JohnGrey

@DESS-M-8

This, 100%. Better to release a Wii U mini that to hobble the console out of the gate. And they would have to do that. The only way to adopt x86 and backward compatibility would be to have a streaming gaming service a-la PlayStation Now and Nintendo simply does not have the infrastructure to do that on any meaningful scale. I personally think that's why Wii U software development is virtually at a standstill.

@CrazyOtto "It could be just an HD collection of Colors, Generations, and Sonic 4 for Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One."

I would pre-order this instantly, just for the HD Colours. Sonic 4, despite the absymal controls, was passable. Generations is HD already, so nothing gained there.

Now all I need are ports of The Last Story and Pandora's Tower and my Wii can finally sold off.

@IceClimbers I don't feel that you can make such a statement considering it's been at least three generations since we've had anything approaching hardware parity with other major consoles. Adding platform-specific user input has only widened the gulf in the past two generations in terms of development feasibility.

@JaxonH Oh? Look at the yearly sales charts for last year and tell me two things: how many in the top twenty are first-party titles and how many are on the Wii U. I'll wait.

@JaxonH Spoken like a non-engineer. There's nothing trivial about hardware, nor about how dire a situtation in which Nintendo finds itself currently. In a way, the combination of PPC architecture and integrated hardware/software philosophy mirrors Apple during the period following Jobs' departure and eventually had the company being three months from insolvency where they once owned the market. The problem at present is that the costs for porting the Nintendo have a incredibly poor return on investment. PC, XBOne and PS4 are all x86 whereas Nintendo is PowerPC. These two architectures use different instruction sets, which means they are not binary compatible, and very few modern development environments even still support the architecture as it's generally limited to proprietary IBM server architecture and a few offhand mobile handsets. Add the increased development costs with the significantly smaller install base with little momentum outside core first-party titles, a crippled account system and an exorbitantly expensive eShop with no cross-buying, and Carnac the Magnificent could've seen third-party abandonment it coming.

And you mentioned that they manage to develop for the iPhone, as though this were somehow difficult, which isn't the case. Aside from the fact that the iOS platform has one of the most robust IDEs available for mobile development, the architecture of iOS and Android are both ARM. This fact is precisely why the 3DS continues to thrive: it also uses ARM architecture.

@burninmylight Nintendo would be supremely foolish to go all digital. Primarily because their eShop service is a mess and their pricing policy absurdly high given the lack of floating accounts and no accessibility cross-device or even cross-generation, but more importantly because less than 20% of console software sales are digital as opposed to over 90% for PC game sales.

The future of digital game sales is going revolve around how the legal establishment of how digital copies of games fall under first sale doctrine and the whether the concept of ownership vs perpetual limited license stands up to scrutiny. Personally, I'm betting against the latter but the rule of law seems to be something of a blasé thing these days.

@PlywoodStick A very principled and reasoned response. One of my biggest problems with digital downloads, and the reason why I almost always purchase physical copies, is that games remains one of the only industries which are able to flout first sale doctrine law.

@alLabouTandroiD Why would anyone do that when they can buy a working cartridge of something like Earthbound on eBay for $70 that can be used on any clone console at any time? That guy paid for a CIB copy, which means he's a collector. And no one, least of all a gamer with limited discretionary income, is going to pay $100 for a digital download when he can play an admittedly illegal rom on any computer for absolutely nothing. Be serious.

@Mario_Fart As I understand it, the game purchase is tied to your NNID, but that NNID is tied to a particular console. So I would imagine that attempting to use the external on a separate ID would fail.

@Prof-Whit It matters not a whit what Nintendo or developers think their game is worth; the market, as with all consumer goods, sets the price.