They don't & in fact 4~6 years is the optimal lifetime of a console, depending on the console makers financials, but the PS3 & Xbox 360 lasted as long as they did also because coding for them was very hard.
That's not why at all. The reason PS360 generation lasted so long was for 2 major reasons:
1) Both MS and Sony lost billions of dollars on the hardware of those consoles. In turn, this meant the generation needed to be extended to recoup the losses via game sales. MS ended up not even making $1 on XB360 when taking the entire generation into account.
2) The Great Recession. It would have been suicidal to release new consoles in 2008-2011 when no one was spending $. Europe had austerity measures and people were in savings mode mentality. Couple that with huge install base of PS360, and it was cheaper to make and sell games to a larger install-base of PS360 console gamers.
Therefore the "untapped potential" was realized much later in their life cycle. The x86 consoles just make coding a lot easier & there isn't much untapped potential at the end of say 4 years.
The untapped potential in this instance has a different dimension for the NX. The NX is coming out in March 2017 and will need to last 4-6 years. That means the NX will be competing with PS5/XB2 consoles towards the 2nd half of its life-cycle whether or not Nintendo realizes it. Maybe Nintendo is stupid enough to think Nintendo consoles don't compete for the same customers. For that reason, it would be a miracle if Nintendo's NX can even make a console that can do 1080p @ 60 fps over 3-4 years starting Spring 2017. The last thing they need to do is focus on 4K gaming.
If all the new gen consoles support 4K native gaming then you can be rest assured that it'd drive the 4K display sales. That's always been how it is, people wanting a new console will get that 4K TV, & not the other way round.
That has nothing to do with my post and nothing to do with the marketplace in which Wii U will launch. I am not debating the next gen 4K capable consoles will drive sales of 4K TVs. The point is in 2017, most of the world will not be on 4K TVs and 2 major consoles won't do 4K gaming. The PS4 Neo may advertise it but it still won't be powerful enough for it. 4K gaming at best is the realm of 2019-2020 consoles with 6-8X the power of PS4/XB1.
However, I disagree that Nintendo needs 3rd party support to stay alive. Wii U is only a "fail" when compared to the previous unpredictable runaway success Wii.
Wow, Wii U is the worst selling traditional Nintendo console of all time. We don't need to compare it to the Wii to see that it was a disaster. Your 1st sentence is flat out wrong because the main criticism leveled at Nintendo's consoles starting with N64 and beyond was inferior 3rd party support against their competitors. Nintendo isn't capable of launching 1st party titles quick enough to sustain the console's sales. Therefore, 3rd party support for a Nintendo console is vital. It's why 3DS/New 3DS destroyed the PS Vita.
From the link you provided, if true, Nintendo's NX is pretty much done unless they price the console at $199.
"After speaking to seven different people this week, I can say with confidence that this is false. NX is not using x86 architecture like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The NX has special, custom-made chips and the overall design of the hardware is very modern. The chips are industry leading because they are very modern chips, but having modern chips doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo is aiming to create the most powerful hardware on the market. Furthermore, any NX rumors on “Polaris chips” and “Polaris architecture” are all wacky. There’s a good reason why those rumors are wacky.
In terms of raw power, numerous sources tell me that NX is much closer to Xbox One than PlayStation 4. Even that might be stretching it a tiny bit. Anyone who is claiming that NX is “two times the power of PS4 GPU” is being misled by their sources. Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t believe the NX will compete directly with PS4 (Neo) / PS4K in raw power.
There will be plenty of debates over the NX’s specs because it’s not simple to directly compare two apples (with x86 architecture) to an orange (that doesn’t use x86 architecture). But everything that I’ve heard (so far) indicates that NX isn’t going to blow away any of the consoles on the market today…except for Wii U."
With Uncharted 4 and $299 sales on PS4 happening around Holiday 2016, and more big hitting games such as Gran Turismo coming out, more price drops on XB1 and PS4 in 2017, Nintendo stands little chance if their console is only barely faster than the XB1 and has little 3rd party titles.
The one part Nintendo execs don't seem to get is a 2017 console is not only a PS4/XB1 competitor. Most people who bought Wii/Wii U got burned so hard by them. This means the amount of gamers left who are now willing to buy a Nintendo console in the first 1-2 years before seeing 100s of games is smaller than ever. By the time NX launches, PS4/XB1 will have an install base in excess of 80+ million units and a games library so vast, nothing on the NX will be able to compete.
The minute it's confirmed that the 2017 NX is barely better than the already laughed at 2013 XB1 (PS4 outsells XB1 by 5-7:1 outside the US/UK), it will become a laughing stock. I don't even think a $199 price will save it. At that point I'd rather buy an XB1 as a secondary console and because at least it'll have a normal controller that can be used on the PC too and a far superior games library.
By the time NX even builds its software library, it'll be the launch of PS5/XB2 and then NX will become the next Wii/Wii U for 3rd parties.
Launching in 2017 + hardware weaker than PS4 will be the biggest downfall of this console unless they start giving away free games (buy NX home console game, get NX handheld game free).
No. Tegra is in Android based console. So it would be extremely easy to port from Android based consoles, using Tegra SoC to NX.
At the same time it would be a double edged sword because if the NX is an ARM SoC console and not x86, how much effort are 3rd parties going to put into porting XB1/PS4 games?
Nintendo doesn't get that all the gamers who grew up with it ever wanted was a powerful Nintendo console + great online gaming capabilities/community + traditional BluRay + strong 1st and 3rd party line-up + traditional controller. Nintendo has not been able to deliver
this since N64 and now they think they need to do something "different" and launch late, like 4 years later than the current gen consoles.
It's sad to see for me how the company which made me a gamer in the first place is being driven straight into the ground because they don't want to do what makes sense.
They will have Zelda at launch but the Wii U by then will be so cheap in the used market, it'll be easy to just buy that, play Zelda and sell it.
On the other hand, that would explain why Nvidia did not killed Denver CPUs and did not stopped development of the technology behind them.
They can make the NX handheld whatever they want. Since they are a monopoly in that space, whoever wants to play handheld games in a traditional way will buy the NX. It's the home NX console that's facing a major risk of failing hard. Not a single person I know who used to own N64, as I did, has ever purchased another Nintendo console ever since. Why is that? Nintendo hasn't figured it out in
20 years.