Fact: Nintendo to release HD console + controllers with built-in screen late 2012

[Laa-Yosh]

The situation with the Wii was quite different:
- Nintendo was coming out of a generation where it had placed last, they haven't had too much money
- the Wii had a very unique, motion based input scheme to differentiate itself from its competitors
- the PS3 was way too expensive for all the casual gamers who owned a PS2 for its wide range of titles, creating a huge opportunity to grab this market segment

Now, however, Nintendo has a lot of money, the competitors have motion control too (we could argue here about the Kinect having even better potential, but no system seller yet), and those who want to replace their Wiis can easily be tempted by the Sony and MS consoles with a huge game library and very strong online infrastructure and market.

Of course that doesn't mean that a radically new control scheme or something of that caliber couldn't once again differentiate the new console enough to repeat the Wii's success. It's just less likely to happen.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

And Wii was considered a sufficient upgrade over the visuals produced by the Xbox, GC and PS2?

Why would Nintendo use a strategy that it publically abandoned last gen while still producing the highest selling Nintendo console of all time? If the new Nintendo console is able to outperform current gen consoles, it will be because it can do so easily without costly hardware.

Nintendo has learned you don't need the "hardcore performance" crowd to obtain dominant position in the marketplace. I don't know why we as gamers still cling to such assertion even though there is plenty of evidence that contradicts such beliefs.

The one thing that Nintendo must do is give its console plenty of first party titles that will resonate with mainstream gamers. Its the area that Nintendo has been lacking of late and has detrimentally affected the sales of the Wii over the last year.

#Sigh#, again with the "you don't need much performance" fundamentalism...
The Wii strategy worked once, and not for long. Doesn't mean it'll always work, and by 2025 Nintendo will continue to kill the competition with weaker hardware.

The only certain thing that History teaches us is that change in constant. The same aproach may not result again and again.

Wii as been nosediving in sales for the past 2 years because its games' graphics are starting to hurt people's eyes (figuratively speaking, of course). Spending more money on AAA 1st party games would be throwing money to the garbage as people have already moved away from the console.

As far as I've seen, Nintendo might be paying hard this time for delivering underpowered hardware again with the 3DS.

 

[Rangers]

And Wii was considered a sufficient upgrade over the visuals produced by the Xbox, GC and PS2?

Why would Nintendo use a strategy that it publically abandoned last gen while still producing the highest selling Nintendo console of all time? If the new Nintendo console is able to outperform current gen consoles, it will be because it can do so easily without costly hardware.

Nintendo has learned you don't need the "hardcore performance" crowd to obtain dominant position in the marketplace. I don't know why we as gamers still cling to such assertion even though there is plenty of evidence that contradicts such beliefs.

The one thing that Nintendo must do is give its console plenty of first party titles that will resonate with mainstream gamers. Its the area that Nintendo has been lacking of late and has detrimentally affected the sales of the Wii over the last year.

The whole story of Wii was that it tapped the casual market, basically a new market in console video games as far as I'm concerned.

PS3 and 360 played in the hardcore space, Wii did not.

What we saw over time is that PS360 had a lot more longevity than Wii, and that's where we're at now, Wii selling in third place in USA, and terrible sales in Japan (8,000 per week recently), with little third party support and a dim future.

From all reports "Stream" is in fact Nintendo concluding that they do need to play in the hardcore space, contrary to your post.

I am sure Nintendo would like to have their cake and eat it too, target both the casual and hardcore markets. Reports are Stream maintains the Wii mote functionality. So they're looking to get wii casual players, and hardcore COD players.

I just think they're not going to be able to do it.

Sales wise, at one time it looked like Wii would beat the mighty PS2 in lifetime sales at some point. It's a testament to how badly its stumbled that it now looks like that wont happen for sure (might not have anyway, and definitely wont now that Nintendo is rushing out a successor). Take Japan, while PS2 ended up past 20m in sales, Wii sits at 11m and is nearly dead there.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The whole story of Wii was that it tapped the casual market, basically a new market in console video games as far as I'm concerned.

That's where I disagree. I believe that the PS2 userbase was far more diverse than what most people thought, there were at least 30-40 million people who got the console to play the kind of casual games that went under the radar here on B3D but still sold millions. Just think about the Harry Potter, Pixar and other licensed stuff, the platformers, totally unknown Japanese games and so on, there were like thousands of titles released on that platform.

These people got the PS2 for $200 and weren't interested in upgrading to a $400 360 or an even more expensive PS3. But the Wii was cheap, had the games they wanted, and more - motion controls and new kinds of casual games. So they migrated in great numbers, almost exclusively to Nintendo. Some of course stayed with MS and Sony, mainly the Fifa / NFL crowd, but the market was split more visibly compared to the PS2's time.

I am sure Nintendo would like to have their cake and eat it too, target both the casual and hardcore markets.

That wouldn't be unreasonable, the new hardware should be enough to get multiplatform games as scalabilty will be less of a factor with the converging feature sets. Reducing screen and texture resolution can compensate both for speed and for memory.
It'll mostly rest on the publishers, who will probably decide based on the new console's initial adoptation...

 

[dobwal]

#Sigh#, again with the "you don't need much performance" fundamentalism...
The Wii strategy worked once, and not for long. Doesn't mean it'll always work, and by 2025 Nintendo will continue to kill the competition with weaker hardware.

The only certain thing that History teaches us is that change in constant. The same aproach may not result again and again.

Wii as been nosediving in sales for the past 2 years because its games' graphics are starting to hurt people's eyes (figuratively speaking, of course). Spending more money on AAA 1st party games would be throwing money to the garbage as people have already moved away from the console.

As far as I've seen, Nintendo might be paying hard this time for delivering underpowered hardware again with the 3DS.

Name one console or handheld that dominated this market due to dominant hardware prowess. You will probably have to go back a couple of decades. "Its 2,3,4,5,10,100,1000X more powerful than [put any current gen console at the time here]" is a bunch of marketing hoo hoo we get at the beginning of every marketing blitz for upcoming consoles. Its meant to excite those us where increased graphical fidelty matters and buys games by the truckloads, but we only make up a portion of the overall gaming population.

In reality millions of users have chosen the Wii over the 360 or PS3, millions of users chose the DS over the PSP and millions chose the PS2 over the Xbox1/GC despite not being the most powerful hardware available.

Nintendo knows it has plenty of diehard fans who will eagerly snap their console at the beginning the cycle despite the lack of visual performance. They then try to focus on features and games that the will encourage more mainstream consumption while letting Microsoft and Sony pour so much heavy investments into the hardware to satiate us hardcore IQ nuts who by themselves can't even support of the cost of that investment.

 

[dobwal]

What we saw over time is that PS360 had a lot more longevity than Wii, and that's where we're at now, Wii selling in third place in USA, and terrible sales in Japan (8,000 per week recently), with little third party support and a dim future.

What we are seeing is that the Nintendo's dearth of first party software of late is killing the Wii's popularity. Thats not a problem with the hardware, its a problem with how Nintendo manages its console software and its relationship with third party publishers. Nintendo isn't known to throw marketing dollars at third party titles nor much marketing support like MS or Sony who don't mind at all featuring third party offerings at the major press conference at places like E3.

Nintendo's outlook on third party titles is the polar opposite of how Sony and MS sees and treats third party content. Nintendo treats third party content providers as rivals while MS and Sony treats them as partners, which now has come home to roost for Nintendo since they haven't had anything real compelling for their userbase in a while.

 

[ninzel]

What we are seeing is that the Nintendo's dearth of first party software of late is killing the Wii's popularity. Thats not a problem with the hardware, its a problem with how Nintendo manages its console software and its relationship with third party publishers. .

I don't completely agree. I think Nintendo was wrong when it assumed that low cost development would attract 3rd parties.
I think what we have seen is that despite the high cost of developing bleeding edge games,
the top AAA 3rd parties are willing to spend that money and take hat risk in order to showcase their game sin the best way possible. The Wii's weak hardware didn't allow for this.

 

[dobwal]

I don't completely agree. I think Nintendo was wrong when it assumed that low cost development would attract 3rd parties.
I think what we have seen is that despite the high cost of developing bleeding edge games,
the top AAA 3rd parties are willing to spend that money and take hat risk in order to showcase their game sin the best way possible. The Wii's weak hardware didn't allow for this.

Nintendo doesn't place much worth on the needs and thoughts of third parties. Low cost development benefits Nintendo more than anyone else because Nintendo's priority in terms of software is on itself.

It should be noted that Nintendo has definitely been the most profitable hardware manufacturer this gen and its probably miles ahead of anybody else in terms of profits it generates as a publisher.

 

[ninzel]

Nintendo doesn't place much worth on the needs and thoughts of third parties. Low cost development benefits Nintendo more than anyone else because Nintendo's priority in terms of software is on itself.

It should be noted that Nintendo has definitely been the most profitable hardware manufacturer this gen and its probably miles ahead of anybody else in terms of profits it generates as a publisher.

That may have been true,and even may all still be true in terms of how they treat 3rd parties.
What I saying is that Nintendo lack of success with 3rd parties has as much to do with their hardware as anything else.

 

[sfried]

Nintendo doesn't place much worth on the needs and thoughts of third parties.

Not entirely true. Part of the original DS development involved feedback from 3rd parties.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Name one console or handheld that dominated this market due to dominant hardware prowess. You will probably have to go back a couple of decades. "Its 2,3,4,5,10,100,1000X more powerful than [put any current gen console at the time here]" is a bunch of marketing hoo hoo we get at the beginning of every marketing blitz for upcoming consoles. Its meant to excite those us where increased graphical fidelty matters and buys games by the truckloads, but we only make up a portion of the overall gaming population.

In reality millions of users have chosen the Wii over the 360 or PS3, millions of users chose the DS over the PSP and millions chose the PS2 over the Xbox1/GC despite not being the most powerful hardware available.

Although that's true, other than the Wii, the best-selling console has always been in the ballpark of it's competitors. If PS2 never came out, would everyone have chosen PS1 level performance over GC and XB? I doubt it.

Nintendo knows it has plenty of diehard fans who will eagerly snap their console at the beginning the cycle despite the lack of visual performance.

I don't think that's a valid strategy. The Nintendo die-hard, like the other platforms I imagine, probably constitutes a few million. Everyone else will lack loyalties and need to be sold to per-platform. 50 million 'die hard Nintendo fans' from SNES reduced to 33 million 'die-hard' N64 fans, reduced to 25 million die-hard GC fans. How many die-hard Nintendo fans did Wii really get?

Now if NES6 can't capture the existing Wii userbase, then it's effectively starting from scratch. There won't be many millions of die-hard Nintendo fans, and the console will have to sell on its merits, offering enough of an upgrade to the core gamer base that PS360 owners will jump ship now instead of wait a couple of years for the new MS and Sony consoles.

This is, AFAIK, a change in the console generations that has no historical precedent, so we can't look back for patterns. We have no idea what a mid-term generation release can or can't do. And considering the wild dynamic of this generation, it doesn't offer much by way of insights either IMO.

 

[MfA]

Nintendo wouldn't be mid term, the other two are late.

 

[wco81]

Nintendo wouldn't be mid term, the other two are late.

Exactly.

PS3 and 360 are using old tech now. Surprised that people on this site are complacent about that.

Kinect and Move are diversions, to extend the generation, which should be just about over.

They may plan to manufacture for few more years but the designs represent an old technlogy now.

 

[liolio]

Just as a ref in regard to rumors of R700 based GPU the 4770 pulled out 21fps in crisis2 on extreme @1080p setting according to hardware.fr

 

[msia2k75]

Just as a ref in regard to rumors of R700 based GPU the 4770 pulled out 21fps in crisis2 on extreme @1080p setting according to hardware.fr

Well they will target real 720p.

 

[ninzel]

I have to agree with Shifty. As a long time Nintendo fan I'm always excited by new Nintendo console information,but equally skeptical this time around. I won't be rushing out to get the next one automatically.
I never thought I would miss any big Nintendo games but there's few I haven't played simply because I got rid of the system when I saw 3rd parties on other systems making games as good as Nintendo's first parties as a replacement. And the Wii's lack of great 3rd party support. So I didn't NEED a Nintendo system for the best games like I would have in the past.
Nintendo needs to bring the entire package next gen. Great first party games,great AAA 3rd party support and a good online component.

 

[MarkoIt]

Unparalleled next-generation performance...

1080p rendering, the case seems big and it has an optical drive.

It's seems to me that it works this way: the console is like a rendering server, which renders, than push the frames to the controllers. Television may not even be needed, and player won't need to be in the same room to play.
It's like Onlive@home. But i don't think that more than a game can be played at once..


Edit: ops they may be fake

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Whoa, it sure looks legit now.
Totally not buying the concept though. Nintendo seems to take some risks here again, I wonder what the software side will bring... at least E3 is just 1.5 months away.

 

[liolio]

Well they will target real 720p.

Well I stated it in a positive manner anyway I don't expect the system to come close to next MSony systems but it can be a clear departure from this gen systems.

Actually if legit the concept of playing everywhere you want in your home is tempting. I would like to be able to play in my tiny garden, or stream stuff from the console (so I hope the system OS will deliver in multimedia/web content).

 

[ltcommander.data]

360's CPU was hot at 3.2ghz on 90nm, but process technology has come along way since then. Would 4Ghz plus really be such a problem on a 32nm or even 22nm process?

Not that I think the Stream CPU will be a higher clocked version of the same CPU as 360 anyway, I don't think IGN are saying that either.

I agree that a triple core IBM CPU doesn't necessarily mean Xenon. Personally, given that Nintendo has been using a modified PowerPC G3 for GameCube and Wii, I'd think they'd move to a PowerPC G5 based design. Presumably that could simplify backwards compatibility which is probably a key design consideration. The 970MP G5 wasn't the coolest processor when it was released on 90nm, but some redesign and production at 45nm, quickly moving to 32nm should take care of that. A triple core G5 at ~3GHz as a marketing term may not outwardly jump out to be better than the Xenon, but being out-of-order should definitely help.

I wonder if Nintendo using a R700 based GPU will finally mean the pre-DX11 generation tessellation unit will finally see some use? I don't believe it ever saw use in the Xenos or R600/R700 desktop GPUs presumably do to the need to stick to broadly reusable DirectX code, but a Nintendo console with no DirectX should have no such limitation. I'd presume this would also soften the blow of not using a DX11 GPU since tessellation is one of the main new features.