Nintendo x DeNA Conference; Nintendo games on mobile devices, New "Project NX" platform announced

[SuperLink]

My whole thing is, nowhere here does it say that Nintendo themselves are making the games, just licensing them, so I truly don't see this effecting the console or handheld games whatsoever, other than maybe, just maybe a number of these mobile games will get a cross release on the Handheld

 

 

Also project NX sounds more like the replacement for NNID, and a OS moreso than an actual system

I probably should have quoted this on my previous post, but yeah the TIME article does actually say who is developing the games.

 

TIME: Will Nintendo or DeNA be developing these games? And is Mr. Miyamoto [creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda and other iconic Nintendo franchises] working on anything smart device-related?

Iwata: Development of smart device games will be mainly done by Nintendo, but it is significant that we are forming a joint development structure with DeNA. Nintendo, through experience in the dedicated game system business, is good at making traditional game products. But for smart devices, in addition to the “product” aspect of a game, the aspect of an ever-evolving “service” is very important—a service that encourages consumers to play every day even for a short time. DeNA has extensive know-how in developing the “service” side of things, and will be primarily responsible for the service-oriented operations. We will be able to greatly leverage strengths of each party.

 

Also, Project NX is a piece of hardware. Or at least is very heavily implied to be hardware of some kind. Reggie, Iwata and Miyamoto had this to say when asked about it;

“We view it as that marriage of the software with the hardware that together creates a compelling experience." - Reggie Fils-Aime

"If we don’t take an approach that looks holistically at the form a video-game platform should take in the future, then we’re not able to sustain Nintendo 10 years down the road. For us to create unique experiences that other companies cannot, the best possible option for us is to be able to develop hardware that can realize unique software experiences."- Iwata

“Our job is to continue to create new platforms that enable us to create fun new ways to play.” - Miyamoto

[Salamander]

Iwata is literally on record in official Nintendo translations describing NX as hardware:

 

Nintendo, together with DeNA, will jointly develop a new membership service which encompasses the existing Nintendo 3DS and Wii U systems, the new hardware system with a brand-new concept, NX, and smart devices and PCs, and Nintendo will be the primary party to operate this new membership service.

 

And here's a slide from Iwata's presentation showing NX alongside a bunch of other hardware devices:

 

 

This Nintendo.co.jp page, near the bottom.  NX is new gaming hardware, no ambiguity.

[Gabz Girl]

After thinking about it for a few days, I'm actually quite pleased with Nintendo's decision to join the mobile market because they seriously need more exposure after the Wii U's fail launch. I don't think we'll see many freemium games in their mobile stuff, but still I hope they don't resort to shitty microtransactions.

 

Also, this NX could be our newest game console, or at least new hardware for something in the future. Interesting.

[Salamander]

I just hope that this time they don't simply bundle together whatever hardware gimmicks they can get their hands on without any idea or plan of what to do with them.  The gamble paid off for the DS and Wii, but not for the 3DS and certainly not for the Wii U.

[Spooky Mulder]

I just hope that this time they don't simply bundle together whatever hardware gimmicks they can get their hands on without any idea or plan of what to do with them.  The gamble paid off for the DS and Wii, but not for the 3DS and certainly not for the Wii U.

50 million 3DS units shipped in an era when everyone has a smartphone anyway say differently. 3DS may not be close to the DS in terms of sales but it may very well go on to outsell the Gameboy Advance. Frankly, the 3DS's success is pretty remarkable for the current handheld climate. Sony certainly hasn't been able to come close to even scratching that with the Vita.

[SuperLink]

Nintendo wanted the 3DS to be a huge success, and while it is extremely impressive that the 3DS is doing as well as it is in the current market climate, I don't think Nintendo will be satisfied unless they can prove to the whole market that handheld gaming is still valuable alongside mobiles. The 3DS didn't do that for them, so in their eyes it's a failure.

 

Even if it's a little pessimistic to view 3DS as a failure, it's something I admire. I really bloody love handheld console gaming, I love it much more than any other kind of video game, and I'm pretty happy that Nintendo are still stubborn enough to keep fighting a fight that I consider to be a good fight. No one else is doing it now, after all. If they're not satisfied in a handheld system's sales unless it can take a big chunk of this mobile-infatuated audience then it means they're nowhere near done yet.

[Salamander]

While I was partly talking sales, I was more talking about success in terms of feature use.  People look at the DS's dual screens and the Wii's motion controls as essential, but for the Wii U by contrast we even see calls for the console to be sold with the GamePad omitted entirely - and how many games use the 3DS's gyroscope?  Microphone?  How much do people even care about the 3D, even, since the 3D fad has once again predictably terminated?  Nintendo themselves barely use their present-gen consoles' gimmicks.

[Blacklightning]

Well for what it's worth, Majora's Mask 3DS uses gyroscope functions, and it makes looking and aiming so much more comfortable it isn't even funny. And I think a lot of the hate against the 3D function stems from 1) the drain it causes on the originally short battery life, and 2) the difficulty in holding it in the proper sweet spot to see it, both things that the New model has refined on pretty well. I'll grant you that developers could stand to use them more often in less gimmicky ways, but that just makes it a matter of cause and effect - people take it for granted until somebody uses it in a cool way, and then it suddenly becomes interesting again.

 

I'd love to know what the fuck people are smoking to suggest that the WiiU needs a tablet-less option, though.

[Marcello]

I only have OOT3D (and WWHD) but I absolutely hated gyro aiming. It's not in any way more comfortable.

I don't particularly care for the other two things either. 3D is nice, but I can't say I'd weep if it never returned.

[Gabz Girl]

The Wii U's gamepad is a hate it or love it thing. Personally, I love it. Off tv play is bloody amazing and despite its large size, the gamepad fits comfortably in my hands once I get used to it. I have played Wind Waker HD, Super Mario 3D World and many other games easily with the gamepad.

 

50 million 3DS units shipped in an era when everyone has a smartphone anyway say differently. 3DS may not be close to the DS in terms of sales but it may very well go on to outsell the Gameboy Advance. Frankly, the 3DS's success is pretty remarkable for the current handheld climate. Sony certainly hasn't been able to come close to even scratching that with the Vita.

 

The DS sold hundreds of millions back then simply because mobile gaming wasn't really a thing. Now that you have mobiles and tablet for gaming, there's no way that 3DS was going to sell as much (or better!) than the DS but at the same time I'm mighty impressed by how well it's done. Way better than how Sony has treated the Vita.

[Conando]

I believe the 3DS just proves that there's still a place for dedicated handhelds in the market. Not as it was before, but enough that Nintendo can pursue future handhelds comfortably.

[Candescence]

Quite frankly, I like gyro aiming, it's not much of a hindrance, and it feels so much more precise than dual-stick aiming, and while one's hands can be a tad shaky, that's not a big deal (and in many cases, that's fairly realistic, I'm pretty sure even trained shooters have to deal with having to stabilize their arms most of the time). It's no keyboard and mouse, but we're not gonna get that unless we get the Gamepad equivalent of a Steam Controller. Splatoon is using it as an optional feature, which is grand, especially since you can probably use the right stick for quick-turning, and headshots are a non-factor. It's nice to have options, really.

 

The 3DS isn't an amazing success like the DS was, but over 50 million is hardly anything to scoff at, especially since the Vita crashed and burned spectacularly. Nintendo's main problem with it is that the 3DS was initially too expensive and had a confusing brand name.

 

The Wii U has that and lack of third party support, and I'm honestly not not convinced that more powerful hardware will fix that one. The Gamepad is fantastic in theory, and it's pretty much the best dual-stick controller bar none, but the cost of the controller itself despite the low screen res is its main problem. Nintendo probably should've just stuck with motion controllers with a 'Motion++' in the style of the Razer Hydra.

 

Both Nintendo systems are great indie machines, though.

[Patticus]

Is everybody here assuming that this "NX" system will be a handheld? If so, why? Why couldn't it be a main system, or even both a main system and a handheld?

 

'Mon now, give me some insight.

[SuperLink]

I'm personally keeping an open mind and don't have any expectations for what it is. All I know is that Nintendo's next handheld and/or console will be so similar that they'll share many features and be heavily compatible with one another. Whether they're one and the same console or more like close siblings released closely alongside each other, I have no idea.

 

But one thing I'm sure of is that the next home console and handheld will be very closely related and compatible, Iwata's made that clear throughout most of his recent interviews about Nintendo's future. We just don't know yet how example it's going to work.

 

So really, NX could be a handheld followed by a home console, it could be a home console followed by a handheld, or it could be both at once.

[Patticus]

Oh, well that sounds like a satisfying evolution of the Wii U's design, and a nod to the PS4-Vita relationship. Hopefully it will be a great improvement on that, more like the Wii U's smooth as fuck system-gamepad relationship.

 

If the next main system does intertwine with the next handheld as deeply as you say, we should expect that the two are being developed simultaneously, with the teams developing each collaborating closely to ensure the best possible end result. The release dates may hit the same year too, but that one's all up in the air - they do need to release fairly close together though. We probably shouldn't expect them to be much more powerful than the PS4 or Vita respectively either, given the likely limitations that offscreen play and such will impose.

 

Since there is likely to be an emphasis on cross and offscreen play, and given the possibility (I feel) that Nintendo will probably adopt its popular Pro Controller as its new base standard, we will likely see the next new handheld essentially be the new gamepad, with those crazy new screens, working as smoothly with the main system on off-screen play etc as the U, only with more range and its own host of games, with lots of shared features. 

[SuperLink]

Yeah I don't expect a powerhouse, especially if they want both systems to be affordable alongside each other to provide the full experience of each. I know people will always want Nintendo to make a powerhouse but unless it becomes way cheaper to develop powerhouse consoles I can't see it happening.

 

because nintendo don't like developing expensive consoles

[Candescence]

And depending on future advancements in tech, another generational leap over the PS4 might even be overkill. We're rapidly approaching the threshold for diminishing returns as it is - the PS4 isn't the enormous leap that the PS3 was to the PS2, for example. The next generation isn't gonna be far ahead of the likes of Uncharted 4 and FFXIV.

 

Games with better graphics are also becoming more expensive to make, it's a bubble waiting to burst. AAA Gaming budgets have already caught up with blockbuster films, which are facing the same problem.

 

Really, Nintendo's direction of keeping things more modest, for better or worse, is far more sustainable over the long run, even if it doesn't endear them to the AAA publishers who are driving towards a cliff.

[Patticus]

If the next handheld and main system are being developed in tandem, I think that it might be possible for a person playing, say, Smash Bros, on the main platform, to play a multiplayer game with a person playing Smash on the handheld, as well perhaps as someone playing on another regular controller - cross-platform cross-play. It might be doable with several of them, even. That shouldn't be as taxing as having two gamepads for the U running simultaneously, as the handhelds would handle the bulk of the processing, rather than relying on the main system to do it all.

 

Ah Nintendo console speculation, how I've missed you!

[Salamander]

I agree, and I think Nintendo have a lot of reasons to want their next systems to have greater cross-compatibility; they've been showing greater interest in cross-compatibility on the 3DS and Wii U, too - having Smash Bros. and Mario & Donkey Kong on both, getting certain indie games on both where they can (like Shovel Knight, and Shantae & The Pirate's Curse), tentative experiments in cross-buy.  It's worth remembering that the Wii U's GamePad + TV dual-screen set-up is in principle pretty similar to the 3DS's dual screens.  I regard that as foreshadowing.

 

I'm envisaging a sort of beefed-up Wii U for which you can also buy and use the GamePad completely independently, or where the handheld is basically a standalone GamePad plus extra TV-equivalent screen, and you can connect the handheld to the main console and use it as another GamePad too.  I guess the expecation is that you'd be able to play games designed for the handheld on the big screen and with extra processing power, or transfer across a scaled-down version of a console game to the handheld and take it away maybe.  Something along these lines strikes me as the most obvious direction for them to go in...

 

...But of course, this is Nintendo, so they may do something completely off-the-wall and unexpected.  You can speculate, but you can't make assumptions.

[-Robin-]

Nintendo's mobile gaming branch will be run by the producer of the Mario Kart series.

 

EDIT: All of Nintendo's IPs are up for grabs for DeNA for making mobile games, and Nintendo intends to release 5 games by March 2017.

 

As we confirmed on March 17, all of our IP can be considered for a smart device game. On the other hand, since the game business on smart devices is already severely competitive, even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game. Also, if we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices, and the appropriate business models are different between the two, so we would not anticipate a great result. If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all. Accordingly, we are going to carefully select appropriate IP and titles for our smart device deployment.

 

 

Regarding the number of the titles, you may want to know that we will release approximately five titles by the end of the next fiscal year, which is the end of March 2017. You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.

 

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/150508/03.html

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

So they want to bring quality and recognition to the handheld market, smart move

[Candescence]

Right, so, according to Nikkei, an internal source has stated that Nintendo are using an Android-based OS.

 

From NeoGAF:

 

 

 

The Nikkei put up an editorial earlier today about Nintendo's partnership with DeNA. It's a pretty long article (and you need an account to read most of it, so unless you sign up that link is kinda useless), but most of it is about historical connections and basically an overview on the relationship.

The interesting part is that the article starts by discussing Nintendo's next platform - the one Iwata codenamed NX. They have an insider source who claims that the OS for the platform will be Android based, and that it is a paradigm shift for Nintendo business-wise. The source goes on to say that when third parties abandoned Nintendo's WiiU one by one, it caused turning point in the company. So while they have had a philosophy of developing their own software and hardware concepts internally for all these years, they are now prepared to embrace a more open platform with Android, to allow developers more flexibility in making content that can also be on smartphones and tablets.

---

Edit: Please do not assume that the NX is an Ouya or a Smartphone. None of those things are implied. This is merely about the software architecture of the operating system.

 

 

Keep in mind that we're talking about an OS that is using Android as a base, not a straight-up Android OS. Android itself is a highly robust OS architecture that can work on basically any hardware, and offers numerous advantages, especially ease of porting, since pretty much every major game engine these days has Android support, which is a good thing. It does not mean that Nintendo is suddenly making a smartphone, it could be a console or a handheld for all we know.

[Marcello]

NX was announced to show that Nintendo is still focusing on consoles, so logically it would be a console (Home or handheld is a different question).

 

On the other hand they also said they'd base their future OS off of Wii U's, so clearly they can't be trusted

[Spooky Mulder]

NX running Android makes a lot of sense if Nintendo is going to be developing mobile games with DeNA. This will probably keep them playable on a Nintendo platform even if that's not the targeted platform for these games.

I still think NX will ultimately incorporate some sort of VR/AR headset. That's the future of gaming and Nintendo already missed the boat on HD. Getting ahead of the game on VR/AR would put Ninty back on the cutting edge and could attract some enthusiasm among 3rd party devs.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

NX running Android makes a lot of sense if Nintendo is going to be developing mobile games with DeNA. This will probably keep them playable on a Nintendo platform even if that's not the targeted platform for these games.

I still think NX will ultimately incorporate some sort of VR/AR headset. That's the future of gaming and Nintendo already missed the boat on HD. Getting ahead of the game on VR/AR would put Ninty back on the cutting edge and could attract some enthusiasm among 3rd party devs.

 

But they already were ahead on VR, 20 years ahead with the Virtual Boy

 

On a serious note, I hope not, I'm not a big fan of VR, heck I can't even percieve 3D effects for some reason, it would either be 2D, or give me a headache