Admittedly, this generation of the console wars has not been kind to Nintendo. The Wii U has been regularly underperforming. Put against the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, the Wii U is barely even in the same sport, let alone the same ballpark. But there may be some hope for the Nintendo brand, and it's looking to the next generation of consoles to save the day...as well as the next generation of handhelds.
That right there should spark a little interest in the gaming community. It's one thing to mention consoles. It's another to mention handhelds. To put them both together in such close proximity, now, that's a different matter altogether. The whole thing came about when Satoru Iwata—Nintendo's president—took a question during an analyst conference. Iwata noted that just last year, the company had restructured its research and development structures, and put both console development and handheld development under one central framework, headed up by Genyo Takeda, senior managing director.
With console development and handheld development under one banner, the reports suggest, we may be looking at future devices with an integrated development platform. Iwata noted with the analysts that it takes quite a bit--”a huge amount of effort” as Iwata described it—to port a Wii U title to the 3DS or vice versa, thanks to differences in resolution and development environment. But with a condensed affair like the one previously described, it should trim down the time to development and get the games in play faster.
Indeed, Iwata described the two systems as eventually being “like brothers in a family of systems.” Some have even suggested that this may yield a kind of Nintendo system that's simultaneously portable and console at the same time, a development that may well yield in the future one common system. This isn't so outlandish; consider the idea of a Wii U whose tablet controller can not only separate from the base station, but can continue to play games. More rapid game development would certainly be helpful; the Wii U's biggest problem as it sits is a pronounced lack of games, and correcting that problem would likewise go a long way in helping the system recover.
Would it be enough? This generation has taken a heavy toll on Nintendo. Its public perception, its overall image...these things have been sorely struck by Nintendo's sluggish game release schedule and constant apologies over same. The next generation may not be kind to Nintendo, especially after all this, but Nintendo can scarcely afford not to try. With faster development plus the unusual form factor of being able to combine console and mobile gaming, it may well be that Nintendo has a recipe for recovery right in its back pocket. Only time will tell if it can pull the job off, but things may be looking at least cautiously up.
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