We really don’t know much about Nintendo’s new hardware. It’s codenamed NX. It’s from Nintendo. And… well… That’s about it, really. However, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently offered what could be vague hints. Or not.
In an interview with Nikkei, Iwata briefly mentioned the hardware, saying he wouldn’t go into particulars about the NX. “However, if you only expand upon existing hardware, it’s dull,” Iwata said. “In some shape or form, we’re always thinking about how we want to surprise players as well as our desire to change each person’s video gaming life.”
That’s not much! Rather vague. So take that for whatever it’s worth. I’ll take it for Nintendo wants to surprise us again.
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39 responses to “What To Expect From Nintendo’s New Hardware? A Surprise, Probably. ”
Every home console Nintendo has ever produced has had a different controller that was very different from the previous one, so I would say it’s pretty obvious they plan to give us something very different to what they have previously.
And thus begat the triumphant return of the Power Glove!
Nah, been done already.
Yeah, but this time I’ll work! I swear! You just gotta believe in life after glove!
The Nintendo Cod Piece – for those times when you play alone
Only alone? Think of the possibilities the Nintendo Cod Piece could bring with some sort of Gameboy-style link cable. …or wait, no, don’t…. don’t think of that.
They’d already done dual screen handhelds before the release of the Nintendo DS, yet that still felt new.
I was saying this purely in reference to:
The Power Glove is very different to any of the Wii U’s controllers though, isn’t it?
And something else that will be seen as a ‘gimmick’. But I suppose there is a good chance that handheld-console hybrid could become reality.
Unless Nintendo bring out a vr headset, they will be left behind..Again.
on that note ‘nx’ better stand for ‘nintendo-friendly to third parties and modders..x’
I really don’t know why this is newsworthy.
So Nintendo is working on new hardware. So what? That’s not news. We KNOW they are working on new hardware. So are Microsoft. So are Sony. So are Apple. So are Samsung. Hardware companies make hardware. That’s what they do. The only difference here is that Nintendo have leaked their internal codename for it.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. They won’t be planning on releasing it until the current console cycle ends.
Nothing is newsworthy about this yet so I really wish these kinds of articles and speculation will stop.
It’s only newsworthy because they actually said they are working on it. And gave it a codename. And speculation about new consoles is pretty much a given, for any morsel of information that is released.
The point is…everyone knew they were already working on something. Just like we know that Microsoft are working on the next Xbox and Sony are working on the next Playstation. Those products will also have internal code names, we just don’t know them.
The fact that we know the codename of “NX” for the next Nintendo product doesn’t somehow mean we’re going to get something new in the near future. I’m certainly not expecting anything for at least another 3-4 years for a new console, or 2-3 years for a new portable system.
Yep, just saying why they are reporting on it. Agree that it will be ages before we see or hear anything else.
I’m pretty sure they were saying that it’d be releasing around 2017. There have been Kotaku articles about this before.
They’ve said nothing of the sort. It’s all just rumours and speculation.
Not necessarily, Nintendo struggled with the Wii-U, they may have decided *not* to enter the console arena again, this at least tells us there will be a Wii-U successor. It may have been assumed, but it wasn’t confirmed until these announcements.
Not really looking forward to these guess-work articles for the next 2 years until Nintendo actually reveals something.
im betting next console release will be the first time they take a decent stab at the hardware design and release something vastly more powerful to the xbone and ps4.
theyll be more focused on 3rd party support and support for 3rd party technologies (ie UE4)
If history has anything to say about it, unlikely.
i think recent history is actually what makes it even more likely… see my reply to pylgrim below.
in all honesty, if the 3 big names were in par in terms of specs and third party support, Nintendo would be a serious contender for my cash.
I’d love to agree but Nintendo just isn’t the visionary company it used to be. They seem to want to be different and quirky for the sake of being different and quirky these days.
it is honestly starting to hurt their console business though. and i dont think the shareholders will allow them to take such big risks at the moment.
Hope so. I want to see Ninty return to the success of the NES/SNES/N64 days. I’d love it. It just feels like they’ve been paddling parallel to the finish line rather than trying to cross it for the last 10+ years :\
Why? Why should they join the rat race of the polygon, frame and resolution? That’s nothing different from what their competitors do and they don’t have the backing of giant multinationals to invest in groundbreaking, ahead-of-the-pack hardware technology. And what for? One or two years down, their competitors will release something inevitably more powerful and it’s back to the bottom.
Note that the Wii U is a hardware powerful enough to have decent (if not mindblowing) ports of 3rd party games. The problem is that the gamers that buy Nintendo consoles are generally not interested in that kind of games, and the gamers that are interested, are not interested in a Nintendo console. That intersection causes very little sales and 3rd party producers just don’t find it profitable enough to do it anymore. It’s more a problem of clashing philosophies than of capabilities.
No, what they will do is what they have been doing since the Wii: create innovative (and a bit risky) new ways of playing the games of their strong franchises. Surprise and delight with something completely unexpected and refreshing even if that means that the machine cannot output the graphics that show in detail the particles of dirt inside the characters’ facial pores.
because they can no longer afford to target their console hardware at hardcore nintendo fans anymore. People dont invest in a console to solely play first party games. Shareholders want action and change. The transition to mobile gaming through their partnership with DeNA pretty much solidified the fact that shareholders are now demanding a lot more of nintendo.
going down this route will allow nintendo to gain an advantage over sony and ms, allow them to appeal to a larger market, increase revenue from hardware sales and licensing deals, opportunities to extend their publishing arm to 3rd party developers (though not likely), and much much more.
dont get me wrong, i still think they will target innovation, but that will be in the form of bundled accessories that will be essential to 1st party games, and eventually third parties. at the heart of it though, i guarantee that it will ship with a traditional controller as well, blu ray support and im going to make a big call here, 4k Blu-Ray playback/1080p gaming.
also to address some of you points:
– you wont see a new sony/ms console for at least 5-6 years.
– WII-U hardware is not powerful enough o make mind-blowing ports of 3rd party titles. this has been reiterated by developer on many many occasions. Even EPIC, Square, and EA have all stated that the hardware is not powerful enough, plus the GPU lacks the feature set, to run their new engines UE4/Luminous/Frostbite.
– Nintendo gamers do want to play 3rd party games. I guarantee you that the majority of WII-U owners also own another console, in order to play 3rd party titles.
And just to add, yes Mario Kart looks unbelievable. but racing games are far from graphics intensive, you can almost pump your entire polygon count into the vehicles, when you dont need to worry about complex environments, and thousands of props in each scene.
All your counterpoints are fine, but the one you missed is the deal-breaker: Nintendo is a comparatively small, strongly Japanese corporation dedicated to videogames. The likelihood of them having the resources and the R&D necessary to compete against giant multinationals with deep pockets filled with money from their other endeavours on their own turf is almost laughable.
thats just the thing, they already have an R&D team working on hardware. they dont manufacture their own chipsets, like they did back in the 80’s and 90’s. it literally is a matter of picking more powerful components to go into their machine.
also Nintendo small??? not quite, they are in fact worth more than Sony. Sony as an entire company is valuated at about $17 Billion, whereas Nintendo is valuated at about $19 Billion.
I would argue that nintendo produced some of its best games ever while it had a console that was at least as powerful as its competition or better.
Newsflash – Nintendo is a large multinational company. which is never a bad thing. Multinationals bring employment, wealth and progress.
I never implied multinational was evil. Just matter of fact stating that they have bigger pockets and are generally more inclined to use their money into researching and producing “next-gen” hardware architecture. On the other hand, Nintendo has always understood that “fun” is something entirely unrelated to number of polygons and other technical specs. They know how to make things visually gorgeous that do not need the processing power to calculate every individual particle in a tornado.
I hope there will be a new Mario game.
It’s going to be a hybrid portable/home console. Bookmark it. It’s the only logical way forward for Nintendo at this point. They’re not going to join the arms race, gimmicks aren’t selling for them anymore, they might as well leverage their strength in portable gaming and incorporate home console gaming into it.
It’ll be a slightly larger n3DS XL in size, slightly more powerful than the WiiU (or basically whatever mobile tech is maxing out at in 2016) and will come with an HDMI signal sender to allow for TV play. Developers can choose to develop games designed for portable, home or a combo of both.
So instead of Nintendo having 2 teams making 2 Mario Kart games, or 1 team making 2 Mario Kart games, they can have 1 team making ONE Mario Kart game that can be played at home or on the go. This will bring development costs down and entice more 3rd parties who know that at least the DS has always been at least semi-successful.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking. Spreading scarce resources over two consoles is really hard to do; In fact, Nintendo are the only company who ever managed to do it with any real degree of success. But that was when they had good third party support, a luxury they no longer enjoy.
I just think it really allows them to narrow their focus and streamline their development efforts. Both will allow them to reduce costs across the board and should result in really healthy sales. If the NX really does turn out to be what I think it is, I’d be surprised if there’s too many people who wouldn’t buy one. Especially if Nintendo cleans up their account system and overall online approach.
What do I expect?
I wish something closer to what I want!
I expect that they’ll release an underpowered machine with a terrible OS, an accounts system which will make the Dreamcast’s Dreampass look up-to-date, awkward backwards compatibility and support for 500 different control solutions of which none are optimised for any single game. It’ll be comparatively expensive for the hardware, get no 3rd party support and the good 1st party games which get released will continue to cost more than a 2 month old Xbox/PS game 4 years after they’re release. Basically I’m seeing the status quo from every year since the internet became a thing.
I wish they’d go 3rd party for consoles and just focus on making the best games on the planet/ their handheld business.
Is this going to be the same surprise Chris Pyne is bringing in the budget?