Top 5 Things Project Café Has to Do
Codename Project Café is the next in a long line of home consoles from Nintendo. After years of Wii HD rumours circling, we finally know that all will be revealed in little over a month’s time at E3. It doesn’t get much bigger than this in the industry.
However as excited as we are, we believe there are some things that Project Café just has to do to avoid lagging behind its competitors.
HD Gaming
Perhaps the most obvious, but also such a vital requirement of Project Café. Nintendo needs to catch up, and if they don’t go HD this time around, they’ll effectively be two generations of tech behind. And we really want to see Mario’s next adventure in glorious HD.
Innovation
Ok, so Nintendo is bound to do this anyway right? But the emphasise on the console doing something completely new is critical to Nintendo. What with Move and Kinect now showcasing the Wii in HD, Nintendo has to pull out the big guns on this one, and surely will.
Introduce New IPs
We love Mario, Zelda and the rest, but we really want to see some new faces on this console. Sure we had Wii Sports and the Miis last time, but how about an exciting new IP that becomes a centrepiece for the console. With rumours circling, this could be very real, very soon.
Online Significantly Improved
Nintendo has definitely got the right idea with the 3DS’s improved online gaming, but to be honest, it seems to have stopped before the finish line – hopefully future updates will remedy this. Project Café has to do what the 3DS did and more, loads more. No more Friend Codes for one – why can’t we just add the name of a friend instead?
Backwards Compatible
As significant as the others? Maybe not. But, allowing gamers to play their Wii games on the new system instantly provides a library of existing games. Also, consider that Nintendo may still support the Wii a while after the successors released, we don’t want to be constantly plugging it in every time now, do we?
Roll on E3
So that’s our list. Are we being too greedy? Are we not asking enough? Are these features paramount to Nintendo’s future success? Your ideas please. (And yes, we’re aware that Nintendo can do what they want in reality).
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Backwards compatibility of course helps to keep only one machine in the living room instead of three. I ended up selling my good old (and rare!) psx games because ps3 could not run them. Same for the ps2 games. Now I'm downloading them again on the PSN (well, if it's up!) and paying twice for them. Sure it's great biz to get back the losses from the very same customers Sony sold their expensive hardware (twice or so), but I like the way Nintendo is doing the backwards compatibility with Gamecube, Wii and the DS-family. I truly like the idea of having one platform that would evolve every 5 years and would be backwards compatible with the one before. But it's not going to happen because gaming = business. If none of the machines were backwards compatible, you will end up selling the old hardware and the games you had, even the ones you treasure dearly. From a business point of view it's quite hard to use money in R&D to make sure all the games from the past are working with a completely new hardware. Basically, it has to be done through software emulation, and it is quite time and money consuming. It's a bit too extreme of a feature technologically, although the philosophy is great behind the concept. Well, we don't live in a perfect world, but hey, that's what makes the world so perfect !
why do people always ask for backwards compatible? it's not as if they would play those old games. These people just want to have an excuse to keep their old games. When the Wii 5 comes out people will ask for backwards once more to play Gamecube, wii, wii 2, wii 3, wii 4 games:/
Good article, some good points. Personally I would like to see it do more than just gaming as well. Like Blu ray, music, etc.
I agree games are the core, that's all. There is no pressure to resort to multimedia, "it does everything" kind of thinking. Nintendo have always been about games and they're not about to change that anytime soon I think you'll find. If they do, I would be shocked.
Ninty were the only company to actually profit from their hardware, to be frank Sony and Microsoft took a bath with their hardware. And since Shigs has pretty much openly stated that violence and blood shouldn't be in games at all, the likelihood is that most folks will have to own a PS3 and/or 360 as well. I think Nintendo should amp up the processing power and HD capabilities, for sure, but not pump the retail price up with features that are essentially surplus to requirement.
