A REQUEST TO NINTENDO: DON'T BE STUPID - BY MR BIFFO

A REQUEST TO NINTENDO: DON'T BE STUPID - by Mr Biffo

27/4/2016

It's all Nintendo at the moment. The NX has been officially confirmed for March 2017. As has a brand new Zelda game. As have smart device versions of Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem.

However, Nintendo has also announced that it expects to sell less than a million Wii U consoles this year, having today posted year-end earnings of $150 million. That's a fall of 61% on the previous year.

The company is braced for a further 1% fall in sales over the coming year, while expecting a 37% rise in operating profits.

Er... okay. Optimistic.

It remains to be seen how Nintendo intends to achieve such a rise. The 3DS continues to sell reasonably well - though its 6.79 million sales were down by a couple of million on the previous 12 months.

There's also no clear sign of a resurgence in Nintendo's Wii U business, with its customers looking towards the NX, and no major game releases on the horizon. Nintendo appears to be pinning its hopes on sales of existing software; Splatoon for the Wii U shifted 4.27 million copies, with Mario Maker close-ish behind on 3.52 million.

Compare that, however, to the 12 million sales Fallout 4 made in its first 24 hours alone, and the picture for Nintendo is far from fragrant.

Consequently, all eyes are now on the NX. With Nintendo putting more of its eggs in the smart device basket, the NX is destined to be the machine that decides, once and for all, whether Nintendo stays in the hardware game.

I just have one tiny request...

"YOU'RE A COWARD"
Call me a coward, but this is no time for Nintendo to be taking risks.

All we know about the NX is that it's out in March 2017, and these words from Nintendo's former president, the late Satoru Iwata: “As proof that Nintendo maintains strong enthusiasm for the dedicated game system business, let me confirm that Nintendo is currently developing a dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept under the development codename ‘NX’. It is too early to elaborate on the details of this project, but we hope to share more information with you next year.”

That was him speaking last year. When he was still alive, I presume.

The part of the statement that worries me is "brand-new concept". If we can take anything from the mixed reaction to Star Fox Zero it's that people don't want brand-new concepts from Nintendo every single time they release a console.

The Wii got away with it - primarily because of Wii Sports - but looking back, I tended to default to playing games with the classic controller. Plus, once I removed the Wii from my telly, it was typically months before I plugged it back in again - partly because of the sensor bar. It was just one extra layer of faff. Once they over-egged that pudding with the Wii U's GamePad, it became virtually inedible.

And, in the case of Star Fox Zero, that GamePad, and Nintendo's insistence on using it, got in the way of giving players what they really wanted: a classic Star Fox game that felt like the Star Fox of old - but using the oomph of modern consoles.

QUADS
Nintendo believes that its smart device business will "quadruple" its profits, and work in "synergy" with its dedicated games machines.

I don't want to write them off as going the way of Sega - for a start, I'm an idiot, and rarely know what I'm doing, while Nintendo has proven over the years that it seems to know what it's doing, occasionally.

Nevertheless, I'm genuinely braced for the worst. You can smell it in the air: people are ready to slam the NX if Nintendo unveils some weird control gizmo that's going to get in the way of them just playing games. The Wii U GamePad, the Xbox Kinect... these things don't work. People don't want them. Developers don't want to make games which utilise them. They don't always make games better. Just stop with them.

And if Nintendo puts even a pigeon step wrong with the NX launch... there's going to be a backlash that makes the Xbox One launch look like a summer stroll through a lovely meadow. People are at the end of their tether. I'm at the end of my tether. I am desperate for Nintendo to start being Nintendo again.

Please: just get back to the games. It's what your legacy is hewn from. Find new ways to use traditional control systems, but utilising current graphical power. Give us new ideas like you used to, by all means, but not at the expense of playability. Nintendo was always accessible. It invited people in. The more barriers you build between people and your games, the less they're going to want to play.

The Super NES was a great machine - perhaps your greatest - but it was simply a better version of other machines on the market. It was an evolution, not an unwanted revolution.

If you unveiled the NX and it was a traditional-style console, with proper next-gen power behind it, a family-friendly design - and you simultaneously revealed a new Zelda game, a proper new Mario game, an F-Zero, a Metroid, a Pilotwings... people would love you for it. That's all you need to do. Stop focusing on hardware, and put your effort into the games. Like you used to.

Please, loves.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
THE TWO RONNIES PRESENT: THE NINTENDO NX SKETCH
REVIEW: STAR FOX ZERO (WII U)
GAMES OF MY YEARS: XBOX 360

46 Comments

Harry Steele

27/4/2016 02:43:11 pm

Hear, hear!

Darcy

27/4/2016 02:51:59 pm

Isn't the whole "make a console to compete with the others" method exactly what they tried with the Gamecube, though? I'm not sure if there's really an audience there for it. People are happy with their Playstations and Xboxen. I mean, what's the average sales for a Zelda game? 5-6 million? Contrast that with Fallout 4. Or, indeed, the real big Nintendo sellers, like Mario Kart.

I still think their biggest problem isn't so much gimmicks as being associated with "kiddy games" and "casuals". Now, if they made a gritty Zelda reboot for the PS4...

Jareth Smith

27/4/2016 03:14:20 pm

Yet this is a vacuous assumption being made by borderline ignoramuses and philistines; gamers who’ve never played Zelda, Pikmin, Fire Emblem, or Star Fox dismiss these titles as “kid’s games” when they are, in fact, for all ages.

Conversely, the Call of Duty franchise is so clearly aimed at pubescent male teenagers, yet this game is seen as “adult” and “mature”, even though it has the cultural and intellectual merit of 50 Shades of Grey.

Let’s not associate sales with quality here, otherwise Justin Bieber is the greatest musician in history. Balls to Mozart – he died near penniless. There was no market for him! Returning to 2016, I’d say Nintendo’s problem is the latest generation of gamers, and those who have joined this now mainstream industry, are used to GTA and hyper violent titles. As a consequence, they dismiss Nintendo’s products without even playing them. If they put the effort in and played the games, they’d realise how fantastic they are and not get so overexcited about pretty but unimpressive titles such as Titanfall or, more recently, Fallout 4.

Besides, what some people class as “gimmicky” can just as easily be seen as innovative – are the newfangled virtual reality headsets gimmicks? Evidently not as it’s not Nintendo behind them. The Wii and Wii U tried new things for the industry, whereas Sony and Microsoft apply the same vapid approach and ramp up graphical prowess with each console iteration.

What will sell the PS5? Its graphical ability rather than quality of games, which for me places blame on gamers being ignorant as opposed to Nintendo being out of touch with reality. Just look at the Wii U exclusives – utterly sensational. Yet most gamers are queuing up to play the latest CoD clone on the PS4 to add to their vast pile of CoD and GTA clones. Dull.

27/4/2016 03:45:43 pm

Are the majority of gamers really all that interested in amazing gameplay experiences, though? I think a lot of people just want something to pass the time and give them an escape from their day-to-day lives.

27/4/2016 04:27:23 pm

RE: Mr. Darcy - Evidently not, which would indicate why the PS4 and Xbox One have been so successful despite the lack of quality games.

There's nothing wrong with passing the time with enjoyable escapism. However, this doesn't provide gamers with a license to so caustically and ignorantly dismiss other consoles and games (as is so often the case for Nintendo), which most of them have never played, as poor quality or childish. What next? Are Studio Ghibli's films superfluous as they're hand-drawn?

All I'm asking for is for gamers to abandon fatuous behaviour... which is about as likely to happen as Donald Trump admitting it's lost and buzzing his hair down.

Kelvin Green link

27/4/2016 06:16:44 pm

Well said, Jareth Smith, well said.

Rakladtor III The Terrible

27/4/2016 07:03:16 pm

Mostly agree, although to be fair I think Mozart done pretty gud in the long run

Voodoo76

28/4/2016 12:11:26 pm

Well written Jareth I agree completely.

Oakreef link

27/4/2016 04:31:53 pm

Ya just another console competing with the others is what the SNES was. And it sold worse than the NES. And then the N64 sold worse than the SNES. And then the GameCube sold worse than the N64. In a market where total console sales went up and up each of their consoles did worse than the last and were completely outpaced in sales by the PSX and PS2 (and the Mega Drive did about as well as the SNES). The Wii is the only Nintendo home console that did better than its predecessor (and at the start of the 7th gen it was trouncing PS3 and 360 in sales), it's no wonder they tried another innovation/gimmick console with the Wii U - just competing with other consoles directly has been a strategy that has kept them going but also one that provides diminishing returns.

Dan Howdle

28/4/2016 06:56:49 am

I agree with both Biffo and a lot of the commentary here, but for me it comes down to this: If there is some gimmick, some whizzy, fizzy Nintendo specificity the world has never seen before, just make it so it doesn't prevent third-party developers cheaply porting mainstream hits to their console.

To me, the failure of the Wii U came down to this: It required you buy an expensive, last-gen console with a gimmick for which there was no clear, logical gameplay case and, more importantly, the manufacturing cost of said gimmick and concomitant sacrifices in power meant third-party support reauired significant third-party investment — something you can only justify with an enormous user base.

Do what you will, Nintendo. Make an anally implanted motion control flight yoke for all I care, just be sure it'll play your Dark Souls and your Fallouts too. Those who are willing to invest in you need something to play in the 8-12 months between each notable release.

27/4/2016 02:58:19 pm

I love the Wii U and it really does have the best games on any Next Gen console, but if Nintendo wants to win over the mainstream audience it needs third party support and HD-super-amazeballs graphics. More than ever, it seems, graphics sell a games console - all my gaming friends only talk about the graphics on the PS4 and Xbox One. It's never the gameplay.

If they returned to a more traditional games console and piled on the amazing Wii U exclusives WITH third party support (and the HD amazeballs graphics) then maybe the mainstream will be won over.

A large sect of the gaming press is certainly enjoying getting on its high horse about Nintendo these days. Whilst the PS4 and Xbox One may be selling well, you don't see articles lamenting the perpetual stream of violent first and third person shooty boom ratta tat tatta fests which plague the consoles. There just aren't enough exclusives or classic games, in my opinion, the focus has been entirely on the graphics. Thankfully... there's Steam and an awesome Indie scene to alleviate the tedium.

Old Red

27/4/2016 03:06:37 pm

I got some beef with all this Mr Biffo. I'll hold back in fear of coming across as/actually being a blinkered Ninty fan boy, but to compare the gamepad to Kinect is way off target. There are good number of games that are improved by the use of the gamepad (Zombi U, Mario Maker, Affordable Space Adventure, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Splatoon, Deus Ex, NSMBWU and in my opinion Star Fox Zero to name a few) and to my mind I'm not sure there was even one game that Kinect improved or even used well.

Also, I'm pretty sure the NX will have some kind of second screen implementation, be it smartphones or a smaller ds like screen on the controller for the new Zelda to make sense. Plus the fact that there's talk of the controller being the new portable system.

Still, I don't think anyone would complain about new Metroid, 3d Mario, F Zero and Pilotwings that are straight down the line good 'uns.

Starbuck

27/4/2016 03:41:35 pm

Damn right, Old Red (are you related to C&VG's Big Red?)

I couldn't disagree more with Biffo about the gamepad - normally cussed only by idiots.

Any console without the variety that it enables just seems so bland and boring in comparison. After several decades of my long gaming life playing games in a particular way the gust of fresh air has been refreshing.

(Nintendo should have included the higher capacity battery as integrated rather than as an accessory, however. For that, Nintendo, I cuss you bad.)

27/4/2016 09:47:12 pm

A gust of fresh air that's been hanging around since the DS release in 2004, all the while becoming increasingly tepid and fart smelling

Guest

29/4/2016 07:02:55 am

Child of Eden

Sleepydays

27/4/2016 03:09:29 pm

I really, really hope that the above scenario pans out. I WANT to like Nintendo again. I can't really get the same game experience elsewhere, but they put up so many roadblocks that it just doesn't feel worth it.

I want a normal, reasonably-powered machine with a familiar control system. I want the kind of digital account system that every other console and app store has had for the last 10 years. I want them to handle their amazing library with the care it deserves and put some effort into VC releases (I can have online play/achievements/shaders from a $30 emulator but not from Nintendo themselves!)

It shouldn't be this difficult, and if the NX ends up limping out of the gate like a horse with a guffed-up leg, I'd be happy to see it's mouth shot off and for them to go third party.

27/4/2016 04:30:34 pm

I also wanted to add: I want to feel like they care about the Western market, just a little. Seeing so many Japan exclusives (games and merch), the bizarre reluctance to release Earthbound for so many years, the sloppy, tone-deaf handling of fan efforts/youtube vids....they probably need to work on that.

Spiney O'Sullivan

28/4/2016 10:07:45 am

Best give up on that. The irony of Nintendo is that for all their efforts to do new things with gaming, their corporate mentality seems to be kind of stuck in the 90s. They've generally failed to grasp changes like digital distribution or online gaming until far too late (and then half-heartedly), so YouTube is completely alien to them. Shame, as they're ruining a pretty good free advertising route. I've bought a few games after starting a Let's Play and deciding I'd rather be playing.

As for caring about the West, they do a bit, just not about Europe. Because again, it's always 1992 in their boardroom, and back then Europe was Sega's domain, while Nintendo focused on the US.

TekMerc

27/4/2016 03:44:23 pm

Iwata famously said he felt like a chef cooking for a king who is already full.

I assume he then decided that Nintendo should emulate Heston Blumenthal and produce 'food' but with 'wacky' changes.

Falloutboy

27/4/2016 03:47:25 pm

Are you serious about the 12 million copies of fallout 4 cos 11.9 million of them had found themselves into cex the day after .
They could have dedicated a whole side of the shop to it and also GTA 5.
Instead of review scores I use this as a judgement of how good a game is nowadays.
All Nintendo seem to get off the media recently is bad press and rubbish about nobody understanding them people are trying to push them away like they did with Sega.

John

27/4/2016 05:09:33 pm

Damn, Biffs. So negative at times about Nintendo. Here’s how I would have enjoyed reading your introduction. Spun more positively for the perspective of the console’s primary target audience: gamers (rather than say, shareholding, semen-encrusted suits out to make a fast buck to fatten their mildewed creaky wallets).

<grumpy> “Nintendo has also announced that it expects to sell less than a million Wii U consoles this year”
<smiley>: “Almost a million people are expected to want to buy and enjoy a Wii U this year, despite knowing another newer console is just round the corner”

<grumpy> “Nintendo has also announced…year-end earnings of $150 million. That's a fall of 61% on the previous year. The company is braced for a further 1% fall in sales over the coming year, while expecting a 37% rise in operating profits.”
<smiley>: “Nintendo continues to successfully sell its products, earning it $150 million at year-end. While this is less than in the previous year, it would be unusual for this to not be the case given relative trends during a console’s lifetime and the stage the Wii U is in presently. Despite the approaching end of life of the current console, the company expects further sales success and comparable sales revenue in the coming year, with operating profits rising by 37%!”

<grumpy> “The 3DS continues to sell reasonably well - though its 6.79 million sales were down by a couple of million on the previous 12 months.”
<smiley>: “The 3DS continues to sell comparably, despite its maturity, shifting a healthy 6.79 million units”

<grumpy> “There's also no clear sign of a resurgence in Nintendo's Wii U business, with its customers looking towards the NX, and no major game releases on the horizon”
<smiley>: “There’s also no clear sign the Wii U won’t continue to sell comparably well for the foreseeable future, despite all major games promised now having been released, providing a very
replete and rich library of unique gaming experiences”

<grumpy> “Splatoon for the Wii U shifted 4.27 million copies, with Mario Maker close-ish behind on 3.52 million. Compare that, however, to the 12 million sales Fallout 4 made in its first 24 hours alone, and the picture for Nintendo is far from fragrant”
<smiley>: “The highly novel and enjoyable new IP Splatoon, answering much undue criticism of Nintendo IP recycling, and the Mario Maker game for the Wii U sold 7.79 million copies between them. While Fallout 4, released on several other platforms has achieved a total of 12 million units sold in comparable timescales, it reached just 6% of the number of active users on those platforms. In contrast, 54% of Wii U owners bought copies of Splatoon and Mario maker, demonstrating impressive levels of successful platform penetration. Given that the Wii U’s user base of millions is only 7% the size of those other platforms, this paints a fragrant picture of their success with their target audience.”

Nintendo is going nowhere; they always take risks as with any decent innovator. It’s what makes them distinct from principally-profiteering competitors who often copy any financially successful innovations from Nintendo (PS Move, Kinect…whatever happened to those?). Their innovation leads to fresh, new, and very enjoyable gaming experiences. Keep doing what you’re doing Nintendo and ignore those whiny cynics whose complaints derive principally from sales figures. We may be relatively numerically few, but there are those of us out there who can actually appreciate what you’re doing and feel its value in gaming. Screw the shareholders; they don’t care about gaming; they just want a fast buck at any expense. Providing you don’t ignore specifically what made your past work great, keep on innovating brand new concepts.

27/4/2016 05:22:08 pm

<grumpy> Man disemboweled by frenzied mob in front of schoolchildren
<smiley> Schoolchildren treated to valuable 'flash-mob'-style anatomical lesson.

Random Reviewer

27/4/2016 06:40:18 pm

Hilarious and appropriate response to blinkered ninty fanboyism. Nice.

Mr Biffo

27/4/2016 05:25:52 pm

<THRRRRRRRP!>

28/4/2016 06:22:28 pm

Reggie, is that you?

Anyway, I agree, there's lots of negativity about the Wii U that just needs a bit of a refocus.

<grumpy>The Wii U is somehow selling fewer units than the GameCube.
<smiley>The Wii U reminds us of just how great the Gamecube was.

<grumpy>Barely anyone, including developers and long-standing gamers, understands the Wii U's gimmick and Nintendo has alienated its new market as it alienated its core gamer market in the last generation.

<smiley> The Wii U's innovation has allowed Nintendo to refocus on selling first-party games to a small core of "true gamers" who understand how the Gamepad is actually immersive. It has also gotten rid of ungrateful 3rd party developers who distract focus from the Nintendo games on the shelves.

<grump>Having to look away from the main screen is immersion-breaking and actively impedes playing games or means you never actually look at the Gamepad.
<smiley> Refocusing my field of vision frequently means my eyes get a good workout.

<grumpy> I have had to take up huffing paint to convince myself that my purchase was justified.
<smiley> The Wii U has enabled me to have experiences that other consoles

<grumpy> After being fired from the paint shop, I live in a skip.
<smiley> The WiiU has not only changed the face of gaming, it has changed my life.

<grumpy> The skip has no electricity, so the only use for my Wii U gamepad is bludgeoning the rats that try to nibble on me at night.
<smiley> My carbon footprint has reduced thanks to the Wii U, and the Gamepad's unique design makes it useful in ways that the inferior rival systems cannot compete with.

28/4/2016 06:26:43 pm

Bah, missed the end of a sentence there. It's all the paint, I suppose...

Ben

27/4/2016 05:49:12 pm

OK, for the sake of disclosure, I'm a die hard Nintendo fan, so obviously there's no way I can entirely agree with you here, Biffles. Granted, the Wii U was by no means a conceptual or commercial success, but it is brimming with great, high quality, first party Nintendo content; admittedly very little of that content takes advantage of that redundant, second screen 'USP', but there are fun, appealing and accessible games on there nonetheless. Personally I think Nintendo's biggest problem isn't hardware innovation or 'gimmickery' per se (The Wii U is a comparative failure, but the Wii was a huge success precisely because of it's revolutionary, imagination capturing gimmick; the very thing that broke down the interface barrier and drew a vast swathe of non traditional punters into buying a console) so much as their failure to garner any meaningful third party support. The trouble is that there is no way that a single company can exclusively generate the volume of content required to entirely support a console platform, especially Nintendo quality software, which is what they were pretty much forced to do after initial enthusiasm from third party publishers dwindled almost immediately, probably when they realised that the disparity in 'oomph' between the Wii U and the competition meant that they couldn't just pump it full of cheap ports with the game map lazily assigned to the second screen. Now admittedly, I guess a large part of that is that their hardware tends to demand a bespoke approach to development both in terms of interface and power that just doesn't make commercial sense in the homogenised world of console gaming, but is the answer that they knock out an identikit traditional console platform? Part of me (the part that has become interested in mortgage rates, risk assessments and politics and that) says yes, but the part of me that loves the weird,wonderful, innovative and experimental stuff they do hates the other side of me and remembers what it was like to have joy in my life. The Wii U is a failed experiment, but an experiment all the same, and doesn't that kind of boldness make life more interesting?

I dunno. I want both things, but there is no question that ultimately content is king and Nintendo have that in spades; unfortunately, to guarantee success these days, there's no escaping the fact that what they need are some of those big third parties and their big, loud, shooty games to make the console more marketable to that other rabble, you know, the huge one with all the money.

Mrtankthreat

27/4/2016 07:05:26 pm

Was the Wii a success though? It sold loads of consoles but how many people bought it because of the hype, played Wii Sports over Christmas and then never touched it again? It was a gimmick because the novelty wore off fairly quickly and the casuals who bought it were never going to migrate to the Wii U.

27/4/2016 07:16:16 pm

Well, 'gamers' may have poo-pooed it after a while and, of course, a large chunk of those courted casuals dropped their wiimotes, bought smartphones and never looked at a console again, but it's got some amazing, classic games and made an insane amount of money, so I guess it depends on your definition of success really. I get that motion controls didn't become the new zeitgeist, but they certainly captured peoples imaginations in the short term at least; think of the Wii as last gen's VR.

MrPSB

27/4/2016 06:13:34 pm

Nintendo has a massive amount of cash in the bank and would have to lose massive amounts over the lifetime of the NX to cause them any issues as far as their future goes. The Wii has set them up for years of niche fiddling and releasing weird stuff that might not sell billions.

27/4/2016 06:15:01 pm

The problem is that people don't want Nintendo games. Nintendo can produce the best bit of computer gaming gold that the world has ever seen -- as they have done countless times in the past -- and people will still moan because it's not Medal of Duty 17 or Elder Rims 6.

As long as you're judging success by sales, then Nintendo will always fall apart when the audience is that stupid.

27/4/2016 06:34:05 pm

See, I don't think that's it at all. I see this from a lot of Nintendo fans and I imagine that there's some comfort in thinking the only problem is 'the sheeple just don't appreciate this genius', but it doesn't wash.

Nintendo has some of the most valuable, marketable IP in the world: Mario, Pokemon, Zelda etc. Those are extremely popular properties. They've just fallen so far out of step with the way major properties are marketed here.

Like I said above, they give the impression they don't give a shit about the Western market. Where are the CGI Mario movies/TV show?

Beyond that, where is the value in a $250 last-gen, dead machine with $60 games when the PS4/Xbox are ubiquitous, similarly-priced and (for your average household) offer a lot more bang for your buck?

27/4/2016 06:57:16 pm

Well said, Sleepydays, well said.

27/4/2016 07:21:16 pm

I hope you're right, Sleepydays, I really do.

28/4/2016 08:14:05 am

The value in a Nintendo platform is Nintendo software. If that doesn't appeal then, as it stands, there is no value in it. I get that the other platforms have a far broader appeal, and Nintendo certainly have a lot to learn from other publishers about marketing (although Nintendo Direct is pretty great tbh) but for fans of Nintendo all the third party titles, technical oomph and marketing prowess under the sun don't really amount to a hill of beans; they're a captive audience and love their juice Nintendo flavoured.

To their credit, I think Nintendo are making, (by their standards at least), some pretty bold and progressive steps towards growing that loyal fanbase with the mobile stuff etc but how far they are willing to go to continue that trend with the NX remains to be seen. As is usually the case with Nintendo, it should certainly be interesting to see how things unfold.

27/4/2016 06:59:54 pm

You don't have to judge success by sales to appreciate that Nintendo no longer holds the same influence that it used to, due to the recent lack of success

27/4/2016 07:10:13 pm

No. We do want Nintendo games, we just don't want to have to use gimmicky control systems that ruin the experience. New Super Mario Bros sold more than Mario Galaxy. People want classic Nintendo games.

27/4/2016 07:53:01 pm

Exactly, back in the day if Nintendo occasionally offered us a hoop to jump through we'd gladly do so, as Nintendo was a charming entity back then and we were enamoured. Over time, much of that charm has withered away and the company is beginning to resemble a shrieking harpy demanding the player bend over backwards to accomodate whatever control scheme.

The problem is, the games just aren't all that anymore. Mostly the company's home console offerings of late have been either rehashes, have an unnecessary gimmick tied to it, or both. I miss the lovingly crafted, epic experiences that took already established franchises forward in a congruent manner. More of this sort of thing, and perhaps people would be more willing to participate in the control scheme olympics here and there

Super-Superbeast 64

27/4/2016 07:15:22 pm

Don't concentrate on hardware gimmicks, do concentrate on core hardware though.

I can't wait to stick my PS4 in a car boot sale and get the new model.

I want to be able to run at NATIVE resolution on my TV (which uses the ageing 1080p format) at 30fps whilst meeting contemporary graphics standards. Simple request in 2016 Jesus Christ!!!!!!!!!

Let alone 2017 when the NX drops.

I will not tolerate a console that can't do that. They need to close the gap to PC to the levels seen in the past.

Nintendo's weren't always associated with being the poor man on the market. My SNES at launch was mind blowing and produced better graphics and sound than the Megadrive and Amiga/PC I had.

It is funny how we have come to accept mediocrity from Nintendo. They used to have the most fun games and the best hardware. I still demand this. At the very least go to AMD and ask them for the same or comparable chip set to those featured in the upcoming XO/PS4 refreshes.

27/4/2016 07:30:03 pm

Given that Nintendo's devs had a mare switching to HD for the first Zelda remake, I wouldn't hold my breath.

God, they made so much money and momentum from the Wii/DS years and instead of investing it into ensuring the following generation was a success (bringing in people who could work in HD and getting a contemporary network in place off the top of my head) they squandered it in an almost Atari-like fashion.

Seagoon

27/4/2016 09:55:26 pm

At the risk of sounding fanboy-ish, this article basically sums up as "be the same as everybody else". I'm sorry, but that's the way I see it.

I get the frustration about pointless gimmicks getting in the way of playing games, but I for one can honestly support the idea of both the Wii and the Wii U. For the first time since the first generation, we had consoles that abandoned the graphics technology arms race in order to concentrate on controller and gameplay innovations. It must have made sense to Nintendo, whose biggest franchises traditionally embrace simplicity. This generation of consoles has felt utterly homogenised because the PS4 and XBox One are both absolutely identical (part of me feels the reason third-parties were quick to drop the Wii U was because they couldn't make cheap, lazy ports for the machine to make a fast buck). Maybe the Gamepad was a bad idea, but let's face it; we could only have figured that out through practice.

It seems to me that both the Wii and the Wii U were founded on the basis that they weren't even going to try to compete with everyone else's technological power, and instead encourage new thinking in game design. Some of the best games on both consoles embrace that, but it seems third-party developers and gamers as a whole didn't get the memo.

I guess I can't be impartial about this as I'm still a Nintendo fan at heart, but I beg you, Biffo; don't encourage the games industry to become even more homogenised than it already is.

Richard Wager

27/4/2016 10:06:51 pm

I love Biffo, I love Nintendo. Got my dirty cash waiting for the NX.
Your on the ball Biffo. Touching my toes waiting for the big N hope it don't hurt too much...

Dr Kank

27/4/2016 10:09:29 pm

Isn't it time Nintendo gave up on consoles anyway? They're never going to be able to match Sony and Microsoft, and trying to produce a different type of console doesn't seem to be working too well for them.

Instead they could just release their games on the Xbox and PS4, maybe come up with some gimmicky controllers in the process, and work at getting their back catalogue on the online stores. That would give Nintendo a much bigger market and the ability to produce games that can fully exploit the power of the Xbox and PS4.

27/4/2016 10:12:07 pm

Really don't want that to happen 😢

TromaDogg

28/4/2016 02:54:09 pm

Good article. Asides from the bit where he compared the sales of 2 single format games to the combined multiformat sales of one of the years biggest titles which was pretty nonsensical and didn't prove any point whatsoever. But an enjoyable read nonetheless

Dirty Barry

29/4/2016 02:39:04 am

I have never agreed with any article as much as this one. It is like having my own thoughts repeated back to me in text.

A lot of my fellow Nintendo fans seem to think criticising the big N is hating it. Quite the opposite, we just don't want to see them wandering down poo poo lane, because we know how amazing they can be at their best.

Talking of poo, if Shigeru broke into the house and curled out a little brown present on the kitchen lino, it seems many Nintendo fans would be overjoyed at how innovative it was.

If the NX is released with some quirky gimmick and a controller it would be impossible to play a capcom beat em up on, I will feel as if Ninty is actually pushing me away.

Many seem happy to have a Nintendo console hanging around as a second console, used solely for Nintendo IPs. Others remember from the Snes days, it doesn't have to be that way.

A conventional, developer-friendly, powerhouse with all the Nintendo staple as well as mainstream AAA games would be far from mundane.

Sadly, I fear this is unlikely, one more gimmick console could lead to a future of handheld only/toys/smartphone games/third party - which would be a terrible loss to the world of gaming.

A REQUEST TO NINTENDO: DON'T BE STUPID - by Mr Biffo

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