Hardware Miyamoto on future hardware after Wii U

[shinkodachi]

That would be great if that could happen

Yeah, but it begs the question why Nintendo thought it was a good idea to take this current direction:

1. I was very off put when I played NSMBU for the first time with a Wii U Pro Controller because parts of the game requiring motion tilts were instead performed with the ZR/ZL buttons. That was more than confusing, because the Wii U GamePad could be tilted in such parts.

2. No analog L/R triggers... Just why? It's a natural part of console gaming nowadays. Nintendo themselves used analog L/R triggers in an innovative way with Super Mario Sunshine. Why take them out?

3. Why was the Classic Controller tethered to the Wiimote...? It's why we are in this mess that third party controllers coming out in 2014 for the Wii U still require a damn Wiimote to connect to. They're neither wireless nor wired in the truest sense of the word. It's just stupid.

 

[aofelix]

Next gen third party should be a massive priority for Nintendo. They were too confident post wii and its hurt them. Sure from a quality perspective, Nintendo should do their own thing and not worry about third parties. But from a sales and practical perspective, just look at the top charts and see how much money is in third party titles.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Next gen third party should be a massive priority for Nintendo. They were too confident post wii and its hurt them. Sure from a quality perspective, Nintendo should do their own thing and not worry about third parties. But from a sales and practical perspective, just look at the top charts and see how much money is in third party titles.

From all the mistakes they've done on the Wii U surely they're going to make sure their next-gen home console will be an entirely different experience for devs and gamers.

Please no stupid bulky controller like the GamePad, Nintendo. Just a traditional controller with analogue triggers, thanks.

 

[shinkodachi]

Next gen third party should be a massive priority for Nintendo. They were too confident post wii and its hurt them. Sure from a quality perspective, Nintendo should do their own thing and not worry about third parties. But from a sales and practical perspective, just look at the top charts and see how much money is in third party titles.

It's a bit like with Sony after the PS2. That console was excessively good in performance and continued to sell in strong numbers well after the PS3 had released. Sony was too proud of their success and botched the PS3 launch. It's why they had to quickly go back to the drawing board, rebrand and set a new direction with the Slim in 2009 just 3 years after the launch of the PS3.

 

[RevPokemon]

Yeah, but it begs the question why Nintendo thought it was a good idea to take this current direction:

1. I was very off put when I played NSMBU for the first time with a Wii U Pro Controller because parts of the game requiring motion tilts were instead performed with the ZR/ZL buttons. That was more than confusing, because the Wii U GamePad could be tilted in such parts.

2. No analog L/R triggers... Just why? It's a natural part of console gaming nowadays. Nintendo themselves used analog L/R triggers in an innovative way with Super Mario Sunshine. Why take them out?

3. Why was the Classic Controller tethered to the Wiimote...? It's why we are in this mess that third party controllers coming out in 2014 for the Wii U still require a damn Wiimote to connect to. They're neither wireless nor wired in the truest sense of the word. It's just stupid.

All 3 things you said are part on my only thing thing about the wired is I'm not sure if they do it for battery or connection

 

[shinkodachi]

All 3 things you said are part on my only thing thing about the wired is I'm not sure if they do it for battery or connection

My guess is that it was designed such to save costs. Classic Controllers are "stupid", they're just housings with buttons inside and the bare minimum of electronics. Why Nintendo didn't just integrate WaveBird transmitters into the Wii and thus had the perfect wireless controller (WaveBird) is beyond me. Or they could've redesigned the WaveBird to use Bluetooth. Or, you know, actually thought about a traditional controller for the Wii because the Classic Controller is just a tacky add-on.

 

[RevPokemon]

My guess is that it was designed such to save costs. Classic Controllers are "stupid", they're just housings with buttons inside and the bare minimum of electronics. Why Nintendo didn't just integrate WaveBird transmitters into the Wii and thus had the perfect wireless controller (WaveBird) is beyond me. Or they could've redesigned the WaveBird to use Bluetooth. Or, you know, actually thought about a traditional controller for the Wii because the Classic Controller is just a tacky add-on.

Simple the classic controller makes more $$$ than the wavebird

 

[shinkodachi]

It's not so simple, though. Nintendo saw it coming that they'll be making Smash Bros. for Wii U. Why would they take out GameCube support from the later Wii models (Family Edition, mini) and then reintroduce an adapter in 2014 for Wii U? Of course, they now can make good money with the adapters and new GameCube controllers, but they'd have made better money if the whole Classic Controller shenanigans were never released to the public and everyone including developers stuck to GameCube controllers. They lost a good 3-4 years of milking customers with new GameCube controllers. Why? I don't understand.

 

[cdoty]

Since development on x86 is much cheaper as it foregoes the need for dedicated development kits and enables better portability between PC and console hardware, x86 is the de facto architecture moving forward. Will Nintendo use x86 in their next console? I'd say it's very possible.

x86 software development is no more expensive than PowerPC. The GNU toolchain targets each equally well and most games are mostly C/C++ code.

All current gen consoles have development kits, so I don't see this going away; x86 doesn't change this. Using Linux or Windows, or shipping debug capable consoles to consumers, are the only ways to get rid of development kits.

The value of x86 is that you can cheaply adapt a reference design, from AMD or intel, and create a console. The parts will be cheaper, due to the economies of scale.

 

[shinkodachi]

All current gen consoles have development kits, so I don't see this going away; x86 doesn't change this.

Tell that to the countless indies out there.

 

[TemplarGR]

My guess is that Nintendo will use ARM architecture for the Wii U successor. By the time this new console appears, ARM mainstream cpus will be far better than the Jaguar cores currently on PS4/XBOXone.

Combine this with the fact that Nintendo always picks AMD for gpus and AMD is entering the ARM SoC market soon. Plus there have been hints about their cooperation in recent news/announcements.

An AMD ARM SoC with a beefy gpu component will be perfect for a new console, plus it will allow the merging of the handheld ecosystem, also using ARM... It is possible that the 3DS successor will be using the same instruction set with the Wii U succesor, something that Nintendo has been talking about for a long time now (merging the two ecosystems).

Since Nintendo is a bit stingy and likes to use mature (and cheap) hardware for its consoles, i believe the Wii U successor will come out at late 2017/early 2018. Earlier than that and the hardware will be expensive for them, and i don't believe they will take more time since they would like to catch up to the competition.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

 

[shinkodachi]

Combine this with the fact that Nintendo always picks AMD for gpus and AMD is entering the ARM SoC market soon. Plus there have been hints about their cooperation in recent news/announcements.

EDIT: Hmm... http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=959539

 

[shinkodachi]

First we have Miyamoto hinting at future hardware... Now we have Iwata expressing frustration towards not being able to do certain things with the Wii U and trying to implement those things in the next console... Just why are they talking about future hardware at this point so much? :| (Emphasis added by me.)

Iwata: ... By the way, speaking of usability, the Nintendo DS was the first portable game system to have a sleep function, but that feature was the result out of the frustration of not being able to implement it with the GameBoy Advance SP.

4Gamer: Frustration?

Iwata: Indeed. The GBA SP was also a clam-shell design, so I pretty adamantly demanded of the hardware team that it went into sleep mode when it was closed. 'This feature is absolutely essential!' I said.
However, at that time, they told me that as it would take re-working the chip so it could be turned on and off it would take a year to do it, so I had to reluctantly withdraw my request. Nevertheless, I did tell them that they had to make sure the next system they designed would be able to go into sleep mode.

4Gamer: Designing hardware seems tricky because it requires you to have a couple of years worth of foresight, doesn't it...

Iwata: I was really upset by that at the time. But that feeling of 'We must do it next time!' connected directly to implementing that feature into the DS.

Kawakami: I do think the concept of a sleep mode for a game console is brilliant.

Iwata: Speaking of that, let's talk about two years ago. Right after the Wii U launched, when you were kind enough to give us quite a lot of feedback, Mr. Kawakami, I had a similar feeling of frustration to the GBA SP situation then. On various points, I thought 'We have to do that next time!'

Kawakamih, I'm sorry. I might have been a little insensitive at the time.

Iwata: Not at all. But, because of that, because of that frustration, not only do we want it to connect with features next time, we are actually working to fix it for next time.

All: Oooooh....

Taken from the 'GAF: http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=959746