The Big N, the Red Three and the HD: Why Nintendo's Staying Ahead
By Jensonb 25 Comments
Ah Nintendo...How the times have changed. When I was a kid, I was raised on a strict diet of PlayStation (later PlayStation2) and admired your systems from afar, until I got into the portable gaming scene with your delightful Game Boy Advance. And I'm crazy, so I only ever had that first one. The ridiculously hard to see one. But I ADORED it. Mario Kart: Super Circuit? I played the shit out of that. Eventually the damn battery died and so the Save stopped working.
Since then, I've been on your portables team pretty much nonstop. A true believer. But not until the early info about the Wii did I really get onboard with your home consoles. I had a GameCube, but I got it long after the PlayStation2 and never really used it much.
But it struck me recently that since the DS, you've been hitting nothing but home runs. The Wii is a revelation, and the 3DS...Jeez, I'm obsessed with the damn thing. I can't get mine until a week tomorrow and damn, I cannot wait.
But that's all background. Here's the thing. Recently, rumours about the successor to the hugely successful Wii have begun to leak out. Essentially, it's going to be HD, it's going to be powerful and it's going to evolve Motion Control beyond PlayStation Move. And I have Move. Move is great. Wii does some parts better, but there are undeniable advantages to Move from a technical level. Outdoing Move is a big deal.
The rumours also have it that this "Project Cafe", whatever it winds up being called, will come out in 2012 - possibly as early as July but maybe around November. In either case, it seems inconceivable that Big N will not get the jump on Sony and Microsoft by at least two, realistically three to four, years. At first blush, this seems like a bad idea - didn't do Dreamcast any favours - but then times have changed.
We're in a Post-Generational Video Games Market now. Sony and Microsoft decided that they wanted a ten year cycle this generation. They want to get by by iterating for a decade and leave off the next big leap. They never told Nintendo and Apple. Nintendo and Apple have decided the future is iterating in a different way. Every now and then we have a big leap forward like 3DS over DS Series, but it still says DS and it still looks like a DS. Nintendo are iterating, but their making bigger leaps faster.
Likewise, Apple release new iPhones, iPod touches and iPads every year, keeping things fresh. And they, like Nintendo, add new functionality through software updates and making Apps available in online stores. The hardware upgrades are substantial. Today's iPhone 4 makes the original iPhone of 2007 look positively archaic. Today's PlayStation 3...Arguably less impressive than 2006's model - in hardware anyway. Think about that.
Suddenly, getting the next generation of home games consoles underway early starts to look like the Coup de'Grace of the modern gaming era. Nintendo will leapfrog the ageing PlayStation 3 and the nearly archaic - saved form such a fate only by MIcrosoft's own interpretation of the iterating culture - Xbox 360. The problem is, whilst they've both done a lot to capitalise on the modern fashion to iterate to keep their consoles fresh, they miscalculated how to do battle with Nintendo: they're simply too far behind, because Nintendo designed the Wii to die off faster. This has a lot to do with the fact they never saw Nintendo coming. They planned to do battle with each-other.
What that means is Nintendo can make a big leap forward NOW, as the market leader, whilst their competition - already struggling to provide an answer to the Wii, and only just beginning to - must wait. Which means Nintendo is the Leader of the Pack. Nintendo have performed an end-run around the Sony/Microsoft extended generation by essentially saying "iterating is not a replacement for generation change, it's part of it". They'll get a boost over the current hardware from their rivals, and ride that wave and the support it will earn them from the hardcore until the next set of machines from Sony and Microsoft drop.
Then they'll iterate. They'll put out a smaller, cheaper Project Cafe. Suddenly, it's this generation all over again.
The handhelds are going the same way - it's a little bit of history repeated. Nintendo have made a considerable leap forward with 3DS after the iterations of DS. Sony, meanwhile, has been iterating the PSP for almost as long, and as yet is still working on their successor, NGP. Nintendo have got the drop on their rival. 3DS torches the PSP graphically. The NGP isn't out for a while, but it it'll be ahead of the 3DS graphically - sort of. It's not as clear cut, because 3DS has the bonus of 3D.
But Sony haven't learnt their lesson properly. Whilst they've fixed the niggles of the PSP, what they haven't done is demonstrated that they have an answer to Nintendo's innovation. Yeah, they added a touchscreen (And, unaccountably, a touch-sensitive back plate) and some motion control but...Well, iOS has all that. Portable Consoles need to do something beyond phones to show their worth. 3DS has a bevy of Social Features and unique experiences. NGP so far looks like having...PS3 Ports.
Like the PSP had PS2 Ports. But the NGP might also get - shock shock gasp gasp - iOS and Android Ports! But who the hell cares? Remember what I said about unique experiences?
Sony doesn't get it. The DS beat them because there's nothing else like the DS. The 3DS will beat them because there's nothing else like it. The NGP can fundamentally only be home to experiences born elsewhere - at least for the most part.
And so it is that, looking ahead, I see Nintendo on top for quite some time to come. The simple fact is, they've engineered the market to their advantage in home consoles simply by being contrary - and their competitors got blindsided and look like they're about to be again. And in portables, well...The old adage still rings true: nobody else can make a portable console like a Nintendo. So the NGP will come out, and it'll do fairly well for itself but...
Nintendo, with their 3DS and their Project Cafe...They're still the king. Remember: The winner of the home console generation usually wins for two consecutive generations. Nintendo won with NES and SNES. Sony won with PS1 and PS2. Now Nintendo's won with the Wii...So they're due to win again next time.
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