The next console from Nintendo needs to be a winner. We have ideas for how the company can modernize its approach
Nintendo is at a crossroads. New president Tatsumi Kashimi has taken over the leadership role following the passing of the late Satoru Iwata. After a previous reluctance, the company is moving into the mobile market thanks to a deal with free-to-play specialists DeNA. The Wii U is last in the three-horse home console race, and delays to some of its software like The Legend of Zelda and Star Fox Zero haven’t aided its cause. The 3DS library is also drying up rapidly.
With so many things in flux we have a lot of questions and hopes for Nintendo’s next system, codenamed the Nintendo NX. Not much is known about the NX at this time. Nintendo has promised to deliver more details about the platform this year. However, with the PS4 at the top of the console mountain and Xbox One finally finding its way after a good holiday season, all eyes are on Nintendo to see how it responds. Given the company’s state of affairs, gamers hope the NX is successful enough to help Nintendo rebound from the Wii U. Here are some of things we think the system needs to do to make that happen.
HARDWARE IN THE MAKING
We don’t know what the NX intends to be, but Nintendo did shed light on what it won’t be. “I can assure you we’re not building the next version of Wii or Wii U,” Kashimi told Time regarding the NX. “It's something unique and different.” Zigging as the rest of the industry zags has been the blueprint for the past two systems. Can the company successfully march to the beat of its own drummer while still capturing the imagination of the public like the Wii did? Also, what kinds of lessons will Nintendo draw from the Wii U’s relative failure for the NX?
Multiple sources have told The Wall Street Journal that the console will be powerful enough to match the current competition from Sony and Microsoft, and will feature both a home-bound component and one you can take with you outside of the home. Both units would work with each other, as well as separately on their own. Last December, Nintendo filed a patent for a controller dominated by a touchscreen display that also contained traditional features such as sticks, inputs, and shoulder buttons. Whether this is for the NX’s controller or just one of the many patents that companies file that never see the light of day remains to be seen, but it makes sense as a hybrid of the kind of controller we’ve become accustomed to and the Wii U’s Gamepad.
If the controller is indeed dominated by the touchscreen display, it could be a functional mobile handheld unit as well. While we imagine the standalone unit’s distance to the home unit will be tethered via wi-fi, it would be great if some sort of crossplay functionality makes every NX title playable on the traveling unit in public. At a minimum, it will be interesting to see the synergy between the controller and main system.
Speaking of being on-the-go, the 3DS handheld currently fits that bill successfully for Nintendo, who says that it has no plans to move away from its tradition of having a standalone handheld. As far as the 3DS and the NX communicating, Nintendo hasn’t traditionally done this extensively with its handhelds and home consoles. The company’s desire to keep the profitable 3DS and its successors relevant could draw a line between its traditional handhelds and the NX.
In broader terms, we hope Nintendo learned its lesson from the Wii U in the hardware horsepower department – lagging so far behind the other consoles is not a good idea. It’s early enough in the lifecycles of the PS4 and Xbox One that the NX could easily get up to speed and also be in a good position to deliver this console generation’s evolving experiences in the future.
Another patent filed by Nintendo describes a system without an optical drive, but support for an external hard drive and a card slot. If the NX doesn’t have an optical disc drive and goes all-in on digital games and away from disc-based games – as well as DVD/Blu-ray playback – it would lower the cost of the unit but also be an interesting step away from traditional retail games. This approach could also use the card slot for proprietary game carts, which would be a step back to older Nintendo consoles and probably incur increased costs for third-party publishers. Again, however, patents are often just ideas.
While matching the other systems’ power and content delivery methods are good ideas, we certainly wouldn’t want the NX to just be exactly like the rest of the crowd. Perhaps more fully using the popular Amiibos is a way to differentiate the NX and could maximize the figures’ abilities beyond just being cute collectibles.
ALL ABOUT THE GAMES
The Wii and Wii U have been uneven on the software front, featuring some great first-party software, the occasional third-party title that hits the mark, and a lot of forgettable filler. It doesn’t have to be this way with the NX.
Nintendo needs to buckle down and improve the direction and overall timing of its first-party lineup in the future. Franchises like Metroid and Kid Icarus should receive proper installments that dig into the core of why fans fell in love with them in the first place instead of taking sidesteps into genres and tones that are alien territory. All console manufacturers can struggle to consistently deliver first-party software from internal studios (just look at Sony in 2015), but with Nintendo’s stable of stars the company could be formidable if it keeps gamers satisfied with a steady diet of quality. Backward compatibility also has the potential to open up the floodgates.
Nintendo’s relationship with third parties has been strained for a while, and getting things back on track will be a big factor in the NX’s potential success. Even if Nintendo bristles at its systems getting ports of games also available on other consoles, it expands a platform’s library and allows gamers to use the system as their primary console. Gamers would be thrilled if the NX was the only system they had to buy and could still get the good majority of gaming experiences. Third parties would certainly welcome the opportunity to do brisk business for their entire software slates, and the better a third party is doing on a platform, the more likely it is going to want to do things like exclusives and take risks with the console. Currently, there are no confirmed games for the NX, although Square Enix has said it’s considering bringing Dragon Quest X and XI to it.
Nintendo’s need for better third-party support is related to how technically different the NX ends up being from the other systems. Third-party publishers and developers want the development and porting processes to be easy. Thus, Nintendo is going to have to walk the fine line between the NX’s features standing out amongst the competition and facilitating new gaming experiences without being too demanding on developers’ time and resources. Using a common PC infrastructure to the PS4 and Xbox One would go a long way to making ports an enticing opportunity to third-party publishers.
THE BIG DAY
When the NX comes out, the price has to be right. With all due respect to the overhead it costs to make these hightech systems, no consumer likes sticker shock getting in the way of their excitement. If the rumors about the NX so far are to be believed, it seems a stretch that the NX will be as cheap as the Wii was when it came out for $249 in 2006. It will be interesting to see if the NX tries to match the current price points of the competition at $300 to $350, or if it will debut more toward $399 like new home systems in the past.
In terms of timing, getting too far from a 2016 release could be a problem for the NX, as the longer Nintendo waits the more entrenched the PS4 and Xbox One become in their install base and the systems’ software reaches the next tier of their evolution. The NX isn’t going to catch the industry leading PS4 in sales (with more than 30 million sold to consumers) any time soon, but it hopefully should be able to deliver comparable experiences, if not unique ones. The Wall Street Journal report says development kits for the NX have gone out to studios, which if true, could make a late 2016 release possible.
Launch lineups are often uneven, and it’s anybody’s guess what we’ll be playing day one on the NX. The Wii U’s Zelda title was delayed from its 2015 release into 2016, sparking speculation that it would appear on both the Wii U and NX similar to how The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess came out for the GameCube as well as the Wii.
A Nintendo system debuting with a Zelda or Mario title would be a jackpot, and with improved third-party relations the initial launch period could help Nintendo boast a good representation of quality titles. The Wii U started out with a good collection of games like Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 that came out much earlier on other systems. The key for the NX will be making its launch lineup timely with other systems instead of a collection of titles that have already been out for months.
ANOTHER CHANCE AT ONLINE
Through its own hesitation, Nintendo still lags in the online space. While the Nintendo eShop has gotten up to speed with its regular influx of content – including indie titles – the company has so far obstinately made its online multiplayer and account setup non-user friendly.
Easily hooking up with friends for party gaming with universal voice-chat for all games would help bring the NX into parity with the PS4 and Xbox One. Moreover, a system-spanning gamer I.D. that’s not tied to one specific piece of hardware would make transferring your data and purchased digital games a lot easier if your system goes up in smoke, migrating your content from the Wii U to the NX, and if you buy a new hardware iteration of the NX.
Nintendo says it is planning a membership service created by partner DeNA called My Nintendo as a replacement for Club Nintendo, which could facilitate easier data transfer, but we’ll have to wait and see exactly what it encompasses.