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Around 18 months ago, during an informal chat with an extremely well-placed individual in the hardware manufacturing business, an interesting nugget of information dropped into the conversation - Nintendo was already accepting pitches from third parties on the hardware make-up of its successor for Wii U. Two names were mentioned: AMD and Imagination Technologies, creators of the PowerVR mobile graphics tech. With the lack of backing sources, that little aside never made it to print, but as Nintendo strives to bounce back from the Wii U sales disappointment, eyes inevitably turn towards future platforms.Is it too early to be talking about new Nintendo hardware? Perhaps - but the fact is that the firm itself has been very open about the general direction it is taking going forward, to the point where it has restructured its entire R&D around a new strategy, designed to address its issues in getting software to market, with fundamental implications for the technological make-up of its next-gen hardware. Handheld and traditional console are now overseen by a single, integrated department, run by Nintendo veteran, Genyo Takeda. The company is openly questioning the future of its business: whether to continue with both handheld and console, to combine them into a single product, or to perhaps expand the range still further. Whatever solution is chosen, integration is key.
"Previously, our handheld video game devices and home video game consoles had to be developed separately as the technological requirements of each system, whether it was battery-powered or connected to a power supply, differed greatly, leading to completely different architectures and, hence, divergent methods of software development," Satoru Iwata said during a corporate management Q+A back in March 2014.
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