IBTimes reports that NX will be unveiled in the next 48 hours, on Friday, October 21st. Expected price is $299 and $399 in a bundle. Macquarie Group is anticipating the price between $300 and $350. ~
Source
"Credit rating agency Macquarie has recently downgraded its rating for the home of Mario from ‘Outperform’ to ‘Neutral’, which essentially amounts to the agency telling investors that it doesn’t expect the company to perform especially well in the near future.
Explaining the change, the firm cited its expectation that NX sales to be weaker than expected due to its expected $300-350 price being too high. Assuming its price sits at the bottom end of that spectrum that translates to around £250 or AU$390." ~ Source
It's not a particularly great sign that R* didn't even announce Red Dead Redemption 2 for the NX. I suppose major studios are barred from announcing future games on yet announced Nintendo console. Still it got me thinking about the biggest obstacles the NX faces of all -- the launch timing is not optimal (imho) and the compromises of replacing both the New 3DS and Wii U with just one console seem to great given the current pricing and low TDP mobile hardware tech. It's too hard to brush aside that the NX will launch 3.5 years after the current gen consoles, which constitutes at minimum the mid-cycle of this generation. This means the NX will face 80+ million installed PS4/XB1 consoles (aka gamers are much more likely to buy a console their relatives and friends own so that they can play games together or share games). In addition, it's going to be pretty hard for the mainstream PC gamer to ignore the massive library of PS4/XB1 titles and NX's tiny launch library.
There seems to be an inherent conflict with Nintendo in trying to capture millions of mobile gamers, casuals and yet retain the interest of more dedicated/hardcore gamers. For that reason I am still not sold on a $300 hybrid console. I still don't understand why Nintendo didn't just make 2 separate consoles. If Nintendo's NX games are easy to port from x86, then it would have been possible to have Nintendo's next gen home console play the NX portable titles as well.
Luckily, unlike the naysayers who think the NX could be Nintendo's last console, even if NX flops, it will be hardly even dent Nintendo's going concern capability:
"During a recent episode of his Pachter Factor show on Siftd, popular video game industry analyst Michael Pachter indicated he didn't think the Nintendo NX would see much support from third-party developers in the West.
He remarked, "[With] the NX, I think you are going to see very low third-party support outside of Japan unless the thing is a hit."
Despite the risk Pachter noted that Nintendo's cash reserves, which he estimates to be around $10 billion, would carry it through a possible console failure. He said that "[in] the worst case if the NX is a bust, they will lose half a billion." ~ Source
We ran Pachter's numbers through techradar's resident supercomputer which revealed that this would leave Nintendo with around $9.5 billion in cash. In other words, the analyst is less worried about Nintendo going bust, and more about it not making the most of its assets."
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