Look most places on the Internet and in the real world this week and there's signs that Pokemon Go is either being played or talked about. It has quickly earned Nintendo millions of dollars and added billions to the company's market value. Clearly Nintendo IP used in apps on smartphones works, and I hate to admit it, works better than releasing a game on Nintendo hardware currently does.
We still don't know very much about what the Nintendo NX is. It seems likely one part of the NX experience will be a games console that sits under your TV. But it's the controller that's the real mystery. We've seen the fake controller, but we've also seen the sketches. The controller is going to be different, and it may even double as a replacement for the 3DS. But all the hints as to what it actually is most strongly suggest a pocket-friendly tablet.
Let's think about that and explain some reasons why a tablet controller works for Nintendo in this smartphone-gaming age.
Nintendo needs to compete with smartphones for your time and moneyThis is the key hurdle to Nintendo's (and arguably Sony's and Microsoft's) future success in the video games market. Everyone has a powerful smartphone in their pocket meaning a massive market for game developers that dwarfs any one gaming platform. It's hard to compete with directly, so instead console and handheld companies offer something different: physical controls, higher performance hardware, and platform-limited IP.
That has worked for now, but with smartphone hardware getting ever more powerful and catching up every year, coupled with a growing user base, it won't work forever. By shipping a tablet with the NX to act as a controller, it could offer the same apps as on your smartphone, but with the added incentive of NX-exclusive content and features at home.
The age range Nintendo caters to includes the very young and it has built a strong reputation with parents catering to this sector. This is part of the reason we have a 2DS available to buy and warnings to stop very young children using the 3D feature on the 3DS. These very young gamers are much less likely to have access to a smartphone, or their own smartphone, but will want to play games such as Pokemon Go.
A small tablet would solve that problem, with parents happy to let their children play Pokemon Go on the NX controller because it's not a smartphone and doesn't have all the other features you don't want them to access. It's also going to be a lot cheaper and a lot less hassle to replace if broken in tiny hands.
Nintendo has gone from dismissing smartphones as gaming devices to embracing them in a handful of years. You could see this as Nintendo gearing up to move away from offering hardware in the future and becoming a software-only company, but another way to view it is as a big pre-NX experiment.
If you're considering a touchscreen controller for playing games on the go, why not test out how well it works under the guise of experimenting with the mobile market? If you make some money in the process, all the better. And Nintendo has certainly done that, with Pokemon Go and Miitomo both generating significant revenue.
The next stage? Get those same gaming apps available on the NX at launch, so you can put down your smartphone to charge when you get home and pick up your NX tablet to continue playing.
Smartphones are having a negative impact on handheld hardware sales. You can see the impact by reviewing Nintendo's sales for the past two generations of hardware. The Nintendo DS has sold 154 million units, where as the 3DS only achieved 60 million. That's still hugely successful, but less than half the previous generation and in a market where there's ever more gamers.
With that in mind, Nintendo launching a 3DS successor as a standalone piece of hardware must look like a big risk internally. Would it even match the 3DS sales during its lifetime, or would we see the first handheld flop for Nintendo? With that in mind, a console/handheld combo must have looked enticing during the planning stages, especially one that can also compliment rather than compete with the mobile games market. Surely that has pushed Nintendo to go down this path.
The information we have heard and the sketches we have seen suggest Nintendo is working on a controller that doubles as a screen and retains some physical buttons. That to me suggests it's a tablet, albeit one with some dedicated physical buttons possibly even embedded into the edges of the display.
Even if Nintendo doesn't go as far as putting buttons within the display (which would surely add cost to the design), a touch-enabled controller seems obvious and likely. The Wii U GamePad has a touchscreen, and all the DS and 3DS hardware does, too. A tablet interface isn't a giant leap for Nintendo and is already an interface gamers are comfortable with.
If, like me, you would rather play games with dedicated physical buttons than endure the compromises of a touchscreen-only interface, then you may throw your arms up in despair if the NX ships with a tablet. However, it seems Nintendo is thinking ahead on this front, too.
Nintendo loves peripherals, and in a recent shareholders meeting a physical controller peripheral for smartphones was mentioned. Therefore it's likely the NX controller would have this available, too. It may even take the form of a shell that copies the 3DS design so you can flip it closed.
So what does the final experience look like?This is an opinion piece based on what I have read about the NX over the last few months coupled with the problems I've considered Nintendo faces in terms of competition from other consoles and the smartphone market. Nintendo is a company that likes to forge its own path in the marketplace, and therefore a hybrid of mobile and home console makes sense.
Imagine you have a box sitting under your TV that looks a lot like the Wii U, which you interact with using a 5-inch tablet. You still buy games on disc or download to the machine from the Nintendo Store, but there's two experiences included: the TV Mode and the Tablet Mode. They may be the same game (just like the Wii U GamePad allows), or you could find features enabled and disabled depending on which mode you're in.
Let's take Pokemon Go as an example of how this could work. In Tablet Mode the game works just like the smartphone app, using augmented reality and GPS positioning to go out and hunt and catch Pokemon in the real-world. Switch to TV Mode and the game changes to be more like a Pokemon game on the 3DS, giving you access to a rich gaming world not available anywhere else. There'd be some link between the Pokemon you catch in Tablet Mode and the game experience in TV Mode.
The last piece of this puzzle is what would happen to the existing Pokemon Go mobile app. And this is where I think Nintendo can be clever, because it can continue to work as is. You don't need to use the NX controller to go out and catch Pokemon, you can use your smartphone instead. Nintendo just links the data up to your NX when you get home.
By doing this, gamers not interested in the NX can continue to play Nintendo games on their smartphones and Nintendo profits. But at the same time, there's the enticement of a richer Pokemon game awaiting them on the NX. All they have to do is buy the NX hardware and games.
And here's the key thing:
In one fell swoop Nintendo replaces the unloved Wii U, produces a successor to the 3DS, allows for smartphone apps to exist using its IP that actually encourages NX ownership, and simplifies the decision to invest in a home console and handheld gaming to just one purchase: the NX.
On September 17 the Tokyo Game Show happens and hopefully Nintendo uses it as a launching pad for the NX. So hopefully we get to find out then how right or terribly wrong I am with this prediction. What's your best guess?
Source: I'm convinced the Nintendo NX controller will be a pocket-friendly tablet
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