Topic: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

[Stogi]

Graphics wise, I don't think Nintendo's next system will be that far above what is here now. They said time and time again that we've come to a point where, in terms of work, better graphics really isn't worth it.

That's why I think they will focus on Ram and Processor speed so they can fill up these graphical worlds with a bunch of things, making them feel more alive.

[Adrock]

If I just built a console with last generation specs as a cost cutting measure because I spent a fortune on researching and developing a motion controller I wasn't even sure was going to be a hit, I'd continue regurgitating that line about specs not mattering too. Nintendo did the exact opposite with 3DS. If specs and graphics didn't matter, Nintendo never would have made what is essentially a portable Wii.

[Stogi]

I think Nintendo gave the 3DS a graphically kick in the ass because they needed to, not because they wanted to. They knew they couldn't get away with a PSP with 3D. That and 3D itself needs better hardware just to run.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I'm iffy on backwards compatibility. There's a good chance Nintendo could ditch optical media. They've never liked discs, only begrudgingly employing them due to the lack of a viable alternative at the time. And Nintendo doesn't give a shizzle about our backcatalog. Backwards compatibility is not a priority for them and they'll do away with it if they can/have to and they know most of us would rebuy those games anyway. Admit it. I can. I paid $50 for each Metroid Prime game and still bought Trilogy. Even though I got it on sale, I still bought it. Why? Because. How many of us are going to buy Ocarina of Time again? They can toss in Master Quest and call it a deal, but I have that too...

They have DQX coming up, and if Wii2 is coming out early next year (which i think is very possible), then there is a good chance that DQX might launch after it's release. Having BC would go a long ways early on for perceived & actual value of the Wii2 especially if it upscales Wii content or DQX pulls a TP with an upgraded dual release.

[Ceric]

Nintendo is also not shy about having console expansions.  Honesly could see Wii2 being Flash based and having an extension that either plugged into the cart slot or the Wii two plugged in to provide backwards compatibility.  Think about how much smaller the Wii could be without the GCN ports and memory slots.  If you were going to BC then those would need to be included because a lot of Wii games use the GCN ports as well, honestly the newest classic controller should have been a wavebird...

Thats why if I was designing Wii2 to be cart based I definitely go the Exo-Skeleton root for BC.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I'm sure Nintendo could work out an actual GC Classic controller to solve that issue (maybe even a version that was wireless with it's own IR camera & accelerators too). I'm also sure their lazy programmers could also figure out how to make the GC & N64 emulators read the flash drive instead of mem card ports (same with Ram Expansion for N64).

[Chozo Ghost]

A cart based system would have a lot of advantages. Load times aren't really a major concern these days like they were in the time of the PS1 and Saturn, but optical drives still have many disadvantages. They have moving parts which means they will wear out eventually which means a cart based system will be more reliable and also have less power consumption. The drives also take up a great deal of space which makes the consoles bigger. Sure, the flash media costs more, but when you take into account the many advantages, isn't it worth it?

[Ceric]

A cart based system would have a lot of advantages. Load times aren't really a major concern these days like they were in the time of the PS1 and Saturn, but optical drives still have many disadvantages. They have moving parts which means they will wear out eventually which means a cart based system will be more reliable and also have less power consumption. The drives also take up a great deal of space which makes the consoles bigger. Sure, the flash media costs more, but when you take into account the many advantages, isn't it worth it?

Not to mention that if done right the cart itself could become built in enhancements down the road ala NES/SNES.

[Ian Sane]

I'm sure most of us would like to see Nintendo do more than just survive, though. They've become the market leader again, and that's great, but wouldn't it be even better if they had powerful hardware and decent 3rd party support as well?

I agree.  I never really cared if Nintendo was the market leader.  I'm not a stockholder and this isn't a contest so who cares?  I wanted Nintendo to be the market leader because I felt that was the step to having NES/SNES level third party support again.  Somehow Nintendo found a way to be the market leader without the Nintendo userbase benefiting from it in any way.  To me the Xbox 360 won this gen, not because they sold the most, but because like the Atari, NES, SNES, PS1 and PS2 before it, it had the best third party support and thus the best variety of any of the consoles for its gen.
 
I want Nintendo to have the best third party support, be the best game developer in the world, and make enough of a living doing it that they can continue to make great games and hardware.  I want Nintendo as Nintendo.  To me the Wii Nintendo is some weird pod-person Nintendo that lacks many of the things that made me a fan in the first place.  Artistically they're irrelevent.  They make casual titles and safe sequels to the same old franchises on last gen hardware and they don't care that their console's third party support is shovelware.  They come across as only caring about money.  Any way they try to move videogaming forward is entirely in how to sell to more people.  But Nintendo used to be cutting edge from a creative and artistic game design perspective.  They used to move videogame design forward.  They would make a game and the rest of the industry would struggle to keep up.  This gen their great innovation is that they found a control gimmick with tremendous casual appeal and that was copied.  But they didn't improve videogames from a creative perspective.  Nintendo has never wanted to be niche but this gen they became safe commercial mainstream product.
 
If this is the Nintendo to continue to exist they might as well have died.  I would actually have prefered to see Nintendo die out in a blaze of glory then to have watched them find tremendous financial success as sell outs preying on casuals who don't know better.  At least if they had died I could have fond memories of who they were.
 
So for the Wii 2 I want to see Nintendo succeed but as a groundbreaking company that moves videogames forward from a creative perspective.  I want to see the Nintendo that shook things up with titles like Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Metroid and Ocarina of Time.  I want to see the guys who dictate where videogames go and when everyone else thinks they've got it figured out, they leapfrog the whole industry with their next sequel.  I want the Nintendo that consistently strives to make the BEST games.  Not the conventional safe best-selling games but the BEST games.  No holding back for casual appeal, no cookie cutter sequels, no half-baked gimmicky controls, and no gimped hardware.

[Ceric]

I agree with Ian for the most part.  I also think Microsoft really got there act together with the 360.  It became the gamer system.

[Chozo Ghost]

I'm sure its no coincidence that this new Nintendo that Ian is referring to came about around the same time that Yamauchi retired and Iwata and Reggie stepped out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, since this new Nintendo leadership is still there and likely to remain there for the foreseeable future this new casual direction they've been steering the company in is likely to continue.

[BlackNMild2k1]

You are talking as if Nintendo didn't make a single good/great game this generation that wasn't casual focused.
Nintendo's only major mis-step this gen was assuming 3rd Parties would back them and then actually leaving them the room necessary for their support only to never actually receive it.

Everything else you said is the usual bitching and whining we expect from you, but you gotta remember that even the funniest comedian alive isn't gonna be funny every single time they open their mouth. You can't expect every piece of software out of Nintendo to specifically cater to you and your never satisfiable needs nor can you expect every piece of software out of Nintendo to be a masterpiece that will raise the bar and stand the test of time.

You also have to realize that a big reason a lot of 3rd parties don't put forth the effort on Nintendo consoles it the fact that they have to compete with Nintendo Software. You want them to be the best, done. You want the 3rd parties to copy their best.... but then we don't buy it because we have the superior Nintendo version, so they do it on other hardware where they don't have to compete with "The Best" that has already done it. So Nintendo tones it down a little bit and focuses on some more casual titles and guess what those same 3rd parties do.... they copy the casual stuff leaving all the core focused titles to other hardware. Nintendo is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Not really sure what you expect them to do when they aren't in control of how the 3rd Parties show their support.

My only solution is that Nintendo invest in more devs that produce more mature content and then release these games under a new branding. Like a Disney->Touchstone or a McDonalds->Chipotle like situation.

[Ceric]

I've never heard of Chipotle.  Didn't know McDonald had another brand.  I knew about Disney->Touchstone.

[NWR_insanolord]

The platformer renaissance Nintendo has produced on the Wii (Galaxy, Galaxy 2, DKCR, NSMBWii, Wario Land, Kirby) more than makes up for anything else they've done this generation.


EAD Tokyo has been such a smashing success that I can't believe Nintendo hasn't tried building a new studio from scratch again.

[Ian Sane]

You are talking as if Nintendo didn't make a single good/great game this generation that wasn't casual focused.

They have made some great games this gen but they're all very conventional sequels.  For the most part they were all safe sure-thing hits.  Something like NSMB Wii is an awesome game but it is pretty much 2D Mario by the numbers.  It's a great game but not really a creative one.  And if Mario follows that direction then we're all going to get bored because it does nothing new.

[BlackNMild2k1]

NSMB Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, SMG 2, Punchout, Metroid Prime 3, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Excite Truck/Bots, Xenoblade, The Last Story, Zangeki no Reginleiv, etc. etc.

Some may be sequels, some may be inspired by past installments in the same genre, but all are quality titles from I've heard. You can keep the blinders on if you want and continue to only see what will support your limited view, but I'm sure there were more than a few new games that they've done this gen that don't fit into your "safe sure thing hits" category.

[KDR_11k]

Nintendo is going far more traditional with the Wii than any previous system but the third parties are brain dead. They still follow the trends of the launch era while Nintendo is raking in the big money with 2D platformers. Stupid third parties aren't even trying to get in on that pie, they're still fighting the battle that Wii Sports won half a decade ago. The third parties are giving Nintendo the casual name these days because what Nintendo is doing is no different from what they were doing on the SNES.

There's an "inside source" claiming that Nintendo is going for the hardcore with the next system, I hope for them that that's not their only focus. There's a reason the Wii massively outperformed the Gamecube in the market.

[leahsdad]

You know, I remember a little game...what was that called?  Oh, yeah, Wind Waker, and when that introduced cell-shaded graphics, the most minor of departures, there was a sh*t storm.  Seriously. 


I think in a way, we want safe sequels.  We don't want change.  Or rather, Nintendo did change (motion, casual) and lots of people didn't like it. I think those people just wanted a Gamecube 2 instead of a Wii.  If that had happened, oh boy....there would literally not be a Nintendo anymore. 


If anything, I'm an older gamer (32).  I'm married, have 2 kids, and my first was born the year the Wii came out.  I think if not for the Wii, I would not be gaming anymore.  I wouldn't want to play PS3 or 360 with my daughter or my wife.  And I don't play online, because you need a whole lot of free time to really enjoy online play, which I don't have.  And I tend to like the games I grew up with, which is why I love the 2D platformers.  And I don't have the patience to sit through 30 minutes of tutorial missions in order to start having fun with a game, because chances are, I only have 30 minutes to game on a particular night anyway.


Oh, and I would never have been able to justify spending $300 on a console that only I would play.  But $200 on something for the family? 

[BlackNMild2k1]

So validations on rumors we've been hearing for the past month or 2 have come from Game informer (as reported by NWR) as to Wii2 being announced at E3 2011 for a 2012 release.

As I and many others have said before it will be 1080p (Iwata did say it will have HD rez) and be significantly more powerful than the PS360. We all know that if Nintendo is gonna support 1080p resolutions, they are gonna optimize it support a smooth 60fps framerate while using all the common & expected effects. That automatically means that it will be several times more powerful than the PS360 just going off that assumption.

According to multiple reports today, Nintendo will reveal a new console at E3 this coming June.

Game Informer first reported that the console is capable of running games at "HD resolutions." Our sources have said the the console is significantly more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and that Nintendo's intent is to recapture the hardcore market. Another source said it is capable of 1080p resolutions.

Nintendo is reportedly showing the console to publishers to garner interest for a late 2012 launch.

Additional sources tell IGN that Nintendo will release a pre-announcement this month with a full reveal expected at E3 and that the console will be backwards compatible with current Wii software.

It's even being rumored to have FULL BC with the Wii, because it would be STUPID not to. How do you follow up your biggest console success in this day and age and not have some way of easing in all the customers of the past 5 years, especially the massive casual market that now all own HD TV's? It's easy to emulate the Wii at the very least on competent hardware, so a system several times more powerful than PS360 shouldn't really have a problem with that.

So this sounds exactly like what I was hoping for with my "predictions" and fixing what some others have been complaining about for years. Hopefully 3rd Parties don't leave Nintendo holding the bag like they did for the Wii and the 3DS launch.

[Stogi]

Well if it does have full Wii software support, that means it's going to have a disc drive and thus be a disc based system.

A shame. I was really hoping for cards this time.

[Kytim89]

It will play Wii games then it must also play Gamecube, right? Ihope the Wii Shop gets a massive over haul and perhaps even Dreamcast support. If it plays Gamecube games then it must have the ports for that system, or Nintendo might elect to use controller emulation via a USB port or through the new Wiimote itself.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I'm sure controller emu would be the way to go, and then they would also sell a GC CC on the side for all those games that used the GC controller and the regular CCPro just doesn't cut it.

[Kytim89]

I'm sure controller emu would be the way to go, and then they would also sell a GC CC on the side for all those games that used the GC controller and the regular CCPro just doesn't cut it.

Why not go with my USB adapter idea, which I will not mention any further out of respect for the topic of this forum.

[Stogi]

I see them releasing a bluetooth CC that recharges with a usb cable or nothing at all.

[Chozo Ghost]

As far as the controller goes, I think the best way to go is to have a conventional controller which can break apart into a wiimote/chuck type deal for motion gaming, but then easily snap back together for a conventional controller experience. This way you get the best of both worlds in a single controller, instead of having to complicate things with one controller for motion and another for regular gaming.

Dual Analog sticks and a couple more buttons are essential. The problem with the wiimote and chuck was there was only one analog and not enough other buttons. So we need one more stick and probably 2-4 buttons added on.