kvetcha
hoopy frood
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Pouring one out for Zak & Wiki, a masterpiece.
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)
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Blue Monty
Inkling
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My idea of making a smaller game like NLG/Monolith Soft new IP exclusive is because I think they would be great fits for launch exclusive titles more than them needing to be exclusive, they are from loved studios with impressive visuals,small games in scope so the lost sales are not big but the most important factor is that by making them exclusive would put them on the ‘spotlight’ in part and would allow them to start gaining a name to start a series more than just releasing them as ‘another’ Switch game. It’s not a case of the games needing to be next-gen only but that they could benefit from being one. Also both things can be true at the same time they can promote the Drake with small exclusive titles and at the same time with patches for Switch OG games (this is what I think Nintendo will do)
until they make them anyway. a Zelda or Mario that could only be made one Drake isn't a crazy proposition
mjayer
Bob-omb
It’s not that you don’t add an “imo” to your thoughts, but you kind of reply with condescension and a air of “this is the way it is.”
Just saying.
D
Deleted member 2
Guest
Yeah instead of ignoring the vast amount of feedback I suggest you take it to heart before you're in a thread full of people who have you on ignore
Blue Monty
Inkling
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Something important to remember always when it comes to the support of a new console is that there will be surprises both positive and negative, back in 2016 nobody would expect Koei Tecmo or NIS to support as much Switch as they have done it but also at the same time nobody would expect Level-5 or Atlus support to fall off as much as it has done compared to the 3DS.
KMStwo
Luma
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I think Switch 2 may also need third parties more because this time around there won't be Wii U ports to fill holes in the calendar here and there.It is solely up to Nintendo to convince a person to buy their platform to enter their software ecosystem.
Now with the switch 2 it may lean a bit more on third parties and a bit less on Nintendo games but that’s just a theory of mine. Nothing greatly supports this theory but it’s just a trend I’m seeing based on a lot of things that I think their platform will have a bit of an increase in the desire of a third-party game being bought than before. Though minor one really.
Partially… because as time goes on, more people can’t tell differences unless you tell them there’s a difference.
Blue Monty
Inkling
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This year is already quite full with a lack of Wii U ports they have been able to adjust their software pipeline already to fit this situation, they also still have plenty of Wii/GCN games to remaster and remakes of games of the other consoles if needed. I think 3rd parties will have a bigger place early on but isnt hard when Switch started from almost 0 and it isnt as result of the lack of Wii U ports imo
Kingpin722
Piranha Plant
I believe Nintendo is gonna sandwich this thing between Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and BOTW 2. literally a no brainer. These 2 games should be the the flagship titles for displaying the new capabilities of the hardware. No other software would move hardware like those two are guaranteed to do.
Kingpin722
Piranha Plant
The commentary around Switch and Wii U ports has always been weird. Those ports are justified bc those were legitimate great games trapped on an abomination of an console that sold less than 15 million. Meanwhile we’ve been consistently getting remastered games from literally EVERY publisher in the industry.
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I mean
It's technically relevant here
ReddDreadtheLead
#TeamLate2025WithAPotentialForEarly2026
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Are you… MrMegaPhoenix by chance?
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I really hope it lands before Pokémon and that the game benefits from it. Kind of getting a bit excited for this one
Blue Monty
Inkling
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I dont think his comment is anything weird, it’s a fact that Wii U ports helped a lot Nintendo early on Switch lifespan allowing them to have a more constant flow of releases than if they had to make unique titles for the console . Is a valid point that Nintendo will not have them now and will have to do something to replace them not only for Drake but also for Switch right now . As I said in my post above they have already done so without the need of third parties but still could be a valid point about the value of 3rd party support which I think something is underrated when it comes to Nintendo consoles even if it will not accomplish the function Wii U ports had imo
You seem to be under a misunderstanding that games are rebuilt from scratch for every platform they release on. That hasn't been really been true since the 90s. The fact that it required a dedicated team a year to port The Witcher 3 to Switch is an exceptionally high amount of time and development resources for a modern multiplatform game. Most of the cost in "impossible ports" to Switch is not in building new things, but optimizing and paring back what's already there so that it can run with something resembling reasonable performance on the much weaker hardware of the Switch.
Power certainly isn't the only factor causing games to skip Switch (see: KH1 and KH2 cloud editions), but in an industry heavily oriented around PS4/X1 development, it's a very big factor. A new Switch that can not only eliminate the PS4/X1 gap, but potentially even get within a stone's throw of Xbox Series S would do a lot to improve third party support.
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While there's room for improvement by sticking with eMMC - the Switch's storage is getting about a third of what the spec can do in IOPS - the real gains here are in eUFS, where Samsung's reported numbers are an order of magnitude better even with just the older 2.1 spec. However, when you get to speeds that fast, we come back to the questions of:
-Would Nintendo allow mandatory installs to internal storage?
-If limiting to internal storage isn't feasible, is there an external storage option that can match those numbers at an acceptable price?
-If no to both, would Nintendo spend extra money on fast storage when games will be required to run on slower storage anyway?
These are extremely muddy questions to answer without a clearer idea of the positioning of the device. My gut says Nintendo will still allow Drake exclusives to run off physical game cards, and therefore has little incentive to go much faster than whatever that allows for. But we'll see.
Honestly I think memory cards are potentially a much bigger issue than the carts. The carts, while limited by costs, are ultimately built to Nintendo's specifications. Nintendo typically tries to go for more open standards for memory cards, which are kinda of a mess when you try to go too far above their current performance class.
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Not exactly! While I VERY much doubt the "Drake" Switch will requite it, PCIe over SD exists and can get to speeds comparable to Xbox's proprietary high speed expansion cards.
That said, however, Steam Deck can play any game the Series S can with enough fiddling, but at a lower resolution, and there's almost no difference running off an SD card there, and that's as far as I know, the same speed as Switch. With the faster, more multithreaded CPU of the Drake, it will be able to take full advantage of SD UHS 1 speeds, and when you account for hardware decompression, could reach speeds more than capable of working with any game between now and the end of the Xbox Series generation.
SD Express exists, in theory, but it's still very early and IIRC power consumption is out of control on the cards that are out in the wild. This is kinda what I was referring to. There are options, but they all come with significant caveats.
I can totally see nintendo launching a "new nintendo switch (OLED)" in late 2022 or early to mid 2023 with a die-shrunk, overclocked tegra X1 (~7/8nm) with around the same battery life target as the 2019 switch and current OLED but running games at more consistent framerates.
In this specific scenario, I really can't tell if they'd be interested in bumping the system RAM to 8GB instead of 4. Perhaps even re-implementing the remaining cores that were supposed to be present on the X1 SoC but didn't make it to the final product.
While I could see a slight improvement in average dynamic resolution under games that would allow for an increase when running under more capable hardware (due to the increase in shared video memory from RAM), I don't think it would be relevant in docked mode, specially considering the gpu compute power itself is way more important when dealing with higher resolutions than video memory (an 8GB RX570 can't really handle 4k in many games despite having all that memory meanwhile, more powerful cards can, even at 6GB).
The overclocked X1 at a smaller node should also be efficient enough to not discharge/not charge at all while docked running at higher clocks given that the current switch OLED dock provides more power than the old one.
The problem that I see here is that nintendo and other developers wouldn't really benefit too much from a jump to an overclocked X1. Memory bandwidth should stay the same (too low), gpu compute isn't enough for third party devs, cpu core count is still poor (even more so considering one's always reserved for the switch OS) and the compute power cripples it even further. But the way I see it is that maybe they'd release it as a mid gen refresh to buy a year and a half or 2 years time for an actual next gen device.
Switch dev kits probably come with ~8GB of RAM, considering they need more memory to debug the application. So developers and nintendo are pretty familiar with how an 8GB switch performs. And so, they most likely realized by now that the CPU and GPU bottlenecks are more relevant. That said, they could really be working on a orin SoC switch for 2023/2024 instead of a mid-gen refresh.
In that case, we could see either the rumored ~1500 CUDA cores which would translate to roughly 3/4ths of the PS4 pro or xbox series s compute power in docked mode but with the advantage of DLSS and ~80-90% of Steam deck's 1.6TFLOPs compute power in handheld mode (which I'm estimating at around 500mhz) or case 2: 1024 CUDA cores which puts it slightly above base PS4 and steam deck level in docked mode and slightly under in handheld mode.
Now, I know TFLOPS isn't everything and memory bandwidth and TDP also come into play but, looking at the orin spec, bandwidth should no longer be an issue and TDP should also be really malleable around 5W to somewhere above the current switch X1 limit of ~15Watts. I believe 18-20W should be possible when docked. I don't think they'd go for 25W considering how conservative Nintendo is being with the current switch.
Finally, price and storage: I don't know if 128GB would be possible under 375-400$ (when considering the orin chip or an overclocked X1 with 8GB of RAM) but I also don't think nintendo would be interested in manufacturing game cartridges above 64GB for games sold at 60$.
But the thing is, I can't really name a single switch game that can't be installed on system memory under an empty 32GB switch let alone a 64GB switch OLED. This is more of an issue with titles that are yet to be ported.
And by the way, if you think Nintendo's selling a switch at above 375-400$, considering the japanese market, you're crazy.
In this specific scenario, I really can't tell if they'd be interested in bumping the system RAM to 8GB instead of 4. Perhaps even re-implementing the remaining cores that were supposed to be present on the X1 SoC but didn't make it to the final product.
While I could see a slight improvement in average dynamic resolution under games that would allow for an increase when running under more capable hardware (due to the increase in shared video memory from RAM), I don't think it would be relevant in docked mode, specially considering the gpu compute power itself is way more important when dealing with higher resolutions than video memory (an 8GB RX570 can't really handle 4k in many games despite having all that memory meanwhile, more powerful cards can, even at 6GB).
The overclocked X1 at a smaller node should also be efficient enough to not discharge/not charge at all while docked running at higher clocks given that the current switch OLED dock provides more power than the old one.
The problem that I see here is that nintendo and other developers wouldn't really benefit too much from a jump to an overclocked X1. Memory bandwidth should stay the same (too low), gpu compute isn't enough for third party devs, cpu core count is still poor (even more so considering one's always reserved for the switch OS) and the compute power cripples it even further. But the way I see it is that maybe they'd release it as a mid gen refresh to buy a year and a half or 2 years time for an actual next gen device.
Switch dev kits probably come with ~8GB of RAM, considering they need more memory to debug the application. So developers and nintendo are pretty familiar with how an 8GB switch performs. And so, they most likely realized by now that the CPU and GPU bottlenecks are more relevant. That said, they could really be working on a orin SoC switch for 2023/2024 instead of a mid-gen refresh.
In that case, we could see either the rumored ~1500 CUDA cores which would translate to roughly 3/4ths of the PS4 pro or xbox series s compute power in docked mode but with the advantage of DLSS and ~80-90% of Steam deck's 1.6TFLOPs compute power in handheld mode (which I'm estimating at around 500mhz) or case 2: 1024 CUDA cores which puts it slightly above base PS4 and steam deck level in docked mode and slightly under in handheld mode.
Now, I know TFLOPS isn't everything and memory bandwidth and TDP also come into play but, looking at the orin spec, bandwidth should no longer be an issue and TDP should also be really malleable around 5W to somewhere above the current switch X1 limit of ~15Watts. I believe 18-20W should be possible when docked. I don't think they'd go for 25W considering how conservative Nintendo is being with the current switch.
Finally, price and storage: I don't know if 128GB would be possible under 375-400$ (when considering the orin chip or an overclocked X1 with 8GB of RAM) but I also don't think nintendo would be interested in manufacturing game cartridges above 64GB for games sold at 60$.
But the thing is, I can't really name a single switch game that can't be installed on system memory under an empty 32GB switch let alone a 64GB switch OLED. This is more of an issue with titles that are yet to be ported.
And by the way, if you think Nintendo's selling a switch at above 375-400$, considering the japanese market, you're crazy.
A 2230 m.2 is still my dark horse choice.
Are there even thermal tests while gaming? All I've ever seen was transferring large files
Aren't those power consumption numbers based on sustained loads? Games don't hit storage that often aside from transferring games from one drive to another. During gameplay, there will be short transfers of small pieces of data, which shouldn't hit power limits.
Are there even thermal tests while gaming? All I've ever seen was transferring large files
Crusters
Koopa
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Slight tangent but....
How would some of you all feel about multiple fidelity download versions?
Even if general performance between all 3 versions was the same or not, say a version with compressed assets, your textures and other assorted odds and ends are lower quality, but the download is half the GB or whatever. You can freely swap digital versions as you organize/reorganize/ get bigger cards etc.
Look over there
Bob-omb
Yea, there was a review of one such SD Express card/controller last year, here. Averaging 3.25w in SD 7.1 mode (as opposed to 1.25w in UHS-I mode) is... not ideal.
The temperatures that card can hit though, ow. That strikes me as SD Express needs to mature enough to get energy draw down.
The dark horse I'm rooting for is still UFS Card 3.0 launching out of nowhere. If nothing else, it would be nice to explain the current apparent lack of UFS Card 1.0 production by Samsung.
The temperatures that card can hit though, ow. That strikes me as SD Express needs to mature enough to get energy draw down.
The dark horse I'm rooting for is still UFS Card 3.0 launching out of nowhere. If nothing else, it would be nice to explain the current apparent lack of UFS Card 1.0 production by Samsung.
OP
OP
Just a correction, the Cortex-A78 family (Cortex-A78, Cortex-A78AE, Cortex-A78C) doesn't support simultaneous multithreading (SMT).
For the demographic of the Switch, it's more work than it's worth
Crusters
Koopa
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You don't think what you perceive ias the switch demographic would find value in swapping out an older game you still play occasionally with a version that's half the file size to make room for newer games without having to remove them from the card, or get a newer bigger card? Not enough to make it worth the server space huh.
What about you yourself?
If it was optional, no. If devs made a version that was half the file size, that's the version they would put out first, then make an optional high res texture pack or whatever
Just to add: on DF's video: on the overclocked switch they imply that a game like Wolfenstein actually had a dynamic resolution improvement. Other than this statement of theirs I did not see other people say the same. Most games with resolution improvements under modded switches were able to reach such goal after a patch mod was installed + help of overclocking to keep framerates steady.
I do believe many games might never be improved upon (resolution-wise) on a retrocompatible switch with either an overclocked x1 or an orin chip. Solely because the resolution lower and upper limits could be hard-coded and many of them may never see an update to fix this for the new platform.
By the way, he also showed how handheld resolutions running at docked or higher clocks on a modded switch improved considerably framerates on what he assumes to be a memory bandwidth limitation. In that case, more system memory (and thus, more video memory - if properly allocated of course) could not solve, but help alliviate the memory bandwidth saturation issue.
Crusters
Koopa
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And if it's not optional but system wide. But say handled via a proprietary mostly transparent
application integrated into the tool set that can spit out a space saver version from a list of asset input?
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Actually.. they sorta did this with Xenoblade X. Not for higher-fidelity assets or anything like that, but for load times. You could play the game regularly out of the box but there'd be long load times and some pretty crazy pop-in, but if you download the optional "performance packs" it'd download a lot of assets to the hard drive and solve a lot of those problems.
Sounds like the sort of thing Nintendo would avoid but they advertised the packs along with the game so players would know to download them if they wanted, even had four or five different packs so players could choose how far to go with it. I could definitely see "optional high-res asset packs" being a thing with Drake.
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I never said anything about "simultaneous multithreading"
Two cores without multithreading is still two threads. Drake has more threads available to it than the X1(+).
It's "more" multithreaded. A multithreaded workload can have those threads spread across several cores, or across two threads of the same core, or both.
Though I understand the confusion.
Crusters
Koopa
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Related, but the assets in the data packs were the same, the data packs made it faster to find the data, and improved streaming performance.
This proposition, is different quality assets, for a game that takes up less space, and is presented to the user, as a simple button press option on the download screen, data management screen, and game file option screen, as well as a prompt when memory is running as opposed to simply removing the game data, and then having to reorganize and redownload later if you want to play it again.
Simply put the option of do you want the premium visual/audio package, or do you want to fit more games on your sd card, and the ability to change your mind between them as you see fit.
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Oh yeah I understood the difference, just meant to say that as far as what @ILikeFeet suggested, having the "small" version be the default purchase and then optional downloads to get the "premium" experience is something I could see Nintendo allowing, as they sorta did something similar with XBX. Not in terms of what the downloads contained or their purpose, but in terms of execution.
Buy base game > optional download > improved game
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
No? A single threaded app is single threaded no matter how many cores are sitting there. Just as multithreaded app is multithreaded even running on one core.
Threads aren’t cores. An SMT cpu would make threading better no matter the number of cpus in the machine. The difference between “a cpu is better at threading” and “there are more cpus to spread work around” matters.
Asset decompression and loading is very sensitive to cache hits - the exact scenario you mentioned is a place where “being better at threading on each cpu” is potentially a bigger win than “I have two extra cpus”
They can. It's just less likely.
Flight sim is first and foremost made for PC. It could be ported to current gen consoles, it could not be ported to last gen because of jaguar cores. So the choice was current gen exclusive, or no port at all.
Stinky Horse
Bob-omb
I know Orin has more going on, but those configurations give the impression that it would be a challenge just to match Mariko in CPU cores*clocks and texels/second if it was on the same technology.
Which may have been the plan if they were thinking of introducing it when Switch was 4 years old, but I guessing Drake is using something different now.
daase ko
Octorok
So there's no big value either waiting after christmas to reveal it which is fine by me.
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Though I think that's less the case now, too, since they're the only mass market option for portability at present. Not much reason for a non-Nintendo fan to go with GameCube over PS2 or Xbox for the latest Tony Hawk game, but with Switch there is. Of course, I imagine in the universe where Switch has Tony Hawk and Assassin's Creed but not Zelda or Animal Crossing it's not nearly as big a deal.
cw_sasuke
Octorok
To be fair WiiU ports were only a big deal because the Switch was the first mayor Nintendo system since the GameCube that launched without any kind of BC to previous systems.
This isn't a scenario that's likely gonna be repeated - Drake buyers will have access to the full Switch library and NSO offerings, aka Nintendos biggest software eco system ever.
This isn't even factoring big service games that's have come to the Switch ever since it's launch like FN, Rocket League, Apex etc.
Yes, the WiiU ports helped a new unproven Plattform witch lackluster initial 3rdParty support. The Drake isn't gonna be that though, so there is nothing Nintendo has to compensate for, i think people in certain places of the internet really downplay the Switch library and what it has to offer just because games arent exclusives or the tend to play them on other systems.
I disagree. They were also a big deal because most people hadn't played them, because they were on the Wii U.
YolkFolk
Tingle
Most people didn’t even know those Wii U games existed. A few friends told me they had the ‘new’ Mario Kart etc.
cw_sasuke
Octorok
I mean that's literally the point, they needed to be ported because there was no BC or other way to play the current offerings of these games on Switch. This wouldn't be the case on Drake - you are still gonna be able to play everything Nintendo released the last 5 years on Drake and in better quality.
The ports were essential because the Switch started at zero with it's library, Drake won't.
PS. They were great games limited by being locked on a Bomba system, this is kinda common sense, didn't think we would still have to point this out in 2022.
Drake will likely have BC and Switch games will have been avaible ok a very successful system with the Switch - so the circumstances that made the WiiU to Switch ports important aren't really a factor anymore.
Not sure about the name, but that's a really well done design. I like it
Raccoon
Fox Brigade
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the design isn't mine! It's the original N64 logo, from when it was "Nintendo Ultra 64"Not sure about the name, but that's a really well done design. I like it
Teal'c
Shriekbat
don't do this, it's early for game lists
Although I don't know what to think about Batman Arkham collection and Hogwarts Legacy.
The former was not shown in the Mini Direct (but we know it exists thanks to Nate) the latter was announced but with virtually no details.
What if they actually come out on Drake?
ahahah this is always funny.
There are still people who believe (and preach) this, even now with Switch.
Where software-houses spend time and money on difficult porting (The Witcher 3, Doom, No Man's Sky, Wreckfest to name a few) while knowing they "won't sell"
Not because they want to take advantage of the huge installed base or because they haven't sold enough elsewhere... absolutely not
ReddDreadtheLead
#TeamLate2025WithAPotentialForEarly2026
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That’s actually a good point too. The uniqueness of the switch already presents a lucrative model that the others don’t really have the same weight to pull and Nintendo won’t have the same amount of titles to work with from the Wii U to bring over
So it would lean more on third parties anyway.
Though, Nintendo does seem to have tapped into the Wii and 3DS games a bit (emphasis on a bit) so I can se them also going more into that.
That said, I still expect Nintendo to be the biggest publisher regardless, as does anyone else, but third party titles seem like they’ll be more important this time than last time imo. And crucial for Nintendo going forward.
If they can manage the transition successful between Switch and Switch 2 where third parties benefit from this, they are set to be in a comfortable position for a while.
The tricky part is managing that transition in the smoothest way possible.
Avoiding a DS>3DS, but more like… a GameCube to Wii. Wii had a ton of third party games to it, opinions on the quality notwithstanding, and it accounted for 60% of all software sales on the platform. And that console was a First party powerhouse too.
I know the GCN wasn’t really that successful, but the transition was super smooth and let thirds jump very quickly.
Nintendo needs to repeat something similar to that transition which from my understanding was super smooth and yielded stellar results long-term. I say similar as the GCN and Wii are super similar, borderline the same (though not quite). Erista/Mariko to Drake are similar but less so than the GCN and Wii, so devs would still need a bit of time getting familiar with it.
They then killed that transition process with the Wii U though lol
And 3DS was also to blame here.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
I think this is an overblown point. Nintendo will always have ports to round out the calendar whether this means they start dipping into older platforms or 3DS remains to be seen.
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