Kotaku posted an article today on the speculated features of Nintendo’s new console (codename: “Project Café”), we have the low-down of those rumors all in one place for you. Here I will give my insights to the new console.
Touted as being “innovation reinvented,” the new console hope to break new grounds for the console market. Knowing Nintendo’s track record and looking back at history with the NES, SNES, and even the infamous Virtual Boy (which was about a decade ahead of it’s time), they’re more than likely going to blow our minds in more ways than one. Looking at the name “Project Café,” it’s easy to gather that the console will be very much a social gaming platform and that online multiplayer will probably have greater importance than the Wii.
In today’s age, with digital distribution and downloadable content being at the forefront of the gaming experience, “Project Café” is rumored to have a very limited hard drive space of only 8GBs, comparable to the 250GB hard drives of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. On the flip-side, there is said to be support for an SD card which have up to 2TBs of space with the SDXC format. This could end up proving very difficult for developers who wish to distribute their DLC on the new console, as many consumers would need to purchase the separate SD storage. This could turn to smaller profit margins in DLC, especially in today’s economic climate where money is pretty tight.
PlayStation 3 definitely led the way in terms of disc format, and Nintendo seems to want to follow that trend as “Project Café” is rumored to support single-layered (25GB) Blu-Ray discs. This could prove useful in many areas, even more so if the video memory and RAM are higher than that of the PS3 and Xbox 360. Even with today’s console generation, we’re still seeing graphical break-throughs that still have our jaws hitting the floor. While this is probably a little less common with PC gamers, given that today’s PCs are leaps and bounds more powerful than consoles, gaming developers still know how to take our breath away. Crytek, who was in the lead of graphical innovation with the graphical milestone, Crysis, has said that the next generation of console should have no less than 8GBs of RAM. While this may seem like a stretch, this is the standard of many of today’s gaming PCs. Unfortunately, this would likely drive the price near the next-gen consoles up past the $500 mark which we seen was a disaster with the initial release of the PS3. I would suspect that with today’s console having approximately 512MBs of RAM, it would be realistic to say that “Project Café” could potentially have 2GBs.
Being in the high definition era, it’s safe to say that Nintendo is looking for at least 720p in their new console, if not full 1080p resolution. While this would not really be anything new, Nintendo’s Wii trailed behind as the console only supported 480p and many gamers, even some developers, were very critical of this. One would hope that Nintendo rectifies that as they’re aiming at hardcore gamers.
The leaked pictures of the console show an LCD screen (the Nintendo Stream) on the controller itself, with a description that read “takes the 1080p image and pushes each rendered quarter to the player’s personal screen.” This statement seems to point in the direction of split-screen co-op, with your section of the screen being shown on the controller. The statement also reads that it will allow you to turn your TV off while play split screen or leaving it will provide “alternate camera views.” The Stream could have many other uses, as well. I see it acting as the lower screen on the DS. Imagine on sport games, such as Madden, being able to pick your plays without your buddy next to you being able to see your choice. RPG games could show your inventory on the Stream, as well as other information (health bars, maps, etc) which would remove some of the clutter on the TV. While some may argue that it could become annoying to have to look down at the controller every few minutes, after a bit of trial-and-error, developers would figure out how to use the screen effectively.
Imagine the possibilities. This is only just the beginning and with Microsoft and Sony having at least 2 years of observation with “Project Café,” we could see even more innovation with the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles. This is definitely going to be an exciting time for gamers as we are beginning to see sort of a revolution. I guess we’ll find out at E3 in June if any of the speculation is true, but one thing is for sure, we’re definitely in for a treat.
