Topic: So NX Is A Home Console Afterall?

No you said they didn't announce it until 2006. They even showed off the WiiMote later that year. Far more than we know about the NX. If you're trying to argue that E3 2015 for the NX is the same as E3 2005 was for the Wii? Well then where was the point where they actually physically showed us what it is?

Where has Nintendo talked about a new portable or even a hardware for that matter. Can you link me to a source where they have discussed about this? All they have been talking about is the NX and it being a gaming platform with people suggesting how it could be steam like. But here when Reggie tells how Nintendo are at work with their next Home Console is where it tells a clearer story that there is actually a Hardware in developemet and it's a Home Console, is it going to be the said NX? I don't know. But that's what it looks like. Me personally personally I'm not ruling out a new portable but NX could be anything.

I don't think there's a need to look hard that they are refering to an "Unannounced platform" as in a completely new platform, not from the existing ones they have "yet to decide" Im not saying it definately is going to NX but they're definately talking about a new platform, else their statement would read something like

".......deliver our games on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and some other platforms that we've yet to decide."

@Kuhang
I think it should be pretty damn clear that they're working on a new home console. We already know this whether the NX is that platform or not. We also know that Microsoft and Sony are also working on new hardware. This isn't news. They don't deny the fact that this is the case. But at the same time I'm sure Nintendo are also at work on a portable platform. All I'm saying here is that we don't know what the NX is but we're more due for a new portable at this stage. None of these statements confirm anything.

That's the general perception, not a routine. And no it was not clear whether they were making a new home console untill now that Reggie has all but conformed a home consoles be it nx or not. Same with Sony and Microsoft with all the fuss about this being the last gen of consoles among fans due to various circumstances in their own respective ways so nothing is clear. And like I said I'm not ruling out a portable but now we have a clear story on the Home console front, cant be said same about portable. And that NX and Home console are the only two dots that can be connected at the moment Which is why NX is leaning more towards being a home console, that is the point.

@Kuhang
It's leaning more towards a home console only because the gaming media doesn't really care about portables. Portables aren't sexy so they never ask questions or talk about them. The truth of the matter is that Reggie didn't confirm anything of the sort. He gave the same PR line he would have given if he was asked that question at any time. That's not confirmation. We really do know jack at this point.

I assume you're more of a portable guy and that you're anticipated for a portable more than a home console but at this point it is starting to sound more like you are forcing your opinions as facts and Yes Reggie just confirmed a home console be it NX or not,. Ofcourse unless he was misinterpreted or if that was not what he meant.

@Kuhang
I've said it repeatedly, they're definitely working on a new home console. Without a doubt. I've never said they aren't. And whatever the NX is I highly doubt that the Wii U will still be around by the time the calendar clicks over to 2019. I've been saying that since before the codename NX was even uttered. But the 3DS hardware is far more out of date than the Wii U and none of what has been said confirms what the NX is. He didn't say "NX is a home console", he said "our next home console and that’s another element we’ll be talking about much later". All I'm saying here is that the hardware they talk about in 2016, the "NX", that could well be a portable system.

It's a similar deal with the Metroid bit. They said they'd take three years to develop a Metroid and therefore if they started now it would be for NX. People assume that must mean that the NX is a home console. But they forget where portables are headed. In the late 90s the Gameboy was an NES in a world of N64s and PS2s. Their next portable? The games could potentially be as big as they were on the 360. And as hard to develop. That's how far we've come. Why wouldn't a next-generation portable Metroid take three years to finish? And if that's where we're at they better be working on an ecosystem rather than just one platform.

Good point. People have to keep in mind that Nintendo's portable platforms have always outsold their console counterparts in the generation(GBA over GCN, DS over Wii, 3DS over Wii U etc.) So I wouldn't big surprised if they do in fact make their portable platform almost like a console with the games being on a bigger scale with a bigger budget.

The NX could still be either but it seems like people are underestimating the fact that it could be a handheld platform.

Probably because everything revolves faster now. On the phone and tablet side for example the flagship phones are yearly releases nowadays. And the announcements are right before they launch.

Also, we are talking about the NX this year because it was revealed by official nintendo channels... if you see this as an announcement then you could add "NX announced 2015, release 2016" to your list and it would still be true.

I don't think NX is a portable. Quite frankly, tablets and phones have shrunken the market for portables considerably. It will never reach the DS-levels again. Their partnership with dena is probably the next portable strategy. This is the real replacement for 3DS.

If they would still release their own portable, this would mean that they are going to make games for 4 platforms (iOS, Android, Portable and Home console). Do we really think Nintendo has the manpower to spare to make games on all these platforms when they struggle to keep up with their current lineup (home + portable)? And this is despite that they have started to co-develop more and more games. It wouldn't be a good business decision to spread themselves to thin.

Good point and good reasoning. It depends on whether or not nintendo feels there's a market for it. I think there is, though, and they might just focus on something insanely good in the portable space, like the vita did, and just go beam that to tv and be done with it.

I still think nx being a portable is most likely, but you may be proven right with this reasoning.

And does anyone remember how, during the pre-wii days, they wouldn't show much in public until close to release in order to not get copied too soon? They may do this with nx, launching soon after they even show anything.

I would be cautious to buy NX if it is indeed an handheld. I would wait quite a while before taking the plunge, if ever. I haven't really used my 3ds in the last year, mainly because my phone is always with me. Having to lug around with a dedicated console just isn't worth it anymore. And if I am using it, it would be at home. Which feels a bit counterproductive.

If it is indeed a portable, Nintendo has to show they can manage to support multiple platforms at the same time, I haven't really felt they have been able to do so this generation. Well, we will see.

@Therad
Well for a start when you look at sales portables have been at around 40-50% of total hardware sales every year since the mid Wii era (as far back as I could bother checking). Last year home consoles destroyed portables but 2014 was kinda ground-zero for PS4 domination. It's not matching DS sales for sure but the DS also happens to be only second to the PS2. And this is before we even look at Japan where the Vita is selling about as well as the PS4. So I wouldn't call portable consoles "dead" just yet.

You're also assuming that they have entirely different sets of content for all "four" platforms. I'll go into that for the dedicated hardware side in a second but just to start I doubt there will be different sets of content for Android and iOS. It also seems unlikely that anything they'll develop for mobile will be "big". The stuff that they've been experimenting with on the 3DS like Pokemon Shuffle? I think it's fair to assume that's the sort of content that will start to appear on phones. And besides, developing this stuff is what their deal with DeNA was mostly about. I doubt it'll stretch them thin. It'll probably just be versions of what they're already playing around with.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum. The fact of the matter is that mobile hardware has improved quite a bit. At this stage a game on a portable system can be basically as complex as a home-console game. What's so different about Mario Kart 8, other than the extra polish, that it couldn't have been also on a portable? Smash on 3DS and Wii U were the same. Games like Animal Crossing and New SMB could be the same. As portable hardware gets closer and closer to home-console hardware I'd argue that their workload could reduce rather than expand.

nywho, I know people will disagree with me anyways. Just throwing ideas into the wind

After the comments from Tanabe about Metroid Prime I'm convinced this is the future of current gen Nintendo systems:
New 3DS -> Smartphones
Wii U -> NX

But I don't think it is healthy to just look at hardware sales. Games are what it is all about, and that has slumped more so than hardware sales.

No, I don't assume they have different sets for all four platforms, but they will still have to port from one of the mobile platforms to the other. This takes more effort, but you are right in that it doesn't make the design more expensive. But let's disregard that for now and say that they will have 3 different platforms they are working on, Portable, Home and Mobile. This will mean that they must divert 1/3 of portable and 1/3 of homes resources to the mobile side. People are already complaining about lack of content, what do you think would happen if they had 1/3 less?

And regarding graphics on handhelds, yes, I have seen the graphics on newer phones, they blow 3ds out of the water. Nvidia Shield are built on phone/tablet tech. The biggest hurdle when it comes to trying to port between different platforms is that all graphical assets must be redone to maximize the experience. I am sure you have heard all complaints about ports. (Especially from the PC-crowd).

What did he say?

I don't think mobile is going to require a third of the entire development team. They only have 5 games planned to release between this year and March 2017. They aren't going to be monthly releases, and I doubt they'll require that much resources.

"If we started for Wii U now, it would likely take three years or so. So it would likely now be on Nintendo's NX console."

Which doesn't confirm anything. I cannot see Nintendo ditching their most popular platform in favour of mobile games, the mobile platform is nothing more than a huge gamble.

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-17-next-proper-metr...

So then you're saying that tie-ratios have tanked? Well lets look then....
Gameboy: 4.3
Gamegear: 3.6
Wonderswan: 1.3
GBA: 4.6
DS: 5.3
PSP: 3.7
3DS: 3.6
PSV: 3.6

????

As I said, it's a bit of a stretch to say that they're going to move that much of their content over to mobile. They're already playing around with that sort of tier of content. I don't think there's any reason to believe that their mobile content will be much more than just moving that sort of content over. Just pointing it out again stuff like that is already on the 3DS. Box-boy, Pokemon Shuffle, Streetpass games, AR games, Rhythm Heaven. I highly doubt that they're going to put 1/3rd of their energy into mobile. It's a market that doesn't pay much more than $1 if that. They're not going to spend years developing games for it.

But it's not the entire thing again especially when the platforms are built with making development on both easy.

I'll put it to you this way if you don't believe what I'm saying. GTA 5 started development in 2009 and they spent hundreds of millions on it. They released on 5 platforms starting in late 2013 and ending about 18 months later. Some of them entirely different architectures others with higher quality textures. All well polished releases. Is it fair to say that they spent a good four years and most of that budget on the game itself? And that the porting part of it was only a small part of the process in comparison?

All I'm saying is that if they have a portable that's powerful enough and a home console that's built alongside it. All built with the intention of making ports between the two as easy as is possible. Games that they'd spend three years developing they can spend maybe another few months on and have two versions. Leaving basically enough time to do a whole other game.

In a nutshell basically you're saying that there's portable, home console, iOS and Android. All I'm saying that's the wrong way to look at it. Instead it's probably more fair to say that they could look at it as small downloadable games, medium sized titles and AAA releases. Which they then spread across those platforms. Because how many times do they need to develop Mario Kart? Animal Crossing? We don't need two every generation if we can have one on both.

It all comes down to how ambitious the games they want to develop are. How many games do Nintendo release normally during a year with nintendo IPs?

People have strange conceptions on what a mobile platform are on these forums. People often brush it off as some sort of inferior platform. A mobile phone/tablet is a scaled down computer with an exotic control scheme instead of keyboard/mouse. Nothing more, nothing less. Games can be whatever Nintendo wants them to be. Nintendo IPs that could be ported quite easily to touchscreens are things like mario party, Fire Emblem, advance wars, pokemon etc.

No, tie-ratios have nothing to do with anything. It is all about revenue. How much nintendo earns on the portable on a yearly basis. The revenue might be positive on the portable at the moment, but it is still declining. Nintendo doesn't earn much on the 3ds. The portable market is shrinking and the Mobile market is expanding. In fact, the growth of ios and android gaming revenue grew more than the entire worth of the portable market. And this is excluding ad-revenue. http://toucharcade.com/2015/06/11/mobile-games-revenue-3ds-pl...

Also, your tie-in ratio shows that not only has hardware sales gone down since the DS, game per console has also gone down. Which means the total number of sold games has gone down.

That is your assumption. Nintendo could also bring 'premium' content to the mobile. They might not be as big as the next Zelda, but they could and should produce bigger things than what you are saying. Other companies have been putting out bigger games successfully. Xcom for example, it has a price of 19.99 and it has been a success.

I am quite sure that for example pokemon is a bigger franchise than xcom, which could rake in some cash on mobile. It seems like a good fit.

So, you are saying nintendo should make 100 mil games? I am not sure why you think the most expensive game of all time is a good example of what you are saying. Nintendo wants to lower costs and scrapping the research on hardware side of portable is one way to do it. The mobile platforms are proven and stable. They will not flop over night, which a new portable might do and it is easier to find programmers who known the platform. It is all about risk mitigation.

And no, roughly 50% of the budget of GTA is marketing.

I don't think nintendo has that kind resources to do the unified platform you want. Remember, Nintendo is a small company.

No, I am saying it doesn't make business sense to continue with portables, since it is a shrinking market. I don't think an successor to 3DS will ever be as successful as 3DS. And the conclusion then becomes NX will probably be an home console.

Btw, 3DS might make a profit now, but I wonder how much it has made if we also subtract the development cost for it. I wouldn't be surprised if it is mediocre from a business perspective.