Looks like Nintendo is finally getting that HD console out (source). It’s still technically only a rumor, and this has been rumored every E3 since… oh… the Wii was still the Revolution, but this one strikes me as more legitimate for some reason. It appears Nintendo isn’t going to just upgrade the Wii and make it pretty, but instead make something entirely unlinked from their Wii brand. I’m not sure if this means no backwards compatibility, no Wii-ware, different online store or what, but I’m not sure making it completely different is a good idea. I suspect they’ll at least want to keep token compatibility, since backwards compatibility and the virtual console are a large draw of the Wii; however, the PS3 and the 360 despite having little to no backwards functionality (with the PS3 doing better AFTER it dropped it).
What does this mean? Do you think the Microsoft and Sony will stick supporting their current gen consoles since the introduction of their new Kinect and Move gimmicks, or make a move to top Nintendo in pure console power? What does Nintendo have to do to be successful in this? I think Nintendo will, at the very least, need better online support. I don’t use online too much, but I can’t deny that Nintendo’s online is by FAR the worst of the three. It can’t win everyone over with pretty graphics and a better processor, it definitely needs some kind of better functionality to really draw modern gamers away from their PS3s and 360s.
Edit: Other possible concerns/points of interest:
3rd party support is needed desperately. Nintendo is the most excellent 1st party developer, with strong 3rd party support for the first time since the SNES (handhelds notwithstanding) it could dominate even more heavily.
Other things I forgot – I need so save before edit times out though.
I’m not a big gamer but it seems to me that now and forever Nintendos true asset will be its first party franchises. Finding the best way to connect these old nostalgic games to a modern gaming evironment is critical and in the Wii they’ve done a pretty decent job of creating a new generation of fans of a new catalog of first party titles. So long as the Nintendo hardware is a distant third place they’ll never successfully court third party developers but that’s not a major issue so long as they find a way to continue to milk those old franchises with compelling sequels and trot out a couple new properties each year. If Nintendo wants to compete with Sony and Xbox on hardware and online experience they’ll be wading into completely foreign waters and taking on a ton of debt. That doesn’t sound like a great plan.
Nintendo would be smarter to simply make a new HD console that functions as a media hub and online portal for the living room ala Google TV and Apple TV with cheaper middling hardware. Allow it to download classic titles from the online marketplace for cheap, free if you already own the games, and allow it to also play Wii games and use Wii controllers. From there you have something people will pay for. The Nintendo legacy in an HD package with the value-add of a media hub that can stream Hulu, Netflix, check the web and so on. If from there you devise a new controller and/or a more traditional gaming environment to make third party developers willing to port titles to your console great. That’s an added bonus.
The last thing Nintendo should do is go upmarket and chase the hardcore crowd. They’ve already got a huge chunk of the middle market and the casual gamers still love them. Grow that pie, let Sony and Xbox fight for the smaller hardcore crowds money. And while Xbox and Microsoft continue to miss the ball on taking over the connected living room try and be the guy to bring that experience to the masses. With the Nintendo name and the nostalgia of the catalog you may well be the first choice for the less savvy 30 somethings who don’t see the value in a dedicated Google TV device but would totally by a new Nintendo that did that for them while the loaded up and old Mario game.
I do think that Nintendo is taking a big gamble trying to win over the hardcore crowd, after they alienated them (justified or not) over the past generation. However, I think that, as a selfish gamer, I would like to see Zelda on a more powerful console (even though Skyward Sword is by far the prettiest game I’ve ever seen).
Now, if Nintendo decides they need a gimmick (and they do) what should it be this generation? My vote: a dedicated AI card. There’s been a big backlash in dedicated pockets of the gaming community recently to how AI is consistently stupid, so modern games are just the equivalent of dumb blondes. If Nintendo were to offer a dedicated piece of calculating equipment for pathfinding, behavior trees, HFSMs, rule sets etc with a consistent, (relatively) easy to use API, they could win over a LOT of fans with a “play smarter” campaign.
ETA: Also, with an AI card they can win over a few casual gamers with “your Nintendog is JUST LIKE A REAL DOG!!111!!” stuff.
There’s an implication there that Nintendo somehow changed course with the Wii. As far as I know Nintendo has never really been the most advanced console on the market. They’ve always favored gameplay over the sparkly and I’ve never once seen them advertise a processor, graphics chip or resolution. Maybe they did with the Nintendo 64 but I pretty sure there were other niche systems that kicked it ass like the Dreamcast or something. Nintendo needs to stay the course and just refreshen itself.
They will make a more powerful console and the new Zelda will look hella pretty, but it’ll still be a couple huge steps below the PS4 and that’s just fine. Going HD with internet is a measured and practical step forward. They don’t want to lead on graphics or processing.
Adding something like an AI card could be doable, but I’m not sure how challenging or expensive it would be. If it makes it much harder to port existing games over its a deal breaker though.
Nintendo should try and be the center of every Simpsons like family living room. Console makers have failed at that task for a generation mostly because they’ve been to complicated and expensive for your average iPhone carrying dummy and all the soccer moms. The people who love Halo, Black Ops, Crysis and Madden aren’t driving minivans and hosting play dates. Nintendo hits that demo and they could become the living room appliance for middle America alongside the TiVo.
Not really, and most of the developers that favored them have been bought out by someone else (like Rare). That said, this is Nintendo’s chance to try and win them back.
Rare is western though isn’t it? English through and through.
For those who remember, Rare grew out of ACG and anyone who ever had a ZX Spectrum will know that name.
I well remember my shock at seeing “Knight Lore” for the first time.
Actually, Nintendo was a hardware leader from the time they put out the Famicom until the N64 (which tried to be and failed miserably). They definitely did line up their chips and eye the enemy - mostly Sega - accordingly, and they lead until they completely dropped the ball with the N64. Now, technically, it had good hardware. What Nintendo screwed up was they completely failed to see what was the limiting factor for games then: disk storage. It didn’t matter what you machine could handle since the thing was bottlenecked by your media.
Likewise, many Nintendo games definitely had a strong focus on graphics until they couldn’t anymore.
However, I don’t have a problem with them staying the course. That’s where their expertise is. But, the key is that sooner or later someone will hunt them down. Microsoft is an incremental improver, and it slowly making inroads that way.
I’m not sure it’s practical. Horsepower isn’t the real issue in AI. Pathfinding issues are mostly resolved (if you put in any effort). But actually making AI act not-moronic is another ball of wax, and not one we have a reasonable answer for.
Microsoft just started publicly talking about the possibility of an Xbox 360 successor, so I’d say we’re still a pretty decent time period away from an Xbox 720/PS4. Doubly so when you consider all of the huge games both consoles already have lined up for 2012 and 2013.
After the Wii was announced, it was just assumed that Nintendo would be first out of the gate with a generation eight console. It’s likely they’ll go the “disruptor” route that Sega tried to do with the Dreamcast: a console that is noticeably more advanced than what came before (PS1, N64), but not quite as powerful as the other players who came after (PS2, GC, Xbox). Basically, get people locked in before the Xbox 720/PS4 are ready and then ride the system to generation nine.
ETA: Oh, and as for the worry that Nintendo will “do something different” with their next system, I say so? Motion controls are here to stay (as the Move and Kinect prove), so it’ll have some kind of motion control option. The only question is if it’ll be totally motion-controlled or if Nintendo will push the Classic Controller a bit more in their next system. Also, from the way the article is written, they seemed to be implying that the name was what would be totally different. So basically, while it might play a lot like the Wii, it won’t be called the Wii 2 or Wii HD or any permutation of Wii. Like the last three Nintendo systems.
I have to agree with Omni; Nintendo hardware is rarely ever the most advanced on the market. The Sega Master System was more powerful than the NES, and the Genesis and TG16 even more so. The SNES in some ways was inferior to the Genesis and blown away by the Neo Geo and the first couple of years of PSX/Saturn. After a brief period of hardware supremacy, N64 was competing against the Dreamcast, and neither the Gamecube or Wii were the most advanced consoles on the market when they were introduced.
If anyone has been a hardware leader, it’s been Sega.
I never said Nintendo always had the weakest hardware, I said they were rarely the most advanced, and nothing you said disproves that.
I also never said the Genesis was more powerful than the SNES, only that it was superior in some ways (notably, clock speed). But SNES still wasn’t the most advanced console anyway, so I don’t know what your point is.
My point is that you’re comparing the N64 to the Dreamcast and the SNES to the PS1 and saying Nintendo is weaker. Of course they would be, you’re putting a previous generation system up against a newer system.
When you compare within a generation, Nintendo was always at the top (or just slightly below, i.e. GC vs Xbox).
Yes and no. One key issue you’re ignoring is the marketing and timing of systems. It’s easy to make a “better” console if you’re not coming out at the same time. So, true, technically the NES and SNES were beat by consoles in their arbitrary “generation.” But they were focused on the technical challenges which game-makers and consumers needed beaten.
Likewise, while I don’t deny the Genesis had some advantages, overall it was not nearly as strong as the SNES. I loved my Genesis, but in terms of the technical advantages consumers and game makers needed (and I admit that’s a fuzzy line, but basically the NES and SNES were less constrained), they won. The NES’s real competitor for that era was the Atari 7800. The Master System took well over a year to arrive (2 for many areas). This was turned around when the SNES arrived about the same period after the Genesis, but it’s clear Nintendo was still a leader, focusing its improvements on what consumers were after.
Now I distinguish being a technology leader from being a technology innovator. Sega was an innovator. But it tended to throw its resources around randomly, to thinly, and peak early or late. Sure, it came out first sometimes, but it failed to use the technology well. For example, it had the first CD console the market. But it sucked, because the hardware was bottlenecked in other ways.
Now, I don’t think of technology as being in “tiers,” because it isn’t. You can have multiple leaders, and Nintendo still leads in miniaturization like nobody’s business. But now, they don’t lead hardware like they used to. They went for a smaller market. It worked for them unexpectedly well and profitably, but it doesn’t position them for better hardware in that respect.
The N64 WAS competing with the Dreamcast from 1999-2001.
You’re defining the lines between console generations so that Nintendo’s lag actually looks like an advantage. Nintendo was the slowest to come out with a 16 bit system; of course it destroyed the TurboGrafx, but by then the Neo Geo was already out. If you want to define it that way, fine, but the technological bar for comparison should be set by the most advanced console available at the time.
And when was the SNES ever the most advanced console available during its lifetime? Never. The hardware was already inferior to the Neo Geo the day it was released. I acknowledged a brief window of superiority for the N64. When was the Gamecube? Never. Wii? Ditto.
I have to say I really enjoy Nintendo’s hardware announcements in recent years. There’s always some crazy random stuff - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always a little out of left field. Two screens! Motion control! It checks your balance! Touch screen! It checks your heart rate (where did that thing go, anyway)! 3D! I see people saying that the controller for this new console will have an HD screen built in. That sounds ridiculous, but Nintendo’s stuff usually does.
That’s fair, I want to clarify that when I say “superior” or “advanced” in this context, I only mean pure number-crunching ability. I would agree the Wii’s control scheme is technically an advancement, after all. It’s just easier to quantify “advancement” with polygons…
Yes? I was responding to the fact that Nintendo has little western support by saying that they LOST a lot of their remaining western developers, like Rare, to buyouts (since Microsoft bought Rare).
I believe Iwata said that Nintendo won’t be touching a 3D home console until 3D-tv Market Penetration is at least 30%.
Yeah, but hardly anyone bought a Neo Geo. The primary competition for the SNES was the Genesis, and the SNES was the better console (which isn’t to say the Genesis wasn’t a lot of fun).