Nintendo's Mysterious 'NX' Gaming Platform To Be Launched In March 2017 (pcworld.com) 88
Nintendo has announced that its next gaming platform -- codenamed NX -- will launch worldwide in March 2017. "For our dedicated video game platform, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept," the gaming console company said while announcing its annual results. PCWorld reports:Nintendo is placing big bets on NX. The company will continue to offer games for smartphone devices, a strategy it has started executing on, but its core business focus will be on what it describes as its "software-led hardware-software integrated business." [...] For the fiscal year ended March 31, the company sold 6.8 million units of the portable Nintendo 3DS hardware and over 48.5 million units of 3DS software. Global sales of the Wii U hardware and software were 3.26 million and 27.4 million units respectively.
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Re:Nintendo is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Nintendo is irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)
For the current generation of consoles, the PS4 has sold over 35 million consoles, the Xbox One is over 19 million, and the Wii U is at 12.8 million. The Wii did quite well, but the Wii U has lagged pretty far behind its competitors.
Re: Nintendo is irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
For the current generation of consoles, the PS4 has sold over 35 million consoles, the Xbox One is over 19 million, and the Wii U is at 12.8 million.
And PC is at 200 million [gamespot.com].
As for handhelds, how far is PlayStation Vita behind Nintendo 3DS again?
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And how many of those Windows 10 installs sit on desks at workplaces and don't play games at all.
And how many of those Win10 installs at homes don't play any games other than free facebook games, Solitaire or Minesweeper.
In contrast, EVERY console and portable is designed for games, that is their PRIMARY use. Not Office, Not Facebook, Not cat videos on Youtube, but GAMES. You're not going to buy a PS4 or Vita unless you want to BUY and play games on it.
As for handhelds, how far is PlayStation Vita behind Nintendo 3DS again?
Doesn't matter, it's still the best portable gaming m
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And how many of those Windows 10 installs sit on desks at workplaces and don't play games at all.
And how many of those Win10 installs at homes don't play any games other than free facebook games, Solitaire or Minesweeper.
His raw 200 million number was bogus, but the numbers still show PC gaming as easily above the Wii U and rivalling the other current-gen consoles. Even just Steam alone there were as many as 11 million people concurrently on Steam at points in the last 48 hours, for instance, so nearly as many people playing games on Steam at a time than have ever even bought Wii Us (source: http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com] ), so PC gaming is nothing to scoff at.
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but the numbers still show PC gaming as easily above the Wii U and rivalling the other current-gen consoles.
Oh yes, I consider the PS4, Xbox ONe and PC to be the "Big Three". But Tepples, who at one time wanted to be a console developer, now has a grudge/axe against consoles because Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo just don't hand out devkits and contracts to everybody.
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Doesn't matter, it's still the best portable gaming machine for the buck. It's a better gaming machine than a 3DS, or phone or tablet.
Just without the software to make it a worthwhile investment, or even the support from its creator.
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Just without the software to make it a worthwhile investment,
It still gets plenty of indies, and plenty of cross-buy stuff like the recent Day of the Tentacle. And there's been some "stealth" releases. Meaning games that get released WITHOUT much promotion so people might not know they even exist. An example of that is the Vita XCOM game which is Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within together with ALL the DLC. That's right, portable XCOM
even the support from its creator.
I really think it is just an SCEA issue. SCEA is so cautious with its marketing, they had trouble marketing the PSP too. They seem s
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PS4 has sold over 35 million consoles, the Xbox One is over 19 million, and the Wii U is at 12.8 million.
Just regarding the numbers, that's really not that bad. It's more than half the 2nd place spot, which has more than half the 1st place spot. It's more than 1/3rd the 1st place spot. It's 12.8 million... that's a lot.
If they were all pretty similar performance-wise, I'd expect the Wii U to get nearly all the same titles - why leave that many possible sales on the table? I don't think that's really the case, and I doubt the Wii U is picking up much of anything, but just based on sales figures, it's got enough
Re:Nintendo is irrelevant (Score:4, Informative)
Moot. The word you mean to use, is moot. Not mute.
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Though I read an article recently that said that it originally _was_ mute that was used in this context, but incorrectly changed to moot at some point. I can't find it in a quick search.
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Your point is mute.
Stop insulting my point! I prefer to refer to him as "volumically challenged."
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I think you meant it's a moo point
Re:Nintendo is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo caters to same-console multiplayer and exploration-game and platformer players, not competitive FPS and sports-game players. Their design goals are easy-to-pick-up, intuitive, and fun, not focused solely on dazzling the eyes with the extreme number of polygons. They explore wacky and different game mechanics like the motion-controller Wii remotes and the asymetric-gameplay Wii U tablet. Go into any nursing home. Odds are you'll find a Wii but won't find an Xbox or PS.
It would be stupid for Nintendo to exit the market, there's no one else that is even trying to cater to their player base. You may not be part of their target market, and that's completely okay. Other people are.
Re:It will have VR headset. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if they can make an affordable and fun-to-use one it might catch one.
Honestly, I was like you. And I grew up in the 80's where VRML and everything else were being pushed as "the future".
And then I played with a Google Cardboard set and, actually, the base mobile phones now can do a better job of VR than you'd probably think. Nowhere near perfect, but enough that we were passing them around the IT Office and others bought their own, all run from a bog-standard Android smartphone.
The Vive and Rift? Stupendously expensive. And you have to have one hell of a machine to get close to using them.
But now consider if you could get one, off-the-shelf, for a few hundred, with a bunch of Wii-like games to entice people and have a laugh at parties with them. Sorry, but that would sell. All the other competitors are similarly pipedreams, homebrew, or too expensive. A Nintendo one - even sold at a loss - could really bring it home to people.
Hell, even just a headset that plugged into a Wii U would do it. And if you could make it commercial, you could repurpose them like people have repurposed the Wiimotes etc.
Sure, you probably aren't going to play Crysis 10 at full speed with them, but that's NOT the be-all-and-end-all of gaming. Make it fun enough that granny buys one for the kids because she was "on a rollercoaster" and you have a seller. WiiFit was nothing special, look how many people bought that.
A WiiVR could easily take the market if launched at the right time - late enough to be developed, early enough to get in before the big players - and the right price point.
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I never see people riding on a bus or a train while playing a video game.
But then, I don't see people on busses or trains, ever.
(This is the problem with anecdotes.)
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I think the appeal of VR is extremely limited. How often do you see people riding a bus or a train while playing a game on their phone, or to a lesser extent, on a portable console? Those same people aren't going to strap a contraption on their face and be ignorant to the outside world just to play a game.
Are you sure about that [slashdot.org]? Seems to me people who are so inattentive to the outside world because they're glued to their smart phones that they need traffic lights in the sidewalk to keep them from wandering into traffic and getting killed might as well take the next step and strap something on their faces to make it clear to everyone that they're not paying attention to what's going on around them.
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I dunno.
I've never lived anywhere with a train, or where folks rode the bus, but I am sure that on airplane flights, these things would work just fine.
Tons of folks have earphones on to tune out the fli
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Give me a VR Mario Kart and I will buy into this whole VR thing.
Actually, my wife will. And she'll kick my ass almost every race.
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It still has some limitations, like visible sub-pixels, visible Fresnel rings outside the center of vision, and a wire tethering you to a PC, but it transports you to a different place, and room-scale VR is excellent exercise. Games are running fine on a single Geforce 970, s
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But now consider if you could get one, off-the-shelf, for a few hundred, with a bunch of Wii-like games to entice people and have a laugh at parties with them.
Most people are not going to be inclined to put on any sort of headset that isolates me from rest of the people at the party. It ~might~ get a brief run as a fad, but its not going to have staying power. Once everyone's seen it, the appeal will be done.
VR for hardcore gaming, has potential. Its already a solo activity (or where the only people you interact with are also in the game) so the isolation isn't an issue.
But I'm not terribly impressed with it yet; its not comfortable enough yet, its expensive, it'
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_However_, if Nintendo wanted to go that route they would have to do one of two things. First, they could allow more than one VR set to be used at the same time. The only way i could see them making it "affordable" for the system to support multiple VR viewpoints is if most of the hardware was in the headsets themselves while the "console" acts a
PASS (Score:2)
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Damn right, I mostly agree for the same reasons. I mean after all, how is VR going to work for Diablo, or say...a MOBA or a PC style MMORPG with lots of skill buttons.
I do think that VR headsets are going to take off for vehicle based games. You mentioned Mechwarrior, but I think that Flight games (whether space or atmospheric) would work well too.
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Re: It will have VR headset. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly possible, but further down the rabbit hole in which they currently languish.
The WiiU primarily did 2 new things: Introduced new interface hardware, and let that hardware divide the experience. Local multiplayer suffered the worst, and adding a VR headset will only exacerbate the problem.
Now, I personally don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with asymmetric multiplayer. Just the opposite, actually. It opens up a lot of potential for new and interesting games, which their Nintendoland tech demo did a good job of illustrating... but it never took off from there.
Nintendo failed to create any games that really took advantage of the hardware, instead shoehorning it into games for no adequate reason, which only makes the game worse (lookin at you, star fox). And they failed to court any 3rd party vendors to create such games.
Despite the potential for asymmetric gameplay, the system failed. I don't see how a double-down on the asymmetry will make things better next time.
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I agree it's likely not VR. Nintendo still caters to the younger crowd and there are many concerns for developing brains using artificial VR realities for long periods of time.
While everyone says Nintendo is in Shambles (Score:1)
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There's no way their WII money is gone. For what the WiiU actually was they couldn't have spent more than 60% of the Wii money, and if they did spend it all then someone needs to take a lead pipe to their R&D department until cost savings improve.
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Nintendo's latest financials (as at March 2016) show they still have about US$5 billion in cash. Now that's not Apple-money but it must be a pretty good chunk of the Wii-money.
VR isn't "here" in any sensible definition of the word. There are a couple of niche products (yes, OR and Vive are niche) and Sony is dipping their toe in with PS VR, but VR isn't going to magically take off in the next couple of years. All being well it may grow into a viable market, but more likely it'll flop like Kinect and other n
Tools to app Nintendo apps are limited (Score:2)
I'm inclined to agree with you. The closest Nintendo has come to publishing an app to app apps are WarioWare DIY for Nintendo DS and Super Mario Maker for Wii U. These are very limited compared to the app development apps that run on an Android tablet, such as AIDE.
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[WarioWare DIY and Super Mario Maker] are meant for everyone to be able to pick up and use. Ease-of-use is the priority, not power.
I agree for those particular products. But there needs to be a clear path for a budding developer to graduate from ease of use to power that doesn't involve moving to another state.
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But there needs to be a clear path for a budding developer to graduate from ease of use to power that doesn't involve moving to another state.
Why?
No Really why?
Why should Publishers cater to an "Edge Case" who doesn't want to move for career purposes. I mean after all if I want to be a chef in a 5-star restaurant in a big city...I might have to MOVE to a big city. If you have to relocate to have a career in your chosen field, then relocate. People do it all the time.
And there's always the option to collaborate on a project online, maybe as a contractor.
Or even the option to form one's OWN company right where you are.
There already IS a clear car
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I mean after all if I want to be a chef in a 5-star restaurant in a big city...I might have to MOVE to a big city.
In this analogy, what's the counterpart to platforms other than consoles? If the answer is fast food, then why is it good for users that there exist nothing between fast food and 5-star restaurants?
Or even the option to form one's OWN company right where you are.
I would if I knew how "relevant industry experience" and "financial stability" are measured.
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In this analogy, what's the counterpart to platforms other than consoles?
Stop being so literal There is no analogy, that was only a for-instance of a career that might require a move.
I would if I knew how "relevant industry experience" and "financial stability" are measured.
Gonna throw a "best practices" reference in there too? You do have "some" idea what those mean, claiming you don't is just a distraction, a coping strategy to convince yourself of the rightness of your "axe to grind"
And if you truly don't know what it means, give it up, you're too disabled to achieve your dream. Sell your computer and be happy playing Tetris, on a SNES, on an SDTV, afterschool w
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I would if I knew how "relevant industry experience" and "financial stability" are measured.
Gonna throw a "best practices" reference in there too?
I was quoting a console maker's description of developer qualifications.
You do have "some" idea what those mean, claiming you don't is just a distraction
As far as I interpret them, one needs to have already developed a game that was published on another platform. This covers the industry alumni route that you have recommended and the PC-to-console route that others have recommended. So I guess the issue is to first come up with a game concept that's as at home on a PC as it is on a Nintendo product, which the Steam Machine [steampowered.com] and Steam Link extender make somewhat easier.
be happy playing Tetris
This talking point
Ports? (Score:1)
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There aren't many ways this can be successful (Score:1)
More need to change more than the hardware (Score:2)
While Nintendo certainly needs to step up its act when it comes to the hardware, the software and the developer support needs to improve. The competition these days are Sony and Microsoft, but also Google and Apple. The former because of the the PS4 and Xbox One and the latter because of Android and iOS. They need to take the best elements of current consoles approaches and also the best elements of current mobile platforms.
Nintendo has tried making kids the focus and in doing so handicapped features such a
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In fairness, PS4 doesn't work in a *purely* IPV6 environment, either. You can use IPV6 addressing, but the closest router still needs to support IPV4.
software-led hardware-software integrated business (Score:2)
Not sure WTF that subject really means, but this is what they should be doing...
They should be partnering up with someone like Samsung, LG, and/or any and all of the makers of "SMART" TV's, and incorporating a hardware and software solution that can handle light gaming which has been their forte for about the last decade or so. Have a marketplace to buy game apps. Percentage of app profits goes to the TV manufactures who sold the TV.
That way you don't really need to buy any console. You just have a smart TV
Strange launch time (Score:2)
Seems like a strange launch time. Haven't the rest of the consoles (for decades) been launched in the calendar 4th quarter, to get Christmas sales?
Slap in the face to the fans (Score:2)
By holding the next Zelda up as a launch title for the NX instead of releasing it for the Wii U sometime in the past two years, Nintendo has completed the slap in the face that was the entire Wii U experience. It's why I don't see myself buying a NX, even though I've owned most of the previous Nintendo consoles.
The Wii U was a disaster, and I say that as a Nintendo partisan.