Rumour Nikkei source: Next-gen Nintendo console development "progressing well" but will not launch until Spring 2024 at the earliest

[Pokemaniac]

I think both Nikkei and Nikkei Asia keep most articles behind subscriptions, so I'm not sure you'd be able to confirm what Nikkei proper has. I'm pretty sure Asia is intended for international audiences, so one would assume the same info is being reported on the main Nikkei articles as well. What's being said tracks with comments from others, and I see that David Gibson retweeted it, so it probably has merit.

Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

Their hardware wasn't as outdated as Switch is though. Switch already had weak hardware when it was released, unfortunately this is Nintendo's strategy, Nintendo doesn't launch new consoles because the old hardware is outdated, they launch when they believe they will make more money with a new...

famiboards.com

Based on some digging in the hardware thread, they appear different.

 

[thoughthaver]

Exactly. I saw a Brazilian Youtuber saying "after playing BotW on 'Switch Pro'(emulator), I can't afford Nintendo having just this 1080p games. Also price blanks".
And I was like "yes honey living outside the country and with more money than literally 99% of your country, your followers that had to save money for years to get a Switch lite definitely agree it's a bummer they can't play TotK on a 10 thousand dollar PC like yours ".
I just get bummed with stuff like this because it's always the same discourses, mainly in Brazilian Twitter. Nintendo fanboys bummed there's no Switch 2, which clearly should have released last year, and other companies fanboys acting like every single next gen game looks like Horizon Forbidden West and Switch is a PS2 like and Nintendo is a mercenary (I mean which multimillionaire company isn't??) and deserves piracy for it... While they buy their FIFA's and CoDs for 70$ every year. But I am fool for just not wanting to fuck my console in order to homebrew or I have the bad choice of being born in a poor family that can't afford me getting a modern PC to emulate.

Sorry for the rant I'm just sick of Nintendo haters and mainstream streamers that know nothing of Nintendo saying the worst gores you can think one might say.

youtubers do love saying the most unhinged and out of touch things possible. but yeah that whole line about it being cheaper to emulate is some real clownshoes shit. i actually pushed back on this once on a discord server and got sent one of those pc part picker links with a supposedly cheap switch emulating rig. the cheapest component was the price of a switch. it was probably true pre pandemic and maybe you can snag a laptop and old parts that can run switch emulation semi decently if you tinker around in it but yeah given the awful price jacking going on rn on behalf of pc compnent manufacturers, its just clown talk.

 

[Marce-chan]

Spoiler

I knew it lol. Yeah, outside of the brazilian dedicated Nintendo community, the views/takes/opinions that brazilian youtubers have about Nintendo are terrible. I don't even bother watching their Nintendo content.

Spoiler

lol yeah me neither. O was just scrolling Twitter and that appeared on my feed due to shitty algorithm or someone I follow replied.
Davy Jones is one I remember has some pretty bad takes too. Watched a reaction video of his shitty podcast, and the takes were "this texture lol" on TotK(?), "Zelda is the franchise they do it differently"(being the most Nintendo Nintendo franchise ever besides Mario), "should've been a remake" on Prime Remastered, a visual remake. Another host said "if it aimed to look good it failed" on Pikmin 4.
Another YouTuber that I can't remember the name made a clickbaiting video called "Tears of the Kingdom bad graphics are going to make it fail" or something, like wtf

youtubers do love saying the most unhinged and out of touch things possible. but yeah that whole line about it being cheaper to emulate is some real clownshoes shit. i actually pushed back on this once on a discord server and got sent one of those pc part picker links with a supposedly cheap switch emulating rig. the cheapest component was the price of a switch. it was probably true pre pandemic and maybe you can snag a laptop and old parts that can run switch emulation semi decently if you tinker around in it but yeah given the awful price jacking going on rn on behalf of pc compnent manufacturers, its just clown talk.

Exactly lol. I believe the GPU alone for a pretty mid PC to be able to run the Switch emulators nicely is the price of the Switch itself.

 

[Zeroth]

Exactly. I saw a Brazilian Youtuber saying "after playing BotW on 'Switch Pro'(emulator), I can't afford Nintendo having just this 1080p games. Also price blanks".
And I was like "yes honey living outside the country and with more money than literally 99% of your country, your followers that had to save money for years to get a Switch lite definitely agree it's a bummer they can't play TotK on a 10 thousand dollar PC like yours ".
I just get bummed with stuff like this because it's always the same discourses, mainly in Brazilian Twitter. Nintendo fanboys bummed there's no Switch 2, which clearly should have released last year, and other companies fanboys acting like every single next gen game looks like Horizon Forbidden West and Switch is a PS2 like and Nintendo is a mercenary (I mean which multimillionaire company isn't??) and deserves piracy for it... While they buy their FIFA's and CoDs for 70$ every year. But I am fool for just not wanting to fuck my console in order to homebrew or I have the bad choice of being born in a poor family that can't afford me getting a modern PC to emulate.

Sorry for the rant I'm just sick of Nintendo haters and mainstream streamers that know nothing of Nintendo saying the worst gores you can think one might say.

It's quite common in the Brazilian gaming community online to complain about Nintendo and advocate to pirate their games. Reddit has a couple brazilian gaming subreddits that constantly shit on Nintendo and are proud to say they pirate the games on PC. I usually just stay away from these discussions and stay on more friendly spaces, it's really not worth the time.

 

[Marce-chan]

It's quite common in the Brazilian gaming community online to complain about Nintendo and advocate to pirate their games. Reddit has a couple brazilian gaming subreddits that constantly shit on Nintendo and are proud to say they pirate the games on PC. I usually just stay away from these discussions and stay on more friendly spaces, it's really not worth the time.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I always avoid this but Twitter has its horrible algorithm of showing you things you don't wanna see just to make you get upset and interact. I'm avoiding to enter that site too, too much toxicity for nothing.

 

[Djehuty]

I don't think I said anything about a rerelease game or old characters as DLC. I wouldn't want that to be honest.

As for your last point, that's what I'm saying. I think a bigger story mode and more features that are deeper is the way to go.

I mean the former will happen.
That’s way more marketable than a story mode returning, especially with world of light there already. It has to have new characters or people would just buy ultimate.

The only way forward for smash brothers is to do a soft reboot. And ultimate deluxe only makes the problem worse, they can’t just use ultimate forever.

 

[Gay Bowser]

The only way forward for smash brothers is to do a soft reboot.

I don’t agree with this at all. How is that the only option?

And ultimate deluxe only makes the problem worse, they can’t just use ultimate forever.

People love Ultimate, though.

I just don’t see a world where Nintendo sees Ultimate’s massive success, easily selling more than double the 3DS and Wii U versions combined, and then says “actually, rather than doing a direct follow-up we should reboot this, building on this would just be too hard”

 

[Dekuman]

Late 2023 announce Spring 2024 launch dream remains alive! barely!

 

[meatbag]

“actually, rather than doing a direct follow-up we should reboot this, building on this would just be too hard”

I feel like people are talking past each other because we have different ideas of what a reboot is.

My perspective is that Smash is a fighting game, and fighting game sequels generally survive even with roster cuts as long as the new entry provides something else for players to chew on. Heck, Street Fighter 6 is straight up including an expansive RPG for its singleplayer content. Smash can copy that, among other ideas bouncing around in Nintendo's cranium.

 

[Deleted member 1141]

I'm going to be blunt and I'm really upset at some of the comments by a couple users in here: When you live in a market where costs for games and consoles tends to be ridiculous price, you're going to have to expect piracy and people (rightfully so) criticizing the companies for this. Also to add onto further context, the game DOES NOT have an official localization for Brazil. This is clearly going to lead to certain situations.

Piracy will always be a service issue, especially when you don't provide official localizations for areas. People who are disabled, poor, etc., that have such low income thresholds, even in the US, are in an area where it may lead to such situations.

So pardon me if I don't subscribe to some views found in this thread, especially coming from a poor and disabled background.

 

[Gay Bowser]

My perspective is that Smash is a fighting game, and fighting game sequels generally survive even with roster cuts as long as the new entry provides something else for players to chew on.

I think treating Smash like just any other fighting game would be a huge mistake. It reaches a lot of people who don’t play traditional fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken. It’s a party game, just like Mario Kart is.

A huge part of Smash’s appeal is the large and varied line-up of fighters from across gaming. That was part of the concept of the series from the very beginning: all your Nintendo favorites, duking it out.

Every character is somebody’s favorite. Every themed stage has some fans. It’s really hard for me to picture a Smash with a significantly reduced roster that wasn’t less appealing to a lot of players, no matter how much other side content they add. The goal isn’t to have a bunch of people still playing Ultimate because the new thing doesn’t have as much stuff and some other people playing the new thing, the goal is to get almost everybody to move onto the new thing. The goal is to get as many as possible of the 30M+ Ultimate owners to upgrade, and then reach new players besides.

I just don’t see why Nintendo would look at Ultimate sales and think “ah, yes, this is the moment where we should do a sure-to-be-contentious reboot with significant content cuts”

People like to talk about how there’s “no way” Nintendo could make the deals to do “everyone is here!” again. But if they wanted to do that for a $60 follow-up to a game that sold >15M units across two versions at $40-$60, they’d definitely want to do that for a $70 follow-up to a game that sold <30M units at $60. Their motivation to make that happen would only be bigger now because Smash is way bigger now.

 

[Marce-chan]

I'm going to be blunt and I'm really upset at some of the comments by a couple users in here: When you live in a market where costs for games and consoles tends to be ridiculous price, you're going to have to expect piracy and people (rightfully so) criticizing the companies for this. Also to add onto further context, the game DOES NOT have an official localization for Brazil. This is clearly going to lead to certain situations.

Piracy will always be a service issue, especially when you don't provide official localizations for areas. People who are disabled, poor, etc., that have such low income thresholds, even in the US, are in an area where it may lead to such situations.

So pardon me if I don't subscribe to some views found in this thread, especially coming from a poor and disabled background.

Just to address this, I was not referring to piracy done by people that can't afford to buy games. In fact, I'm one of those people and most of my childhood was playing GBA, SNES and N64 games on emulators. I also came to have a PS2 and basically every game for it was pirated back then.

I'm Brazilian and I live in social vulnerability (as in, I can barely pay the bills and everything I have to spend the month goes on to pay my expenses as I had to move from home to study on a public university).

What I was specifically criticizing was a man that has high income(in simple words, rich in comparison to us) talking about how better it is to play emulated BotW on his gaming PC that probably costed more than what my mom receives in a year of salary because Nintendo didn't release a Switch Pro that can do 4K.

I'm not defending Nintendo from the rightful criticisms of them not localizing their games, most notably Pokemon and Zelda games, because that's totally disrespectful to say the least with its Brazilian costumers.

Their pricing method here is absolutely terrible too, basing the prices on dollar which makes a sing game cost 1/4 of a minimum salary here. Also not adapting sales(as in making 50% now and then on markets such as Brazil) is dumb and heavily decreases the opportunities for me to buy any first party game. So of course people buying modded Switches or emulating will be a thing more common here.

 

[Deleted member 1141]

Just to address this, I was not referring to piracy done by people that can't afford to buy games. In fact, I'm one of those people and most of my childhood was playing GBA, SNES and N64 games on emulators. I also came to have a PS2 and basically every game for it was pirated back then.

I'm Brazilian and I live in social vulnerability (as in, I can barely pay the bills and everything I have to spend the month goes on to pay my expenses as I had to move from home to study on a public university).

What I was specifically criticizing was a man that has high income(in simple words, rich in comparison to us) talking about how better it is to play emulated BotW on his gaming PC that probably costed more than what my mom receives in a year of salary because Nintendo didn't release a Switch Pro that can do 4K.

I'm not defending Nintendo from the rightful criticisms of them not localizing their games, most notably Pokemon and Zelda games, because that's totally disrespectful to say the least with its Brazilian costumers.

Their pricing method here is absolutely terrible too, basing the prices on dollar which makes a sing game cost 1/4 of a minimum salary here. Also not adapting sales(as in making 50% now and then on markets such as Brazil) is dumb and heavily decreases the opportunities for me to buy any first party game. So of course people buying modded Switches or emulating will be a thing more common here.

Alright, thank you for clarifying to me on this particular post. Honest to god, there's been issues (here and elsewhere for that matter), so I definitely had a bit of a knee jerk reaction and I do want to apologize for that.

 

[Johna X]

I think treating Smash like just any other fighting game would be a huge mistake. It reaches a lot of people who don’t play traditional fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken. It’s a party game, just like Mario Kart is.

A huge part of Smash’s appeal is the large and varied line-up of fighters from across gaming. That was part of the concept of the series from the very beginning: all your Nintendo favorites, duking it out.

Every character is somebody’s favorite. Every themed stage has some fans. It’s really hard for me to picture a Smash with a significantly reduced roster that wasn’t less appealing to a lot of players, no matter how much other side content they add. The goal isn’t to have a bunch of people still playing Ultimate because the new thing doesn’t have as much stuff and some other people playing the new thing, the goal is to get almost everybody to move onto the new thing. The goal is to get as many as possible of the 30M+ Ultimate owners to upgrade, and then reach new players besides.

I just don’t see why Nintendo would look at Ultimate sales and think “ah, yes, this is the moment where we should do a sure-to-be-contentious reboot with significant content cuts”

People like to talk about how there’s “no way” Nintendo could make the deals to do “everyone is here!” again. But if they wanted to do that for a $60 follow-up to a game that sold >15M units across two versions at $40-$60, they’d definitely want to do that for a $70 follow-up to a game that sold <30M units at $60. Their motivation to make that happen would only be bigger now because Smash is way bigger now.

I mostly agree but I think DLC's negotiating power is underestimated here. I think, if Everyone Is Here happens again, it will be after all the DLC has released. Sora if no one else, but I wouldn't be surprised for it to widen.

I'd only bet on:

Megaman, Ryu, Ken

Pac-Man, Kazuya (admittedly Kazuya and Steve I wonder if crazy balancing and engine stuff also effects DLC, but the jist of the work is now done tbf)

Sonic, Bayo, Joker

Terry

Banjo and Steve are iffy, above all else I genuinely think Phil being there or not has a big effect, but also competitor status even with Phil may mean they want DLC money rather then base. I do think they'd come in time if Phil, but recently there's been a lot of talk of him being sacked
Then again, after Ultimate's success, what new Xbox lead would logically say no to getting smash money? It's hard to imagine them going back to a closed garden strategy, but I do think things are shaky

Everyone else feels more likely to be DLC to me, though I may be extrapolating the mid 2010s reputation of Konami onto this, so maybe its just Square I'm iffy on

 

[meatbag]

A huge part of Smash’s appeal is the large and varied line-up of fighters from across gaming.

Sure, and they can still capitalize on that appeal even with roster cuts. No one's asking Nintendo to limit the roster to 16 fighters. But I don't see why we can't boot out somewhat redundant fighters like Pichu, Chrom, etc.

Every character is somebody’s favorite

Same thing happened with Pokemon, and clearly it hasn't hurt sales. Same thing happens with other fighting games.

It’s really hard for me to picture a Smash with a significantly reduced roster that wasn’t less appealing to a lot of players, no matter how much other side content they add

My only argument is that increasing the fighter count isn't the only way forward for Smash. On that point, what counts as significantly reduced? There's 89 playable characters in Smash Ultimate. I don't think it will be that detrimental to the sales of the series if the next Smash "only" had 70 or so fighters. I believe that in a lot of cases, a big and varied roster can make up for specific characters being absent from that roster. People are surprisingly willing to try out new stuff, especially if it's games their friends play.

The goal is to get as many as possible of the 30M+ Ultimate owners to upgrade, and then reach new players besides

And I disagree that the only way to do this is by building on top of Ultimate.

I just don’t see why Nintendo would look at Ultimate sales and think “ah, yes, this is the moment where we should do a sure-to-be-contentious reboot with significant content cuts”

That's why the content cuts will be "insignificant" i.e. just enough to make development less unwieldy, just enough to make sure sales aren't significantly impacted, just enough so they can try new things.

People like to talk about how there’s “no way” Nintendo could make the deals to do “everyone is here!” again

It's always a possibility, but it's also not a guarantee. And even if the next game manages "Everyone Is Here", what about afterwards? They can't just keep adding more and more stuff, unless Smash becomes a full-blown GaaS.

 

[Gay Bowser]

I mostly agree but I think DLC's negotiating power is underestimated here. I think, if Everyone Is Here happens again, it will be after all the DLC has released. Sora if no one else, but I wouldn't be surprised for it to widen.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the way they achieve “everyone is here” is with Sora being a Piranha Plant-style limited-time bonus with him being a paid purchase after the first sixty days or whatever. I agree that he’s probably the character that’s the most likely to prove a sticking point/be prohibitively expensive from including in the base game.

 

[Instro]

Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

Their hardware wasn't as outdated as Switch is though. Switch already had weak hardware when it was released, unfortunately this is Nintendo's strategy, Nintendo doesn't launch new consoles because the old hardware is outdated, they launch when they believe they will make more money with a new...

famiboards.com

Based on some digging in the hardware thread, they appear different.

Ah ok that's a good catch. I do also see another article from the same Nikkei Japan author on the same day, that seemingly deals with a switch successor, but it appears to be paywalled. Could be something related or of interest there.

 

[bayonetta]

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

Preparing my best crazy laugh for the possibility that they're going back to LCD from OLED. If it's to keep the manufacturing cost down, the device better make up for it with powerful hardware.

 

[Notsowise]

yup.... no new hardware this year my ass..... let's wait and see. If sales plunge, they will run for what's next. Zelda performance will dictate the future, mainly in how many new switches it can move.

 

[Gay Bowser]

yup.... no new hardware this year my ass..... let's wait and see. If sales plunge, they will run for what's next. Zelda performance will dictate the future, mainly in how many new switches it can move.

If new hardware is coming next year at all, its release window is absolutely already locked in at this point. There’s no world where they plan a Switch 2 for holiday 2024 and then say “actually, we didn’t ship as many new Switches on the strength of TotK as we wanted, let’s bump that up to March”

Ramping up manufacturing for a new high-volume product like a console is a huge undertaking that takes months and involves dozens of suppliers, you can’t just pivot on a dime like that.

 

[Adulfzen]

yup.... no new hardware this year my ass..... let's wait and see. If sales plunge, they will run for what's next. Zelda performance will dictate the future, mainly in how many new switches it can move.

nah assuming something is already in the works the cost of moving up the productions (and shipping and retailing) schedule would probably way too costly/complicated.

Only thing that could potentially change is the reveal timing but I doubt Nintendo Switch hardware (and software) sales will take such a nosedive in the next 12 months that it'd force nintendo hands in any shape or form.

 

[SirArthur]

Weird. Since Nintendo got a good deal for the oleds. Hay maybe its the sony q lite.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I just don’t see why Nintendo would look at Ultimate sales and think “ah, yes, this is the moment where we should do a sure-to-be-contentious reboot with significant content cuts”

Man, in their shoes I would be incredibly intimidated about the scope of a project where we're just expected to have ~90 characters from the get-go. Ultimate was able to get there by basically slowly growing from the ~50 the Wii U version started with over the better part of a decade. But if they ever actually plan to do a game that isn't primarily built on recycled content, that's a hell of a lot of work to do again in higher fidelity than ever.

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

It's always a possibility, but it's also not a guarantee. And even if the next game manages "Everyone Is Here", what about afterwards? They can't just keep adding more and more stuff, unless Smash becomes a full-blown GaaS.

Considering one of the goals of the expansion is to bring certain franchises in house; it wouldn’t be shocking if Nintendo is mulling about attaching a dedicated team & doing exactly that.

 

[Gay Bowser]

Man, in their shoes I would be incredibly intimidated about the scope of a project where we're just expected to have ~90 characters from the get-go. Ultimate was able to get there by basically slowly growing from the ~50 the Wii U version started with over the better part of a decade. But if they ever actually plan to do a game that isn't primarily built on recycled content, that's a hell of a lot of work to do again in higher fidelity than ever.

I think there’s a good chance the next Smash builds on Ultimate in the same way Ultimate built on Wii U.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Ugh. Smash 4 was fine, but I'm far less interested in Smash 4 3.

 

[Spyder]

yup.... no new hardware this year my ass..... let's wait and see. If sales plunge, they will run for what's next. Zelda performance will dictate the future, mainly in how many new switches it can move.

Cope

 

[MisterSpo]

Preparing my best crazy laugh for the possibility that they're going back to LCD from OLED. If it's to keep the manufacturing cost down, the device better make up for it with powerful hardware.

Yeah, going back to vanilla LCD from OLED would be a big step back in the portable experience. Maybe price is a serious concern, but I thought OLED was now much more competitive pricing wise.

The other thing that strikes me as odd: would Sharp really need to be involved from the R&D stage just with regular LCD screens? Or is there a newer form of LCD Nintendo could be using?

 

[BowserIsMyFather]

Weird. Since Nintendo got a good deal for the oleds. Hay maybe its the sony q lite.

I think that's a likely scenario.

Or, you know, one of the gazillion handheld PCs flooding the market.

 

[Hermii]

I think that's a likely scenario.

Or, you know, one of the gazillion handheld PCs flooding the market.

None of which are defined as "game console".

 

[carbonaxiom]

None of which are defined as "game console".

From the Ayaneo 2 website:

"Handheld PC", "Gaming Handheld", and "Gaming Console" are all fairly interchangeable terms for these devices. Those Sharp LCD screens could still be for Nintendo, but it's just as likely that it's for some other company. We don't have any way of knowing with our current information.

 

[Djehuty]

I don’t agree with this at all. How is that the only option?



People love Ultimate, though.

I just don’t see a world where Nintendo sees Ultimate’s massive success, easily selling more than double the 3DS and Wii U versions combined, and then says “actually, rather than doing a direct follow-up we should reboot this, building on this would just be too hard”

why not stop there, lets just port deluxe again, lets reuse the botw map a third time.

you cant keep something like that forever, if they do ultimate deluxe they have to follow up on that, ever addition to ultimate makes the next dev cycle even harder. things cant be infinity grown and ultimate is already way beyond nintendos normal scope.

but idk what you're saying for the last thing? they rebooted smahs multiple times with melee brawl and 4, we've bassicaly been on 4 for 10 years now, with smahs ultiamte being a beefed up redo of four (much needed, 4 sucks). they've done it before and will do it again to keep interste, if they do the Same thing forever people will stop caring.

look at what happened to yo kai watch for example, on top of the world but there was no evolution, just more and now it can barely be considered shovelware.

building on ultimate would be, removing 30 characters, adding 15-20 new ones, adding 60 ish new stages with like 20 returning, a new menu new side modes and stuff like that.

it is unviable from both a business perspective and development perspective and it doenst grow the communty,jsut furhter its decline, people who are tired of ultimate wont come back for the exact smae game with 1 new mode or a couple new characters, ultimate deluxe is dumb, ultimate 2 is even dumber.

 

[Lucifer]

why not stop there, lets just port deluxe again, lets reuse the botw map a third time.

you cant keep something like that forever, if they do ultimate deluxe they have to follow up on that, ever addition to ultimate makes the next dev cycle even harder. things cant be infinity grown and ultimate is already way beyond nintendos normal scope.

but idk what you're saying for the last thing? they rebooted smahs multiple times with melee brawl and 4, we've bassicaly been on 4 for 10 years now, with smahs ultiamte being a beefed up redo of four (much needed, 4 sucks). they've done it before and will do it again to keep interste, if they do the Same thing forever people will stop caring.

look at what happened to yo kai watch for example, on top of the world but there was no evolution, just more and now it can barely be considered shovelware.

building on ultimate would be, removing 30 characters, adding 15-20 new ones, adding 60 ish new stages with like 20 returning, a new menu new side modes and stuff like that.

it is unviable from both a business perspective and development perspective and it doenst grow the communty,jsut furhter its decline, people who are tired of ultimate wont come back for the exact smae game with 1 new mode or a couple new characters, ultimate deluxe is dumb, ultimate 2 is even dumber.

you said yourself that 4 sucks, so I'm curious as to why you're counting Ultimate as a redo of 4? Have a play at Smash 4 again, Ultimate is as different to 4 as 4 is to Brawl.

I'd honestly say none of the Smash games are reboots, they have all been building on top of each other with Brawl being the black sheep for ruining mechanics way too much.

We have been on MK8 for a decade, that's not the case with Smash tho.

Ultimate Deluxe has a chance of happening because they might want to ride it out like they did with MK8D. That way give Sakurai a whole lot of time before the next installment.

 

[Djehuty]

you said yourself that 4 sucks, so I'm curious as to why you're counting Ultimate as a redo of 4? Have a play at Smash 4 again, Ultimate is as different to 4 as 4 is to Brawl.

I'd honestly say none of the Smash games are reboots, they have all been building on top of each other with Brawl being the black sheep for ruining mechanics way too much.

We have been on MK8 for a decade, that's not the case with Smash tho.

Ultimate Deluxe has a chance of happening because they might want to ride it out like they did with MK8D. That way give Sakurai a whole lot of time before the next installment.

I don’t count ultimate as a redo of 4, it’s a different game, but there is no denying that it’s engine is a supped up 4, it fees different and looks different enough. But ultimate is the product of like 13 straight years of dev. That’s the main reason why I think ultimate deluxe would be dumb, you just raise expectations amongst casuals higher.

They are not gonna ride out ultimate becuase it doesn’t sell like Mario kart. The next entry is proabably years away but that’s fine. Some people are still getinng smahs, but there isn’t a denial online and the community in general is less active then ever. Ultimate deluxe would do nothing to allieviate that, especially since you can just, play ultimate in the switch 2.

And as I said before, the general market doenst like things that get repeated to often, the only reason mk8 worked is because the wii u failed. A power of a 30mil game on a console that can already play 30mil game isn’t going to do gangbusters.

It would be the stupidest things Nintendo will have ever done. Had they did that, which is why I’m confident they won’t.

Nintendos goal is money, all their innovation or ack there of goes back to money, the simplest answer is new smash = way more profitable than ultImate but again.

Edit: yeas they have built each other, but each new iteration was unqiue, but ultimate was the least unique amongst those becuase it reused all the assets form 4.

Ultimate was only possible because 4 had like 80% of smash characters anyway and that’s because they stocked with that engine and dev team. Brawl was a reboot from melee, of course it also reused assets but most things were from the ground up, whereas in smash ultimate aside form the new stuff and the stuff returning from melee or beak, it is highly edited smash 4 content, even then this game was and still is the most expensive game they have ever produced, as well as the hardest to produce do to licensing. Ultimate is a feat itself, one that is almost entirely impossible to repeat due to the unqiue situations it was birthed in.

 

[Deleted member 2]

Cope

Worthless comment, post better

 

[Gay Bowser]

why not stop there, lets just port deluxe again, lets reuse the botw map a third time.

Literally a slippery slope fallacy.

A sequel that builds on Ultimate is not the same as just porting MK8D again.

As @Lucifer pointed out, it’s weird that you go back and forth on “smahs ultiamte being a beefed up redo of four” but then also saying it was transformative, turning a game that sucked into a good game.

it is unviable from both a business perspective and development perspective and it doenst grow the communty,jsut furhter its decline, people who are tired of ultimate wont come back for the exact smae game with 1 new mode or a couple new characters, ultimate deluxe is dumb, ultimate 2 is even dumber.

I don’t think it will be just “1 new mode or a couple new characters.” I don’t know why you’re repeatedly characterizing my argument as something I’m not saying.

They are not gonna ride out ultimate becuase it doesn’t sell like Mario kart.

Ultimate has outsold every single Mario Kart game save two, and there’s a chance it outsells one of those by the end too.

The next entry is proabably years away but that’s fine. Some people are still getinng smahs, but there isn’t a denial online and the community in general is less active then ever. Ultimate deluxe would do nothing to allieviate that, especially since you can just, play ultimate in the switch 2.

Really? A sequel that built on Ultimate (never said it was “Ultimate Deluxe”) would do nothing to make the Smash community more active?

It would be the stupidest things Nintendo will have ever done.

Now you’re just in the realm of outright nonsense hyperbole. Ahh, yes, Nintendo’s biggest mistakes: the Virtual Boy, the 64DD, the Wii U, and…launching a new console with a Smash game that builds on its predecessor, as other Smash games have done.

Nintendos goal is money, all their innovation or ack there of goes back to money, the simplest answer is new smash = way more profitable than ultImate but again.

I don’t really think that’s necessarily true at all, and I, again, also never said the game would be “Ultimate but again.”

It’s odd to me that you characterize Ultimate development as Nintendo’s largest ever undertaking – “the most expensive game they have ever produced, as well as the hardest to produce do to licensing” – but then also insist they wouldn’t capitalize on that work with a sequel that built on that work.

I’ll be honest, your posts are sort of all over the place here and I don’t really find any of what you’re saying very convincing. The comparison to Yo-Kai Watch, a series that immediately went into faster than annual installments and then just vanished as YW4 was internally rebooted multiple times, doesn’t really feel like a very apt comparison to Nintendo releasing a sequel six years after the previous game, no matter how iterative that sequel is.

Sequels that build on their predecessors are not an unheard-of concept in video games. You repeatedly try to characterize Nintendo’s choice as either A) reboot or B) “ultimate but again” with “1 new mode or a couple new characters” and that’s just a false dichotomy. They can use their work with Ultimate as a base and also make meaningful additions and changes, no matter how much you try to act like that’s not one of their options.

 

[P.Scoop]

Yeah, going back to vanilla LCD from OLED would be a big step back in the portable experience. Maybe price is a serious concern, but I thought OLED was now much more competitive pricing wise.

The other thing that strikes me as odd: would Sharp really need to be involved from the R&D stage just with regular LCD screens? Or is there a newer form of LCD Nintendo could be using?

Sharp have a long-time relationship with Nintendo. If they're developing a new system, Sharp would be one of their first choice to contact and get screens from them for R&D

 

[Terrell]

I could see the Switch hardware squeezing out another 2 decent fiscal years with a price drop. But overall Nintendo's stocks are going to take a hit if they don't announce an upgrade sometime later this year or early next year.

I imagine they'll announce it very early 2024, right before the end of this fiscal year, to appease stockholders, and release it holiday 2024 with an information blowout over that summer.

I don't know shit about anything or how anything works, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

The primary issue is that if there's a price cut on hardware, their projections for revenue and operating income stop making sense. In order for these figures to not be obfuscating something, Nintendo will have to manage to hit its sales projections for Switch without price drops. The second the latter stops being true, it just raises A LOT of questions.

I guess I don’t really understand why people are acting like “new game gets made after original director leaves series” is something that has never happened in games before

This is a solved problem. You appoint a new director and make the next game. Would Sakurai’s guiding hand be missed? Maybe! But even if he’s “semi-retired” there’s no reason he can’t be involved in an advisory role (that’s exactly what “semi-retired” sounds like to me, actually).

Games aren’t made by one person, even if that person is Sakurai.

Like, what’s the alternative? Nintendo just never makes another Smash, because Sakurai is done?

So long as Sakurai is not mentoring his replacement (which seems unlikely, given the development structure of Smash overall), it's not a solved problem in this context, that's the larger issue. Otherwise, I would agree.

 

[Bosintang]

Nintendo could be planning to hardware tiers: a budget one with a LCD screen, a stingy storage and less premium materials. A more luxurious one with OLED screen, a more generous storage and higher quality materials. 350 vs 450 for example. Their competitors do that, and I believe that more options is always better.
They can release a Drake lite later.

 

[Hermii]

From the Ayaneo 2 website:

"Handheld PC", "Gaming Handheld", and "Gaming Console" are all fairly interchangeable terms for these devices. Those Sharp LCD screens could still be for Nintendo, but it's just as likely that it's for some other company. We don't have any way of knowing with our current information.

I don't think just as likely. For one, all of these are fairly niche devices, probably wouldn't be a big enough contract for the CEO to brag about it.

For two, these products tend to use standardised parts, probably would be no need for the screen supplier to be involved since the R&D stage.

 

[carbonaxiom]

I don't think just as likely. For one, all of these are fairly niche devices, probably wouldn't be a big enough contract for the CEO to brag about it.

For two, these products tend to use standardised parts, probably would be no need for the screen supplier to be involved since the R&D stage.

These two points are relevant for niche products like the Ayaneo, but the rumored Sony Q-Lite is a viable candidate that would be both big enough to mention in a presentation and would likely involve a decent amount of R&D. And even here, "gaming console" is a possible way of referring to the device, even if it ends up being a Wii U-like peripheral for the Playstation 5.

The one major point I've seen against it being a Sony device is that many believe Sony wouldn't care about keeping the existence of the device a secret. I disagree with that assessment. Most companies care about leaks, it's just that most also consider it to be too much of a hassle to deal with leaks when they actually do happen. In this case, it's not a leak so much as the CEO of a partner development company mentioning the device before it's ready to be revealed. It would take little effort for a company like Sony to quickly contact Sharp and tell them to scrub mentions of the device and their partnership for now.

 

[Lord Azrael]

why not stop there, lets just port deluxe again, lets reuse the botw map a third time.

you cant keep something like that forever, if they do ultimate deluxe they have to follow up on that, ever addition to ultimate makes the next dev cycle even harder. things cant be infinity grown and ultimate is already way beyond nintendos normal scope.

but idk what you're saying for the last thing? they rebooted smahs multiple times with melee brawl and 4, we've bassicaly been on 4 for 10 years now, with smahs ultiamte being a beefed up redo of four (much needed, 4 sucks). they've done it before and will do it again to keep interste, if they do the Same thing forever people will stop caring.

look at what happened to yo kai watch for example, on top of the world but there was no evolution, just more and now it can barely be considered shovelware.

building on ultimate would be, removing 30 characters, adding 15-20 new ones, adding 60 ish new stages with like 20 returning, a new menu new side modes and stuff like that.

it is unviable from both a business perspective and development perspective and it doenst grow the communty,jsut furhter its decline, people who are tired of ultimate wont come back for the exact smae game with 1 new mode or a couple new characters, ultimate deluxe is dumb, ultimate 2 is even dumber.

I don’t count ultimate as a redo of 4, it’s a different game, but there is no denying that it’s engine is a supped up 4, it fees different and looks different enough. But ultimate is the product of like 13 straight years of dev. That’s the main reason why I think ultimate deluxe would be dumb, you just raise expectations amongst casuals higher.

They are not gonna ride out ultimate becuase it doesn’t sell like Mario kart. The next entry is proabably years away but that’s fine. Some people are still getinng smahs, but there isn’t a denial online and the community in general is less active then ever. Ultimate deluxe would do nothing to allieviate that, especially since you can just, play ultimate in the switch 2.

And as I said before, the general market doenst like things that get repeated to often, the only reason mk8 worked is because the wii u failed. A power of a 30mil game on a console that can already play 30mil game isn’t going to do gangbusters.

It would be the stupidest things Nintendo will have ever done. Had they did that, which is why I’m confident they won’t.

Nintendos goal is money, all their innovation or ack there of goes back to money, the simplest answer is new smash = way more profitable than ultImate but again.

Edit: yeas they have built each other, but each new iteration was unqiue, but ultimate was the least unique amongst those becuase it reused all the assets form 4.

Ultimate was only possible because 4 had like 80% of smash characters anyway and that’s because they stocked with that engine and dev team. Brawl was a reboot from melee, of course it also reused assets but most things were from the ground up, whereas in smash ultimate aside form the new stuff and the stuff returning from melee or beak, it is highly edited smash 4 content, even then this game was and still is the most expensive game they have ever produced, as well as the hardest to produce do to licensing. Ultimate is a feat itself, one that is almost entirely impossible to repeat due to the unqiue situations it was birthed in.

No offense but your arguments are kind of a mess and full of contradictions. You acknowledge that Ultimate was a monumental feat built up over years, yet somehow you think it would be cheaper for Nintendo to build that all over again from the ground up...? Even if they cut the roster massively, they would absolutely build on the existing engine and mechanics. That is the reality of any software development, not even just game development. A new Smash that innovates completely wouldn't be more profitable than Ultimate if it also costs a shit ton more to develop.

And that's not even taking into account that for some reason, you take for granted that something entirely new would automatically sell better. Ultimate is going to be extremely difficult to beat, new or not. You seem super convinced that building on Ultimate would alienate tons of people and inevitably shrink the community, but I feel like that couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think there is any basis in reality to what you say. People are here for the roster and party game aspect - try to think what actually keeps people playing these games years after launch. Most casual players probably haven't even touched any mode outside of free for all. Why would you not keep iterating on the game's biggest draw by adding more and more of its biggest hook - new characters - rather than innovating in low impact areas just for the sake of innovating?

And that Yokai Watch comparison is super misguided. The situations are nothing alike. Yokai Watch, in classic Level 5 fashion, drove itself into the ground with multimedia oversaturation and an insane release cadence, leading to extreme burnout.

 

[Lord Azrael]

You frequently see people suggesting that Smash be rebooted, and I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to achieve. It's a lot cheaper to carry over existing characters than to build new ones from the ground up. What exactly are people looking for? New movesets and fighter mechanics? They'd be better served working that in to new characters, as they've been doing, than completely overhauling an existing one. That way they can still have the experimental stuff without throwing out the kitchen sink.

Don't get me wrong I'd also love if old characters like Donkey Kong or Ganondorf more closely represented their franchise counterparts, but on the other hand I also like their current playstyles and would be upset if they were redone, with no suitable replacements. Every character out there is someone's favorite not just for the character themself, but also their playstyle. If you give Ganondorf a makeover then you better also give me an echo of his previous self in a character like Black Shadow or something, because his down air or side smash connecting are some of the hypest moments in Smash

But maybe I should carry this conversation on to the active thread we have right now that's actually about this topic heh

 

[Lucifer]

I don’t count ultimate as a redo of 4, it’s a different game, but there is no denying that it’s engine is a supped up 4, it fees different and looks different enough. But ultimate is the product of like 13 straight years of dev. That’s the main reason why I think ultimate deluxe would be dumb, you just raise expectations amongst casuals higher.

They are not gonna ride out ultimate becuase it doesn’t sell like Mario kart. The next entry is proabably years away but that’s fine. Some people are still getinng smahs, but there isn’t a denial online and the community in general is less active then ever. Ultimate deluxe would do nothing to allieviate that, especially since you can just, play ultimate in the switch 2.

And as I said before, the general market doenst like things that get repeated to often, the only reason mk8 worked is because the wii u failed. A power of a 30mil game on a console that can already play 30mil game isn’t going to do gangbusters.

It would be the stupidest things Nintendo will have ever done. Had they did that, which is why I’m confident they won’t.

Nintendos goal is money, all their innovation or ack there of goes back to money, the simplest answer is new smash = way more profitable than ultImate but again.

Edit: yeas they have built each other, but each new iteration was unqiue, but ultimate was the least unique amongst those becuase it reused all the assets form 4.

Ultimate was only possible because 4 had like 80% of smash characters anyway and that’s because they stocked with that engine and dev team. Brawl was a reboot from melee, of course it also reused assets but most things were from the ground up, whereas in smash ultimate aside form the new stuff and the stuff returning from melee or beak, it is highly edited smash 4 content, even then this game was and still is the most expensive game they have ever produced, as well as the hardest to produce do to licensing. Ultimate is a feat itself, one that is almost entirely impossible to repeat due to the unqiue situations it was birthed in.

Now we get into tricky territory of what's souped up, and what's new and old, all of which is quite subjective.

IIRC, Brawl was built on Melee code, and 4 was built on Brawl code, I think Sakurai has mentioned this.
Either way, I don't see any benefits to throwing away an engine unless the code is a mess and hard to work with. Why would you?

Engine and assets are quite separate things as well, why would I throw away a model of Mario when I've already got one that looks great and I can edit that one? It seems pointless to me. In fact, this can allow for time for other things, the animation in Ultimate is amazing compared to the other entries, IMO that's another thing that really separates it from the rest.

The only actual from the ground up reboot was Melee, and that's because of the switch from lego polygons to a higher polygon count, since then it has been streamlining.

They cans till use this engine, edit it further, and add/cut content/characters/stages/modes/whatever as they please. This also doesn't mean it'll be Ultimate 2. Just what would be the point of redoing the engine completely?

As for Ultimate Deluxe, whether something like that happens or not will depend mostly on Sakurai I feel.

 

[Spyder]

Worthless comment, post better

No

 

[ReyVGM]

Could people take the Smash talk to another thread?

 

[JRPGHurtsWallet]

Personally that Sharp thing makes me think a Sony or Microsoft handheld, not Nintendo. As already mentioned, that would be a significant step back from the OLED.

This is Nintendo after all though so it wouldn’t surprise me, but it would be incredibly disappointing and a bit of a slap in the face. Release superior hardware on a inferior screen.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

This is Nintendo after all though so it wouldn’t surprise me, but it would be incredibly disappointing and a bit of a slap in the face. Release superior hardware on a inferior screen.

Have they ever done that before? Closest things would probably be Game Boy being unlit for a while again after Game Boy Light, and Switch losing the 3D capabilities of the previous generation.

 

[ILikeFeet]

This is Nintendo after all though so it wouldn’t surprise me, but it would be incredibly disappointing and a bit of a slap in the face. Release superior hardware on a inferior screen.

except they haven't really done this before

Have they ever done that before? Closest things would probably be Game Boy being unlit for a while again after Game Boy Light, and Switch losing the 3D capabilities of the previous generation.

while it lost the 3D, the panel quality was significantly improved