Nintendo Project Café Rumour Analysis

Project Cafe

However, many other games suffered from developers trying to shoehorn motion control into games that would be better-served by a gamepad. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Paper Mario might be good games, but we'd argue that they're good in spite of the controller, rather than because of it. Even with Wii Motion Plus, the Wiimote simply doesn't have the precision needed for some games, and it's also incredibly annoying when you accidentally wave it out of range of the sensors.

A touchscreen removes these problems, providing more precision, while also providing a flexibile mouse-like controller that you simply can't get from a pair of thumbsticks. There's great potential here for console-based first person shooters, particularly when you consider the console's rumoured graphical horsepower – think Metroid Prime: Hunters, but with Call of Duty-quality graphics.


However, there's also a great deal of room here for innovation – this is a whole new control system that could result in some exciting new ideas, particularly as the rumours say the console will be able to stream games to the controller. You might not even need a TV – you could potentially just take the controller upstairs and play your games (if they support single-screen gaming) wherever you want in the house, but without the graphical restrictions of a handheld console. With two screens, including a touchscreen, Nintendo will also have the ability to offer DS games on the Virtual Console, freeing up yet more of the company's back catalogue to more gamers.

The main problem presented by a touchscreen controller is the cost of the device. A second controller is likely to cost a fair chunk of cash, and it's also likely to be a while before third-party controller manufacturers manage to get together their own designs, if they even bother.

We also doubt that we've seen the last of the Wiimote – not if Nintendo wants to maintain compatibility with Wii games. In fact, if the touchscreen controller doesn't have motion control built-in, the box may even include a Wiimote-like control, or one be made available as an add-on, much like the Wii's Classic game controller.

Motion control was a major part of the Wii's success, and it's important for Nintendo to keep catering for this market, just as a basic business decision. You could probably think of the rumoured touchscreen controller as just one of the options available to developers, which are also likely to include a motion control device, and probably a standard gamepad too. There's also nothing to stop game developers producing new motion-control games for the console either, and with the benefit of superior graphics.

Conclusion

As with any pre-release speculation, this should all be taken with the appropriate serving of sodium chloride at the moment. Nintendo hasn't confirmed any of the rumoured specifications, and even if it had, our speculation in this article could also prove to be way off the mark. Nintendo has a habit of being unpredictable, but if the rumoured specifications are true, then Project Café is a potentially exciting device.

There's some really good potential for Nintendo to start producing innovative in-house games again, while also providing backward compatibility and hopefully attracting third-party developers such as Crytek with the extra processing horsepower. If Project Café does indeed feature DirectX 10-level shaders, then this is also good news for PC gaming, as well as console gaming. We just need to hope that the console has plenty of decent games, as that's the main problem for the 3DS and the Wii at the moment. That means exciting new in-house titles, rather than just rehashes of old Zelda and Mario games, and it also means decent third-party games that people want to play.

Please don't mess this up, Nintendo.