I would love to say that I come from a generation where Nintendo ruled the roost. Fact is I’m not, Atari and Coleco made the gaming consoles that I first remember. Thankfully, Nintendo did ultimately jump into the breach and ultimately killed those two. But for many, Sony and Microsoft killed Nintendo and many of younger generations don’t remember the gaming giant that was Nintendo. The company hopes to make a return with the return to the console with Nintendo NX.
Company remains tight-lipped on Nintendo NX
For a company that dominated the industry for well over a decade and had such iconic successes as “Mario Brothers” and “The Legend of Zelda,” the fall from grace could better be called a trip off a cliff.
The former giant has enough of an, albeit aging, following that they may try to reenter the fray, or should before their legacy is all but forgotten for those that new of it at all. This was actually quite evident when rumors of a new system began to circulate and attention was piqued for many.
The company showed that not all that glitters is gold with the interesting Wii, but the follow up in Wii U failed to make a dent in a single market around the world. The company that revolutionized handheld gaming with the GameBoy and the DS series brought interest but in order to return to former glory, Nintendo needs to start leaking rumors of its plans for a new console or hybrid of handheld and console gaming. That’s how little we know about the Nintendo NX, we don’t have any idea what this is meant to be, though someone calling themselves Arekkz has summed up rumors and patents in an interesting video posted to YouTube.
The newest rumors suggest that Nintendo will be using AMD x86 industry chips on its processing units, which essentially suggests that Nintendo’s NX could have the same power as Microsoft’s and Sony’s award-winning consoles in the Playstation 4 and Xbox One respectively.
But what is a new console without games?
In a piece for WIRED UK, Matt Kamen interviewed a developer who is appalled by Nintendo’s unwillingness to let any potential game designer even look at much a new console much less know what it has under the hood.
In the piece, Kamen pointed out what Thomas Mahler, CEO of developer Moon Studios had to say at the gaming forum NeoGAF.
To the secrecy, Mahler had a curt answer that didn’t hide his frustration with Nintendo.
“This is actually THE singlest most annoying thing for every dev out there. We also talked to Nintendo and got absolutely nothing – I’ll never understand that.”
Martin Sahlin of Coldwood Interactive and developer of Unravel, was equally frustrated.
“I wish I knew more about it, but they’re really secretive about it. I actually had a really fun discussion with a person from Nintendo a while back [….] He wanted me to pitch something for the NX, and then he could tell me more about what it was. But basically, it’s kind of hard to pitch something when you don’t even know what it is,” he near screamed.
“With Nintendo not having any devkits out there at this point and probably even wanting to sell it in 2016,” Mahler added, “I can already guarantee that they’ll just not have any software support, since nobody can just jumble games together in less than a year. I mean, you can, but it’ll be garbage.”
“Get Unity and Epic to support these consoles WAAAAY ahead of release. By the time the console launches, it should be EASY for developers to develop games for these systems, things shouldn’t just only start at this point. I want the goddamn devkits or at least proper hardware specs ideally two years before release. Keep all the developers updated, start a forum where devs can chat and figure out all the problems everyone’s having, instead of everyone just having to deal with it. None of that’s happening anywhere and it’s just braindamaged,” continued Mahler.
So no news, and lots of frustration from Nintendo.
