EddieE
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Posts
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The thing about Nintendos current, Wii/DS era strategy, is it is unsustainable and they know it.
Yeah, they made a truck load of money off console sales for both system, but the casual gamers who bought them were happy with Dr Kawashimas brain training and Wii sports and never got into buying software reguarly.
I think that big influx of mums and grannys and girlfriends who got into those systems have gone through that phase and they don't seem to be jumping over to kinect or move in droves.
Nintendo rode that wave with skill, now its time for them to look at what the next big thing will be.
What I am imagining now is quite different to my original speculation, but similar in other ways too.
The 6 inch screen thing - this is basically a tablet - so they are trying to jump on the ipad thing. The streaming to controller thing I don't think will be a main feature but just something you can do if you like. I think the touch screen will be a second screen, and in some cases a controller.
Due to the size of the screen, I imagine there being just a very thin strip of real estate either side. An analogue stick roughly centre (ergonically the best place from holding a postcard about the right size) of each side with a d pad above the left one and start/home buttons below, on the right two hardware buttons above and below. With bumpers and triggers on back (the form of which would also work like kickstand) this would be perfect for FPS games as the face buttons tend to be secondary functions anyway with the sticks and triggers the main controls.
Nintendo must realise they NEED TO BE FRIENDLY FOR fps games as these are the biggest sellers out there. Another big one, fighting games, would not be so supported by this format, but most enthusiasts would have fight sticks and the touch screen would offer plenty of space for an on screen series of buttons that would be big enough to work.
So you'd have a tablet controller that could be used as a main screen or a secondary screen/secondary control mechanism, but could also have all of the offline functionality I spoke of above.
Nintendo would then try (and I predict miserably fail) to make this an ipad competitor with wifi, web browser, iplayer, youtube stuff that they would be too controlling with and probably wouldn't work.
For me, I am cynical but not hopeless about Nintendo.
I'm old enough to remember fondly the days of the NES and SNES when Nintendo still did their nintendo thing but had massive third party support and hardcore gaming galore.
That was possible because the Nintendo pads did not demdand a certain kind of game play. While the Wii drastically restricted what developers could do and forced them to make games with motion gimmicks, a touch screen would open things up to let developers do more, and what I am now speculating would be perfect for FPS games which are the mainstay of gaming these days.
All pointless speculation I know, but hey, I love speculating!
Yeah, they made a truck load of money off console sales for both system, but the casual gamers who bought them were happy with Dr Kawashimas brain training and Wii sports and never got into buying software reguarly.
I think that big influx of mums and grannys and girlfriends who got into those systems have gone through that phase and they don't seem to be jumping over to kinect or move in droves.
Nintendo rode that wave with skill, now its time for them to look at what the next big thing will be.
What I am imagining now is quite different to my original speculation, but similar in other ways too.
The 6 inch screen thing - this is basically a tablet - so they are trying to jump on the ipad thing. The streaming to controller thing I don't think will be a main feature but just something you can do if you like. I think the touch screen will be a second screen, and in some cases a controller.
Due to the size of the screen, I imagine there being just a very thin strip of real estate either side. An analogue stick roughly centre (ergonically the best place from holding a postcard about the right size) of each side with a d pad above the left one and start/home buttons below, on the right two hardware buttons above and below. With bumpers and triggers on back (the form of which would also work like kickstand) this would be perfect for FPS games as the face buttons tend to be secondary functions anyway with the sticks and triggers the main controls.
Nintendo must realise they NEED TO BE FRIENDLY FOR fps games as these are the biggest sellers out there. Another big one, fighting games, would not be so supported by this format, but most enthusiasts would have fight sticks and the touch screen would offer plenty of space for an on screen series of buttons that would be big enough to work.
So you'd have a tablet controller that could be used as a main screen or a secondary screen/secondary control mechanism, but could also have all of the offline functionality I spoke of above.
Nintendo would then try (and I predict miserably fail) to make this an ipad competitor with wifi, web browser, iplayer, youtube stuff that they would be too controlling with and probably wouldn't work.
For me, I am cynical but not hopeless about Nintendo.
I'm old enough to remember fondly the days of the NES and SNES when Nintendo still did their nintendo thing but had massive third party support and hardcore gaming galore.
That was possible because the Nintendo pads did not demdand a certain kind of game play. While the Wii drastically restricted what developers could do and forced them to make games with motion gimmicks, a touch screen would open things up to let developers do more, and what I am now speculating would be perfect for FPS games which are the mainstay of gaming these days.
All pointless speculation I know, but hey, I love speculating!