Topic: Keys to the NX's Success

I just had some thoughts that I wanted to type out, and hopefully start a discussion on what people think the NX needs to be successful. I think we all know that the NX has a large task set for itself with it entering in the middle of a console generation and having to take the baton from the Wii U and possibly the 3DS. In my opinion, the NX is going to have to be more than just " solid" and " good enough", these things were what the Wii U was asked to do, at this point though the NX is going to have to go beyond this. So I'll begin my list of what I believe the NX needs. And hopefully this doesn't sound too much like just a wishlist...

1. Taking back Their Games

Nintendo has had decades full of high quality, memorable games across all platforms. Sadly, although these games have such lasting appeal and can still be enjoyed to day, Nintendo does not have a grasp on them. What I am referring to is the act of playing roms and using emulators. Pretty much all of Nintendo's library can easily be downloaded and played for free by anyone on so many devices. Many people feel like this is an unsolvable, losing battle, but not me. For the NX, Nintendo is going to have to have a much better " virtual console" like store. They have to consolidate their games in an efficient manner. Meaning that the games from the nes, snes, n64, gc, gameboy, gba, etc. need to be added to this store quickly and in large amounts or phases. If someone wanted to play majorahs mask for example, but saw that it won't be added to nintendo's virtual store for several months, why would they not consider going onto their computer and getting it right then, instantly? The second thing is the prices for there games, I feel that the prices on their virtual consoles have been too high over the years, these are not physical/ collectable copies. You cant charge 10 bucks for an n64 game in 2015, again, why would somebody not just go download it for free? They need to have better prices, and packages, sales/ deals. I honestly believe that this is a very important asset to Nintendo because these games are not the cheap, c- grade, knockoffs that you find on the android or apple stores, they are high quality games, that Nintendo has dozens of right in their hand.

2. Packing The Essentials

Nintendo's consoles have been a bit behind on the times with the 3DS and Wii U, and need to realize that they are indeed competing with phones, tablets, notebooks, etc. especially on the handheld/ portable market. The reason why in my opinion is the issue of money surprisingly. Its nice to think that customers can happily end up buying both the ipad and the 3ds for their child, but that's just not reality.the choice between purchasing a 3ds/ wii u or a tablet or other smart device IS made by people. And I know that Nintendo creates dedicated gaming devices, which a tablet for example is not. And things should stay this way, but Nintendo needs to add in some of the essential features/ apps of other smart devices in order to get and edge and keep up. things like a crisper interface, and apps like facebook, twitter, youtube, maps, instagram, skype, email, pandora, etc. ( I know they already have some of these like youtube, but they need the whole shebang.)

3. Have the ability to play as a traditional console

Nintendo has really been into innovative and novel modes of gaming the past few generations; motion, 3d, two screens, gamepad, etc. And all of that is great but they need to at least ALLOW for tradtional gaming, especially for the sake of 3rd party developers. The Wii was terrible at bringing in 3rd party support, and not just because of graphical limitations, but gameplay as well. for example call of duty, ( im not a cod fanboy, just using it as an example) never got a real game on the wii, not because its developers didn't want to, but because it was near impossible with the wii's setup and control issues. I dont care if a 3rd party dev. doesn't want to put their game on a nintendo console, but they should at least be able to if they want to! Nintendo should never make it so blatantly difficult for a 3rd party to port their game over. Like I said, innovation is great, but that should come after a traditional gaming mode has been established. case and point- the Wii's library: out of all the wii games, only a hand full made good use out of the wiimote ( wii sports, skyward sword, metroid prime, mario kart.) many, many other games allowed for the use of gamecube/ classic controller such as super smash bros. and others had very little, and meaningless motion control like super mario galaxy. So that shows how well it works out for ya

4. Power
Nintendo's philosophy for a long time now has been offering a less powerful, but less expensive console, but with an excellent core of 1st party games. This seems like a great plan.... for 1995. If this plan worked, then the gamecube, wii, and wii u would have much better software sales, and there would be no need to produce the NX, but here we are. 20 years ago if you asked someone to name 5 video game series/ characters, 4 of them would probably be nintendo. Not today, and the reason why is that although nintendo's games are of high quality, get good reviews, have large fan bases, etc. they aren't the only ones. Many high quality game series exist today and a lot are made by smaller studios and teams. Nintendo needs to change up its strategy, and part of this is embracing and catering to 3rd party developers, this sort of goes along with my last point, but instead of controls, nintendo needs power ( not the magazine.) At minimum its going to need to be at xbox one, ps4 level, this may seem like to much to ask, but considering were a few years into this generation, i dont think so. Like I said, if a third party developer doesn't want to port their game to nintendo's console, so what! but, they should at least be able to with ease. When it comes to third party and 1st party games for nintendo, my question is why not both?

My opinion
-Affordable price
-More power WHILE staying affordable
-stronger/steadier software release schedule
-Better third party as much as possible
-Strong launch line up
-Clear marketing
-New but practical idea.

Instead of repeating what @WebHead said (because I largely agree with the bullet points) I'm going to respond to the wall of text. Because I don't agree with most of what was said.

1. They're not going to stop people pirating their games, especially their old games. Emulators exist. What they need to do is resolve this in the same way that others have. Do people pirate a movie if it's on Netflix? Probably not. Why? Well the fact that it's a decent value service helps but I'd argue the main reason is because it plays on any device and is easier than pirating. Make it clear that people's purchases of VC games will last and will exist on more than one platform. People will buy into it at the same prices that already exist. They don't need to have a fire sale.

2. If anything parents are going to not be impressed if a gaming device has facebook, twitter and so on. And for kids that are old enough for parents not to think it's an issue? Their parents will give them a phone so they can call them. Youtube? For sure, but beyond that I don't think this is an issue

3. You said it yourself, both the Wii and the Wii U had traditional control options in addition to their unique features. The Wii U even had those traditional control built in. To say that this is an issue is a bit of a stretch.

4. I agree to a point. I don't think a home console will be able to do well without at least being in the ballpark of the best performing platforms from the generation prior. For Nintendo that means the Vita for a handheld and the PS4/XBOne for a home console. However I don't think your conclusion is correct. You said that they that they tried and failed with this low-power strategy with the Wii, Wii U and Gamecube. That's not right. The Wii did fantastically well with the low-power strategy and the Gamecube was not under-powered. You have a theory that can only be applied to one platform. This is the first console generation since the SNES where the most powerful console is "winning". Including portables.

1. Wii had most games and...it didn't accomplish much tbh. I doubt NX will do anything with VC noteworthy unless it somehow goes beyond simple emulation.

2. Depends on the audience. Problem is that some of these are owned by competitors like Microsoft. If anything, just have a good browser and half of these are taken care of.

3. Sadly, this is what the market wants. However, Nintendo should stick to their strengths and make strong software with an appealing hardware for 3rd parties.

4. First off, the Gamecube had power, moreso than Playstation 2. Moving on...
"No need to make the NX". Hardly a point since the Wii U will be almost 4 years out by the time the NX is revealed, much less released.

5. Appeal. Nintendo needs to sell this console to a bigger market. They need to stick to what they did right, even with the Wii U. Get some third parties like Squeenix on board and start off strong. This is the reason the PS4 did so well...despite the rather paltry launch library. Sony sold the system really well.

6. Continue giving news "directly" to gamers, but pander the press more/advertising: Nintendo needs to work with the press like IGN to promote their goods more. They can also opt to let Youtube go wild with advertising. Yes, I said earlier that Youtube wasn't needed, but what could it hurt? Youtube is a powerful marketing tool that many big companies are embracing.

1. Price
2. Power
3. Brand

You guys are great, if I were a recruiter for Nintendo, I would hire you guys for the marketing department. Some of the current Nintendo employees have no idea what people want, they should leave their current positions and go back to business school.

ummm i don't agree with much of that at all, to the point where i almost can't reply with anything

but it's still working today

If this plan worked, then the gamecube, wii, and wii u would have much better software sales, and there would be no need to produce the NX, but here we are.

so they would have stopped being a gaming company at the Wii U if those 3 consoles sold more games? i know what you're trying to say, you think they're rushing the NX. really, their "plan" has worked incredibly well because they have obscene amounts of money. it just hasn't gone exactly how you wished...

20 years ago if you asked someone to name 5 video game series/ characters, 4 of them would probably be nintendo. Not today, and the reason why is that although nintendo's games are of high quality, get good reviews, have large fan bases, etc. they aren't the only ones. Many high quality game series exist today and a lot are made by smaller studios and teams. Nintendo needs to change up its strategy, and blah

dude I think people would still name Nintendo games, outside the big daddys like GTA and Call of Duty. i think you're grossly exaggerating the popularity of these other "high quality game series" out there

the rest is just more "needs to be powaful" "needs third party" "needs 2 copy the competition" stuff.....

Can't tell if sarcastic or not, but my position on this might be different from most. The best products are not designed to the voices of what people want. Customers don’t know what they want. It’s nintendo’s job to know what we want. There are many disruptors that go on record with that, all the way back to ford, who stated that, had he given people what they wanted, he would’ve built a faster horse.

People keep asking nintendo for a faster horse. But I want more.

If I had to be truly honest about what it is I want, it is something along the lines of “the highest quality immersive interactive entertainment”. In that light, wii U was an absolute homerun to me, as were all their predecessors - because they had the games out there the nintendo way, with insane levels of quality that I can’t find in abundance anywhere else.

Don’t confuse the method with which people currently perceive these results to be a reality with a thorough analysis of what people want. We may think all of this is the way, but all we reason with is a context that will be irrelevant in 3 years time.

1. I don't think emulators are eating into Nintendos profits at all. For a couple of reasons; one, it is more of a hassle to use emulators. Two, their newest releases are not emulated at the moment. Three, quite frankly, those games are already written off any profit now is gravy. But they should connect our purchases to the NNID, so we can download the NX version for free. This would be good marketing.

2. This will eat into game development time, since they have to divert one or more of their studios to make this possible. And they will never ever come to a parity with smartphones, it is impossible. If they really felt that they need more apps, they should really adopt the entire android platform (ala amazon fire). This would also have other synergies, such as porting between different devices (portables, consoles, NX2, etc) would be easier.

3. The Wii U (and 3ds, and ds) has all had traditional buttons & sticks. I only agree about the wii, but it had (with a chuck) 4 buttons and a stick at least.

The only one I agree with is 4, and not exactly as the original poster says. With the Wii U, they should have had a newer GPU core, this is the main reason they can't have engines such as Unreal 4 on Wii U. And this does pose a problem for a developers, since it affects how easy they can port games.

Not only do people not know what they want but what they actually want is variable. People want different things at different times, in different demographics and in some cases simply because they already have one thing. Some people want something different to what they already have, others want the same thing again. It's far more complicated than just asking the public what they want and then putting it on the shelf.

As an example, if you had asked someone in the early 2000s what sort of mobile they wanted? They would have said it should be small and durable. Maybe with a little torch on the end so they can find their keys and a nice clicky buttons. People wouldn't have asked for big displays, people probably wouldn't have even thought of internet connectivity or even cameras for some. It was in that market that the first iPhone was developed.

@skywake: exactly my point and good example - and that is disruption in the marketplace. That is what I'd like nintendo to do and they are, as shown before, capable of doing that.

Separating purpose from perceived method is vital to get to that state. And when I hear myamoto talk about not needing a tv as a primary display, or changing the way we play games, I get more excited, not concerned.

@skywake: Exactly. We can be quite certain that cloning ps4 will not work. Why would people suddenly start buying nintendo over ps4 or xbox1?

@skywake
Indeed:

@skywake: yeah I said more power but even slightly more power is more power nonetheless. Tbh I don't think NX is gonna be much more powerful than Wii U.

Mark my words if NX is an expensive $400 slightly better ps4 clone with a weak launch line up and comes out next year, again Mark my words it will be their last system.

Next year it'll be three years since the PS4 launched. The PS4 launched at $400US. So I think it's fair to say that if it's in the ballpark of the PS4 to the point that we're using words like "slightly" and "clone"? It's going to be less than $400US.

@skywake: My thing is that 2016-2018 is most likely going to be the period of the PS4's and Xbone's relative prime of sales/popularity. If Nintendo launches this expensive uncompelling box with weak games next year they are gonna get their butts whooped hard.

NX must be aggressively priced, easy to understand, and bring something new to the table. as well as having a strong launch.

The key is in the 3rd party content. Without it, Nintendo cannot maintain a sustainable console in the market. The Wii U is the proof of this. Amazing 1st party content, innovation and everything you could expect from Nintendo, but it's just 10 million sales in over 2 and a half years.
How does Nintendo regain steady, persistent 3rd party support? That's the one million dollar question. I'd say an hardware similar to the other competitors would help. So go x86-64, it's an absolute must. Talking with 3rd parties early and showing them the machine, humbly asking for feedback would also be of help (Judging by the Square-Enix enthusiasm, I suspect Nintendo is already doing this).
In 2016, Nintendo could easily make a machine at least as capable as the PS4 for about half the price. I'd say go a little further than that (use the new AMD microarchitecture that débuts that same year, for instance) and try to make a 300 to 350 dollars/euros console. A console to run everything the current gen does, with some extra icing on the cake.
Also, the Wii U suffered from a poorly thought marketing campaign and a really bad name. Nintendo cannot make the same mistake twice in a row.

@WebHead:
The point is that by the time we get around to late 2016, even moreso if it's late 2017, it's not going to be hard to match that spec. If it's not much more powerful than the Wii U? That sort of console won't hold its own either, especially if it's new. If it's about on par with the PS4/XBOne? They can be seen as a decent alternative platform and still launch at $299-350US.

@BinaryFragger:
In 2001 those things weren't really holding it back. Most people were still on dial-up so online gaming was more of a novelty then an essential feature. LAN multiplayer was as big a deal, at least amongst my circle of friends. The XBox pushed it pretty hard but even then that only really took of in a big way with the 360.

It's a similar deal with game sizes. It wasn't as restrictive as you seem to think it was. Using the Wii as a measure of game sizes for a standard def console with a bigger disk capacity? There are ways to find out what sizes a random selection of Wii games are. I just did. Based on that source? 25% of Wii games were above 2.1GB and 25% under 700MB with 50% being above (or under) 1.1GB. Given that I'd argue that 1.5GB wasn't a straight jacket in 2001.

I think any fair minded person would agree that the PS2 was the laggard in terms of spec in that generation. The Gamecube and XBox were well ahead of it. So the suggestion that Nintendo has been "doing the same thing" in terms of spec and "failing" at it since the Gamecube is, for lack of a better description, a load of bull.

You're generalizing too much. The only third parties that were relevant on Nintendo systems are very few. Capcom, Konami, Square and few other. Nintendo always pushed the local production. Except maybe Ubisoft on the Wii but the WiiU and the 3DS showed how much the core Nintendo audience care about Ubisoft games. But games like Fallout, Elder Scrolls or Mortal Kombat will never change the fate of a Nintendo system in good or bad.
The competition knows that. They know if you keep Square, Capcom, Alus or Level 5 (Konami is out of the business except if they magically become relevant again now Kojima left) away from Nintendo, you neutralize them. But Nintendo with them become very dangerous, the 3DS proved it.

Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Mortal Kombat are not the games I want to play on a Nintendo console. When I say Nintendo needs to regain 3rd party support it's more like Final Fantasy, Tales of, Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Need for Speed, FIFA, Resident evil, Street Fighter, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed and other industry regulars.
A game whose primary focus is gore rather than gameplay like MK would probably not do well either way. Elder Scrolls is meant to be played on a PC. What's next, Hatred on Nx?
Also, the GameCube was a cutting edge machine for 2001. Only a handful of games ever needed to be split in two discs, so I'd hardly call that an issue. And I don't know a single person who had their PS2 and Xbox connected online at the time. No one truly cared about online until the Xbox 360 came to market. So, Nintendo delivered a cutting edge machine and sold about 22 million consoles. While I do agree that this time they need to put some more effort on the hardware side, there's no magic silver bullet.