Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

A Nintendo NX Delay Would Help It Dominate In 2017

According to Nintendo’s current, alleged timetable, we should be hearing an announcement about the Nintendo NX any day now, and the console itself will come out next March. The March release is the only official info Nintendo has given out about the NX to date, but increasingly, their plan to debut the console now and release it then seems increasingly unlikely.

There are three main issues with Nintendo’s plan here:

1. Announcing a console now during an incredibly busy holiday release window when that console does not come out for the holiday is a bad idea.

2. Announcing a console when there’s now less than six months until release is not that much time to promote the product.

3. Releasing a new console in March is a pretty odd time window by itself.

I cannot speculate about Nintendo’s motives as to why they’re remaining silent about the NX ten months into 2016 and this close to launch, but all indications point to a possible delay, and honestly, I think that’s that’s the best course of action for a few reasons.

My new theory? Nintendo should wait to announce the NX until January, and then debut the system in late June.

This solves at least few of the above problems in multiple ways. Nintendo should announce now that a “Nintendo NX Premiere Event” will be on a specific date in January (like, the 2nd, ideally) so that fans can stop sitting around and praying that a Direct magically pops into existence.

Why January? Again, it’s to get around problem number one. There are at least a half dozen major AAA game releases coming out this fall, and two new pieces of Sony hardware, the PS4 Pro and PSVR. Not that people wouldn’t pay attention to Nintendo’s NX announcement if it did happen, but it would get choked by all this other news, and besides that, the console isn’t even going to be out for purchase this holiday. Additionally, Nintendo should have their own “moment” this holiday with the (assuredly profitable) release of Super Mario Run on iOS this December.

But January? Nothing will be happening in January, and the NX would be the only thing anyone is talking about. Nintendo can launch 2017 as a hard reset for their hardware ambitions, debuting the (hopefully promising) NX right as the year starts. While I’d love for this to be a live stage show complete with demos, it will probably be a Direct, and this leads me to my next point.

This would also have to come with a delay, obviously. You can’t debut a console in January and have it come out in March. So, I would suggest a late June release, one that comes directly after E3 itself.

Previously, when we’ve talked about the short release spans of the PS4 and Xbox One, both had big E3 events between their debut and the launch of the console. But here, after six months of build-up, Nintendo could show up at E3 with a huge number of games for the NX, and not only “win” the show, as they have in the past year or two, but also have the benefit of putting the NX on sale almost immediately after E3 was over. It would be the ultimate hype lead-in for the product, provided what’s shown is actually something to get excited about.

Add in the idea that the NX might launch with some serious heavy-hitters (Zelda, possibly Mario and Pokémon) and you would have the success story of the summer, a time when there’s usually a pretty heavy drought of releases, but a period where people aren’t in school and able to play more video games than ever. This is an argument against a potential, traditional release in Fall 2017 (which would be a huge delay) where the NX would be facing off against yet another collection of big AAA titles and Xbox’s new Scorpio console.

A longer delay to Fall 2017 does not seem like the best idea given the competition the NX would face then and the fact that they really do need to replace the Wii U as soon as they can manage. But this “announce any day now, release in March” idea doesn’t seem like the best course of action either. That’s why I think a plan to announce as soon as the new year hits, and then launch as soon as the new year hits, and then launch as soon as E3 ends is the best move, but we’ll see what actually happens soon enough, I suppose.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/10/06/a-nintendo-...

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Eh. I could see Nintendo doing that, but the fanbase is going to commit seppuku if that happens. Or worse, they'll buy another console for Christmas.

@Ichi Shhh. You're making too much sense here.

@Ichi It is still on the Developer to make sure it works correctly on both systems.

@Ichi Neither am I by any stretch of the imagination, and even I can see that it's a non-issue.

@DefHalan Did those 3DS devs had to make sure their games worked correctly on the N3DS back when it didn't exist?

@MarcelRguez No, but that doesn't mean there are certain problems that can occur from having more power.

@DefHalan Then you shouldn't have trouble naming games that have issues when running on the N3DS but not on the original model, right?

@MarcelRguez I haven't worked on anything released for the 3DS after the N3DS was released. I have worked on lots of mobile apps that have had issues related to differences in power between devices. I am talking about the power differences from a developer point of view, not a consumer one.

I think we all feel this way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_KQgbAIzb4

@DefHalan One would say that the world of phone apps is more similar to the world of PC gaming due to the amount of variables combining OS versions, configurations, architectures and the like. @Therad and @skywake explained it better than I could a couple of pages back, this discussion is just going in circles.

About the N3DS, it's my understanding that the system purposefully underperforms when running O3DS games. I know because its clock speed can be unlocked via homebrew, which in turn increases the framerate of some games. That could cause some issues in some games, but there's no reason why Nintendo couldn't lock performance in a similar way in the home console NX if they wanted to, is there?

@MarcelRguez I don't know exactly the impact this can have on development, since I have been mostly part of teams on Mobile devices since the N3DS launch.

Also I agree that phones are similar to PC gaming currently, but consoles are heading that way and it is just going to make things more complicated.

@MarcelRguez Not sure in what aspects the N3DS differs from the 3DS, but iirc Tomb Raider on the Xbox One S has an increased framerate due to the little extra power the One S has over the One. That's not an issue. Now, Tomb Raider's framerate wasn't locked, if it was, you wouldn't notice anything at all. I don't think a higher framerate will cause any problem in games without a locked fps; We're not in 1990 anymore, when the framerate was crucial to a game's performance, like how games ran slower on European consoles, due the ''limitations'' of 50Hz TVs. Those games were literally tied to the refresh rate of your TV.

@Octane I was mainly thinking about mechanics (if not whole systems) in games with locked framerate that depend on that lock to work as intended. A recent example: the re-release of Resident Evil 4 runs at 60fps on consoles, which causes the hens in the game to drop eggs twice faster than before. This, in turn, affects the economy of the game, since you can just camp for healing items. Minor inconvenience, but it's an example of a somewhat modern title being affected by such changes.

@MarcelRguez I think that's just laziness on Capcom's part then. The original game may have had an invisible clock that was locked to the framerate, by just counting frames. They could've fixed that when they ported the game to PS4 and Xbox One, but apparently they didn't. However, we're still talking about old games. These days that wouldn't be an issue anymore. Using frames as an in-game clock is something of the past. I hope it is at least. I can't think of any recent examples that have the same issues.

@Octane Didn't Skyrim or a similar game use frame count as a poison-damage timer? I could swear I'd seen something like that recently, and in a triple A game too. Besides, it wouldn't surprise me if many retro-inspired indie games did that very same thing, especially to emulate features like the way Samus gets damaged by lava in Metroid.

@MarcelRguez I googled it, but I couldn't find anything. Anyway, if there are still games basing their in-game clocks on frames, then they're doing something wrong. That means an area with more enemies that causes a drop in fps, also means that in-game time progresses slower in those areas for some features.

But we were talking about multiple SKUs, and we're now talking about half-arsed ports. The easiest solution would be to lock your framerate to the lower end system if you want to avoid the issue all together.

@DefHalan Youd rather develop for Wii U and 3ds at this point? Sweet. good to dee im not the only one making for wii u.

Honest question: Was Color Splash pretty much the last "big" game for Wii U? I'm sure we'll still see some VC titles and indie stuff, but in terms of full-blow, big experience games, is this all she wrote?

@rallydefault In terms of exclusives then yes that was the last game. There's still BOTW but that's also on NX and is likely to be the definitive version. Who knows what Nintendo are doing? If NX sees a delay, then the Wii U version could be canned.

There's still Zelda. Other than that there is nothing else. However, given Nintendo's secrecy these past couple of years, another game is within the realms of possibility.

Considering how barren the pre-NX lineup is, that wouldn't be smart. More than likely, they've shown us pretty much everything that isn't coming out on NX at this point. Maybe there's a couple more smaller games or third party stuff, but I doubt we're seeing much of anything on 3DS or Wii U from here on out.