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

[BlueManifest]

No, the current Switch is 12nm. The original was 20nm.

I got it backwards they thought the launch switch was going to be 16 and it ended up being 20

 

[Hermii]

Wasn’t 8nm always the rumor though?

I remember everyone thought the current switch would be 12nm for sure and it ended up at 16nm

Everyone did think the switch would be 16nm, instead we got an off the shelf tx1 at 20.

And yeah, 8nm was always the rumour for t239. What’s making that rumor borderline ridiculous is the Nvidia leak confirming 12sm. Seems way to big and power hungry for an 8nm handheld.

 

[BlueManifest]

Everyone did think the switch would be 16nm, instead we got an off the shelf tx1 at 20.

And yeah, 8nm was always the rumour for t239. What’s making that rumor borderline ridiculous is the Nvidia leak confirming 12sm. Seems way to big and power hungry for an 8nm handheld.

If that’s true it could point to a stationary switch supplemental system, or a larger hybrid switch with bigger battery

 

[Hermii]

If that’s true it could point to a stationary switch supplemental system, or a larger hybrid switch with bigger battery

It’s actually wrong calling it a leak, it was straight up theft from nvidias server. So the veracity is indisputable.

I find both of those unlikely though. Imo the far most likely answer, is that t239 is not 8nm. Those rumors probably originated from Orin being 8nm, and maybe Orin hardware was in early dev kits. Or leakers just assumed 8nm because of Orin.

 

[Brofield]

I think it may have been explained at some point at the old place (hell I very well might have asked and just forgotten), but what kind of differences/gains can be expected from the different sizes of 20nm/16nm/12nm/8nm/5nm?

I'm assuming something along the lines of smaller = better/more efficient, but for what purpose flies over my head, and what it means if it's smaller that something else can be fit in its place

 

[ILikeFeet]

I think it may have been explained at some point at the old place (hell I very well might have asked and just forgotten), but what kind of differences/gains can be expected from the different sizes of 20nm/16nm/12nm/8nm/5nm?

I'm assuming something along the lines of smaller = better/more efficient, but for what purpose flies over my head, and what it means if it's smaller that something else can be fit in its place

important to note that the names are marketing now. and because of such, 20nm/16nm/12nm are all very similar. also note that these names mean different things depending on the fabricator. but you are right that smaller is generally better. 8nm refers to samsung's 8nm, which is just an enhanced 10nm. samsung has a 5nm, but it's different than tsmc's 5nm. so it's why we list the fab alongside the node when not talking about a product in particular

samsung 8nm is speculated to really not be a good fit for what we know of the SoC for the successor, but tsmc 5nm is

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Wasn’t 8nm always the rumor though?

I remember everyone thought the current switch would be 12nm for sure and it ended up at 16nm

12nm is 16nm, with minor improvements.

 

[Deleted member 887]

I think it may have been explained at some point at the old place (hell I very well might have asked and just forgotten), but what kind of differences/gains can be expected from the different sizes of 20nm/16nm/12nm/8nm/5nm?

In the Olden Days, this referred to, basically, how small your transistors were. That meaning is way fuzzier now, but the rough trend is the same - smaller process nodes means, at best, that the amount of electricity needed goes down, while the number of chips you can make out of the same wafer of silicon goes up, which makes the final product cheaper.

In the modern era, there are some limits to that. Newer nodes are less mature, so while the theoretical maximum number of chips you can make with the same amount of silicon goes up, the actual maximum might stay the same or even go down, as a finicky node can make more chips that don't pass QA. And as the "size" of the process has become more about marketing than about a hard definition of transistor size, you can't compare 8nm at one company to 8nm at another in the way you once could.

Chips are designed for one process node, and can usually be "die shrunk" to a smaller node in the same family, which means "build it exactly the same but smaller". This how Mariko Switches got better battery life - the die shrunk version of the X1 can run at the same speed but lower power.

 

[Shiba]

Pretty sure we heard absolutely nothing about the Switch until July 2016.

I could have sworn it was earlier but from what I’m digging it seems like people speculated that it would be some type of hybrid based on patents and the eurogamer report was the first actual piece of what the NX. So yeah it’s possible that a similar scenario can happen.

That being said I also recall that the next systems were usually mentioned far in advanced either saying “the next console is in development” or something of the similar but never in a glorified manner. As we knew it was coming in 2017.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

I could have sworn it was earlier but from what I’m digging it seems like people speculated that it would be some type of hybrid based on patents and the eurogamer report was the first actual piece of what the NX. So yeah it’s possible that a similar scenario can happen.

That being said I also recall that the next systems were usually mentioned far in advanced either saying “the next console is in development” or something of the similar but never in a glorified manner. As we knew it was coming in 2017.

People consider them announcing project NX at a conference in 2014 as them officially announcing the switch, others consider the October thing or January thing (whenever it was) as the official announcement.

No one really knew what NX was though until close to launch from official sources. No one knew of the specs of the switch until 3.5 months before launch.

Microsoft announced Project Scarlett during June 2019 and then officially revealed the console later that year are the Game Awards. They did not reveal project Lockhart until a few months before release but there were some leaks about that.

I think people have to consider that applying the scenario that happened with Microsoft which is a leaky as hell ship to Nintendo which by comparison is as stable as the switch updates is already Apples to Oranges.


Even with Sony rumors were all over the place with the PS5 like 16 RDNA2 TFLOPs and 16 Zen 3 cores, and then within a year of the PS5 release there was that the data breach happened to AMD we found out details about the PS5 like it being Navi 1/RDNA1 based at the time. Turned out to be a hybrid RDNA1+2 approach and what was read was earlier information of how things turned out to be.

 

[Dakhil]

Qualcomm wants to buy a stake in Arm alongside its rivals

Cristiano Amon says UK chip designer is an ‘important asset’ in $500bn semiconductor market

www.ft.com

The US chipmaker Qualcomm wants to buy a stake in Arm alongside its rivals and create a consortium that would maintain the UK chip designer's neutrality in the highly competitive semiconductor market.
⋮
"We're an interested party in investing," Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm's chief executive, told the Financial Times. "It's a very important asset and it's an asset which is going to be essential to the development of our industry."
⋮

⋮
He added that Qualcomm, one of Arm's biggest customers, could join forces with other chipmakers to buy Arm outright if the consortium making the purchase was "big enough". Such a move could settle concerns over the corporate control of Arm after the upcoming IPO.

"You'd need to have many companies participating so they have a net effect that Arm is independent," he said.
⋮

Amon's intervention will give renewed momentum to the idea of a syndicate of chipmakers becoming cornerstone investors in Arm. Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger suggested that the US chipmaker could support such a move earlier this year.
⋮
"Arm has won everywhere because of the collective investment of the entire ecosystem, from companies like Apple and Qualcomm and many others, and that's because it was an independent, open architecture that everybody could invest in," said Amon, referring to the period before SoftBank purchased the company.
⋮

Amon said Qualcomm had not spoken to SoftBank about a potential investment in Arm. He added that the Japanese group had been prioritising resolving an impasse at Arm's renegade China unit.
⋮
Investing in Arm alongside rivals would "support a successful IPO and valuation" and ensure that the company continued "striving and investing", said Amon.

Here's the archive to the Financial Times article if anyone wants to read it.
And also, fuck Qualcomm.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

9 months in advance I'm looking for something a little stronger than an easily fakeable factory leak from some sketchy forum in China. We had so many leaks coming out at this point before the switch released. Same with the PS5 and Xbox. You cant hide something like a new console launch. We should be hearing about games coming to it, hearing about part orders, hearing rumors about the name and so many other things. But we're hearing nothing. We're getting far fewer leaks for this than for the switch pro which didn't even happen.

When there were rumors about the tablet and detachable controllers form factor for NX, that was a pretty big deal. But it's kind of impossible to have an equivalently notable story this time when it would probably be "Breaking: Next Switch form factor still the same!" We never heard anything about the Switch name until Nintendo told us.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

BREAKING NEWS: The Switch 2 is a tablet with detachable controllers according to sources.

I’m sorry but is this what people want to see as reports/“leaks” about the switch 2 to know that it is coming

You don’t need a report to know that the switch 2 will be a switch sequel.


And no, I don’t think Nintendo is abandoning their portable console market. And because of the way the switch is, it already limits what they can do next.

 

[Multiverse]

People downplaying the DLSS leak as if it was a “given“.
No one knows that for sure and a lot people were screaming “Nintendo only use wither technology, they would never do something like that. They would never do 4k blah blah blah”.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

People downplaying the DLSS leak as if it was a “given“.
No one knows that for sure and a lot people were screaming “Nintendo only use wither technology, they would never do something like that. They would never do 4k blah blah blah”.

You forgot Ray Tracing too. Nintendo would never use that!


Ignore that the API includes Ray Tracing.

 

[ShadowFox08]

I don't think a lot of people were expecting RT in a switch 2 tbqh, including me. It takes up a lot of GPU performance and made DLSS a necessity since it cut performance by half. So at the time, something we guessed in ~2 TFLOP console a year or so ago, it didn't seem feasible to use it on such a relatively low power console when we have 6tflop turing RTX 2060 struggle with it.

And then I believe it was Nate who heard from someone that RT may be coming but they had to reduce the count of RT cores because it affected the power draw or something.

And then we hear about mobile tech using RT vis tech demos and actually see it being used in some capacity in action on Steam Deck, and all of a sudden it does seem doable..

 

[SiG]

I don't think a lot of people were expecting RT in a switch 2 tbqh, including me. It takes up a lot of GPU performance and made DLSS a necessity since it cut performance by half. So at the time, something we guessed in ~2 TFLOP console a year or so ago, it didn't seem feasible to use it on such a relatively low power console when we have 6tflop turing RTX 2060 struggle with it.

And then I believe it was Nate who heard from someone that RT may be coming but they had to reduce the count of RT cores because it affected the power draw or something.

And then we hear about mobile tech using RT vis tech demos and actually see it being used in some capacity in action on Steam Deck, and all of a sudden it does seem doable..

I don't know if it's because of Nvidia. If anyone could figure out mobile RT that keeps within the limits of the power envelope it's probably going to be them.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I've always believed

 

[Mr Swine]

I don't think a lot of people were expecting RT in a switch 2 tbqh, including me. It takes up a lot of GPU performance and made DLSS a necessity since it cut performance by half. So at the time, something we guessed in ~2 TFLOP console a year or so ago, it didn't seem feasible to use it on such a relatively low power console when we have 6tflop turing RTX 2060 struggle with it.

And then I believe it was Nate who heard from someone that RT may be coming but they had to reduce the count of RT cores because it affected the power draw or something.

And then we hear about mobile tech using RT vis tech demos and actually see it being used in some capacity in action on Steam Deck, and all of a sudden it does seem doable..

To be Frank, Drake should have a vastly superior Ray Tracing performance over Steam Deck thanks to its uArch.

RDNA2 Ray tracing performance suffers more than Nvidia Ray tracing with lower bandwidth.

Drake if it has 102GB/s bandwidth should be theoretically closer to 130GB/s thanks to it’s memory compression and more.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

And then I believe it was Nate who heard from someone that RT may be coming but they had to reduce the count of RT cores because it affected the power draw or something

This didn’t actually happen.

What happened was that there were battery concerns, but there wasn’t anything on RT cores being removed.

Nor is that easy.

And there isn’t any mobile hardware with RT hardware, if desktop hardware fit into a form that is small enough for laptops at best, a small NUC at worst.

ARM Mali GPUs use software ray tracing

Which is horrendously low in terms of performance.

To be Frank, Drake should have a vastly superior Ray Tracing performance over Steam Deck thanks to its uArch.

RDNA2 Ray tracing performance suffers more than Nvidia Ray tracing with lower bandwidth.

Drake if it has 102GB/s bandwidth should be theoretically closer to 130GB/s thanks to it’s memory compression and more.

Where did you get 130 from?

 

[Dekuman]

When you're in the middle of the rumor phase, it never feels anything is enough or all the pieces make sennse
A lot of the Switch rumors only became credible after the reveal then we went back and retroactively said this one was true and look we knew about this detail X months before release!

In reality if you asked someone following the NX leaks in June 2016 how they felt about no NX news at E3 and likelihood of an early 2017 release, you may have gotten a much more conservative answer. Granted with the NX, we knew Wii U needed to be replaced and the NX codename itself was announced by Iwata a year prior, so there was perhaps a stronger sense 'this thing is coming'

Scott the Woz does a good breakdown of the major leaks and fake rumors leading up to the NX reveal. I leave it up to you guys to decide if we're in a similar situation or not.

 

[ILikeFeet]

To be Frank, Drake should have a vastly superior Ray Tracing performance over Steam Deck thanks to its uArch.

RDNA2 Ray tracing performance suffers more than Nvidia Ray tracing with lower bandwidth.

Drake if it has 102GB/s bandwidth should be theoretically closer to 130GB/s thanks to it’s memory compression and more.

personally, I don't like taking theoreticals into contention too much

 

[Hermii]

When you're in the middle of the rumor phase, it never feels anything is enough or all the pieces make sennse
A lot of the Switch rumors only became credible after the reveal then we went back and retroactively said this one was true and look we knew about this detail X months before release!

In reality if you asked someone following the NX leaks in June 2016 how they felt about no NX news at E3 and likelihood of an early 2017 release, you may have gotten a much more conservative answer. Granted with the NX, we knew Wii U needed to be replaced and the NX codename itself was announced by Iwata a year prior, so there was perhaps a stronger sense 'this thing is coming'

Scott the Woz does a good breakdown of the major leaks and fake rumors leading up to the NX reveal. I leave it up to you guys to decide if we're in a similar situation or not.

The major difference between then and now, is these are much more uncertain times.

Back when Switch launch there wasn’t a chip shortage, Covid lockdowns in china and war in Europe.

Even if a rumor is 100% legit at the time, it might not turn out for reasons beyond anyones control.

 

[Dekuman]

The major difference between then and now, is these are much more uncertain times.

Back when Switch launch there wasn’t a chip shortage, Covid lockdowns in china and war in Europe.

Even if a rumor is 100% legit at the time, it might not turn out for reasons beyond anyones control.

i agree, and Nintendo at the time was pretty open there was a next console coming , but I think their motivation then was to reassure people they aren't going away. With a successfull product, their motivation now is more about maximizing sales and managing transition so people don't hold off purchases too early.

 

[Mr Swine]

This didn’t actually happen.

What happened was that there were battery concerns, but there wasn’t anything on RT cores being removed.

Nor is that easy.

And there isn’t any mobile hardware with RT hardware, if desktop hardware fit into a form that is small enough for laptops at best, a small NUC at worst.

ARM Mali GPUs use software ray tracing

Which is horrendously low in terms of performance.


Where did you get 130 from?

personally, I don't like taking theoreticals into contention too much

I was thinking of this Nvidia memory compression which should be updated/enhanced to get out more effective memory bandwidth compared to what Tegra X1 can

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

When you're in the middle of the rumor phase, it never feels anything is enough or all the pieces make sennse
A lot of the Switch rumors only became credible after the reveal then we went back and retroactively said this one was true and look we knew about this detail X months before release!

In reality if you asked someone following the NX leaks in June 2016 how they felt about no NX news at E3 and likelihood of an early 2017 release, you may have gotten a much more conservative answer. Granted with the NX, we knew Wii U needed to be replaced and the NX codename itself was announced by Iwata a year prior, so there was perhaps a stronger sense 'this thing is coming'

Scott the Woz does a good breakdown of the major leaks and fake rumors leading up to the NX reveal. I leave it up to you guys to decide if we're in a similar situation or not.

I need a bit of time to process information and how it is being compared, see I was not there during the entire Nintendo switch pre-launch speculation. I was pretty much a very casual gamer that didn’t really pay much attention to online stuff at the time, online stuff like this that is. I was basically pretty much a Normie. All my gaming news came from my friends at the time.

However this is wild, Mochizuki reported apparently that there were Nintendo switch development kits that went out, yet a year to a year and a half later is when they were actual specs leaked of this device which ended up being the tegra X1 specs that were leaked.

Devkits October 2015, but spec leaks December 2016

 

[ShadowFox08]

This didn’t actually happen.

What happened was that there were battery concerns, but there wasn’t anything on RT cores being removed.

Nor is that easy.

And there isn’t any mobile hardware with RT hardware, if desktop hardware fit into a form that is small enough for laptops at best, a small NUC at worst.

ARM Mali GPUs use software ray tracing

Which is horrendously low in terms of performance.


Where did you get 130 from?

oh yeah a battery issue. Could have sworn the rumor said something about less cores or disabling them.

True that there isn't any "mobile" hardware with RT yet in a traditional sense, but even though Steam Deck is treated like a mini PC--it might as well be treated as mobile if it isn't already. That's how I saw it already with it's power, form factor and tdp, despite it running on windows. Its semantics really.

I was thinking of this Nvidia memory compression which should be updated/enhanced to get out more effective memory bandwidth compared to what Tegra X1 can

Besides Nvidia compression that has helped tx1 somewhat (and maybe rasterization or tile based rendering or w/e), the increased cache from Orion (more than standard ampere) should help tremendously as well. It's going to be really interesting seeing switch 2 games going head to head with PS4.
Weren't 50 GB/s GPU Turing cards already not breaking a sweat vs xbone games with similar GPU performance? I don't think we'll have to worry reaching ps4 parity and somehow getting bottle necked by bandwidth.

 

[Mr Swine]

Besides Nvidia compression that has helped tx1 somewhat (and maybe rasterization or tile based rendering or w/e), the increased cache from Orion (more than standard ampere) should help tremendously as well. It's going to be really interesting seeing switch 2 games going head to head with PS4.
Weren't 50 GB/s GPU Turing cards already not breaking a sweat vs xbone games with similar GPU performance? I don't think we'll have to worry reaching ps4 parity and somehow getting bottle necked by bandwidth.

Seeing how ”outdated“ the version is on tx1, latest version should be much more effective/efficient together with the other compressions introduced in the later uArchs. If Drake indeed has more cache it should theoretically stand toe to toe with PS4 GDDR5 bandwidth

I haven’t heard about 50 GB/s Turing not breaking a sweat but it should be true since it’s such a long gap generation wise from GCN to Turing (and all the advances made)

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Can we talk about RAM latency for a second? I feel like that’s an important discussion to have.

For the record, GDDR has worse latency than DDR but it has higher memory bandwidth.

Granted, with the switch they’ll use LPDDR so it isn’t like GDDR with respect to latency, but I wonder if there’s a way they can reduce the latency as much as possible without being too complex.

 

[Falcatops]

Can we talk about RAM latency for a second? I feel like that’s an important discussion to have.

For the record, GDDR has worse latency than DDR but it has higher memory bandwidth.

Granted, with the switch they’ll use LPDDR so it isn’t like GDDR with respect to latency, but I wonder if there’s a way they can reduce the latency as much as possible without being too complex.

Sure, RAM is an important topic. Nintendo did have a problem with RAM latency with the N64’s Rambus DRAM (RDRAM).
Rambus had a huge bandwidth at the time but suffered from severe latency, and even in some cases (like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine) the devs preferred to stream data and textures directly from the cart instead of going through RAM because the latency was lower.

According to Wikipedia the N64 carts had a bandwidth of 264 MB/s while the RDRAM had 562.5 MB/s. So that makes me think that maybe the N64 had more than double the RAM bandwidth it really needed. (I know it doesn’t work that way, but it’s a simplification)

Also, to make matters worse, the CPU had to access the RAM through the RCP which added even more latency.

I don’t know the specific differences in latency between modern LPDDR, GDDR and DDR but AFAIK devs have mentioned that one bottleneck in the current Switch is the RAM bandwidth and not it’s latency per se.

Edit: and maybe a way to reduce latency is increasing CPU/GPU cache size to avoid going to RAM as much as possible, but that increases costs too.

---

Edit2: the RDRAM wasn’t the only problem with the N64, another problem was the small texture cache (TMEM) that was only 4kb in size.

MVG talks about TMEM and other problems in this video, and at 7:10 he talks specifically about the RDRAM problem.

Spoiler

 

[ShadowFox08]

Seeing how ”outdated“ the version is on tx1, latest version should be much more effective/efficient together with the other compressions introduced in the later uArchs. If Drake indeed has more cache it should theoretically stand toe to toe with PS4 GDDR5 bandwidth

I haven’t heard about 50 GB/s Turing not breaking a sweat but it should be true since it’s such a long gap generation wise from GCN to Turing (and all the advances made)

I believe it was z0mbie who made that comparison on the older site. To be fair the 50 GB/s was the VRAM on the turing video cards that were around 1 TFLOP, and it doesn't account for separate RAM on a PC.

 

[BlueManifest]

I need a bit of time to process information and how it is being compared, see I was not there during the entire Nintendo switch pre-launch speculation. I was pretty much a very casual gamer that didn’t really pay much attention to online stuff at the time, online stuff like this that is. I was basically pretty much a Normie. All my gaming news came from my friends at the time.

However this is wild, Mochizuki reported apparently that there were Nintendo switch development kits that went out, yet a year to a year and a half later is when they were actual specs leaked of this device which ended up being the tegra X1 specs that were leaked.

Devkits October 2015, but spec leaks December 2016

Devkits leaked October 2015 and the system released in 2017? That about lines up with this system dev kits leaking in 2020 and the system coming in 22 or 23

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Edit: and maybe a way to reduce latency is increasing CPU/GPU cache size to avoid going to RAM as much as possible, but that increases costs too.

Seems like the GPU would have 1024*1024*4 bytes of L2 cache and they can access the CPU L3 cache before going to the system RAM. But this last part is inherent to Tegra SOCs.

Devkits leaked October 2015 and the system released in 2017? That about lines up with this system dev kits leaking in 2020 and the system coming in 22 or 23

Would that count as a leak really? Wouldn’t it be simply reporting from a financial news company?


But really, my main point with mentioning the time frame, is that I see countless places mention about how there are dev kits but there are no leaks and that because there are no leaks from devs (yet?) that the Mochizuki report is a lie and he made it all up.

Yet, the very Switch that used an off the shelf component and only very close to the launch of the system is only time we actually got specifications leaks on the ram, the CPU, the CUDA Core count, the architecture, etc.

People had to wait over a year. Despite dev kits being out in the wild for ages apparently! The thing should have leaked ages ago and it did not!

We may not have any specific leaks with regards to specifications of a system from developers at the moment, but judging by how much they got away with the spec leaks, I’m willing to believe that it’s not impossible for Nintendo to get more away from it than others.

People are applying what happens to Microsoft and Sony with respect to leaks on their hardware as though it is comparable to Nintendo, but it is not really comparable! They got away with it and probably will get away with it again with it being close to launch that we get actual numbers from a developer! Microsoft is especially a very leaky ship and very open, and AMD is more open to leaks than NVidia (sans Kopite7Kimi)

And we may not get any leak until it’s close to launch so it would be months waiting until it’s close to being out in the public.



We aren’t going to get leaks period of a system that isn’t announced yet, and people should stop saying that because no tech specs of the soc have leaked from developers that A) it was made up from financial reports, B) it means nothing is really happening and C) that it means it’s several years off.


Unless they can explain how Nintendo got away with a TX1 getting leaked over a year after initial report of developer kits and not a few months after despite being an off the shelf part and nothing really special.

 

[LiC]

Seems like the GPU would have 1024*1024*4 bytes of L2 cache and they can access the CPU L3 cache before going to the system RAM. But this last part is inherent to Tegra SOCs.

1024 * 1024 * 1, more likely.

 

[ShadowFox08]

I have a Steam Deck. The clocks vary depending on usage, but when I've been monitoring it for graphically intensive games the GPU is usually somewhere between 1.0GHz and 1.3GHz (which would be between 1Tflops and 1.3Tflops). I haven't seen it hit 1.6GHz, but I'm not using the overlay that shows clocks that often. I believe it's also possible to lock the GPU clock at 1.6GHz, but that would likely result in throttling of the CPU clocks, or reduced battery life, or both. I'm quite happy with the performance of it, so I don't really feel the need to tinker with it to squeeze out any extra performance.

May I ask what the CPU clocks were when you had the GPU at 1-1.3Ghz?

 

[Simba1]

Yeah if its coming spring 2023 a fall reveal is possible as to not mislead consumers going into the holiday. They will take a hit in sales for it.

I know the counter argument for a bait and Switch seems compelling but that's a one time deal, break the trust and you lose the customer forever.

Thing is that Switch hardware and software are still selling great, and Q4 (Holiday season) is quarter when Nintendo usually have similar sales compared to 3 previous quarters combined, so I don't see announcement before or during Holiday season if new Switch hardware is not launching this year because it would effect on sales in their most important quarter.
Also, I dont think consumers would be mislead because we talking about more expansive hardware, even less that there would be lose of some kind of trust or loosing customers, especially now after 100m+ sold units or after things that Nintendo done in past where they really mislead consumers (saying there is no new 3DS hardware and couple weeks later they announced new 3DS hardware).

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

1024 * 1024 * 1, more likely.

Disappointing.

 

[Dekuman]

Thing is that Switch hardware and software are still selling great, and Q4 (Holiday season) is quarter when Nintendo usually have similar sales compared to 3 previous quarters combined, so I don't see announcement before or during Holiday season if new Switch hardware is not launching this year because it would effect on sales in their most important quarter.
Also, I dont think consumers would be mislead because we talking about more expansive hardware, even less that there would be lose of some kind of trust or loosing customers, especially now after 100m+ sold units or after things that Nintendo done in past where they really mislead consumers (saying there is no new 3DS hardware and couple weeks later they announced new 3DS hardware).

Nintendo has largely avoided this issue by launching their hardware leading in Christmas, Switch was an exception on a dead Wii U and they had telegraphed well in advance it was coming. So I was just trying to figure out how they would manage messaging if they stick to a March launch. I feel they will and should give warning going into Christmas if that is their plan.

With a successful Switch, I think they need to manage this well. Don't piss off existing customers or new customers while appeasing people rearing to upgrade.
I know the March timeline is popular but the more I think about it, they may just opt to launch later in 2023 like summer (August for a callback to SNES launch?) or later and give the OLED upgraders a full 2 years and avoid having mixed messaging going into Holidays 2022.

I personally want this thing out sooner, but from a planning perspective later in 2023 seems to make the most sense. That of course doesn't stop leaks from happening later this year, they just won't confirm anything until they formally announce it next year for release later that year.

 

[Foltzie]

Thing is that Switch hardware and software are still selling great, and Q4 (Holiday season) is quarter when Nintendo usually have similar sales compared to 3 previous quarters combined, so I don't see announcement before or during Holiday season if new Switch hardware is not launching this year because it would effect on sales in their most important quarter.
Also, I dont think consumers would be mislead because we talking about more expansive hardware, even less that there would be lose of some kind of trust or loosing customers, especially now after 100m+ sold units or after things that Nintendo done in past where they really mislead consumers (saying there is no new 3DS hardware and couple weeks later they announced new 3DS hardware).

You nail the potential issue with which any company must wrestle when introducing new hardware.

If Nintendo is ramping up for a March 2023 launch, the supply chain will start to leak more when heading towards the launch (see the OLED model), along with games info leaking more, especially if titles are launching in the Nov-Mar timeframe and suddenly start being outright coy about Switch releases. So their hand will be forced at least somewhat.

I would posit that Nintendo would probably still move good consoles this holiday season assuming the usual gimmick of pairing Switch consoles with a "free" copy of Mario Kart and announcing a higher price point for Drake/4K Switch or a price reduction on some of the current models*.

*I know this is less likely due to BOM considerations, but maybe some components have come down in price.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

This is worth this thread, it’s 13 minutes though but it presents more on the logistics issue with a pro console from Sony or Microsoft:



I’m only going to add my few cents here, originally I remember talk about shortages being alleviated by the second half of 2022 in late 2020/early 2021.

Then in 2021 that moved to 2023 being the year the shortages resolve.

And now in 2022, it’s moved to 2024.

Despite that, other aspects of the semi shortages have the shortages ending/being gone probably by the next decade/ end of this decade.

 

[davec00ke]

Xbox One X outright flopped and the PS4 Pro sales were fairly weak, thats why you are not getting PRO consoles.

 

[Kevin]

This is worth this thread, it’s 13 minutes though but it presents more on the logistics issue with a pro console from Sony or Microsoft:



I’m only going to add my few cents here, originally I remember talk about shortages being alleviated by the second half of 2022 in late 2020/early 2021.

Then in 2021 that moved to 2023 being the year the shortages resolve.

And now in 2022, it’s moved to 2024.

Despite that, other aspects of the semi shortages have the shortages ending/being gone probably by the next decade/ end of this decade.

I think a lot of the reasons to dismiss a PS5 Pro and Xbox Series XX also applies to why I've been so skeptical in a Switch Pro or Switch 4K within the next year. Digital Foundry brings up a lot of valid points here and I mean Steam Deck litterally had to delay the Steam Deck stand because they couldn't even get the parts for that.

Personally I'll be really surprised if we get a 4K Switch within the next year or so.

 

[Serif]

Couldn't Drake's manufacturing overcome some (not all) of the shortage issues because it's using a smaller tablet sized chip and could reuse components from the OLED like battery and screen?

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Xbox One X outright flopped and the PS4 Pro sales were fairly weak, thats why you are not getting PRO consoles.

Can you do the basic effort of actually contributing to the thread instead of giving some smart Alec response? Because that’s all you’ve been doing in this thread.

Couldn't Drake's manufacturing overcome some (not all) of the shortage issues because it's using a smaller tablet sized chip and could reuse components from the OLED like battery and screen?

Yes and no, well this new device will be much easier to manufacture than the Xbox series in the PlayStation5, but it will still be supply limited regardless if they launch it this year, next year, the year after or the year after that.

People that subscribe to the idea that a 2024 launch or 2025 launch for a chip that started in 2019/2020 because of shortages have to realize that

A) you either launch a new system during the shortages and deal with it as best as possible, B) you don’t launch anything at all.

I’m not sure of what the percent chance is of Nintendo completely canning a device like this that they have been working on since 2019/2020, but I suppose it depends on you as a person on what you believe the chances of Nintendo canning such a project that they spent perhaps $1 billion on already?

I think a lot of the reasons to dismiss a PS5 Pro and Xbox Series XX also applies to why I've been so skeptical in a Switch Pro or Switch 4K within the next year. Digital Foundry brings up a lot of valid points here and I mean Steam Deck litterally had to delay the Steam Deck stand because they couldn't even get the parts for that.

Personally I'll be really surprised if we get a 4K Switch within the next year or so.

To dismiss it, you have to believe it outright does not exist.

And the steam deck only had a delay of 2 months.

 

[Vanillalite]

Chip shortages and costs not actually coming down means I doubt we see a refresh this time even if one was planned. Like DF said that’s why MS even bothered with the Series S. At best maybe see something like the S get a storage bump.

By time things would start to level out around idk 2026 it feels like they’d be better if just working on getting the next true gen out.

I don’t think it’s a 1:1 story though as the parts Nintendo needs will be different than the bigger beefier console chips in the X and 5.

 

[Bosintang]

Crazy how those 11 developers have had development kits since last year, some since 2020, and absolutely NOTHING has leaked regarding those games and the only solid evidence we have of a new machine is from a hack, which confirms that Nintendo and Nvidia are indeed working on a new system (no shit).

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Crazy how those 11 developers have had development kits since last year, some since 2020, and absolutely NOTHING has leaked regarding those games and the only solid evidence we have of a new machine is from a hack, which confirms that Nintendo and Nvidia are indeed working on a new system (no shit).

And crazy how devs had the OG switch devkits since 2015 and yet you didn’t get a leak until late 2016 3 months before the switch launched.

When it was using an off the shelf part.

Funny how having devkits doesn’t mean you’ll get automatic leaks immediately.

Devs are chatty but they aren’t stupid enough to risk their jobs and getting black listed if they know it’s not safe for them to do so.

It’s almost like they have a mouth to feed!

 

[Serif]

Is it not the case that fewer developers have Drake devkits than the number of developers with original Switch devkits back in 2015/16, thus fewer opportunities for leaks?

It must be, since most developers targeting the Switch platform could just use the current devkits. It'd just be a few third parties (at least 11, from that report) who are making Drake exclusive games (and by that, I mean PS/Xbox/PC games that can't be ported to current Switch).

I'm assuming the devkits aren't final hardware either, so unlike last time there's nothing interesting to leak about the form factor, which would basically be unchanged from the current Switch.

 

[Kevin]

Can you do the basic effort of actually contributing to the thread instead of giving some smart Alec response? Because that’s all you’ve been doing in this thread.



Yes and no, well this new device will be much easier to manufacture than the Xbox series in the PlayStation5, but it will still be supply limited regardless if they launch it this year, next year, the year after or the year after that.

People that subscribe to the idea that a 2024 launch or 2025 launch for a chip that started in 2019/2020 because of shortages have to realize that

A) you either launch a new system during the shortages and deal with it as best as possible, B) you don’t launch anything at all.

I’m not sure of what the percent chance is of Nintendo completely canning a device like this that they have been working on since 2019/2020, but I suppose it depends on you as a person on what you believe the chances of Nintendo canning such a project that they spent perhaps $1 billion on already?

To dismiss it, you have to believe it outright does not exist.

And the steam deck only had a delay of 2 months.

I was referring to the dock being delayed and not the Steam Deck and who knows, new hardware could still come. I'm just personally no longer expecting it or getting excited for it.

 

[Skittzo]

Crazy how those 11 developers have had development kits since last year, some since 2020, and absolutely NOTHING has leaked regarding those games and the only solid evidence we have of a new machine is from a hack, which confirms that Nintendo and Nvidia are indeed working on a new system (no shit).

Nothing except one of the devs being Zynga with their game being Star Wars Hunters.