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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

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Sin & Punishment said:
While true, we're talking about a company that finished a game and then spent an entire year just for polish.

If it takes an entire year to polish Tears of the Kingdom, a game that could have run on decade old hardware, imagine their process for Switch 2 games.

Not literally, just in the level of graphical fidelity.

They have IP that could maximize that kind of hardware.

3D Zelda (TotK successor, OoT Remake), Monolith's new IP, F-Zero, Star Fox, Metroid Prime (5 in this case, since 4 is being developed for Switch 1), etc.
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Nintendo does take lots of time for polishing and optimization, but one could also say that the more capable hardware in T239 could enable them to spend less time initially on needing heavier optimization because of the massive performance increase across the board. Which in turn allows games to run flawless on Switch 2 (especially with first few years of cross generation games).

The Switch was a great proof of concept, but struggled out of the gate to run many Nintendo games as intended.
Switch 2 on the other hand has the benefit to fully realize games in both handheld and docked modes not having to drastically sacrifice scope and scale in order to achieve that full gaming experience on the go or at home...
 
Discostew said:
I just have to post these.




And nuts to the idea that Nintendo is going to have a hard time with better visuals. They chose the art-style of BotW/TotK, not because of limitations, but because of presentation.
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Thanks for posting this, I had never saw this comparison before but it does highlight what Nintendo as a company chooses to prioritize.
Nintendo are obsessive with gameplay ideas and the advancements of how their characters interact in their respective gaming worlds.

If anything I see this as a result of what will cause games to take longer to make On Switch 2, the pure increase in performance on every level over Switch 1 will allow for endless possibilities of gaming ideas and how do you go about editing those down (as a creative gaming company)?
I almost feel like Nintendo were in a similar boat when going from N64 (a highly restive console) to the GameCube which allowed them to just throw anything at the machine and it just ran very well.

They aren’t quite in that same boat but I could see them getting in their own way (if no-one is their to reign in developers)
 
Truno said:
I don't think that it's 1 game holding back the console launch. I firmly believe that the delay is for most of Nintendo's first-party studios to ensure a steady release cadence for the first 1-3 years of the console, avoiding the droughts that we're seeing with current-gen consoles. In my eyes, Smash and Animal Crossing could be as big of culprits as 3D Mario. Nintendo is in a position in which they can do this and remain healthy
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This.

oldpuck said:
Well, it's a good move because it makes shitloads of money. Here is the gross revenue during the Wii years side by side with the Switch era.



Launch window is the period between the system's launch and the end of the first fiscal. For Wii that was 4 months, for Switch it was 2 weeks. Both the Switch and the Wii/Wii U era have flat revenues, but Switch is much higher. But it's not just the revenue, it's the actual profit.



Profit stays high while hardware sales go down, because the hardware gets cheaper to make over time. Peak hardware profitability comes after the peak hardware sales.



See? Hardware peaked for Switch but the profit stays level. Now, you could argue "look man, momentum is ending even if profit is high, Nintendo should have struck already" but momentum isn't measured by hardware sales. It's measured by people who still play their Switch, and buy more games. If your ecosystem is unhealthy, then software sales will peak when your hardware does. That's because people are just buying all the games their interested in at the same time they buy their console. That's what happened to the Wii.

But if the ecosystem is healthy, if users are still really engaged then you'd expect software sales to peak after the hardware does. That's what happened with Switch.



Hardware sales peaked in 2021, but Nintendo didn't even get to take full advantage of their install base till 2022, when software sales peaked. And 2023 drop was tiny. The first sign of true, waning platform momentum is the fiscal year ending next month (where I've inserted Nintendo's latest projections, as the year isn't over).

If the argument is that you want to launch the next console after the previous console peaks, but before momentum fades enough that you have to start your audience over again, then the correct year to launch the Switch NG would be this one, in the holiday. Which was clearly Nintendo's plan.

I see zero evidence of incompetence here in that launch timing. We'll see if Nintendo's 4 month delay proves to be the company's undoing, but color me dubious.
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Because of this.

I see that everybody assumes that 3D Mario will be a launch title, and while I do agree with that, it's a much bigger assumption to say that it's the game that caused the delay. Shit, Odyssey is barely hanging on to top 5 in lifetime Switch sales - despite it being released 7 months into that lifetime (was that still launch window? late fall? early winter?) Anyway, by that I just mean Nintendo has surely noticed the number of juggernaut evergreens the Switch has and how it's done alright for them. So if they want to take half a year more to get their shit lined up proper so they can release a string of bangers, then so be it.

ILikeFeet said:
Despot's first studio album
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Not sure which reference caught me more off-guard today, OldPuck quoting The Iliad or this.

Definitely this.
 
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Discostew said:
And nuts to the idea that Nintendo is going to have a hard time with better visuals. They chose the art-style of BotW/TotK, not because of limitations, but because of presentation.
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Two things can be true at once. Nintendo can be quite capable of handling the transition to Ultra HD, and be slowed down by it.

I think the tech-savvy gamer overestimates how hard the leap to 4k was, because 1) the leap to HD was so hard, and 2) Physically Based Rendering hit about the same time.

HD was hard for a number of reasons. It was the first leap in resolution in nearly 30 years for Nintendo, but also it roughly coincided with the death of CRTs. That changed everything from the rendering pipeline to the way assets were generated.

4k was the second leap in resolution in less than 10 years. But when 4k hit, PBR was also ascendent, and PBR also changed everything for both art generation and rendering. Nintendo already took the leap on PBR with Breath of the Wild and now that they've standardized their engine, it seems like PBR is well supported at Nintendo.

4k quality assets still take more time, no matter how well prepared for it you are, so this can still be a factor. It's also possible that Nintendo is rebuilding their lighting pipelines around RT. When people pull out Horizon: Multisyllabic Noun and say Nintendo needs to learn to step up to this level of fidelity, I think they're forgetting that Nintendo has first class ray tracing hardware, something that the first party studios for the other two console manufacturers have been slow to adopt.
 
Machrider said:
From a business POV why should Nintendo let someone else get all the profits from cards that are basically only on their system? That's great for SanDisk or whoever, but what does Nintendo get out of it?

SD Card is different it was a universally accepted format, but in this case there is no universally accepted high speed memory card format that has taken off.

Like I said they could stand to make a billion dollars or more even with a profit margin of only say $10 per card.

Nintendo doesn't need Samsung or SanDisk to make these cards for them either, they are a massive company, they can easily make a fork of the existing UFS tech, call it their own and contract some factory in China or Vietnam to pump them out in the tens of millions. There will be no shortage of vendors/suppliers lining up to get a contract with Nintendo.
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If they are not licensing out the format then how are they making money? From cutting out the middle man? Why would it matter to Nintendo whether they're making billions in card sales from branding or from cutting out SanDisk?

If they aren't willing to continuously develop the format then creating a proprietary UFS is the last thing they should do. The last UFS card format is in 2020. The longer the two line diverge, the more work it is on Nintendo to create a card version. It's much better to prop up UFS card or another format and let the appropriate association do the developments.

As big as Nintendo might be, they are a far cry from competing with the biggest memory manufacturing companies in either production or price. Both equally important when games are getting to be averaging above 100gb. Even if Nintendo can make more money being the sole producer despite the cost of development and production. The gains in game sales easily make up for that and mores.
 
Discostew said:
I just have to post these.




And nuts to the idea that Nintendo is going to have a hard time with better visuals. They chose the art-style of BotW/TotK, not because of limitations, but because of presentation.
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Nintendo will ALWAYS choose that artstyle. It's not like they are about to make all of their ips ultra realistic. Shit they won't even make one ultra realistic IP. I think they thing that is hard for people to swallow is this information coming mere weeks before we though we were getting a reveal. People would have took it better if this info came out at the beginning of the year.
 
ILikeFeet said:
Nah. They're not obligated to make every game on that level. A lot of their Switch games aren't even the best the Switch has to offer. It's how they're even able to make so many games for their system
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That's the Nintendo difference. Everyone expects all of Microsoft and Sony to do Triple A games. While Mario party x,y, and z sells 11 million.
 
Lugia667 said:
I'm confused, is this saying they are changing plans and won't release it or that they originally won't and now will?
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Midori said previously (assuming she's legit) that P3R and Metaphor were planned for release on Switch 2. "Changing plans" from that sounds more like dooming if anything.
 
seyfeselassie said:
Is it normal for publishers to not know when hardware will be revealed?
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It doesn't really matter for them right now.

They need to know when it comes out (which they do), but reveal? I think the only way they find out ahead of time is if Nintendo wants their games included in the reveal. That would still be months away.
 
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seyfeselassie said:
Is it normal for publishers to not know when hardware will be revealed?
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Unless that's a burner account for an Atlus exec, I don't think it's surprising that they don't know the reveal plans (tentative or otherwise). Any Nintendo reveal info would be on a much, much stricter need-to-know basis than game dev stuff.

Nevermind the fact that the delay itself is probably not even 2 weeks old. So also wouldn't be surprising if no one outside Nintendo actually knows the updated plan yet.
 
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oldpuck said:
Well, it's a good move because it makes shitloads of money. Here is the gross revenue during the Wii years side by side with the Switch era.



Launch window is the period between the system's launch and the end of the first fiscal. For Wii that was 4 months, for Switch it was 2 weeks. Both the Switch and the Wii/Wii U era have flat revenues, but Switch is much higher. But it's not just the revenue, it's the actual profit.



Profit stays high while hardware sales go down, because the hardware gets cheaper to make over time. Peak hardware profitability comes after the peak hardware sales.



See? Hardware peaked for Switch but the profit stays level. Now, you could argue "look man, momentum is ending even if profit is high, Nintendo should have struck already" but momentum isn't measured by hardware sales. It's measured by people who still play their Switch, and buy more games. If your ecosystem is unhealthy, then software sales will peak when your hardware does. That's because people are just buying all the games their interested in at the same time they buy their console. That's what happened to the Wii.

But if the ecosystem is healthy, if users are still really engaged then you'd expect software sales to peak after the hardware does. That's what happened with Switch.



Hardware sales peaked in 2021, but Nintendo didn't even get to take full advantage of their install base till 2022, when software sales peaked. And 2023 drop was tiny. The first sign of true, waning platform momentum is the fiscal year ending next month (where I've inserted Nintendo's latest projections, as the year isn't over).

If the argument is that you want to launch the next console after the previous console peaks, but before momentum fades enough that you have to start your audience over again, then the correct year to launch the Switch NG would be this one, in the holiday. Which was clearly Nintendo's plan.

I see zero evidence of incompetence here in that launch timing. We'll see if Nintendo's 4 month delay proves to be the company's undoing, but color me dubious.
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This is one of the reasons why I think Nintendo will go with 8nm. It's just too cheap to ignore. It will be interesting to see how Strix Point and the later RDNA 4 APUs compare to this hypothetical 8nm scenario, especially with RAM and battery/performance efficiency
 
SwitchEmUp said:
This is one of the reasons why I think Nintendo will go with 8nm. It's just too cheap to ignore. It will be interesting to see how Strix Point and the later RDNA 4 APUs compare to this hypothetical 8nm scenario, especially with RAM and battery/performance efficiency
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Samsung 8nm is just plain bad. Much better to for N4. RDNA2 was more efficient than Ampere due to Nvidia choosing Samsung 8N. It is really bad if 8nm is chosen in 2025.
 
SwitchEmUp said:
This is one of the reasons why I think Nintendo will go with 8nm. It's just too cheap to ignore. It will be interesting to see how Strix Point and the later RDNA 4 APUs compare to this hypothetical 8nm scenario, especially with RAM and battery/performance efficiency
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I keep reading here that “better” nodes would actually be cheaper for Nintendo.

Is that not correct?
 
RedSpring said:
If they are not licensing out the format then how are they making money? From cutting out the middle man? Why would it matter to Nintendo whether they're making billions in card sales from branding or from cutting out SanDisk?

If they aren't willing to continuously develop the format then creating a proprietary UFS is the last thing they should do. The last UFS card format is in 2020. The longer the two line diverge, the more work it is on Nintendo to create a card version. It's much better to prop up UFS card or another format and let the appropriate association do the developments.

As big as Nintendo might be, they are a far cry from competing with the biggest memory manufacturing companies in either production or price. Both equally important when games are getting to be averaging above 100gb. Even if Nintendo can make more money being the sole producer despite the cost of development and production. The gains in game sales easily make up for that and mores.
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They make money in selling the cards, the same way they made money on GameCube memory cards and N64 memory paks, they didn't donate that money to charity. There is no UFS format to "prop" up, they've all failed miserably, they're not even stocked at mainstream retailers because no one wants them.

256GB Switch 2 Memory Expansion Card (only made by Nintendo) - $59.99 USD, Nintendo pockets $10 of that and consumers basically have to buy it if they want more storage than what the base unit offers. As a result they sell millions and millions of these cards. 512GB for $89.99 or whatever. 1TB later on.

Good for developers also who don't have to guess which speed SD Card you have as there are like 15 different card read speeds, Nintendo can lock the speed in to match the internal storage of the Switch 2 so the experience is uniform for everyone.

If Nintendo is going to prop up and entirely create a market for a dead format from SD or Samsung they should rightly ask "well what the fuck is in this for us, we're doing all the work in getting these cards sold so you guys can make profit off the card sales from our ecosystem", if they want to do that, they should absolutely ask for a cut of the profit. This isn't a situation where any of these UFS or higher speed SD Cards are popular for any other device. Even popular high end cameras don't support any of these formats, Samsung's own phones didn't even support their own UFS card format, lol.
 
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0
It hurts that we might really be a year out from the Switch 2; I still hope this is all an elaborate gotcha, and we will still get the Switch 2 this year with a reveal in a couple of weeks.
 
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Meelow said:
It hurts that we might really be a year out from the Switch 2; apart from me, I still hope this is all an elaborate gotcha, and we will still get the Switch 2 this year with a reveal in a couple of weeks.
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I‘m in the same boat. I really hope we get Switch 2 in 2024, atleast we won’t have to wait that long for confirmation whatever it‘s this or next year.

And I don‘t want @Shareholder Chad to take an even creepier Avatar, so it better be 2024.🙃
 
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Meelow said:
It hurts that we might really be a year out from the Switch 2; apart from me, I still hope this is all an elaborate gotcha, and we will still get the Switch 2 this year with a reveal in a couple of weeks.
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A big blowout with a bunch of first party games people find exciting would more than soften the blow.

Suppose Nintendo promised 3D Mario, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart for the first year, with smaller franchises like, for example, Wave Race or Donkey Kong or Metroid Prime along the way, maybe a high effort Ocarina remake or a new 2D Zelda too.

Like, would a couple months of delay hurt as much with a good slate on the horizon?
 
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Which team are you on?

- Team June reveal

- Team September reveal

Of course it could be neither but you’ve got to imagine they’ll reveal it before the seasonal shopping period truly starts. It would also be awkward for them to have a summer direct without mentioning the new hardware whilst also focusing only on Switch.

I’m going with June.
 
YolkFolk said:
Which team are you on?

- Team June reveal

- Team September reveal

Of course it could be neither but you’ve got to imagine they’ll reveal it before the seasonal shopping period truly starts. It would also be awkward for them to have a summer direct without mentioning the new hardware whilst also focusing only on Switch.

I’m going with June.
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I'm going with option 3: The same timing as Switch 1 had. Team October reveal!
 
Part of me also feels we see a return of proprietary memory cards like how Series S & X had those sticks from Seagate during the first 2 years or so, until we saw more manufacturers produce and offer their alternatives that still keep all of the characteristics the same.

Whether it would be a bad thing or not is up for debate. I honestly just want much faster load times than Switch 1 and i believe a proprietary solution can do a better job at delivering the required speeds and capacities for the Switch 2.
 
Darknut85 said:
„Plans change“ is the ace which every insider, legit or not, has in their sleeves.
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I also think that especially as it pertains to content makers positioning themselves as "insiders" and privy to non-public info, these people realistically doesn't talk to people in management positions at any company. And no one talks to people in management or probably even low level people at Nintendo in Japan. Most probably they have some connections in the larger circle of PR people, gaming journalists willing to break embargos, and maybe some people working at American development studios. And people in those kinds of positions learn things rather late, and often through industry rumors and the like. Even though people like Nate often do make clear that they are mostly speculating or at best speculating based on rumors, what they say much too often over time turn into pseudo facts here even though it is likely that most pieces of information has passed through a long game of telephone.

Edit: And I do think it's different when information emerges in real business publications since 1) in theory they corroborate from multiple independent sources and 2) if Nintendo themselves, or maybe more likely other business entities in the supply chain, need to softly manage investor expectations or even the publics expectations it can be useful to covertly communicate timelines etc. through journalists.
 
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YolkFolk said:
Which team are you on?
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Hopeful for June reveal and it doesn't seem totally unrealistic. But I think the more likely scenario is some form of acknowledgment from Nintendo that new hardware is on the way sometime April-July and then silence up until real reveal in October at which point we see the form factor and some brief trailers. Then a full blow out in January with press hands-on and a better idea of all games coming in launch window.
 
Modern Ninyo said:
switch 2 bros, are we in massive trouble?
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I previously said I was going to only lurk for a while but I saw this and was taken aback. And I don’t say this as an attack on any moderation, but did this guy just get banned for using the word “bros” once in 14 posts?? If I missed anything then I’ll apologise profusely but if not then why so harsh?
 
Christer said:
Hopeful for June reveal and it doesn't seem totally unrealistic. But I think the more likely scenario is some form of acknowledgment from Nintendo that new hardware is on the way sometime April-July and then silence up until real reveal in October at which point we see the form factor and some brief trailers. Then a full blow out in January with press hands-on and a better idea of all games coming in launch window.
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Maybe in June they’ll just have a Direct primarily focusing on Metroid Prime 4 and then show a few other games before or after it. A bit like when BotW was the focus of summer 2016 because they had nothing else to show for the old hardware.
 
Tof said:
I previously said I was going to only lurk for a while but I saw this and was taken aback. And I don’t say this as an attack on any moderation, but did this guy just get banned for using the word “bros” once in 14 posts?? If I missed anything then I’ll apologise profusely but if not then why so harsh?
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Apparently he also „abused“ the pronouns field by using „Noun“ as a pronoun. Just my opinion, but I think in that case a warning would have been enough, since he probably hasn’t done anything in bad faith.
 
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I bought a Sandisk 512 GB micro SDXC card two months ago for $24.99. A suggestion above was a proprietary UFS card that’s more than double the price for half the storage space. I get that it’s faster, but good luck explaining that to people after spending nearly 20 years using an affordable, non-proprietary format.

Maybe we’re overthinking this. What’s the cheapest, most performant, non-proprietary expandable storage format Nintendo could use? It’s probably that one.
 
Just want to also add that I’ll try to make less of my posts about questioning moderation and more about hardware discussion going forward. Apologies.
(Please don’t ban me 😔)
 
TLZ said:
Better get out of denial stage and move on to acceptance. It's better that way.
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It’s a lot easier to swallow all of this when you consider that a summer / June reveal is still very possible. The reality is having the device out in the open will be enough to satisfy many folks, including myself. Third parties can probably start talking about supporting the platform with modern games - that alone will revitalize gaming news for me.

After that we’re really only talking about a few months difference in the launch of the device itself. Maybe November to March isn’t really that bad.
 
karmitt said:
It’s a lot easier to swallow all of this when you consider that a summer / June reveal is still very possible. The reality is having the device out in the open will be enough to satisfy many folks, including myself. Third parties can probably start talking about supporting the platform with modern games - that alone will revitalize gaming news for me.

After that we’re really only talking about a few months difference in the launch of the device itself. Maybe November to March isn’t really that bad.
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I personally would rather play on it, instead of waiting 9 month for it to release, while burning in desire.
 
SwitchEmUp said:
This is one of the reasons why I think Nintendo will go with 8nm. It's just too cheap to ignore. It will be interesting to see how Strix Point and the later RDNA 4 APUs compare to this hypothetical 8nm scenario, especially with RAM and battery/performance efficiency
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Is definitely not Samsung 8nm
 
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