Topic: Switchmas Eve Rumors and Speculations Thread

[supermario2k]

Nintendo has never been good at getting teenagers though. When we were kids, we all played Nintendo, but as teenagers most of us migrated to either Sega or Sony, SNES did alright comparatively but it struggled the first couple of years, and didn't really take off until around the time the entire industry was on the verge of collapse especially Sega, who did collapse just a few years latter.

Nintendo basically starts over every generation with the kids and desperately tries to hold onto, or win back, the gamers that moved on. They will do just fine targeting the 30+ crowd, which is the age group that spends the most money on games, who cares which groups sends the most time on games that's not relevant at all. Teenagers fuel the Xbox and Playstation but even Playstation is beginning to reap the benefits of nostalgia which I think, 20th anniversary of PS1 and all that, probably helped build the hype for PS4 as much as anything else.

Nintendo so Ian says Nintendo needs to make an open world game because that is what Sony and MS has, except Sony doesn't make open world games, Sony makes racing games, fighting games, and a few Nintendo knock offs, with some narrative stuff sprinkled in. They also don't make that many FPS games either, neither does Microsoft for that matter, those are all 3rd party games, presumably if Nintendo can attract the right audience, and a large enough segment of it, they can get those games to come back, Game Cube had open world games, it had FPS games, even Wii had a few, there is no reason NX can't also. Nintendo can't worry about 3rd parties entirely, they need to make the machine accessible, make the best games they can, price it right, target their core audience while making it accessible to as many people as possible and actually market the hell out of it. They do that by having more variety, which I outlined a path to that but someone else mocked me for it because maybe they just want Nintendo to make one game a year forever.

[ThePerm]

I'd say the majority of the top posers on this forums were teenagers during the n64 era(in our early 30s now). I'd say Goldeneye, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart have been pretty popular with teenagers.

If Nintendo made 3 years of nothing but M rated titles there would still be a big group that says "Nintendo just makes kiddie games"

[Soren]

Also, what the hell were kids playing in their DS systems all last decade? To say newer generations haven't grown up with some sort of Nintendo IP is ridiculous.

[supermario2k]

Okay, let's try this again. Nintendo 64 sold how many? It might have appealed to the loyalists, but what Nintendo console hasn't appealed to them? If you think Playstation wasn't fueled by teenagers then you were living on a deserted island in the 90's. Nintendo has never been strong with teenagers. Just because some people who grew up with DK and Smash appealed to those people who just happened to be teenagers at the time doesn't prove it appealed to the broader category as a whole. And like it or not Nintendo does appeal to kids, just because some grown ups, myself included, also get into their games doesn't mean they don't try to make games that have broader appeal but you gotta admit it's always been a token effort at best.


BTW, Perm you just proved my point, NONE of the games you mentioned were made by Nintendo, bravo buddy thanks for playing. Nintendo has never made games that appeal to teenagers, and as a whole their consoles have never appealed to teenagers. They appeal to kids, and adults that grew up with them, and a few who stick with them even through the awkward teen years. Perm, go back in time and I promise you had more friends that were into Playstation, even people in your HS that weren't your friend, that were into Sega and Playstation, than N64.

Nobody was talking about Handhelds, the rules that apply to them have never applied to consoles it's an entirely different market, no different everything.

[Luigi Dude]

Nobody was talking about Handhelds, the rules that apply to them have never applied to consoles it's an entirely different market, no different everything.

Only it isn't.  The people playing handhelds are still playing Nintendo games which shows Nintendo's current franchises are still strong with a large percentage of the gaming market.  During the DS/Wii era they got many of these people to buy both the handheld and home consoles.  Once again the Wii U's biggest problem is Nintendo gave little reason for people to own both since the 3DS had many of the same games that literally played the same.  Unlike the Wii era where there was a much bigger difference between their handheld and home console lineup.

[Ian Sane]

My point about the open world and FPS games is simply that Nintendo's games don't feel very modern.  They did when a game like Ocarina of Time came across a big ambitious title but not so much these days.  A reason why Zelda is going open world is probably because those types of games have replaced the traditional Zelda format as the ultimate epic videogame adventure.  A big part of Zelda's appeal is how grand it is and it doesn't look so grand anymore in its old format.

"Bigger is better" is an easy sell.  When a new console comes along people want to be blown away by what new possibilities the console provides.  That's why something like NSMB U was a poor choice for a flagship title.  It looks any sort of "oomph".  No one was looking for a console to play a sidescroller in 2012.  Doesn't mean it's a bad game it just doesn't knock anyone's socks off.  No one is going to play it in a demo kiosk with it's well done but unambitious gameplay and think "wow I have to buy this system!" and go tell all their friends unless they're already a big Nintendo fan.  So in Retro's case DKC won't make that kind of an impression.  Metroid could, if it comes across as ambitious like Super Metroid and Metroid Prime did in their time.

I know Nintendo has not been traditionally popular with teens but so what?  Nintendo has to be good at a lot of stuff they suck at for the NX to do well.  I can make the same excuses for third party support and online infrastructure.  Doesn't matter.  They have to improve on this stuff.  If they don't make improvements in their weak areas how are they going to do any better than the Wii U?

[ShyGuy]

YOU WANT RUMORS? WE GOT FAT STACKZ OF RUMORS. This from the Mos Eisley Cantina of video games, aka NEOGAF and has been apparently verified. Lots of info in here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=201100330&postcount=4778

- WAN Remote Play built in
- Luigi's Mansion 3
- Horse power
- Lots of games

[Enner]

A better dumb terminal will be nice to have. The Wii U GamePad is a nice idea, the GamePad we got was just too cheap (and simultaneously too expensive). Adding enough fancy chips for remote play with any suitable internet connection is a neat trick to add.

The AMD-centric one is curious. I'm dubious of the NX adopting the next-generation 14 nm chips from AMD. It's not in contemporary Nintendo's style to use such potentially expensive chips. But after the failure of the Wii U, maybe this is finally the time where Nintendo feels they need to go for it.

[ThePerm]

Okay, let's try this again. Nintendo 64 sold how many? It might have appealed to the loyalists, but what Nintendo console hasn't appealed to them? If you think Playstation wasn't fueled by teenagers then you were living on a deserted island in the 90's. Nintendo has never been strong with teenagers. Just because some people who grew up with DK and Smash appealed to those people who just happened to be teenagers at the time doesn't prove it appealed to the broader category as a whole. And like it or not Nintendo does appeal to kids, just because some grown ups, myself included, also get into their games doesn't mean they don't try to make games that have broader appeal but you gotta admit it's always been a token effort at best.


BTW, Perm you just proved my point, NONE of the games you mentioned were made by Nintendo, bravo buddy thanks for playing. Nintendo has never made games that appeal to teenagers, and as a whole their consoles have never appealed to teenagers. They appeal to kids, and adults that grew up with them, and a few who stick with them even through the awkward teen years. Perm, go back in time and I promise you had more friends that were into Playstation, even people in your HS that weren't your friend, that were into Sega and Playstation, than N64.

Nobody was talking about Handhelds, the rules that apply to them have never applied to consoles it's an entirely different market, no different everything.

I don't live in a revisionist history. Goldeneye was published by Nintendo. It was made by Rare, but Nintendo owned just shy of the majority share. When they sold their shares to Microsoft they got $375 million dollars. Smash Bros was made by Hal Labs. If you didn't know Hal Labs offices are located inside the Nintendo Kyoto offices. Miyamoto or Iwata meerly had to take an elevator or staircase to take a look at what was going on during development. Actually, Iwata would just stay put. He was president of Hal. Who else makes Mario Kart? Nintendo makes Mario Kart. Mario Kart 64 was made at EAD. The house of Mario and Zelda. Every game I mentioned was published or made by Nintendo.

lets take a walk through history.

Playstation comes out in 1994. During this time period Nintendo is still releasing SNES games. When it comes out it is met with mild applause. It does well, but not super well. At this time period I never saw any Playstations in stores. I do see Sega NOMAD, 32x, and Virtual Boy.

1995 Nintendo is still making snes games. Games like Donkey Kong Country and Metroid are in stores. If you walked into like a Target you would see an snes hooked up with Donkey Kong Country. Killer Instinct is in full force at arcades and is the big thing. Tekken is around, but not in a big way. You might walk into a k-mart arcade and see Soul Edge. During this time period you start to see some interest in Playstation in some magazines. Sega Saturn comes out in 1995 out of nowhere. At this point you start to see a lot of magazines start to compare Saturn and Playstation a lot. Meanwhile in the rumor section of the magazine there are rumblings about whatever Nintendo is doing. Its a big newspoint that Nintendo is working with the Silicon Graphics company.

1996 two big tings come out Nintendo 64, and Tickle-me-elmo. Initially both products are highly popular and sell out. There is a shortage though. Getting an n64 was big among my friends. Getting an n64 was more like getting a PS3.  You weren't cool if you didn't have one.

At this point if you were to walk into a Toys R Us you would see a trio of systems. Saturn, Playstation, and N64. The first time I played Playstation was in a Toys R Us. They had Mortal Kombat Trilogy on display. But **** that. Mario 64 was on display and the game was something to behold. I've always been a Nintendo/Sega/Pc gamer. We had 3d games on the computer. But they were all 2.5D shooters like Doom and Hexen. Ok maybe there were a few polygonal games like Stunts or Flight simulator. We also have to take into account that the games on Playstation were not using its power. Mario 64 was a revelation of just the amazing synthesis of ideas. It was special. There were lines in the store of people who wanted to play at the kiosk.

Christmas came, Christmas went. I really wanted an n64 that year. For consolation I got Super Mario Bros 2. and an Atari Jaguar with AVP, Cybermorph, Raiden, and NBA Jam. I stared to save some money to buy an n64 myself instead of relying on my parents. Resident Evil came out, but I didn't hear abut it until 1998. It wasn't an exclusive though. It was on Saturn too. D(DÄ« no Shokutaku) was a scary game too. Also Multiplatform.

The year is 1997. Playstation is this console that did well against snes, but got totally decimated when n64 came out. My brother was a big Sega fan. He collected a lot of magazines. I still possess these, because its a good refresher to read some journalism from the actual time period as opposed to the revised opinion of somebody who wasn't even sperm yet. If you had bought an n64 the previous Christmas you would notice something. There weren't a lot of games coming out for n64 in the future.

A game is coming out that will change everything: Final Fantasy VII. At this point people start to make a bigger deal about how n64 doesn't possess the storage capacity in cartridges.  I have to say though to me. No big deal. Mario 64 would still be a hot product in 1997. I rented an n64 from Blockbuster. I played the **** out of Mario 64. It was a hard game for a 13 year old. I mastered it though. I got an n64 for Christmas with Mario 64 and Diddy Kong Racing.

I went to a friends birthday party in February of 1998. At that house was an amazing game that would sell more than 8 million copies. Goldeneye 007. My birthday was in March. I payed 69.99 for that game, plus tax.
During a free day in 8th grade I got to see some wrestling games like wcw vs nwo world tour and cool boarders. Went to a few other friends houses and saw FFVII and more cool boarders.

I have to say at this point Nintendo captures the majority of the market share (IE more n64s were sold then Playstations had been sold in the last 3 years. But not by much. Sega Saturn wimpers off in the distance as I enter high school after the summer. I see an add in an Electronics Gaming Monthly magazine. Ye Snooze Ye Lose. Get the gold copy of Zelda. It was the thing in  my life I antiscipated the most. When I got it in Novemeber It did not dissapoint. In fact it moved the bar so damn high.

I have to note Starcraft and Half-Life came out on the PC that year. Metal Gear came out on Playstation. I didn't have a psx yet. Pokemon comes out too. It is a gigantic sales champion for Nintendo. Banjo Kazooie also comes out.

Lets skip to 1999-2000. And let me start to cut this short. N64 games dry up, psx games do the opposite. Dreamcast comes out and is a best selling system that breaks initial release sales records. Nobody buys the games though. Everyone pirates them. It was not at all hard to pirate dreamcast games. Sony captures the market share and maintains it. Sega captures 20% of the market share, but doesn't get further. Nintendo 64, which started off strong ultimately doesn't grow much after its initial popularity.

There is a severe drought in games for Nintendo. People have now completely switched from getting their news from magazines to getting their news from online. Oh and Playstation games are now only $9.99 while n64 game are still $60-$70. My brother won a playstation at his HS graduation. He didn't play it much. A friend gave me MGS which was awesome, but the second disc never worked. I tried FFVII again, and still hated it. My brother combined our Birthday money and bought a dreamcast. I had originally bought Aidyn Chronicles, which sucked, I took it back and thats where my money for Dreamcast came. We purchased probably only 3 games for the system. The rest we acquired This satisfied me during the n64 drought. I would have bought psx games if most of them weren't terrible. I did buy resident evil 3.

We hear news of ps2, Microsoft announces Xbox, Sega drops out. Nintendo releases games few and far between at this point. Gamecube gets announced. PS2 comes out, PSone comes out. N64 sales stop.

2 years into ps2 Playstation is still around. Still selling consoles. Nintendo is making gamecube.

What you should learn from this is.

Playstation started 2 years earlier than n64, if it had launched against n64 it wouldn't have gone off the ground. Playstation had continued well after Nintendo had moved on.

I would say the games people did buy for all sold well. Ultimately, the price of the games was a big factor. Getting a game for $9.99 is more appealing than getting multi color consoles and then paying 7 times as much for an n64 game.

Also, the lack of games. So many droughts of games. People would say Nintendo was kiddy. Even while you were beating them at Goldeneye. Console sales were pretty even until game droughts happened in 1999. Nobody wants to buy a system with nothing on the horizon(look at wii u). The n64 ultimately sold 32 million.
If you don't think 32 million people is a lot, consider this, that is almost the entire population of Canada.

But the biggest argument was that there were almost 2000 games for psx and only almost 400 for n64

also Final Fantasy Vii

lets also take into account the combined sales of GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, n64 vs psx and ps2 during that time period of 1994 till 2004. One would find that Nintendo sold more systems and games than Sony. Also, note Sony wouldn't be outputting much themselves besides wipeout and ape escape. Sony relied entirely on 3rd parties during this period. Nintendo had far more on their plate despite the narrative given by revisionist.

also note. In high school I wrote school papers about bias in video game journalism. I remember my interactions with people. I saw the shift, but it seemed to happen to some extant by media manipulation. Also, very shortly after EVERYONE had the internet.

[ShyGuy]

From the same thread:



Also, there has been rumors/speculation of Call of Duty, Madden, The Division, and WatchDogs 2.

[ThePerm]

I could start a part 2 about how on late n64 through Gamecube Nintendo SPECIFICALLY sought to improve its reputation with teen and mature gamers.

Eternal Darkness(Nintendo contracted Silikon Knights to make a survival horror game), it is an excellent game.
Conkers BFD Nintendo let Rare turn Conker into a violent sexual game
Perfect Dark was actually published by Nintendo.
Sin and Punishment when announced was supposed to be Nintendo and Treasures effort to get Nintendo to make A T rated game. It didn't come out though.
Someone somehow convinced Angel Studios and Capcom to get Resident Evil 2 on n64. It was a 64MB cartridge. INSANITY
The Metroid Prime Series is rated Teen
The Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil 0, and Resident Evil 4 was initially exclusive to Gamecube, I'm sure a money hat were involved. Resident Evil 2 and 3 were also ported.
Nintendo made a big effort with Konami to get Metal Gear solid on Gamecube
Yamauchi created a weird Q fund to get a Final Fantasy Game(Chrystal Chronicles) on gamecube T rated
Nintendo published Geist (it was mediocre and mostly forgotten)
Star Fox Adventures was rated T
Smash Bros is Rated T

none of these efforts changed the perception of Nintendo. Nintendo then decided "**** it, these rubes are stupid" and released Zelda Wind Waker. I also want to note a lot of people thought PS2 was more powerful than GCN. Nintendo stopped bothering releasing specs. They never mattered. If an opinion never changes despite new information than you are dealing with insanity. The only way to go against that is to go the other way.

[Soren]

Big rumor dump from 10k on Gaf. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=201100330#post201100330

T3
The NX controller will have a screen controller of some kind. Not known if it will be standard or optional. It won't have any processing power, more like a dummy Vita. But then this won't be the NX handheld either. I dunno, this rumor seems like a bunch of bullshit.

T2
Luigi's Mansion 3 in development - Next Level Games is supposedly doing it. Was a Wii U game at one point.

T1
The NX will use a custom Polaris-like GPU - There's a bunch of tech stuff on the post, I'm just going to put his tl;dr here:

The NX GPU is using features that are debuting on the Polaris chip, and is therefore heavily speculated to be a Polaris chip, as that would work well in a handheld too and help AMD prove they can make low wattage chips with good performance for small devices. (GCN 1.3, Vulkan, Primitive Discard Accelerator, etc)

Nintendo is using Vulkan with NX - Ties in with the Polaris GPU thing. Mentions a dev porting a PS4 game to NX.

Most dev kits won't be given until Nintendo formally reveals the NX - If this is true, don't expect a lot of games at launch, then.

MercurySteam has a dev kit and is making an already announced game for the NX. - Raiders of the Broken Planet maybe?

Final Fantasy XV on NX.

NX will likely launch at different times per region. - Because of the (cutting-edge) chips, there might not be enough ready for a Holiday 2016 launch.

There are lots of NX games in development. - Another quote

"And you can quote me on this on GAF too: "I think NX software output is going to blow away Wii U. There's a LOT of games in development. I don't know if we'll see all of them at E3, since a lot of Wii U projects weren't announced until January 2013, but I'm very impressed so far with what I'm hearing."

New IP are being developed.

My take? This is a lot of wishful thinking. The "NX will have lots of games" crowd doesn't jive with "most people will only get dev kits after NX is presented" crowd.

[Adrock]

Ha, I just got to that post after slogging through 96 pages of that NeoGaf thread. I'm glad I don't have to summarize it. Thanks, Soren!

NX Gimmick: I expect a screen controller, but I don't think it should be included in the console. I'm not worried about the cost so much as the stigma of launching a new console with a similar hook as Wii U. I suppose if Nintendo pushes it to the background and let's the games speak for themselves. When Nintendo unveiled the GamePad, the presentation was essentially, "FOR ****'S SAKE, LOOK AT THIS CONTROLLER!" Focus on the games and how they interact with Nintendo Network and My Nintendo, and I think that sends a much better message.

What's described by 10k sounds like one of those things that would only work in a perfect world. What's the point of taking the controller out of your house if it's main selling point requires a personal hotspot or WiFi connection? How often will people find themselves in a scenario where that's viable?

Enhanced GamePad streaming sounds good though. It wasn't great when trying to play from a different room or just to get something from my kitchen. My current apartment isn't that large. My new apartment is actually larger (my kitchen and living room are on opposite ends now). Outside of improved streaming, Nintendo should focus on making it smaller and lighter.

Luigi's Mansion 3: I'm somewhat surprised Next Level Games isn't an official Nintendo second party developer.

Custom Polaris-like GPU: FinFet 14 nm is pretty cool if true. Generally, that means better performance per watt (AMD describes it as a "historic leap" from Radeon to Polaris, you can decide if that's just marketing/PR) which is something Nintendo likes. This would be the most aggressive Nintendo has been in adopting modern tech in... probably ever. AMD is moving to 14 nm this year. For context, Wii U's GPU was on a 40 nm node in 2012 when AMD already had 28 nm GPUs for a year. NX having a 14 nm GPU tends to be hotly debated on tech forums. There's a push in that community that Nintendo should go with 14nm process with skepticism that AMD could have it ready for a Q4 2016 NX launch in the yields that Nintendo wants according to that DigiTimes report, or even what the minimum Nintendo would need available.

The part of the rumor that starts describing power is really weird and practically pointless since it has so little context. NX's GPU is "marginally" better than PS4's GPU, theoretically twice as powerful as PS4's GPU, and theoretically close to PS4K. What? Fine. Ultimately, it's more powerful than PS4. This goes along with leaks we've been hearing from Emily Rogers, IndieGamerChick, etc.

So far, we've heard that both CPU and GPU outperform PS4. That's great and all, but put that into context. PS4's CPU was not good in 2013 and the GPU was mid-tier. Is NX three years ahead of PS4? Does it have to be? Is this impressive, or just impressive "for a Nintendo console?" We should all accept the fact that extra power isn't going to help Nintendo that much. If NX even gets multiplatform games, doesn't expect significantly better performance. Like 10k said, it'd be stuff like steadier frame rate and enhanced effects. To the average consumer, they're probably not going to notice.

The idea that AMD pushed Nintendo to adopt a 14 nm process is both encouraging and exciting. This may actually be the result of the rumor that Nintendo is going with AMD for both console and handheld, in which performance per watt is extremely important in the latter. Early adoption drops the price of 14 nm faster. The more business AMD gets, the better. AMD cutting a deal with Nintendo to supply APUs for both console and handheld is the best case scenario for both companies as well as consumers.

Using Vulkan on NX: Nintendo joining the Kronos Group was one of those announcements that flew under the radar last year. The implications of this are rather encouraging. Nintendo is taking an active role in staying modern. Unity, Epic, Valve, and Dice have all contributed to the creation of Vulkan even if none have games that use it (yet?). Simply put, every major engine maker has supported and been involved with Vulkan so Nintendo being a contributing member of the Kronos group that developed Vulkan is only a good thing.

Most Development Kits Won't be Given Out Until NX is Formally Revealed: If porting is as easy as rumors suggest, this probably sounds worse than it actually is.

---

I don't have much to say about the other stuff. I generally like MercutySteam though Raiders of the Broken Planet isn't particularly my kind of game. Any non-shovelware game Nintendo scores is a good thing. So same goes for Final Fantasy XV. I would personally like remakes of Final Fantasy VI and IX.

[Caterkiller]

I'd be pretty happy with another screen controller but in a way that's done more like the patents. It should be small, sleek and look like something out of the future. The gamepad just looks like an old school clunky Gamegear. With a little screen in the center that's as small and as high quality as your typical smart phone's then it won't appear as intrusive to consumers. With these free form displays keeping the shape of a typical controller instead of forcing to be a rectangle, I think that in it's self would make a screened controller at least visually more appealing.

I love off tv play. It's great when I want to kinda watch tv at the same time or when I need to hide and keep quiet early in the morning while my kids are still sleep.

Just make that controller and the system itself look completely different than the Wii stuff before it. Luckily the new president already expressed his opinion about the Wii U looking far too similar to the Wii so I expect the form factor to be a non-issue.

These rumors are crazy, sort of. Seems almost too good to be true right? I'm optimistic.

[Evan_B]

I just realized I want to play Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Quest XI.

BUT I swore Zelda Wii U would be my last video game. Soooo, maybe at the end of the NX's lifespan. Maybe.

Oh, who am I kidding. Once the next Xeno title comes out I'll probably buy an NX.

[Adrock]

Oh, who am I kidding. Once the next Xeno title comes out I'll probably buy an NX.

You will join us, or die.

[Stratos]

That is a rumor that gets me pumped like the good old days. A lot of winning titles if even half of those turn out to be true.

[ThePerm]

If Nintendo is smart they'll have several upgraded wii u/ps4/xboxone titles for NX launch.

I personally would be fine if NX was an improved ps4 with an improved wii u controller at bare minimum.

Marketing will be the most important aspect moving forward with NX.

[Luigi Dude]

The Luigi'd Mansion 3 rumor is something I can easily see being true.  Dark Moon, despite being a sequel to a decade old Gamecube launch title that had a lukewarm reception, managed to sell over 4 million copies, which is a million more then the original Gamecube title did.  I can see Nintendo wanting to strike while the iron is still hot, especially since the team that made Dark Moon is still around at Next Level and doesn't have anything more important to make.

Plus there was a rumor several years ago that Nintendo was working on a Wii U port of both Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and Kid Icarus: Uprising.  That would easily explain the part about the game originally being a Wii U titles since Nintendo could have decided turning development making it a full fledged sequel was a better option then a port. 


Hey if that is indeed what is happening, maybe the Kid Icarus: Uprising port was turned into a sequel as well and will also hit the NX.  Of course that's harder to do since the original team was basically Sakurai with a bunch of freelance designers Nintendo hired to work with him.  Unless Sakurai is willing to come back to work on a sequel, I don't see who else Nintendo would hire to make a sequel except for maybe Platinum, but after Star Fox maybe they might do just that.

[Adrock]

Marketing will be the most important aspect moving forward with NX.

I'd put price above marketing. Nintendo is going to have a hard time selling NX for anything over $300. If the 14 nm Polaris rumor is true, some people are thinking $400. I could probably convince myself to pay $400 for a Nintendo console, but not the average consumer. I'm part of the dwindling fanbase who buys Nintendo hardware first and asks questions later. I like the first party output, and I don't have time for a lot of games as my backlog illustrates. I've always liked having at least a PlayStation, but I'm finding it harder to justify purchasing more than one console these days.

[TOPHATANT123]

Oh, who am I kidding. Once the next Xeno title comes out I'll probably buy an NX.

Here's my pipe dream, it's E3 2017, NX is a console with some handheld component (although I don't see how that works) and has been out for six months.
They've shown some good stuff but this is it the final announcement. President Kimishima addresses the viewers and explains they have one last surprise in store, screen fades to black...

*Beautiful piano music



The melody kicks in as well as a gameplay montage, it's a fantasy RPG, story driven, linear, 3rd person over the shoulder, HD, new IP set in a tropical land. Vibrant lush green forests and sandy beaches. In comes the battle system it's turn based with elements of time management, with the crux being that there's no mp and instead actions take up different amounts of time to windup, execute and then return to a ready stance.
Quick few shots of the cinematics; it's an age old coming of age tale with drama, romance and a giant tortoise.



That's right because the end goal of the quest and hence the name of the game (according to a random name generator) is "Tortoise of the North".
Who is this tortoise?
Where is the tortoise?(The north)
Why a tortoise?

The tortoise is shrouded in mystery, but what isn't is the release date as it's this holiday.
*Fade to black.


*Fade back to the Monolith Soft/ Nintendo logo. Music begins to build up.



What is this? Another one?
And is that Mika Kobiyashi I hear?
"It's something about this planet"
The Sawano drop occurs and a big blue logo splashes onto the screen.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3
     In development

[Enner]

As much as I adore Mika Kobayashi's vocals and Hiroyuki Sawano's style, I would prefer if Tetsuya Takahashi picked a different and new composer or group of composers for his next Xeno game. Sawano's "FULL ANIME" style meshed well with Xenoblade Chronicles X's sci-fi trappings for me, but there were more than a few people that didn't take the "FULL ANIME" music well.

On the NX potentially using AMD's 14 nm chips: This is a path that I don't at all expect Nintendo to take, but truly hope they do. Granted this will make the NX prohibitively expensive for little gain as the current PlayStation 4 secures the place of being the lead development platform for home console games. But I badly want to live in a world where Nintendo arguably has the most powerful home console for a few years, even if it means practically no difference when it comes to most software for the NX.

[Evan_B]

I don't really get the Golden Axe reference, but what you described sounded neat!

However, you clearly want Xenoblade Chronicles X 2, not Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 hasn't even coe out yet!

[MagicCow64]

As much as I adore Mika Kobayashi's vocals and Hiroyuki Sawano's style, I would prefer if Tetsuya Takahashi picked a different and new composer or group of composers for his next Xeno game. Sawano's "FULL ANIME" style meshed well with Xenoblade Chronicles X's sci-fi trappings for me, but there were more than a few people that didn't take the "FULL ANIME" music well.

On the NX potentially using AMD's 14 nm chips: This is a path that I don't at all expect Nintendo to take, but truly hope they do. Granted this will make the NX prohibitively expensive for little gain as the current PlayStation 4 secures the place of being the lead development platform for home console games. But I badly want to live in a world where Nintendo arguably has the most powerful home console for a few years, even if it means practically no difference when it comes to most software for the NX.

I poked around the NeoGAF thread myself, and the most coherent conjecture seems to be: Nintendo was planning on a 20 nm computer brain in 2014 for the NX, when AMD was still actively developing 20 nm stuff. But then AMD decided to drop 20 nm stuff and leap frog down to 14nm, which resulted in Nintendo getting a "free" upgrade. Polaris itself probably won't be ready, but Nintendo could be using a grabbag of Polaris features that are already ready to go, resulting in a sort of hybrid intergenerational chip deal for the NX.

[TOPHATANT123]

My reasoning is that traditionally Monolith Soft can handle more than one game at once, in 2015 we saw the release of Project X Zone 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles X and in the past we have seen titles like Soma Bringer, Disaster Day of Crisis both releasing in 2008, it'd make sense if now that developers are working on a single shared architecture (or it could be streamed but that doesn't seem likely to me) they get games out on that console twice as fast. For example if Mario Kart 9 comes out on both handheld and console NX that frees up the Mario Kart team to make something like F Zero where traditionally they would be trapped devoting most of their resources to Mario Kart, since as soon as they finish one another one is needed for a upcoming system on the horizon.

Takahashi has made comments about his next game not being tied down to a specific genre and story structure closer to a JRPG. From one section of the fans you see a desire for a change of pace with less FULL ANIME bombastics. Another section wants to see a continuation of the open world sci-fi style of X and an evolution of it's story and mechanics.

I don't really get the Golden Axe reference, but what you described sounded neat!

However, you clearly want Xenoblade Chronicles X 2, not Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 hasn't even coe out yet!

I would like X-2 yes, but I feel that even having it called X-2 makes the game sound like a side step or stopgap for the next game. Psychologically I think it needs to be something like Xenoblade 3 or Xenoblade Z even if it is a continuation story wise from X.