The GHZ Forum

So word around the webs is Nintendo preparing a new console. I'll just list off my thoughts on the rumors:

2012 launch-obviously a given.

E3 reveal- plausible though they might focus on 3DS this year & save the reveal until next year.

HD resolutions-Also a given, at the least it'd be like the dolphin emulator.

More powerful than PS3/360-Now they're starting to lose me. Granted the Wii was the exception not the rule when it came to Nintendo's philosophy on console design but the 3DS isn't exactly rivaling the NGP in graphics so I'd kinda doubt the next system will be PS4like in power.

Controller functionally like a GCN-Kinda comes across as Nintendo admitting defeat on their blue ocean strategy. I would've assumed the next system would expand on the Wiimote in a new way.

Controller also has a 6 inch HD touch display used for streaming the game being played on the tv-Uh, WHAT?! OK I can tottally buy the idea of a small touch screen for adding DS-like gameplay but that's a freaking tablet! Not very likely IMO.

That last rumor, if used in that way, reminds me of the PS3/PSP Remote Play feature, only without the need of getting a second, portable system: http://us.playstation.com/ps3/features/ ... ivity.html

PlayStation site wrote:Remote Play lets you access your PlayStation®3 system with your PSP® system via a wireless Internet connection. That means you can access media files on your home console —music, videos, pictures— from your PSP®system. The PSP® system can even fire up your PlayStation®3 system remotely from stand-by mode with Remote Start. And when Remote Play is combined with DLNA®, you can use your PSP® system to access media files stored on your home computer.

But come on, it's Nintendo. Four Swords Adventures, ho!

Team Mecha wrote: More powerful than PS3/360-Now they're starting to lose me. Granted the Wii was the exception not the rule when it came to Nintendo's philosophy on console design but the 3DS isn't exactly rivaling the NGP in graphics so I'd kinda doubt the next system will be PS4like in power.

The Wii is more powerful than GC, PS2, and Xbox. It just isn't more powerful than the current-gen systems it's competing against. Nintendo will likely make a system that is more powerful than the 360 and PS3, but not more powerful than Xbox 3 or PS4. If they launch in 2012, they'll be the first out of the gate and could potentially push the other two companies to release next-gen systems within a year. Nintendo would be putting itself in a similar position to what Dreamcast had in terms of comparative release and system power. This is a strategy that relies on establishing itself early on in the cycle, but leaves itself open for the competition to mimic any success it has.

This generation was so slow to get started, 2012 feels almost too soon. 2012 is a long time from now, but it feels like the Wii just launched yesterday. I'm not sure I'll be ready for the next gen by then. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I am interested to see what Nintendo brings out as this system's gimmick and how well that can hold their audience's attention.

I'm definitely not going to be ready for next gen. I'm not even ready for current gen! Any intention of getting a PS3 or 360 has gone right out of the window. I'm basically waiting for either Mac/cloud gaming to take off or for me start getting a steady flow of income (sadly, the former is more likely in the forseeable future).

I just bought a game pad for my Macbook's Boot Camp Winodws XP, since that's the closest thing I have to a dedicated games machine. (I have a Wii, but no TV in my student room so it's stuck at home.) It's all a bit sad, but at least now I can play Super Meat Boy now without getting 20 minutes of finger pain afterwards.

Incidentally, I have a gift copy of Super Meat Boy sitting around on Steam if anybody's interested (drop me a PM).

And Super Meat boy is taken.

This generation was so slow to get started, 2012 feels almost too soon.

Man, no shit. It's been over 5 years since the 360 launched and the price has barely gone down at all. To put that in perspective, the Xbox 1 was only out for 4 years before the 360 came along. It's already been a normal console cycle and we're really not ready to go anywhere yet. The only console that I think is genuinely ready to be retired is the Wii, which ironically is the youngest of the current set.

Maybe Kaz Hirai wasn't just bullshitting when 5 years ago he was rambling about a 10-year cycle.

Kaz said the same thing about the PS2 too though... And to some degree he was right. There's still random shovelware that appears on PS2 every few months. I think the latest WWE game came out with a PS2 version.

If Sony really goes even 9 years without launching a new system it will be by chance that things turned out the way Kaz predicted, not some 10 year plan Sony had laid out.

In the US, PS3 came out almost exactly six years after PS2. Sticking with that time frame would put the PS4 around November 2012. The PS2 may have had ten-year life, but it wasn't Sony's only console for that whole time. Keep in mind also that the PS3 hasn't dominated the market like the PS2 did.

Nine years from the PS3 release would be 2015. I can't imagine them waiting that long. There's an Extra Credits video called "Consoles are the New Coin-Op." If I recall correctly they predict two more console cycles. My worthless opinion says there will be one. Of course, this is baring some sort of technological/financial/other Armageddon that forces things to slow down more than they have already.

MiraiTails wrote:Nine years from the PS3 release would be 2015.

And we'd still have to use our hands! That's like a baby's toy!

Elijah Wood plays on his Xbox 3 with Kinect. A lock for 2015? BttF predicts the future again!

I still can't afford an Xbox 360 or PS3, so I'm in no hurry. I've not been particularly excited about a console release since the Dreamcast, which was, objectively speaking, a BIG DEAL. The technological improvements since then have just been too incremental to catch my attention. Now if someone decided to bring back 2D hand drawn games in a big way...

I've probably said this before, but whatever: the jump to higher resolutions resulted in crisper yet not that much more impressive visuals on the 360 and the PS3, and since higher resolution graphics demand bigger amounts of system and video memory (of which both systems lack) the environments also aren't that bigger either. Only in some of the latest titles did the best developers manage to make the most out of each and every byte to expand the environs and really polish the graphs and come up with something really outstanding.

And now we have 3D TV and Full HD (keep in mind that, unlike PC games, there are almost no console games that are actually rendered in real-time at a native resolution of 1920×1080, just upscaled), and new systems have to be designed with these and maybe other technologies in mind, until it all settles down on a single standard once more.

As for MiraiTails' link, digital distribution is a kickass development for people in the third world especially (YAY, NO MORE SHIPPING COSTS!!), although I'm not so sure about actual streaming to thin clients. It's good for older games and everything (I think it's ideal for portable systems), but unless servers and Internet connections get an impossibly gigantic power and speed boost, and lag is reduced to almost imperceptible levels, we won't get the full AAA experience. And I'm sorry for social network/indie games' fans, but innovation (the GOOD one, the real one, that is) doesn't lie that way.

gr4yJ4Y wrote: Maybe I'm just getting old

I'm pretty sure it all comes down to this. It's a lot harder to be fascinated or excited as you get older. Plus time goes relatively faster.

Crazy Penguin wrote:'ve not been particularly excited about a console release since the Dreamcast

I feel exactly the same way.

Isuka wrote:... unless servers and Internet connections get an impossibly gigantic power and speed boost, and lag is reduced to almost imperceptible levels, we won't get the full AAA experience.

I haven't tried streaming gameplay (Onlive still isn't released over here), but everyone I've spoken to has said that the lag is pretty imperceptible already.

Of course, you won't get the best performance unless you pay a lot of money to own a piece of machinery dedicated to a specific task. But that just seems like a very inefficient way of doing things when you can get almost the same result from a home computer, which can also do so much else.

I remember back when I was going through a DDR phase and I would hear about nutcases who had invested thousands of dollars into buying an entire arcade machine for their personal use; it seemed utterly baffling to me, but I had to concede that it was the best way to play if you were serious about the hobby. Now, I have friends who feel the exact way about consoles. The only games console they can possibly imagine being worth the money is the Wii (it's cheaper than Kinect/Move), and only because the control scheme is somewhat novel.

Handhelds are a different matter, but the smartphone phenomenon is definitely something to watch.

digital distribution is a kickass development for people in the third world especially (YAY, NO MORE SHIPPING COSTS!!)

This is pretty much a ludicrous myth. Speaking from one myself, while it's been difficult locating Dreamcast and games in my little alpine-mediterranean corner of the old continent, any sort of online interaction was at the time entirely non-existent. Nowadays it's pretty easy to run into PS2's, PS3's, Xboxes, 360s, Wiis...second-hand stores also offer a generally huge amount of games and the official shops are filled to the brim like it was the 90's all over again. But the online bits of those consoles only started working a while ago, and the only reason they do work is because the country in question has recently put a wi-fi transmitter on practically every corner; any sort of national-scale online distribution model for consoles simply doesn't exist.

I do believe, one day, a child somewhere amidst the forests of Sumatra is going to be terribly sad once he connects his shiny new home Nintendo to the HDTV inside his parents and 30 brothers' straw hut, only to discover he needs to connect online to play, and the nearest router is 4000 km of flight away. Oh, the tragedy of the under-developed!


On topic, I think Nintendo'd be smart to dump the motion controls for its latest gaming platform, so I'm kind of hoping that rumor's true. Wii Sports and Warioware have been fun and everything, but for the flagship games I've played on Wii, those kind of controls only got in my way and contributed little to overall experience other than something I nicked Nintendo Wrist. I'm waiting for N's next innovation.

Well, casual-oriented motion control games still make a lot of money, so it's unlikely that this will be dropped (you like it or not). But yeah, it'd be nice to keep traditional controls to certain games.

It isn't so much that I want them to be dropped, but that they aren't really evolving the medium in any meaningful (or even desirable, save for maybe the publishers) way. There are too many people who think that "the future of gaming" lies that way.

(No Imagination) wrote:This is pretty much a ludicrous myth.

No it's not. If I felt like getting, say, Modern Warfare 2 for my PC, it'd cost me 40 bucks through Steam and about 75 if I wanted to get a physical copy. If I wanted to get Halo Reach, it'd cost me 60 bucks through Xbox Live Marketplace and over 90 for a physical copy. If the PlayStation site didn't suck so much donkey cock I'd give you an example from the PlayStation Store, too. And I could go on and on.

It's a different story for every country, but there are many where the only way to get games at reasonable price-points is either by resorting to the second-hand market (which technically doesn't count as one for most publishers) or digital distribution. But of course, older hardware (and, consequently, older distribution models) are more appropriate for poorer countries that are still dragging behind in terms of access to the Internet. And even then, I guess in most cases they'll get better connections far sooner than they will lower import taxes and shipping costs for game discs.

If it's backwards compatible with Wii software, then surely it will also be backwards compatible with the Wii remote? It sounds like this time around the remote will be the secondary controller, much like the GameCube and Classic controllers were for the Wii, and most games will be developed with the new primary controller in mind. So hypothetically motion controlled games will be an option, but developers won't be "forced" to make use of that technology.

Crazy Penguin wrote:So hypothetically motion controlled games will be an option, but developers won't be "forced" to make use of that technology.

Thank god that phase is over! Seriously!

It is hard to see them putting an HD screen on a controller and expecting it to be usable as a waggle stick, but I doubt it'd go without some kind of motion sensing in it. And Sony and Microsoft are just getting started! Their next systems will probably come with more accurate Kinects and Move controllers.

Well. I wont be getting any console early, I did that mistake with the DS... besides none of the games so far avaliable for the 3DS look good enough just to buy a new console for them...

And well, I will wait until 2013 and see what happens...

Gamespot posted an article discussing the rumor that Sony and Microsoft are waiting until 2014 (2013 if pushed) for their next consoles. The article doesn't really have any news, but it's a good summary, I guess. 2014 or later sounds fine to me. It seems pretty much expected that Nintendo will announce their next console at this year's E3.

As for me, I'm trying to only buy new consoles/handhelds when one of the following conditions are met:
1) The cost of the exclusive games I want to play is greater than or equal to the cost of the system. Someone on this board said that's what they do. Anyone want to take credit for what I think is a good idea?
OR
2) An exclusive game in which Tails is playable is released. I've come to realize I'm not all that interested in playing as characters other than Tails. At least not enough to justify buying a new console.

For anyone who doesn't know, Nintendo has confirmed that they will "...show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo..." The console will be released in 2012. Source: http://www.1up.com/news/nintendo-confirms-wii-successor-2012

The Wiiu, everybody.

God I'm glad no one was around to see me completely lose my mind at the mere mention of cross-platform SSB. That would've been embarrassing.