It was always going to be announced this year. As a company, Nintendo runs like clockwork through product cycles that have been refined to a fine point since the NES was released in 1985:
NES: 1985SNES: 1991N64: 1996Gamecube: 2001Wii: 2006Project Café: 2012
The list above shows the years in which Nintendo's home consoles were first released in the West, with the next console (allegedly codenamed Project Café) slated for release next year. It's a list where the product cycle never waivers from 5-6 years regardless of what Nintendo's competitors were doing at the time, the relevant market conditions, or technological innovations in the industry.
After all, the Nintendo 64 released with cartridges as a storage medium when the industry had moved on to CDs, and the Wii launched with Gamecube hardware at a time when Sony and Microsoft were pioneering HD gaming on consoles. When SEGA did everything it could to launch consoles ahead of Nintendo with the Genesis/Mega Drive in 1989/90, Saturn in 1995, and Dreamcast in 1999, Nintendo held firm with later releases and sold more consoles on all three occasions. The story of the current-generation, of course, is that Nintendo has far outsold the PS3 and Xbox 360 with its Wii despite outdated hardware (thanks mostly to the motion controller boom).
And that's the other thing about Nintendo product launches. Where appropriate, the company will attach a system-selling gimmick or innovation that sets its product apart. Whether it's the NES Zapper, the analogue control stick for the N64, the Gamecube's square profile, handle and undersized discs, or indeed the 3DS' autostereoscopic screen, there always seems to be something that makes a Nintendo product unique. The company may develop consoles more cheaply than its competitors so that it can attach lower retail prices designed specifically for the mass market, but it'll always try to innovate within that remit nonetheless.
So, while Microsoft and Sony have been publicly flirting with each other about a "10-year cycle" - seemingly encouraging one another to greatly extend the normal five-year cycle while they retrofit their consoles with Kinect and Move - Nintendo has been keeping quiet and working busily on its next big thing. Educated guesses point towards 2013/14 launches for the next consoles from Sony/Microsoft, and the two companies have effectively played straight into Nintendo's hands by leaving it with something of an open goal. Effectively, Nintendo has been gifted a year or two of uncontested time to launch a new console, establish a user-base for the system, and roll-out the relevant games or products that will build that base, all before competing consoles have even had time to enter the marketplace. Not since the NES has Nintendo been afforded that kind of luxury and that was at a time when the market was much more open anyway.
The main problem with an extended console cycle is industry stagnation - consumers become tired of the same range of products and start yearning for something new; inevitably, both console and game sales take a downward trend. Motion controllers such as Kinect and Move are a partial solution to that, but only for a specific market. They may please casual gamers but the hardcore contingent will likely remain uninterested in what Kinect/Move offer. If there's one thing that the Wii has taught the industry, it's that motion-controlled games just don't push core gamers' buttons, so to speak. This problem of stagnation is one that's not lost on Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot:
"At this stage in the consoles' lifecycles it is possible to do new IP [intellectual property], but it will be more attractive when new consoles come along. That's when consumers are more ope
n to trying new things," he said in a recent interview with MCV.
"As consoles get more mature it is the big established brands that soak up most of the sales.
"When a new format launches, we look to use the new technology to bring new games and new ideas to our consumers," Guillemot added.
And this is precisely why the timing is ripe for Nintendo to appeal to core gamers. Initial rumours have pointed towards a number of dubious Project Café possibilities, from controllers with built-in HD screens to motion controls that are "Better than Move" and allegedly leaked pics such as the one shown right. The rumour that makes the most sense to us, though, is that Project Café will be an HD console with superior hardware to the PS3 and Xbox 360. Nintendo's President, Satoru Iwata already seems to have ruled out the possibility of 3D technology (due to a lack of mainstream 3D TV adoption), and the motion control market is now saturated by all three of the platform holders. In effect then, Nintendo has to pitch a console that either offers a new gimmick altogether or outdoes the current HD consoles at their own game.
It wouldn't be the first time that Nintendo has developed the most technologically advanced console on the market either. After all, the major selling point of the N64 was that it was more powerful than its rival 32-bit machines, the SEGA Saturn and Sony PlayStation. Don't be at all surprised, then, if this is the direction that Nintendo goes down at E3 in just over a month's time. There will almost certainly be a new gimmick and it's unlikely that Nintendo will drop motion controls altogether given the success it's had with the Wii. Nonetheless, Project Café will need something more than all of these things, and the promise of a significant upgrade in hardware while Microsoft and Sony twiddle their thumbs seems to be the best way to stimulate a core market that's gradually becoming disinterested.