The Nintendo NX is probably going to be announced pretty soon—certainly by E3 2016, but very possibly sooner. And it’s almost certainly not going to introduce virtual reality— Nintendo has said as much, several times. The company doesn’t think the technology is there just yet. Well, that makes one of them. Plenty of other big companies are going after virtual reality games in a big way. Is Nintendo going to get left in the dust?
The Nintendo NX Won’t Be Traditional, But It Won’t Be VR Either
All the evidence about the Nintendo NX points toward a few general ideas: The system will be at least as powerful as the PlayStation 4, if not a little more. It will probably have some kind of handheld, mobile or remote play capability. It may be broadly cross-compatible with the other systems, or at least be extremely easy to develop for. The controller is still a pretty big mystery, despite a few patents. And it won’t be virtual reality, because Nintendo doesn’t want to go that route.
Virtual reality may well be the future of gaming—at least if devices like PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive catch on. Trouble is, all these devices are going to be mondo expensive for the first few years. The HTC Vive is $800… plus you’ll need a pretty high-end gaming PC on top of that to even use it. Uh, no thanks. The PlayStation VR costs $400 on top of the cost of a PlayStation 4. It’s pricey stuff.
No way is Nintendo coming out with a virtual reality console anytime soon. The prices are far beyond anything the company has ever done in modern times. The Wii and Wii U were both the cheapest consoles of their eras, in part because they were underpowered compared to their competitors. But that price differential gave Nintendo a competitive edge, which shored up the company’s market share in the Wii era.
Nintendo doesn’t chase specs—at least not anymore. And that means that virtual reality is totally out of the question for the near future. The prices are just too high. Luckily for Nintendo, those high prices mean that most consumers won’t be able to indulge in virtual reality yet either. We’re just barely entering the “early adopter” stage of virtual reality. It will be several years yet before the technology goes actually mainstream—in terms of usage, not press coverage.
Mind you, Nintendo hasn’t ruled out virtual reality forever—just for the time being. Heck, that could be Nintendo’s plan all along—introduce a relatively traditional console in the Nintendo NX, then see where the winds of change blow over the next few years. Nintendo can survive being a few years late to the virtual reality game. It could even be the company that takes it truly mass-market five years down the road. So don’t worry that the Nintendo NX isn’t virtual reality-based. It just doesn’t matter that much—yet.
