...that'd be interesting actually. Still more than a few years off from that though, but yeah. Next console design...that is not a poor idea.
It just strikes me that they keep saying they aren't in the console race. Well, money talks and shit walks. Completely go off the rails and change the game. If you aren't in the race, don't limit yourself to the track.
Nintendo is NEVER going to usurp Sony or MS with some badass bit of tech that puts everyone to shame. Bearing that in mind, I think graphically Wii U is good enough for a world of people entranced by mobile games. Extend the 3ds life cycle out for a bit longer than you might while you wait for the Wii U tech to shrink and cheapen enough to make it completely portable.
While you're doing that the actual Wii U is just going to get cheaper and cheaper to make so that can reflect in the retail price via price drops and pack-ins.
When the new handheld comes out you'll have a shit ton of available content and, while it will all be playable on Wii U too, time the handheld release with some really hot software.
Keep making Wii U's and whatever the new handheld is for a long time while you develop new hardware. God knows it'll have hella great software before long, and be cheap as chips.
When the time comes for new hardware ONLY make a handheld and have it able to sling to TV and that's the smoothest transition I can imagine for Nintendo to REALLY become it's own beast if it doesn't want to compete with Sony and MS.
Really it turns it into almost as if Sony went exclusively Vita/Vita TV. Obviously this wouldn't work for Sony but Nintendo needs to try something radical like they did with the Wii.
Sure they could fail, but at least they would fail while daring something great.
The important thing would be to have the new handheld be EXACTLY a portable Wii U but don't frame it like that to the public mind. Find some way to keep that idea out of people's heads. I don't know if that means making software that exclusively runs ONLY on the new handheld but I'd think that wouldn't be a wise move.
People have lower standards for mobile tech and I could see a portable Wii U being good enough, graphically, for another 5 or 6 years.
Of course, this is all just silly daydreaming. Just something I was thinking up today.One of the things you've gotta love about Nintendo is that they're like Lovecraft's Azathoth; a blind, mad demon sultan-god of pure nuclear chaos. Playing their maddening pipes beyond the veil of angled space in a profane celebration of nihilism.
There is no rhyme. There is no reason. There is Reggie. There is Iwata. They are one with the chaos and the great, all-encompassing nothingness that expands infinitely in all directions beyond our puny understanding.