All Eyes on Nintendo: What NeXt?
The past week Sony finally revealed the Playstation 4 Pro, your $400 on-ramp to the 4K future, for those of you not already in the PC gaming fast lane, with some added benefits like HDR. For everyone ready to take the leap, you now have options for the living room. On one hand, the Xbox One S, which is available now, already supports 4K Blu-rays and 4K streaming for a pretty appealing $299 and games like Battlefield 1 will have HDR support. For 4K gaming though, you’ll be able to jump in with Sony’s PS4 Pro this November and Xbox fans will have to wait for whatever the “Scorpio” winds up being in 2017.
But what about everyone else? What about the people, like me, who aren’t quite ready to drop thousands for higher resolutions and HDR in the very near future? Who else am I going to throw money at? Nintendo, I’m looking at you.
When VR first started to pop, I was a bit apprehensive. In fact, if you listen to the first few episodes of our podcast you can hear me question why we are so obsessed with these new tools when we still have so much work to do with our current ones! After now having spent time with the HTC Vive though, I am excited for the future of gaming experiences through virtual reality. Maybe 4K and HDR is more of that too though. Perhaps I need to see it to believe it. While it might completely stun me, is the experience different on a fundamental level? The answer appears to be, sorry bleeding-edge enthusiasts, probably not.
At least VR is a completely new way to interact in the game world and even walk around or peer over the edge of its massive heights. Now, there is an argument to be made that if the PS4 Pro could make Uncharted 4 on my 1080p TV run at 60fps and utilize HDR (if my TV supported it), then yeah that would make the experience different in some ways. It would breathe new life into certain games. If it could make other games VR compatible with the upcoming PSVR headset, sign me up! But Sony doesn’t want to splinter their audience and make their already huge install base (43.4 million) feel like idiots and resent them as a result. This leaves Nintendo in a really interesting position.
I think it’s in Nintendo’s best interest to not go toe-to-toe with Sony and Microsoft. They can’t win that fight. Nintendo seems to be focused on providing a unique experience that the others don’t for a price that is just hard to ignore. Something that even the most hardcore of PC Elitists would be intrigued by and that wouldn’t directly compete with the glowing green tower under their desks. And soccer moms at Best Buy thinking this thing is much cheaper than those other ones AND it has Pokemon! They won’t care if Nathan Drake is running from an explosion in 4K you can see the exit wounds of each bullet. Their kids will bring it to school like I brought my Gameboy Color to school way back when and other kids will experience that special coming-of-age FOMO.
If the Nintendo machine is colorful enough with the kiosk low to the ground, has Pikachu running across that damn screen, and comes in at a low price point then it stands a good chance of selling. They’ll also be ushering in people new to games and those who haven’t played games in a long time who have fond memories of Mario and Pikachu by sneaking them onto their phones.Pokemon Go just surpassed 500 million downloads worldwide and for the month of July sales of the 3DS were up 80% compared to July of 2015. Sales for Pokemon X and Y were also up an insane 200% compared to last year.Pokemon X and Y: a game that came out in 2013 on a platform that is now over five years old.
On top of that, Nintendo operates on an entirely different level. They claim that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild only needs to sell two million copies to be profitable. In comparison, Square Enix needed five million units sold of their Tomb Raider reboot in order to start making their money back. Unless they pull some classic Nintendo fuckery, this might be the time to finally show the world why we should still care for what they have to offer. They really seem to march to the beat of their own Donkey Konga bongos but what console fanboys and PC master race fuccbois don’t realize is that this is a good thing. They open the doors and let more people in and maybe in time they’ll be interested in your platform of choice and the games will come along with them. Now if only we could get some details on that damn NX. Your move, Nintendo.
Paul Tamayo is a photographer/videographer from Brooklyn, New York who runs The Optional, a gaming blog and podcast. Follow him on twitter @polimayo
