That alone would have made the console $400, which means $500 with the tablet. Who is going to buy that?
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What exactly would make such a console cost $400 in 2011?
Juniper XT cards (800sp / 40 TMUs / 16 ROP / 1GB GDDR5) were being sold for $160 at the time. Full motherboards with the E-350 were going for $100 retail in the same time period.
Even if it wasn't a SoC (in the end it wasn't, anyway), a motherboard with a custom 4*Bobcat CPU + 64-bit 4GB DDR3 + discrete Juniper + 1GB 128bit GDDR5 probably wouldn't reach $200.
Case + ~120W PSU + cooling + 32GB eMMC would do below $100 for sure.
And the tablet.. there's no way that thing ever cost $100 to make. It was probably never above half of that.
Yeah, the console would probably go for $400 if they wanted to make a profit off of it. But back in 2011, people were aching for a new console with better graphics. The public would have bought it in waves and all AAA developers would be in line for releasing their "next-gen" titles for the brand new powerful console.
Instead, they chose to do backwards compatibility with the Wii. Which had been dead in the water for over a year in software sales.
Juniper XT cards (800sp / 40 TMUs / 16 ROP / 1GB GDDR5) were being sold for $160 at the time. Full motherboards with the E-350 were going for $100 retail in the same time period.
Even if it wasn't a SoC (in the end it wasn't, anyway), a motherboard with a custom 4*Bobcat CPU + 64-bit 4GB DDR3 + discrete Juniper + 1GB 128bit GDDR5 probably wouldn't reach $200.
Case + ~120W PSU + cooling + 32GB eMMC would do below $100 for sure.
And the tablet.. there's no way that thing ever cost $100 to make. It was probably never above half of that.
Yeah, the console would probably go for $400 if they wanted to make a profit off of it. But back in 2011, people were aching for a new console with better graphics. The public would have bought it in waves and all AAA developers would be in line for releasing their "next-gen" titles for the brand new powerful console.
Instead, they chose to do backwards compatibility with the Wii. Which had been dead in the water for over a year in software sales.
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Why would any developer want to spend time working with the Wii-u for next gen games when at the same time, they knew that ms and sony's consoles will come out later with better performance anyways. They wouldn't want to invest in games to launch with the Wii-u if it wasn't already on 360 and ps3, in which case they would be hard pressed to make the game better for wii-u just for the heck of it. At that point, nintendo is left with a more expensive console that still had nothing to show for it. So the public would buy in on the fact that it was more powerful than ps360? My answer is: no more than they would have now because, when the wii-u launched, most sources wrongfully quoted the performance to be twice the performance it actually is and it did nothing for the console.
You compare the Wii-u launch price of $350 with what your fantasy spec and you can see that they would need to minimum quadruple the power budget, which means cooling and power delivery would need to match. They also need a lot more memory bandwidth to feel the GPU which is not going to be just put 4GB of system ram there and then 1 GB of Vram for the gpu if they didn't want the console to be completely borked when they need to run more than ps360 era games. All that and the console would still be obsolete a year later when the ps4 launches with more than twice the performance.
We disagree here, the idea of streaming content from one device to another and locally is interesting but here is the thing: Nintendo produces and sells handhelds already which makes the WiiU gamepad superfluous. Making the home console mobile does not help Nintendo offer, it is incoherent, the WiiU is a commercial failure, they have update the 3DS, and from there they are focusing neither on the handheld or the home side of their business and they come with something nonsensical.
Edit
On the matter of "nonsensical", say the a device akin Shield (handheld) allow for a sustained TDP of ~10 Watts, traditional Nintendo console are more like ~3 Watts. Say 3 watts does not fly with Nintendo requirement why not scale the handheld before considering an external accelerator. It is the same situation as if one were to buy laptop powered by an Atom processor and intends to use constantly with external GPU (it is worse as actually the external GPU is not a complete system). To make it worse Nintendo does not seem to be aiming for the moon and in PC term the external accelerator would be a pretty mid-range GPU.
It makes no sense when you have room to scale the primary device without getting into exotic and costly cooling solution. That path Nintendo may have chosen is a device useless by self which include SOC, ram, whatever cooling solution, etc, and another device which includes soc, ram,etc.
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I get that nintendo might be wary about selling an expensive handheld but selling the concept I see is just that with some make-up. I don't think they need an expensive handheld, I think they need a cheap home and a cheap handheld consoles to launch simultaneously with a common environment and some degree of compatibility. The hardware is the easy part. The also need a decent launch line-up.
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Not sure I understand this. It sounds exactly like the Wii U but they moved the more capable graphics hardware in the "dock" to a portable add-on that can be used on the controller or the dock? How will they solve the problem where the controller is too expensive? I think that is the reason why the Wii U mainly failed. Sounds like only Wii U users are going to want this so they can take their tablet on the road?
Tommy McClain
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MS and Sony's consoles wouldn't be out until one whole year later.
That's like trying to say the PS4 Pro shouldn't have been released because Scorpio will be out next year with better performance anyways.
Never mind the fact that console gamers had been suffering from an unprecedented drought of newer consoles, so Nintendo lost a huge opportunity here.
Nintendo would be left with a console that could actually run PS4bone multiplatform games at 720p, with an exclusive tablet controller that could offer new gameplay ideas.
The Wii U died the moment it was a 8th-gen console with 7th-gen hardware and the only ones willing to throw money at the console were Nintendo alone.
Come 2013, people had seen what a PC with a DX11 graphics card could do and they wouldn't to go back to PS360 IQ.
Yeah well my fantasy spec would have worked a hell lot better than Wii U's specs. And this is not just my opinion.
Yes, they would need to triple the power budget (like the PS360 before it and PS4bone after it), and yes cooling and power delivery would need to match.
And yes, it wouldn't fit inside that ridiculously tiny box, it would need a larger case #shock!!#.
And the end result is that it wouldn't be crap. And people would buy the new console.
64bit 4GB DDR3 would be plenty for quad-Bobcat at 1.6GHz. 1GB VRAM for Juniper is more than appropriate, it wouldn't be borked.
The PS360 had 512MB total.
Obsolete is what the Wii U became because it had terrible hardware.
Nobody is going to port next gen games to wii u no matter how powerful it is. There are plenty of games it can run and nobody bother to port. The console isn't going to have sold more just because it was more powerful if nothing was going to show off it's power over the previous gen before the next gen is actually announced.
At least we can comfort ourselves that third party AAA ports won't even be a problem with NX. The combination of cartridges + under specced hardware takes care of the dilemma entirely:
There won't be any of them. Problem solved.
There won't be any of them. Problem solved.
Definitely better hardware would have helped but the 3DS launch circa 2011 too, Nintendo handheld could have evolved and do what the Vita does.
I agree 2011 might have been moment a good for Nintendo to launch something: a Wii 2 and matching handheld, not a more powerfull wii U.
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Steven Williams (boogie2988) claims he has talked to a Ubisoft employee who confirms the box+dock / box+handheld functionally.
That part looks promising.
That part looks promising.
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so many requests for infos... not nice releasing fakes
Every other day I visit Nintendo NX's subreddit. I can't explain how something can be so hilarious and depressing at the same time.
Having spend the last two evenings with the PSVR, and specifically the Playroom platformer game, I would like to bet all that Nintendo NX will also be a VR machine. WIth Goolgle VR Daydream style goggles where you put the NX screen unit, the base console would do (most of) the processing. It would be wireless with similar tech as WiiU controlpad, and of course the detachable contollers.
Anyone who has played that PSVR game must have had the same feeling, it's so what Nintendo sholud do.
Anyone who has played that PSVR game must have had the same feeling, it's so what Nintendo sholud do.
upnorthsox
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Or not.
I heard it might be announced at the investor thingy next week, although I don't think Nintendo usually does that...
It's kinda upsetting and amusing both at once that I work for one of the biggest game company in the world, yet have no clue what that console is ^^
It's kinda upsetting and amusing both at once that I work for one of the biggest game company in the world, yet have no clue what that console is ^^
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