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

[ILikeFeet]

the Digital Foundry video was recorded before a lot of the specifics came out, I think. I doubt they dived too deep into the leak themselves due to ethical reasons. that said, as annoying as "because Nintendo" is, they were pretty correct in how Nintendo does things, in regards to memory and power consumption rather than raw performance. so I don't think they're doubting the high core counts but are curious where Nintendo is gonna clock this and how much and how fast memory is gonna be

 

[Herb Alpert]

Nintendoland one of the GOATS, fool!

Lol
I mean, yeah it looks fun for a game concept, but building a whole hardware line around it always seemed weird.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

F O L D E R S

There is no way this doesn't come to the regular switch lol

 

[mjayer]

Lol
I mean, yeah it looks fun for a game concept, but building a whole hardware line around it always seemed weird.

You sound like someone who hasn't experienced Nintendoland.

 

[Adulfzen]

I hope better capture options for gameplay also come alongside drake, such as longer gameplay clips at higher resolutions and better bitrate.
Technically livestreaming should also be feasible at the cost of a bit of GPU performance (with NVENC)

 

[ShaunSwitch]

Bring back the theme shop from the 3ds. The BOTW 3ds theme they released at the time of the switch release was awesome. Could make the themes platinum point rewards to drive engagement in their new rewards system.

 

[ILikeFeet]

There is no way this doesn't come to the regular switch lol

the folders dream is over

 

[Foltzie]

the Digital Foundry video was recorded before a lot of the specifics came out, I think. I doubt they dived too deep into the leak themselves due to ethical reasons. that said, as annoying as "because Nintendo" is, they were pretty correct in how Nintendo does things, in regards to memory and power consumption rather than raw performance. so I don't think they're doubting the high core counts but are curious where Nintendo is gonna clock this and how much and how fast memory is gonna be

Can someone summarize why DF wouldn't dive deep into the leak? Is one of their staff working with Nintendo in some fashion?

 

[BlueKing]

Can someone summarize why DF wouldn't dive deep into the leak? Is one of their staff working with Nintendo in some fashion?

Because it is stolen information.

 

[thegodsend]

Can someone summarize why DF wouldn't dive deep into the leak? Is one of their staff working with Nintendo in some fashion?

Probably because the leak is a criminal act that the don't want to support.

Honestly any professional gaming media should only report that there was a data breach but not in the content of the data itself in a case like that.

 

[Thraktor]

Well yeah, I don't expect this to be a "simple" revision. This is more like an iterative successor that's not treated like a traditional successor.

And regarding the architecture change, as I noted above it's a lot, lot easier in this case to do a software solution for BC, mainly for the reasons you noted. I doubt this was possible for the new 3DS or Wii U, they had to retain the same general microarchitecture because software solutions were simply too difficult or expensive.


I just don't see how they will market this as a new generation of Switch with the lineup they've announced for this year. I know it will be BC, but to announce so many high profile games for your older model and then announce a new generation later that's launching with the biggest titles, that doesn't seem like good marketing. You severely diminish the selling capacity of the older models, especially if we're talking about a $400+ price.

I think for 3DS they probably could have swapped out the CPU cores for newer ARM cores and maintained compatibility, but yeah, on the GPU side there wasn't much they could have done.

I worry that if they present it as a "pro" style device, and let's say call it the Switch+, then they would have the opposite issue in a couple of years time. People would have been happily buying the cheaper regular Switch thinking that the Switch+ is only for people who want to play in 4K or play a handful of 3rd party exclusives, and then Nintendo turns around and says they're only supporting Switch+ from now on. At this point I think they're better off presenting it at a successor, and just trying to be very clear with expectations, along the lines of "This is the next Switch, but don't worry, we'll still be supporting the original model for some time". In a sense having a big lineup of high-profile games launching as cross-gen titles reinforces that, as it shows existing Switch owners that they're not getting abandoned.

 

[Skittzo]

I think for 3DS they probably could have swapped out the CPU cores for newer ARM cores and maintained compatibility, but yeah, on the GPU side there wasn't much they could have done.

I worry that if they present it as a "pro" style device, and let's say call it the Switch+, then they would have the opposite issue in a couple of years time. People would have been happily buying the cheaper regular Switch thinking that the Switch+ is only for people who want to play in 4K or play a handful of 3rd party exclusives, and then Nintendo turns around and says they're only supporting Switch+ from now on. At this point I think they're better off presenting it at a successor, and just trying to be very clear with expectations, along the lines of "This is the next Switch, but don't worry, we'll still be supporting the original model for some time". In a sense having a big lineup of high-profile games launching as cross-gen titles reinforces that, as it shows existing Switch owners that they're not getting abandoned.

I still think that's too risky for a company like Nintendo. They'd want to hedge their bets a bit more, not outright call it a successor but still I guess treat it like one. The messaging will be really interesting to see.

 

[Pokemaniac]

So, in general, APIs are not a 'shroud' that isolates software from the hardware and thus ensure that the code that runs on a machine runs equally on newer devices (if said newer devices are designed in a way that facilitates the transition, that is)?

While typing that, I realize also that NVN is not the only option to code stuff for the Switch since Vulkan and DirectX(?) are probably options too. That makes the problem for the hardware/API maker much harder, I imagine. Is that so? If yes, I imagine Nintendo will want to push the developers to using NVN2 exclusively so it can facilitate backwards compatibility with subsequent hardware in the Switch family.

APIs generally provide some level of abstraction, but they frequently "leak" details of the underlying implementation, especially in cases like NVN which are supposed to be very low level.

Games on Switch can use OpenGL or Vulkan (DirectX is a MS proprietary API), but those are much more hardware agnostic than NVN, so they're less of a concern for BC.

 

[Thraktor]

I still think that's too risky for a company like Nintendo. They'd want to hedge their bets a bit more, not outright call it a successor but still I guess treat it like one. The messaging will be really interesting to see.

Yeah, I'm really curious on how they present this (and what they call it). It really isn't following what I'd expect from them, so I'm just really unsure what approach they're taking.

 

[Hermii]

I think for 3DS they probably could have swapped out the CPU cores for newer ARM cores and maintained compatibility, but yeah, on the GPU side there wasn't much they could have done.

I worry that if they present it as a "pro" style device, and let's say call it the Switch+, then they would have the opposite issue in a couple of years time. People would have been happily buying the cheaper regular Switch thinking that the Switch+ is only for people who want to play in 4K or play a handful of 3rd party exclusives, and then Nintendo turns around and says they're only supporting Switch+ from now on. At this point I think they're better off presenting it at a successor, and just trying to be very clear with expectations, along the lines of "This is the next Switch, but don't worry, we'll still be supporting the original model for some time". In a sense having a big lineup of high-profile games launching as cross-gen titles reinforces that, as it shows existing Switch owners that they're not getting abandoned.

This, I dont know how its so hard. Because thats exactly what MS did with the Xbox Series. They even got a ton of criticism for it back at the old forum (until it turned out Sonys strategy was basically the same, they were just less upfront about it).

 

[Crusters]

I always thought that with the WiiU they were trying to make a switch, but had to give up when they realized the hardware wasn't there yet and remained with their pants down, forced to release a weird machine with a concept even them didn't really believe in (asynchronous gameplay).

What I can't figure out is why they kept the ppc750 CPU architecture for the GameCube for 3 freaking consoles.

 

[Thraktor]

This, I dont know how its so hard. Because thats exactly what MS did with the Xbox Series. They even got a ton of criticism for it back at the old forum (until it turned out Sonys strategy was basically the same, they were just less upfront about it).

Well there is one difference that I'd expect vs what Microsoft are doing, which is that I assume Nintendo will keep selling the original Switch for some time. At the very least the Switch Lite will stick around for a couple of years, but even the base model (whether it's the 2019 model or the OLED) will almost certainly be retained as a lower price option for a while.

 

[Hermii]

What I can't figure out is why they kept the ppc750 CPU architecture for the GameCube for 3 freaking consoles.

Simple, BC.

 

[Hermii]

Well there is one difference that I'd expect vs what Microsoft are doing, which is that I assume Nintendo will keep selling the original Switch for some time. At the very least the Switch Lite will stick around for a couple of years, but even the base model (whether it's the 2019 model or the OLED) will almost certainly be retained as a lower price option for a while.

Yea, MS replaced last gen with the series s as the low price option.

 

[Crusters]

Simple, BC.

I see this trotted out pretty often, but honestly, that sounds like turning lemons Into lemonade to me.

It does not sound nearly like a reason so strong they would keep using the product of a failed partnership, that resulted in 2 out of 3 of said products being dismal failures.

 

[Hermii]

I see this trotted out pretty often, but honestly, that sounds like turning lemons Into lemonade to me.

It does not sound nearly like a reason so strong they would keep using the product of a failed partnership, that resulted in 2 out of 3 of said products being dismal failures.

At the time they made that decision, it was 1 out of 2. And the Wii was a massive success.

Edit: and bc doesn’t only mean bc for games, it means they get to iterate on their old dev environment. Remember the Nvidia blog post about the 500 man years it took to create a brand new one?

 

[Thraktor]

I see this trotted out pretty often, but honestly, that sounds like turning lemons Into lemonade to me.

It does not sound nearly like a reason so strong they would keep using the product of a failed partnership, that resulted in 2 out of 3 of said products being dismal failures.

The Gamecube's failure couldn't be attributed to the choice of CPU architecture at all, it was generally a pretty good choice at the time (both MS and Sony switched to PPC for their next consoles). Meanwhile the Wii was obviously very successful, and with the Wii U they placed too high a priority on backwards compatibility when designing the hardware. After the failure of that they made a clean break with the Switch.

It's hardly that they "kept using the product of a failed partnership", it was only (partially) responsible for the failure of one console, and after that Nintendo dropped it.

 

[Crusters]

The Gamecube's failure couldn't be attributed to the choice of CPU architecture at all, it was generally a pretty good choice at the time (both MS and Sony switched to PPC for their next consoles). Meanwhile the Wii was obviously very successful, and with the Wii U they placed too high a priority on backwards compatibility when designing the hardware. After the failure of that they made a clean break with the Switch.

It's hardly that they "kept using the product of a failed partnership", it was only (partially) responsible for the failure of one console, and after that Nintendo dropped it.

Everything makes sense to me but the bolded. That sounds like trying to weave an explanation after the facts. I just have a hard time believing that, and have never seen any interviews or documentation where they talk about bc being such a high priority for the system, that they would design the core of the system around it.

 

[Hermii]

We ever

Everything makes sense to me but the bolded. That sounds like trying to weave an explanation after the facts. I just have a hard time believing that, and have never seen any interviews or documentation where they talk about bc being such a high priority for the system, that they would design the core of the system around it.

Check out Iwata Asks on the Wii U chipset.

 

[MP!]

Everything makes sense to me but the bolded. That sounds like trying to weave an explanation after the facts. I just have a hard time believing that, and have never seen any interviews or documentation where they talk about bc being such a high priority for the system, that they would design the core of the system around it.

that's literally what they did ... they built the wii hardware into the Wii U hardware in such a way it was expensive and underpowered.
The wii GPU is actually it's own little block if I remember correctly ....

Edit: Either way reading this again seems like their quest for low power consumption lead to the design of MCM and in turn deigning the wii transistors into the actual GPU...

Iwata Asks

iwataasks.nintendo.com

 

[Herb Alpert]

Also the weird "the console must be smaller than 3 DVD boxes"

 

[Z0m3le]

So while researching for this new video I'm doing about the 6 year old switch pro rumor, I came across a bunch of sources reporting that a new model of the Switch was suppose to launch in early 2021, what if the OLED model was delayed because of the pandemic, and that is why Drake is following so closely behind it?

 

[Thraktor]

Everything makes sense to me but the bolded. That sounds like trying to weave an explanation after the facts. I just have a hard time believing that, and have never seen any interviews or documentation where they talk about bc being such a high priority for the system, that they would design the core of the system around it.

Iwata specifically stated that "the Wii U had to be backwards compatible with the Wii" in the Iwata Asks where they discuss the Wii U hardware:

Shiota
Actually, a lot of the CPU and GPU designers this time have been working with us since development of Wii—which is a plus. They really like our products.
Iwata
Especially since the Wii U had to be backwards compatible with Wii.
Shiota
Yes. The designers were already incredibly familiar with the Wii, so without getting hung up on the two machines' completely different structures, they came up with ideas we would never have thought of. There were times when you would usually just incorporate both the Wii U and Wii circuits, like 1+1. But instead of just adding like that, they adjusted the new parts added to Wii U so they could be used for Wii as well.

 

[Crusters]

We ever

Check out Iwata Asks on the Wii U chipset.

That's the one with Genyo Takeda right? He said the main focus of the system was to adopt to the HD standard, and low power draw and high performance, not backwards compatability, this is why they sought out and adopted a soc and a multicore CPU. In fact the most oft cited goal was lowering power consumption.

'Low power high performance was Nintendo's decision to adopt a multi-core CPU and to "fully embrace" an MCM (multi chip module), which weds CPU and GPU in a single component'

BC is not mentioned for several pages, and while they did say 'especially since it must have bc with wii'.... It's after they said they were already with the same designers of the Wii (and GameCube) from the start.

In no way shape or form is anything they say indictive of the main driving force of the consoles design was BC, and the way it's brought up is as a fortunate bonus that made bc really easy for them. They were able to tweak and alter components to enable hardware bc, without compromising the design they wanted. And it did not come from Nintendo, they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought about'.

Shiota
Yes. The designers were already incredibly familiar with the Wii, so without getting hung up on the two machines' completely different structures, they came up with ideas we would never have thought of. There were times when you would usually just incorporate both the Wii U and Wii circuits, like 1+1. But instead of just adding like that, they adjusted the new parts added to Wii U so they could be used for Wii as well

They wanted the design, before they were surprised by easy hardware bc. Which means they were thinking about, or anticipating, acquiring bc through other solutions, it did not have to be through hardware aping the Wii, to meet the demand for 'it must have bc with wii'. BC was not the driving force of the design, and it's ease of implementation was a bonus due to still being with the same designers, not the main focus.

The whole bc explanation just doesn't add up with me. That chicken very clearly hatched from an already laid egg.

 

[Thraktor]

That's the one with Genyo Takeda right? He said the main focus of the system was to adopt to the HD standard, and low power draw and high performance, not backwards compatability, this is why they sought out and adopted a soc and a multicore CPU. In fact the most oft cited goal was lowering power consumption.

'Low power high performance was Nintendo's decision to adopt a multi-core CPU and to "fully embrace" an MCM (multi chip module), which weds CPU and GPU in a single component'

BC is not mentioned for several pages, and while they did say 'especially since it must have bc with wii'.... It's after they said they were already with the same designers of the Wii (and GameCube) from the start.

In no way shape or form is anything they say indictive of the main driving force of the consoles design was BC, and the way it's brought up is as a fortunate bonus that made bc really easy for them. They were able to tweak and alter components to enable hardware bc, without compromising the design they wanted. And it did not come from Nintendo, they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought about'.



They wanted the design. BC was not the driving force of the design, and it's ease of implementation was a bonus due to still being with the same designers, not the main focus.

The whole bc explanation just doesn't add up with me.

I really don't get what's so confusing here. The CEO literally said the console "had to have" BC. It was a design constraint. Changing the CPU architecture would have broken BC, therefore they couldn't do it.

 

[Hermii]

'Low power high performance was Nintendo's decision to adopt a multi-core CPU and to "fully embrace" an MCM (multi chip module), which weds CPU and GPU in a single component'

BC is not mentioned for several pages, and while they did say 'especially since it must have bc with wii'.... It's after they said they were already with the same designers of the Wii (and GameCube) from the start.

In no way shape or form is anything they say indictive of the main driving force of the consoles design was BC, and the way it's brought up is as a fortunate bonus that made bc really easy for them. They were able to tweak and alter components to enable hardware bc, without compromising the design they wanted. And it did not come from Nintendo, they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought about'.



They wanted the design. BC was not the driving force of the design, and it's ease of implementation was a bonus due to still being with the same designers, not the main focus.

The whole bc explanation just doesn't add up with me.

I mean, it says there quite clearly “it must have BC with the Wii”.

If you decided that as a requirement to not budge on, every decision you make will take that into account.

For example going with an mcm. If it wasn’t for the BC requirement, an APU from AMD would have been the logical choice.

 

[Crusters]

I really don't get what's so confusing here. The CEO literally said the console "had to have" BC. It was a design constraint. Changing the CPU architecture would have broken BC, therefore they couldn't do it.

Except we know there are other ways to provide bc. And not just including older hardware, The 360 came out well before the Wii u.

Nintendo was very obviously considering other ways before they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought of' for said partners. It wasn't the driving force of the design, it was a pleasant surprise they worked out during the process.

I find a contradiction in 'They showed us something we never would have thought of doing!' with 'This was the main reason they made the console this way.' particularly when the 'Things we would have never thought of' was specifically outlined as the very things people are using as an argument that was the main driving force of the console.

 

[Hermii]

Except we know there are other ways to provide bc. And not just including older hardware, The 360 came out well before the Wii u.

Nintendo was very obviously considering other ways before they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought of' for said partners. It wasn't the driving force of the design, it was a pleasant surprise they worked out during the process.

I find a contradiction in 'They showed us something we never would have thought of doing!' with 'This was the main reason they made the console this way.'

I mean, otherwise they would have just bolted on the Wii circuits in addition to the Wii U circuits, but the engineers found a way to make it work. Not having BC was never an option, they just engineered a slightly more elegant solution.

 

[MP!]

Except we know there are other ways to provide bc. And not just including older hardware, The 360 came out well before the Wii u.

Back then pretty much the only option was to just include a whole wii inside the wii U ... (or emulate wii on the Wii U but almost certainly it wouldn't have been powerful enough?) I'm also confused about your reference 360... it's not BC at all with the original xbox.

 

[Crusters]

I mean, otherwise they would have just bolted on the Wii circuits in addition to the Wii U circuits, but the engineers found a way to make it work. Not having BC was never an option, they just engineered a slightly more elegant solution.

That's not an argument I have been making. I never said anything about no bc. I've been questioning this particular implementation of bc being the main driving force of the design. Which the Iwata asks being used as an argument shows was actually a surprise they would have never thought of themselves.

So once again, if that is the case, why the Frankensteined tri core ppc750?

Back then pretty much the only option was to just include a whole wii inside the wii U ... I'm also confused about your 360... it's not BC at all with the original xbox.

I can stick most of the discs from my Xbox library Into my 360 and play them.

I was playing call of Cthulhu just the other day.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Except we know there are other ways to provide bc. And not just including older hardware, The 360 came out well before the Wii u.

Nintendo was very obviously considering other ways before they were pleasantly surprised by 'things we would have never thought of' for said partners. It wasn't the driving force of the design, it was a pleasant surprise they worked out during the process.

I find a contradiction in 'They showed us something we never would have thought of doing!' with 'This was the main reason they made the console this way.'

Ah. Let me see if I can rephrase. The Wii U is built around the same CPU as the Wii and GameCube because it was the most efficient way to get Backwards Compatibility. If Big N wanted As Much Power As Possible, Damn Efficiency, AND backwards compat, they probably would have gone with a different solution. If their goal was As Much Power As Possible, As Power Efficient As Possible, they might have gone with a different solution.

The "surprise" is that the designers figured out how to use the Wii backwards compatibility hardware for Wii U's purposes, limiting how much hardware they had to stick in the device. To quote the Interview

There were times when you would usually just incorporate both the Wii U and Wii circuits, like 1+1. But instead of just adding like that, they adjusted the new parts added to Wii U so they could be used for Wii as well.

In other words, the default design was "Stick a whole Wii in there for backwards compatbility." But they didn't they decided to share hardware. And we know they're not referring to anything other than the MCM because the next lines of the interview are

Iwata
And that made the semiconductor smaller.
Shiota
Right. What's more, power consumption fell. That was an idea that only designers familiar with Wii could have put forth. We were able to make such a small semiconductor because so much wisdom bubbled up!

If you look at the MCM there is only one part that is shared between Wii games and Wii U games. That's the CPU cores. Which goes back to what Hermii said about why they kept the CPU for three consoles

Simple, BC.

Was that their only choice? No, they could have gone with a new CPU for the Wii U and included a PowerPC pair for Wii BC. Again:

There were times when you would usually just incorporate both the Wii U and Wii circuits, like 1+1.

But the chip designers convinced them that they could more efficiently build the WiiU around the same CPU.

They did decide to include a new GPU that was not BC, and the solution there was to include a backwards compatible GPU but make it part of the MMC instead of putting it in as a separate piece of hardware.

TL;DR, the Wii U shares the CPU with the Wii and the GameCube because it was the most efficient way of achieving Backwards Compatibility.

 

[MP!]

That's not an argument I have been making. I never said anything about no bc. I've been questioning this particular implementation of bc being the main driving force of the design. Which the Iwata asks being used as an argument shows was actually a surprise they would have never thought of themselves.

So once again, if that is the case, why the Frankensteined tri core ppc750?



I can stick most of the discs from my Xbox library Into my 360 and play them.

I was playing call of Cthulhu just the other day.

I see what you mean but those were essentially ports that you could download from the store using software emulation... the hardware was not BC in anyway ... but if you're saying nintendo could take a similar approach and make software compatibility by doing just what MS did there ... I suppose they could. But clearly they thought hardware compatibility was the better option... and then designed the mcm around compatibility and energy efficiencey

edit: for what it's worth I think if they would have picked an apu from AMD at the time and then done software emulation it would have probably been a better received more developer supported machine...
BUT
I don't think nintendo was willing to spend the time case by case creating compatibility for each game ... and you can see in their design choices they preferred a blanket cover all approach of designing the wii hardware into the Wii U logic as to not have to take that approach.
So yeah I agree with you there ... there were other options.
But it's clear Nintendo Designed the wii U around maintaining Backwards compatibility otherwise WHY would it be so limited in it's design?

 

[Deleted member 887]

TL;DR, the Wii U shares the CPU with the Wii and the GameCube because it was the most efficient way of achieving Backwards Compatibility.

Addendum: I suppose it's also possible that they're referring to the bus between the GPUs here - that by going with an MCM, they could stick the GPU for the Wii and the GPU for the Wii U inside the same chip, and because only one is powered on at a time, they could share on die hardware connecting them to the CPUs.

 

[ILikeFeet]

there's a new RT bench out that also supports linux. maybe we can see how well the Gabe Boy can do RT for comparison's sake

 

[Hermii]

That's not an argument I have been making. I never said anything about no bc. I've been questioning this particular implementation of bc being the main driving force of the design. Which the Iwata asks being used as an argument shows was actually a surprise they would have never thought of themselves.

So once again, if that is the case, why the Frankensteined tri core ppc750?



I can stick most of the discs from my Xbox library Into my 360 and play them.

I was playing call of Cthulhu just the other day.

Because they needed a ppc 750 for BC?

 

[Crusters]

Back then pretty much the only option was to just include a whole wii inside the wii U ... I'm also confused about your 360... it's not BC at all with the original xbox.

Ah. Let me see if I can rephrase. The Wii U is built around the same CPU as the Wii and GameCube because it was the most efficient way to get Backwards Compatibility. If Big N wanted As Much Power As Possible, Damn Efficiency, AND backwards compat, they probably would have gone with a different solution. If their goal was As Much Power As Possible, As Power Efficient As Possible, they might have gone with a different solution.

The "surprise" is that the designers figured out how to use the Wii backwards compatibility hardware for Wii U's purposes, limiting how much hardware they had to stick in the device. To quote the Interview


In other words, the default design was "Stick a whole Wii in there for backwards compatbility." But they didn't they decided to share hardware. And we know they're not referring to anything other than the MCM because the next lines of the interview are

If you look at the MCM there is only one part that is shared between Wii games and Wii U games. That's the CPU cores. Which goes back to what Hermii said about why they kept the CPU for three consoles


Was that their only choice? No, they could have gone with a new CPU for the Wii U and included a PowerPC pair for Wii BC. Again:

But the chip designers convinced them that they could more efficiently build the WiiU around the same CPU.

They did decide to include a new GPU that was not BC, and the solution there was to include a backwards compatible GPU but make it part of the MMC instead of putting it in as a separate piece of hardware.

TL;DR, the Wii U shares the CPU with the Wii and the GameCube because it was the most efficient way of achieving Backwards Compatibility.

Yeah, exactly. Now we arrive at.

Why on earth was Nintendo still with ibm so this would even be a thing?

I mean I know they had a multiyear contract they started in the early 2000's (late late 90's?) But how long do those last?

But ibm was NOT in a good place after the Wii released and during the Wii is dev process with their partnership with apple, or for a gaming companies needs at that time, they were having trouble delivering competitive products that worked irrc they were stuck trying to move past 90nm among a host of other issues. Apple was getting pissed. IBM literally could not deliver.

Did IBM even have anything coming out in the gaming space anymore during the lead up to the Wii u?

It's a business, not a friendship. Why on Earth was Nintendo still with them?

 

[Instro]

I still think that's too risky for a company like Nintendo. They'd want to hedge their bets a bit more, not outright call it a successor but still I guess treat it like one. The messaging will be really interesting to see.

I'm reminded that they spent like 2 years saying the Switch wasn't a replacement for the 3DS lol. So we'll probably see that happen again.

 

[Hermii]

Yeah, exactly. Now we arrive at.

Why on earth was Nintendo still with ibm so this would even be a thing?

I mean I know they had a multiyear contract they started in the early 2000's (late late 90's?) But how long do those last?

But ibm was NOT in a good place after the Wii released and during the Wii is dev process with their partnership with apple, or for a gaming companies needs at that time, they were having trouble delivering competitive products that worked irrc they were stuck trying to move past 90nm among a host of other issues. Apple was getting pissed. IBM literally could not deliver.

Did IBM even have anything coming out in the gaming space anymore during the lead up to the Wii u?

It's a business, not a friendship. Why on Earth was Nintendo still with them?

Honestly aren’t you fucking way late to the party, to be mad at this now?

 

[Crusters]

Honestly aren’t you fucking way late to the party, to be mad at this now?

Ha ha of course not.

I was just wailing like a baby because I found out my gbc bc was not a perfect replication of Gb games like 2 pages ago.

 

[Hermii]

Ha ha of course not.

I was just wailing like a baby because I found out my gbc bc was not a perfect replication of Gb games like 2 pages ago.

Just savour the fact that the Wii U is one of the greatest homebrew devices ever, partly in thanks to that ppc cpu.

 

[MP!]

Yeah, exactly. Now we arrive at.

Why on earth was Nintendo still with ibm so this would even be a thing?

I mean I know they had a multiyear contract they started in the early 2000's (late late 90's?) But how long do those last?

But ibm was NOT in a good place after the Wii released and during the Wii is dev process with their partnership with apple, or for a gaming companies needs at that time, they were having trouble delivering competitive products that worked irrc they were stuck trying to move past 90nm among a host of other issues. Apple was getting pissed. IBM literally could not deliver.

Did IBM even have anything coming out in the gaming space anymore during the lead up to the Wii u?

It's a business, not a friendship. Why on Earth was Nintendo still with them?

I think we were all surprised they stuck with PPC

 

[Deleted member 887]

Ha ha of course not.

I was just wailing like a baby because I found out my gbc bc was not a perfect replication of Gb games like 2 pages ago.

haha - for what it's worth, I think every game actually was "perfect." You could make a program if you wanted to see the differences in processors, but the identical screen refresh rate means that even if you managed to keep pokemon running for days, you wouldn't see an issue.

 

[Crusters]

Just savour the fact that the Wii U is one of the greatest homebrew devices ever, partly in thanks to that ppc cpu.

Oh dude, until the GTA trilogy fixes itself on switch reVC is.....

I mean I have no idea what you are talking about.

You a cop?

 

[My Tulpa]

The R&D for this SoC is exponentially higher than it would be for something like Mariko or OLED; this isn’t up for debate: a die shrink and an OLED screen are frankly cheap compared to engineering an SoC that’s designed on a completely new architecture (and all its requisite engineering advances) than the one in use that was designed 7 years ago. So it needs an exponentially larger ROI than either of those pieces of hardware did.

While true that the R&D spending by Nintendo in FY20/21 was $250 million more than they spent FY17/18 or FY18/19, it should be noted that back for those revisions they spent ~11% of their revenue those years on R&D.

For last year, they spent only ~5% of their revenue.

Contextually, it’s not as big of a deal you are making it out to be here.

Like I said earlier, Nintendo now knows the value of an upgrade model mid way to keep engagement of a system high in its later life. This investment will pay dividends in Switch software sales 2022-2027 (they even alluded to this in their last investors meeting)

Also, saying Nintendo regrets not releasing a Wii HD console makes you sound like Michael Pachter, all without having any evidence to suggest a Wii HD would have made a difference in the outcome there; the Wii audience didn’t walk away because they wanted better graphics, this is pretty well-documented to not be the case.

I’m not speculating on what I think would have happened nor what Patcher thinks. I’m relating what Nintendo said themselves about not dealing with HD earlier.

Is the GPU the only thing being updated here? No? Then there’s gameplay differences to be had with new hardware. Just to name some things that the SoC coupled with other hardware advances will allow beyond image quality off the top of my head:

• Faster load times (better CPU + potentially faster storage)
• Higher volume of enemies/objects on screen without greatly diminishing image quality or frame rate to achieve it
• Significantly improved AI (far more performant CPU + GPU Tensor cores), meaning...
  • far easier implementation of rollback netcode
  • smarter computer enemy/NPC activity
  • hardware much more suitable for simulation games
• Faster internet connectivity (currently bottlenecked/artificially capped by RAM and write speed on storage, as I understand it)
• Bluetooth 5 functionality, which means…
  • Diminished input lag
  • Longer battery life for controllers without requiring larger batteries

To boil this hardware advancement down to "better image quality", even when looking only at the SoC itself, is reductive to the point of disbelief.

You listed things I imagine 3rd party devs care about than Nintendo, tbh.

Like I said, the focus on what this does different when Nintendo releases it will be the graphics/performance upgrade. That’s it. It will be seen as that.

Also, if Nintendo wants to utilize the tensor cores for AI (maybe AR?) gameplay that the other Switches can’t do? Then of course they will make exclusives for it. I expect some more “niche” titles to be exclusive to this new model.

I was talking about the majority of Nintendo efforts will be playable across all systems.

 

[t_kermi]

if it was a docked version of current switch, $200 is definitely feasible.

But for a brand new model that is using Drake? At least $350 because it is a huge upgrade and it it's a new chip/tech. and it's gotten more features than a Series S..

Would be really awkward to price this vs a $300 OLED model tbqh. Even if it is home only.

Yeah, I'm thinking something like $499 MSRP for this new Switch. And the Switch OLED price dropping to $319. If new hardware is that ~5x raw performance, possibility with larger battery and other improvements / new components - it's really strange to price it any lower than say $449.

Personally I would prefer expensive (up to $699), powerful hardware with actively cooled dock and 25W / 30W SoC TDP using TSMC N5P / N4 and 16GB fast RAM. This could give ~3,5 TFLOPS raw performance and nice practical results with DLSS.