Nintendo GOing Forward.

[Deleted member 13524]

Wii U has no chance at 149, even 249 for that matter, as long as that albatross controller exists. And that controller will never greatly cost reduce, either, as it's a big hunk of glass.
(...)
They packaged a old inefficient $150 360-esque chipset with a $150 controller, bottom line.

Bollocks.
There's no glass in the controller. There's a cheap-ass screen with a very low resolution, a cheap-ass resistive (plastic) single-touch panel, a couple of buttons, a tiny cheap-ass battery and a WiFi modem+antenna and little more.
No glass, all low-cost ICs and plastic.

If they can't make that controller for less than $50 then they're complete idiots. And if need be, I will personally go to alibaba to look for equivalent parts of all the components to prove my point.

And I don't know why you say "the Wii U has no chance at $249" when Amazon.com is currently selling them for $239.

Nintendo themselves have admitted that (that they cannot currently reduce Wii U price from 299 because of the Wuublet).

Of course they said they can't reduce the price.
What were you expecting them to tell the world?
"Hey people hold on a little bit because we're just about to make our console a lot cheaper while cutting on our profits"?

Ouya had ZERO financial backing and even in many cases quality control. Yet still seems to exist okay, shockingly. If anything it's probably proof just how viable this model could be, as it's literally a kickstarted console that has already lasted a decent while. I was surprised when Ouya shot up the Amazon bestsellers list recently when it was flash saled at $70. Like, this thing is still around and kicking? And that's with a freakin Tegra 3.

I'm making an assumption they could get the Nin-Ouya down to $149 with a state of the art chipset and a quality controller, mind you. Amazon Fire Tv shows you can get close though (with a gen old, but still Ouya crushing, chipset). At any rate $199 should be the worst case.

The Ouya had $8.5M as financial backing but has been a failure ever since it started shipping. There's a reason why it got pushed into a software distributor, mostly.
All it takes for Ouya to become completely irrelevant is Google getting their shit together in game distribution and gamepad support.


The FireTV is a media streaming device for selling Amazon's digital content above all, and the videogame thing came as a distant second.
First because it brings an outdated SoC (older and much weaker than their current 6 month-old tablets) and second because the media remote is bundled with the device but the gamepad isn't.

 

[DrJay24]

I just looking at the Wii U, #$%& it is $300? Step one Nin, drop the price. This thing should be $249 with a game, pro-controller and 32GB. Instead the Zombi U bundle is $420 on Amazon. The price alone killed any interest to get it as a secondary console. I was interested in Lego city, MH3, Zelda and Zombi U, but I can wait.

 

[Wynix]

I just looking at the Wii U, #$%& it is $300? Step one Nin, drop the price. This thing should be $249 with a game, pro-controller and 32MB. Instead the Zombi U bundle is $420 on Amazon. The price alone killed any interest to get it as a secondary console. I was interested in Lego city, MH3, Zelda and Zombi U, but I can wait.

$199 with X and Mario Cart 8 and i'm in.

Also;

pro-controller and 32MB.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

$199 with X and Mario Cart 8 and i'm in.

Is that a knock-off title from SAYGA?

 

[MrFox]

I don't think price is their biggest issue right now. I was dead set on buying a WiiU at launch as I was a big fan of the gamecube and wii. A new SSB and a new Fire Emblem would have been enough, but a year and a half later I'm still waiting, now they say SSB is coming on 3DS as a priority, and the WiiU version is 6 months later? WTF? And Fire Emblem has been a 3DS exclusive for quite a while, it's probably never coming back on consoles. There's no new franchises announced that look any good or interesting. Just franchise milking.

It's not the weak hardware's fault, nor is it the third parties fault, Nintendo themselves don't seem to care about home consoles anymore. Sure, the tablet wasn't a good idea, and it drove the price up, but gamecube had great first party games 2 years in despite the low adoption rate, it was worth buying because of the games.

Nintendo stopped innovating and just follow trends (3D is a trend, so is the tablet, that's not innovation). They are exploiting dwindling franchises, and almost gave up the console space, focusing too much on portable. New Mario games iterations are the same game from previous generation, with an added gimmick once in a while.

The Mario universe isn't keeping up with the times, it has many similarities to the Mickey Mouse universe, back when simplistic and naive was the norm. It's as if Disney was still making films today with Mickey Mouse, and never had their reinvention from 1985. Nintendo didn't advance with the rest of the industry and are now overwhelmed by better competitors. They need to do the same thing Disney has done in 85. Fire everyone on top, build bigger studios, and start making real AAA games. The WiiU success should have enabled that? Where did the money go? Their market is now moving toward kids-at-school only. At some point the Mario brand will have eroded enough to make Nintendo irrelevant, and the remaining die hard fans will go elsewhere.

 

[tuna]

This is what Nintendo should do:

For Christmas 2015 release a new portable system looking mostly like the Vita with a similar screen. Release a "TV companion box" accessory that you plug in the TV. That system has its own processing and can run the same games but in 1080p. You can also connect more portable systems, controllers and other various accessories like scale and other stuff (maybe camera?). Sell the portable system for 150-200, the TV box for 100-150 and the games for 40.

All saves etc are moved automatically between portable and box system and all games work on both. Don't bother with PS4 level multiplatform games, focus on custom built stuff instead.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Any home console that doesn't equal or surpass the PS4 in power and launches in 2015 is a console that will alienate 3rd parties.

Any home console that alienates 3rd parties is a train wreck on day one.
Unless the console isn't targeting gamers anymore.


Maybe it's time for people to give up on daydreaming about Nintendo coming back to the home console business with a PS4-killer or (even worse) following the miserable path of an Ouya look-alike.

Nintendo will run away from competition. As far as their plans go, their next console is a hub for assisted living devices and by 2016 they can do that with a $15 SoC.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Hey folks. Always down for some good Nintendo speculation.

Move to ARM and be the only console not using x86? Would that bode well for porting multiplatform games?



As for the bolded part, I wonder if that's what made Nintendo screw big time with the hardware on this last generation.
Maybe they feel obligated to to give something to do to an incompetent hardware team (the ones responsible for CPU and GPU, at least), and that ultimately screwed the final result.

Well, I believe that the integration of hardware teams happened after the finalization of the 3DS and Wii U hardware. They would have been separate teams, and both machines kinda suck, as far as current (for their time) tech goes.

I'm trying to sort this out in my head, because this QOL thing presents an interesting twist. They could possibly use this to delay the introduction of a new home console (perhaps indefinitely) and focus on the 3DS successor for traditional gaming. Seeing as Nintendo sees the 3DS as a profit generating device at the moment, I would not expect them to cut its lifespan short. Thus, we're looking at the QOL platform next year and their next handheld in 2016. Their next home console, if it comes at all, would then be pushed back to 2017. At that point, you have to wonder if Nintendo will be relevant at all in the living room, especially as I predict the QOL platform to be a spectacular failure. I mean, it's potentially a cool idea, but I have no faith in Iwata and co. to pull it off. Wii Fit was a long time ago.

So right now it seems as if their future in the home console space is in doubt, yet Iwata seemed to indicate in the last Investors Q&A that there is something in the works. And *gasp* it is going to "absorb" the Wii U architecture. Which means that it is possible that their "portable" (which may end up being more like a tablet) may also be based on Wii U in some way.

I'm imagining that their next handheld could possibly be a tablet large enough to house an updated/cutback version of the Wii U chipset. If MS can get TSMC/IBM/AMD to play nice, perhaps Nintendo can as well. After all, they seem to be the only ones interested in that PPC 750 core these days and the CPU's L2 eDRAM could be replaced with SRAM on a smaller node (22nm?).

The 32 MB MEM1 would be tricky to carry over. They could either put it off chip, since the bandwidth seems to be quite low anyway or make that SRAM as well, depending on how much room it takes up on the die.

Either way, I don't think Nintendo have learned their lesson when it comes to custom architectures and 3rd parties. Or they realize it and just don't care. Their own programmers come first and they like that Espresso core just fine.

 

[Wynix]

Is that a knock-off title from SAYGA?

Haha, i guess that shows my interest in the title.
I haven't played Mario Kart since MK 64.

 

[idsn6]

A robot. A small, motile domestic robot that follows you around the home and responds to simple commands. Carries around a detachable tablet controller to both serve as a display and play games.

 

[Rangers]

Bollocks.
There's no glass in the controller. There's a cheap-ass screen with a very low resolution, a cheap-ass resistive (plastic) single-touch panel, a couple of buttons, a tiny cheap-ass battery and a WiFi modem+antenna and little more.
No glass, all low-cost ICs and plastic.

You can "Bollocks" and "$50" all you want. Here's the facts: Nintendo cannot and will not reduce the price (greatly, or anytime soon) because of the controller. Period. That's why the Wii U is 299 and despite selling terribly, has not been further price reduced. That despite not even including a mechanical hard drive, which is a huge savings (it should basically be priced like the 4GB 360, or 12Gb PS3, which is $199, but instead it's 299 because of the controller).

BTW, $50 (that cannot be reduced) is HUGE on a BOM sheet. And will add much more than that to the retail price. That's if we accept your figure.

The cheapest 4" smartphone I know of is basically the Lumia 520, which is MUCH smaller and lighter than the Wuublet (not even close to comparable in heft) and still retails for $60. That's with no extensive buttons and sticks mechanisms, or large amounts of plastic contained in Wuublet. Also, if you break the Wuublet, the replacement is $140 from Nintendo, which I doubt they're treating as a profit center either, since it's simply an administrative expense not anything they market.

And I don't know why you say "the Wii U has no chance at $249" when Amazon.com is currently selling them for $239.

Yes, there are occasional almost fire sales on Wiiu. Also isn't that 8GB version pretty much discontinued? I think the 32GB with some games 299 now. The 8GB is a bad deal and not enough storage.

Of course they said they can't reduce the price.
What were you expecting them to tell the world?
"Hey people hold on a little bit because we're just about to make our console a lot cheaper while cutting on our profits"?

What profits? They've lost money two fiscal years in a row. Obviously it's unlikely Wii U hardware is profitable even at 299 (my guess it's it's close to break even).

If you think a Wii U-power type mobile console sans Wuublet (ouya like) at 149, wouldn't do better than Wii U, well I just have to strongly disagree. I agree it might not become a huge hit, but it almost 100% certainly would outsell Wii U imo.

There have been times when Nintendo has specifically mentioned the controller as why they cannot cut the Wii U price. I'm short on time though, for now I came up with a couple tangential links

Wii U idea almost scrapped over price concerns (from 2012)

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/iwata-wii-u-idea-was-almost-scrapped-over-price-concerns/

The Wii U's second screen was born out of the idea of allowing someone to play a game while the TV is being used by the whole family, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told The Telegraph. But Iwata admitted that the idea almost didn't make it to a final product.

"Sometime during that final discussion we almost gave up on the idea of the additional screen," Iwata said. "This was due to our concern over the expected high cost, it may not have been feasible to create this and sell it at a reasonable price point for the consumers." This should come as some comfort to those of us still concerned about the console's (and controller's) price point, as the continued development of the Wii U suggests that Nintendo hit upon a "reasonable" price.

Also more recently (January 2014) Nintendo ruled out a further Wii U price cut and declared it "not an option". Such strict terminology obviously refers to Wuublet.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/nint...an-option-smartphone-service-revealed/0127412

So what about the elephant in the room? Iwata offered no immediate solution to the Wii U problem, but did rule out one thing – a price cut.

Astonishingly, he still argued that marketing could hold the key to saving Nintendo’s £250 machine, pledging that marketing efforts will be increased.

He also vowed to make better use of the console’s GamePad controller.

"Under the current situation where the company has to report an operating loss, simply executing a price reduction as a way to defuse the situation is not an option," he claimed. "In the short-term, Nintendo will focus on thoroughly enriching the value of the most significant feature of Wii U, the Wii U GamePad.”

 

[Sonic]

Nintendo is in a really bad position at the moment. They have a failing last generation console that will likely be surpassed in sales by the next gen systems. Perhaps by being too conservative they failed to weigh the risks of going with such weak hardware. The company's upper level management either needs to be canned or have a good slap in the face for their piss poor decisions. They should stop attempting to reinvent the wheel and go with what works and build upon that.

There's a few scenarios I can see Nintendo going in the future.

They remain a console manufacturer and continue releasing intentionally gimped consoles to save a buck. Not sure what would happen in this scenario but they'd likely bomb again unless whatever radical reinvention of gameplay they come up with is the new thing.

They remain a console manufacturer and get their stuff together. They could realize the errors of their ways and release a console for $400 or so that is an upgrade, 3x minimum, over PS4/XB1. They could even have the business sense to buy up a few western devs to round out the weaknesses in their lineup. Maybe they hire a few people that has experience in developing and establishing an online ecosystem that includes multiplayer. Their next portable could be something in the $250 range and pack a decent punch and could even be compatible with its big brother. This scenario is likely a pipe dream at this point.

Another pipe dream scenario is a company like Apple or Google who want to get into the market could partner directly with Nintendo and foot the bill for a new system. The branding could be shared across the system and Nintendo has no licensing fees. A partnership of this type could help out Nintendo and whichever company tremendously. Nintendo gets a partner willing to spend the cash needed to enter the market so Ninty saves money there. And its partner gets Nintendo and all that comes with it such as the experience. It's a win win for both. Lala land.

Nintendo exits the console business and the portable business a short while later. They end up becoming a software only company that sees it can profit from its software in a big way. All of a sudden they have a much bigger market and more powerful hardware to develop for. The company could develop high quality titles and make a killing. I'd love to play Mario Kart over Live/PSN. The chances of me buying Nintendo software is much greater on Android and PS4/XB1 than their own hardware, and I bet a lot of people on here and elsewhere feel the same. I'd be willing to shell out some money for a Zelda game in full HD glory on the current systems. This scenario may not be as unlikely as the rest because Nintendo may eventually be forced out of the hardware market. I think they'd end up having much better success than Sega, I'm not sure Mario and Zelda have lost their appeal so much as Nintendo's hardware has lost its appeal. I doubt Nintendo's quality of games would diminish all that much, iif at all, in the same way Sega's has.

The medical device thingy is cool and all but unless they get some critical patents then they will end up getting clobber-knockered from bigger players. If they have patents then hey maybe they got themselves a new market to themselves. If this ends up being some awesome device that helps seniors in a serious way then maybe health insurance could cover it. If that happens then Nintendo has hit a jackpot.

All in all I wish the best for Nintendo. Wherever their path lies I hope they continue making great quality games.

 

[Rangers]

They could realize the errors of their ways and release a console for $400 or so that is an upgrade, 3x minimum, over PS4/XB1. They could even have the business sense to buy up a few western devs to round out the weaknesses in their lineup. Maybe they hire a few people that has experience in developing and establishing an online ecosystem that includes multiplayer. Their next portable could be something in the $250 range and pack a decent punch and could even be compatible with its big brother. This scenario is likely a pipe dream at this point.

The problem here is timing. It's April 2014. If Nintendo canned Wii U and started developing this console tomorrow (which they show no signs of), or even if they've already been working on it in secret a year or two, how fast could they get such a powerful console out the door? Late 2016 if they're lucky? The problem there is by that point PS4 and X1 will already have huge established install bases. The more powerful console will eventually take over the market, but the problem is in this scenario theyd have maybe ~2-3 years before they have to start worrying about PS5 and XTwo, which in turn will eclipse their machine in power. More than that they have to worry about the spectre of PS5 and XTwo, which as the Dreamcast can tell you, the spectre of a more powerful, better supported upcoming machine will cause people to hold off purchase. 3 Years isn't enough to build up a install base from scratch.

Also, $400 for 3X PS4/X1 doesn't seem too doable. That's 7970 GPU level. If you dial it back to 1.5 or 2X PS4, then you get the situation where multiplat games target X1/PS4 and dont take advantage of the more power, think Xbox and PS2.

And mainly, it just seems unlikely Nintendo will ever do this. Horrible to say but, more or less they hate technology. They dont even like to develop for powerful machines. Then you have the fact they cant afford to subsidize hardware like MS/Sony can. The QOL stuff is probably their version of a white flag.

You said Pipe Dream, so obviously you agree.

 

[Grall]

Another pipe dream scenario is a company like Apple or Google who want to get into the market could partner directly with Nintendo and foot the bill for a new system. The branding could be shared across the system and Nintendo has no licensing fees.

SEGA sort of tried that with the dreamcast, didn't work too well. Yeah, winCE was friggin lame, so that certainly did not help, but nintendo is as we all know deeply conservative and like a child burned by fire, extremely wary of previously failed ideas.

Nintendo brass are such control freaks I don't think they'd ever consider partnering with another company, not unless stock owners get all of the current top executives completely ousted. Current leadership are stuck in a rut going round and round, much like a circular argument, concerning how to be successful. They've done things a certain way to be successful, so to be successful you do things a certain way. Round and round it goes, never changing, never adapting.

I doubt Nintendo's quality of games would diminish all that much, iif at all, in the same way Sega's has.

With the right leadership (likely meaning NOT the current), software-only nintendo could be fantastically successful. Nintendo could make an absolute killing purely from Pokemon games for iOS/android, they could slay much of the competition with their huge library of titles if they just wanted to. All that is holding them back is their own egos and the fallacial idea that you earn more money by releasing your own games on your own platform rather than on someone else's platform where you have to pay royalties.

Sooner or later they will go 3rd party, that's just the way it is. Only question is how long it'll take. They'll make at least one more crack at a home console, we know that because they're nowhere near out of money, and they've said they're already developing the successor to wuu (and it'll be shared architecture with their next handheld, so probably ARM based.) After that though... Who can say? Probably looking at sometime in the coming decade until they'll finally cave.

 

[firstminion]

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? The shear amount of people that seem to be hoping that Nintendo fails in the hardware segment tell you there is a huge market for their games. Because the people hoping Nintendo fail aren't hoping they vanish never to be heard from again, they are hoping that Nintendo gets out of the hardware business and goes multiplatform.

Because while a huge number of people want to play their games - they want to do so without purchasing exclusive hardware for that sole purpose. They want to play them on their PS/Xbox's along with all their other titles and capabilities of those machines.

I imagine that Nintendo has done the math somewhere and decided that staying in the hardware business is ultimately more profitable for them - and the Wii reinforced that belief. I guess we'll have to wait to see how much the WiiU flop chips away at that determination.

I believe you are spot on, RancidLunchmeat.

 

[-tkf-]

I started browsing for used WII U's, since the XBOX One isn't on the table in my country and Microsoft decided to not really give a damn either i am going to move the XBOX One below the WII U on my shopping list. The WII U has more games that i want anyway, but before i throw money at the WII U i am going to wait for E3.

Somehow i expect Nintendo to do nothing special.. but here is my idea for something that might work..

Introduce a cheaper WII U "mini" sku without the tablet/pad.

And a addon for the DS handhelds that makes it work just as the Tablet
Plus software/hardware for android and ios tablets that does the same.
Finally the tablet as a addon purchase.

Patch all the games that can be patched to work without the tablet so they run seamless without tablet, you don't have a tablet, you don't really know what you are missing.

 

[eastmen]

I would say this.

No new handheld until they can get wii u power or better in a handheld the size of the 3ds xl at under $200 . So maybe 2015 with 16nm chips they could even just use a die shrunk wii u (since I believe that's 32nm chips)


For a home console , 2015 is to soon. Its just 2 years after the wii u. I would suggest 2016. This would actually be a good time. AMD is set to release their replacement to the brazos / jaguar line and i'm sure we will see a lot of good gcn 2 designs (or whatever the newest tech is)

So maybe a 8 core puma above 2ghz with a GCN 2 chip with something in the 2k range for shaders and 8 gigs or so of ddr 4 ram.

It wont give them a large performance advantage but it will actually give them the fastest console out for 3 or 4 years until sony and ms refresh and it will allow them to stay close in price parity .

 

[-tkf-]

I would say this.

No new handheld until they can get wii u power or better in a handheld the size of the 3ds xl at under $200 . So maybe 2015 with 16nm chips they could even just use a die shrunk wii u (since I believe that's 32nm chips)

For a home console , 2015 is to soon. Its just 2 years after the wii u. I would suggest 2016. This would actually be a good time. AMD is set to release their replacement to the brazos / jaguar line and i'm sure we will see a lot of good gcn 2 designs (or whatever the newest tech is)

So maybe a 8 core puma above 2ghz with a GCN 2 chip with something in the 2k range for shaders and 8 gigs or so of ddr 4 ram.

It wont give them a large performance advantage but it will actually give them the fastest console out for 3 or 4 years until sony and ms refresh and it will allow them to stay close in price parity .

But they need to do something while the develop new stuff..

 

[liolio]

Imo going with AMD is a terrible idea, Nintendo needs convergence between their home and handheld hardware, at least they are aware of that if their late strategic statements are to be believed.

I also believe that summing Nintendo's troubles as foremost a hardware issue is wrong. THeir situation would not as tricky if it only came down to having a better hardware. They have issue with the pace of their software releases, they have issues building new successful IP, that is for games but there is more.
They have issues with documenting their hardware.
They have issue with the OS and their network infrastructure, they lag competition badly.

It would be easy to make a potent hardware if they leave backward compatibility behind, but it is not as simple. Right now their capitalization is around the level of their cash reserves, risky bets and ambitious hardware could be a hard sell on investors without a proper back up for the hardware(which is proper OS and network infrastructure, more streamlined games productions, proper positioning for their handheld and home consoles in a world flooded with phones and tablets on one side and MSFT/Sony consoles on the others with a potential invasion of gaming enable (cheap hardware and software) STB in the years to come.

Nintendo needs to create a proper ecosystem for their products, they are far off. I've seen no hint of them working in the right direction, on the hardware they are working in the right direction with a common architecture for their handheld and home consoles but that the is the easy part to fix. By the way there are many shades of grey there is a world between sucky hardware and slightly outperforming the ps4/xb1. The world is not black or white, their products needs to offer good value for the price, the WiiU does not. Iwata seems aware of the issue, his hesitation about the WiiUmote were spot on, it is too pricey compared to the value it adds to the system in a world where nobody no longer miss screens as an alternative to tv. To some extend it is the same issue with Kinect, tech is still too expensive for the value it adds to the system.
Had the WiiU been a 199$ upgrade to the Wii its fate could have been different (it is beyond salvation now imo)> Yet I'm not sure they could have reached that price tag even without the WiiUmote and for that price the hardware is still supa underwhelming but I think the major issue is elsewhere, bad tools, bad OS, bad network infrastructure, lacking first party line up, etc.

I think all of those issues take a more serious reorganization of the company to be fixed than to make a "good" call on the system specs (at a given price point).

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Imo going with AMD is a terrible idea, Nintendo needs convergence between their home and handheld hardware, at least they are aware of that if their late strategic statements are to be believed.

And why are you assuming that AMD isn't capable of delivering an ultra-mobile SoC?