TurtleFish

I would hazard a guess that most people who would only read the opening line and then walk away would be the type of people who wouldn't enjoy NMS regardless of the nuance added on.

I'm just excited that there actually IS a game under all of that - I was scared to death that it would be nothing more than a pretty pretty demo.

Also, I'm glad it's not a MOBA. :)

I don't think the NX is going to change a thing. Mashing a console and handheld together for cheap with power is a tough technical problem, and 3rd Party publishers are having enough trouble producing games for PS4 and XBOne - why would they add a 3rd platform to the mix? If Nintendo follows a conventional strategy, I think they won't have any more success, at least in the North American market.

The only way I see this being a runaway success is if they pivot hard the other way - they admit "core console gamers" (whatever you want to label the group that think top-end consoles are the only way to game) will never buy a Nintendo product except as the optional 'second' or 'third' console, and they start focusing more on the mobile audience instead. They focus on the general public, the group that spends their time playing endless rounds of Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja, years after release - the people that turned Angry Birds into a crazy success.

Basically, they need to follow the same strategy that they followed accidentally with the Wii. But, that's a crazy brave move, especially when everybody's watching -- it takes guts and courage to face failure doing the risky thing, knowing the Internet is going to turn on you if things go against you. I don't know if Nintendo has the chutzpah to go for it like that.

You just have to be careful. I've backed 10 projects so far, with 5 still pending. Of the 5 I've gotten, completely satisfied. All of them, I've checked that they've come from public companies that have shipped product before in one form or another, or people with public reputations, or have made sure that the projects are small enough that they should be relatively easy to produce. (Like, it's hard to have major production problems with posters.) And even when something was cool, I've always stepped away if I was uncertain about a person's ability to deliver, or the quality of the product itself.

You should always be prepared to lose your money or at least expect problems. Building stuff for a large number of people is HARD. It's not just skill at producing whatever product you're producing - it takes organization, time management, supply chain management, and people management, and those are all hard skills to get right. Now, all of this checking doesn't guarantee success, but, it at least reduces the chance that somebody will just take the money and run.

All that being said, I remember that old Bombcast where the group was musing about Jeff burning all the social credibility he's earned over the past 20 years to kickstart the franchise fee to open a Domino's Pizza in Petaluma, and I wonder how many people would go for that....