PixlBit

I don't think it's conspiratorial at all. There are far too many major outlets that are willing to take the industry's claims at face value, and toe the party line without rocking the boat. The fallout over the Xbox One's DRM policies and price-performance ratio exposed that in a very stark, ugly way. It's like political coverage, where the news organizations either deliberately slant their coverage for ratings, or stay as non-committal as possible to avoid offending sponsors or risk losing access to key players.

And I'm not the least bit convinced that publishers weren't happy about the Xone's DRM policies, and hoping that Sony would do the same. Not after hearing the constant pissing and moaning over not getting a cut of used games, or the insistence that critics were wasting their time fighting against an inevitable future, or even devs like CliffyB stating that we technically don't own games anyway so why all the talk about consumer rights? Indeed, I suspect that Sony's push towards PSNow, which circumvents real game ownership entirely, helped placate third-parties enough to allow them to not put any DRM in the PS4.

I really can't think of what Nintendo can do with their next console to turn things around. I seriously can't. I don't know how they can pull the core away from PCs and the other consoles, or casual players away from smartphones and tablets. There aren't any major untapped markets left for them to tap into with their own dedicated hardware, so they have no choice but to compete with someone now. Something they themselves say they aren't good at doing.

"The mobile space may be a far bigger ocean than the hardcore space, but flood any ocean, no matter how big it is, with shit, and nothing but parasites can survive in there."

Perfect description of the mobile market right there. Given Nintendo's committment to avoiding the devaluation of their brand, moving to mobile would be anathema to their entire philosophy on games. I don't want to see what comes out of that.

And that's another big reason I don't want Nintendo to go third party. Even while the WiiU is selling like trash, they're still doing wonky little games like that Gamecube remake with the robot where you take pictures and stuff. Having to compete on someone elses' ecosystem would lead to retrenchment into their safest franchises. It's strange seeing complaints about too much Mario alongside calls for Nintendo to abadon hardware in light of that.

I don't see that happening either. At worst I expect them to go the hybrid console/handheld route--but even that would end up slicing their total market share in half, if not more, since they wouldn't have money coming in from two different sources.

And I'm not super worried about their franchises becomign irrelevant. People have loved Mario and Zelda games for several decades now. Nintendo games have the most staying power in the whole industry.

The problem, though, is that third parties aren't even willing to port games that work on 8-year old consoles to the WiiU. EA put FIFA on the goddamn PS2 and PSP but not the WiiU; several big publishers (Take Two, Bethesda, Konami, etc.) don't even bother, despite stuff like GTAV and MGSV getting PS3/360 ports. Thus they won't even bring over games that work on much weaker hardware. That's how bad the relationship is.

And even if the WiiU was even in power, other issues come up. Nintendo has never released a console for more than $300 in it's entire history, regardless of what part of the market it was aimed at. How many people would pay $400-500 for a Nintendo box? Would people be willing to trust Nintendo's network infrastructure for multiplayer-centric games with the spectre of friend codes and the like? What would Nintendo do with that extra power to draw people in when they've spent years saying "specs don't matter"?

I'm skeptical that Nintendo would be able to address those issues, as they've been outright hostile to changing company strategies that alienate the core for a long time now. I never did believe them when they said they were going to make a big push to the core; given the WiiU's specs, how designing a small low-power box was a priority, and how basic stuff like portable account systems are STILL not available, I'm not anymore convinced. No amount of hardware power can fix that.

I know Sony lost something like $1 billion and had to cut thousands of jobs recently. That's on top of the job cuts they've already done in the past few years, alongside sales of assets (including their own building), just to stop bleeding money. Their market performance has been pretty miserable since the 90's; Emily Rogers did a great write-up on it at the Not Enough Shaders blog.

But yeah. It's funny how people say, "oh, Nintendo can't compete as a games only company", while their competitors struggle to deal with all the juggling they have to do. These losses are a very recent problem in Nintendo's history.

To be honest, it's something that only came to me when talking about it on Twitter a few weeks ago. I was one of those who completely glossed over it while Sony was curbstomping Microsoft at E3. 

Thanks. :)

Thanks. :)

Seriously don't get why they've never used that title.

And yeah, if it had similar specs to a PS4 AND the Gamepad, it would avoid the weight of being too weak hanging on it's neck right now. It'd probably be $500 too, though, and I doubt they'd have the stomach for that. 

Hell, there are full games on the PS4 and Xone you can get for that price now. It's pretty ridiculous in light of that.

Yeah, that's the main thing that pushes it over the line. If it's being treated like the first part of the main game, then there's no justification for charging $40 for it.