Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

sony dropped the screen quality for vita (OLED to "SuperTFT"), and that saving might be <$10. For you and me it's $35, but for them it's 100Mio x $35, not just once, but on every single part (16GB vs 32GB flash, 1GB vs 2GB ram, 800Mhz vs 900Mhz,...), which is a bet for the next 5years+.

When I was debating with a console HW dev for the next gen, he said: "The hardest part in designing a console nowadays is to decide which audience you target (aka what price tag).".
That's probably why XB1/PS4 are technically pretty much the same at pretty much the same price now (without kinect).
Nintendo's "Modular" move would be a break-out of this one-price, one-target-audience restriction, without really breaking the "one target" benefits from a development point of view.
Yet I agree with ""Available now - Nintendo NX! Use you mobile phone as a screen. Only it might not work, in which case you can buy an optional screen for $100." It's messy! ", it's a marketing and also an ergonomic challenge. On the other side, Wii and the wii-mote were just as challenging and risky.

 

I repeat my earlier post, because I think I'm right.

The base handheld would be sold separately and might come with a basic model dock that only lets you connect to tv. The "power+" dock would be released later.
What if not only the controllers were detachable, but also the processing unit of the handheld. The processing unit would contain the cartridge slot and of course all the main silicon of the handheld, the screen unit would be basically just that - a screen that's not functional by itself.

In home use you'd detach the handhelds processing unit and put it in either of the docks - the basic or "power+", leaving you with essentially a WiiU type controller - the processing unit with the screen and controllers attached.

For portable use you put the processing unit back in the controller(s) but you'd also have the option to leave the controller part at home, making it essentially a tablet, or maybe even a stripped down mobile phone if the screen is some less than 6" and has a sim slot. It would not necessarily need sms and traditional phone functions as people use them less in favor of other messaging services.

 

That's an optional extra and not a selling point or system requirement. That is, someone buying a PS4/XB1 isn't continent on its streaming working to their phone (and Sony's doesn't work well on all its Xperias). The equivalent would be more like Sony/MS not packing a controller and letting you try your existing controllers. Get your new console home, try your wireless last-gen controller, find it doesn't work and you can't play anything... not a great experience.

Yes, but without that investment up front, they risk selling far less devices (potentially) because the product confuses the public and doesn't provide a good enough experience. If we're talking $200 or $225, one without a screen and a mesage to try your phone and, if it doesn't work, buy a $100 screen, while the other is a complete, no nonsense solution, which do you think would be more readily adopted by the market?

 

I think it's rather a very common way to sell products and doesn't confuse people. for "cheap" you get your small mcd-fries, your cheap samsung galaxy mini/neo, your toyota, your.. it's not a bad product, it's just the core/base. Not all your mp3 will fit, no A/C included, neither is a 'free' coke. But that's clear up-front. you can still play Mario and Zelda like everyone else. Sure, it has to work, but we cannot judge the basic idea based on how we assume Nintendo will deliver. These are IMO two topics.

For some price bumps you can increase the individual value of a product the way you prefer. Even Apple, the master of "simple/one size fits it all" started to diversify. 3 different phones, 3 different ipads (+ legacy devices), different colors on your macbook. why wouldn't that be great on a console? you might get the very basic cheap one and be super happy, you might turn it into a premium stand alone console (especially if they'd really even increase GPU performance).
N is already selling several handheld incarnations, 2DS,3DS,3DS XL, which we could argue would confuse and piss of people, especially if you'd try to play a game that relies on 3d, on the 2DS.

 

It's not the same as a low end a product, or a different product! It's an incomplete product. It's a product selling with an essential part missing which you can supply yourself. It'd be akin to MS/Sony selling a console that requires an HDD without an HDD so you can source and fit your own (and possible a 30% chance that your choice of HDD is incompatible, or whatever the handset compatibility failure rate might be). Why don't they do that? Because the product sold has to be complete and functional out of the box if you are targeting the mainstream.

It'd be the same as a TV being sold without a remote because you might have a programmable one you can use. They all come with a remote, no matter how redundant it might be and how much cost it adds, because it's a fundamental part of the product's operation.

 

Okay, first of all a disclaimer:
- We're discussing my own translation of what some brazilian guy posted on a brazilian forum written in some very terrible portuguese.. back in May. Some things were easily decipherable, but for others I had to resort to my own knowledge/deduction/intuition to fill in the blanks.
So feel free to put another 50 Kg of salt on top of the previous 100Kg.

The guy did write "$300 console, $100-200 screen depending on size and resolution, $50 controllers". That much was clear.


What I do get from that and the smartphone-as-a-screen connection is that what you buy for the $300 base price is the console box + dual controllers + tv-dock. You can play any NX game with the $300 base set, as long as you have a TV.
Now I don't know if the mobility-dock is included with the base price, but it may not be. You may have to buy the mobility-dock separately, and on top of that you can also buy the $100-200 screen. Regardless, you get the option try and save those $100-200 by connecting the console box + controllers to the mobility dock and your own smartphone.

Again, using the smartphone/tablet is just like you claimed for the PS4Bone, an optional extra.

 

for all my stationary consoles I provide exactly that essential part, die display. (I actually have no TV, I had to buy a projector for playing consoles.)

I know that feeling. I remember having a TV that was not compatible with my SNES. It had the mechanical connections, but something (I think the green channel provided some sync signal) wasn't compatible. but again, let's not judge the idea by your worst case projection of how it will be realized, that would rather reflect the individual personality than the N product (as we don't know it).

-while my 3ds actually had a 2gb sd-card, I had to buy the mandatory memory card for my vita.
-while I had super mario in the snes box and mario in the NES box, I actually had to buy a game for my gamecube. (and I argue a game console without a game is not fully functional,because a display in that case would also be of no use).
-while my PS3 and PCs have multiplayer out of the box, I have to provide a PS+ account for my PS4 to have this essential functionality, otherwise MP does not work on my ps4-games (and I buy the full games, not discounted single player only versions)
-for my PS3 I had to buy an HDMI cable, if I recall correctly.
-MS still sells a X360 without a HDD ( http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/consoles/4gb ). Why, if not for the lower price? (there are several games that don't work and quite some struggle a lot, the 4GB is not an installation space).

TVs used to include an antenna, nowadays they don't. how do you suppose to use such an incomplete product?

it's really just a question of what you expect the user provides. If you design a product by "everybody has a TV" "everybody has internet" "everyone has a phone", it might make not much sense to sell a product including exactly the same features.

 

We're not talking a console that requires a component 99.999% of target purchasers already have and which would not add anything to the device if included (who wants a second 40" screen??).

I'm not judging the idea. I'm attempting to deduce the validity of the rumoured design based on an evaluation of its effectiveness and workability. the idea itself, if well executed (or a variation of it), might be a very good product. As described though, the specific embodiment as per Tottentranz's interpretation, I can't see this design working.

Fair point. That one didn't go down a bundle. One can also ask "what are Vita sales like?"

You can borrow games, download trials, and you obviously want a game of your choosing rather than a random something you don't care for. Leaving that choice with the purchaser makes sense (while bundle prove to be popular because people like all-in-one complete solutions...)

It's an optional service. Not everyone wants multiplayer so it'd be stupid to force that cost on everyone.

Many devices come with an excess of cables. Cutting back on those makes sense.

But it runs without an HDD. A handheld without a screen - do you not appreciate what that means?! If you get a console home and it hasn't got an HDMI cable, you can swap over the cable from your TV box for the time being. That's an inconvenience. If you buy a handheld that doesn't have a screen, connect up your phone enthusiastically and find it doesn't work, you're faced with either $100 for buying the optional screen or considering a new phone. That's going to be a shit experience. That's going to cause internet rage. So either the screen works 100% on any phone, or, better yet, provide that component of the handheld and give everyone that complete experience of a machine they can switch on when they get it home (and if necessary, charge the $25 on overpriced 'optional' memory cards...).

Those antenna's don't work. You need a capable, typically roof-mounted receiver. So we're all better off for TV's leaving out a useless piece of junk adding pointless cost when 99.9% of homes already have the necessary equipment to supply broadcast signals.

Right. But in this case, the 'everybody has a phone' is only valid if the product works with every phone, or the vast majority that people will try to use. Given the variability of hardware and software though, that seems unlikely to me. In the case where it's incompatible with 30% of phones, it'd be a disaster, and you'd have the same disaster if a home console was launched that was incompatible with 30% of TVs, or a net streaming widget that was incompatible with 30% of internet services.

 

Shifty, I don't know how else I'm going to say this..

Nothing in the description says you need a phone for the NX to work in mobile mode. It says you need a screen, which may be either a compatible 3rd-party handheld or Nintendo's own separately purchased screen.
So what if the feature doesn't work on X, Y or Z handheld? You can always get the dedicated screen.

 

I'm a little scared as as Nintendo felt the heat on the home console market as well as on the handheld one, though to a lesser extent, they are going for a do it all device that might fall short on all accounts

It saddens me in advanced it would so easy for them to provide a proper setup forward from both the DSline and from the Wii. The technology has made a significant stride forward: memory can provide both decent capacity and bandwidth, processing power is cheap.

 

I know. The problem is if a person believes their phone will work, buys a $200 handheld, then finds their phone doesn't work. If that happens in significant numbers, it'd be very bad PR. It'll be even worse if an Android update or somesuch causes the screen to stop working, which is very likely for some.

Now the alternative is to just shell out $25 for an inbuilt screen that keeps the package the same for everyone and saves all this bother. If this screen isn't $25 but is more like $100 added cost, then chancing it with the mobile is maybe worth it. But I'm pretty sure a good screen will be cheap enough that there's no point taking the risk.

Not to mention how does Nintendo manage the inventory? How many screens should they provide? If they release 2 million NX on launch day, should they provide 2 million separate screens which might mostly go unbought? Or only provide 500,000 screens trusting people use their phones, only to find demand for the screens is far greater and face irate NX owners without a screen?

 

that's exactly my saying. why would most want another display if they already have a quality tablet? Even if you had a bad tablet with a $35screen, why would you want a device with exactly that bad screen again? It's fine to sell a gameboy with a build in lcd, as nobody at that time had another mobile device with a screen. yet nowadays it's simply the opposite.

yet it would boil down to your argument. Why not include a disc that costs N $2 instead of selling an incomplete device? and I agree, it's to give the user choice. I rather don't pay extra $ for a game I cannot choose.

what cost? I never paid anything on ps3/pc to play my multiplayer games. I pay for the game to cover that cost.

it's not without a screen, it's with an optional screen. if the rumors are true, you can get the screen from N. The point is, if you don't need the screen because you have already a tablet/phone (like most people), you'd be settled. just like you'd be settled with a console playing F2P games, no need to include mario (as it was back in NES/SNES times).

, well, my projector had no hdmi cable either. I had just two devices for a weekend without the connecting cable.

I still don't see why you deduce it wont. the opposite is the case. N will not sell a device that will not work for 50%+ of the people, I guess we have to agree this would be ridiculous hence there is no point in assuming that big fail.

do you think it's likely any company will release a product with a 30% failure rate? I cannot imagine your prediction would be true, for any product.

I see ton's of games which are enabled on per-device basis on the android store, exactly for the compatibility reason. you don't buy a game and realize afterwards it's not compatible. (unless something went wrong). Why wouldn't N be able to do the same with the client app? you install it, test it with some test-stream, if all fine, you know you are settled, if not, you know you need the $100 screen.

 

This is a very fine point and one I've dreamed of for a couple of years - instead of buying a camera with a screen and a phone with a screen and a gaming device with a screen, have a standard interchangeable format and swap the screen around. That's good economy, but the industry would never go that way and you do end up putting all your eggs in one basket - break that screen (happens ALL the time with mobiles!) and you've lost your camera and handheld console too.

Games don't cost $2! The people who make them still need to be paid, you know. PS1's etc used to come with a demo disc, and you'd get demos on magazines, but these days it's just left for the user to make that choice for the best game for them.

That's another argument!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.channel4.ondemand#details-reviews
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.ITVMobilePlayer#details-reviews
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.virginmedia.tvanywhere#details-reviews
I own a USB DVD drive with Wifi streaming, and an app on Android to use it. It doesn't work on all devices (the idea was quickly abandoned too). And YouTube on my iPad Mini refuses to play a lot of content and drops the connection - that's a fixed hardware platform and the most popular streaming app in the world.

There are lots of apps that don't work, or don't work faultlessly, on different devices,and devices that get messed up for whatever reason and don't work as well as they should. 30% is of course a random illustrative figure, but compatibility is definitely a factor in the consideration of the plan's viability. This would be Nintendo giving up QOS control, and that's very unlike them, although of course an avenue they must be considering sacrifices in if they are serious about mobile development.

Here's another one:
http://www.cultofmac.com/443335/skyrocketing-failure-rate-means-ios-is-less-stable-than-android/

"In the second quarter of 2016, Apple’s iOS lost the smartphone performance battle to Android. Plagued by crashing apps, WiFi connectivity and other performance issues, the iOS failure rate more than doubled to 58 percent quarter-over-quarter. Out of the 58 percent of iOS devices that failed, iPhone 6 had the highest failure rate (29 percent)"

Okay, that's just some rather silly numbers.

That's a possible solution. Will it say that on the box? "Important - before you buy this product, please download and run this test app. You'll also need a Windows PC or MAC or another mobile device to run the Server Test app." Even then, you couldn't be sure there wasn't some freak issue between actual NX radio hardware and the mobile.

 

Yeah totally agree.
IMO it is more likely the end product is closer to the Eurogamer/letsplayvideogames/Emily Rogers 'leaks'.
Trying to screen sync/stream to a mobile phone/tablet to be the screen has a lot of technical challenges and many downsides including that Nintendo would need to create a client for each mobile device to ensure it works smoothly/error-correction/session control/etc, and that is ignoring that this would need to use 802.11ac Wi-fi that relatively has massive drain on mobile devices in a gaming context/situation and requires users to understand potential channel conflicts - Bluetooth would not have the bandwidth-latency requirements.
Those that I know who play Pokemon Go feel it is the Wi-fi (5GHz that would also be the underlying tech IMO to connect NX to a smartphone product for screen streaming) that is responsible for massively reducing battery life for playing that game.
On a more practical consideration, ease of playability from a physical form/ergonomics perspective would be incredibly fiddly if there was not an integral screen as there would need to be someway to balance/combine the smartphone and hand controller for the NX gamer for ease of viewing-positioning while both hands are busy on controls; most smartphones do not have the physical stands/integral frames that would suite separated hand controls (plus this limits actual positioning of the display and gamers' position).
It would then have very limited use and appeal IMO and be rather niche, which is why I can only see this working with it shown more similar to that of Eurogamer.

Cheers

 

Better have a Wii U padlet with processing power + dock with extra processing power & connectors than anything else IMO.
But Nintendo might have made something else...
With that you can have either all players watch their screens + TV as map or all players looks at the TV and their screens as additionnal infos like on the 3/DS...
You get asymmetric gameplay, team gameplay, cooperative gameplay, cooperative gameplay w/ people wandering off-screen (they'd use their pad/device screen then)...
A lot of options, it's simple, it's rather easy to market "Buy your game once, play it on the go or at home in Full HD, you don't have to purchase any extra device. Plus you can play with friends cooperatively, competitively, by teams and asymmetrically !" or maybe "Pay once, play everywhere !"

I've seen really good 720p 3D screens @ IMG a few years ago, it could even have that feature... (But that would most likely make the pad screen the main screen because of it)

 

...mah. PS4+ VITA was something similar but:
1) the handheld cost with a decent tegra on it.
2) the docking cost with a powerful processor in it.
3) they promised to have games like PK:GO on their NX - it means you need internet+GPS anywhere on handheld, so SIM card.

...it is not going to be a cheap console, then. At least compared to PS/XB1.

 

Shigeru Miyamoto showing Super Mario running on iphone 7 during apple's keynote of today.

I'm dead serious.

 

Coming this holiday and it doesn't sound like it's F2P.

 

On ios first, so apparebtly coming later for drones too

 

Meeeeeeh Super Mario Run.. looks like a 2D sidescroller runner like jetpack joyride..