Nintendo GOing Forward.

[Shifty Geezer]

This is where Yamauchi failed; he only knew that which had served him well in the past, but when times changed (and thus, the gaming industry business with it), he was out of touch, and too big-headed to realize it.

I think that example better serves my argument than yours. Yamauchi had incredible industry experience having headed Nintendo during its entry and growth of console gaming. He failed because his vision didn't match the way things were changing. A better leader would have been one who listened to his advisors, kept an eye on the market, and adapted accordingly - something you don't need experience of making games to be able to do.

Heck, we've all presented ideas that we think the console companies should do, yet few of us have experience inside the console industry. Does that mean we should keep our mouths shut because we've no idea what we're talking about, or does that prove that any sensible person can look at something like Kinect and make choices about it without needing experience in electronics or software design?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Heck, we've all presented ideas that we think the console companies should do, yet few of us have experience inside the console industry. Does that mean we should keep our mouths shut because we've no idea what we're talking about, or does that prove that any sensible person can look at something like Kinect and make choices about it without needing experience in electronics or software design?

There is no consequence of having an opinion when you are not personally accountable for a thousands of jobs and tens of millions of investor capital, nor have a Board of Directors questioning why your market share and customer base has diminished and wanting to know how you're going to turn this around.

This is also the difference between being an employee and having a boss above you who is partially accountable for your work, decisions and advice (and endorsing them or not) and being the man at the top with no such cover. When the buck stops at your desk and you have to set a direction and make decisions, you want to understand the information presented to you in as much detail as possible. Because if you don't understand it, and overlook something that later proves critical, there is nobody to blame but yourself.

Using Kinect as an example there were as many people justifying the inclusion of Kinect 2 with Xbox One (as a USP) as there were against it. And I'm talking about the position before the consoles had launched, so without any benefit of hindsight that Kinect was in fact widely perceived as an unnecessary expense with little to justify its existence like a millstone around Xbox One's neck.

 

[McHuj]

I found the announcement of the new Kindle tablets and FireTV from Amazon interesting and immediately thought of Nintendo. The FireTV is a "quad" core (2 A72 + 2 53) and the $50 tablet has a some sort of quad core with 1GB of RAM a 7" 600p screen.

Now the questions that came to mind are. 1. Is Nintendo's next handheld going to have better specs than the $50 Amazon tablet? and 2. if Nintendo is going with an ARM architecture all around, I think the A72 is certainly a viable option for the home console. 3. Is Mediatek a viable contender for NX SOC(s)? I hadn't really considered their possibility.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The main reason why Mediatek isn't a viable contender for NX is because there's a buttload of evidence pointing to AMD being the ones behind the console. IMO we're just a formal/official confirmation away by now.

As for a Cortex A72 in a handheld console, I don't think that makes much sense either. Console game developers are supposed to be able to use a certain resource for an indefinite amount of time (they can't be expected to handle heat/power throttling), so it doesn't make much sense to use a CPU core that wasn't built for staying active for long periods of time.
That said, I think using moderately-clocked Cortex A53 cores (up to 1.4GHz?) would make much more sense, even if they go with an 8-core or more. Recent 3D/Compute APIs and engines seem to like lots of cores and rely less of single-threaded performance anyways.


To be honest, I think the main reason why smartphones keep getting higher-performing big cores is because of javascript and the rise of web apps (and the fact that no one seems to use web workers). Decently-developed native apps for smartphones shouldn't need 2.5GHz behemoths IMO, save for some very specific productivity software (which again, doesn't make much sense in a smartphone).
Javascript and web browsing isn't a primary concern in a gaming handheld, so there's isn't much sense in having a big core there. Not even the big home consoles got one of those, this generation.

 

[wco81]

Well the main reason for faster CPUs on phones is to get people to upgrade.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well the main reason for faster CPUs on phones is to get people to upgrade.

Also not because of gaming prowess, then.

 

[liolio]

I found the announcement of the new Kindle tablets and FireTV from Amazon interesting and immediately thought of Nintendo. The FireTV is a "quad" core (2 A72 + 2 53) and the $50 tablet has a some sort of quad core with 1GB of RAM a 7" 600p screen.

Now the questions that came to mind are. 1. Is Nintendo's next handheld going to have better specs than the $50 Amazon tablet? and 2. if Nintendo is going with an ARM architecture all around, I think the A72 is certainly a viable option for the home console. 3. Is Mediatek a viable contender for NX SOC(s)? I hadn't really considered their possibility.

It also made me think of nintendo as they will have the "kids edition" now available @99€, definitely I like the choices Amazon made with their Kindle / Fire devices t lately. I liked the 6" form factor it was a nice try, the SOC they chose for the HD 6 & HD 7 was also good. I actually prefer what Amazon is doing with its Fire/kindle line than what Google is doing with its nexus tablets.
There is a lot more to Nintendo or Amazon devices than hardware but if I were to shop something cheap for a kid now... tablets have never been more tempting.

As for Nintendo collaborating with Mediatek or using one of their products welI I can't see Nintendo turn to any East or South East Asian countries or companies for a collaboration.

 

[Megadrive1988]

credit to jmga on GAF for this:

Nintendo joins Khronos Group as a contributor member

https://www.khronos.org/members/contributors/nintendo-co.-ltd

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Cool, they can bring all their cutting edge 3D tech to OpenGL.

.mario class in next version confirmed.

 

[Commenter]

This is my prediction of how NX is going to work. Firstly, although this will disappoint a lot of people again, I don't think Nintendo are interested in the slightest in competing in hardware terms, they'll leave that to MS/Sony to slug it out.

My idea of how the NX might work comes from the oldest pairing of home console and handheld there is, namely the Sega Master System and Game Gear. If you kow anything about two systems, they both shared the same architecture, and hence developers were easily able to port existing master systems to gg and new games could be released on both platforms with relevant ease. Although some games needed tweaks to ensure the game was playable on a small scale but I imagine the work was not massive. Couple that with new technologies such as save games stored in the cloud and I imagine you'll be able to pick up where you left on the base unit plugged into the tv on the handheld portion of the NX. I think that the NX might actually just be a handheld unit with the same specs as Wii U that can couple to the Wii U base unit rather than an entirely new console. There has been plenty of speculation that Wii U would eventually shrunk to fit insde the tablet. That could be the NX???

 

[Rikimaru]

No Wii U won't be shrank to tablet. And there is already thread for such posts.

 

[Commenter]

Why wouldn't Nintendo shrink Wii U down into the tablet? It should be easily doable by now.

 

[Rodéric]

glMario, more fun than glTeapot !

(More likely licencing Vulkan.)

 

[Grall]

Why wouldn't Nintendo shrink Wii U down into the tablet? It should be easily doable by now.

No financial gain. Wuu has one year of effective life left to it, tops. A major re-engineering of a hugely unsuccessful platform (essentially rebuilding it all over from scratch) isn't going to re-coup its costs. Most of the sales the Wuu will see have already been made. Shrinking it down isn't going to change anything, sales-wise.

Also, most people would probably feel uncomfortable gaming on a fat giant tablet with a HDMI cable running across their lap and all over the floor over to the TV.

 

[Rodéric]

No financial gain. Wuu has one year of effective life left to it, tops. A major re-engineering of a hugely unsuccessful platform (essentially rebuilding it all over from scratch) isn't going to re-coup its costs. Most of the sales the Wuu will see have already been made. Shrinking it down isn't going to change anything, sales-wise.

Also, most people would probably feel uncomfortable gaming on a fat giant tablet with a HDMI cable running across their lap and all over the floor over to the TV.

Oh come one, they'd use a wireless HDMI dongle !
But I don't expect that to happen either.

 

[Commenter]

No financial gain. Wuu has one year of effective life left to it, tops. A major re-engineering of a hugely unsuccessful platform (essentially rebuilding it all over from scratch) isn't going to re-coup its costs. Most of the sales the Wuu will see have already been made. Shrinking it down isn't going to change anything, sales-wise.

Also, most people would probably feel uncomfortable gaming on a fat giant tablet with a HDMI cable running across their lap and all over the floor over to the TV.

What I meant was, for all intents and purposes it would be a new platform in the same way the sega game gear was, but it'll just be archietcturally compatible with the wii u so you'll already have a library of a hundred or more titles off the bat. It may be that the NX has an extra cpu core or two, more sp's on the gpu, more RAM for NX-only titles but otherwise wholly compatible with the Wii U. Nintendo would be hoping to convert the Wii U userbase over to NX to get a headstart sales-wise.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nintendo would be hoping to convert the Wii U userbase over to NX to get a headstart sales-wise.

How likely would that be? How many Wii U owners are dying to take that experience mobile with a large tablet to carry around in addition to their other mobile device(s) of choice?

 

[Commenter]

Well, it's going to be roughly the same experience whatever NX is. Mario kart, Zelda etc. What's the difference?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Nintendo would be hoping to convert the Wii U userbase over to NX to get a headstart sales-wise.

Actually, the Wii U userbase is a pretty bad target for Nintendo, since it's so small.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A new device can offer a new experience, unless you feel DS games are nigh identical to N64 games, being Mario Kart and Zelda.