Nintendo's next gen strategy for home & mobile

[Grall]

IR camera like kinect2 could be an option. One problem is, wuu doesn't have usb3 (we don't need any fancy schmancy modern hardware features in our 2012 console! Bah, away with all that stuff! ), so it will be difficult to engineer a solid, high-res camera solution.

Anyway, nintendo must be seriously off their rockers if they think that fitness gaming could be a way out of their current woes. Wiifit was a FAD. They don't get that - or don't want to admit it to themselves.

 

[(((interference)))]

"Hospitality of an Entertainment Company" lol...

The Ars article makes some good points:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...ue-confusing-unfocused-vision-for-its-future/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

They're really just incompetent, what are they thinking with this for example:

As someone who's been working in the area for a couple of years, I can tell you that this is a typical Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) flowchart.

It's a real and expanding market targeted to an expanding demographic (>65 years old), and it's supposed to be the next boom in governmental investment of first-world countries. Also, a big proportion of a developed country's riches is in the 3rd age.
Japan is one of the countries with the oldest population and this is a very big concern for them. It's not a surprise that a big company exploring AAL is coming from there.

So far, most efforts for establishing a technological AAL ecossystem come mostly from several small companies (mostly startups) dedicated to developing health monitoring systems or small sensors. Everything is so spread and disorganized that there's been a real struggle to create and/or abide to standards that can assure the connectivity and ease-of-use between devices of single vendors -> and this is a market that is very dependent on ease-of-use because it's mostly directed to elders.

Nintendo is in a unique position for making this work very well for them:
1 - They're located in the country that has - by far - the largest dedication/awareness per-capita to AAL than anyone else,
2 - They have worldwide distribution channels.
3 - They have a brand recognition that has already reached all demographics through the Wii and its family-oriented games
4 - They're very good at designing ergonomic and easy-to-use devices.

Iwata wasn't wrong when he announced this as a "blue ocean" for them. I think it is.
This is very good news for investors, IMO.





Now.. for gamers, this is not good news. If their AAL system get good results, I don't see Nintendo coming back to the cut-throat console world ever again. I don't know what they would do with their IPs.
Perhaps they would sell off their game-development divisions along with the IPs in order to allow Mario/Zelda/Metroid games in a future without Nintendo as a console maker?
Or maybe they will just keep all the IPs to themselves we'll only see Mario in Wii Fit or Kinect Sports games for elders (sounds like such a waste..).


I also see this transition as yet another coward attitude from Nintendo -> which translates into weakness from their management, no matter how we look at it.
Looking at the past 10 years, I get the feeling they're unable to stand their own whenever they find competition, whatever the market is.
They find competition in the high-end console business, they run away and create a low-end console business (Wii). They keep going at the low-end console business hoping it might work forever (Wii U, 3DS) but they find competition from smartphones/tablets and it fails.
Then they run away and create a Health Console business.
Where will they run away to, when they find competition in the Health Console business?

They're showing that they're incapable of standing their ground, again and again.

 

[Nesh]

As someone who's been working in the area for a couple of years, I can tell you that this is a typical Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) flowchart.

It's a real and expanding market targeted to an expanding demographic (>65 years old), and it's supposed to be the next boom in governmental investment of first-world countries. Also, a big proportion of a developed country's riches is in the 3rd age.
Japan is one of the countries with the oldest population and this is a very big concern for them. It's not a surprise that a big company exploring AAL is coming from there.

So far, most efforts for establishing a technological AAL ecossystem come mostly from several small companies (mostly startups) dedicated to developing health monitoring systems or small sensors. Everything is so spread and disorganized that there's been a real struggle to create and/or abide to standards that can assure the connectivity and ease-of-use between devices of single vendors -> and this is a market that is very dependent on ease-of-use because it's mostly directed to elders.

Nintendo is in a unique position for making this work very well for them:
1 - They're located in the country that has - by far - the largest dedication/awareness per-capita to AAL than anyone else,
2 - They have worldwide distribution channels.
3 - They have a brand recognition that has already reached all demographics through the Wii and its family-oriented games
4 - They're very good at designing ergonomic and easy-to-use devices.

Iwata wasn't wrong when he announced this as a "blue ocean" for them. I think it is.
This is very good news for investors, IMO.





Now.. for gamers, this is not good news. If their AAL system get good results, I don't see Nintendo coming back to the cut-throat console world ever again. I don't know what they would do with their IPs.
Perhaps they would sell off their game-development divisions along with the IPs in order to allow Mario/Zelda/Metroid games in a future without Nintendo as a console maker?
Or maybe they will just keep all the IPs to themselves we'll only see Mario in Wii Fit or Kinect Sports games for elders (sounds like such a waste..).


I also see this transition as yet another coward attitude from Nintendo -> which translates into weakness from their management, no matter how we look at it.
Looking at the past 10 years, I get the feeling they're unable to stand their own whenever they find competition, whatever the market is.
They find competition in the high-end console business, they run away and create a low-end console business (Wii). They keep going at the low-end console business hoping it might work forever (Wii U, 3DS) but they find competition from smartphones/tablets and it fails.
Then they run away and create a Health Console business.
Where will they run away to, when they find competition in the Health Console business?

They're showing that they're incapable of standing their ground, again and again.

Unfortunately Nintendo rarely looked beyond their usual practices and their old IPs. The GC was showing these signs. But they always tried to find ways to maintain their decades old culture, never letting go. Never risking on new IPs, never adapting to the needs of the third part devs, never maintaining or acquiring promising studios etc. They lost Rare for example. Now they are all by themselves, only with their old IPs, only appealing to their old fans and kids and stuck with a hardware that cant support bigger game projects that are up to date. They thought they could take on the market all by themsleves indifinetely

 

[Melqart]

Whatever Nintendo decides to do, they need to clear up some of this vagueness. The Western media seems to think they're making a third software platform focused on health and quality of life and that's not what the presentation says or alludes to. "Platform" in context means "business platform" and not software platform. Non-gaming device(s). And apparently non-wearable whatever that means. The presentation said something about leapfrogging wearables (and wearables are supposed to be the new thing for 2014).

As for their gaming business they doubled down on the Wii U pad for the near term and hinted about R&D for future consoles which would share an architecture at least at the OS and account level like what Apple does. They hinted about partnerships and later hinted about M&A. They also said they would be more open to licensing out their IPs (characters probably like for merchandising and stuff). Said games would always be tied to their own hardware and they would experiment with mobile but not release Mario or their existing library. They're not "Dreamcasting" the Wii U, they're stuck with it for now. The presentation wasn't optimistic about it either so they'll probably "Saturn" it (short lifespan for a console). They probably don't want to dump any more money into it and just want to profit what they can from software.

I have a feeling they'll merge with a major Japanese software publisher. Either Bandai-Namco or Sega. Probably Bandai-Namco since they're pretty close (and always have been minus the PSX era) and Bandai is more than just games. But Bandai-Namco is profitable making even that unlikely anytime soon. For the health thing I can see them partnering with Samsung since they have a relationship with them (they just made the wii fit meter for them). I would also keep an eye on Invensense.

 

[Fourth Storm]

As someone who's been working in the area for a couple of years, I can tell you that this is a typical Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) flowchart.

It's a real and expanding market targeted to an expanding demographic (>65 years old), and it's supposed to be the next boom in governmental investment of first-world countries. Also, a big proportion of a developed country's riches is in the 3rd age.
Japan is one of the countries with the oldest population and this is a very big concern for them. It's not a surprise that a big company exploring AAL is coming from there.

So far, most efforts for establishing a technological AAL ecossystem come mostly from several small companies (mostly startups) dedicated to developing health monitoring systems or small sensors. Everything is so spread and disorganized that there's been a real struggle to create and/or abide to standards that can assure the connectivity and ease-of-use between devices of single vendors -> and this is a market that is very dependent on ease-of-use because it's mostly directed to elders.

Nintendo is in a unique position for making this work very well for them:
1 - They're located in the country that has - by far - the largest dedication/awareness per-capita to AAL than anyone else,
2 - They have worldwide distribution channels.
3 - They have a brand recognition that has already reached all demographics through the Wii and its family-oriented games
4 - They're very good at designing ergonomic and easy-to-use devices.

Iwata wasn't wrong when he announced this as a "blue ocean" for them. I think it is.
This is very good news for investors, IMO.





Now.. for gamers, this is not good news. If their AAL system get good results, I don't see Nintendo coming back to the cut-throat console world ever again. I don't know what they would do with their IPs.
Perhaps they would sell off their game-development divisions along with the IPs in order to allow Mario/Zelda/Metroid games in a future without Nintendo as a console maker?
Or maybe they will just keep all the IPs to themselves we'll only see Mario in Wii Fit or Kinect Sports games for elders (sounds like such a waste..).


I also see this transition as yet another coward attitude from Nintendo -> which translates into weakness from their management, no matter how we look at it.
Looking at the past 10 years, I get the feeling they're unable to stand their own whenever they find competition, whatever the market is.
They find competition in the high-end console business, they run away and create a low-end console business (Wii). They keep going at the low-end console business hoping it might work forever (Wii U, 3DS) but they find competition from smartphones/tablets and it fails.
Then they run away and create a Health Console business.
Where will they run away to, when they find competition in the Health Console business?

They're showing that they're incapable of standing their ground, again and again.

Thanks for the tip. Sounds like it might have some potential (if the ocean really is as blue as you describe). I echo your sentiments concerning Nintendo's cowardice, however. Let us hope that if this platform does take off, Nintendo actually invest in what they need to in order to defend their market. That they were bullied out of the motion control biz is pathetic in my eyes.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Wearables are so 2012. Nintendo is going straight to Injectables!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Implantables. Injectables didn't sit well with focus groups. They're saving Augments for next-next gen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Last night, a friend showed his Spectrum +2 he had rediscovered from many years ago. It had a number of game cassettes, including Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, developed by Ocean Software in 1986 and 1987 respectively. So there is actually precedent for Nintendo releasing their games on other platforms. To take that approach now would be a return to their earlier strategy of maximising profits by selling their IPs on other platforms.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

To take that approach now would be a return to their earlier strategy of maximising profits by selling their IPs on other platforms.

Yup, the remaining Nintendo IPs I would still buy (bearing in mind I've played Mario platformers and Mario Cart so many times now) are Zelda and Pikmin but there's no way I'm springing for a Wii U.

If they were on PS4, I'd buy them.

 

[tuna]

Nintendo should definitely buy sega and then sell the western PC studios to whoever!

 

[Grall]

Is sega actually profitable these days on their in-house developed software? They're not really using any of their classic franchises anymore other than sonic, and all his games have been anything from forgettable to awful for the last 15ish years or so.

I doubt nintendo would actually have much to gain from buying sega.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Last night, a friend showed his Spectrum +2 he had rediscovered from many years ago. It had a number of game cassettes, including Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, developed by Ocean Software in 1986 and 1987 respectively. So there is actually precedent for Nintendo releasing their games on other platforms. To take that approach now would be a return to their earlier strategy of maximising profits by selling their IPs on other platforms.

I had both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr for Coleco. I assume the latter was Nintendo IP? Long time ago. IIRC, the chief competitor to coleco was Intellivision. Coleco played Atari cassettes with an add-on, so not sure what that relationship was. Got my curiosity piqued, now I'll have to go read up on it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There was a lot of...'piracy'. Third parties reverse engineered consoles to make games and the like, leading to the console crash of the 80s, saved by Nintendo which brought in publishing limitations and security to prevent too many and crap games.

 

[Megadrive1988]

This was just posted on nintendo.co.jp

Corporate Management Policy Briefing / Third Quarter Financial Results Briefing
for the 74th Fiscal Term Ending March 2014

You have explained your concern about users being divided by hardware. Currently, you have both a handheld device business and a home console business. I would like to know whether the organizational changes that took place last year are going to lead to, for example, the integration of handheld devices and home consoles into one system over the medium term, or a focus on cost saving and the improvement of resource efficiency in the medium run. Please also explain if you still have room to reduce research and development expenses.

Iwata:

Last year Nintendo reorganized its R&D divisions and integrated the handheld device and home console development teams into one division under Mr. Takeda. Previously, our handheld video game devices and home video game consoles had to be developed separately as the technological requirements of each system, whether it was battery-powered or connected to a power supply, differed greatly, leading to completely different architectures and, hence, divergent methods of software development. However, because of vast technological advances, it became possible to achieve a fair degree of architectural integration. We discussed this point, and we ultimately concluded that it was the right time to integrate the two teams.

For example, currently it requires a huge amount of effort to port Wii software to Nintendo 3DS because not only their resolutions but also the methods of software development are entirely different. The same thing happens when we try to port Nintendo 3DS software to Wii U. If the transition of software from platform to platform can be made simpler, this will help solve the problem of game shortages in the launch periods of new platforms. Also, as technological advances took place at such a dramatic rate, and we were forced to choose the best technologies for video games under cost restrictions, each time we developed a new platform, we always ended up developing a system that was completely different from its predecessor. The only exception was when we went from Nintendo GameCube to Wii. Though the controller changed completely, the actual computer and graphics chips were developed very smoothly as they were very similar to those of Nintendo GameCube, but all the other systems required ground-up effort. However, I think that we no longer need this kind of effort under the current circumstances. In this perspective, while we are only going to be able to start this with the next system, it will become important for us to accurately take advantage of what we have done with the Wii U architecture. It of course does not mean that we are going to use exactly the same architecture as Wii U, but we are going to create a system that can absorb the Wii U architecture adequately. When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems.

Still, I am not sure if the form factor (the size and configuration of the hardware) will be integrated. In contrast, the number of form factors might increase. Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform. To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples. Whether we will ultimately need just one device will be determined by what consumers demand in the future, and that is not something we know at the moment. However, we are hoping to change and correct the situation in which we develop games for different platforms individually and sometimes disappoint consumers with game shortages as we attempt to move from one platform to another, and we believe that we will be able to deliver tangible results in the future.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140130qa/02.html

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Did IBM ever do any research on getting PowerPC on mobile devices during the past 10 years?
AFAIK, their last CPU to go on a laptop was the G4 for the powerbooks..
How hard would it be for Nintendo to co-develop a PowerPC for a handheld?

Now they're claiming there will be more than 2 form factors.. at least a 3DS-sized handheld, a tablet and a home console.
I couldn't understand if they're going to target the same performance characteristics for all three.

 

[Goodtwin]

Yup, the remaining Nintendo IPs I would still buy (bearing in mind I've played Mario platformers and Mario Cart so many times now) are Zelda and Pikmin but there's no way I'm springing for a Wii U.

If they were on PS4, I'd buy them.

I think there are a lot of people in your boat. Im a hardcore Nintendo fan, so its an easy decision to buy a Wii U, but there are far more people that like a lot of Nintendo developed games, but not enough to buy the hardware. Ultimately I believe the Wii U will sell about the same as the Gamecube did because of games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart, but Nintendo's historic IP's simply dont have enough mass market appeal these days to take it beyond niche status.

 

[Fourth Storm]

This is an interesting development. Can Nintendo get IBM and AMD to play nice for an SoC. I would imagine that quite a few parties would be involved.

IBM and AMD would probably have to license out the cores to Nintendo, who would then probably go to Renesas again for the custom SoC design, which would then be outsourced for manufacturing to TSMC. On a smaller process node, they should be able to just use SRAM instead of the eDRAM cache on Espresso. Possibly SRAM for MEM1 on the GPU side as well.

I have a feeling Nintendo may push off their next hardware line to 2016/2017 now, since they will be focusing on launching the QOL platform next year and will probably not want to cause any confusion. Or it is possible that they are conducting alot of the R&D this year for everything so that they can start to profit possibly the year after next. I can't believe Iwata is going to get away with possibly 4 years of consecutive losses; even if he is setting Nintendo up for long-term success (that has yet to be seen).

 

[Exophase]

Did IBM ever do any research on getting PowerPC on mobile devices during the past 10 years?
AFAIK, their last CPU to go on a laptop was the G4 for the powerbooks..
How hard would it be for Nintendo to co-develop a PowerPC for a handheld?

Now they're claiming there will be more than 2 form factors.. at least a 3DS-sized handheld, a tablet and a home console.
I couldn't understand if they're going to target the same performance characteristics for all three.

Or what about just using ARM for their consoles? Even a 1.6+GHz quad core Cortex-A9 would have given the Wii U's CPU a run for its money. Cortex-A15s even more so. While it may not be particularly cutting edge in 2016, something like a quad or maybe hex core 2.5GHz Cortex-A57 would be a big step up from where they're at CPU-wise, and they could use the same core count with a lower clocked A53 setup on handhelds. Then license some kind of GPU that scales well from handheld to console. Not sure what would be feasible here (if AMD could accommodate it or not), but of course nVidia would be a strong contender, since they're licensing now.

Then they could run the same software with scaled back features for both systems, and the mobile stuff could run on the console out of the box if digitally distributed (and/or with the mobile cart slot on the home console). Nintendo is being so vague, as usual, that it's hard to tell if this is the ultimate goal or if it's instead something a lot weaker like just unifying the SDKs and OSes better. They do talk about not just migration between handheld and console but between console generations, and relying on better and easy to license and integrate ARM cores in the future sounds like a much safer bet than relying on IBM. But they also talk about "absorbing the Wii U architecture" and I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. All I know is that trying to move their handhelds to POWER would be a huge mistake.

I think going forward they should just cut their losses with Wii U backwards compatibility. So far the system has so few games that sold to any degree (and almost all of them are first party) and I doubt this is going to change dramatically. They'd be best off just porting/modestly enhancing the biggest sellers and maybe offering some kind of discount system for people who bought the originals.

 

[Wynix]

This is mostly good news, hopefully AMD can get their GCN architecture in there.

Basically; Both will use the same architecture and system software, home console = iPad(better cpu/gpu/memory) and handheld = iPhone(slower to conserve power).

I just hope they put a bit more grunt in the next home console.