(Not sure if this is the correct place for this, originally tried posting on /r/nintendo but you're not allowed to post about the NX there for some reason)
The other day when the NX rumors came out, my first thought was that the way the control scheme was described doesn't really make any practical sense. Plenty of people thought I was nuts, and maybe I am.. I still don't see the benefit to how it was described, but if it's true, I'm sure there's a reason for it that I'm missing.
But since then, a new thought occurred to me that may be even more damning for this rumored console.. the implications for the eshop. Think about it..
The way that the console is described implies that the "portable" and "home" versions of the console would use the same games which are on , primarily, 32GB carts.
That's all well and good, but sharing the same games between the home and portable would make digital sales practically impossible at this point in time.
Look at the size of WiiU games.. Nintendo games tend to be on the small side, but there are still plenty of games in the 10-16GB range. Third party AAA games, again assuming they come to NX, are going to be 20-50GB more often than not(and let's hope that 64GB-or larger- carts will be available, because if not, it's the n64 v. PSX all over again). This is also to say nothing of where and how patches will be stored, which themselves can be several GB in size.
The only practical means of storage for eshop titles on the portable will be micro sd cards(or standard sd but it's doubtful nintendo will step back after going to micro for the n3ds). Currently a 128GB micro sd card is around $40 if you buy online, which isn't bad, but that could potentially store only about 3 AAA games. A 256GB micro SD ranges from $80-$200 and there are only a few on the market. There is nothing bigger as of now.
If the NX is being sold partly as a portable, we can assume they want to retain the appeal for parents buying it for their children, which all but eliminates the possibility of costly flash-based internal storage in any great amount
The PS4 and XBO both launched with 500gb drives 3 years ago and they've already moved onto 1TB because that 500 fills up fast.
So the problem, it seems, would be having the same versions of games on both the portable and home versions of the console. Unless Nintendo wants to make the eshop MUCH less appealing(and according to the same rumor, they almost went ALL DIGITAL but thought better of it). So it's clear that the eshop is still an important, and growing, part of their business.
eShop filesizes on the 3DS aren't a big problem because the games are so much smaller. Both in scope and in that they use lower res textures.
So sorry for this being a little disjointed and all over the place. What do you guys think? One partial solution I could think of would be to have a big hard drive on the home dock and have the system designed to just copy a couple of your games to the sd card for when you go portable, but that seems like a janky solution, and people never were fond of their idea of stocking the original Wii "like a refrigerator" to the point where Nintendo jerry-rigged a solution for it to use SD cards more directly after the fact.
Submitted August 02, 2016 at 07:31PM by FasterThanTW http://ift.tt/2apjIAn casualnintendo
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