Pay no attention to the console
behind the curtain
I’ll be completely honest here: I
didn’t expect to be writing about the NX this early. I’ve been planning on
doing an editorial on it ever since I started doing these. The lead-up to
release has been such a disasterpiece of epic proportions that I wanted to wait
until there was enough to talk about to fill a whole editorial, but I also
wanted to cover it before the official unveiling (because I have a “part 2” of
sorts planned for after that).
My original idea for this week’s
editorial was to talk about the Windows 10 store and how awful my experience
was in buying ReCore, but after watching the NX caravan of craziness unfolding
even more over this week, I just had to write about it.
So if you haven’t been keeping up with
the insanity that’s been the Nintendo NX, I’ll recap for you. Since the Wii U
was unfortunately a bit of a flop for Nintendo, the race was on to make their
next console as quick as possible. There were rumblings that something new was
on the way as early as Late 2014, only to be completely blown open in March
2015, when the brand new console was announced by Satoru Iwata, codenamed “NX”.
Aside from a few brief namedrops at
Nintendo Directs and various conferences ever since then, Nintendo has yet to
officially announce anything aside from “yeah, this is a thing that’s coming!”
Later on, Nintendo would also confirm that the projected release date is March
2017, but other than that, we know absolutely nothing about this console.
Remember March 2017, because we’ll
come back to that.
Ever since then, the NX has been
subjected to what can only be referred to as “The No Man’s Sky Effect”. Rumours
and theories about exactly what this box would be able to do, what the
controller would be like, what games it would have, and so on. People have been
claiming we’ll see the return of cartridges on consoles, a new Smash Bros. game
would be available at launch, and several false reports that we’d be seeing
news tomorrow, next week, and so on and so forth.
I mostly had this all running in the
background, paying little attention to it. However, it all came to a head for
me when this monstrosity started making the rounds on the internet.
I still remember when I saw this, I
literally said out loud “Oh god, please let this thing be fake.” As much as I
like the Wii U and think it has an excellent library of exclusives, there’s no
denying that one of the major reasons that it failed was because people didn’t
like the gimmicky controller. Now that motion controls have finally been all
but put out of their misery (aside from gyro controls, but those are still hit
or miss), I think that gamers as a whole just want standard controllers back
with no more fancy shapes or anything like that.
Later on, this would be all but
confirmed as yet another fake, and we’d later see this patent for detachable
controllers that seems to have a bit more legitimacy behind it.
I can’t say I’m super stoked about
this one either, but I’m going to save judgement for when I see the thing for
real.
The latest in NX rumours came to us as
a supposed leaked release date for the Zelda: Breath of the Wild amiibo. If
this is to be believed, we’ll have both the NX and Zelda in our hands on March
4, 2017.
And this is where the date from
earlier comes back into play.
So in 6 months, we’re going to have
the next Nintendo console in our hands. A console we’ve only seen through
suspicious “leaked” images and rumours, with only a handful of teasers for a
few confirmed games, like the aforementioned Zelda. I sincerely doubt that this
is going to come to pass.
Why? Well, first off, because Nintendo
needs to drum up hype. I remember that when the Wii U launched, it was
conspicuous by its absence in marketing. If you weren’t a gamer, you’d have no
idea that it was a thing. Conversely, when the Wii first launched, it was everywhere. Remember those “Wii would
like to play” ads where those two Japanese men would go door to door hawking
the Wii to random strangers? You couldn’t escape them back in 2006! As a
result, the Wii became one of the highest selling consoles of all time, with it
still being difficult to find one even 2 years later.
If Nintendo has only 6 months to
unveil the NX, show off what it and its games can do, and create an
advertising campaign large enough to catch the attention of gamers and
non-gamers alike, it’s probably going to go the same way as the Wii U. Nintendo’s
really been struggling in the years since the Wii U failed, so I was thinking
that they’d strike back with force next time.
I can see 2 paths where this can go
ahead. Either Nintendo launches the NX in March as expected and faces the
music, or takes it’s time and we eventually see this thing sometime in the
summer or holiday season. Honestly, I’d prefer option 2, just so we can have a
better handle on what this thing’s going to be.
Although I’ve been extremely critical of Nintendo’s business
strategies in recent years, they’re still one of my favourite game companies,
and one I hold a great deal of respect and nostalgia towards. Just like every
developer, I want to see them succeed. Although negative criticism is fun to
write, there always comes a bit of disappointment when it comes to taking
something from a favourite franchise or creator and tearing it to shreds. While
it was extremely cathartic writing my review of Star Fox Zero earlier this
year, I sincerely wanted that game to be good.
So until we see the NX for real, I’ll hold off any judgement.
I’m not a businessman, so I’m sure there’s some strategy going on that I won’t
understand in the slightest. For Nintendo’s sake, I just want them to bounce
back.
Song of the Week
The theme from Mario Chase from Nintendo Land. This launch
title for the Wii U is sincerely underrated in my opinion. If you gather a
group of friends or family and play a round of one of the competitive games, it
can be a lot of fun! It was the main attraction of my family get-togethers for
a long time, and I’d like to play it again soon.
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