quote:
If anything, Nintendo is on the verge of transforming the entire console paradigm, as I'm sure Sony and Microsoft will quickly follow in Nintendo's footsteps. As these slides indicate, Nintendo has realized that they can no longer support two separate platforms with diverged user bases. With every successive hardware release, they've had to wipe the slate clean and start over - in terms of users owning the system, available games, etc.

Now, it seems Nintendo is emphasizing the development of a software ecosystem that will support all of their future devices. With each hardware variant running the same OS, accessing the same programming libraries, and sporting a similar hardware architecture, each system can access the same pool of games. Thus, all future Nintendo systems will have access to the same massive pool of games, similar to Steam and iOS/Android. Nintendo will no longer have to worry about rebuilding new relationships with consumers via hardware - instead, users can download, buy, and maintain their game libraries via their NNID, and can play them on their console of choice.

Good points. Do you think they shift their tech even further down the scale, making "indie-typed" sized games with higher production values? That might be the only way to make a game for both systems.

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I agree, and I think Smash 4 is a prime example that Nintendo can get this right. No one would dispute the fact that Smash 4 on the Wii U is the definitive version, yet at the same time, the handheld version doesn't feel like a half-baked, poorly conceived afterthought of the Wii U version - it feels like its own distinctly robust game, ideally suited for a handheld.

See I think the Smash model is wrong, it's still making two separate games. That just doubles all of their efforts on fewer game types.

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Posted by Cs

Member since Aug 2008

10484 posts

Posted on 7/2/15 at 6:57 pm to Freauxzen

quote:
Good points. Do you think they shift their tech even further down the scale, making "indie-typed" sized games with higher production values? That might be the only way to make a game for both systems

See I think the Smash model is wrong, it's still making two separate games. That just doubles all of their efforts on fewer game types.

I think the architectural confluence of Nintendo's future systems will allow them to proceed in the opposite direction, actually. Nintendo has been bogged down this generation by needing to support both the 3DS and the Wii U, which was particularly straining as they completely underestimated the difficulty and production costs of creating AAA titles in higher resolutions.

I think the Smash 4 model is the gold standard for Nintendo, and it's something they're probably going to want to execute with all of their major titles. The problem with Smash 4's development, however, was that there were two completely separate teams developing the game - one for the 3DS, and one for the Wii U. This is due to the wildly different architectures of the two systems - the Wii U is running on an outmoded PowerPC chip, while the 3DS employs an ARM chip. They essentially had to have two separate teams writing two completely different sets and types of code. Game logic, optimization, netcode, etc...all of it had to be created twice by two different teams. This was incredibly inefficient and resource intensive.

I think the goal going forward is to unify their development talent instead of spreading them thin, and it seems they're attempting to do this by homogenizing the hardware and software across all of their future platforms. Ideally, developers will only have to code for one specific architecture, which can then scale across both the handheld and console. This frees up development time and allows Nintendo to allocate resources to additional projects.

This post was edited on 7/2/15 at 7:00 pm

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