Next Gen Gaming - 5 years on.

[AndrewTS]

As far as the next Nintendo console goes, Fils-Amie says that Nintendo would begin work on the next Nintendo system when a developer was unable to do something on the current Wii hardware.

You mean like being unable to make a unhorrible-port of a first-generation 360 game, being unable to make a Wii translation of an FPS without stripping down the visuals to last-gen standards, or being unable to create any decent computer-controlled character AI, hell let alone fit a decent number of NPCs on screen at one time, or being unable to make a sandbox game with decent draw distances, or...?

Reggie knows jack shit. He runs the North American segment of a Japanese company, and has no knowledge or control over anything NOJ does until they see fit to inform his fat mongoloid ass so he can parrot the approved talking points out to the gaijin Nintendo hivemind.

 

[Kageho]

Sounds about right. Despite the Wii being successful in its own right, the DS still destroys it in Japan. In general, Japan (Nintendo's core market, don't forget) portable and mobile games are far more widely played than consoles--even if it is by more "casual" gamers.

I don't know. A lot of games I've been buying lately have been handhelds. Maybe its because they aren't usually graphic whores and contain gameplay, or try something different, but I don't think its just because its portable or mobile.

...though honestly that does help.

 

[AndrewTS]

I'm guessing a fair amount of those are RPGs?

 

[Kageho]

Nearly every single one of them actually. It wouldn't be the RPGuru without his RPGs, now would it?

 

[AndrewTS]

Heh, jes' sayin' that may have a lot to do with it. Now, surely I'm not saying that consoles are suffering any sort of RPG shortage, it just that there's a lot more variety on portables.

On the portables there are re-releases, re-makes, re-imaginings, new localizations of some older RPGs, localized versions of RPGs that didn't get English releases in the past, and a whole host of originals.

It's not all generic Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy clones, either. There are dungeon-crawlers, rogue-likes, Strat RPGs, action-RPGs, and much, much more.

Plus, for someone who doesn't have to have the latest and greatest visuals, there's definitely charm and appeal to those older sprite-based games.