Last week, during a press conference, Nintendo announced that they will be releasing a new console by the name of NX. It’s their next generation hardware concept and they said that we will know more about it next year. At the same time, they also revealed that they will be making mobile and PC games in partnership with a company named “DeNA”.

This statement has spawned numerous statements, including an article written this week, that claims that this is nothing more than an admission of failure by Nintendo regarding their WiU console. Of course, this is just speculation because we don’t know anything really about the NX. We don’t even know what type of gaming console it will be, if it’s a hand held or a standard console, or something else entirely. It is not impossible for it to be a completely different concept that they came up with and nobody expects.

This also could very well seem as an “admission of failure”. It is well known that the WiU, essentially, lost all its third party support and that it will be extremely hard to get them back on board, unless they will pay them a lot of money. There are a few studios left that are willing to work with Nintendo but at the end of the day, to produce anything on that specific console that isn’t their own work seems like a losing battle.

This is not the first time that Nintendo had this problem. With hand held devices they had quite a lot of success because third party developers released a great number of quality games for them, but with home consoles there have been situations where that was not the case. Take for example the Game Cube and N64. Both devices had great Nintendo developed games, but suffered when it came to games put together by other companies and because of that, they had a rather short lifespan.

The WiU also struggled in the same way, but not as much as the others did.  There were a lot of fun, casual games, dancing games, family games or party games that were released by third party developers later in the console’s life. At this moment, the WiU is practically a wasteland for other game developers. Only “indi devs” and the occasional studio, like “Platinum” (that are literally being paid by Nintendo), that are willing to create a game for them. The majority of good games, few as they are, are developed by Nintendo themselves. Surprisingly, there seems to be a valid market on the WiU for ports of existing indi titles such as “Shovel Knight” or “Spy Chameleon”.

From the hardware point of view, Nintendo continues to develop games that run at 60 frames per second, that are colorful, fun and esthetically pleasing. Although they mostly get a more casual kind of customer, they also have some hardcore gamers that play titles like “Smash Brothers”, “Bayonetta 2” or “Xenoblade Chronicles X”.

The great problem is that other than that you are basically only relying on the WiU shop to provide you with new games for your system. To be frank, this  is a console that gets turned on every couple of months and it can’t even be compared to the PS4 or the Xbox One which get new, good games every few weeks.

This is where Nintendo slips when it comes to market share. They simply have difficulty getting decent games on their system. It is not like they don’t have great games, it’s just that they don’t have enough of them coming out on a regular basis and in the end a constant stream of apps is what sells consoles. I wish they could get a “Zelda” game out every year, but if they did that it would probably ruin the critically acclaimed franchise. So, all you do is wait for those big, killer applications and in the meantime your WiU just sits quietly in the corner collecting dust.

If we were to look at the latest sales figures for the WiU, we would notice that only 9,2 million systems were sold since its launch in November 2012, a very low number considering their renown and stature within the gaming community.

Is it more likely to be a hand held device? Well, the 3DS seems to be going strong right now and they have just updated it, so it is unlikely that it will be a hand held device. That probably means that it will be a standard home console.

This also implies that the WiU had a relatively short life when you compare it to the PS3 or to the Xbox 360, but that isn’t unheard off. It is actually only in recent years that we’ve ran into unusual situations, where consoles had seven to nine years lifespan. For example, did you know that there was only a four year gap between the release of the Sega Saturn and the release of the Sony Playstation? This is actually unconceivable now. We had the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 while the Xbox One was just recently released, in 2014. That’s a huge nine year gap.

That being said, it is entirely possible for us to get Nintendo’s new console sooner than we have expected. What would they do with it is still a mystery. Obviously they will need to add more power under the hood and, of course, to regain the support of third party developers more than anything else.

Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata hinted that they will be going in an entirely new direction with this system, saying that “If you only expand upon existing hardware, it’s dull. In some shape or form, we’re always thinking about how we want to surprise players as well as our desire to change each person’s video gaming life.”

We don’t know anything for sure about the NX for now, so everything said is pure speculation, but we will definitely discover more next year.

I can’t wait for more information to be released, but as soon as they do, I’ll be sure to keep you informed.