Nintendo NX: Speculation on a new console

All of this is pretty pure speculation, as is every other article around right now. We only know a limited amount of information, but if it is to be believed, Nintendo are going to release a new home console by the end of 2016, and it currently goes by the working title, Nintendo NX.

The first major point is that it may have the possibility to be as much handheld gaming as home console. The Wii U already features the ability to play games solely on the handheld gamepad, as long as you are within range of the console itself, allowing you to not use the television as your main screen. If the NX allowed internal processing in the 'gamepad', then it could become a handheld console for use out and about, and a home console, all in one.

If it keeps similar hardware to Wii U, and is more a cosmetic or extra functionality upgrade (eg DSi compared to DS, or new 3DS compared to old), Wii U games would be cross compatible with NX, developers working on Wii U titles wouldn't be left in the lurch and people who have a Wii U wouldn't need to upgrade immediately. As unlikely as this is, it would be a smart move by Nintendo, as long as the upgrade to functionality was enough to warrant buying the new console, but small enough that current Wii U owners were able to keep their existing hardware.

There are rumours that the Nintendo NX may return Nintendo to using 'cartridges' to sell their games physically. However, they wouldn't be the bulky cartridges of the N64 and earlier. It would be using digital media, like SD cards (similar to existing DS/3DS cartridges). This may seem strange at first, but considering that with Blu-Ray style discs, we have just about explored the limits of how much information can be stored without increasing the writeable surface area of the disc, and that SD cards are becoming increasingly cheaper, physically smaller and are capable of holding more information every day, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense. This could be alongside downloading games from their internet-based store, as it is currently.

Pricing is set to be lower than the Wii U and competitors. This has always been a good selling point for Nintendo consoles, both for within the home and handheld. It has led, along with it's first party titles, to the reputation Nintendo has for being family friendly, and was one of the driving factors behind the success of the Wii.

However, the timing is way too early - the PS4 and Xbox One have only just gotten out of their launch title slump, and the Wii U has only just received its first batch of really influential titles - Mario Maker, Splatoon, Yoshi's Wooly World. The Wii U will only have been out for 4 years by late 2016, in comparison to the 6 years that the Wii was the main console for, and the 5 the Gamecube was available for. If it winds up being a more cosmetic upgrade, this may be a moot point, but in the event that it is an entirely new console, fans would have to invest in new hardware sooner than they were expecting - even with cheaper price point, they may lose trust that this console will be useable longer than a handful of years. It's that broken trust that would be the worst thing for Nintendo; people buy their platforms for their unique IPs (such as Mario, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, etc.), but if a platform fails to deliver on those IPs because the next platform is being rushed into development, then fans will feel cheated, and wonder why they should invest in a new platform if the same will happen again.

If third party developers don't adopt it, then it will be the same situation as the Wii U currently faces - good first party support, but no games other than Nintendo's unique IPs to choose from. There are a number of reasons why third party developers may choose not to develop for the Nintendo NX, including investing in learning and testing an entirely new coding language, expenses of developing on the new platform, the risks of developing on a new unproven platform, especially after the premature ending of the Wii U's retail cycle.

If dev kits are already in hands of developers, then it may get decent 3rd party support at launch. Most of the rumours currently circulating are due to developers who already have a kit. We aren't currently aware which developers have dev kits and what titles they are currently working on, but at the very least, it is a decent hope.

At the end of the day, though, this is all wild speculation based off a handful of facts. Speculation where Nintendo are concerned is risky at best, due to the unpredictable nature of the company. Wide speculation of the Wii condemned it to failure, yet it became a ridiculously successful console. The same can be said of the idea of the DS. So at this early stage, all we can say for sure is that whatever Nintendo do wind up doing, it is sure to be a surprise, despite our best efforts to guess at it.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a very useful and yet almost completely overlooked feature of the Internet. It's a real shame, since I love the way in which they work and can be used to track many different sources of information without subscribing to a million different websites, all with individual accounts and logins.

So, what is an RSS feed? In really simple terms, it's a way of collecting and displaying posts from the Internet in one feed 'reader', usually as shortened links. In more complicated terms: "RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it."

Some computers have RSS readers built in, and many web browsers can have them installed. If you would prefer to use a browser based reader, there are sites like Feedly (which I'll be using as an example).

RSS feed URLs typically look like: http://www.[website name].com/feed. They can sometimes be tricky to find, and don't always follow this pattern, but luckily for us, Feedly is a little more user-friendly.

To add a feed to Feedly, take the URL of the blog and paste it in the searchbar, like so:



And pick 'RSS' from the choices given (Atom will also work, and in practice, they are very similar).

You will then see a collection of posts from that blog in a shortened format, like this:



All you have to do is press the green '+feedly' icon, and then you're done!

Now you can track content from your favourite blogs, news sites, forums, webcomics etc. without joining a mailing list. What's more, since they're all collected in one place, it's much easier to check for new updates than loading a lot of different webpages whenever you remember to check!

Digital Revolutions

I'm always irrationally angry every time I see an article about a 'new media' killing a more traditional form of media. Partially because it's usually just another way of the writer saying "the world is changing and I don't like it" and partly because it's simply untrue, and their argument is based on a very shallow understanding of the media in question.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, the increasing popularity of television began to scare the film industry - if people have access to entertainment in their own homes, why would they pay to see a film in theatres? Later, in the 70s and 80s, Betamax and Videocassette Recorders meant that people could record television to watch and rewatch at any time - including films that had been broadcast. Again, the film industry were concerned that people would simply record films off the television and would not buy a copy for themselves.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, six decades after their initial concerns, the film industry is still alive and producing content. Thriving, even. Now, however, their big concerns are over digital streaming, downloads and pirating media.

Digital streaming will not kill television or film. In fact, Netflix and Amazon have gone beyond simply being a content streamer, and have become substantial producers of new content. Pirating won't even kill media, despite the scaremongering. Figures used to show massive losses to the film and television industry work under the impression that every pirated copy is a loss of one legitimate sale. Yet many people pirate things they have no intention of buying, or intend to buy at a later date but cannot currently afford. Many people also pirate media that is unavailable for a legal purchase in their own country.

A small example using the long-running CW show, Supernatural. At the time of writing, the 11th season has just begun to air in the US. In the UK, season 9 has been airing on Freeview television stations (stations that require no additional subscription service, such as cable or satellite to view), and season 10 will be made available at roughly the same time for Brits as season 11 will be for Americans. Previously, it was only televised by Sky, requiring an additional costly subscription to view. Season 9 was only made available in the UK on DVD and Blu-Ray in June 2015, and there is no release date for season 10, despite being released in the US on DVD and Blu-Ray. In short, there has not been a legal way to catch up to the current season of the show in the UK, unless you have an extremely expensive subscription to satellite television. This is just one of many television programmes, from the perspective of just one country.

In a similar way, eBooks will not kill physical books and even if they did, stories would still be told. Authors will still write, novels will still be published and people will still read it. Digital music isn't killing the music industry, either - if anything, the ability to buy single tracks instead of entire albums has boosted music sales, not diminished them.

Essentially, my argument is that new technology will never change the media being created, only the way of consuming that media. Digital downloads don't require physical space, and are easily portable. I can carry a library of books, a few dozen films and many hours of music in my pocket, and entertain myself literally anywhere - how is that a bad thing? It's an amazing sign of how quickly we've developed technology; twenty years ago, we could only just send short text messages from phone to phone; now we can stream media from anywhere with a semi-decent signal or internet access.

If anything, digital media of all forms is diversifying media as a whole. Digital publishing has made self-publishing obtainable for the vast majority of writers; streaming services have made it possible for musicians to record and release music independently of a recording label; film makers can release their work on video streaming sites. If anything, the digital revolution has cut out the middle man - the producers, the distributors, the publishing houses and the record labels. This is what large companies should be more afraid of; technology giving artists the tools to produce and distribute their own work on their own terms. As more and more independent success stories happen, how long will traditional media cling to their current business models? Will they adapt with the times or become relics of the past?

The truth is, things are always going to change. Technology doesn't remain stagnant for long, and with technological advances come cultural shifts. People and companies need to adapt to and embrace these developments, not shun them simply because they are new.