JamesCoote

I don't get why there have been so many "waves" in such a short time. It's left me confused as hell, and since I'm not really a collector type person and I don't play SSB, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I should buy any more from a functionality point of view.

I'm still optimistic though as they have so much potential. Just hoping for more games that really do some interesting stuff with them

With SteamOS, does valve take a cut of revenue from games sold on it, even if they're not sold through the Steam storefront? Do they even allow stores that are not Steam on the OS?

I'm really not sure SteamOS is going to be viable if Nintendo is having to give up 30% of its revenue and 3rd parties 60% before tax

Quoting @dres : "Nintendo simply does not have the skills to make a proper OS."

This is also my conclusion from experience on WiiU. Or rather, they can, but it takes up so much of their time and effort, it's simply not economical or justified

@daveh30 This is possibly true. It might make more big AAA 3rd party devs take Android seriously just the fact that Nintendo were using it. Equally, it's easier to justify to a big game studio or publisher an Android target for their engine as they know it'll have uses beyond just Nintendo hardware. It's a lot less risky than spending ages on a pure NX version of the engine in case NX flops like Wii U. Plus like it or not, tablets and phones are rapidly catching up to consoles in terms of specs, so it's not totally daft to suggest that AAA games might come to those other Android devices sooner than we think.

But yeah, it'd probably be of more immediate benefit to small and mid-sized studios using engines like UE4 or Unity.

@Artwark Unity doesn't automatically work on whatever system. Someone has to put a lot of time and effort into making it work with specific architectures / systems. With Android, that work is already done, but with WiiU, Nintendo ultimately have to pay either Unity or their own programmers to make it happen

Sucks as would have been great for 3rd party devs. Whatever they do, hope they make life easier than on WiiU

@outburst @zerodactyl Apple will never allow iOS to run on any non-apple devices, so forget any chance of iOS on NX.

It should also be said that different companies redskin Android for their devices. All Amazon devices (kindle, FireTV Fire Phone) use a heavily modified version of Android - heavily modified to sell you stuff

I personally hate all the Samsung redskins of Android I've tried. I use 'vanilla' android (the standard Android that google makes) on my Nexus 5 and it's snappy and responsive and maybe doesn't look super cool, but it doesn't look bad either.

The main thing for any Android based console is allowing navigation with a controller, since Android is obviously designed for touch, and also making an attractive store front. I remember when OUYA was coming out having many debates within the OUYA community about how to stop the store having the whole self I reinforcing chart system where the more popular a game, the more visible it is and so the more popular it becomes, causing the charts to get stuck solid with the same few titles for years (who could then spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year on advertising to prop up their chart.position). As it transpired, OUYA did a bunch if cool things to prevent that, but a). they never got the sheer flood of games from mobile anyway and b). the store front aesthetics looked crap IMO. If people have a nice store experience, I really think it does contribute to a console's success.

Also just backing up what others have said about OUYA in that they mostly made sure all games on their store were designed for TV and console controls and not for touch.

The main thing that killed OUYA was perception and people's perception of Android fed into that. Ultimately it's just an OS but people associated it with the mess that is Google Play, piracy etc. If Nintendo do go with Android, they need to make a bloody good communication job on exactly how and why these things won't affect NX. I'd also recommend they de-emphasise Android. Only devs really ought to know and care what's underneath so long as users get a good experience. It might even be worth lying and saying it's not Android but modified version of linux, such is the stigma that Android has with core gamers

This would be great for me as a dev as it'd make it super simple to make games for the NX. Conversely, I think no matter what, Nintendo should have quality control on their next console. Be selective in the devs and games they bring onboard, then make it super easy for devs once they are there. I have literally wasted weeks on bureaucracy and fiddling with settings and installing tools with WiiU instead of actually making games. It's an appalling waste of time and resources for 3rd party devs and is at least part of the reason for lack of 3rd party support on WiiU IMO. So if Android solves that, brilliant!

Clearly, Nintendo are great at making games and that's what they should spend their time doing, not making operating systems. Doesn't matter too much whether it's Android versus say SteamOS or some other flavour of Linux, so long as it allows them to focus on the stuff players really value like friends, leaderboards, achievements, video streaming, system UI, storefront etc.

Also with Android, there's an outside chance NX might support VR, especially as Oculus have committed to supporting Android for the long term.

Basically an Android NX would be all sorts of awesome so long as Nintendo don't just throw open the doors to any and every mobile dev.

@yokokazuo It's fun for sure, but feels like an extra to the multiplayer rather than a really immersive experience.

Dare I say it, splatoon also has great potential on mobile, swishing fingers all over a touch screen to splatter ink everywhere

The single player is undercooked based on what I've played so far of it. Had (has?) the potential in terms of mechanics and character that Portal had, but without the story and with the disjointed way you move between missions, it feels a little flat.

Really hope they do a full narrative single player story in Splatoon 2 with the power of NX (assuming there is one)

I've been using the splattershot to run lines of ink around the map I can then use to either escape, refuel or get close to enemies for a kill. All while taking chunks out of enemy territory.

I must admit I mostly go for kills, but doing a line across the open areas near the enemy spawn just means they get disrupted swimming to wherever the battle is taking place or distracted filling it back to their colour.

Also I've found penning the enemy into the area around their spawn, even for 20 seconds, others in the team will go fill in the areas behind.

Another tip is to make sure you go down the side corridors some maps have at least once with your colour. They may get filled back by the enemy but often they're underused and stuff I've inked sin the 1st minute is still there when counting scores at the end.

Also, if you find you're getting hammered up close by an enemy and are about to die, worth dropping a bomb at your feet for an even chance of revenge from beyond the grave

This means Nintendo are producing large numbers of download keys right? I wonder if that'll lead to something like what steam keys are?

Started using it last week. Haven't found any bugs so far and looking forward to finally being able to use new Unity GUI for WiiU projects!

Most of my indie-dev friends had already made the switch to Unity 5, so good that the WiiU version has now caught up!

I remember when steam was first introduced and people, myself included, hated it as a buggy mess that just got in the way of gaming. It was only begrudgingly that people accepted it when HL2 came out and that required it / didn't let you play without iirc.

However, it did eventually get better and I've been through 3 PC's since then, so been able to just download steam and boom, there's my entire games library.

These sorts of debates annoy me. Frankly, digital is the future. When it's done properly, it's great! I'd just urge people not to be put off by the crappy way it's implemented on console.

I'm working on two games for WiiU right now. First will be just in the US, and hoping to at least earn enough from it to pay for PEGI for the second. Not decided if USK is worthwhile yet.

I've heard a rumor IARC won't arrive for Wii U this year. Though I'd love that to be wrong, gotta plan based on pessimistic predictions.

The other aspect is the opportunity cost to developers. That €1200 could go towards say a stand at a games convention or help pay for a PS4 devkit or pay for some kickass concept art, all of which may or may not generate more sales than USK.

Price is not the problem. It's volume

There's probably only a few tens of thousands of Wii U owners who actually bother to check the eShop for new releases, follow forums and twitter for news of what eShop games are coming up. Most people here fall into that group, but the issue is how to encourage the 9 million other Wii U owners to buy eShop games.

Also on the physical disks thing, Steam offers a pretty good service and that's all digital. Many developing countries (outside of Africa) have surprisingly good broadband and within developed nations, it's only really the US that has a problem in towns and cities (rural broadband is a different matter at least here in the UK).

A digital only NX would save Nintendo and 3rd party devs / publishers a lot of time & money in the long run. It's clearly the future, but I can also see the arguments of ppl who live in places with sucky internet, so I expect NX to have disks, but be the last console with physical media.

A good compromise might be a diskless SKU / version of the console. Same price but with extra HDD space.

Certainly for digital distribution, the current system makes zero sense. It's a massive duplication of effort having to separately publish in different regions, and getting rid of that will save Nintendo and 3rd party devs time and money to be better spent elsewhere.

Other platforms let (3rd party) developers pick and choose which countries to release their games in and I think it should be the same for Nintendo systems/stores. There are sometimes legit (often legal) reasons why games can't be sold in some countries, but no need to deprive others that have been lumped into the same region from having a game.

Hopefully the new combined system for getting games age-rated will come to Nintendo consoles sooner rather than later. At that point, for digital games, there'd really be very little reason left for having separate publishing regions.

Also, a lot of fellow indie devs I talk to dream of releasing their games in Japan on Nintendo systems, just because how frikking cool would that be? At the moment, it's nigh on impossible.

I expect it's the same deal as with Unity 5 for WiiU - it'll come when it's ready, not on some arbitrary schedule.

Alternatively, it may be they choose some trusted devs to do a test run with the new tech before opening it up to the wider group of devs (still within the existing 3DS dev program). In which case, we'll probably just see the odd one or two unity-nn3ds games at first, rather than an opening of the flood gates.

This could be super-exciting for me. The game I originally wanted to make for Wii U was made in Unity, but needed multiple second screens to connect to the Wii U (the one Wii U gamepad was not enough. Each player needed their own secret screen). And the only (Nintendo approved) way to do that was to connect 3DS to Wii U. But 3DS didn't support Unity at the time, so I was a bit stuck and eventually went on to making other games for Wii U.

Now though, it ought to be possible. Tempting as well to port my game Totem Topple, which is going through lotcheck for Wii U at the moment, though will have to wait and see what Nintendo reps say, and also if I can get my hands on a new 3DS devkit.

@bluedogrulez Amiibos aren't really for kids, they're for adults that grew up in the glory days of Nintendo. So no surprise toys r us don't push them to the front of the store.

Or if they could announce it for early 2016 and have some really good bundles for holiday season, it could be enough of a carrot to save Christmas/holiday season. Spend the holidays playing Splatoon & MK8 and know that come January, there'll be Zelda to cover the usually dry post-holiday season.

That's the only way I can conceivably see them rescuing this. Frankly, Xenoblade, Star Fox and Metroid are unlikely to sell systems outside existing Nintendo fandom

The problem is now there's no good time in 2016 to start talking about NX without making people think "Ooh, maybe I'll wait for that rather than buying a a Wii U-Zelda bundle"

Please tell me it has those silly sound-bites you can say when voting for a level like MK8: "I'm using motion controls!" "I'm a little bit nervous!"

I guess this is the gaming equivalent of fanfiction. I'd love to take part, but I've never played any Zelda games (plus I just don't have the time). Whilst I'm not against female link, maybe Nintendo should create more new IP and have female leads in those? It might even attract a new audience to Wii U. This is what I was hoping they'd do with mobile but seems it's all going to be existing IP.

@theprisoner06 Unity isn't some panacea for porting. I've spent the last month porting one of my Unity games to WiiU, and it's still not quite ready for lotcheck.

I'm not going to criticise devs for their choice of tools just because they don't happen to support this or that specific platform. I'd love to put my Unity games on 3DS for example.

@theprisoner06 monogame is not some obscure little engine. It supports a whole bunch of platforms, and is one of the more common/ popular tools for gamedevs. WiiU just happens to be one of the few major platforms it doesn't support (Xbox one being the other). It is more programmer-centric than Unity, which if you come from a coder background, can make it far easier to get to grips with. You're more likely to make a better game if you using the tools you're comfortable with, and not spending your whole time trying to wrap your head around Unity's bull crap instantiating game objects or inability to do polymorphism for example.

There are complex technical reasons why Monogame isn't supported by Xbox one either. That fact caused massive consternation amongst devs who had previously made XNA/monogames for XBLIG/XBLA and then felt shut out of Xbox One and left in the cold by MS being unable to overcome those difficulties. In this case at least, you can't simply blame WiiU's different architecture.

Probably the fastest way for this game to get on WiiU would be for the devs to rewrite it in Unity, and having worked on a project to do that before, it's no easy task and takes months of dev time.

There's no one really to 'blame' here. The game realistically isn't going to come to WiiU or X1 anyway, unless monogame gets support for those platforms, and even that'd be months off. So makes sense the dev takes advantage of Sony's support by going exclusive for 6 months.

@IceClimbers
With regard to which platforms are viable for indies, most probably, the opposite is true. I have a friend who is just about to release on Xbox One, so should soon know for sure from him. In any case MS/ID@Xbox are very selective with who they allow on their dev program. There is a lot less competition on that store than Wii U, and every ID@Xbox dev/game gets a good slice of marketing help to boot.

PS4, likewise. Whilst Sony have done a very good job of cultivating an indie friendly image, if you count the number of games on PS4 from indies, it's relatively low volume compared to Wii U. Plus the ratio of indie to big-publisher is higher. They are actually quite selective in who they give dev tools to and who they support marketing wise. It's going to vary from game to game, but it's reasonable to assume the same indie game will do better on PS4 or Xbox One than Wii U.

In contrast, the majority of revenue on iOS/Android goes to the top 200 or so games in the charts. There is very little movement within those charts, and those already there spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per day on user acquisition to stay in those positions.

You're right in that to have any hope with a new game, you need a pre-made audience, either from an existing IP or previously successful game. (Plus bundles of cash) I.e you're Rovio or you're making the next Game of Thrones game.

Of course there are some outliers like Crossy Road, but for every one of those, there are thousands of perfectly good games (and I mean excluding the match three and flappy bird clones) that fail to break even, or often to even make their $99 app store developer program fee back.

Steam lies somewhere between Xbox One and android/iOS. You can still make enough to pay rent if you have a good game with reasonable marketing effort behind it. Plus your game has a better chance of blowing up. But at the same time Steam is going the way of mobile markets as Valve continue to open it up. Recently, competition has ramped up sharply, where average quality continues to fall, making it harder for everyone.

I suspect there's a general problem where most indie games on the eShop aren't economically viable. Bigger games don't get the volume they need to support wages of a small team. Individual devs can't reasonably produce anything more than "mobile" games, which aren't substantial enough to attract an audience used to sitting down and spending multiple hours on a single game.

@D2Dahaka RE: "Biggest problem Wii-U has is that it is priced above the casual market (ie. not an impulse buy price) ..[and other stuff]"

The price isn't the issue: Some are willing to drop $60+ on Candy crush saga or $600 on a new iPad. But they never go into GameStop or the gaming aisle at Target or whatever because gaming isn't their thing. So they'll never see that reduced price. Even if they did, those people are now used to convenience gaming. Any time/place they can pull out their phone or tablet and play. On the bus or curled up in bed. A bulky box with all these peripherals and wires that needs to be plugged into the TV and demands your full attention is not very appealing.

Price drop will only appeal to core gamers who might be thinking of picking up a second console. But Wii U's been limping along doing that anyway; they're unlikely to squeeze too many more purchases out of that niche.

Lack of support for gamepad and 3rd party AAA can both be traced back to the rise of cross platform tools and working in a cross-platform way. Make the game once, then deploy it to various platforms. Gamepad screws that up from a design perspective, whilst Wii U's different architecture makes it trickier to code those cross-platform tools and then optimize for performance.

PS3 had big problems at the start of its life because of it's weird architecture, so not like Nintendo didn't have forewarning. PS4 and X1 are relatively identical hardware wise because that's what big AAA studios asked for.

Games are becoming more homogeneous, and counter-intuitively, Wii U is suffering for going against the flow. Plus the stuff I said earlier about the casuals all going to mobile

@vonseux Yeah, sadly I couldn't get to grips with Wonderful 101. Might give it another go at some point though.

Still doesn't have that killer app for the gamepad (but then PS4/X1 don't have their respective killer apps yet). There's nothing wrong with Wii U per-se, but it's stuck in no-man's land between casual and core audiences. As much as I hate to use those terms, both worlds have turned and left Nintendo in the dust.

Since I don't really know most of them and probably won't be getting SSB, I'll probably get whichever looks coolest.

@readyletsgo Actually I edited my above reply, because having re-read it, seems customers will instead browse the tablet and make selections on that. Or maybe it was as I first thought that there'll be more physical cards that customers take to the counter, with sales assistants using the tablet to put the purchase through? I'm really confused now

But yes, definitely as an 'ordinary' consumer, you walk into a game store at the moment and the selection of Wii U games looks anaemic, simply because not that many of the Wii U's games actually make it to boxed disks on shop shelves

I suspect most Wii U customers don't hang around on Nintendo forums and websites (no offense!) or browse the eShop for the latest games, but instead find out about what games are for the system by seeing what disk boxes are in the shop. So hopefully this will help increase visibility for the mostly-indie devs on the eShop who otherwise are invisible in store.

Edited after having re-read, it seems this isn't what I first thought...

Casual gaming is about convenience (the clue is in the name!) Not having to pay before you can start playing, and being able to download to the mobile device you already own are the factors pushing casual gamers away from traditional console games.

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@CaptainToad It's all perception, and the perception right now is that Wii U is not a console for core gamers. There is too much stacked against Wii U for that to change, though Nintendo can probably still save face and put themselves in a good position for a post-Wii U future.

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The other way to interpret Miyamoto's comments is that it is possible to convert casual gamers to be interested in deeper, more challenging games (or at least ones that are a bit more sophisticated than a match 3 in a shiny wrapper). As others have cited, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, The Sims type games that have a female demographic in mind, not usually associated with "core" gaming but probably no less loved and played than say, Gears of War (to name a random, popular AAA FPS franchise)

Many casual gamers go on to spend significant sums of money on IAP, so it's not as if they aren't willing to spend at all.

@CaptainToad In raw units sold. There are other important measures (which we will never know) that indicate how much people are actually playing and spending on the console. E.g. Daily and Monthly active users

The important thing though is perception. X1 is perceived as a core console, as growing, as having superior specs to the Wii U, and as a place Activision or EA are still going to put the latest CoD or FIFA on in 2 or 3 years time. X1 has the same problem as Wii U though in that PS4 is killing it in perception / appeal to core gamers. Hence X1's panicked jettisoning of Kinect and appointing "gamer" Phil Spencer as division head. If we get out the other end of Christmas/Holiday season and X1 is still behind Wii U in raw numbers, then perception will start to change. But in a negative way for X1, not in any way that'll help Wii U or Nintendo

Firstly, I don't think many casual gamers read Edge magazine, so it's not like these comments alone will put them off, whilst they will appeal to the core gamers Nintendo is losing to PS4/X1, and confront the negative press created by Ubisoft et al. saying they will no longer make mature games for Wii U.

Longer term, I don't think there's room for 3 consoles to all be targeting the hardcore gamer market. There just aren't enough of them. There was a report in GI.biz a while back saying the number was something like 35mil and slowly declining, not going up. Since that audience (rightly or wrongly) places a high cache on "awesome graphics", the Wii U's inferior specs compared to PS4/X1 will only make it harder to wow those gamers and make them feel like Wii U is the place with not only the "best" (read shinyest) games, but that will have the best games in the future. For all the talk about Nintendo being innovative with game mechanics, core gamers don't actually want something different. They want games that follow all the familiar genre conventions, so that they can learn them quickly and know they are going to enjoy them, with one or two incremental changes or additions (such as wall running addition in titanfall to the usual FPS formula).

Plus Nintendo is furthest behind in terms of building the infrastructure that core gamers now expect. Friends, achievements, integrated twitch and video sharing, PS+/Xbox Live stuff.

Also, whilst Nintendo can still appeal to the generation that grew up playing their games/system, they are going to lose the next generation, who in 10 or 15 years time will get all nostalgic and blurry-eye'd for Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, not Mario, Zelda and Pokemon (because that's what they're playing right now as kids).

I hope this is what they are just saying to win back fans, and not what they are actually thinking. (Or maybe Wii U is a right-off, and they figure they can get something close to break-even over the lifetime of the product by appealing to the core as the #2 console in their collection, where they already have a PS4 or X1 as their "primary" machine for all the cross-platform AAA latest releases)

@arnoldlayne83 it's damaging for the industry long term. PS4 driving the console industry sharply towards the hardcore end of the pool has split the market in half. No casual gamer is going to spend $400 on a console that advertises itself as all sports and shooting aliens, especially when they already have a gaming device (phone) in their pocket that caters far more to their needs and tastes.

The "gamer" market is by far the smaller half by customer numbers and revenue. Maybe Sony had to do this to survive. A poor PS4 launch and Sony exiting the console space would have been a disaster.

But it's made console gaming niche, which in turn makes Nintendo's position of proprietary console targeting more casual audiences, untenable.

There's a theory that consoles do better when they have a wide range of games that appeal to many different people, even if there is clearly a "core" demographic.

So yes, this is undoubtedly bad news for Wii U. All those marketing dollars spent promoting the game bleed into helping promote the systems it is on. So Nintendo is doubly missing out.

I'm also slightly concerned about X1/PS4, and that they are focusing too much on the "gamer" market. Last gen, xbox 360 had a bunch of family friendly kinect titles, which actually made the whole offering more well rounded. Now that MS have so publicly denounced Kinect, it's not going to be like last gen where MS was quietly supporting those devs making more "family friendly" fare. The danger is that once PS4 runs out of early adopters, their sales bottom out. That's why we're seeing LBP 3 being pushed strongly at the moment

@sinalefa I may well get in touch once this new arrow system has been implemented. Just a shame it's not possible to send out a test build, so going to have to rely on screenshots/video (and testing with people at events).

Even though we've only just "announced" the game, we've been trying throughout development to take peoples' feedback and incorporate it into the design. Although some things are a bit more inflexible at this stage, this change wouldn't have a big an impact on the "vision" of the game, even though in practical terms it changes the design.

The thinking anyway would be to keep this as an option. So you could play with or without arrows. With arrows makes the game easier, but there are a number of other settings that affect difficulty, and when you max those out, the difference from using arrows or colour or both becomes marginal, as the game gets virtually impossible at that point anyway.

The other point about the business angle is that something like 5% of males have at least some form of colour-blindness. That's 2.5%+ sales instantly down the drain if you ignore it. Plus it's a crappy attitude that'll win you no friends.

Interestingly, some (non-colour blind) people seem to really struggle with the game at the moment, so making it easier, and so even more accessible, like you say, can't be a bad thing in the other direction either

@Sean_Aaron It might be possible. The problem is, the closer you are to a colour match, the more points you get (or faster your speed boost in race mode). This is why we don't split the ring into discreet colour bands. Likewise, you can't be 80% between square and triangle. It's either one or the other.

Having patterns on the ring, they'd have to logically merge from one set to another. Would need to sit down and experiment to see if that was really workable. Another one someone suggested to me was having differing animations on the ring or in a glowing halo around the ring. So for example, one that has a striped pattern, with the stripes flat horizontal when you're way off, turning to dead vertical when you're spot on.

In fact, just thinking about it now, it may be possible to have arrows rotated at different angles coming towards you on the track. You then have to turn the ring to match the arrow position, or probably better, the ring remains fixed and you turn the square indicator at the top to match the angle / rotation of the arrow. The ring would probably have to be a smaller arc, so you could see it all at once. It's currently about 340 degrees. There is a gap at the bottom to stop people rotating the wii remote all the way around and crossing their arms over. Could be say 180 degrees or 225 degrees and probably still be visible / not cut off by the track below. The extra challenge would be that it's difficult to judge the arrow rotation/direction when you're on a rollercoaster track, travelling at all sorts of banking and loop-the-loop angles until right before you hit the object on the track.

What do you reckon? That'd only take a day to implement, so might try it anyway

@Sean_Aaron & @sinalefa - As it happens, spent the last couple of days implementing colour-blind settings. There'll be colour customisation options as well, so you can fine-tune in case the pre-selected colours aren't quite right.

@Josaku A lot of people have commented that it's not obvious how you actually play. Making a video to illustrate at the moment, which should hopefully get posted up on youtube later this week

@Kaze_Memaryu The music doesn't really fit with the rest of the visuals at the moment. We're getting more music composed for the game, and also in the process of creating some completely different looking levels that'll have a different vibe again to the ones made so far

Nintendo should make mobile games where it makes sense to do so. This is a good example of where it makes sense, versus say a Mario platformer, where the game design and controls don't mesh / gel well with touch interface.

It's a shame cross platform tools like Unity3d don't generally have 3DS support, or it'd be much easier for developers to make a game from the outset that works on iPad, PC, Wii U and 3DS. Then there'd be none of this "Why is my favourite game coming to iPad but not 3DS when it'd be perfect for it?" I guess at this point in the 3DS lifecycle, it's not worth doing it.

Makes sense, since a lot more people (esp. kids) have access to a tablet than a console. Looking at the picture, they clearly didn't go in for making it small and portable, so I'd imagine they think this is going to be played in the house rather than on the move. (Also means battery life won't be an issue).

Slightly off topic, but I think the future is in games that span multiple devices. So you sit down to play on console, then continue your game on your mobile whilst out and about. (Or rather, the other way around. You customise your spaceship on the phone, then when you get home from school/work, you can hop onto your PC/console and launch straight into battle). NFC Figurines could be a part of that, especially if, like the amiibo figures, they are used in a more sophisticated way than they are at the moment.

A lot of devs probably want to do free to play, but the eShop is just not set up for it. Yes, it's possible, but the implementation is really not set up for micro transactions, vs buying $5 or $10 DLC in a single go for an AAA title.

I'd echo what @rockodoodle and other's have said. It's disturbing that Nintendo is making those kinds of losses on the back of a successful MK8 launch.

3DS has performed admirably, considering the rise of mobile. Equally, mobile means any successor is likely to flop hard. Nintendo need to work out not only how to make fun mobile games, but also how to market them, and how to do games-as-a-service. Once they do that, they can begin to leverage their large number of strong IP's on mobile. As well, they can take that into a new console in a couple of year's time.