Nintendo filed patent for gaming console without disc reader

[Wellington2k]

I've been telling people for years that they will eventually move away from discs and go to SD cards. If I'm right, I've got some money to collect.

 

[Madridi]

The day any console goes digital only is the day I stop buying it regardless of how many good games it has.

That is, until it gets hacked and I can pirate shit..

 

[TecXero]

The day any console goes digital only is the day I stop buying it regardless of how many good games it has.

That is, until it gets hacked and I can pirate shit..

Same, except for the piracy part. I'd want to be able to backup all the software I buy for it.

 

[KingVamp]

If they go all digital, which I doubt and hope they don't, you can still buy codes and points from the stores. Plus, yes, you could go to the store to download and the store will be completely responsible for not losing their transfer copies.

I be happy, if this patent means nothing and maybe even happier if it does going back to carts correctly, especially if the carts can be used with the portable too.

 

[Armadillo]

Digital only and I'm out. Might be ok elsewhere, but digital prices on console games in the UK are just absurd.

 

[LightyKD]

I'm all in for this. I'm already 80% digital. I have a few physical Wii U games only because they were cheaper that way.

 

[Deleted User]

2 Good things about digital:
1: No selling games only to rebuy later
2: No tariffs, if every game were digital games would probably be affordable in Oceania

 

[laudern]

2: No tariffs, if every game were digital games would probably be affordable in Oceania

I don't understand this point. Digital games on console have historically been more expensive than retail. There is 0 competition when deciding on "where" to buy as you are forced to buy from the consoles own digital shop.

The US MS/Sony digital stores are the only stores I see consistently bucking my previous paragraph. But the Australian ms/Sony stores, forget about it.

I can't speak about the nintendo Australia store, as I have previously mentioned, I'm not Dumb enough to buy digital content from an incompetent digital store.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't understand this point. Digital games on console have historically been more expensive than retail. There is 0 competition when deciding on "where" to buy as you are forced to buy from the consoles own digital shop.

The US MS/Sony digital stores are the only stores I see consistently bucking my previous paragraph. But the Australian ms/Sony stores, forget about it.

I can't speak about the nintendo Australia store, as I have previously mentioned, I'm not Dumb enough to buy digital content from an incompetent digital store.

eShop's really good actually, only complaints I hear about it are from indie devs having trouble getting updates on. In general Australia/NZ's is identical to UK's except sometimes there's the odd late title (usually available by the time your imported disc arrives except in the case of indie games.)

As for competition you can get codes from retailers, I ended up getting Fall of Cybertron for less than half of Steam's listed US price by buying a code from Amazon.

 

[LightyKD]

eShop's really good actually, only complaints I hear about it are from indie devs having trouble getting updates on. In general Australia/NZ's is identical to UK's except sometimes there's the odd late title (usually available by the time your imported disc arrives except in the case of indie games.)

As for competition you can get codes from retailers, I ended up getting Fall of Cybertron for less than half of Steam's listed US price by buying a code from Amazon.

The eShop is fairly horrid. Have you seen the pricing? Most games I can get for a third of the price in physical form. Sad part is, I don't want a physical collection yet I'm forced to have cases and disc on shelf do to the lack of game sales and third parties giving a fuck about updating their pricing.

 

[Online]

Nintendo's very first ventures into optical drives is what led to the Playstation being created surprisingly so I guess it's only natural to want to steer away from it. This either means full digital or cartridge based games which would be pretty cool.

 

[FAST6191]

Nintendo's very first ventures into optical drives is what led to the Playstation being created surprisingly so I guess it's only natural to want to steer away from it.

If you are running a business or engineering project like that then you have gone so spectacularly wrong it is hard to overstate it. There are many reasons to move away from optical drives (cost, random read speeds, read speeds in general, capacity limits, reliability) but business failures of decades ago should not be one of them.

 

[mashers]

The only circumstances under which I will currently go for a download version of a game is if that is the only option. Otherwise, I want a physical copy in whatever form (disc, cartridge, card) which is read only. I don't want streaming games, download versions of games or games which require any online activation. I want to be in control of buying, selling and using my software and I don't want to rely on a company continually providing services to allow me to do so.

A new console from Nintendo with no option to purchase physical copies of games would be a huge disappointment to me.

 

[LightyKD]

What if this isn't a next gen Nintendo Console. What if this is simply a 3DS player or a Wii U mini with a 3DS slot?

 

[stomp_442]

I don't understand why the cost of a digital download is so high. Disc manufacturing and the packaging, shipping the disc, and retail store expenses. Cut out all those expenses and the cost of the game should be a lot lower. Not to mention second hand resale would be eliminated forcing anybody that wants have the game to buy the game. Just lowering the cost of a digital copy of a game would go a long way to promoting digital purchases.

 

[mashers]

I don't understand why the cost of a digital download is so high. Disc manufacturing and the packaging, shipping the disc, and retail store expenses. Cut out all those expenses and the cost of the game should be a lot lower. Not to mention second hand resale would be eliminated forcing anybody that wants have the game to buy the game. Just lowering the cost of a digital copy of a game would go a long way to promoting digital purchases.

Excellent point, and another reason why I don't like digital downloads. Why should I pay £40 for a digital version when I can pay the same price for a physical copy with a nice case, booklet etc.?

Having said that, I would be interested to see what the cost price is for a unit of a particular game on digital download compared to the physical version. Yes there will be savings in that there is no production, material or physical distribution costs with a digital download, but download version come with their own costs - servers to host the files, bandwidth for people to download them, infrastructure to provide the storefront and backend payment system, customer services for the eShop etc. Nonetheless, these services are not of any value to me so I prefer to pay for the physical version nonetheless.

 

[KSP]

This makes sense that the NX will be discless since its most likely a hybrid handheld device designed to play games both mobile and at home. You cannot use disc storage for handheld consoles anymore. Most likely the NX will use a SD storage for games and will play them both at home and handheld. You'll see a consolidated line of all Nintendo games both handheld and traditional.

 

[mashers]

This makes sense that the NX will be discless since its most likely a hybrid handheld device designed to play games both mobile and at home. You cannot use disc storage for handheld consoles anymore. Most likely the NX will use a SD storage for games and will play them both at home and handheld. You'll see a consolidated line of all Nintendo games both handheld and traditional.

This would imply that one download will work on both consoles. That doesn't make sense from the sales point of view. For example, I have DKC Returns on my Wii and 3DS, and I bought both. If I had downloaded it to an SD card which would play in a home console and a handheld then that's only one sale. That means Nintendo will either have to differentiate between version of the software (e.g. 'mobile', 'desktop' and 'universal') with different price points, or charge more for everything to compensate for lack of duplicate sales, or suck up the difference and make less money.

In any case, I don't like the idea of a mobile/console hybrid. Just look at games for phone/tablet OSes. There are games which are made for phone-sized screens and work well, and there are games which are made for tablet screens which can also work well. Then there are universal games which will run on either. Usually one of two things happens. Either the game runs well on the phone, and the scaled up HD version wastes space by just making everything bigger and higher resolution, or the game is well adjusted to utilise the screen size of the tablet and is then unplayable on the phone. I would hate to see this happen with the NX, with games which either look like shit on the home console and play well on handheld, or look great on the home console and are unplayable on the handheld.

I would much rather games were made specifically for either handheld or home console so that they can be suitably adapted to the target platform. And yes, I would rather buy duplicate copies for each (e.g. disc for home console and cart for handheld), though I realise I may be in the minority here.

 

[KSP]

I think Nintendo's problem is they don't have enough third party support hense they don't have enough software to help sell their home consoles, this is the reason WiiU is dead. Since Nintendo has little thirdparty support, they intend to consolidate both home and handheld under one banner the NX, which means they will only ever need to make one version of all their first party games and will help increase the amount of software they have for their next system.

Also Nintendo's third party support for their handheld division has always been very strong if they can leverage this into their home console they would have a real contender.

NX will most like be powerful enough to play games at fullHD and only downscale the games when its used in handheld mode. This help solve Nintendo's biggest problem lack of software. Imagine if every game ever released on 3DS was originally released on WiiU, then WiiU wouldn't be dead right now.

I expect to see all games running in fullHD at 30-60, and possibly downscaled for the handheld element, same game, same cartridge. This is just my guess. I don't think they will try to make handheld versions of home console games, rather just make one game that can work in both situations.

 

[FAST6191]

I don't understand why the cost of a digital download is so high. Disc manufacturing and the packaging, shipping the disc, and retail store expenses. Cut out all those expenses and the cost of the game should be a lot lower. Not to mention second hand resale would be eliminated forcing anybody that wants have the game to buy the game. Just lowering the cost of a digital copy of a game would go a long way to promoting digital purchases.

Though I can not imagine it is free as an accountant would frame it the retail side of things kind of runs themselves. That said I am not sure of the current breakdown of costs. I do recall a few years back you would here of albums being recorded and the budgets there -- they were similar to game prices of the time, both were pressed onto optical media and one sold for four or five times more.

There are probably two reasons for the downloadables to be high though

1) I imagine originally there was some kind of fear (or possibly even a contract) that the bigger electronics/entertainment retailers would throw a wobbly -- if the retailers either boycotted or dragged their heels then if downloads did not work out then you would be left in the lurch for your new game.

2) Because people will pay it. I do wonder how many in the sales/accountant world run the numbers on what would happen if it got cheaper, indeed I imagine the whole price drops on Steam thing would be some great data to look at. I am also amused that "budget game" is a euphemism. Anyway you see something similar with professional sports -- player salaries go sky high, people wonder why and there might be something there but at the end of the day people do pay what amounts to a month's rent in places for a nosebleed seat, they do pay for the pay per view events and so on and so forth.

Second hand may not be cut out -- various EU rules might well force their hand. Also I like my second hand sales and a game company complaining about them always seems stupid to me.