Nintendo hints aplenty.

Various rumours of a new Nintendo project have been doing the rounds recently. Let’s deal with some interesting ‘news’ from website Nintendo News. These guys have had their finger on the Nintendo pulse over the years and claim to have been given an inside tip on some new Nintendo hardware codenamed Fusion. They even claim, albeit whilst maintaining a level of journalistic scepticism, to have been given the tech specs for this new Next Gen Nintendo hardware. It would appear that the proposed hardware will be split over a new console and new DS, see below:

Fusion DS

• CPU: ARMv8-A Cortex-A53 GPU: Custom Adreno 420-based AMD GPU
• COM MEMORY: 3 GB LPDDR3 (2 GB Games, 1 GB OS)
• 2 130 mm DVGA (960 x 640) Capacitive Touchscreen
• Slide Out Design with Custom Swivel Tilt Hinge
• Upper Screen made of Gorilla Glass, Comes with Magnetic Cover
• Low End Vibration for Gameplay and App Alerts
• 2 Motorized Circle Pads for Haptic Feedback
• Thumbprint Security Scanner with Pulse Sensing Feedback
• 2 1mp Stereoptic Cameras
• Multi-Array Microphone
• A, B, X, Y, D-Pad, L, R, 1, 2 Buttons
• 3 Axis Tuning Fork Gyroscope, 3 Axis Accelerometer, Magnetometer
• NFC Reader
• 3G Chip with GPS Location
• Bluetooth v4.0 BLE Command Node used to Interface with Bluetooth Devices such as Cell Phones, Tablets
• 16 Gigabytes of Internal Flash Storage (Possible Future Unit With 32 Gigabytes)
• Nintendo 3DS Cart Slot
• SDHC “Holographic Enhanced” Card Slot up to 128 Gigabyte Limit
• Mini USB I/O
• 3300 mAh Li-Ion battery

Fusion Terminal

• GPGPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
• CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
• Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
• MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAMED KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
• 802.11 b/g/n Wireless
• Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
• 2 USB 3.0
• 1 Coaxial Cable Input
• 1 CableCARD Slot
• 4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads
• Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot
• 1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
• Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
• Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
• Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage

Now, as Nintendo News points out some of these code-names are seriously suspicious and may smack of a hoax, but there is yet more interesting stuff coming from an official Nintendo source.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has been intimating that the company is seriously considering a change of business plan. This comes in the light of the financial report that has seen the projected earnings slashed from an expected net profit of ¥55 billion for the year, to a net loss of ¥25 billion, dropping around ¥80 billion or £465 million. This comes after a poor Christmas period for both the DS and WiiU platforms. It now seems highly likely that Nintendo may kill-off the WiiU before the machine has really had a chance. The lack of third-party support and the disastrous marketing decision surrounding the machines confusing name has meant many casual gamers simply have seen the WiiU as nothing more than a Wii, which they already own. This is in spite of some excellent first-party titles now being available on the console.

Speculation is rife as to the Japanese gaming giants next move. Some say that they will end production of home consoles and go the Sega route of becoming a publisher. Others, as we have seen above are claiming that the big N is already working to fix its WiiU issue with a new console which could fight on a level playing field with Xbox One and PS4.

One thing is for sure Nintendo are already exploring the possibility of mobile gaming. “We are thinking about a new business structure,” Iwata said “Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone.” He added. “We cannot continue a business without winning. We must take a sceptical approach whether we can still simply make game players, offer them in the same way as in the past for 20,000 yen or 30,000 yen, and sell titles for a couple of thousand yen each.”

Nintendo’s next move could have huge ramifications for the gaming landscape. Should they chose to abandon hardware, it will be a sad day for gaming but a joyous day for PS4 and Xbox One owners who would be able to enjoy the wonders that Nintendo first-party games offer. Unlike any other company out there.

Time will tell.

One Response to “Nintendo hints aplenty.”

1. Moonhead says:

   January 22, 2014 at 10:21 pm

   If this is true I will be livid. If I have invested money in a console that is not going to see 2 years before being dropped Nintendo can go fuck themselves!!

   Reply