When it comes to the NX, Nintendo knows it needs to make sure customers understand what the machine is all about. Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime recently opened up about some important lessons Nintendo needs to learn from the past going forward.
"One of the things that we have to do better when we launch the NX, [is] we have to do a better job communicating the positioning for the product," Fils-Aime tells the A-List (via Eurogamer). "We have to do a better job helping people to understand its uniqueness and what that means for the game playing experience."
It's important to note that nobody outside of Nintendo officially knows what the NX and its unique capabilities are, but Fils-Aime's point is still an important one. Nintendo's Wii U struggled in large part because the company couldn't find a way to differentiate it from the original Wii, with some customers simply viewing the Wii U as a tablet add-on rather than an entirely new console. The console's tablet functionality failed to draw in consumers, especially when so few games took real advantage of the console's dual-screen capabilities.
However, it wasn't just the console itself that was to blame. Nintendo also struggled to regularly release first-party titles that might have made purchasing the Wii U worth it. For example, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will release at the very end of the Wii U's life cycle and will be the only new Legend of Zelda game released on the console (it will also release for the NX). Fils-Aime is well aware of that problem as well.
"We have to do a better job from a software planning standpoint," Fils-Aime says. ""[Nintendo must] have that continuous beat of great new games that are motivating more and more people to pick up the hardware and more and more people to pick up the software. Those are the critical lessons [...] You have to make sure people understand the concept, you have to make sure you've got a great library of games, and when you do that, you tend to do well."
If Nintendo can learn those important lessons for the launch of the NX, the results should speak for themselves. Rumors and leaks surrounding the console point toward it being a handheld/home console hybrid. There's also a growing list of exclusive titles for the machine that, if true, seems to indicate that Nintendo may have indeed learned its lesson. We'll know for sure as soon as Nintendo decides to officially unveil its new device, which is set to release in the first half of 2017.
