per blank card with the speed rating of UHS II and get the data transfer speed equivalent 5 times the speed of a bluray 4x and half the speed of a good SSD drive.

[Data]

I heard a rumor that Nintendo will unveil their NX in September 2016 for a March 2017 release.  The NX will be a portable system like the Nvidia Shield Tablet.  I have only seen concept illustrations so far.  It looks like a tablet with a kickstand and the kickstand is a "bookshelf" that hold player one and two joysticks.  The NX will be a handheld device as well as portable console which plugs into televisions. 

 

The rumors also state that the console gets it's power from the Nvidia Tegra 2016 generation.  The Tegra is a multi layered arm processor with Nvidia's 14 nm graphics core.  This combination is also used in autonomous cars.  The console will essentially be a turbo charged Wii U that does 60 fps at 1080 but compared to Sony and Microsoft's updated consoles which will be running 60 fps at 1440p , the NIntendo will once again be under powered by raw Giga Pixel pushing power.

 

[XFactor]

Those are rumours for now but Nintendo seems to never learn their lessons.

 

The NX seems it will not attract third party developers again.

[Zalmute]

Those are rumours for now but Nintendo seems to never learn their lessons.

 

The NX seems it will not attract third party developers again.

Do you think those third parties would want to go with Nintendo if all they made was a power machine like neo? I seriously doubt that. In fact, I doubt anyone would buy a machine like that from Nintendo because they will already have a ps4, so why buy another one?

[kitsunebi]

There's an interesting dichotomy between how the console scene is viewed in the West vs. how it is in Japan.

 

In America, the Wii U was pretty much a failure leaving the Xbox One and PS4 to fight it out for the title of console king.  But in Japan, the Xbox One commands less than 1% of the market - it's almost nonexistent.  And the Wii U has proven to be much more successful than the PS4.

 

Even though the West currently comprises the largest video game market-share, making it financially beneficial to cater to Western tastes, Japanese companies, and Nintendo in particular, tend to ignore that and cater their games and marketing strategies towards the Japanese market.  As such, the "lesson" that Nintendo has learned from the current generation of console wars is that their strategy is working, as the Wii U is the most successful (non hand-held) system currently on the Japanese market.  Its failure in the US is unlikely to influence whatever they decide to do with the NX.

[XFactor]

The PS4 in Japan is on pace to sell more units than the Wii U's Japanese lifetime sales by the end of the year.

 

There's an interesting dichotomy between how the console scene is viewed in the West vs. how it is in Japan.

 

In America, the Wii U was pretty much a failure leaving the Xbox One and PS4 to fight it out for the title of console king.  But in Japan, the Xbox One commands less than 1% of the market - it's almost nonexistent.  And the Wii U has proven to be much more successful than the PS4.

 

Even though the West currently comprises the largest video game market-share, making it financially beneficial to cater to Western tastes, Japanese companies, and Nintendo in particular, tend to ignore that and cater their games and marketing strategies towards the Japanese market.  As such, the "lesson" that Nintendo has learned from the current generation of console wars is that their strategy is working, as the Wii U is the most successful (non hand-held) system currently on the Japanese market.  Its failure in the US is unlikely to influence whatever they decide to do with the NX.

[kitsunebi]

The PS4 in Japan is on pace to sell more units than the Wii U's Japanese lifetime sales by the end of the year.

 

That's a given, especially once FFXV hits.  The main point is that Nintendo (or any Japanese company) doesn't base any of their decisions on what western gamers want, even though business acumen would demand that they do so.  Japan has 40% of the population of the US.  Yet of the US and Japanese combined lifetime sales of PS4+WiiU, Japan only amount to 28.8% of sales.  And if you add the Xbox One into the equation, only 17.8% of the sales.  That means that consoles sell at over twice the rate per capita in the US as they do in Japan.

 

The problem is that Japan doesn't know how to develop games to appeal to that lucrative western market.  Sometimes they inadvertently create something that has huge crossover appeal, like Pokemon, and sometimes they create something that for whatever reason is more popular in the west than in Japan (Castlevania, Metroid, Zelda).  But attempts to create a "western" title from the get-go are bound to fail in the same way a western developer's attempt to create a JRPG-style game will always fail.  Their hands are tied, and all they can do is continue to develop with the Japanese market as their intended user base.  Which at this point is moving further and further away from the home console.

 

I don't think handheld gaming will ever be half as popular in the US as in Japan, but perhaps it will all be irrelevant soon enough and mobile gaming will reign supreme across all continents.  Where this leaves the NX is anybody's guess, but I personally feel the Japanese home console's ship has begun to sail, and don't expect the NX to reverse its course.