Topic: Does anyone feel Iwata might actually resign?

I hope he doesn't, because I love Iwata! I strongly believe that we have to wait until the end of this year to see how the Wii U is doing first though. Despite their claims, it is a similar situation to the 3DS where it will take a while to gain steam, but look at the 3DS now. After e3 and some quality titles are released, Wii U sales are going to pick up but we'll have to wait and see how it fares during the holiday season.

The problem with Smartglass concept is that it lacks the off TV play feature found on the Wii U & on PS4 with PS Vita. We might not be seeing games that truly showcase the Gamepad innovation now but later on as this other games like Watch Dogs, Splinter Cell, etc. come out gamers will fully recognize its importance particulary as to the assymetrical gameplay.

I doubt PS4 will be a success. The production cost of the system is huge. I'm not sure as to what kind of revision on the PS4 so since the unveiling last February but it will have some direct impact on the PS4 sales. Sony CEO though acknowledged few days ago the importance of price point on launch. He knows that the gaming market is struggling & for the PS4 to be competitive it has to be affordable. The lack of a tablet controller out of the box is going to be a problem on launch hence it's still very expensive if you get the PS Vita for off TV play.

If Microsoft can do things right from the unveiling next month of the Xbox 720 up to its launch it might be on the running against Nintendo. Microsoft don't need to go against the PS4 on power pissing.

If he steps down from his current position, I only hope that he doesn't leave the company as a whole(unless, of course, he was in a bad personal situation for that). He's perfect for Nintendo Direct! Nobody else can deliver direct to us like he can!

He should step down. Nintendo will continue to suffer if he'll remains as its CEO.

I agree smartglass won't be able to replicate off screen play but the other gamepad functions and asymmetrical gameplay options it should. If I recall the madden/Fifa gamepad functions started off as a test concept for smartglass.

I also agree that Microsoft would be wise not to play the specs pissing game. While the hardcore guys will be angry the general market won't care and developers and third party developers develop to the lcd so the PS4's extra power wont be put to use. From the rumors specs Microsoft is going a good medium with better epsces than the Wii U but arguably worse specs than the PS4.

One advantage I can see of smartglass is that some of the smartglass functons can be used even when the game or application isn't running on my xbox.

It will be just like last time with PS3. People thought it was going to kill Xbox and Wii because of bluray and extra power, but that obviously didn't happen, and even when there were differences, it wasn't by much.
I was honestly expecting Xbox to be more powerful this time than PS, but these are mainly still rumors.
As for smartglass, a tablet is going to have to be as powerful as a 3DS to Wii U to keep up, and it will have to be at most $200-250.
Honestly, the higher price for things is justifiable as long as the functions are used, but I'm pretty sure no one bought a tablet just for smartglass. Did that even ever get used?
Overall, I think Wii U has some pretty impressive visuals and features given how barren it is early in it's life, but there's no denying it has potential.
I think Wii U will be able to port over some next gen games. The Wii U's build isn't as much for multi tasking as the other consoles, but I think Wii U will be able to perform great feats when all the processing power is focused on one application.
The 8GB RAM is for strictly multitasking, and the 8 CPU's is for handling that 8GB of RAM. Wii U is basically going to try to do the same operations as the other consoles with half the hardware. The specs won't matter as much since it's part of the Xbox and PS UI to handle a maximum of 14 or so tasks at 512mb at a time, while Wii U will be able to handle a maximum of 3 programs at a time, and possible more if they just overload the software with more than just one feature at a time.
i.e. look at PS4 UI. I handles a video, chat, and home menu all at once, while in game. Wii U's alternative would be all those social features in one software instead of 3 seperate ones, while running one game.
You get the same features(considering it matters to the audience and market) for less money, then the GamePad adds to that.
I wouldn't be surprised if we're able to run Netflix or a VC game while playing a Wii U game with a second GamePad.
I don't think Sony will be able to figure out their hardware as well as Nintendo will, and the only game that shows PS4 having some extra power is the Capcom game.
Sony can't even make a game better than Capcom on their own system IMO.

I always wondered what the point of 8 GB of ram is. Probably for a bunch of useless stuff. Typical Sony

There are things I like about Iwata and some things I don't like.

He seems to be willing to push deadlines a lot if he thinks the quality of the game will benefit from the extra time, and I don't think it'd be too easy to find someone else as liberal in that regard. While I really like that he cares about the quality so much, you could also look at that as a weakness. Right now for example, I think the Wii U would be in better shape if Nintendo had actually released at least one game between release and now.

He has also really pushed the idea of building hardware around new and unique play experiences, and again, this is both a strength and a weakness. Both the DS and Wii released to a very mixed reaction as many observers struggled to understand them, but the two consoles were clearly massive successes. However, I think basing the 3DS around stereoscopic 3D what somewhat of a mistake. And their pursuit of uniqueness has come at the cost of graphical and computing fidelity, which in turn has hurt their image in the eyes of a number of "hardcore" type gamers.

It's way too soon to say whether Iwata will resign, as that rests largely with the success of the Wii U. We will have a decent idea of how successful in terms of sales the Wii U will be after this holiday season. If Nintendo manages to put out several of their top games by this holiday and they are still struggling, that will be a pretty clear indication.

I like the part where you put the 3DS on the same level as the Wii U when it comes to power.

Good. Popularity wise, it will be as powerful.
The way I worded it though was in the form of a ratio. The same statement could have been said as PS Vita:PS4.
This would only pertain to Xbox.

Actually, those 8GB are pretty significant. Developers are expected to have access to at least 7 GBs of that RAM for use in their game. This will either make things much easier on them, or allow them to do things they simply couldn't before. Traditionally, the ram has been the bottleneck of game consoles. For example, the PS3 has a great processor, but the console struggles to utilize it because of how pathetically small the RAM is in comparison. The idea behind Sony's design is to try and limit the bottlenecks anywhere in the architecture, and that is an intelligent approach.

smartglass has over 8000 users on ios (at least those who reviewed the app), and around 13,000 downloads on android. Its also re installed on every windows 8/phone machine.

also I find it odd you downplay smartglass when there are already millions of tablets out in the wild. Its what makes smartglass a pretty ingenious move bye taking advantage of almost every tablet in the wild is capable of becoming a smartglass machine.

I really like Iwata and a change in management is disturbing to me at this point in Nintendo. A new management might prematurely scrap Nintendo's hardware department (which has a lot of potential and is one of biggest driving forces in the industry, but investors are gunning for Nintendo to go software only). On the other hand, a younger management might also bring a stream of fresh ideas to the company and he/she might actually reinvigorate Nintendo's hardware and software departments. I believe that Iwata will be replaced in 2014 however that goal of making 100 billion yen is far out of reach (at least for this year because Nintendo is still going through a generational shift).

@SCAR392 I think it's important to keep that history in it's full context. Let's not forget that Sony's first two PlayStations dominated their console cycles. People were expecting the PlayStation 3 to do so well, not just because it was a nice machine, but also because they were used to Sony being at the forefront.

Sony made two mistakes with the PlayStation 3 that cost them: price and architecture. The thing was simply too expensive. It was just more than what most people were willing to consider. Just as bad was the fact that the CPU and RAM allotment was a pain for developers to work with. Sure, there was a lot of potential in the hardware, but the CPU was almost alien to some developers, and having to juggle 256MB of RAM and VRAM was challenging.

Sony seems to have learned both of those lessons with the PlayStation 4. They seem to be talking a lot about "ease of development" and "affordability" which shows that Sony understands their own mistakes.

Also, it seems you're making a few incorrect and ungrounded assumptions in terms of multitasking. All the data so far suggests that the PlayStation 4 will leave the vast majority of the hardware to run games. The operating system, if designed intelligently, does not have to be so taxing. Just look at smartphones and all they can do as proof of that. I also question the Wii U's ability to multitask as you suggest. It's struggling pretty bad right now as things are. Plus, multitasking is not really that much of a desire for games consoles. There are some nice things they can do in the background, but you can only physically use them for so many things at a time.

Those are some pretty bad numbers considering how many Xbox users there are.

@Sony_70
No one's down playing smartglass at all. Chances are, that if there are so many tablets 'out in the wild', then those same people would have an Xbox, too, right? Then there should be more than just 8,000 users.
Either way, most consumers won't buy another device to compliment their current device unless they actually know that it improves anything.
The Wii U already has half the features a tablet would bring(another purchase), plus the 3DS option for crossplay if that's the way things go.

Does anyone remember the Virtual Boy? Any other company would have fired EVERYONE. I think things will be fine.

@Tainy

I think there is a misconception about the sales of the original Playstation 1. The system launched in 1994 (2 years before Nintendo 64) and sold right through to 2006 (giving it a full 12 year lifecycle, and it especially became popular in emerging markets that Nintendo had no access to). As far as I remember the Nintendo 64 dominated sales in North America and Europe (PS1 was still selling more in Japan though) until it was discontinued in mid 2002.

I agree with the rest of your comment though. The Wii U does not do true multitasking at this point (except for a couple of essential services in the background like networking and disk management) and the PS4 will most likely also not do true PC-like multitasking due to only having 1 GB of ram reserved for system functions (the other 7 GB is for games I believe). However, I think Nintendo and Sony can both implement a freeze-based multitasking (in which the application will suspend most operations and have a few operations like sound and networking running in the background if needed hence not overusing system memory or processing resources).

But the Virtual Boy was actually still profitable for Nintendo. They had a record summer that year. And Nintendo had no intention of the console (or toy as some call it) replacing either the Game Boy or Nintendo 64.

They're about to report a loss for the 2nd year in a row. It's been a long time since that happened, if ever.
Things are not fine.

On the bright side, Nintendo consumers will see a ridiculous amount of games and a lot of other great improvements this fiscal year. Nintendo has to hit the market with quality and quantity to even have a puncher's chance of meeting that goal.

There are probably more than 8000 users that's just the number of people who reviewed the app..Again you don' have to worry about consumers potentially buying a tablet since more tablets are sold each year than life time sales of both the 3DS and Wii U.

Its not a matter of people. The Wii U doesn't really add any benefit when the populous are buying tablets anyway. Smartglass also makes it easier to get into the Microsoft/xbox ecosystem versus buying a Wii U/3DS.

Stillcan't go wrong with either system or way In my mind. Both have their pluses and cons and variety is the spice of life.