The Nintendo NX Study in Contradictions

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
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The Nintendo NX Study in Contradictions

After the disaster that was the Nintendo Wii U, it's not surprising to see that a lot of fans are actively pinning their hopes to the Nintendo NX to put their company of choice back in the running in the console stakes. The Nintendo NX, however, may not be the place to start looking for the salvation of a company.

Word from Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima is that the Nintendo NX is not a replacement for the Wii U. Nor is it a replacement for the 3DS. Rather, it's a "new way of playing games," which Kimishima believes "will have a larger impact than the Wii U." It's considered a hybrid of console and mobile technology, and is said to be built with "industry leading" material. The system is expected to launch next spring--completely missing the holiday shopping season--out of a need to assemble a more powerful lineup of titles at launch.

Given that the Wii U has sold only 12.8 million systems worldwide--as compared to 101 million units of Wii--Nintendo does not need a "new way of playing games" right now. It needs a big seller and it needs it in short order. The Wii U has been lagging the market, and many games that made it to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were never found there. That's bad news; it's lost both system credibility and gaming credibility. Missing the holiday shopping season is an even bigger disaster; it should have held out for one October or another, whether it be 2016 or 2017, it should not be trying to split the difference.

Nintendo needs a hit. That's the bottom line; it's gone from top of the food chain to bottom of the barrel in one generation. If it spends another generation at the bottom it may well not come back. Though the market has changed in the last several years, Nintendo can still recover, but it's going to need quite the system to pull that off, and it doesn't have the benefit of the doubt from its player base right now.


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