Re-framing the NX as a successor to the 3DS, and not the Wii U

As most people are probably aware, Eurogamer have made a dramatic reveal regarding Nintendo’s upcoming NX console. In brief, they claim the system will run on Nvidia’s Tegra X1 mobile chip; use cartridges instead of discs; have detachable controllers; and connect to a television for big-screen gaming. Since the NX was first announced the majority of pundits have had the NX pegged as a successor system to the Wii U, based largely on the latter’s poor sales and the fact that the Wii U’s biggest new title, Breath of the Wild, will also be released on NX. Based on the information in Eurogamer’s reveal, however, I think that framing NX as primarily a handheld console is much more in line with Nintendo’s aims for the machine.

The hardware details leaked by Eurogamer all suggest that the NX is essentially a mobile device. Most significantly, it uses a chip designed primarily for tablets, the Tegra X1 (or possibly the unreleased X2), implying that the entire system is being designed to function on the move. Further more, though the increase in power a Tegra-based system represents isn’t particularly impressive compared to the Wii U, it’s a stellar leap from the 3DS or Vita. According to Digital Foundry, Tegra would make the NX more powerful than the last generation of home consoles (and the Wii U), whilst not quite matching the power of the PS4 and Xbox One; not at all impressive for a home console, but incredible performance for a handheld.

The ideal play experience for the NX, too, appears to be in handheld mode. Taking out the middle of the machine to plug into a television, as Eurogamer suggest will be the case, is certain to induce a significant, possibly quite uncomfortable, change in the form factor of the controller (and when being used for multiplayer, may even leave each player with far fewer available buttons). This could be another encouragement for consumers to use the NX as a handheld, although we’ll need to know the actual specifics of how this would work to know for certain. I don’t want to pass judgement until we do learn more, but so far it appears that the experience of playing NX in the living room is going to be inferior to that of using it as a handheld. That entire aspect of the NX, then, may be motivated by marketing more than any real need; a concession to the idea of the NX as successor to the Wii U, allowing production of the latter to cease and helping to buy Nintendo time to develop a ‘proper’ home console.

Nintendo’s current PR line for the NX has some hints of this strategy, touting the console as “neither the successor to the Wii U nor to the 3DS”. This has echoes of the early marketing for the original DS which presented that device as a ‘third pillar’ alongside the GameBoy and home consoles, giving Nintendo space to quickly drop the DS and release a more conventional new GameBoy if the DS failed to catch on. Nintendo seems to be hedging their bets just as much with the NX marketing, providing an excuse to discontinue both the ailing Wii U and ageing 3DS, using the NX as a stop-gap home console (while really a 3DS successor) before bringing out a more powerful, non-portable console in a few years’ time.

There’s another revelation from Eurogamer which supports the idea that NX is a really a handheld- the physical media for its games. Allegedly, these will take the form of cartridges (a disc reader, with its battery-draining lasers and motors, being totally impractical in a mobile device) with a memory capacity of 32GB. The Eurogamer article describes this as being quite small, but that is only really true in relation to recently released triple-A titles. Grand Theft Auto V on PC, easily one of the largest games of recent years, requires 65GB, for example, and Bethesda’s new DOOM sequel takes up 50GB; neither have any hope of fitting on a 32GB NX card. However, there are some relatively recent big-budget releases which could fit onto such a card. Fallout 4 takes up only 30GB, making it a comfortable fit; Metal Gear Solid V is slightly smaller at 28GB; the largest Wii U game, Xenoblade Chronicles X, is just shy of 23GB; the latest Far Cry game only requires 20GB. And, Xenoblade aside, these figures are all for 2016 PC games, loaded with the highest-quality graphical assets; last-gen releases of a similar size and complexity but lower visual fidelity require dramatically less space. Fallout 3 had a hard drive requirement of just 7GB, and Far Cry 3 used only 15GB- both more than capable of being contained on an NX cartridge. It’s also worth noting here that a 32GB card is many times larger than anything seen on the 3DS or the PS Vita, the cartridges for both of which top out at 4GB of storage space.

So, if these specs can be believed, the NX would be pretty pathetic placed next to the PS4 or Xbox One. As a next-gen handheld, however, it’s a much more attractive prospect, capable of running games that are far, far larger and a great deal shinier than anything we’ve seen on a handheld thus far. Yes, you may be able to plug it into a TV, but the NX is really intended to replace the 3DS, not the Wii U- and I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll see the true successor to that in a couple of years’ time.