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What we know so far about the Nintendo NX with sources
- Thread starter Hero of Legend
- Start date
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Inferno313
Banned
There were job listings for Smash Bros 6 awhile back.
Most people were assuming that was a weird code name for the DLC (4 = 3DS, 5 = WiiU, 6 = DLC) but it could've been an NX game.
DrROBschiz
Member
You think they are FINALLY going to consolidate their Eshop Library and offerings into ONE platform with complete access across the board?
As well as access to all digital purchases?
DrROBschiz
Member
Pokken Tournament port seems obvious
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
DrROBschiz
Member
New with the Old
They are gonna have ORIGINAL and new launch titles you goof
Dont worry. What do you think all the core talent has been working on while we get these spin off games and low budget titles?
Probably no BC with Wii U, otherwise would be kind of strange. Unless they have some kind of upgrade plan.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Kirin950's implementation of A72 is excellent indeed. But if nintendo were really after that I don't think they would have much trouble securing an equally-decent A72 from AMD ; )
DrROBschiz
Member
That will be the roughest thing
rebuying software
Hopefully they have some way to get the new games Digitally with a discount if you owned the WiiU version
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
I don't expect a lot of Wii U stuff tbh. Maybe Smash and maybe Zelda but that's it. Stuff like Mario Maker and Splatoon are probably going to get sequels down the line instead.
DrROBschiz
Member
I can see that
Still Mario Maker and Splatoon are Really fresh
Splatoon seems very likely to get a sequel soon though
McHuj
Member
a man can dream
DrROBschiz
Member
Good points.
It's interesting...if this is a combined Wii U/3DS version, could/would you also get a discount for the 3DS one?
On that note, handheld or console first, or...? Regardless, it seems like a nice way to highlight a unified library/account system since the game was released on two different systems. Kind of like a "bringing together" where you can finally have it all.
DrROBschiz
Member
Its about damn time and I hope they deliver on that Unified promise
DrROBschiz
Member
Not really
These were big investments and high quality software that large chunks of audiences have yet to play
Its the same philosphy that Sony had with all the remasters
Ps3 to PS4
It's a screen showing there will be downtime for maintenance on a Nintendo-related page for updating. It is timed closely to the things that Rösti said, two days after the earnings, one day after a briefing. May not be NX related at all, buuuut, they are updating for "something."
I don't want to go into too much more detail since he asked not to spread it around though!
Being able to play stuff on a portable, I would gladly rebuy my entire Wii U library.
Hero of Legend
Member
WELP, congratulations everyone, as of the 2008th post, this is now my most posted thread ever! My Pokemon X&Y news thread from 2013 held the previous record of 2007 posts!
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532350
I really appreciate that people really like the thread.
Thanks so much everyone!
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532350
I really appreciate that people really like the thread.
Thanks so much everyone!Yeah, especially with Smash and Splatoon being pushed as emerging Esports games, Nintendo's going to want definitive editions of both games unless they do the dumb thing and put PowerPC and full Wii U BC in the box. Can't let the scene die even if they get Spla2n in 2017 on a 2-year turnaround (which, that team is probably emphasizing Animal Crossing or Mario Kart)
DrROBschiz
Member
Nail on the head brother
Mr. MondayNight
Member
Don't know if thread worthy this guy said Smash is set up to be an NX launch game doesn't know if it's a port or a new main game.
https://twitter.com/serkantoto?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
EDIT:In my best JR voice beaten like a government mule.
What can I say you know when and how to make threads.....
https://twitter.com/serkantoto?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
EDIT:In my best JR voice beaten like a government mule.
WELP, congratulations everyone, as of the 2008th post, this is now my most posted thread ever! My Pokemon X&Y news thread from 2013 held the previous record of 2007 posts!
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532350
I really appreciate that people really like the thread.
What can I say you know when and how to make threads.....
James Scott
Banned
Didn't they do the Wii U one as well? Not sure if that's good/interesting news.
DrROBschiz
Member
Itll be a little bit of Both
Its going to have all the WiiU content but will carry the update and content torch for Smash going forward
Eventually Smash on NX will look very much like a sequel compared to the WiiU version as updates get phased out for WiiU
Hero of Legend
Member
DrROBschiz
Member
Dude
NX news lit NeoGAF on fire
ITs getting real now boys
NX news lit NeoGAF on fire
ITs getting real now boys
Hero of Legend
Member
Seriously. The storm's a-comin'!
One thing worth noting just as a basic bit of logical deduction. Given that (from the Macronix news and other reports) we can confidently say that the handheld is releasing this year, and AMD's comments last week that their semi-custom win [i.e. NX APU(s)] is coming to market in the latter half of this year, at least one of the following statements has to be true:
1. The handheld SoC is made by AMD
or
2. Both handheld and home console are releasing this year
or
3. The home console is releasing this year and uses game cards instead of optical media
or any of the above, obviously. So, if you're arguing that the handheld SoC is made by anyone other than AMD, your scenario pretty much has to involve either the home console arriving this year as well, or the home console using game cards. Conversely, if you think the home console isn't arriving until next year, then that's predicated on AMD being behind the handheld chip.
Not necessarily hugely important info, but if you're coming up with a theory of the NX that doesn't satisfy any of the statements, then you should probably give it a bit of a rethink.
1. The handheld SoC is made by AMD
or
2. Both handheld and home console are releasing this year
or
3. The home console is releasing this year and uses game cards instead of optical media
or any of the above, obviously. So, if you're arguing that the handheld SoC is made by anyone other than AMD, your scenario pretty much has to involve either the home console arriving this year as well, or the home console using game cards. Conversely, if you think the home console isn't arriving until next year, then that's predicated on AMD being behind the handheld chip.
Not necessarily hugely important info, but if you're coming up with a theory of the NX that doesn't satisfy any of the statements, then you should probably give it a bit of a rethink.
idk, remasters are the 'in' thing among next gen consoles :T
DrROBschiz
Member
Ehh
of all the things that could leak you would expect the least important or mundane stuff to be the first
And Smash port is still something i find exciting lol
Just as a remark: Rosti is currently unsure if the "NX in 2016" comment comes from the reporters or from the conference itself, due to him not being a native Mandarin speaker / the audio quality of the conference sucking major ass. It's not confirmed yet the context of "NX in 2016"
I don't think we can completely rule out a scenario where Macronix makes game carts for the NX Console (which releases without a DVD/Blu-Ray drive), particularly since that's been suggested by some of the patents.
DrROBschiz
Member
So we should assume the NX platform, both handheld and console, use the same carts right?
Fits with the theme of the system
It's a end of financial year briefing, though, which means they're going to be talking about sources of revenue for the coming year. If it's not planned for this year there would be no reason to mention it.
That's actually a fair enough point, I'll edit it in.
Edit: Although this article heavily indicates a handheld launch this year as well.
As someone who works in supply chain and logistics seeing this post made my week. It needs to be bronzed and hung for all to see.
They're still incredibly liquid. Just not as liquid as they have been in the past.
The major financial investments that they will likely need to make to build theme park attractions for Universal doesn't strike me as being as "conservative" as you believe them to be. There's been a LOT of business expenditures that they've been making to help grow their business, which have been what compounded their financial performance in prior years. And those expenditures aren't likely to stop, considering the projects they've been discussing as being in the pipeline.
They know that, just like any other business, you only get as much out of your investments as you put into them. But that means you have to put something into them.
Logistics/supply chain management is a difficult proposal for every corporate entity. You want just enough stock to meet the demand, with the right amount left over for any sudden upticks and seasonality.
Since you wanted me to explain myself, I will do so, but considering how long the post is going to be, you (and everyone else in the thread) will wish I had continued going without the detailed analysis. But since there's a LOT of bullshit spouted about distribution on GAF, now is as good a time as any.
Performance in procurement and distribution is typically measured by the amount of inventory turns you get in a year, or how often you have had to replenish your estimated stock levels at your intended destinations. Too many turns and you're over-spending in logistics and have underestimated demand. Too few and you have risked overspending your warehousing costs or may end up with dead stock at destination retailers, which will cause you to again overspend in logistics to re-distribute to regions that have higher sell-through of the product. That being said, items with high sell-through are generally preferred to have the lowest inventory turn you can get, depending on what your warehousing capacity is.
There are 3 major shipping methods for logistics: ocean, air and truck. Nintendo almost definitely uses a combination of all 3 methods. Each has very different pallet size and container weight restrictions. If your pallet is too heavy, you're charged for it. If your pallet is too tall/wide, you're charged for it. You have to strike the right balance, which is nigh impossible, at times. You almost always leave money on the ground, no matter which way you do it. The difference is in how much money that is.
And you have to maximize the usage of each shipping container, as any unused space basically leads to you paying for cargo space that you aren't using, so you avoid shipping pallets that you can't stack, so part of your pallet space is wasted in packing materials to ensure that your merchandise isn't going to be crushed by the pallet you stack on top of it. And you typically have to standardize this packing procedure, as uniquely packing pallets is a huge time-sink for a warehouse to deal with.
Then factor in where your stock has to go once it lands at its destination point, where it enters the rail and road intermodal networks to distribute them to retailers.
With 2 SKUs for each game, you have to make those calculations twice, with an order of magnitude more complexity, as the handheld SKU may have a higher demand in some regions and with some retailers, while others will not.
Since I don't know what the freight/pallet restrictions are for electronics (I mainly moved raw materials to be manufactured in-house), I'm going to have to use rough numbers and a reasonable facsimile of what their actual logistics scenarios could be.
Let's say Nintendo has a game that's launching in about a month. It's just left manufacturing and is ready to ship.
A disc-based SKU is a standard disc in a standard clamshell case, $1.50 to manufacture a piece. In order to ship these, because they can't be stacked loose, they're packaged in boxes that hold about 100 at a time. Of those boxes, in order to meet the size and weight mandates of each shipping method and to pack it with sufficient cushioning, you can only fit 14 boxes on a single pallet. So each pallet holds 1400 copies of a single game. Packing this pallet would cost an extra $2 in materials (pallet, boxes, padding, shrink wrap for the pallet, etc) per box, as a really rough number.
You can load 10 pallets in a 20ft shipping container while still meeting the weight and dimensional restrictions, totalling 14,000 copies per container. You're loading 50 containers to go by ocean freight (as most freight liners ship goods from multiple sources to the same port and that's the most you can allot to the freight liner), totalling 700,000 copies. According to estimates provided by the US government, the cost to ship via ocean from Japan to California, including import/export fees, is $4150 per container, a number that can decrease the more volume you can achieve in a single ocean liner. As a rough number, for 50 containers, let's say their volume shaves that number down to $4000 per container, or $200,000 for the total transportation cost to the port.
Now, you have to collect those containers from the port and send them to a warehouse for re-distribution. Warehouses have limited inventory space. Warehousing costs can vary greatly, depending on if you subcontract or own your own, but let's say the warehousing costs and collection from the port per pallet are averaged to $300.
Next, you have to re-distribute those pallets. To grossly over-simplify, let's say Nintendo only has to send them to one retail chain, who asks to have them sent directly to each of the retailer's distribution centres in 5 US regions. Shipping costs vary depending on origin/destination, but using rail (the slowest method) and assuming these distribution centres are at the railway hubs, let's say all 50 containers cost them $15,000 to ship. This is all assuming that you're sending WHOLE containers and not sending them via smaller amounts.
Let's say every retailer allots the same amount of shelving space. That shelving space is not free. Let's estimate that a 6'x12' dedicated shelf in all their retail outlets costs them a $2,000,000 annual slotting fee (yes, that's totally a thing and typically how places like Walmart actually make their money) and the retailer expects to sell through all 700,000 copies you gave them a month as part of that arrangement..
Nintendo expects to sell 8.4 million copies in the year and keep an extra month of the retailer's inventory needs per month for seasonal sales protection, meaning that they will be required to repeat these costs 13 times in the year. That is your preliminary inventory turn ratio. Meaning the total logistics cost per year for this one SKU is:
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 13 = $182,000
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 13 = $2,600,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $300 per pallet x 13 = $1,950,000
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 13 = $195,000
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $6.745 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $13.65 million
Total cost per unit annually: $2.24 (74 cents a unit in logistics)
Next you have a cartridge SKU. Assuming they'd be packaged similarly to 3DS games, cartridge plus plastic clamshell case could cost $4 to manufacture in the bulk volume and contract discounts Nintendo would get (but considering that is the presumed estimate for 3DS games using ROM chips, I'd say it's probably lower... but whatever). Because of the smaller size, they can pack them 175 per the same size of box and achieve a similar weight. This nearly doubles the amount of copies you can ship. Let's assume we'll ship the same amount of containers across the ocean and achieve 1.225 million copies for the initial shipment. The retailer now requires less than you can ship, so the warehouse cost will be adjusted up to $450 per pallet. Applying all the same calculations per unit:
Prelim inventory turn ratio - 7.43
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 7.43 = $104,020
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 7.43 = $1,486,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $450 per pallet x 7.43 = $1,671,750
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 7.43 = $111,450
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $5.37 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $36.4 million
Total cost per unit annually: $4.59 (59 cents per unit in logistics)
You've trimmed your logistics costs by nearly 25% for the entire year on that single SKU and require fewer shipments to achieve the same stocking targets. And that's without me recalculating to shave even more savings by trimming down the packaging.
Let's take that same cartridge and put it in a thinner and smaller clamshell container made of a cheaper to produce plastic (why do you think they did it with Blu-Rays?), cutting that material cost to $3.50 per unit. Now that it's twice as thin and smaller, let's say I can package 300 per box, totalling 4200 per pallet, 42,000 per container and 2.1 million units in a 50-container shipment and the warehousing costs increase to $600 per pallet, as you're now storing the merchandise for much longer than you were originally before it's redistributed to the retailer.
Prelim Inventory turn rate - 3.27
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 3.27 = $45,780
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 3.27 = $654,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $600 per pallet x 3.27 = $981,000
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 3.27 = $49,050
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $3.73 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $31.85 million
Total cost per unit annually: $3.91 (41 cents per unit in logistics)
Puts it within spitting distance of a disc cost per unit, and all I had to do was trim the fat on product packaging.
Now try managing these numbers for 2 SKUs of essentially the same game and paying the manufacturing costs to have both media types on a shelf. It's messier, harder to manage possible demand and overall less cost-effective. It took me most of my evening to get these calculations done, and that's when I'm spit-balling numbers. With one SKU, that's one set of shipments, one consumer/retailer demand to account for, 1 less SKU that could be left to languish if accidentally over-stocked, which also costs money.
TL
They're sold to a liquidation retail outlet, more often than not. Most major retailers use them to off-load inventory they can't sell. And it's still more money than they'd get by tossing them. It's something I used to do all the time, when I could get away with it, because it was cheaper than re-shipping stock elsewhere.
We need more business classses here on gaf, more things like this that help people understand what really goes on behind the scenes.
Eddie Nash
Neo Member
Yes. It seems the leaks are finally starting to appear. It's nothing major yet, but it's a start.
It's an analyst opinion, but it seems that firm makes forecast based on discussions with suppliers
About Matronix: so, their fiscal year is the same as the calendar year? In that case, I'd say your point has solid ground.
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