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Nintendo's Mysterious 'NX' Gaming Platform To Be Launched In March 2017 (pcworld.com)
Nintendo has announced that its next gaming platform -- codenamed NX -- will launch worldwide in March 2017. "For our dedicated video game platform, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept," the gaming console company said while announcing its annual results. PCWorld reports:Nintendo is placing big bets on NX. The company will continue to offer games for smartphone devices, a strategy it has started executing on, but its core business focus will be on what it describes as its "software-led hardware-software integrated business." [...] For the fiscal year ended March 31, the company sold 6.8 million units of the portable Nintendo 3DS hardware and over 48.5 million units of 3DS software. Global sales of the Wii U hardware and software were 3.26 million and 27.4 million units respectively.
Maybe if they can make an affordable and fun-to-use one it might catch one.
Honestly, I was like you. And I grew up in the 80's where VRML and everything else were being pushed as "the future".
And then I played with a Google Cardboard set and, actually, the base mobile phones now can do a better job of VR than you'd probably think. Nowhere near perfect, but enough that we were passing them around the IT Office and others bought their own, all run from a bog-standard Android smartphone.
The Vive and Rift? Stupendously expensive. And you have to have one hell of a machine to get close to using them.
But now consider if you could get one, off-the-shelf, for a few hundred, with a bunch of Wii-like games to entice people and have a laugh at parties with them. Sorry, but that would sell. All the other competitors are similarly pipedreams, homebrew, or too expensive. A Nintendo one - even sold at a loss - could really bring it home to people.
Hell, even just a headset that plugged into a Wii U would do it. And if you could make it commercial, you could repurpose them like people have repurposed the Wiimotes etc.
Sure, you probably aren't going to play Crysis 10 at full speed with them, but that's NOT the be-all-and-end-all of gaming. Make it fun enough that granny buys one for the kids because she was "on a rollercoaster" and you have a seller. WiiFit was nothing special, look how many people bought that.
A WiiVR could easily take the market if launched at the right time - late enough to be developed, early enough to get in before the big players - and the right price point.
Give me a VR Mario Kart and I will buy into this whole VR thing.
Actually, my wife will. And she'll kick my ass almost every race.