Archive link: https://archive.ph/NF2r0
At some point, getting Nintendo would be a career moment and I honestly believe a good move for both companies. It’s just taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time… :-)
An Xbox branded portable with a soc taken from an Android tablet released 8 years ago would tank badly
Nintendo is successful because of their games, not because their hardware is the best
That and some of their hardware concepts. When they work, they really work.
If that hardware was the first handheld gaming device capable of playing some small selection of 3D current gen games? It absolutely would have been successful.
Being Nintendo didn’t make the Wii U successful, because it was the worst piece of shit anyone’s ever made. The switch was successful because it was a good handheld.
Nah, the Wii U wasn’t a bad system at all. It failed for lack of advertising and game support. There was nothing to play and people didn’t understand it wasn’t just a Wii accessory. The name certainly didn’t help either.
I agree. The Wii U was great fun. The second screen was great for off-TV play and for local multiplayer.
Not only was it terribly marketed, but Nintendo had trouble getting the 3DS to sell and put all their energy into saving that. This left the Wii U with a lack of games at launch.
Combine that with EA dropping Nintendo because they refused to adopt Origin as their online platform, and it was doomed from the start, whether the hardware was good or not.
Edit: and the gamepad was more comfortable to hold than the Switch, ironically.
I mean that the nvidia shield tablet, which was released 3 years earlier, had almost exactly the same cpu/gpu of the nintendo switch for $100 cheaper, but it was a flop.
the secret it’s in making a console that It’s not able to run real current gen games (even in 2017), but it’s able to run highly optimized games that look like current gen (especially 1st party games where they don’t aim for visual realism)
i think for pure raw power the wiiu had a stronger cpu than the switch, but then the software didn’t take advantage of
You can’t compare a console to an Android tablet. They didn’t give developers any reason to target the shield tablet; of course there weren’t going to be any games. And the built in controllers to make it a handheld were what made the switch the switch anyways.
Switch games never at any point looked current gen. They could support some games with current gen mechanics, in a handheld form factor. The switch had no path to success if it wasn’t a handheld. There are some people who only use it docked, but nowhere near enough that it was remotely possible to build enough momentum for third party support.
Microsoft has their own strengths. If they had made the Switch, there would have been less compelling first party games, but there would have been a lot more early third party buy in and it would have been a wash. Ultimately the fact that it was a viable handheld capable of some meaningful 3D worlds would have sold it.
What are you talking about? One of the first games they brought out on the system was Doom 2016, a VERY good looking game at the time. The fact that a handheld could run it was mind-blowing, even at half the framerate.
Doom looked awful on the switch. It took an extremely heavy dose of adaptive resolution, with a bunch of effects rendered at 360p, and heavy motion blur just to get the game to function at 30FPS.
And it’s a game that uses very careful design to run extremely well on very old PC hardware.
Honestly WiiU was sick as hell for MH3U cuz I could have all my UI on the other screen so it was super cool for immersion.
I agree, their first party games are usually extremely polished and accessible for everyone in the family. their concepts overall for consoles are typically really good though. just about every console since the Wii (except WiiU) has felt great to use, even if they all have some kind of gimmick. But I think the gimmicks help in their favor, it makes them stand out from PS and Xbox
They tried to be the best in hardware too but that failed so they stick with software
lol just saw the timeline, imagine spending years of r&d for the best game console on the market, then microsoft beats you by 3 days
Twice actually. If they used CD instead of cartridges N64 would beat the first PS.
I still think the N64’s overall technical superiority over the PS1 is very visible. Notice how much more closed in most PS1 games’ environments are. Spyro is the main exception, but that needed a lot of special tricks where N64 just does that. I say this as someone who doesn’t really like the N64 library.
Yeah, many games originally planned for n64 got scrapped due to cartridge format. FF7 is a notable example. All that processing power gone to waste because space constraint. They learned nothing of this and still used the alien mini dvd format in Gamecube.