Nintendo NX - Prediction Thread

[Nolan]

The real gimmick on the iHome would be the lawsuits from Apple.

[Ashley]

Yeah didn't Apple copywrite the use of i at the start of electronic products or something?

 

Or certainly tried to.

[Ronnie]

Nice idea though

[Pestneb]

Name: NX

 

Graphical capability: Hardware dependent

 

Controller style: Supports wireless controllers.

 

The gimmick: Play Nintendo games anywhere. OS with decoding dongle with security features. Plugs into a PC with minimum specs to enable the reading of game disks/digital games on hard drive/ interface with controllers.

Dongle can come bundled with entry level hardware, or if you already own suitable hardware the dongle can simply be plugged in. Requires connection to an NNID - each dongle has a unique code and is locked to an NNID. Internet connection is required to activate the dongle.

 

Hard drive size: User dependent..

 

Launch lineup: Mario platformer, Mario Kart 8 NX, Smash bros for NX

 

No. of Bundles available at launch:NX solo, NX + basic hardware, NX pro

 

Price: £50 + £20 annual subscription.

 

Release date: November 2016

 

Mainly I'm considering the NX actually being an o/s stored on a usb stick. Plug it into a PC and if the PC is high enough spec you will be asked to either set up a new nintendo account, or log in using existing details.

The USB stick has hardware and software features to protect data and allow encrypted game data to be read by a connected machine.

When connecting to a new machine an internet connection must be active before the NX will launch.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Pestneb

[peterl0]

I really like the idea of what this could be. Almost a way of Nintendo becoming a third party developer without actually doing it. Presumably some developers would just leave their game as a PC port and some would actually port the game to the controller, and hence pay a small licence fee. (Which could also possibly work using blue tooth for traditional games.

 

I doubt it will happen though.

[Kav]

I think the predictions for both home and handheld consoles with a bundle for both is a good shout.

 

So based on this, I'll make this prediction.

 

Name: Nintendo Home & Nintendo Portable

 

Graphical capability: Home console - PS4K (Neo) level, Portable - Vita/WiiU level

 

Controller style:

 

Home - I think they'll do the controller we saw on that patent in the NX Discussion Thread (with a couple minor adjustments)...

http://www.n-europe.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1788842&postcount=1138

 

These aren't in scale with each other...

 

The Pad:

Clickable analogue sticks. The shoulder buttons are set up like the Pro Controller, so there's 4 buttons but no analogue triggers unfortunately. No + or - buttons, just the "home" button (labelled "Nintendo" here).

It'll have gyro, NFC, speakers, a USB charge slot and microphone jack.

 

 

The Portable:

Similar size to the New 3DS XL, but not clamshell in design. Two Circle pads as opposed to analogue sticks but they will be clickable (they'll depress slightly). The shoulder buttons will be set up like they are on the New 3DS XL as opposed to the Home controller, so still 4 buttons. Touch interface like the Home controller.

Card slot for the games on the top, headphone jack on the bottom, NFC and speakers. Will have gyro too of course.

 

The gimmick: 3D, multi-touch touch-screen and both consoles will be compatible with each other in some respects (save data, profiles, cross-platform play on some games etc)... Portable can be used as Home console controller.

The handheld games work on the home console, most console games work on handheld, but they scale. Some home console games will be only home console as they're too big, or certain features/game modes will be missing when playing on the portable.

 

Hard drive size: 500gb

 

Launch lineup: Zelda WiiU port, Retro's game, Pikmin 4, Amiibo game, a Nintendogs type game, a Brain Age type game, a F2P game and a decent Virtual Console.

 

No. of Bundles available at launch: 3; Home & Portable bundle, Home console, Portable console.

 

Price: Home - £299.99, Portable - £189.99, Both - £399.99

If you buy the bundle you'll effectively have 2 controllers, one of which you can take anywhere with you and continue to game on the go.

 

Release date: March 2017

 

So I've made a couple adjustments to the above based on the news we got today.

 

What I hope for now, is as follows:

 

They have Zelda as hands-on at E3, albeit the WiiU version, but they will also show game-trailers for NX games in an E3 Direct... there's not going to be a stage presentation now the NX won't be there.

At the end of the Direct they will announce an event towards the end of the year that's going to be strictly an NX only event, so all the focus will be on that with no other distractions at all.

 

At this event there will be hands-on demos of the games that got trailers at E3 as well as an announcement trailer for the NX 3D Mario game, it'll be said that you can expect a hands-on of that game at next years E3.

 

Release will come in March, my prediction quoted above, and then at E3 next year the Mario that will be there will be announced as the big holiday title for that year. Giving the console another big push.

 

 

 

Anyone else have any thoughts/changes on their predictions?

Edited April 27, 2016 by Kav

[Dcubed]

@kav82, I like your controller designs. The bottom one looks like a retro cool tape cassette as well for extra awesome as well! : peace:

[dazzybee]

So I've made a couple adjustments to the above based on the news we got today.

 

What I hope for now, is as follows:

 

They have Zelda as hands-on at E3, albeit the WiiU version, but they will also show game-trailers for NX games in an E3 Direct... there's not going to be a stage presentation now the NX won't be there.

At the end of the Direct they will announce an event towards the end of the year that's going to be strictly an NX only event, so all the focus will be on that with no other distractions at all.

 

At this event there will be hands-on demos of the games that got trailers at E3 as well as an announcement trailer for the NX 3D Mario game, it'll be said that you can expect a hands-on of that game at next years E3.

 

Release will come in March, my prediction quoted above, and then at E3 next year the Mario that will be there will be announced as the big holiday title for that year. Giving the console another big push.

 

 

 

Anyone else have any thoughts/changes on their predictions?

 

They said nx won't be at e3, you're living in dreamland if you think nx game trailers are going to be there. They want to unveil nx properly, not in a sizzle real as part of their big Zelda event.

 

As for expect. I think a Wii u powered handheld that streams to the tele. No home console as such. All in one.

[Kav]

They said nx won't be at e3, you're living in dreamland if you think nx game trailers are going to be there. They want to unveil nx properly, not in a sizzle real as part of their big Zelda event.

 

As for expect. I think a Wii u powered handheld that streams to the tele. No home console as such. All in one.

 

I'm clutching at straws Dazzy! I'm hoping the NX itself isn't there but game-trailers might be.

I just can't see how they can go to E3 with one one game... even if it is Zelda!

[dazzybee]

I'm clutching at straws Dazzy! I'm hoping the NX itself isn't there but game-trailers might be.

I just can't see how they can go to E3 with one one game... even if it is Zelda!

 

I wishe it were true but they are saying nx is not there. They're binning off e3. This year is a wipeout for home console Nintendo. BUT, I think the NX will be game crazy! Just need to wait for this damn reveal event/direct.

[Kav]

I wishe it were true but they are saying nx is not there. They're binning off e3. This year is a wipeout for home console Nintendo. BUT, I think the NX will be game crazy! Just need to wait for this damn reveal event/direct.

 

I'm hoping they mean the NX itself won't be there. Not that they won't show anything at all for it.

 

Like I say, I'm clutching at straws as otherwise E3 for Nintendo is going to be absolutely dire! One game, even if it's Zelda, isn't enough!

[Jimbob]

Name: Nintendo NX (Home Console) & Nintendo NX Portable (Handheld)

 

Graphical capability: equal to the PS4 (Home) & PSP Vita (Handheld)

 

Controller style: 1 controller like the WiiU Pro (in design) for the home console, but has a mini-touch screen/pad like the PS4 controller. Keeping with Nintendo's style of being backwards compatible, the WiiU tablet would be compatible to allow the NX to play WiiU games with ease.

 

The NX Portable would have the touch screens and be compatible with the home console NX. Would be backwards compatible with the 3DS, so has a card slot for these games to be played on the system. Fold-able like the 3DS so it can be carried around.

 

The gimmick: Cross-buy and save between both the NX Home and Portable. Including VC games, which would work on both systems regardless.

 

Hard drive size: Default would be a 500gb HDD which can easily be upgraded if required (similar to how it can be done with the PS4)

 

Launch lineup: Zelda WiiU port, a new Pikmin, Animal Crossing NX and possibly whatever Retro is cooking up. 3rd party, expecting the usual Dance game and maybe whatever WiiU game Ubisoft had cooked up, but ported to the NX. And of course, a fully stocked Virtual Console (existing VC's on 3DS and WiiU updated to work on the NX consoles at launch)

 

No. of Bundles available at launch: 1, which would be the Home and Portable bundled together. Both consoles sold separatly.

 

Price: £299 (NX Home). £179 (NX Portable) and £399 (both Home and Portable). Each console bundled with 1 game and all necessary stuff to get things going (bar the plug for the Portable, existing 3DS charger cable compatible with console)

 

Release date: March 2017 (probably March 17th)

[Pestneb]

What if the NX is a licence... you get a controller which connects to a Nintendo "cloud". You use your NNID and pay subscription to connect to the NX, with one of costs to unlock particular games, with collected subscription fee's paid to game developers by Nintendo as % of time spent by users...

so if you spend

50% of your time on game X,

27% on game Y,

16% on Game Z

and

7% on game W

 

thats the % of your subscription fee that goes to the publishers of those games (less Nintendo's cut)

 

basically you can play on your PC, tablet, even mobile phone, so long as it is capable of streaming quickly enough and interfacing with the controller.

 

Nintendo can upgrade the NX whenever they want, maybe have different levels of subscription for different services..

so

Virtual console

Nindies

Online + (with voice chat support )

etc..

 

It would mean they'd need a good stream of titles, but also that they can incrementally improve the NX as demands from publishers change. Made a AAA game but NX doesn't quite have enough RAM? sure, we can upgrade that for you...

Or even allow publishers to upgrade the NX for themselves and have for example an EA specific NX feature set for example, with hardware features that EA develops and pays for that the regular NX doesn't have but are only made available to EA titles (or other publishers can make use of those features but pay Nintendo for NX AND pay EA a smaller cut for the EA specific features).

Edited April 29, 2016 by Pestneb

[Happenstance]

What if the NX is a licence... you get a controller which connects to a Nintendo "cloud". You use your NNID and pay subscription to connect to the NX, with one of costs to unlock particular games, subscription fee's paid to game developers as % of time spent...

so if you spend 50% of your time on game X,

27% on game Y,

16% on Game Z

and

7% on game W

 

thats the % of your subscription fee that goes to the publishers of those games (less Nintendo's cut)

 

basically you can play on your PC, tablet, even mobile phone, so long as it is capable of streaming quickly enough and interfacing with the controller.

 

Nintendo can upgrade the NX whenever they want, maybe have different levels of subscription for different services..

so

Virtual console

Nindies

Online + (with voice chat support )

Basic

Premium

 

Thats basically Playstation Now at the moment and while that is actually quite a good service, the technology is still way too early to base an entire system around it. Plus Internet speeds just arent where they would need to be for everyone to get games running steadily. I certainly cant use Playstation Now at the moment.

[Pestneb]

Thats basically Playstation Now at the moment and while that is actually quite a good service, the technology is still way too early to base an entire system around it. Plus Internet speeds just arent where they would need to be for everyone to get games running steadily. I certainly cant use Playstation Now at the moment.

 

Playstation now lets you play playstation games on your PC/tablet? that's pretty interesting.

 

I was thinking they'd have software that would allow games to be buffered to a certain extent... the slower your connection the higher specs your device would need to be. Basically allow preloading of larger assets to the device, but certain elements are streamed...

 

I wouldn't be too keen on it myself, but internet infrastructure is constantly improving. As they said, this wouldn't replace the Wii U and 3DS, but it would complement them. maybe slower speeds would be limited in the type of games they could play, but if NX was free to download and you could run a tool that tells you what you can get with your hardware and connection, it could be pretty neat.

So maybe with a slower connection you'd only be able to access VC games upto say N64, with stronger hardware maybe Nindies and upto GC, improve your connection and you can get a basic package, up the hardware power and the full thing is available to you....

If they could sort it so the streaming element was comparable to a youtube video, with local hardware doing a lot of the leg work, I think it could work.

Like the Server could "think" for AI, and tell the NX client software "AI E12 is going to approach door 27" the local hardware has data on how AI E12 would behave (walk characteristics, texture lighting etc) but without the net connection the actual brains of the game won't be there... so piracy would be tough.. hackers would need to hack into Nintendo's servers and replicate the AI and then redirect NX client software to the pirate server... no doubt with pirate servers potentially planting virus' trojans etc. I guess a local AI emulator could be created, and actually could be interesting in terms of mods etc. But the security challenges would be Nintendo's problem.

 

I think it also goes someway to explaining the home and handheld hardware developers joining into one team - the challenge is a single one, how to stream data securely and without causing gameplay issues...

Also when the net connection goes down, your games are unavailable... much in the same way that a power outage would currently render our libraries of games useless...

Edited April 29, 2016 by Pestneb

[Ashley]

Playstation now lets you play playstation games on your PC/tablet? that's pretty interesting.

 

I was thinking they'd have software that would allow games to be buffered to a certain extent... the slower your connection the higher specs your device would need to be. Basically allow preloading of larger assets to the device, but certain elements are streamed...

 

I wouldn't be too keen on it myself, but internet infrastructure is constantly improving. As they said, this wouldn't replace the Wii U and 3DS, but it would complement them. maybe slower speeds would be limited in the type of games they could play, but if NX was free to download and you could run a tool that tells you what you can get with your hardware and connection, it could be pretty neat.

So maybe with a slower connection you'd only be able to access VC games upto say N64, with stronger hardware maybe Nindies and upto GC, improve your connection and you can get a basic package, up the hardware power and the full thing is available to you....

If they could sort it so the streaming element was comparable to a youtube video, with local hardware doing a lot of the leg work, I think it could work.

Like the Server could "think" for AI, and tell the NX client software "AI E12 is going to approach door 27" the local hardware has data on how AI E12 would behave (walk characteristics, texture lighting etc) but without the net connection the actual brains of the game won't be there... so piracy would be tough.. hackers would need to hack into Nintendo's servers and replicate the AI and then redirect NX client software to the pirate server... no doubt with pirate servers potentially planting virus' trojans etc. I guess a local AI emulator could be created, and actually could be interesting in terms of mods etc. But the security challenges would be Nintendo's problem.

 

I think it also goes someway to explaining the home and handheld hardware developers joining into one team - the challenge is a single one, how to stream data securely and without causing gameplay issues...

Also when the net connection goes down, your games are unavailable... much in the same way that a power outage would currently render our libraries of games useless...

 

He said "basically" so it doesn't have all of that. I think Now is compatible with certain Bravia TVs and Sony devices. You can remote play your PS4 on a PC/Mac and I assume you can use Now this way too.

 

But PlayStation Now is built off the back of Sony's acquisition of Gekai whose whole purpose was to bring this technology to the masses. I haven't personally seen anything from Nintendo to suggest they'd be suited to overcome this particular technical hurdle.

[killthenet]

I've done a mock up of what I think the NX controller should look like, it's pretty rough and ready so excuse the poor photoshopping.

 

 

I want Nintendo to utilise the free form display technology to create a sleeker alternative to the Wii U gamepad. The display would extend above the controller to give the player the option to play off-tv or as a second display as in 'Star Fox Zero'. The screen will also extend below and around the analogue sticks, giving players the option to have quick and easy access to a wider variety of items, like in 'The Wind Waker' as shown below and be used for context sensitive buttons.

 

 

That's not the best example clearly, as it only shows items that are already assigned to face buttons, but for a game like 'Minecraft' the player could have 5 or 6 items on either side of the controller and be able to quickly switch between them. It could really help with the UI in some games, freeing up valuable screen space as well as offering convenience for gamers.

[Sheikah]

I think they should stay as far away from expensive controllers with screens on - the gamepad has been an example of what people think of that. The screens always look worse than the TV anyway.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

I've done a mock up of what I think the NX controller should look like, it's pretty rough and ready so excuse the poor photoshopping.

 

 

I want Nintendo to utilise the free form display technology to create a sleeker alternative to the Wii U gamepad. The display would extend above the controller to give the player the option to play off-tv or as a second display as in 'Star Fox Zero'. The screen will also extend below and around the analogue sticks, giving players the option to have quick and easy access to a wider variety of items, like in 'The Wind Waker' as shown below and be used for context sensitive buttons.

 

 

That's not the best example clearly, as it only shows items that are already assigned to face buttons, but for a game like 'Minecraft' the player could have 5 or 6 items on either side of the controller and be able to quickly switch between them. It could really help with the UI in some games, freeing up valuable screen space as well as offering convenience for gamers.

 

I agree the gamepad situation should be avoided - Can two gamepads even be used together yet?

 

But I love this idea! A good combination of a standard controller and screen - I would imagine that is how the Dreamcast 2/3 controller would have looked. Good stuff!: peace:

[Kav]

So after the Eurogamer article does anyone have any further wild speculations or hope for the NX?

 

Here's mine:

 

So if it actually is anything like Eurogamer suggests, I'd like to see something along the lines of this:

 

 

Clickable snub Analogue Sticks.

Shoulder buttons, but a cross between a smaller version of the Gamecube button and a scroll-wheel. So it scrolls and depresses to a click.

The screen part of the portable has a sensor bar. You dock the screen, connect it to the TV, upscaling occurs, and you use the 2 control parts of the device like Wiimote+'s.

 

So effectively you have the portable console and an HD super-Wii, which has a relatively traditional method of input too:

 

2 clickable analogue sticks

D-Pad

4 shoulder buttons (2 of which are a scroll)

4 face buttons

 

Throw in a camera on the back of the screen section for some AR gaming (Pokemon) whilst on the go and VR like the mobile phones manage it and voila!

 

That's my dream (with OS level Party Chat of course :p )!!!

 

Edit: I forgot to put the cartridge slot on my pic! Haha

...and the black bits on the "top" pic are IR sensors for the sensor bar and Wiimote pointing.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Kav

[dazzybee]

 

As for expect. I think a Wii u powered handheld that streams to the tele. No home console as such. All in one.

 

Don't need to change mine, I was pretty much bang on to begin with. It was like I knew....

[Fierce_LiNk]

Don't need to change mine, I was pretty much bang on to begin with. It was like I knew....

 

#TeamDazzy

#Hybrid4life

#HybridTheory

#NXtreme

#DeathToTeamSerebii

[Glen-i]

Don't need to change mine, I was pretty much bang on to begin with. It was like I knew....

 

 

Or they were spying on you. Which is perfectly possible. I would know.

[Dcubed]

Would be hilarious if Eurogamer's report turned out to be total bunk...

 

I say this as the one, sole loon on here who kept saying that the first NX machine would be a handheld

[Sheikah]

@Dcubed it's a handheld and a home console in one so a guess either way would have been correct . Edited July 28, 2016 by Sheikah