Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

I find this to be the most fascinating aspect of the whole NX drama. We still don't know what the "brand new concept" is!
Which means there is still ample room for rampant speculation and wild assertions. It's glorious!

 

A miserable little pile of hope.

 

The way they announced the date and the fact the will have nothing about it at E3 makes me think that the thing could slip further into 2017.

Couple this with the Zelda delay to 2017, it seems to me Nintendo is a complete mess behind the scenes.

 

If they really start selling it in march, when we can expect the announcement?
Before christmas to create hype and keep someone away from ps4?

 

If the NX is released 5 months after Neo and uses a totally new tech (contrary to Neo) it better be more powerful than Neo...

Right?

 

Yes the´ll release in february/march, and will slash the price by summer....

 

Ok, it is weird to announce it and not to give any detail about it. I expect details soon as the system is now official and there is no point in holding information to preserve their others systems sales.

 

Nikkei claims a reveal before X-mas. Which makes perfect sense so that is probably right.
This release schedule is consistent with their earlier statements. It also fits rather well with availability of certain lithographic nodes plus lead times for volume and manufacturing/packaging/distribution for a global launch. The likelyhood of something other than 28nm manufacturing is a bit better now than with a global release in october/november.

 

I assume we'll know more around E3...

EDIT
Christmas for March ? That's short... Better be something special...

 

I guess they will reveal juicy bits before people start shopping for Christmas i.e. with some (small) margin before Black Friday.

 

Seriously, "power" is the least interesting aspect of their new system. They need to be capable of accepting ports relatively easily if they want some of the AAA library. Otherwise they are free to design their new system as they please. Most of us armchair experts can easily design a console from XBox1 up to 10x XBox1, and give reasonable estimates on die sizes, approximate yields given redundancy assumptions, power draw and so on. There is nothing particularly interesting there, just pick a target.

 

It's the "everything's-gone-to-shit-and-we're-super-late-but-we-promised-a-new-console-to-our-investors-during-fiscal-2016-so-March-2017-is-as-late-as-possible-without-having-our-asses-kicked" time of the year.

My personal reading from that announcement is that they postponed the launch as far as they could without having to miss their promises to investors. They might have done this in order to give game devs more time and get a decent launch portfoliio... or the hardware itself may be late and this could mean another delay down the road.

 

Japanese's fiscal year ends on 31 March, not 31 December as it is usual in western world.
Being said that, it's crazy and it means that budget is not even clearly allocated yet..

 

NX Double confirmed for 2017:

https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/725224978984083456

 

Isn't there some kind of a holiday in March in Japan? Thought it was a big gift-giving time.

But if March in Japan, it could be fall/winter in the US and EU.

 

Not considering "power" as critically important is exactly what put Nintendo in the mess they've been in since 2009 when the Wii software sales came to a halt. I don't know how that can ever be uninteresting, especially in this forum.
If you suggest that "any armchair expert can design a XBox x10" then what I would call ridiculous armchair expert-ism is to repeat the usual taglines like "what matters is the games" or "what matters is if I have fun with it", while putting power on the bottom of the list of priorities.

Power will determine if the NX can or cannot play multiplatform games from the other two consoles. Therefore, Power will be absolutely critical to third-party developer support -> without which no console has ever been well succeeded in the long term. Power will determine if Nintendo is willing to risk making fewer money (or even a loss) on selling the console. Power will determine the price of the console, the necessary cooling (noisy? silent?) and power delivery systems (external brick?), all factors that could sway customers one way or the other. Power will determine if yields can become a problem which could lead to production and distribution shortages.


Power is absolutely critical for the console, the company's survival and the jobs of tens of thousands of people (not to mention that Nintendo must be a substantial fraction of Japan's GDP, which has been struggling itself).
If Nintendo doesn't find it interesting, then they're doomed and there's no amount of waggle that will keep them afloat.

 

I don't think it matters if they match the neo or not. The neo will need to exist in parallel with the current consoles which means 3rd party porting can be done if they are in the same ballpark as the xbox one and ps4. What matters more would be nintendo's relations with 3rd parties and the tools they can provide. Launching this late is a huge problem tho. Especially for global market in march would probably mean very little interest until maybe summer for most of the world..

 

So the Wii didn't outsell the PS3 and XB360? The 3DS didn't massacre the Vita in sales?
Power is not the be-all and end-all of gaming. Have you seen the total revenue of iOS games?
I'm not sure there is room for more than one profitable home console any more. Nintendo could make a third cookie cutter console, but would it be profitable? What would it bring to gaming?
I would prefer, by far, that they try to somehow innovate and bring something new or unique to the table.
And if there isn't a market for anything but a FIFA/Madden/... platform anymore, they are probably better off making games for mobile platforms, and ditching consoles altogether. Bringing their brand of entertainment to the platforms where people really are.

 

Please dear god no. Whenever nintendo "innovates", they add a random gimmick which novelty wears off after a few months.

All they need is to make games with a higher production value than the old games they remake over and over with character designs from the 80's. If they can't even do that, at least have a platform that can receive ports. Or yeah, they might as well fall back to mobile micro-transaction, selling virtual amibo.