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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.
I think the appeal of VR is extremely limited. How often do you see people riding a bus or a train while playing a game on their phone, or to a lesser extent, on a portable console? Those same people aren't going to strap a contraption on their face and be ignorant to the outside world just to play a game. It reminds me of 3D. Everyone just decided it was going to be The Next Thing, but they never stopped to consider what value it provided, or if the benefits outweighed the costs. And it crashed and burned. I agree with you that the future of VR will be phone-based. And I think the future of high-end VR, like Vive and Rift, will be via a phone app that integrates with a high-end gaming PC. But I think it will have about the same market impact as high-end gaming PCs. Definitely a sustainable market, definitely large and influential, but nowhere near an "everyman" thing.
hi
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.
XBox360 and PS3 were far superior to the Wii in technology, but the Wii destroyed the competition in sales. Your point is mute.
For the current generation of consoles, the PS4 has sold over 35 million consoles, the Xbox One is over 19 million, and the Wii U is at 12.8 million. The Wii did quite well, but the Wii U has lagged pretty far behind its competitors.
Superior in terms of raw horsepower sure, but that's not the market that Nintendo is trying to go for.
Nintendo caters to same-console multiplayer and exploration-game and platformer players, not competitive FPS and sports-game players. Their design goals are easy-to-pick-up, intuitive, and fun, not focused solely on dazzling the eyes with the extreme number of polygons. They explore wacky and different game mechanics like the motion-controller Wii remotes and the asymetric-gameplay Wii U tablet. Go into any nursing home. Odds are you'll find a Wii but won't find an Xbox or PS.
It would be stupid for Nintendo to exit the market, there's no one else that is even trying to cater to their player base. You may not be part of their target market, and that's completely okay. Other people are.
Moot. The word you mean to use, is moot. Not mute.
For the current generation of consoles, the PS4 has sold over 35 million consoles, the Xbox One is over 19 million, and the Wii U is at 12.8 million.
And PC is at 200 million.
As for handhelds, how far is PlayStation Vita behind Nintendo 3DS again?
I never see people riding on a bus or a train while playing a video game.
But then, I don't see people on busses or trains, ever.
(This is the problem with anecdotes.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Certainly possible, but further down the rabbit hole in which they currently languish.
The WiiU primarily did 2 new things: Introduced new interface hardware, and let that hardware divide the experience. Local multiplayer suffered the worst, and adding a VR headset will only exacerbate the problem.
Now, I personally don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with asymmetric multiplayer. Just the opposite, actually. It opens up a lot of potential for new and interesting games, which their Nintendoland tech demo did a good job of illustrating... but it never took off from there.
Nintendo failed to create any games that really took advantage of the hardware, instead shoehorning it into games for no adequate reason, which only makes the game worse (lookin at you, star fox). And they failed to court any 3rd party vendors to create such games.
Despite the potential for asymmetric gameplay, the system failed. I don't see how a double-down on the asymmetry will make things better next time.
This signature is false.
IIRC Nintendo confirmed a while ago NX was not VR. I think the latest speculation going around is that it is a tablet system, OR a tablet that can broadcast to your TV through a base station when you're at home. There was a "leak" that confirmed some of this but it was a bit suspicious.
You're really missing out. Too bad.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I think you meant it's a moo point