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

[ShadowFox08]

There will be LESS 3rd party support on the new Switch hardware than the current Switch has gotten the last 7 years…for a variety of reasons. Doesn’t matter the specs.

The current Switch could have gotten a port of every Xbox One release the last 7 years. but it didn’t.

The new hardware won’t add anything more compelling. And the state of the the industry and limited dev resources and minimizing output…I don’t see any more support when it has to be exclusive to a relatively low userbase device.

Boy you are always full of hot takes.

We don't know that.

That's likely not true. Not for CPU constrained games, especially if they are already struggling to get a solid 30fps on Xbone. Also there's some 720p Xbone games.. Which would definitely not make it to Switch.

Switch 2 has DLSS and RT. That's very compelling. DLSS allows to punch above it's weight. It doesn't really need anything else.

 

[Jersh]

Wii U and Switch both used slow flash storage though, so they didn’t get to take advantage of SSD-level speeds until now with Switch 2. That could be considered one of the longest-running flaws of their home consoles.

That wasn't a feasible option for either system.

Consider for a moment that the Wii U could run all but one game directly from the optical disc. Speeds weren't a priority. But even if they were, if you take a quick glance at the more expensive, higher spec consoles that released a year later...

...they both had HDDs. Why? Take a look at this article from late 2012. It talks about how you can now grab a 160 GB drive from Intel for $320. The basic set Wii U retailed for $300. I think you can see the problem. I'm not gonna knock Nintendo for this one when Sony and Microsoft made the same balk a year later.

The Nintendo Switch was in a different yet similar boat. Yes, SSDs were mainstream by this point... but not in that form factor. Yes, UFS 2.0 (or even 1.0) could've been gone with, but let's follow a similar exercise and look elsewhere in tech, but this time at storage sizes. If Nintendo went with UFS 2.0, the largest capacity you could get from Samsung's flagship phone in those days was just 128 GB. Presumably, that was expensive. Let's say Nintendo went with 64 GB; twice the capacity of the launch Switch. Should be fine, right?

You might think so, but there's cascading effects that make the answer a solid 'no'. If games are allowed to run off SSD like speeds, that means they have to be installed to internal storage. There wasn't a sufficient external storage solution with which you could expand that 64 GB in 2016. And game cards would've been a rather expensive way of simply delivering data to the console offline. My 64 GB OLED isn't nearly enough storage now, and I buy physical when able. I can't imagine how much storage I'd need if everything had to be installed (the answer is probably a lot more than 128 GB!). It's an entire paradigm shift that's simply not befitting of a console you can take on the go.

Not to mention - the Switch usually isn't limited by its storage speeds anyway! The eMMC inside the Switch is capable of 300 MB/s, same as UFS 1.0. The microSD bus runs at UHS-I, limited to 90 MB/s - just a third of the speed. In this article, Digital Foundry compared load times across multiple storage mediums. Despite the "slow" internal storage being over 200% faster than the SD card, it only loads BotW 5%-10% faster. This is because loading in Breath of the Wild - and the vast majority of Switch games - is bottlenecked by the CPU decompressing the data. Using a UFS 2.0 drive (is that the right word? chip?) capable of 1.2 GB/s wouldn't have made it decompress any faster, and that's what it's spending nearly all of its time doing.

Yes, you can argue that this was a classic example of Nintendo's "old and withered" approach. But even at $400, the Wii U likely would've been seeing a loss with SSDs, and the Switch would've had to make serious convenience compromises - and most games wouldn't have even been able to benefit without drastic increases to file size (further compounding the convenience issue). The tech just wasn't there yet, and these were totally rational decisions.

 

[volcsia]

YES YES YES

Nintendo isn't stupid. I'm sure they're scared out of their boots about repeating a Wii U situation. They were in the worst situation they've ever been in with that console and immediately hit the golden goose with the Switch. They're now in literally the wealthiest situation of their entire company history, but memories of the Wii U are still fresh. They've had the past nine years to think about where they want to go next.

The Switch was put together from whatever Nvidia had off-the-shelf because they were desperate. It's a night-and-day situation with the Switch 2. The SoC is custom. Everything has undoubtedly been analyzed from head-to-toe to keep this momentum going. They aren't going to suddenly be reckless and suddenly starting selling consoles at a loss or re-join the console wars that's tearing Playstation and Xbox apart. All they need to do is be as financially savvy as they've been over the past few years and they'll be totally fine.

As you say: when the Switch 1 first launched, they were on the 20nm node. But they had to quickly transition to something better. So while they do want to be cost-effective with their spec choices, there's a point where it's not financially prudent to cheapen out. Not if it's going to hurt the console and they're going to end up having to shift gears anyway. At the time though, it was a completely different story and Nintendo just needed to get something out there to keep themselves afloat.

File Decompression and super fast I/O like the other 9th gen consoles for super fast load times, the first console with built-in tensor cores for the best AI upscaling and Ray Tracing on the market, a powerful modern GPU frankensteined from both Ampere and Ada Lovelace, and now just confirmed, 12gigs of ram using the newer LPDDR5X...

Nothing about the Switch 2 is "cheap" so far. Cost-effective and not selling at a loss and so families can buy it for their Xmas so their kids can play Mario Kart? yes, but not cheap for the sake of being cheap. If anything, it hits a lot of sweet spots to be a competitive and worthy choice for the 9th gen of gaming, especially for a handheld device. There has clearly been a lot of careful thought put into this. The only part to me that's cheap is the LCD screen which I can completely understand. But the OLED model and Lite are proof that there will be several SKU's to keep the train going. Nintendo is playing the long-game and not putting all their eggs into one premium expensive package that they have to sell at a loss. They know what they're doing...

Which brings me to the point: why would Nintendo purposefully put themselves through the same situation with the node? why invest so much hard-earned revenue to create a totally bespoke SoC for a new Switch 2 hybrid console just so they can get an older inefficient node that they'll have to replace anyway? Yes, you can argue that Nintendo often makes miracles with "withered technology", but everything we've seen thus far from the Switch 2 is hardly withered at all. If anything, what they're doing is practically the best that a cost-effective early/mid 2020's handheld could be. I find it hard to believe that they'd purposefully cheap out on an essential like the node when it'll cost them more in the long-run anyway as opposed to a smaller 5nm node like the TMSC 4N that'll last longer, get them more battery life/performance, and it's not like they couldn't afford. With how wildly successful the Switch was, a company would be out of their mind to not cut Nintendo a deal on a higher-quality node so that everyone reaps the benefits.


A lot of rambling, but TLDR: it doesn't make sense to me that Nintendo, Nvidia, and all their partners would put so much time, thought, and money behind this new console only to cheap out on a component they'd almost certainly have to replace in the long-run anyway.

"Lateral thinking with withered technology" doesn't mean they will use all old techs and put it into one novel system, but it could also mean they rethink about the purpose of some old techs and incorporate it with the new tech. Yeah, sure they will use new techs for the processors, but they could rethink about other things to support the new techs. One easy example of that philosophy is by adding scroll wheel buttons to the new Switch (still hoping). Scroll wheel is an old tech, but then they could apply it in modern application (like the one that Sakurai wanted since GC era, or imagine being able to attaching materials by scrolling when playing ToTK, or being able to change swords easily when playing BoTW/ToTK).

I am not saying that scroll wheel buttons could be in Switch 2 (I wish to) but having both new and old techs in one machine doesn't violate the "lateral thinking with withered technology" philosophy that Nintendo has. I personally wait what kinds of old tech that Nintendo will rethink in Switch 2.

 

[gonanzir]

If the price drops to 3000cny after switch2 is released, I will buy it immediately

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[Discostew]

The 3DS chip was interesting, it was fixed-function but it had some modern capabilities like built-in normal mapping that were much harder to do in the PS2 gen. In raw power it was weaker than those consoles but the better lighting could give a more impressive image in some cases, especially on a smaller screen where the lower poly counts and low-res textures are less noticeable.

I recall the 3DS having 4 vertex/geometry shaders, but no pixel shaders.

 

[NineTailSage]

If the horsepower comparison doesn't prove that the switch2 has a ps4pro-like level of graphics in docking mode at the highest bandwidth tolerated (close to 4tflops) and without dlss turned on, then I don't think the horsepower comparison means much, I'd personally prefer a more comprehensive argument (which I can't do given my level of hardware knowledge. lmao)

I think the validity of comparing Switch 2 to PS4 Pro (while docked) is more to give an example of the image quality we could expect, by just using more modern graphical features. I actually believe we will see games that look much better than what PS4 Pro was capable of, simply because what developers achieved on Switch 1 hardware.

There were a number of companies that missed the boat with the Switch, and some even admitted to that in retrospect. By the time they realized that the Switch was going to be a successful console (and not crash and burn like the Wii U), many third party companies were already too deep in development on PS4/XBone games to easily adjust to include the Switch. Nintendo coming in now after a huge win, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that more companies will take the Switch’s successor more seriously from the start.

At the least, the successor will actually get CoD games.

I completely agree with this.
The major difference that the original poster doesn't acknowledge, is that 3rd party games aren't selling so well on just PS5 and the Series consoles. As games get more expensive to make, companies will want to gain profits from any platform they can possible.

 

[kingman]

If I may add some possible hopium to 4 nm debate...

So I'm on record being more on the pessimistic side in terms of expectations from nintendo, and the reason for that is, I admit, mainly due to the “because Nintendo” argument. But the other day I came to a sudden realization: what if the “because Nintendo” argument itself is flawed?


I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me the “because Nintendo” arguments started in the wii days. Up until the Wii, Nintendo was running highly competitive even possibly state-of-the-art hardware. But all that changed when the Fire Nation attacked the Wii was created. For those of us that were around the days leading up to the eventual release of the Wii specs, we had no idea the length Nintendo would go to underpower their system. To find out that the wii would have specs that even Nintendo's greatest haters could never have imagined was an absolute gut punch.

And from that moment on I think a lot of us told ourselves to never put anything past Nintendo.

But what if that was the wrong way of thinking?

Yes the wii was nothing more than an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. However I think it's important that we understand the context where this decision was made. Remember, this was in the aftermath of the GameCube, which up until that point was Nintendo's worst selling console. Nintendo probably wasn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon but their finances were in trouble. They didn't have the Financial Resources that behemoths like Sony and Microsoft did, so they were much more vulnerable. So they try to do what they felt was probably the safe decision at the time, and not invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in a new incredibly powerful console that might have had razor-thin margins to begin with. I'm not happy with their decision to go down this route but I can understand it.

But then the Wii successor, the Wii U comes out, and thanks to the dual money printing machines that the wii and DS turned out to be, to the relief of many of us, turns out to be an actual generational upgrade. Now some of you might say “Yeah it may have been a generational upgrade but it was still a whole generation behind the PS4 and the Xbox One.” While yes that's true, some of you might not have been aware or perhaps even forgotten that this was during a time when people were thinking that the next Nintendo console would literally be just a wii HD. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a system that would play Wii level games except in HD. And probably not even 1080p HD either. Was it an unfair belief? Perhaps. but again given what Nintendo did with the Wii, it was not an unreasonable fear.

So then after the Wii U bombs, we have the switch. Now here's where we're thrown a bit of a curveball. The graphical jump from the Wii U to the switch was thankfully significantly bigger than the one from the GameCube to the Wii. This thing wasn't simply two wii u’s duct tape together . It was more like three or possibly four wii u’s duct tape together! With some actual modern features!

“Okay but it was still significantly weaker than the PS4 and Xbox One!”

Yes that's true as well. However this would be a more reasonable complaint if the switch was a console. But it wasn't. It was a hybrid. The fact that it had to work as a handheld as well, changes the calculus a bit. Now that the switch was going to be a handheld as well, It was unfortunately going to be limited in just how powerful it was going to be. But for a handheld at the price Nintendo was going for, well it seems they had gotten the best deal that they possibly could have at the time. In 2017 Nintendo wasn't going to have a handheld as powerful as the competition but it was going to have the best or at least one of the best pieces of tech in the handheld space.

And now we come to the switch 2. We're still missing some pretty key details but from everything we know so far:

• ampere / Lovelace architecture
• 1536 cuda cores
• 48 tensor cores and 12 RT cores
• 8 core ARM A78C processor
• 12 GB of lpddr 5x RAM at 120 GB/sec
• 256 GB of ufs 3.1 storage

All these things together do not come off as seemingly cheap. So what if Nintendo doesn't have a history of being a bunch of cheapskates, but rather, there was only one instance in their entire history where they decided to be penny pinchers, and that was the exception rather than the rule? And the rest of the time, they did in fact try to get the most powerful Hardware they could reasonably afford?


So what I'm actually trying to say is: what if the “because Nintendo” was inside us all along?

 

[PeachyLaCox]

I thought that Nate confirmed frame gen for sure? He even made a podcast about it, unless Im wrong?

That was Ray Reconstruction.

 

[Branduil]

I do think 4nm is pretty likely for all the reasons previously listed (future-proofing, cheaper in the long run, fits with what we actually know about the system). 8nm isn't impossible or anything but just using Occam's Razor, 4nm is what I would bet on. 8nm made more sense before we found out just how much power the chip was packing.

 

[ezidro3]

The current Switch could have gotten a port of every Xbox One release the last 7 years. but it didn’t.

Switch running Cyberpunk 2077 (it runs on Xbox One so it can run on Switch):

 

[NineTailSage]

If I may add some possible hopium to 4 nm debate...

So I'm on record being more on the pessimistic side in terms of expectations from nintendo, and the reason for that is, I admit, mainly due to the “because Nintendo” argument. But the other day I came to a sudden realization: what if the “because Nintendo” argument itself is flawed?


I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me the “because Nintendo” arguments started in the wii days. Up until the Wii, Nintendo was running highly competitive even possibly state-of-the-art hardware. But all that changed when the Fire Nation attacked the Wii was created. For those of us that were around the days leading up to the eventual release of the Wii specs, we had no idea the length Nintendo would go to underpower their system. To find out that the wii would have specs that even Nintendo's greatest haters could never have imagined was an absolute gut punch.

And from that moment on I think a lot of us told ourselves to never put anything past Nintendo.

But what if that was the wrong way of thinking?

Yes the wii was nothing more than an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. However I think it's important that we understand the context where this decision was made. Remember, this was in the aftermath of the GameCube, which up until that point was Nintendo's worst selling console. Nintendo probably wasn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon but their finances were in trouble. They didn't have the Financial Resources that behemoths like Sony and Microsoft did, so they were much more vulnerable. So they try to do what they felt was probably the safe decision at the time, and not invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in a new incredibly powerful console that might have had razor-thin margins to begin with. I'm not happy with their decision to go down this route but I can understand it.

But then the Wii successor, the Wii U comes out, and thanks to the dual money printing machines that the wii and DS turned out to be, to the relief of many of us, turns out to be an actual generational upgrade. Now some of you might say “Yeah it may have been a generational upgrade but it was still a whole generation behind the PS4 and the Xbox One.” While yes that's true, some of you might not have been aware or perhaps even forgotten that this was during a time when people were thinking that the next Nintendo console would literally be just a wii HD. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a system that would play Wii level games except in HD. And probably not even 1080p HD either. Was it an unfair belief? Perhaps. but again given what Nintendo did with the Wii, it was not an unreasonable fear.

So then after the Wii U bombs, we have the switch. Now here's where we're thrown a bit of a curveball. The graphical jump from the Wii U to the switch was thankfully significantly bigger than the one from the GameCube to the Wii. This thing wasn't simply two wii u’s duct tape together . It was more like three or possibly four wii u’s duct tape together! With some actual modern features!

“Okay but it was still significantly weaker than the PS4 and Xbox One!”

Yes that's true as well. However this would be a more reasonable complaint if the switch was a console. But it wasn't. It was a hybrid. The fact that it had to work as a handheld as well, changes the calculus a bit. Now that the switch was going to be a handheld as well, It was unfortunately going to be limited in just how powerful it was going to be. But for a handheld at the price Nintendo was going for, well it seems they had gotten the best deal that they possibly could have at the time. In 2017 Nintendo wasn't going to have a handheld as powerful as the competition but it was going to have the best or at least one of the best pieces of tech in the handheld space.

And now we come to the switch 2. We're still missing some pretty key details but from everything we know so far:

• ampere / Lovelace architecture
• 1536 cuda cores
• 48 tensor cores and 12 RT cores
• 12 GB of lpddr 5x RAM at 120 GB/sec
• 256 GB of ufs 3.1 storage

All these things Together do not come off as seemingly cheap. So what if Nintendo doesn't have a history of being a bunch of Cheapskates, but rather, there was only one instance in their entire history where they decided to be Penny Pinchers, and that was the exception rather than the rule. And the rest of the time, they did in fact try to get the most powerful Hardware they could reasonably afford.


So what I'm actually trying to say is: what if the “because Nintendo” was inside us all along?

I think what the Switch has taught Nintendo is that with a strong concept and execution, they can return to Wii/DS like profits while only having to support one platform. The details of the specs we are finding out about Switch 2 are leaning towards a Nintendo who are all in on evolving that platform concept they created in the Switch.

I agree nothing about what we've come across so far shows a Nintendo that is looking to just save money and cut corners, so this will probably be the best execution of their ideas that we've seen in sometime. The Switch 1 has a lot of bottlenecks that keep it from being an excellent handheld and excellent home console all at the same time...

 

[Zedark]

If I may add some possible hopium to 4 nm debate...

So I'm on record being more on the pessimistic side in terms of expectations from nintendo, and the reason for that is, I admit, mainly due to the “because Nintendo” argument. But the other day I came to a sudden realization: what if the “because Nintendo” argument itself is flawed?


I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me the “because Nintendo” arguments started in the wii days. Up until the Wii, Nintendo was running highly competitive even possibly state-of-the-art hardware. But all that changed when the Fire Nation attacked the Wii was created. For those of us that were around the days leading up to the eventual release of the Wii specs, we had no idea the length Nintendo would go to underpower their system. To find out that the wii would have specs that even Nintendo's greatest haters could never have imagined was an absolute gut punch.

And from that moment on I think a lot of us told ourselves to never put anything past Nintendo.

But what if that was the wrong way of thinking?

Yes the wii was nothing more than an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. However I think it's important that we understand the context where this decision was made. Remember, this was in the aftermath of the GameCube, which up until that point was Nintendo's worst selling console. Nintendo probably wasn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon but their finances were in trouble. They didn't have the Financial Resources that behemoths like Sony and Microsoft did, so they were much more vulnerable. So they try to do what they felt was probably the safe decision at the time, and not invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in a new incredibly powerful console that might have had razor-thin margins to begin with. I'm not happy with their decision to go down this route but I can understand it.

But then the Wii successor, the Wii U comes out, and thanks to the dual money printing machines that the wii and DS turned out to be, to the relief of many of us, turns out to be an actual generational upgrade. Now some of you might say “Yeah it may have been a generational upgrade but it was still a whole generation behind the PS4 and the Xbox One.” While yes that's true, some of you might not have been aware or perhaps even forgotten that this was during a time when people were thinking that the next Nintendo console would literally be just a wii HD. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a system that would play Wii level games except in HD. And probably not even 1080p HD either. Was it an unfair belief? Perhaps. but again given what Nintendo did with the Wii, it was not an unreasonable fear.

So then after the Wii U bombs, we have the switch. Now here's where we're thrown a bit of a curveball. The graphical jump from the Wii U to the switch was thankfully significantly bigger than the one from the GameCube to the Wii. This thing wasn't simply two wii u’s duct tape together . It was more like three or possibly four wii u’s duct tape together! With some actual modern features!

“Okay but it was still significantly weaker than the PS4 and Xbox One!”

Yes that's true as well. However this would be a more reasonable complaint if the switch was a console. But it wasn't. It was a hybrid. The fact that it had to work as a handheld as well, changes the calculus a bit. Now that the switch was going to be a handheld as well, It was unfortunately going to be limited in just how powerful it was going to be. But for a handheld at the price Nintendo was going for, well it seems they had gotten the best deal that they possibly could have at the time. In 2017 Nintendo wasn't going to have a handheld as powerful as the competition but it was going to have the best or at least one of the best pieces of tech in the handheld space.

And now we come to the switch 2. We're still missing some pretty key details but from everything we know so far:

• ampere / Lovelace architecture
• 1536 cuda cores
• 48 tensor cores and 12 RT cores
• 12 GB of lpddr 5x RAM at 120 GB/sec
• 256 GB of ufs 3.1 storage

All these things Together do not come off as seemingly cheap. So what if Nintendo doesn't have a history of being a bunch of Cheapskates, but rather, there was only one instance in their entire history where they decided to be Penny Pinchers, and that was the exception rather than the rule. And the rest of the time, they did in fact try to get the most powerful Hardware they could reasonably afford.


So what I'm actually trying to say is: what if the “because Nintendo” was inside us all along?

Interesting to read this. As someone who did not partake in the Wii/WiiU generations (I got an XB360 when I was a young teen and my first self-bought system was a PS4), this despair you describe just simply did not resonate with me. So when I joined the hype cycle for what seemed like a genuinely innovative and interesting system to me (the NX), I was a bit taken aback by the level of "because Nintendo" reasoning: it killed speculation and dragged down a lot of discussion. I think the chip ultimately ended up quite nicely, and what we saw was that the raw specs were decent but not awesome or anything, yet the fact that it was a more modern chip than the gen 8 systems was a genuine boon (I remember John Linneman mentioning this, stating that getting something like Witcher 3 to run on gen 7 systems would have been plain impossible yet Switch managed to get an acceptable version running).

Not sure whether people agree, but I feel like Switch has surpassed pre-launch expectations in terms of hardware capability, because the "because Nintendo" reasoning seems to have piped down a lot. Nowadays, we are speculating about a chip that would match anyone's hopes for a full generational leap, and disagreements seems to only be taking place in the margins (CPU clock 1.5 GHz vs. 1.8 GHz, GPU clocks being 100-200 MHz higher or lower, stuff like that). The fact that we are getting comprehensive leaks also helps with that, of course. Edit: And the funny thing is that every new reveal of specs has been basically positive: 'SoC leaked? Wow, it has 12 SMs, tensor and RT cores, and 8 ARM A78 cores!' 'RAM leaks out? Nice, looks like it is a more modern technology than we anticipated!' 'Storage? Good, UFS3.1 is great and 256GB is as expected (though 512GB would be even better)!'

 

[Pokemaniac]

That wasn't a feasible option for either system.

Consider for a moment that the Wii U could run all but one game directly from the optical disc. Speeds weren't a priority. But even if they were, if you take a quick glance at the more expensive, higher spec consoles that released a year later...

...they both had HDDs. Why? Take a look at this article from late 2012. It talks about how you can now grab a 160 GB drive from Intel for $320. The basic set Wii U retailed for $300. I think you can see the problem. I'm not gonna knock Nintendo for this one when Sony and Microsoft made the same balk a year later.

The Nintendo Switch was in a different yet similar boat. Yes, SSDs were mainstream by this point... but not in that form factor. Yes, UFS 2.0 (or even 1.0) could've been gone with, but let's follow a similar exercise and look elsewhere in tech, but this time at storage sizes. If Nintendo went with UFS 2.0, the largest capacity you could get from Samsung's flagship phone in those days was just 128 GB. Presumably, that was expensive. Let's say Nintendo went with 64 GB; twice the capacity of the launch Switch. Should be fine, right?

You might think so, but there's cascading effects that make the answer a solid 'no'. If games are allowed to run off SSD like speeds, that means they have to be installed to internal storage. There wasn't a sufficient external storage solution with which you could expand that 64 GB in 2016. And game cards would've been a rather expensive way of simply delivering data to the console offline. My 64 GB OLED isn't nearly enough storage now, and I buy physical when able. I can't imagine how much storage I'd need if everything had to be installed (the answer is probably a lot more than 128 GB!). It's an entire paradigm shift that's simply not befitting of a console you can take on the go.

Not to mention - the Switch usually isn't limited by its storage speeds anyway! The eMMC inside the Switch is capable of 300 MB/s, same as UFS 1.0. The microSD bus runs at UHS-I, limited to 90 MB/s - just a third of the speed. In this article, Digital Foundry compared load times across multiple storage mediums. Despite the "slow" internal storage being over 200% faster than the SD card, it only loads BotW 5%-10% faster. This is because loading in Breath of the Wild - and the vast majority of Switch games - is bottlenecked by the CPU decompressing the data. Using a UFS 2.0 drive (is that the right word? chip?) capable of 1.2 GB/s wouldn't have made it decompress any faster, and that's what it's spending nearly all of its time doing.

Yes, you can argue that this was a classic example of Nintendo's "old and withered" approach. But even at $400, the Wii U likely would've been seeing a loss with SSDs, and the Switch would've had to make serious convenience compromises - and most games wouldn't have even been able to benefit without drastic increases to file size (further compounding the convenience issue). The tech just wasn't there yet, and these were totally rational decisions.

To add to this, I actually have a my Wii U storage on a decent SATA SSD (in an enclosure) right now, and the loading times of the Wii U games didn't really change super noticeably from doing that. Granted, a bunch of that probably comes down to the USB 2.0 port, but it just goes to show that the hardware from top to bottom was just not well equipped to move data around very fast.

 

[Eclissi]

If I may add some possible hopium to 4 nm debate...

So I'm on record being more on the pessimistic side in terms of expectations from nintendo, and the reason for that is, I admit, mainly due to the “because Nintendo” argument. But the other day I came to a sudden realization: what if the “because Nintendo” argument itself is flawed?


I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me the “because Nintendo” arguments started in the wii days. Up until the Wii, Nintendo was running highly competitive even possibly state-of-the-art hardware. But all that changed when the Fire Nation attacked the Wii was created. For those of us that were around the days leading up to the eventual release of the Wii specs, we had no idea the length Nintendo would go to underpower their system. To find out that the wii would have specs that even Nintendo's greatest haters could never have imagined was an absolute gut punch.

And from that moment on I think a lot of us told ourselves to never put anything past Nintendo.

But what if that was the wrong way of thinking?

Yes the wii was nothing more than an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. However I think it's important that we understand the context where this decision was made. Remember, this was in the aftermath of the GameCube, which up until that point was Nintendo's worst selling console. Nintendo probably wasn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon but their finances were in trouble. They didn't have the Financial Resources that behemoths like Sony and Microsoft did, so they were much more vulnerable. So they try to do what they felt was probably the safe decision at the time, and not invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in a new incredibly powerful console that might have had razor-thin margins to begin with. I'm not happy with their decision to go down this route but I can understand it.

But then the Wii successor, the Wii U comes out, and thanks to the dual money printing machines that the wii and DS turned out to be, to the relief of many of us, turns out to be an actual generational upgrade. Now some of you might say “Yeah it may have been a generational upgrade but it was still a whole generation behind the PS4 and the Xbox One.” While yes that's true, some of you might not have been aware or perhaps even forgotten that this was during a time when people were thinking that the next Nintendo console would literally be just a wii HD. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a system that would play Wii level games except in HD. And probably not even 1080p HD either. Was it an unfair belief? Perhaps. but again given what Nintendo did with the Wii, it was not an unreasonable fear.

So then after the Wii U bombs, we have the switch. Now here's where we're thrown a bit of a curveball. The graphical jump from the Wii U to the switch was thankfully significantly bigger than the one from the GameCube to the Wii. This thing wasn't simply two wii u’s duct tape together . It was more like three or possibly four wii u’s duct tape together! With some actual modern features!

“Okay but it was still significantly weaker than the PS4 and Xbox One!”

Yes that's true as well. However this would be a more reasonable complaint if the switch was a console. But it wasn't. It was a hybrid. The fact that it had to work as a handheld as well, changes the calculus a bit. Now that the switch was going to be a handheld as well, It was unfortunately going to be limited in just how powerful it was going to be. But for a handheld at the price Nintendo was going for, well it seems they had gotten the best deal that they possibly could have at the time. In 2017 Nintendo wasn't going to have a handheld as powerful as the competition but it was going to have the best or at least one of the best pieces of tech in the handheld space.

And now we come to the switch 2. We're still missing some pretty key details but from everything we know so far:

• ampere / Lovelace architecture
• 1536 cuda cores
• 48 tensor cores and 12 RT cores
• 8 core ARM A78C processor
• 12 GB of lpddr 5x RAM at 120 GB/sec
• 256 GB of ufs 3.1 storage

All these things together do not come off as seemingly cheap. So what if Nintendo doesn't have a history of being a bunch of cheapskates, but rather, there was only one instance in their entire history where they decided to be penny pinchers, and that was the exception rather than the rule? And the rest of the time, they did in fact try to get the most powerful Hardware they could reasonably afford?


So what I'm actually trying to say is: what if the “because Nintendo” was inside us all along?

Best comparison for Switch 2 is most likely Switch. Both because it is the only hybrid console (and for this reason it cannot be compared to home consoles, which are larger and without battery problems), and because it is the only one developed with Nvidia.
Comparisons with previous consoles don't seem applicable to me.
So, if we take Switch, let's try to think: if in 2017 they used the 20 nm process, which of the 8nm, 5 nm and 4nm processes is comparable to it in 2025?

 

[Evil Lucario]

If I may add some possible hopium to 4 nm debate...

So I'm on record being more on the pessimistic side in terms of expectations from nintendo, and the reason for that is, I admit, mainly due to the “because Nintendo” argument. But the other day I came to a sudden realization: what if the “because Nintendo” argument itself is flawed?


I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me the “because Nintendo” arguments started in the wii days. Up until the Wii, Nintendo was running highly competitive even possibly state-of-the-art hardware. But all that changed when the Fire Nation attacked the Wii was created. For those of us that were around the days leading up to the eventual release of the Wii specs, we had no idea the length Nintendo would go to underpower their system. To find out that the wii would have specs that even Nintendo's greatest haters could never have imagined was an absolute gut punch.

And from that moment on I think a lot of us told ourselves to never put anything past Nintendo.

But what if that was the wrong way of thinking?

Yes the wii was nothing more than an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. However I think it's important that we understand the context where this decision was made. Remember, this was in the aftermath of the GameCube, which up until that point was Nintendo's worst selling console. Nintendo probably wasn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon but their finances were in trouble. They didn't have the Financial Resources that behemoths like Sony and Microsoft did, so they were much more vulnerable. So they try to do what they felt was probably the safe decision at the time, and not invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in a new incredibly powerful console that might have had razor-thin margins to begin with. I'm not happy with their decision to go down this route but I can understand it.

But then the Wii successor, the Wii U comes out, and thanks to the dual money printing machines that the wii and DS turned out to be, to the relief of many of us, turns out to be an actual generational upgrade. Now some of you might say “Yeah it may have been a generational upgrade but it was still a whole generation behind the PS4 and the Xbox One.” While yes that's true, some of you might not have been aware or perhaps even forgotten that this was during a time when people were thinking that the next Nintendo console would literally be just a wii HD. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a system that would play Wii level games except in HD. And probably not even 1080p HD either. Was it an unfair belief? Perhaps. but again given what Nintendo did with the Wii, it was not an unreasonable fear.

So then after the Wii U bombs, we have the switch. Now here's where we're thrown a bit of a curveball. The graphical jump from the Wii U to the switch was thankfully significantly bigger than the one from the GameCube to the Wii. This thing wasn't simply two wii u’s duct tape together . It was more like three or possibly four wii u’s duct tape together! With some actual modern features!

“Okay but it was still significantly weaker than the PS4 and Xbox One!”

Yes that's true as well. However this would be a more reasonable complaint if the switch was a console. But it wasn't. It was a hybrid. The fact that it had to work as a handheld as well, changes the calculus a bit. Now that the switch was going to be a handheld as well, It was unfortunately going to be limited in just how powerful it was going to be. But for a handheld at the price Nintendo was going for, well it seems they had gotten the best deal that they possibly could have at the time. In 2017 Nintendo wasn't going to have a handheld as powerful as the competition but it was going to have the best or at least one of the best pieces of tech in the handheld space.

And now we come to the switch 2. We're still missing some pretty key details but from everything we know so far:

• ampere / Lovelace architecture
• 1536 cuda cores
• 48 tensor cores and 12 RT cores
• 8 core ARM A78C processor
• 12 GB of lpddr 5x RAM at 120 GB/sec
• 256 GB of ufs 3.1 storage

All these things together do not come off as seemingly cheap. So what if Nintendo doesn't have a history of being a bunch of cheapskates, but rather, there was only one instance in their entire history where they decided to be penny pinchers, and that was the exception rather than the rule? And the rest of the time, they did in fact try to get the most powerful Hardware they could reasonably afford?


So what I'm actually trying to say is: what if the “because Nintendo” was inside us all along?

To add to this, the Wii U CPU was massively held back because of backwards compatibility. It's not a coincidence that Sony and Microsoft ditched backwards compatibility with the Xbox One and PS4, because that allowed a clean break in architecture to make something better for the future. The Switch also adopted this mentality as well. So it was much more expensive for what seemed to be no gain (aside from near-perfect Wii backwards compatibility), and when combined with the Wii U GamePad production, it's not that surprising the system was sold at a loss.

Ironic how sticking so hard to backwards compatibility was what helped contribute to Nintendo's misfortunes while the opposite helped out Sony and Microsoft. But that was then, this is now with more future-proofed architectures and decent translation layers available to use.

 

[rick_C]

Best comparison for Switch 2 is most likely Switch. Both because it is the only hybrid console (and for this reason it cannot be compared to home consoles, which are larger and without battery problems), and because it is the only one developed with Nvidia.
Comparisons with previous consoles don't seem applicable to me.
So, if we take Switch, let's try to think: if in 2017 they used the 20 nm process, which of the 8nm, 5 nm and 4nm processes is comparable to it in 2025?

I think one of the reason in using 20nm in 2017, is that Nintendo have no choice. TX1 is designed with 20nm. Nintendo need to pay if they want anything beside 20nm. So 2017 case cannot be applied in 2025, which T239 is a new SoC and Nintendo is free to ask for what they want.

 

[Aufhebung RPG]

I would say if the TX1 using 20nm can be used as an analogous case, the T239 would not be any of the 8nm and 4nm processes, tegra's original process was 28nm and the predecessor of the T239 on the tech path was orin with 8nm. so as others have said, what sets the T239 apart from the TX1 is that it's a Nintendo and Nvidia Customized gpu with flexibility in process choice, so I think the case of the TX1 only tells part of the story not the whole story.

 

[Hermii]

To add to this, the Wii U CPU was massively held back because of backwards compatibility. It's not a coincidence that Sony and Microsoft ditched backwards compatibility with the Xbox One and PS4, because that allowed a clean break in architecture to make something better for the future. The Switch also adopted this mentality as well. So it was much more expensive for what seemed to be no gain (aside from near-perfect Wii backwards compatibility), and when combined with the Wii U GamePad production, it's not that surprising the system was sold at a loss.

Ironic how sticking so hard to backwards compatibility was what helped contribute to Nintendo's misfortunes while the opposite helped out Sony and Microsoft. But that was then, this is now with more future-proofed architectures and decent translation layers available to use.

The whole system actually. They went with complicated and needlessly expensive Frankenstein MCM, which was a collaboration by 3 companies (Renesas, AMD and IBM). The whole reason for this was keeping compatibility.

They could have gone with an APU made solely by AMD either arm or x86, and gotten a similar deal to what the competition got.

 

[Jersh]

To add to this, I actually have a my Wii U storage on a decent SATA SSD (in an enclosure) right now, and the loading times of the Wii U games didn't really change super noticeably from doing that. Granted, a bunch of that probably comes down to the USB 2.0 port, but it just goes to show that the hardware from top to bottom was just not well equipped to move data around very fast.

I'm not positive on this which is why I left it out of the post, but Wii U games might've suffered from similar compression issues as the Switch. It probably wasn't as bad though, especially if the data packs for Xenoblade X are anything to go by (though that might be a function of how poorly disc drives handle random reads).

All that said, yeah, the USB port is a major factor. USB 2.0 operates at 480 Mb/s; that's only 60 MB/s, and after efficiency losses from the protocol it's more like 50 MB/s. I don't think anyone really knows how fast the Wii U's internal storage is, but it may have been in that range.

 

[Eclissi]

I think one of the reason in using 20nm in 2017, is that Nintendo have no choice. TX1 is designed with 20nm. Nintendo need to pay if they want anything beside 20nm. So 2017 case cannot be applied in 2025, which T239 is a new SoC and Nintendo is free to ask for what they want.

Yes I know.
But the points of contact between Switch 2 and the consoles preceding the Switch are many fewer.
So I don't think we should rely on what Nintendo did with Wii and Wii U to hypothesize the starting points for the new console.

 

[RainTech]

Re: what SciresM said about BC, I remember saving these:

I expect them to just emulate the GPU while CPU can run natively on the new SOC. ARM cores are usually compatible to each other. They used a similar approach on Galaxy 1 from the 3D All Stars Collection. The game code ran natively on the HW while the GPU was emulated. I remember DF saying that in their analysis.

 

[Discostew]

I would say if the TX1 using 20nm can be used as an analogous case, the T239 would not be any of the 8nm and 4nm processes, tegra's original process was 28nm and the predecessor of the T239 on the tech path was orin with 8nm. so as others have said, what sets the T239 apart from the TX1 is that it's a Nintendo and Nvidia Customized gpu with flexibility in process choice, so I think the case of the TX1 only tells part of the story not the whole story.

I think you have a few things mixed up. The Tegra X1 was never planned for TSMC 28nm. Maybe you're thinking about the Maxwell desktop GPUs, which were made on TSMC 28nm.

 

[Discostew]

I expect them to just emulate the GPU while CPU can run natively on the new SOC. ARM cores are usually compatible to each other. They used a similar approach on Galaxy 1 from the 3D All Stars Collection. The game code ran natively on the HW while the GPU was emulated. I remember DF saying that in their analysis.

The CPU code ran natively because they recompiled from Wii's PowerPC to Switch's ARM. It's why that game wasn't as stressful on the hardware compared to Sunshine, which was fully emulated.

 

[finite]

Hmm.

Those unable to weight for the codename may end up missing it. It can pay to have an Ounce of patience.

 

[lexony]

There will be LESS 3rd party support on the new Switch hardware than the current Switch has gotten the last 7 years…for a variety of reasons. Doesn’t matter the specs.

The current Switch could have gotten a port of every Xbox One release the last 7 years. but it didn’t.

The new hardware won’t add anything more compelling. And the state of the the industry and limited dev resources and minimizing output…I don’t see any more support when it has to be exclusive to a relatively low userbase device.

The new hardware will be more powerful and therefore easier to port games too.

Where Witcher 3 needed major rework and quite some dev time to get it to run on Switch, the same game would likely run with little optimising on Switch 2 without any sacrifices.

It will be much easier to port games for this new console, especially because the newest generation had a slow start and the majority of major current third party games also still run on a PS4. We finally reached a point where graphics of games don‘t age that fast anymore. Many last Gen titles, even from like 8 years ago, still look amazing. Most Indie and AA games could run on almost any hardware (which Switch is already proofing).

Not saying that Switch 2 will suddenly get way more Third Parties, but I don‘t see how it would get less. New hardware also means new opportunities. Switch 2 will not "save" the industry, but it could give the right impulses for devs to invest again.

Just an example. Imagine Square Enix bringing Final Fantasy 7 Remake with maybe some Nintendo Exclusive Features to Switch 2 (as a Definitive Edition). Maybe it will be "below their expectations" again, but it can be a second chance for the game and a possibility to find new audiences.

 

[Roccoco]

I've been lurking a lot the past few days which finally caught up to me and I had a dream last night about the Switch 2 reveal, lol

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's far smarter than me for all the info you've shared, it's been a fun ride following along!

 

[Kenka]

Currently watching the lastest DF Clip. It's adorable how out of touch they are.

Let's not go this way.

 

[YolkFolk]

There will be LESS 3rd party support on the new Switch hardware than the current Switch has gotten the last 7 years…for a variety of reasons. Doesn’t matter the specs.

Absolutely insane and I love you for it.

Are you still able to confirm that all first party Switch 2 games will be on Switch 1, that Switch 2 first party games won’t have much improved graphics, and that Switch 2 will just have up-ressed Switch 1 games?

 

[Danny]

Absolutely insane and I love you for it.

Are you still about to confirm that all first party Switch 2 games will be on Switch 1, that Switch 2 first party games won’t have much improved graphics, and that Switch 2 will just have up-ressed Switch 1 games?

Would be pretty funny if My Tulpa was right and Switch 2 becomes a new Wii U bomb.

 

[Raccoon]

Let's not go this way.

idk I think punching up is kind of cool

and I'd say there's not a chance anyone from digital foundry would care

 

[lexony]

idk I think punching up is kind of cool

Oh wow, you really are a Raccoon, aren‘t you?

 

[Noleth]

Finding out what the real Wii U specs were must’ve been the wurst
get it because-

 

[Multiverse]

GVG has joined the hype.

The BC talk is so funny to me and there’s a lot of wishful thinking.

Nintendo is already basically charging full price for resolution upgrades this generation: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (that’s actually more expensive than the Wii U version), Skyward Sword, etc. I don’t see that changing with the Switch 2. They’re not going to do free performance and higher resolution upgrades. That makes no damn sense. No damn business sense as well.

This is what‘s going to happen. BC on Switch 2 will be 1:1. That’s what it should be and what it will be. All games will hit their capped frames and resolution that was on Switch 1. All those dynamic res games will hit the cap. That is your improved performance. And it will not be more than that.

Why? Nintendo is running a business and I’m pretty sure they know more than me, and I think they’ve learned from what’s going on right now. People are not buying new software. New PS5 games partly because of these free old game upgrades. Sony and Microsoft lowkey destroyed the industry and physical game market because of that. They also trained consumers to expect free upgrades, which in my opinion is not sustainable in a long-term. And I feel like providing performance and visuals upgrade like this esp free ones to old games to 4K will lessen the impact of new games that are actually in 4K. Everything is in 4K now. It’s no big deal anymore. I don’t need to buy new games. I have my old games in 4K. You‘re devaluing the graphics and performance bump if that makes sense.

Nintendo would want to avoid that mistake. You want to sell MORE software and NEW games. Selling BOTW 4K edition at 60$ (that has a physical game cart) is a much better move imo and that’s exactly what they are going to do.

Also, their talk about the OS, which I completely disagree with. I don’t think Nintendo will do what they’re saying (THANK GOD). I think they‘re still going to keep everything as light and basic as possible. Consuming less space as possible.

 

[Kenka]

The CPU being the bottleneck in regard to loading times (regardless of the medium) is a good remark.

The clocks will be interesting in that regard.

 

[YolkFolk]

Would be pretty funny if My Tulpa was right and Switch 2 becomes a new Wii U bomb.

I’d love it for the insanity. Imagine the gaming community reactions etc. Would be hilarious.

Nintendo just like:

 

[PeachyLaCox]

The CPU being the bottleneck in regard to loading times (regardless of the medium) is a good remark.

The clocks will be interesting in that regard.

Last time they kept the clocks on docked and handheld the same, wonder if this time they'll up-clock for docked mode? I guess it depends on the cooling solution?

 

[Hermii]

The BC talk is so funny to me and there’s a lot of wishful thinking.

Nintendo is already basically charging full price for resolution upgrades this generation: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (that’s actually more expensive than the Wii U version), Skyward Sword, etc. I don’t see that changing with the Switch 2. They’re not going to do free 4K upgrades. That makes no damn sense. No damn business sense as well.

It's not technically the same as the Wii U Ports on Switch. To port a Wii U game to Switch, you need to spend a significant amount of effort porting and optimising the game to a completely different architecture.

Drake is a lot more similar to TX1, but the power gap is much wider. So it's more akin to changing a few parameters.You woudnt have to implement diss, or use any fancy features to get a decent upgrade. Im simplyfying,it would require some QA testing probably, but a basic enhancement patch would be a much smaller project than the Wii U ports.

 

[Zedark]

idk I think punching up is kind of cool

and I'd say there's not a chance anyone from digital foundry would care

John Linneman actually frequented forums like these, but then people were always being nasty to them whenever they disliked the results of an analysis video. So indeed, I doubt they care anymore, but it is not because they feel too high and mighty for it. It is because anonymous shitposters try to attack them for personal grievances about analyses.

And I don't consider 'punching up' as "attacking a group of nerdy people who discuss specs and resolutions" to be honest, even if they have a popular Youtube channel.

 

[Hermii]

The CPU being the bottleneck in regard to loading times (regardless of the medium) is a good remark.

The clocks will be interesting in that regard.

Last time they kept the clocks on docked and handheld the same, wonder if this time they'll up-clock for docked mode? I guess it depends on the cooling solution?

That's why Drake has dedicated hardware for file decompression. To reduce the pressure on the CPU.

 

[PeachyLaCox]

The BC talk is so funny to me and there’s a lot of wishful thinking.

Nintendo is already basically charging full price for resolution upgrades this generation: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (that’s actually more expensive than the Wii U version), Skyward Sword, etc. I don’t see that changing with the Switch 2. They’re not going to do free 4K upgrades. That makes no damn sense. No damn business sense as well.

This is what‘s going to happen. BC on Switch 2 will be 1:1. That’s what it should be and what it will be. All games will hit their capped frames and resolution that was on Switch 1. All those dynamic res games will hit the cap. And it will not be more than that.

Why? Nintendo is running a business and I’m pretty sure they know more than me, and I think they’ve learned from what’s going on right now. People are not buying new software. New PS5 games partly because of these free old game upgrades. Sony and Microsoft lowkey destroyed the industry and physical game market because of that.

Nintendo would want to avoid that mistake. You want to sell MORE software and NEW games. Selling BOTW 4K edition at 60$ (that has a physical game cart) is a much better move imo and that’s exactly what they are going to do.

I mean you could release 4K versions but provide a discount to those that own the game already. So for example you have the physical copy of Tears of the Kingdom, that'd act as a key to make sure you own a copy and it installs a digital copy of the game which requires your physical copy to allow you to play it. Or if you own a digital copy it'll already know by your purchase history and auto give you a discount. I can possibly see Nintendo doing that.

 

[Aether]

Not to mention - the Switch usually isn't limited by its storage speeds anyway! The eMMC inside the Switch is capable of 300 MB/s, same as UFS 1.0. The microSD bus runs at UHS-I, limited to 90 MB/s - just a third of the speed. In this article, Digital Foundry compared load times across multiple storage mediums. Despite the "slow" internal storage being over 200% faster than the SD card, it only loads BotW 5%-10% faster. This is because loading in Breath of the Wild - and the vast majority of Switch games - is bottlenecked by the CPU decompressing the data. Using a UFS 2.0 drive (is that the right word? chip?) capable of 1.2 GB/s wouldn't have made it decompress any faster, and that's what it's spending nearly all of its time doing.

That's simply cause the games where designed around the slow speeds, high compression and finish loading in chunks.

Benefit of ultra fast storage is that you need to prepare less into ram cause it's "cheap" to load it at a moments notice. Currently most is loaded into the ram, even if it's not used, to not need to touch the storage if it's needed, but that also means the ram is filled with unused assets.

You need to design your systems around the limitations and bottle necks you have, meaning slow speed storage will always hold faster storage back when the software has to run from both.

 

[Danny]

I’d love it for the insanity. Imagine the gaming community reactions etc. Would be hilarious.

Nintendo just like:

"You will buy our new 400 dollar console that only gives you up-ressed Switch games and you will be happy".

Nintendo according to My Tulpa.

 

[pelusilla6]

About RAM

12 gigs of RAM is good, 120gb/s bandwidth is even better, but remember that there is never too much RAM.

Maybe for Nintendo exclusives it's enough, but in a few years AAA developers will have a harder time porting to Drake (Series S flashbacks). Keep in mind that they are starting to ask for +16Gb of RAM in the minimum requirements of a PC game (32 recommended). And you have to remember that those games can also rely on the exclusive GDDR memory of the graphics card, its true that we dont need that much because of 720p-1080p resolution + DLSS but still.

 

[Kenka]

That's why Drake has dedicated hardware for file decompression. To reduce the pressure on the CPU.

Hermii, would you or anyone consider list the chip parts and explain their relevance? I think a lot of people would appreciate the design of Drake more if they were given explanations in layman terms.

 

[Lugia667]

There will be LESS 3rd party support on the new Switch hardware than the current Switch has gotten the last 7 years…for a variety of reasons. Doesn’t matter the specs.

The current Switch could have gotten a port of every Xbox One release the last 7 years. but it didn’t.

The new hardware won’t add anything more compelling. And the state of the the industry and limited dev resources and minimizing output…I don’t see any more support when it has to be exclusive to a relatively low userbase device.



Eh, I’m sure Microsoft who has their Xbox platform pulling in more revenue and profit now than any previous gen is crying about negligible hardware unit sales differences lol

If they are so profitable why are they shutting down studios and putting their games on other consoles? Clearly there is some pressure coming from somewhere to make them more profitable

 

[kingman]

Wii U Speculation Thread. Infamous now for going very off the rails in spec expectations only for Nintendo to wildly underdeliver.

I remember one of the earliest rumors was that it would be 5-6x times more powerful than the 360.

Good times.

 

[Danny]

If they are so profitable why are they shutting down studios and putting their games on other consoles? Clearly there is some pressure coming from somewhere to make them more profitable

My Tulpa is one of those guys that still think Xbox will kill PlayStation in the future.

 

[Gerald]

I wonder how big of an industry shift there will be if they get GTA 6 workin on this thing lol

inshAllah

Talked many times about it but im believe they will port it to Switch 2, but after PS5 and XSX|XSS Premiere, what is 100% fully focus for Rockstar Games

 

[Gerald]

Im wonder how it will look with RAM for OS in Switch 2,they will go again with very light OS and 500MB for OS,or more function,and for example 2-1.5GB for OS, 10-10.5 for Devs

 

[Aufhebung RPG]

So, if say we find out that there have been several changes to t239 since the hack, does that have any effect on the data we have so far (12 sets of sm 12 ray tracing cores 1536cuda)