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Don’t Believe the NX Hype

Don’t Believe the NX Hype

Recently, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was interviewed by IGN and once again stated his praise for the NX. Apparently, he thinks “the interface is very attractive. It’s a machine that will be easy to use for all gamers. They have built in something that will give us chance to really have a different experience from what exists today. That’s what I like – that they come with something new that is adapted to what we actually want now.” He adds later on that, “it’s a really new approach, it’s really Nintendo, coming with something new again. We love it.” Indeed, there seems to be a lot of implications that Nintendo is going to wow us with an exciting new innovation like they did with the N64 and the Wii.

Ubisoft definitely isn’t the only developer singing the NX’s praises. The Pokemon Company has said that Nintendo “is trying to change the concept of what it means to be a home console device or a handheld device.” This has confirmed the rumour that the NX will be both home and portable console. Take-Two has also weighed in on the hype train, as chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke to TheStreet before this year’s E3. Among other inquires, TheStreet asked Zelnick what impact the NX will have on the gaming industry over the next couple of years. Zelnick replied that one must never “count Nintendo out. They go quiet for a while and then they come to market and do something really exciting. We are very interested and watching closely the development of what Nintendo plans to do next.” Despite Take-Two’s less than glowing record with Nintendo, it seems even they are implying the same innovation as Ubisoft and The Pokemon Company.

Furthermore, in a statement that I think truly summarizes all of the above, an executive close to Nintendo (who will apparently be left unnamed) told MCV that the NX is “a nice bit of kit, a bit of a novelty, but a good one. It won’t appeal to PS4 fans. Nintendo seems set on trying to upgrade smartphone gamers. That’s going to be a big job for the marketing department.”

What I’d like to know is why all these developers are so gung-ho for the NX. Without knowing for sure how Nintendo is going to accomplish the console hybrid, I can only speculate on the technical side. Thus, let’s look to the past in the context of Nintendo consoles. The Wii received similar praise from Ubisoft, as did the Wii U. It seems that Ubisoft is consistently optimistic about new technology, as explained by Guillemot in the same interview with IGN. “We always take disruptions on the positive side. We think each time that it’s an opportunity for our creators to take more risk. When a machine is installed, there are a certain number of brands that are taking up the time of players, so they are going to buy the next Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty . Even if they say, ‘I’m interested in what you’re doing,’ at the end of the day they first buy what they know, and then they go somewhere else. When they change machines, they consider that it’s better to try actually what has been done for that machine, so it gives us an opportunity to either totally change an IP that we have done before, or to create new experiences and new IPs.”

Don’t Believe the NX Hype

As honest and hopeful as Guillemot sounds, I think all this praise from developers is a marketing strategy. Especially in the case of Ubisoft and The Pokemon Company (which is part-owned by Nintendo), I strongly suspect that Nintendo is encouraging people to praise its new console – whether or not they actually know what it is. The only naysayer in this entire scheme is Thomas Mahler of Moon Studios, developer of Ori and the Blind Forest . In a post at NeoGAF, Mahler claims that “we also talked to Nintendo and got absolutely nothing – I’ll never understand that… [they’re] treating their devkits and their unreleased consoles like they’re the second coming and are insanely secretive about it… It’s not even that the hardware isn’t finished (duh), but [they] could at least give me the goddamn specs, so we’d know what to build shit for.” This statement seems far more typical of Nintendo, as it often focuses on selling its console based on first-party games, not third-party. Or Nintendo really doesn’t like Ori’s adorable ears.

One indie dev aside, all this praise sounds far too well planned to not be encouraged by Nintendo itself. For all these developers, if money isn’t exchanging hands, than business deals are being made and profits are promised. Company executives are all about making money, after all. But we as consumers? We need to wait and see what the NX actually is rather than be too swayed by the head honchos at Ubisoft, The Pokemon Company, and even Take-Two.

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