Nintendo building 40,000 square-meter R&D facility for new consoles
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 10:58am by Jack
Who’s ready for a new Nintendo console?!
Well, I can’t promise you I know when one is coming, or how much it will cost, or if it will have that mystical “HD” ability the kids all love these days. Actually, I can’t really promise you anything. However, I can give you a good idea of where it will probably be researched, developed and built: Kyoto!
The new building will cost about $141 million, mere pennies for the current overlord of video games. Nintendo told Nikkei the 40,000 square-meter facility will be “devoted to creating new game consoles as well as software for the Wii and DS.”
Free game of their choice to the first Infendo Ninja who sneaks into this new facility, snaps pics, and gets out alive.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:41 am
O_o
February 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I will try… I imagine the defenses being something like Bowser’s Castle in SMW. I guess I could use the back door…
February 12th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
$141 million? Really?
Surely thats Yen?!
February 12th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
This is just a front, its really just a bunker where they will begin to take over the world.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
“Free game of their choice to the first Infendo Ninja who sneaks into this new facility, snaps pics, and gets out alive.”
Jack, that sounds like a great idea for a Nintendo-themed stealth game!
February 12th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
woo! hd!
also, for the blue ocean… what is the incentive to upgrade their console on the regular console cycle? they already don’t care about HD or uber l33t graphics. so why wont they just stick with XP, which works fine, instead of upgrading to stoopid vista which is arguably not an improvement and is a waste of money and it’s ridiculous that only vista provides directX 10 and
…i seem to have gotten off track
February 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
wow! $140,000,000 + is a lot of money invested into our future fun. i likes the sound of that
February 12th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Marcus:
141 million yen is only %1.5 million dollars – the land alone would cost more than that.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, we have awesomeness.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:24 am
@deep,
“also, for the blue ocean… what is the incentive to upgrade their console on the regular console cycle?”
I still think Wii was a hedge. It was an experiment that they weren’t sure of at the time. That’s why they didn’t invest in a new CPU or new GPU, just overclocked versions of gamecube hardware. I think they know they can’t do that twice. I’m not saying that Wii2 will be the next gen power player, but I certainly think it will be closer to modern hardware than the Wii is. I also think they know that the world expect surprises from them. Thats what I think this building is about. Imagine the Wii as a console designed to test an idea while giving them 5 years to figure out what the next major thing will be. Either way, it will be interesting.
Oh, and Vista is WAY better than when it first launched. Much better than XP. If it weren’t for being so close to 7 coming out, I would highly recommend it. All my old PC games, going back to Baldurs Gate run fine on it, as well as my newer ones like Bioshock and the Witcher.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
@ Used
He was making a joke about how average consumers… like… didn’t like how they felt like they had to buy more for Vista…
I’m-a switching to a MAC!
February 13th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
haha-
vista is better. still unstable. agreed on just wait till vista2. erm, i mean 7.
though honestly, vista was such a hardware hog. totally uncalled for. and when will MS get the multifinger touch pads???? nothing beats it for scrolling on a laptop. except my logitech minimouse…. but NO PAD beats it for scrolling. yeah.
also i run xp on my desktop and have a blackbook for class. can’t recommend the mac more UNLESS you need to do excel. then it’s worthless. fortunately my excel days are largely over. and i can just do any real work at home as needed.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I think Nintendo is making a great move. As we already know, Nintendo will only put out a new console if it’s going to innovate in a new way similar to what the Wii did.
Now about the OS discussion. Vista is a system hog and it isn’t the best. It’s better to just wait until 7 comes out (I think it will be superior in that Microsoft is actually letting the public play with it in Beta form). I love my XP based system. Sure I don’t have DirectX 10, but Bioshock is still quite the looker when maxed out on a DX9 system.
Now to the Mac haters. Mac is actually an outstanding OS. It’s much more reliable than Windows. I don’t know how many times my Windows based computers crashed on me for no reason. However the Mac computers I’ve used I’ve never experienced any issues with them. Not only that Mac OSX has a couple of programs called Boot Camp, and Parallels that let’s you run different OS’ at the same time. For instance. I use the Mac for many things such as photoshop, 3D modeling, so on and so forth. But if I want to take a break I switch to my Windows XP parallel (yes on a Mac laptop) and boom I can play Bioshock or whatever on Windows. So Mac’s aren’t as bad as deepthought claims. Plus Microsoft has a crappy MP3 player, the Zune. Apple has the most badass cellphone of all time, the iPhone.