They would have to be a LOT better than the PS360 versions to convince anyone to buy a new console though. Unless there actually are 'core' gamers out there who only bought a Wii this gen and have been holding out for an HD Nintendo console.
It'll be weakest, regardless.
Which is EXACTLY what Nintendo tried to do with the 3DS, let the third-parties have their space. And it FAILED, hardcore. This is the mindset Nintendo had with the 3DS - save their big blockbusters for a few months down the road, letting third party developers grab the limelight like they've always wanted. There were some great AAA third-party titles at and around 3DS launch, and it wasn't enough to get the system started. And that's the strategy that Nintendo admitted was the wrong way to go.
But that's how you don't get the people you want early on, without any game that would sell Nintendo systems. The customers are more important than the third-party developers, Nintendo actually lost a large number of third party titles on 3DS because it flopped. I know this first hand, my company was one of the largest handheld developers in the US, and due to the horrible 3DS launch and failing PSP market, my company changed gears and now only makes smartphone titles, because that market was deemed much more dependable (there just wasn't hardly any business on the handheld side, no publishers wanted us to make games for them). I know of at least two big 3DS titles that were canceled because of that.
There were a bunch of high quality third party games at and around 3DS launch, some of them ports. That didn't help the situation one bit. I mean, here's what 3DS had in its first months:
We were a work-for-hire company, and publishers stopped wanting to hire us for work. They were losing money on 3DS launch titles because the customer base was too small, and wanted to wait to see if the customer base would get any bigger before starting up again. In the meanwhile, we had a couple iOS games that were doing very nicely, and we got 70% of the proceeds from those rather than just a flat fee to develop a game.
I've bolded the "high quality" games.
A couple fighters, and two DS up ports.
The rest were either middling or just outright bad.
Also, Crush 3D was avaliable no where near release.
the big lesson though, at least for nintendo, is you can't have a successful launch without a BIG game from them. And according to development cycles and whatnot, it seems like the only choice left is a mario game of some sort. Obviously not mario kart, but some other mario game.
I see. I just insertef the highest frequency I thought would be possible without looking it up, since I just wanted an upper bound.
This is true, but the 360 had eDRAM for the framebuffer as well and pretty much that exact bandwidth. So it would be no increase at all over 360 in that regard. Which still seems low, even for Wii U.
Because the rumors range from "5x360" at the top end to "=360" at the bottom end. (I hate this metric, but since it's the only thing we have it will have to do) And people generally expect more than that from the other successor systems (if not, they'll be a hard sell). It's also releasing a year earlier.
lets face it though, you say they could make any franchise big if they push it hard but that's still a gamble, because that isn't definite. What is definite is that mario is a system seller.
The trend is a bad thing though. Iwata specifically made a point that following that trend for the 3DS was a big mistake, and that they will have learned from it for the future. He wouldn't say that if that trend was just fine.
The issues 3DS had early on were not launch-related - the system did not have a bad launch by any stretch of the imagination. The major issue 3DS had was that after launch, when everybody who saw a reason to buy a 3DS at launch had already got one, there was nothing to carry on the momentum onto the rest of the potential customers. Which is where a big franchise at or around launch would've helped. So I have to side with BMF here. It was the post-launch drought. As currently seen on the Vita, BTW.
I don't consider it oversaturation when the games are for different platforms. I don't think 3D Land (or the next) has any barring on what happens for the wii/wiiU.
