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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

I think some people who have been in the thread for a long time have been dragged into the graphics race mentality, which is not Nintendo's core nor a good way to make a profit, Nintendo's core competency has never been an established brand such as something like "play station" but rather first-party games + unique hardware design, at least at the last shareholders meeting!Furukawa reiterated the idea that users will leave Nintendo if they don't have something unique to offer.
 
This doesn't disprove anything in my post. I suggest you re-read it.
I reread it twice, and then what?You're just trying to say that Nintendo doesn't have its own design philosophy for hardware iteration and design but only adheres to blue ocean and gimmicky strategies for profitability and marketing reasons, yet Furukawa's statement at least proves you wrong in that regard.
 
Modern high resolution graphics in a convenient, mass market priced handheld is something pretty much unique in the market.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's main profit driver is software sales. More power allows for more variety and more marketable software.

Nintendo, of course, knows these things, and it's no surprise they chose the most powerful off the shelf mobile SOC they could for Nintendo Switch at the time, and appear to be continuing that trend, with T239, on 4NM anyway, having incredibly impressive performance per watt. This time, it's custom, and the GPU is quite large, so we know they care about performance.
 
Overly optimistic estimates of Nintendo's hardware performance would be a disaster repeated several times over, I still remember 2016 when someone swore that Nintendo would use a 16nm process for the TX1, the result was that they switched to 16nm only two years after the launch of the switch, and we're about to witness this type of thing play out again lol, but whether or not it comes to pass will just have to wait and see.
 
Overly optimistic estimates of Nintendo's hardware performance would be a disaster repeated several times over, I still remember 2016 when someone swore that Nintendo would use a 16nm process for the TX1, the result was that they switched to 16nm only two years after the launch of the switch, and we're about to witness this type of thing play out again lol, but whether or not it comes to pass will just have to wait and see.
Its you who think a gimmick wil just make it an instant success. As i said Wii U got much expensive to make for Nintendo by focusing so much on a ultimately worthless gimmick. That isn't what gamers and the market care about. New and exclusive software will sell the Switch 2, and increased third party support.

Should Nintendo make better controllers for the Switch 2? Yes, that is something gamers care about. But no gimmick that isn't about improving the Switch 2 gaming experience is worth doing.
 
Overly optimistic estimates of Nintendo's hardware performance would be a disaster repeated several times over, I still remember 2016 when someone swore that Nintendo would use a 16nm process for the TX1, the result was that they switched to 16nm only two years after the launch of the switch, and we're about to witness this type of thing play out again lol, but whether or not it comes to pass will just have to wait and see.
I don't disagree, WUST is infamous to this day lol (Wii U Speculation Thread). That being said, WUST wasn't actually unreasonable imo, it was just that nobody could predict Nintendo would release something that was weaker than the 360 in many ways. Anyway threads like this will always be biased towards the best case scenarios.

When it comes to Switch being 20nm, in hindsight there were many good reasons for it. But it was a shame, especially the cpu clock speeds suffered greatly for it.

Im personally in the 4nm camp, because imo if it was on a worse node the chip would have been smaller. A lot of smart people here have done good analysis on how ampere would perform on various nodes, and their conclusion is that 4nm lines up really well with getting this chip to ideal performance per vat on switch handheld power consumption. And at 8nm Drake would be an inefficient power hog. But however they are hobbyists, that can't possibly account for everything engineers at Nvidia would account for.
 
Its you who think a gimmick wil just make it an instant success. As i said Wii U got much expensive to make for Nintendo by focusing so much on a ultimately worthless gimmick. That isn't what gamers and the market care about. New and exclusive software will sell the Switch 2, and increased third party support.

Should Nintendo make better controllers for the Switch 2? Yes, that is something gamers care about. But no gimmick that isn't about improving the Switch 2 gaming experience is worth doing.
Do I deny that please, in fact I understand that a good portion of the thread has fantasies about the performance aspect of Nintendo's hardware bordering on the same as gamers who fantasized back in the day that The Wind Waker was a realist Zelda, and if one observes the trajectory of Nintendo after the iwata it's clear that performance still doesn't matter very much even now, gimmickry is more important, it's just that Furukawa wouldn't have been asradical as the iwata was, turning the previous generation's console form factor and controllers on their head.
 
I don't disagree, WUST is infamous to this day lol (Wii U Speculation Thread). That being said, WUST wasn't actually unreasonable imo, it was just that nobody could predict Nintendo would release something that was weaker than the 360 in many ways. Anyway threads like this will always be biased towards the best case scenarios.

When it comes to Switch being 20nm, in hindsight there were many good reasons for it. But it was a shame, especially the cpu clock speeds suffered greatly for it.

Im personally in the 4nm camp, because imo if it was on a worse node the chip would have been smaller. A lot of smart people here have done good analysis on how ampere would perform on various nodes, and their conclusion is that 4nm lines up really well with getting this chip to ideal performance per vat on switch handheld power consumption. And at 8nm Drake would be an inefficient power hog. But however they are hobbyists, that can't possibly account for everything engineers at Nvidia would account for.
I mean, if Nintendo didn't think hardware performance mattered in the ps3/x360 era when visuals were soaring, Nintendo cares even less about hardware performance now at a point in time when visuals have evolved to the point where it's hard to tell progress with the naked eye.I can't speculate on what process the T239 will use, but for me TSMC 4N is a near-fantasy choice.

Edit:And I've been watching this thread for a while now, and I've come to realize that there are quite a few people in the thread who actually just want Nintendo to be in the normal console iteration of shaping the "millennium kingdom" like Sony and Microsoft, but it's not a question of expectations, it's that this kind of thinking doesn't fit with Nintendo's development strategy in the post-Iwata era, so I'm not an optimist here.
 
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I reread it twice, and then what?You're just trying to say that Nintendo doesn't have its own design philosophy for hardware iteration and design but only adheres to blue ocean and gimmicky strategies for profitability and marketing reasons, yet Furukawa's statement at least proves you wrong in that regard.
Most of the other users' replies said what I wanted to say so I'm not going to go much more in-depth, but again, Nintendo's hardware strategy is not bound to throwing gimmicks around. They have released iterative systems in the past, some of which were successful, others not so much.
I think some people who have been in the thread for a long time have been dragged into the graphics race mentality, which is not Nintendo's core nor a good way to make a profit, Nintendo's core competency has never been an established brand such as something like "play station" but rather first-party games + unique hardware design, at least at the last shareholders meeting!Furukawa reiterated the idea that users will leave Nintendo if they don't have something unique to offer.
Again I covered this in my post. They already have something unique to offer to users. They're the only portable system on the market that truly appeals to console gamers. They also have an unbeatable lineup of software. Hardware gimmicks aren't the only unique thing that they can offer, and they've even driven users away in the past with the Wii U and to a lesser extent the Wii.
 
I mean, if Nintendo didn't think hardware performance mattered in the ps3/x360 era when visuals were soaring, Nintendo cares even less about hardware performance now at a point in time when visuals have evolved to the point where it's hard to tell progress with the naked eye.I can't speculate on what process the T239 will use, but for me TSMC 4N is a near-fantasy choice.

The issue is just that the leaked chip suggests an extremely powerful and power hungry system.

Enough time has passed and we're still potentially so far away from the system launch that the leaked chip may no longer be the actual chip, but in that case, 4N is more likely is 4N is the last not shit node ever made and will be a mature node by 2025/2026. Even low power systems would be cheaper on 4N for a release in 2026.

(And again, the major issue is that there are no real alternatives for Nintendo other than standard power leaps. Outside of Kinect stuff, there have been no interesting innovations in the tech sector that could be applied to control inputs and Kinect is a terrible fit with a hybrid system. The Switch 2 will probably just be a power leap with no meaningful innovation because that's the only option Nintendo has available. Any innovation from Nintendo would have to come from completely custom R&D which is wildly expensive and likely to fail)
 
I mean, if Nintendo didn't think hardware performance mattered in the ps3/x360 era when visuals were soaring, Nintendo cares even less about hardware performance now at a point in time when visuals have evolved to the point where it's hard to tell progress with the naked eye.I can't speculate on what process the T239 will use, but for me TSMC 4N is a near-fantasy choice.
Think about it this way, Nintendo probably partnered with Nvidia and chose the TX1 because they can provide gpu technology (features, not performance) and development tools on par or better than AMD, within a portable power budgets. So that more developers will port games to their platform. I don't think it was ever a goal to get support on par with the other platforms, but at least get a good number of games.

With T239, I think they're guided by pretty much the same philosophy. Not trying to win any DF comparisons, but either not being left out of having the games.
 
I will let this one out, but I think some of Nintendo's best systems have this thing that allows for true, disruptive, and innovative gameplay alongside more standard gaming experiences in its own ways, like the DS family or the Switch. Laterality, not compromise.

(even when it isn't used in its intended ways, i think the two screens make up for it by allowing for more visual flavor out of the games)
 
We've talked about potential gimmicks for literally years and there's just nothing out there at all other than Kinect 2.0.

Which would work great... In docked mode...

It would have to be completely custom if it's not a Kinect which introduces huge risks and costs.
 
Enough time has passed and we're still potentially so far away from the system launch that the leaked chip may no longer be the actual chip
IMO this isn't a possibility worth suggesting if you consider the customs data. We're less than a year from the expected launch date, I think it's a bit too late to consider things like this. Such a major hardware revision would have had to already happened.
 
Most of the other users' replies said what I wanted to say so I'm not going to go much more in-depth, but again, Nintendo's hardware strategy is not bound to throwing gimmicks around. They have released iterative systems in the past, some of which were successful, others not so much.

Again I covered this in my post. They already have something unique to offer to users. They're the only portable system on the market that truly appeals to console gamers. They also have an unbeatable lineup of software. Hardware gimmicks aren't the only unique thing that they can offer, and they've even driven users away in the past with the Wii U and to a lesser extent the Wii.
I'll reserve my opinion, but I agree with you that the switch is still a unique product, but the "uniqueness" is very low, and if it's not expanded or innovated, Nintendo will go back to the same problem they faced in the 3DS era: only relying on first party games to attract customers, which is not an option that will maximize Nintendo's own interests.
 
I'll reserve my opinion, but I agree with you that the switch is still a unique product, but the "uniqueness" is very low, and if it's not expanded or innovated, Nintendo will go back to the same problem they faced in the 3DS era: only relying on first party games to attract customers, which is not an option that will maximize Nintendo's own interests.

The Switch's ability to get indies and legacy titles makes its situation massively different from the 3DS.

But again, there's absolutely nothing out there other than Kinect 2.0. Not a single other viable suggestion has been raised in the years the internet has discussed this.
 
The Switch's ability to get indies and legacy titles makes its situation massively different from the 3DS.

But again, there's absolutely nothing out there other than Kinect 2.0. Not a single other viable suggestion has been raised in the years the internet has discussed this.
I'm only attempting to ask questions, as to what Nintendo does on their own that's up to fate to favor this thread.
 
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Think about it this way, Nintendo probably partnered with Nvidia and chose the TX1 because they can provide gpu technology (features, not performance) and development tools on par or better than AMD, within a portable power budgets. So that more developers will port games to their platform. I don't think it was ever a goal to get support on par with the other platforms, but at least get a good number of games.

With T239, I think they're guided by pretty much the same philosophy. Not trying to win any DF comparisons, but either not being left out of having the games.
I agree with this, but the question still remains "why does it have to be TSMC 4N", there are many better processes than Samsung 8nm that also cost less than TSMC 4N
 
I agree with this, but the question still remains "why does it have to be TSMC 4N", there are many better processes than Samsung 8nm that also cost less than TSMC 4N
This has been discussed again and again, but the core point is that it's likely the case that TSMC 4N is actually cheaper per die. It just uses far less silicon, it has better yields and reliability, and it means they can make the device itself cheaper without sacrificing performance, such as a smaller cooler and battery.
 
I agree with this, but the question still remains "why does it have to be TSMC 4N", there are many better processes than Samsung 8nm that also cost less than TSMC 4N
The logic is that Nvidia likes to group their products on as few nodes as possible. 20nm is the exception, but they allegedly had cancelled plans to launch more 20nm products.

But Im completely open to this being an exception. Nobody actually knows.
 
The difference between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft and their PlayStation and Xbox is that Nintendo see graphics and performance technology as a means to an end of utilizing the technology to provide unique experiences, while its competitors use it as an end to provide graphical displays that are close to realism.
 
complex artstyle? what this suposed to mean? a photorealism artstyle? i cant imagine Nintendo going for that, they always strive/pride temselves on stylized artstyle
It doesn’t have to default to photorealism. A complex art style can be anything really.

Also I’m very confused on this whole “gimmick/innovation” debate. I doubt Nintendo is gonna futz too much with their machine. Refinement & improvement of existing tech in the JoyCons & minor additions are what I expect (these would be things like paddles or a camera). Like Switch was presented w/HD Rumble & was forgotten about after like 3months by both consumers & Nintendo. Anything bigger or experimental will be an accessory + software. Given what we see on Switch, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine going into next hardware. The only significant tech that would impress people would be a vast improvement of battery life day 1.
 
Wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo got a good offer for TSMC 4NM because of the switch success.

Like Nintendo has something that they didn't have in the early switch and Wii U era and that would be bargaining power.
And i wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia will be more closer when it comes to developing the Switch 2.
 
Wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo was able to get some good offers for 4NM, because of the success of the switch and also how many company would love to be Nintendo main providers this Generation, if they're the main providers it would mean they'll also the providing Nintendo for Switch 2, Oled and maybe a pro version.
Nintendo doesn't pay foundry companies (e.g. TSMC, etc.) directly to secure process node capacity. Nvidia does.
 
I find this innovation discussion a bit confusing. Why would software innovation not count? Switch was successful due to its hardware innovation for sure, but also due to gameplay design creativity such as in BOTW, which did not even require the new hardware to work.
That's what I am trying to say.

I'm not saying CMB won't have a gimmick, but I don't think it needs one, and Nintendo aren't going to add one because Nintendo gonna Nintendo. They're a for-profit company.
And this.

Also, I would like to add, optional accessories had and will always be a thing. Ring Fit adventures sold extremely well for a game with an optional accessory.
I think some people who have been in the thread for a long time have been dragged into the graphics race mentality, which is not Nintendo's core nor a good way to make a profit, Nintendo's core competency has never been an established brand such as something like "play station" but rather first-party games + unique hardware design, at least at the last shareholders meeting!Furukawa reiterated the idea that users will leave Nintendo if they don't have something unique to offer.
A lot of us has been here long before the Wii era and we are telling you it doesn't have to be about unique hardware design because Nintendo had always strive for unique gameplay design. Look at Pokémon, look at mario 64, mario odyssey every first zelda on a console.
Yes, this is a graphics thread but don't get it confuse. We truly understand what Nintendo philosophy is. I think it is you who is getting lost in the hardware part.

The difference between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft and their PlayStation and Xbox is that Nintendo see graphics and performance technology as a means to an end of utilizing the technology to provide unique experiences, while its competitors use it as an end to provide graphical displays that are close to realism.
Hmm, kinda kinda not. Nintendo has always been about presentation. They will deliver you a nice looking game. Go back to a link to the past. Where you first leave your house and the storm is heaving and it give off a sense of urgency or when you are going to the tower of hera and you sense the depth of how far Link really is up high. Graphics on important to Nintendo just not in the same manner as the rest. I think that's the more appropriate way to say it.
 
@Dakhil do you have any guess on what internal storage they can use in switch 2 to minimize loading ?
because loading time is killing me in OG switch :/
Most likely UFS 3 or 4. And SD express seems likely for expanded storage. 1GB/s plus minus (more likely minus) is a reasonable expectation.

Which means not as blazing fast as ps5/series, but still fast.
 
Also I’m very confused on this whole “gimmick/innovation” debate. I doubt Nintendo is gonna futz too much with their machine.
Some people here feels like that Nintendo needs another gimmick for their machine to stand out, but a couple of us are arguing that it is the games itself that are the innovation. While games like Wii Sports is good. It is games like Mario Galaxy that provides more depth and stand the test of time. Take a look at switch sports and mario odyssey. Mario odyssey out blew switch sports. Why? Because it is very innovative game. The 85 million people who played Wii sports were part of a fad and left. That's what no one is talking about.
 
Most likely UFS 3 or 4. And SD express seems likely for expanded storage. 1GB/s plus minus (more likely minus) is a reasonable expectation.

Which means not as blazing fast as ps5/series, but still fast.
its don't need to be as fast as ps5 but above switch by a high margin is all I need from it.
 
Makes me wonder if AI upscaling might be used in games that are streamed via the cloud to minimize the limitations of it?

Obviously streaming is ew, but the thought just popped into my head.
 
Some people here feels like that Nintendo needs another gimmick for their machine to stand out, but a couple of us are arguing that it is the games itself that are the innovation. While games like Wii Sports is good. It is games like Mario Galaxy that provides more depth and stand the test of time. Take a look at switch sports and mario odyssey. Mario odyssey out blew switch sports. Why? Because it is very innovative game. The 85 million people who played Wii sports were part of a fad and left. That's what no one is talking about.
The Mario Galaxy you're pushing is also a customized game based entirely on the wii's unique hardware and controller, your statement is simply a deliberate attempt to obfuscate certain things, your idea that Nintendo doesn't need hardware breakthroughs just quality first-party games to entice gamers to buy them is purely an act of condescension on the part of a Nintendo fanboy, all video game development from pong to the present day has always been based on the fact that the hardware determines the game'sThe minimum framework that development can support, both in terms of graphical performance and gameplay design.

Edit:Unless you think the currently popular TV—controller model will last until the end of the human race, in which case I can only wish that your imaginary "millennial kingdom" never dies.
 
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complex artstyle? what this suposed to mean? a photorealism artstyle? i cant imagine Nintendo going for that, they always strive/pride temselves on stylized artstyle
Complex artstyle is maybe not the best way to describe it. It enables artstyles that are harder or hardly possible to implement with typical shader rendering, but one "simple" example would be style transfer. Heck, you can have it as a game mechanic and the player provides either in game creations or you take stuff like the screenshot folder to train a model on the fly and apply it for a specific area or enemy in the game. What I'm talking is all but photorealism. You can also create some weird swirling textures, that's not just 2 textures overlapped but actual animation, making like for a convincing monster skin for a weird out there beast.

I know, but DLSS isn’t the best example of this, as it is purely graphical.
I didn't even mention dlss...
 
I think some people who have been in the thread for a long time have been dragged into the graphics race mentality, which is not Nintendo's core nor a good way to make a profit, Nintendo's core competency has never been an established brand such as something like "play station" but rather first-party games + unique hardware design, at least at the last shareholders meeting!Furukawa reiterated the idea that users will leave Nintendo if they don't have something unique to offer.
I'm just a normal Nintendo fan that want their 1st & 2nd party games in solid high framerate & high resolution with decent graphics, that's all. More AAA 3rd party games than current Switch is a bonus
 
The Mario Galaxy you're pushing is also a customized game based entirely on the wii's unique hardware and controller, your statement is simply a deliberate attempt to obfuscate certain things, your idea that Nintendo doesn't need hardware breakthroughs just quality first-party games to entice gamers to buy them is purely an act of condescension on the part of a Nintendo fanboy, all video game development from pong to the present day has always been based on the fact that the hardware determines the game'sThe minimum framework that development can support, both in terms of graphical performance and gameplay design.
Switch was a new type of hardware, but not in such a way it introduced new types of play. Compared to both 3DS and Wii U it lost camera, microphone, second screen, and added... slightly more buttons available when doing two handed motion control, and the IR camera 1-2 Switch uses to know if you're pretending to eat something. And yet, became possibly their biggest success ever. Refusing to adapt with the times (like Xbox going full Kinect and refusing to add motion to their standard controllers) is silly, but history certainly doesn't show that breakthroughs are necessary every generation, or that Nintendo can't succeed without them.
 
The Mario Galaxy you're pushing is also a customized game based entirely on the wii's unique hardware and controller, your statement is simply a deliberate attempt to obfuscate certain things, your idea that Nintendo doesn't need hardware breakthroughs just quality first-party games to entice gamers to buy them is purely an act of condescension on the part of a Nintendo fanboy, all video game development from pong to the present day has always been based on the fact that the hardware determines the game'sThe minimum framework that development can support, both in terms of graphical performance and gameplay design.

Edit:Unless you think the currently popular TV—controller model will last until the end of the human race, in which case I can only wish that your imaginary "millennial kingdom" never dies.
Mario Galaxy doesn't necessarily need a Wii Remote, as evidenced by the Chinese Nvidia Shield and 3D All-Stars versions.
 
I'm just a normal Nintendo fan that want their 1st & 2nd party games in solid high framerate & high resolution with decent graphics, that's all. More AAA 3rd party games than current Switch is a bonus
That's fine, everyone has everyone's needs, I just tend to go for the "new" hardware design level all the time in that thread, I apologize if I offended anyone, sorry.
 
Modern high resolution graphics in a convenient, mass market priced handheld is something pretty much unique in the market.
Steam Deck: i'm a joke to you?
Nintendo, of course, knows these things, and it's no surprise they chose the most powerful off the shelf mobile SOC they could for Nintendo Switch at the time, and appear to be continuing that trend, with T239, on 4NM anyway, having incredibly impressive performance per watt. This time, it's custom, and the GPU is quite large, so we know they care about performance.
I hope Switch 2 will be the last Nintendo console to focus on performance,
Now these graphical leaps have become too small to justify the price.
 
Considering that those new microSD Express cards max out at 800 MB/s sequential read speed, the chain of storage speed will only be as strong as its weakest link, whether that be the cartridge, SSD, or external storage. Though it won't matter as much since Switch 2 games will likely have much lower-quality assets than equivalent PS5 games.
 
Let's say the Switch 2 came with a version of the Kinect that lived up to all the original promises of the Kinect other than Milo (which, what the fuck, that was the fakest demo of all time) because computer vision is basically that good these days.

What are some gaming applications you would like to see for this new Kinect.
 
Let's say the Switch 2 came with a version of the Kinect that lived up to all the original promises of the Kinect other than Milo (which, what the fuck, that was the fakest demo of all time) because computer vision is basically that good these days.

What are some gaming applications you would like to see for this new Kinect.
Aside from the privacy concerns (maybe make it so that it only turns on when it has a specific game), I would love to see a naval or tank combat game where you have to communicate using semaphore.
 
Yes. In terms of sales and user experience, you are.
I mean considering that it is still a PC but dedicated for gaming it has an amazing user experience. Steam OS has a great UI were Nintendo could learn one thing or two (even with their more minimalistic approach) and it is great how you get so many services like Cloud Saves and Online for free on a handheld like device.
 
Aside from the privacy concerns (maybe make it so that it only turns on when it has a specific game), I would love to see a naval or tank combat game where you have to communicate using semaphore.
Nintendo making a game where you can only communicate with other players through morse code would legitimately be peak fiction. Why can't we have that as a major multiplayer title, what the hell?
 
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