Nintendo NX & Zelda Rumors

[A Black Falcon]

Frankly, I don't see any downsides here. Nintendo is bowing out of directly competing with Sony and MS and have gone full-on with the one market they've always dominated, portable gaming. Combined with their tentative first steps into cell phone games (to great success, partly due to how terrible the vast majority of cell phone games are), they've got a clear path. Meanwhile, Sony and MS have opted to just turn consoles into PCs with none of the advantages of PCs. I'm not really sure how that's going to turn out.

There's third party concerns, but Nintendo has maintained solid third party support on their portable line, so I'm expecting that to continue on the NX. Frankly, this seems like a pretty smart decision, even if it means the days when Nintendo could compete graphically with competing systems are long behind us. The Gamecube seems to be the last time Nintendo is going to play that game.

As I've said in several threads now (here for example: http://tcforums.com/forums/showthread.ph...Confrences ), I think that the third-party concerns are a big issue, and by yet again refusing to release a system with hardware comparable to the competition Nintendo doubles down on ensuring that they will not get much third-party support, particularly from the West. The loss of third-party support has hurt Nintendo quite a bit over the last two decades, so this is a real problem. With this Nintendo continues relying on creating gimmicks that can draw people in. But how reliable is that as an operating principle, when in the last two generations we see the two polar opposite results that it can bring?

And as for third parties on handhelds, the 3DS is still getting some support, yes, but the rise of smartphones has greatly reduced the amount of third-party support it has gotten versus past Nintendo handhelds. The 3DS is a moneymaker, but past Nintendo handhelds did better because they were not competing with something most people have in their pocket. Convincing people to carry something around other than just a phone is not so easy. On these grounds, for the coming years at least there may actually be more security in the traditional console market; it has problems too, but at least there is still a clear place for devices that let you play games on a TV.

Of course, playing the high-power-console game costs a LOT of money, so on those grounds I can see why Nintendo is staying away; maybe this is the safest route. But it has its own major issues.