Update 23/05/16

Nintendo X Nvidia

Nintendo have joined forces with Nvidia according to Emily Rogers.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=203747904&postcount=1780

http://gamingbolt.com/nintendo-nx-nvidia-is-involved-with-the-consoles-future-rumor

OP:

Emily Rodgers/Arcade Girl has posted some interesting rumours relating to supposedly recent radical changes at Nintendo, one of which will allow them to speed up their first party output significantly. She also goes onto mention how the launch of games within NEX's first year alone will eclipse the amount of software WiiU managed within the past four years. She also states that Nintendo's aim is to exceed the first party software output it managed on previous console generations. She also debunks one aspect of a previous rumour from a verfied reddit user known as 10k, who claims his source told him the NEX controller will essentially be a dummy Vita allowing for remote play gameplay via WiFi.

"This isn’t some hyperbolic statement. This isn’t speculation nor blind optimism. These aren’t my personal fan wishes either. Furthermore, my negative feelings toward the Wii U have zero influence on any of the information mentioned below.

Here is what I’ve been told by my sources close to Nintendo:

The big fundamental focal point (and overall goal) behind NX is to vastly increase the software output from Nintendo’s first party teams and studios.

To accomplish this, the entire process of how Nintendo develops and produces software has gone through radical changes.

There is a new strategy that was put in place to create and release first party software at a faster rate.

Multiple unannounced Wii U projects were moved over to NX.

The NX could potentially see the highest output of first party software in the company’s history. (I’m talking about the entire lifespan of NX. Not just one or two years.)

Now, there are a few things that need to be mentioned here.

Reminder: A new process/strategy doesn’t necessarily mean that software won’t ever be delayed, or there won’t ever be gaps between releases. There is no “perfect strategy” that will prevent delays if a project requires more polish…or if a project just isn’t coming together as the company had hoped.

Also, the company does Nintendo Directs, so it’s unknown how much software will be revealed at E3 this year. For example: Bayonetta 2 wasn’t announced until three months after E3 2012. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Yoshi Wooly World, and Wind Waker HD weren’t revealed until the January 2013 Direct — two months after Wii U launched.

So it’s possible that Nintendo may save some game announcements for later events after E3 (and after launch). I highly doubt that they will bust their entire load at E3"

NEX controller:

"A few days ago, I talked about whether the hardware rumors posted by NeoGaf’s 10k had any legitimacy. I said the NX gimmick described in 10k’s rumors were false. But I never confirmed nor denied whether the controller will have a screen or not. Will the NX controller have a screen? Maybe. Maybe not.

But the gimmick he describes about “using enhanced Wii U Gamepad streaming tech to stream games from anywhere” and “It’s basically a dummy Vita, with no processing capabilities, that won’t require a $200 add-on to experience remote play” is not correct.

The controller itself will not have any processing capabilities, it’ll essentially be a dummy vita. It’ll likely have basic OS functions to access the NX console from anywhere, like a tiny cpu. Nintendo will use enhanced Wii U gamepad streaming tech, and allow the controller to be taken anywhere, connect to the NX console at home (likely through Wi-fi or personal hotspots and the NX console will likely have to be in stand-by mode). Basically, it’s remote play built into the box and won’t require a $200 add-on to experience it. -10k

I showed this to my Nintendo sources, and they laughed. “The gimmick is made up. His sources lied to him,” they said. The gimmick that 10k’s sources were describing sounded like Wii U 2.

Even if the NX controller gets a built-in screen, why would the NX’s main gimmick — the hardware’s biggest selling point — be an enhanced, improved version of Nintendo’s worst selling console ever? Satoru Iwata said NX is not a replacement for Wii U and 3DS. Tatsumi Kimishima said NX is not the next version of Wii or Wii U — it’s something unique and different. Let’s not also forget that Kimishima warned that Wii U was too similar to the Wii.

And how exactly are these NX games going to “stream from anywhere” outside of your house…to this controller that “won’t have any processing capabilities”…? Will Nintendo provide some type of streaming service (that won’t require a monthly subscription) to make all of this magically happen? The information that 10k’s sources provided on the gimmick just didn’t make sense."

https://arcadegirl64.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/nxs-software-output/

So increased software output = Low quality games and microtransactions? Its where the money is.

Who is this Emily Rogers and why should I believe anything she has to say? The only other time I've even heard her mentioned is in regards to some rumors about the new Legend of Zelda game. Her Twitter account is also protected and that linked Wordpress blog only has two posts and they're both about this same unsubstantiated NX speculation. Does her uncle work at Nintendo?

There is no magical way to increase the speed of game development. It's all about man power. At a certain point, no matter how optimized the software and tools, asset generation requires people to work their asses off working on that stuff. So unless Nintendo's secret strategy is to hire a ton more people, this "news" is essentially empty air.

Emily Rodgers has consistently had her rumors validated, she's one of the most reliable certainly.

@liquidprince:

Or working alongside other developers, sharing labour costs. I do think they need more employees also, they would need to in order to do this.

Even if I did trust this source, what are these rumours really?

That Nintendo will make first party games and that the NX will have a new controller?

Radical changes!

But wheres my third party support?! I need yet another version of call of duty on my nintendo console!

...then why can't I find any reference to her other than this and those Zelda rumors from a few months ago? You're also misspelling her name every time.

EDIT: OK. I actually did manage to find a site with a bunch of her writing over the past four years, but this particular rumor still doesn't seem like it's all that substantial.

@ripelivejam: agreed, ideally with as many motion control features as possible.

I wonder if this might be the first Nintendo console I own since the Famicom. Would be neat I guess!

This assumes there aren't inefficiencies or bureaucracy issues that you can eliminate. Yes, Nintendo hasn't invented a magical game programming/art asset creating AI that can churn out games for them, agreed there. But Nintendo also seems to have a slow bureaucratic development process with a lot of iteration and games that get retooled a bunch. They may be streamlining that process to just approve games, build them, and ship them. That could speed things up considerably.

Would it also result in lower quality games? I have no idea. Certainly Nintendo has maintained a high level of quality in first party titles, so it's hard to argue that their process doesn't work. But maybe there are inefficiencies in the process that they can eliminate that will result in more games at a faster pace.

@skinky: Oh? What rumors of hers have been previously proven true? What stories has she broken? It's important to establish credibility beyond "trust me, guys"

@rethla said:

This is the first thing I thought when reading the OP. Maybe the NX is a phone...

It's a shame really. Nintendo has completely fallen off my gaming radar. The last Nintendo product I bought was a DS Lite, and it was (and still is) great. They haven't really done anything as well since. The NX will have to be something pretty special to get me interested.

@sinusoidal: Every few months I look at the 3DS and think "one day" but then there's nothing on it that screams "BUY ME!". The closest is Fire Emblem or Bravely Default, but the rest is all stuff that I'd maybe like to try but I've no long term enjoyment of and no itch to play another Mario or Zelda etc.

@sinusoidal:I think by increased software output we're really seeing the consolidation of the handheld and home console game development (I.e instead of having Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart WII 8/WII U, we have Mario Kart 9 that works anywhere).

I think this makes sense because consumers would rather buy one game that works everywhere rather than two separate software packages. The disadvantage with this is that software gets muddled (does good game design lend itself to multi function uses?).

I guess this could be good news but increased output leads to worries of dips in quality. Plus, would Nintendo start using some of their lesser used IP's or are we just going to get 2-3x as many Mario games? It could even just be a bunch of mobile ports.

None of this seems that radical without any specifics about what Nintendo changed in their development process and it just raises some questions/concerns about the future.

@jesus_phish: Link Between Worlds is exceptional, Fire Emblem Awakening and MH4U are also great games, and I hear very good things about their sequels too. Phoenix Wright DD, Animal Crossing and Majora's Mask 3d are really good especially if you haven't played those series before, or if it has been a long time for you. On top of that there are the SNES re-releases, and well-received games I personally haven't played yet like Mario 3D World, Pokemon XY, Bravely Default and Second, Mario Kart and Xenoblade Chronicles 3D.

All of it adds up to being worth the price, but only just. Combining the Wii U and the 3DS output together into one console (assuming that's what they'll do for the NX), you'd end up with a pretty reliable catalogue of great and interesting games.

@gerrid: I'm sure I'll eventually get one and enjoy it, I'm just waiting for it to drop in price again. I've got a Vita and tonnes I enjoy playing on that. I'm also looking at a lot of the games you mentioned and thinking, they sound great but like heavy time investments. Anytime I hear about FE, MH, AC, Pokemon and Bravely Default it sounds like they're all 100 hour games, which is great value, but I've limited gaming time so they need to really be great you know?

What has Emily Rogers leaked in the past that turned out to be real information? The first time I had ever even heard of this person was two weeks ago when someone posted about her Zelda tweets.

I honestly don't buy her story...

Should Nintendo produce more games faster? Sure, but that will take years, not months, to ramp up. In fact, even if NX shipped this year that ramp-up of teams would take half a generation to actually reach any sort of noticeable speed. Even if Nintendo start this process three years ago, I would rather doubt that would be still a secret - increased production/paces would be noticed. In other words, she is spouting a pipe-dream..

Radical changes at Nintendo... Okay where? Show me who was moved, hired, or fired that demonstrated that radical changes in management or oversight have occurred. People have been fired for sure...Nintendo seems really good at that. But, nothing has switched at headquarters and certainly there was no massive hiring or movement of teams. Again, Nintendo SHOULD do this, but they have shown no outward indication of changes to structures, and it would show if they did. Whispers would have been heard, hiring or additions to teams would be noticed if this were occurring. Again, she is spouting pipe-dreams of what fans would love to happen.

"...I showed this to my Nintendo sources, and they laughed." No, ya didn't. Anyone that would know would work at Nintendo, right? And, anyone who worked at Nintendo for this past year knows talking about Nintendo to anyone outside would be a firing offense. Again, it would MAKES SENSE if Nintendo didn't repeat the mistake of Wii U with game pads with screens, but attributing western business logic to Nintendo is a pipe-dream.

What is the polite way to say this...everything she 'revealed' is what someone who liked Nintendo would WANT them to be doing or thinking.

@mike: @chaser324: She primarily tweets her "news" and then quickly deletes it. She's accurately predicted stuff like Miiverse coming to 3DS and Platinum making a Wii U game.

She's regarded as pretty accurate but I've only known of her for a few months now so there is no way for me to know if she can be accurate about big stuff. She seems to have some insider knowledge about Nintendo. But access to new game titles and access to the NX are very different things.

Come this E3 we'll see how correct she is or isn't with big stuff.

@chaser324: @mike: Also, I feel I need to note that Skinky is a user that recently registered and necro'd every Nintendo thread from the last two years to say "Super Mario Sunshine Galaxy" is going to be an NX launch title, leading myself (and no doubt, other GB users) to flag their bullcrap posts wholesale. This thread is sketchy as hell.

@whitegreyblack: The credibility of the OP and the credibility of Emily Rogers are really two different matters. I've seen this specific piece quoted elsewhere by reputable people. I still don't think this rumor is all that substantial though: studios change their internal processes all the time and it's rarely newsworthy since it's really only the output that matters.

@chaser324: "The credibility of the OP and the credibility of Emily Rogers are really two different matters."
I see your point and agree.

However, the Emily Rogers stuff that's posted in the OP is tenuous at best and really is of absolutely no substance:
The NX aims to increase first-party output. How? Radical changes. What changes? A new strategy. What strategy? ...
Then, it just goes on to say that some other person that posts rumors about Nintendo things (in this case, the NX controller) is wrong, and then.. it just sort of ends there.

This all sounds like the kind of calibre stuff you'd get from a Youtube vape personality rumor/beef video playlist.

@mike:

Even when she does get things wrong, she still has a knack of being on the right track, or thereabouts, leading most to believe she has credible sources. Recently she rumoured the recent Paper Mario game months before the last Nintendo Direct.

@whitegreyblack:

Have there only been two Nintendo threads in the last two years?!. You need more active Nintendo fans and writing on here.

@skinky: There are a lot of Nintendo fans here. I think the disconnect you might be having is in not understanding the community rules or how the forums function on this site.

Nintendo shouldn't rely on obscure bloggers to tell us what they're doing.

Have you guys really never heard of Emily Rogers?

She an authoritative source in the industry. It was her that first broke the news that Twilight Princess was coming to both GCN and Wii.

Here's an article she wrote about the Dolphin:

https://dromble.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/

Here's a reddit thread about the last job she quit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/31vt5r/emily_rogers_will_stop_writing_at_the_end_of_the/

Pic below.

Nintendo's investors meeting is held on the 27th, it's likely we should get the project codename as we did with Wii's "Revolution", at the very least. Who knows if they say anymore, probably unlikely. As far as business changes mentioned in the Op, they if true should be forthcoming. I am personally hoping for new acquisitions, Nintendo should invest in their portfolio outside of Japan. Just one will do for now...

I just want a Nintendo thing that'll play all the Nintendo things I've missed since 1984.

@shindig: If Nintendo launches a somewhat unified platform with a big back catalog virtual console at an account rather than system level I will be there day one, even if it costs a lot and does nothing else.

Nintendo failed to sell me a Wii U primarily because of how badly the Virtual Console was implemented...ON A CONSOLE LAUNCHED IN 2012!

It still makes me mad. It was inexcusable on the Wii, which launched a year after the Xbox 360, and it was inexplicable with the Wii U.

True or not, I'm not sure I want them to ramp up 1st party dev anyway? To me that reads more like an EA thing where we suddenly get Mario Kart 2016 then 2017, 2018 etc. I shudder to think about Mario Golf, Tennis and Party being annualized like that. Though it would create awesome Giant Bomb content eventually!

Besides an easy way cut down like 6 months on game dev time is to stop "localizing" it to fit Nintendo's skewed view of what a game in Europe should be vs US vs Japan.

@geirr: Not to derail this but I think you mean what "our" "skewed view" is compared to theirs. There's just flat out different laws regarding things like that which stop them releasing games in their original state - just like how there's been laws in Germany for years about what gore can and can't be shown, what symbols can and can't be shown etc, etc.

Please stay on topic. Don't make this another thread about Nintendo localization. A small change to their localization process isn't going to significantly accelerate game development.

Yeah, and you should only really ramp up first-party support if the ideas are there to implement. It might just come naturally with new hardware.

Nintendo X Nvidia have joined forces according to Emily Rogers

http://gamingbolt.com/nintendo-nx-nvidia-is-involved-with-the-consoles-future-rumor