Aiddon

all the last few months have taught me is this: that consumers are dumb as hell, 3rd parties apparently can't do anything with Nintendo systems unless their hands are held every step of the way, and if someone tries to act like they know anything about advertising and marketing then it's advisable to promptly ignore them. It's worked well so far.

Why does everyone think ditching the Wii U is a good idea? That'd probably make Nintendo lose more money plus lots of people would be ticked about having their fairly new console obsolete so quickly.

Because Western media pundits have no attention span and can't grasp the concept of long-term thinking. Hell, Western gaming in general can't seem to think long-term as evidenced by reducing themselves to living from one AAA release to another. Not exactly a stable model to live on.

Unless there is an XP or Leveling system implemented, then enemies would level up as you do

Except those never work. In Skyrim for instance you'll just plow through enemies like a hot knife through butter despite the fact that they're the same level as you. And why does this dilemma exist? Because the player earns more than just more Health or Mana, they also learn new abilities, something that the enemies never get. So the difficulty durve in Skyrim not only never goes up, it actually DECREASES.

Another reason an open world Zelda wouldn't work is this: level design. Zelda's dungeons and just maps in general are an intricate clockwork of architecture and structure. Thing is, in an open world game the level design actually has to be very similar otherwise the difficulty curve makes no sense. And that is why it could never happen. Levels in Zelda get more and more complex little by little as the game progresses in a very precise manner in order to balance player resources, specifically tools, in order to be challenging but never irritating. If you take away the pacing then the game just becomes a bunch of samey dungeons which is a serious blow to the design.

definitely a possibility; Atlus has been putting out more and more games for Nintendo systems, such as the Devil Survivor series, Soul Hackers, Etrian Odyssey, and now Shin Megami Tensei IV. Furthermore, I don't see Nintendo letting SMT x FE die. The thing is, pretty much EVERY Japanese pub has issues right now. CAPCOM just laid off staff (though it was from their American branch), SEGA has been having money troubles for awhile, Square Enix is a mess, Sony is on the brink of the PS4, etc and I doubt Western companies would even cast a second glance at Atlus.

Nintendo needs to listen to these guys about marketing. We do live in a blockbuster world and never has that been more apparant than with the damage done by not marketing wii u, no matter how heavily invested in the hardware and software are.

Gone are the days of " if you build it, they will come."

Now you have to build it. Then advertise like mad.

And Nintendo goes AGAINST that typical blockbuster mindset because it's not who they are. Ubisoft (and by extension a LOT of other publishers) try to do this blockbuster mindset with EVERY game they release and that's not a good business strategy. This is like if in Hollywood EVERY film needed at least a $100 million budget (including the Oscar bait titles). Nintendo realized before everyone else that that mindset wasn't a good one. They release a variety of games of all shapes, sizes, and niches. So far their biggest hits this year have been a strategy RPG and a life simulation game. Not exactly something the other companies would think of as potential hot sellers. Furthermore, there's no point doing marketing right now, because it's the summer. There's nothing going on and there's little point competing against movies for ad space. They'll pump up their marketing when it's time.

Right, and even though honestly disc streaming along with the main ram bandwidth is enough for most applications (textures aren't as bandwidth hungry as some would think) prioritizing commonly used textures to be housed in EDRAM would be effective, but it depends on the game being developed.

They aren't using the EDRAM 'yet'.  Many of them simply hadn't figured out what they were doing with the system, and Nintendo's tools weren't very good (you could argue even Nintendo didn't really know what they were doing with the system yet) when the current crop of games was released.  Obviously there are a couple that use it lightly, like Shin'en's game and Trine 2.  Just goes to show you that the indie guys were able to get more acquainted with the system in a shorter period of time than big house publishers.  A testament to their engineering prowess.

Considering that most developers have let themselves become factory production lines I get the feeling they don't really WANT to learn architecture more complex than "let's just keep throwing a bunch of RAM at it!" AAA production has just become such a mess that even the SLIGHTEST deviation throws wrenches in their beloved plans. It's kind of sad