E3 2015 Nintendo Conference Thread: June 16th 5:00 PM BST

[Protocol Penguin]

I just wrote in the Nintendo 3DS thread that it seems that Nintendo have quickly semi-abandoned the 3DS now that they've announced a move to mobile development, so I expect tjat mobile phones will be Nintendo's de facto 'new' handheld device very soon. As for the NX, if (if) they end up sticking with the PowerPC GameCube architecture again to ensure backwards compatibility, I can't see them making anything competitive in terms of power. We'll see how that turns out, I guess.

[SMD]

Can't see them sticking with PowerPC. At this point they surely have to be looking at bringing third parties on board.

...right?

[ryodi]

How has announcing a slew of new games for the 3DS semi abandoning it? Along with those game announcements it will get at least one more new Pokemon game and it may get a boost from Yokai Watch depending on how well that takes off in the West but I think it has got another couple of years left in it yet,

[Lorfarius]

Can't see them sticking with PowerPC. At this point they surely have to be looking at bringing third parties on board.

...right?

How? If they can't sell a big enough amount of systems to make it worthwhile to make 3rd party games they will just be in the same situation. What they really need to be doing is investing in some 2nd or 3rd party studios themselves, open that war chest and get them creating a second line of titles that the inhouse team haven't got time to do.

[SMD]

How? If they can't sell a big enough amount of systems to make it worthwhile to make 3rd party games they will just be in the same situation. What they really need to be doing is investing in some 2nd or 3rd party studios themselves, open that war chest and get them creating a second line of titles that the inhouse team haven't got time to do.

I meant in the sense that they make it ridiculously easy to run engines like UE4 and support devs

[Lorfarius]

Ah.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday (can't remember which sorry) where Reggie had been asked about the whole VR scene. He said they had experience in that and they don't think there's anything in it that's fun.

To me that's stupid. You had experience in it 20 odd years ago when the tech just wasn't there with a product Nintendo botched during development yo think you can claim that gives you a good idea of how the market is is pretty arrogant.

Nintendo are toymakers at the end of the day which is why they always seperate themselves from the rest of the industry but they get such wonderful things right they all just need their heads banging together.

[deKay]

Who said it was 20 years ago? I'd be amazed if they hadn't something R&D had put together in that area.

[Lorfarius]

The VB was around the mid 90's they haven't touched it since. Every interview about VR in recent years has been nothing but negative even Miyamoto doesn't think it's worthwhile.

[deKay]

Yes, but Nintendo will have had a VR setup in development more recently than that. In fact I'm pretty sure they've mentioned they had something based around the 3DS at some point.

Oh, and the Virtual Boy wasn't VR.

[gone fishin]

Nintendo have been doing VR... kind of.

The 3DS and the Wii U Gamepad can give a kind of VR, hold it in front of you and move yourself around!

They've done a few things that use it - Face Raiders on the 3DS, the Google Streetview on the Wii U, that other one that gave you trips around Kyoto, London and all that.

So I suppose I understand where they're coming from. Certainly seems that they've struggled making games with that capability, although it's a little bit more limited than VR.

[pulsemyne]

Can't see them sticking with PowerPC. At this point they surely have to be looking at bringing third parties on board.

...right?

PowerPC is probably a dead end for consoles now although there are some power chips that could possibly do the job. ARM chips are likely for the next machine although they could go with an AMD x86. Given that MS seems to have been successful in making an emulator for powerpc to x86 it would be possibly acceptable for nintendo to go down this route with a new machine. Either that or just include the WiiU chipset in a new machine, it's probably quite cheap to make now (indeed they might have to do it if they had signed a big deal with IBM for a certain amount of chips, say 50 million. They'll have a lot left over).

[gone fishin]

I can see them dropping backwards compatibility completely and going with a VC catalogue for all games up to Wii, with each game being purchased "as new" (ie it won't support the actual discs..)

Backwards compatibility for the Wii U could be a bit of a challenge, especially if using emulation and getting latency down for streaming to the gamepad screen (plus actually supporting the gamepad hardware).

[Chopsocky]

Aaaaaand Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash doesn't support Wii Motionplus.

Wii Sports Tennis is so basic and EA Grand Slam proved you could use a more accurate 1:1 system whilst controlling player movement to deliver an even more authentic and satisfying experience.

But hey! What good did waggle ever do for Nintendo, right?

RIP Motion Controls

2006-2014

It doesn't make any sense. The table tennis game in Wii Sports Resort is an almost perfect game due to the Wii motion plus. If Nintendo ever return to motion controls it's likely they will forget how to program them all over again. They didn't even bother improving the Wiimote tech this gen.

Ultra Smash looks like recycled trash, you're better off playing the N64 original or the GBC versions with their unique rpg systems.

[Protocol Penguin]

PowerPC is probably a dead end for consoles now although there are some power chips that could possibly do the job. ARM chips are likely for the next machine although they could go with an AMD x86. Given that MS seems to have been successful in making an emulator for powerpc to x86 it would be possibly acceptable for nintendo to go down this route with a new machine. Either that or just include the WiiU chipset in a new machine, it's probably quite cheap to make now (indeed they might have to do it if they had signed a big deal with IBM for a certain amount of chips, say 50 million. They'll have a lot left over).

Can one even buy any devices that use PowerPC processors these days apart from the Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360? Serious question.

[Barnard]

Can one even buy any devices that use PowerPC processors these days apart from the Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360? Serious question.

The Curiosity rover on Mars is still using one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750

[Lorfarius]

Can you buy those on eBay?

[Barnard]

Can you buy those on eBay?

The shipping costs are astronomical.

[gone fishin]

It doesn't make any sense. The table tennis game in Wii Sports Resort is an almost perfect game due to the Wii motion plus. If Nintendo ever return to motion controls it's likely they will forget how to program them all over again. They didn't even bother improving the Wiimote tech this gen.

Ultra Smash looks like recycled trash, you're better off playing the N64 original or the GBC versions with their unique rpg systems.

Nintendo can't win...

New Play Control Mario Tennis was slated for its motion control, now people are complaining this one doesn't have motion control.

We've already got Wii Tennis on the Wii U (in HD with Motion Plus and online), I'd be happy with an update to the GC game. Without motion controls. And developed by Camelot (which this is, nice!)

[Super Craig]

In my house at least, MotionPlus for Wii Sports Tennis was a negative. We prefer the original game.

[Chopsocky]

Nintendo can't win...

New Play Control Mario Tennis was slated for its motion control, now people are complaining this one doesn't have motion control.

We've already got Wii Tennis on the Wii U (in HD with Motion Plus and online), I'd be happy with an update to the GC game. Without motion controls. And developed by Camelot (which this is, nice!)

Sounds like you're better off playing the barebones 3DS version. The 'New Play Control' port didn't even use the Wii Motion Plus and by all accounts was pretty poor. What's wrong with giving us more control options? Camelot is wasted on this.

[boxoctosis]

The 3DS Mario Tennis is only barebones in single player. In local multiplayer it becomes a mad competitive thing of beauty.

[SMD]

Reggie comments on E3

[SMD]

He also confirmed they're doubling down on Metroid Prime chibi

[mushashi]

unless Nintendo have a console that is visibly more powerful than the Xbox/PS4 - or some sort of VR/Augmented Reality thing - I honestly can't see where they have left to go with a games machine.

some hybrid TV/portable thing is going to fail even more disastrously than the Wii U. Its not like you can't do that already with your iPhone.

Reggie came out and pooped on VR so doubtful on that front (AR already tried on 3DS, not much interest), and the usual power option is something they don't have any interest in. Whatever NX is will be trademark modern Nintendo thinking, doubt anybody will be able to nail a good guess for it (unless it really is the hybrid one-ring to rule them all idea).

What they really need to be doing is investing in some 2nd or 3rd party studios themselves, open that war chest and get them creating a second line of titles that the inhouse team haven't got time to do.

Who do you think does most of the grunt work on the currently announced Nintendo titles? 2nd and 3rd-party developers, not EAD, etc.

Hideki Konno, one of the longtime heads of development at Nintendo is using up some of their staff to work on their mobile games, which leaves the rest of them to concentrate on finishing up the remaining internal Wii U and 3DS titles and work on NX games, which if they follow the rest of the industry for a hardware jump, will take years to complete anyway.

[mushashi]

Shigeru Miyamoto was on the publicity circuit at E3, the interesting interview he gave with NPR did have some nuggets about what Nintendo are thinking in terms of the future, don't expect VR and NX will be something nobody else is apparently doing if they are sticking to their philosophy. He also revealed why he even managed to get a job at Nintendo in the first place, it pays to know somebody who knows the CEO.

At this conference, there's a lot of virtual reality. Have you seen virtual reality? What do you think of it?

Yes, I've seen virtual reality, and we experiment with virtual reality and different technologies. We're quite interested in it, but at the same time, Nintendo's philosophy is that we create products that are going to be played with everyone in the living room. And we don't feel that virtual reality is a good fit for that philosophy. And so, while I can't say whether there will be a technology in the future that's a virtual-reality-type experience that fits with that or not, we're here at this conference to showcase the products that we're going to be selling in the next year or so. We don't have anything in the near future that fits that, and so that's why we're not showing anything in the virtual reality space this year.

One of the things about Nintendo that's always been interesting is you've never tried to make a more powerful console with better graphics, and all the stuff that the Xbox has done. Can you explain a little why you've kind of stuck with that?

So unfortunately with our latest system, the Wii U, the price point was one that ended up getting a little higher than we wanted. But what we are always striving to do is to find a way to take novel technology that we can take and offer it to people at a price that everybody can afford. And in addition to that, rather than going after the high-end tech spec race and trying to create the most powerful console, really what we want to do is try to find a console that has the best balance of features with the best interface that anyone can use.

And the reason for that is that, No. 1, we like to do things that are unique and different from other companies, but we also don't want to just end up in a race to have the highest-tech specs in a competition to try to find how we get these expensive tech specs to the lowest price of the other systems. And so there's different ways that we can approach it, and sometimes we look at it just from the sense of offering a system that consumes less power and makes less noise and generates less heat, or sometimes we may look at the size of the media and the size of the system and where it fits within the home.

But really what's most important to us is, how do we create a system that is both unique and affordable so that everyone can afford it and everyone can enjoy it.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/06/19/415568892/q-a-shigeru-miyamoto-on-the-origins-of-nintendos-famous-characters

[Lorfarius]

Hideki Konno, one of the longtime heads of development at Nintendo is using up some of their staff to work on their mobile games, which leaves the rest of them to concentrate on finishing up the remaining internal Wii U and 3DS titles and work on NX games, which if they follow the rest of the industry for a hardware jump, will take years to complete anyway.

Which is utter bollocks. They clearly can't cope with the right amount of output, they can't get third parties on board so should be increasing the number of 1st/2nd party games. Spend some cash and get more studio's, easy.

[rgraves]

Which is utter bollocks. They clearly can't cope with the right amount of output

Actually, aren't they significantly more prolific than either Sony or MS in the 1st party stakes - I don't think it's the amount of software that Nintendo puts out that's the issue, it's the amount of supporting stuff around it from 3rd parties that makes it look thinner than a sideways supermodel. I've not counted the exact numbers, but I'd be very surprised if the amount of 1st party content coming out of Nintendo wasn't at least the same as either Sony or MS.

With even a reasonable amount of 3rd party support, the library on Wii U would be much more healthy. It's there they have a big problem, not their own stuff.

[mushashi]

Nintendo can be more prolific currently as they don't have to meet the same production values as the competition, they'll run into the same development time problems as everybody else going forward as consumer expectations for their products continue to rise, it was only a generation ago when certain people were arguing for Wii-level graphics and production values as being good enough, now find me somebody happy to settle for Wii-level graphics when they could have Wii U-level graphics, it'll be the same for NX.

Sony funded way more titles during the PS and PS2 eras than they managed for PS3 or PS4, while Microsoft chose to blow out their spending on selective X360 titles they were willing to fund in comparison to the more scatter-shot approach they adopted for the original Xbox, the former head of Xbox said so himself at the time.

Consumers are as much to blame for rising costs as the publisher arms race is.