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

[Deleted member 887]

I want to believe you, but to me you are just a random person on the internet.

“RDRII is a nuSwitch launch game” has floated around from other folks, too.

It weirdly tracks with the Switch launch, which had Zelda and Skyrim, with Skyrim an explicit influence on Breath of the Wild, and RDRII an explicit influence on Tears of the Kingdom.

Will definitely play red dead on it, if it’s legit though

Same.

I realize I might be in the minority here, but I just want to continue what I think of as the Switch legacy:

Nintendo first party all on one platform, with a consistent first party release schedule.

An indie machine.

A stream of greatest hit ports from the prior generation, playable finally in handheld mode.

Switch gave me gaming again. My life doesn’t fit playing on a TV, but I wasn’t happy super with the DS library. I played every portable Zelda, but I wanted Big Zelda. Same for Mario. I played indie games on my laptop at night before bed and loved many of them, but the controls felt awkward. And the “big PC” games I could squeeze out in my laptop were a decade old and controlled worse.

I’d love to play Elden Ring finally, but I personally don’t need current era multiplats to be happy as long as my “late” ports are consistent and high quality. I miss so many overlong-overhyped-AAA dogshit this way anyway!

Current switch’s hardware holds back that stream of ports, both in terms of number and quality. Nintendo continues to deliver in terms of quantity, and the games are fun, but they’re increasingly feeling technically compromised.

Drake seems on track to fix both of those problems, if Nintendo can just stick the landing in terms of creating an install base.

Where I see challenges is the indie space. The Switch eShop has recreated the indie bubble of early Steam days, with a large install base hungry for content with limited system requirements. Indie Devs getting on Switch have done well by riding that bubble but it’s mostly burst - there is plenty of content a lot both good and bad, and enough good that wading through the bad to find the niche is mostly a losing battle.

Console approval requirements are a pain in the ass, and as publishers retrench to a smaller number of games, devs will be forced to go it themselves, which will push them back to Steam. For a while the iPhone was a wonderland of truly strange and original games, but the same forces applied.

The Triple I games and whatever Lucas Pope makes will come to Drake, but I don’t think the next “a dark room” will come there unless it’s already a success. That’s a shame

 

[Mr Swine]

RDRII is still a launch / launch window game the last I heard.

That depends entirely if they have shifted all focus for the GTAVI game and scraped all other projects.

Could be a GTAV situation where it’s canceled

 

[ShadowFox08]

It would be more than 7%. I think (especially due to smaller cache) it would be more like 15% or more. It’s slower and has a lot less cache, shares memory pool with the GPU (though it doesn’t consume much but still). The 3600 in reality should perform better than the PS5 CPU in most cases even at 4GHz, when it can clock higher.

3.5GHz is 14% slower than 4GHz example, but it has less cores so it wouldn’t be 14% better there, but it has a lot more cache so it could help it perform Better still. That said, this game is single threaded leaning and not really multi threaded, so it’s not really indicative of what the ps5 is doing MT wise. But otherwise it should be better than the PS5.


Series uses 2 threads (doesn’t seem like an actual core, but balances it across cores) out of the 16 threads it has, but XBox One/X used 6.5 for games like the PS4.

oh really?

I was thinking something along the lines of just comparing a hypothetical PS5 7 cores for gaming to the reality of using 6.5 cores for gaming and then comparing it to Drake's A78. Not to the other Ryzen CPU that runs at 4.0Ghz.

3.5 GHz x 6.5 cores = 22.75 vs 3.5 GHz x 7 cores = 24.5.
22.75 is 93% of 24.5.

Also realized that PS5's clockspeed is "variable." Runs at 3.5Ghz max, and I believe that's when the GPU is clocked lower than max clocks o achieve it. How much lower the CPU when GPU is being pushed, I couldn't find. Maybe 3.2?

Kinda confused about how how many cores series uses?.. Since you didn't directly answer how many cores they use? Good to know that xbone used 6.5 as well though. Thanks.

indie machine.

A stream of greatest hit ports from the prior generation, playable finally in handheld mode.

Switch gave me gaming again. My life doesn’t fit playing on a TV, but I wasn’t happy super with the DS library. I played every portable Zelda, but I wanted Big Zelda. Same for Mario. I played indie games on my laptop at night before bed and loved many of them, but the controls felt awkward. And the “big PC” games I could squeeze out in my laptop were a decade old and controlled worse.

I’d love to play Elden Ring finally, but I personally don’t need current era multiplats to be happy as long as my “late” ports are consistent and high quality. I miss so many overlong-overhyped-AAA dogshit this way anyway!

Current switch’s hardware holds back that stream of ports, both in terms of number and quality. Nintendo continues to deliver in terms of quantity, and the games are fun, but they’re increasingly feeling technically compromised.

Gonna be so amazing to see ps4 performance and fidelity (minus resolution) on a Nintendo handheld.. I think it's the sweet spot for GPU and bandwidth on a 720p screen at least.

Wonder how long it will take until we get used to Drake specs as Devs really start taking advantage of PS5/x series power and dumps last.. I guess it's more future proof than switch's specs though, and clearly more performant on a 720p screen anyway.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

oh really?

I was thinking something along the lines of just comparing a hypothetical PS5 7 cores for gaming to the reality of using 6.5 cores for gaming and then comparing it to Drake's A78. Not to the other Ryzen CPU that runs at 4.0Ghz.

3.5 GHz x 6.5 cores = 22.75 vs 3.5 GHz x 7 cores = 24.5.
22.75 is 93% of 24.5.

Also realized that PS5's clockspeed is "variable." Runs at 3.5Ghz max, and I believe that's when the GPU is clocked lower than max clocks o achieve it. How much lower the CPU when GPU is being pushed, I couldn't find. Maybe 3.2?

Kinda confused about how how many cores series uses?.. Since you didn't directly answer how many cores they use? Good to know that xbone used 6.5 as well though. Thanks.

That’s an interesting way to look at it I suppose, yeah, since it’s PS5 to PS5 and not anything else.

The variable clockspeed I think doesn’t change too much of how it operates, only small changes so I’d assume it’s 3.5GHz 99% of the time. The 1% chance it is at say, 3.2GHz, shouldn’t really matter imo since that’s not really the most case scenario.

the series uses, in essence, a core. It has 16threads, if it uses two threads, it uses 1 core.

It has 8 physical cores after all.

 

[mariodk18]

For $449, could we get 256 GB internal storage?

 

[ILikeFeet]

For $449, could we get 256 GB internal storage?

Storage is cheap. You should be asking how generous will Nintendo be

 

[karmitt]

That depends entirely if they have shifted all focus for the GTAVI game and scraped all other projects.

Could be a GTAV situation where it’s canceled

Where is this coming from? What evidence do we have around them canning everything in favor of GTAVI?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Where is this coming from? What evidence do we have around them canning everything in favor of GTAVI?

don't know about GTAV being canned as I don't think that was ever hinted at.

but them canning RDR2 for current gen has been rumored

https://www.thegamer.com/red-dead-redemption-2-current-gen-port-cancelled/

 

[Mr Swine]

Where is this coming from? What evidence do we have around them canning everything in favor of GTAVI?

Didn’t Rockstar go on a canning spree after the GTA Trilogy fiasco?

 

[Paxie]

don't know about GTAV being canned as I don't think that was ever hinted at.

but them canning RDR2 for current gen has been rumored

https://www.thegamer.com/red-dead-redemption-2-current-gen-port-cancelled/

They may have meant GTA IV, a remaster was also mentioned to have been cancelled alongside the RDR2 reports

 

[Look over there]

So DF has confirmed that the PS5 uses 6.5 cores for games, and brought the closest comparison they can being the Ryzen 3600 at 4GHz (not 4.2, or 4.4GHz) to the PS5. However, noting that it has higher cache (32MB L3) so it’s a looser comparison.

That said, it lowers the CPU requirements needed a bit more.



As in, it’s not as high for games for the next gen systems and presumable Drake.

What is the PS5 OS doing that it needs an extra half core for? Granted, that does explain how the 3600 manages to make a scarily close approximation for this.

Because I have a pedantic streak, an aside for the readers: so in this video there's a table which lists total L3 cache for the 3600 and PS5. The entries listing 32 MB of L3 for the 3600 and 8 MB for the PS5 are true, but misleading. To say that there's X amount of cache typically carries with it an implication that a given core can access X amount of cache. But because of how Zen 2 is designed, the cores are divided into clusters (called Core Complexes, or CCX) and each CCX has its own L3 cache. And the L3 cache is private to that CCX. So it would be more precise to say that the 3600 has 2x16 MB of L3 cache (any given core has access to the 16 MB of L3 cache that belongs to the CCX it's in) and that the PS5 has 2x4 MB of L3 cache (any given core has access to the 4 MB of L3 cache that's in that particular CCX). I'm not 100%, but I also think that means it's possible to duplicate data between the two sets of cache.

Alright, pedantry over. And yeesh, what is going on with Gotham Knights? It's demonstrated to be CPU-bound, as changing GPUs didn't do much. But the CPU utilization is bizarrely low, relative to the examples given. And there is a noticeable difference between the percentages shown for the threads in the first CCX (should be 1-6) and the ones for the threads in the other CCX.
My layman's gut impression: It's not heavily multithreaded, thus largely corralled to one CCX. And the heavier thread(s) are... spending an inordinate amount of time idling? Are they like, contesting the same locked resources over and over again or something?

 

[ILikeFeet]

They may have meant GTA IV, a remaster was also mentioned to have been cancelled alongside the RDR2 reports

If GTA4 really is the mess that we've heard it to be, I figured a remaster was a nonstarter

 

[ShadowFox08]

That’s an interesting way to look at it I suppose, yeah, since it’s PS5 to PS5 and not anything else.

The variable clockspeed I think doesn’t change too much of how it operates, only small changes so I’d assume it’s 3.5GHz 99% of the time. The 1% chance it is at say, 3.2GHz, shouldn’t really matter imo since that’s not really the most case scenario.

the series uses, in essence, a core. It has 16threads, if it uses two threads, it uses 1 core.

It has 8 physical cores after all.

Right, I got the 2 threads per core. Wish you said the one core from the beginning...
But is that actually confirmed or just a guess?

For $449, could we get 256 GB internal storage?

Definitely possible, considering Nintendo has kept the storage low for consoles, just as 128GB is also likely as well at least for $400. But Nintendo really needs steps up with the storage amount this time considering we will be getting full PS4 ports of AAA 3rd party games that ware originally 60-100GB. Even if they means offering a second sku with 512GB to 1 TB closer to $500. I'd argue that the initial storage size, cart capacity (and affordability for devs) and less restriction to devs for publishing their games (such as not forcing decompression), is just equally important bottlenecks as RAM and CPU for consumers and devs for investing their games on Drake.

$450 for 512 GB- 1TB SKU would be a fantastic deal for core gamers, but feels a bit of a pipedream.

Storage is cheap. You should be asking how generous will Nintendo be

That's true, but it seems like historically companies with multiple skus usually don't make a ton of profit/break even or even lose money from the lowest model, and try to recoup with higher end models with the double storage thing for $100 more. What comes to mind is Wii U, last Sony/ms gen and current gen consoles are launch, and flagship phones.

Guess it all comes down to how much all the separate parts will cost + shipping snd and how bleeding edge the tech is.. And if they are willing to break even, or be closer to getting as much profit as possible. If they end up with 2 SKUs, then I think they woud be willing to break even or a small profit with the lower storage model, while recouping.

I'm sure they are getting a much better deal than Steam for SD is.

I don't think Nintendo's wants to risk losing money again, especially with newer more up to date hardware.. But man it's hard to say until the reveal specs and price.. It could be different this time. Or not.

 

[Ojoloco]

RDRII is still a launch / launch window game the last I heard.

I’d imagine most big Square and Capcom AAA games they never natively ported so FFVX Royal Edition, FFVII Remake, MH World Iceborn, RE 2+3 Remake, REVII+VIII (with their third person modes), RE4 Remake. Street Fighter VI and MH World 2 in terms of new games.

Drake should be able to handle anything outside of maybe Ubisoft PS5/SeriesSX exclusive open World games so the next Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs and Farcry.

I would expect random ports from Ubisoft, such as the Far Cry saga, the AC pre Origins and post Origins, the Avatar game and any random multiplayer game that they are doing.

And Cyberpunk

 

[Deleted member 1324]

You’ve said several times the system has the power of PS4 in handheld mode and can run games like RDR2. You’ve also said the image quality will be a huge leap forward.

Why then say the system could be weaker than expected with a real successor possibly in 2025? Is the PS4 power comment not accurate now? Seems unlikely they’d release a pro at this point in the systems life for €400 with exclusive games and then drop a successor 2 years later.

Not having a go, always happy to see your posts. Just clarifying your power comments.

This is Nintendo. Anything is possible. There could be a different “Pro” system I haven’t heard about made for release in 2023 that’s more powerful than current Switch but much less powerful than Drake.

Drake could then arrive when they’re ready to call the system “Switch 2” around later 2025.

The only system I was told about was “part of the current Switch family” + “PS4 power level with PS4 Pro image quality” + “RDR II launch / launch window” + “Spring 2023 release date with Zelda”

 

[YolkFolk]

This is Nintendo. Anything is possible. There could be a different “Pro” system I haven’t heard about made for release in 2023 that’s more powerful than current Switch but much less powerful than Drake.

Drake could then arrive when they’re ready to call the system “Switch 2” around later 2025.

The only system I was told about was “part of the current Switch family” + “PS4 power level with PS4 Pro image quality” + “RDR II launch / launch window” + “Spring 2023 release date with Zelda”

Yeah, there’s no chance of another new system coming so soon after this next one. It’ll be several years before there’s even better hardware worth having over Drake. No idea how they’ll brand this new Switch but it’s going to be the star of Nintendo’s show for a good while.

 

[NateDrake]

Yeah, there’s no chance of another new system coming so soon after this next one. It’ll be several years before there’s even better hardware worth having over Drake. No idea how they’ll brand this new Switch but it’s going to be the star of Nintendo’s show for a good while.

"no chance" and Nintendo is not a string of words one should pair together.

 

[the_marmolade]

You know Rockstar pubically stated they cancelled a bunch of internal ports and remakes...

 

[ILikeFeet]

"no chance" and Nintendo is not a string of words one should pair together.

as far as something coming after Drake soon, you don't have to look at nintendo but look at Nvidia. hard to say how much better Thor will be since that's a bit more esoteric than Orin

You know Rockstar pubically stated they cancelled a bunch of internal ports and remakes...

that doesn't preclude RDR2 for drake though

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

What is the PS5 OS doing that it needs an extra half core for? Granted, that does explain how the 3600 manages to make a scarily close approximation for this.

Because I have a pedantic streak, an aside for the readers: so in this video there's a table which lists total L3 cache for the 3600 and PS5. The entries listing 32 MB of L3 for the 3600 and 8 MB for the PS5 are true, but misleading. To say that there's X amount of cache typically carries with it an implication that a given core can access X amount of cache. But because of how Zen 2 is designed, the cores are divided into clusters (called Core Complexes, or CCX) and each CCX has its own L3 cache. And the L3 cache is private to that CCX. So it would be more precise to say that the 3600 has 2x16 MB of L3 cache (any given core has access to the 16 MB of L3 cache that belongs to the CCX it's in) and that the PS5 has 2x4 MB of L3 cache (any given core has access to the 4 MB of L3 cache that's in that particular CCX). I'm not 100%, but I also think that means it's possible to duplicate data between the two sets of cache.

Alright, pedantry over. And yeesh, what is going on with Gotham Knights? It's demonstrated to be CPU-bound, as changing GPUs didn't do much. But the CPU utilization is bizarrely low, relative to the examples given. And there is a noticeable difference between the percentages shown for the threads in the first CCX (should be 1-6) and the ones for the threads in the other CCX.
My layman's gut impression: It's not heavily multithreaded, thus largely corralled to one CCX. And the heavier thread(s) are... spending an inordinate amount of time idling? Are they like, contesting the same locked resources over and over again or something?

It is heavily single Threaded, yes.

The PS5 used quite a fat OS though, fwiw. At launch it had 12.5GB of memory for games out of 16, at least that’s what rich said by “at launch” that he knew of. Don’t know how much it reduced by now, but I’m gonna assume not much.

And then the same core config of the last gen.

This is Nintendo. Anything is possible. There could be a different “Pro” system I haven’t heard about made for release in 2023 that’s more powerful than current Switch but much less powerful than Drake.

Drake could then arrive when they’re ready to call the system “Switch 2” around later 2025.

The only system I was told about was “part of the current Switch family” + “PS4 power level with PS4 Pro image quality” + “RDR II launch / launch window” + “Spring 2023 release date with Zelda”

nope.

 

[Concernt]

"no chance" and Nintendo is not a string of words one should pair together.

Honestly I gotta strongly agree here. I think Drake is just the beginning, the Switch laid the groundwork for the platform (collectively, the Nintendo Switch Family of Systems). Drake, I think, is the first stepping stone; the iPhone 3G to the Switch's 2G. Switch and its pretty flexible OS, standardised architecture, and to Nintendo's advantage, being the only console and most successful single product of Nvidia. I don't see them slowing down. A bit like phones, but maybe a bit slower, new "generations" every few years with games spanning the gauntlet from whatever the lowest end unit they can support up to whatever the latest hardware is, with the eShop and existing games carrying forward. I honestly think we've seen the last of ports once Xenoblade Chronicals X comes over, and from here on out games will just get updated to support the newer hardware, like smartphone apps.

I could also be dead wrong, of course, but I think this is the likely long term picture.

And to clarify, I definitely think the hardware from next year is the Drake Switch, not some X1++ abomination. Unless that was implied, it stands that I agree.

 

[Deleted member 887]

.My layman's gut impression: It's not heavily multithreaded, thus largely corralled to one CCX. And the heavier thread(s) are... spending an inordinate amount of time idling?

Are they like, contesting the same locked resources over and over again or something?

The cause could be too much multithreading, in fact. Or a data structure design issue. But it’s almost definitely a case where an effectively serial path is split across threads. It could be contesting over the same mutex, or it could be that threads are waiting for each other to break workloads down.

In these cases increased single thread perf wouldn’t help much because it wouldn’t clear the backlog. This kind of design is always slow, more power just lets it be slow, faster, if that makes sense.

When you get your fundamental data structure design wrong, you’re fucked. No amount of optimization will save you, you need a total engine overhaul. Which will create new performance problems even as it makes the situation better, which will mean you have to start a new optimization cycle.

There are games where that happens on, and places where it could happen, but a Montreal Batman game isn’t one of them.

 

[Terrell]

I'd still say UFS cards are the better choice, but I wouldn't completely rule out CFexpress. The Type A is bigger than a microSD or UFS card (everything is), but it's smaller than a standard SD card, and actually about 20% smaller than a Switch game card, so hardly too big for a device like the Switch. I'm not too concerned with performance past 800MB/s or so, because I don't expect much more from internal storage, with commonly available UFS 2.1 at around 800MB/s being about as high as I expect on that front. That said, unless they roll back Drake's PCIe support to 3.0 (which would be a bizarre decision), it would be compatible with the inevitable PCIe 4.0 CFexpress cards, which would be a 2000GB/s link speed for Type A (probably 1.6/1.7GB/s real world).

And, although CFexpress cards are absurdly expensive at the moment, I'm actually not particularly concerned at how much they would cost were they actually widely used in a mass-market consumer device. Currently the only users of CFexpress cards are either professional photographers or videographers, or they're amateurs who are willing to spend thousands of dollars/euros/pounds on a camera, and as much again on lenses. That is, they're not exactly a price-conscious audience. However, the underlying technology is literally just a NVMe BGA SSD wrapped in plastic, I would assume in most cases using exactly the same chips as M2 2230 SSDs, but with fewer lanes connected and none of the SATA/USB/etc pins that M2 connectors have. In fact, you can literally put an M2 2230 SSD in a CFexpress housing if you want.

This is why I brought up the Xbox Series X/S expansion card, which is just a slightly modified CFexpress Type B card, but targeted at a much more price-conscious audience. The 1TB card at $220 is about half the price of equivalent CFexpress cards, despite using a more expensive PCIe 4.0 SSD. That $220 almost certainly includes a very healthy profit margin too, as it's a proprietary accessory, so there's no reason mass-market CFexpress cards targeting a similarly price-conscious audience couldn't offer 1TB cards at a sub-$200 price point, which wouldn't be far off the price 1TB microSD cards go for at the moment.

I'd be more concerned about power consumption. With eUFS built for phones and NVMe SSDs built for PCs, the former should have more reliably low power consumption than the latter. Given that UFS cards and CFexpress cards would leverage existing eUFS and NVMe manufacturing respectively, I would therefore expect UFS cards to have lower typical power consumption, and also more consistent power consumption across cards, than CFexpress. The max 1.7W of the CFexpress Type A card I found isn't terrible, but it's higher than you'd probably want for a device like the Switch, and as far as I can see there's nothing stopping other cards pulling 3-4W.

The 2D dimensions of the Type A card are less a concern than the ~3x thickness, it means you need additional clearance in the chassis for the card slot. And that chassis is likely already jam-packed if Switch is anything to go by (the Game Card slot has space cut out inside for it and ONLY it, so only being 20% smaller than a Game Card is… eep?). Meanwhile, microSD slot is so thin and small that it’s able to sit above the heat shield.

 

[9-Volt]

You know Rockstar pubically stated they cancelled a bunch of internal ports and remakes...

Did they officially say this though? Last I remember it was another insider report. Personally I don't buy that "to focus on GTA6" because they won't be the ones doing the remasters. I think they just simply removed Groove Street games from the projects, that's all.

Midnight Club LA Remastered has ben rumored for a year now, we should be hearing about that soon.

 

[mariodk18]

So RDR2 in summer or fall? I think they’ll put it out a bit later than ToTK, giving room for both to breathe. Like Skyrim, so fall.

 

[carbonaxiom]

Seeing a lot of Elden Ring responses, but I kind of think it might be beneficial to wait a bit longer on that one? The game already sold a ton, well beyond expectations and previous From sales. They might get more out of nostalgic double-dipping 2-3 years down. That’d be how long it would take for me to consider going back at least.

Elden Ring is effectively an evergreen title, one that continues to sell on a level that Nintendo's big first party titles are known for. There are still many people playing the game, even 8 months after its release. At the time of posting, it's number 30 on the most played by current players list on Steam. with 24,821 current players: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed

If it's going to release on the new Switch, then sooner is better. It also likely has DLC on the way, so releasing a Switch version before that happens would be ideal.

 

[karmitt]

"no chance" and Nintendo is not a string of words one should pair together.

At the very least if there is something “soon” after this hardware release, it’s unlikely to leave it and the content that supports it behind.

I could see Nintendo‘s ‘next-generation’ being only moderately better than Drake - a die shrunk Drake with some new features like VR. If Drake is mostly to extend the current Switch lifespan, they wouldn’t necessarily wait 5 years from launch to bring on whatever comes next.

 

[olobolger]

Yeah, there’s no chance of another new system coming so soon after this next one. It’ll be several years before there’s even better hardware worth having over Drake. No idea how they’ll brand this new Switch but it’s going to be the star of Nintendo’s show for a good while.

I don’t know how much Nintendo could a Drake rumoured device release be, but a I think it would be very Nintendo to a have new system based on their known hardware but with a twist.

What I mean is that, while a lot of things point to this system being part of the Switch family (even if in terms of hardware/potential they could brand it as a new one), hence same form factor, ecosystem, not new gimmicks, etc., they might be thinking on this being the base of their new generation in a few years. It could be based on the Drake platform, but with higher clocks, memory, supplementary piece, or whatever adaptation needed for a new innovation, and this could be AR, VR, something fully unexpected…

 

[Ojoloco]

So RDR2 in summer or fall? I think they’ll put it out a bit later than ToTK, giving room for both to breathe. Like Skyrim, so fall.

Launch Window, so, depends of the release date of drake

 

[Ojoloco]

Did they officially say this though? Last I remember it was another insider report. Personally I don't buy that "to focus on GTA6" because they won't be the ones doing the remasters. I think they just simply removed Groove Street games from the projects, that's all.

Midnight Club LA Remastered has ben rumored for a year now, we should be hearing about that soon.

It is true that there is no official information about it.
And I think like you, possibly it was all about removing Groove from the projects they were involved in. As we can see with the internalization of GTAtrilogy in rockstar

 

[Nux]

I want two SKUs. Will gladly pay for higher end model for more storage space. Lower end at $400 with $256 GB (lol watch us get cheapened out with 128GB) storage or something and $450-$500 for 512GB-1TB. The increased storage shouldn't be that expensive. They will make their profit with the higher end.

Got my $500 gift card from bestbuy on my desk waiting to be used ._.

I was referring to cross platform games instead of the system itself.

 

[Hermii]

as far as something coming after Drake soon, you don't have to look at nintendo but look at Nvidia. hard to say how much better Thor will be since that's a bit more esoteric than Orin


that doesn't preclude RDR2 for drake though

Yep, from what I read about Thor it sounds pointless to even use it as a base for a gaming soc. I think the next Nintendo soc would be completely separate.

 

[KeijiKG]

Playing a bit of Bayo 3 and . God, the new switch can’t come soon enough…

It's weird when a boss battle has multiple phases and one of them puts you off because of its framerate boost.
Really early in the game at that.

 

[Mr Doggo]

i hope re4 remake releases for the switch 2.

 

[NintenDuvo]

Im catching up with the thread so whats the consensus now, is Drake not going to be the next Switch but the true successor years down the line and instead we just going to get a better performing version of the current Switch?

 

[Deleted member 887]

Im catching up with the thread so whats the consensus now, is Drake not going to be the next Switch but the true successor years down the line and instead we just going to get a better performing version of the current Switch?

No, that is not the consensus.

 

[Hermii]

Im catching up with the thread so whats the consensus now, is Drake not going to be the next Switch but the true successor years down the line and instead we just going to get a better performing version of the current Switch?

Imo, it’s too late in the lifecycle, and to much of a leap for that.

Mariko at higher clocks, with 6 gb of memory would have served perfectly fine as a pro I 2019.

 

[Dakhil]

Microsoft exec says gaming is 'somewhat resilient' to economic weakness

In the Global Financial Crisis, Microsoft's Xbox console business had the best calendar year to date, and Xbox content and services got a pandemic bump in 2020.

www.cnbc.com

⋮
Today, Spencer said, Microsoft gives people choice in how much they'd like to spend if they want consoles. The company offers the $499 Xbox Series X and the less powerful $299 Xbox Series S. Microsoft subsidizes the cost to the tune of $100 to $200 per console, with the expectation that it will make the money back on sales of accessories and storefront purchases, he said. It's up to gamers if they'd like to pay $10 or $15 per month for Game Pass subscriptions. They can also buy games outright, or play certain games for free.
⋮

Keep in mind the price of semiconductor and electronic components are expected to continue to rise up by up to 3.6% in 2022, and aren't expected to fall until late 2023 at the earliest, exasperated by Russia's attempted invasion of Ukraine, and the geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China.

---

 

[ILikeFeet]

Im catching up with the thread so whats the consensus now, is Drake not going to be the next Switch but the true successor years down the line and instead we just going to get a better performing version of the current Switch?

Don't know how you came to that conclusion but no

 

[ShadowFox08]

Why are we back to the idea of Drake being a pro model, and a true successor coming out like 3 years later again? Being a part of the "switch family" is only implying it keeps it's Switch name and that it's backwards compatibility to switch. Doesn't mean it's going to be a pro model, or contradict the idea of Drake being a successor (which is very high at this point). Cause the amount of R&D invested and generational leap/s in power and technology should make the writing in the wall as a successor.

How Sony and MS are treating their last and current gen consoles coexisting with multiplatform games between each other should be identical to how Nintendo will treat Switch and Drake.

It's only new for Nintendo home consoles because usually the previous home consoles have been on their last legs on their 4th or 5th year. That's not the case for Switch since it's still selling quite well coming into it's 6th year. Obviously Nintendo doesn't want to kill/put on life support the Switch soon either (the market dictates that). In terms of marketing they have to be careful. They can clearly state or just show that Drake will be used to enhance Switch games, while offering 3rd party exclusives from the get go (with some cloud versions on switch) and keeping the same 1st party support for a number of years. However they frame it to make the switch last as long as possible vs slowing sales down for it significantly.

 

[YolkFolk]

Ugh.. Why are we back to the idea of Drake being a pro model, and a true successor coming out like 3 years later again?

Some are saying otherwise but there’s no chance of this happening especially in the current climate.

This new system is basically a completely new console which is a generation ahead of the Switch in terms of its graphical output. The R&D and marketing for this device will rival that of putting out a next generation console - no different than Sony launching PS5.

It’s going to be expensive, it’s going to have exclusive games and we’re going to see a lot of older games get upgrades. There’s no realistic scenario where Nintendo will allow millions of people to buy this new device only to say ‘only joking, here’s the real Switch successor’ a couple of years down the line. People talk about gradual upgrades but hello? We’re still on OG Switch tech 6 years down the line. They’re not going to magic out a Series X level mobile chip out of no where right after Drake.

It takes years to design and put together this sort of stuff. From what we know this new hardware will be more capable and relevant than the OG Switch was for it’s time. It’s going to be Nintendo’s lead machine for a good while in my view.

 

[carbonaxiom]

Ugh.. Why are we back to the idea of Drake being a pro model, and a true successor coming out like 3 years later again? Being a part of the "switch family" is only implying it keeps it's Switch name and that it's backwards compatibility to switch. Doesn't mean it's going to be a pro model or contradict the idea of Drake being a successor is very very high. Cause the amount of R&D invested and generational leap/s in power and technology have "successor" should be obvious.

How is the concept of how Sony and MS treating their last and current gen consoles coexisting with multiplatform games between each other so foreign to people? That's exactly what's going to happen with switch and Drake.

It's only new for Nintendo home consoles because usually the previous home consolez have been on their last legs on their 4th or 5th year. That's not the case for switch since it's still selling quite well coming into it's 6th year. Obviously Nintendo doesn't want to kill/put on life support the Switch soon either (the market dictates that). So they could explicitly or not, market Drake as a pro console with same 1st party support as switch for a few years.. But it will replace switch eventually.

People keep bringing up they will market the Drake as a pro console, but now how. I mean how could they market it like a PS4 Pro and One X while not screwing over investors to alter say, it's a successor later? Maybe they don't have to say anything different than how Sony and MS have been treating current gen. The idea that Drake is going to just be a high end pro model to only upscale switch games like a pro model is laughable. Not with that R&D and completely different architecture

This position is one most people here consider at least possible, if not likely. The arguments come mostly with the preconceived notions associated with the terms "pro console" and "successor". There aren't any words that accurately describe the middle ground some think Nintendo might go for, so everyone is constantly forced to pick a word and then deal with the misinterpretations.

In other words, this often just becomes a semantic debate. Whatever Nintendo chooses to call the new system, everyone agrees that the older Switch models won't be immediately abandoned.

How they will go about that is a more interesting discussion to be had, but even there you should abandon assumptions that supporting the older console means that games can't be designed for the new one unless an entire port is made. It's possible that Nintendo has designed compatibility layers that allow them to make games that take full advantage of everything the new system has to offer, DLSS and all, while also being able to run on the OG Switch, and all while being the same SKU version of the game.

There's a lot they would need to deal with to make this work, including how both devices would handle running the same physical cartridge while giving different outputs. But it can be done.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Just like Nintendo, we are all doomed.


And from the looks of it, doomed to entertain what shouldn’t be entertained in a reasonable sense, and doomed to loop in circles.

 

[carbonaxiom]

Just like Nintendo, we are all doomed.


And from the looks of it, doomed to entertain what shouldn’t be entertained in a reasonable sense, and doomed to loop in circles.

The thread is about ready to enter a new Chinese factory uncle rumor loop.

 

[ILikeFeet]

The thread is about ready to enter a new Chinese factory uncle rumor loop.

fingers crossed for another linux4tegra update before the new year

 

[KMStwo]

Why are we back to the idea of Drake being a pro model, and a true successor coming out like 3 years later again? Being a part of the "switch family" is only implying it keeps it's Switch name and that it's backwards compatibility to switch. Doesn't mean it's going to be a pro model, or contradict the idea of Drake being a successor (which is very high at this point). Cause the amount of R&D invested and generational leap/s in power and technology should make the writing in the wall as a successor.

How Sony and MS are treating their last and current gen consoles coexisting with multiplatform games between each other should be identical to how Nintendo will treat Switch and Drake.

It's only new for Nintendo home consoles because usually the previous home consoles have been on their last legs on their 4th or 5th year. That's not the case for Switch since it's still selling quite well coming into it's 6th year. Obviously Nintendo doesn't want to kill/put on life support the Switch soon either (the market dictates that). In terms of marketing they have to be careful. They can clearly state or just show that Drake will be used to enhance Switch games, while offering 3rd party exclusives from the get go (with some cloud versions on switch) and keeping the same 1st party support for a number of years. However they frame it to make the switch last as long as possible vs slowing sales down for it significantly.

I completely agree with this. Though I want to add something that I said a while ago. I think the Switch Pro vs Switch 2 debate exist because of 4 reasons:

1- We heard about "a more powerful Switch model" too early. Like in 2019 iirc. This already set up our minds to think this is a Switch Pro if we are expecting it to release in 2020/2021. There are more than 400pages of speculation of this device on the other place where we were expecting a Switch Pro or atleast an "iterative model" for release in 2020 or 2021. Unfortunately, even in 2022, this way of thinking is still haunting us. I will come back to this in my third point.

2- PS4 Pro and One X exist. The idea of a more powerful mid-gen Switch has gained so much traction because of these two. So much so that people use Switch "Pro" as a shorthand for more powerful Switch. Not that the New 3DS and the DSi don't exist but the Wii U, Wii, Gamecube and Gameboy Advance do exist too. Even if more powerful, the New 3DS is weird because it replaced the 3DS at the same price(safe for the entry 2DS) and I am sure for most people it wasn't perceived as a more powerful or high end model but rather some kind of updated 3DS. It was nowhere near the heights of the DSi and even lesser than the PS4Pro/OneX. The New 3DS was needed because it was vital for the 3DS sales(which were very far from DS or Switch numbers) to extend its life until the Switch dropped. The Switch already got its upgraded model and that is the Switch OLED. I am 100% sure if the PS4Pro/OneX didn't exist, the "Switch Pro" wouldn't have gained so much traction.

3- We don't want to detach ourselves from that way of thinking. The idea of a more powerful Switch in the Switch family is still entrusted in the back of our heads to this day(since 2019/2020 where it made sense). Like, most people on the internet(and even here the thinking still remains) will refer to the rumors about the more powerful Switch in 2022 the same way they referred to it in 2020(as just a more powerful Switch- a Switch Pro) because the thing we have been hearing for years as a Switch Pro is yet to materialize. And it didn't materialize because it is something different than what we were expecting. I think we have to understand the thing we thought was a Switch Pro in 2019 is not it, it is much more than that. It was never just a more powerful Switch in the Switch family. I think we need to understand that and abandon that 2019/2020 way of thinking. We even know the specs of this thing. I am 100% sure if we started to hear about this device in late 2021 and in early 2022 the specs were known as they did then the Switch Pro vs Switch 2 debate wouldn't even exist. All those theories that Nintendo can release a revision of Drake 2 years later or a true successor after Drake wouldn't even be mentioned(and those are surely fueled by what happened with the Switch OLED). Not that those theories cannot happen but for me the chances are extremely low. We are in 2022, not in 2020 were a Switch Pro still made sense. I believe that if we started to hear about this device in late 2021, most people would have been in the Switch 2 camp.

4- We have to understand a next-gen Switch can just be a more powerful Switch without any new significant gimmick. With what we know about Drake I am very sure most of the budget went into performance rather than a significant pricey gimmick like what happened with the Wii U or the 3DS. I think Nintendo learned from their past errors and just want to make a better Switch trying to fix the Switch's flaws rather than adding a significant gimmick which would bring along it its own flaws while not properly correcting the flaws of the previous system again like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U.

Besides, I also expect a crossgen period but I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo is clear this is their next big thing from day one and even name it Switch 2 clearly indicating they are not part of the same family.

 

[Serif]

I 4- We have to understand a next-gen Switch can just be a more powerful Switch without any new significant gimmick.

Yup. I'm still drawing the Game Boy Advance comparison in my mind. More powerful backwards compatible next-gen device sharing the brand name, new features but no 'central gimmick' other than continuing the device concept itself. The fidelity of the games will make it obvious it's a next generation device, just as the GBA showed up with SNES ports. More significant a generational gap than the Game Boy Color, which is still framed today as just a 'Game Boy but in Color', despite the exclusives.

And hopefully like the GBA, we will get a clamshell Switch 2 and Switch 2 Micro. All with OLED screens. A man can dream.

 

[karmitt]

Some are saying otherwise but there’s no chance of this happening especially in the current climate.

Nate came in and dropped a cheeky but honest: ‘not a chance ‘and Nintendo shouldn’t be said in the same sentence. Since then I assumed it was just a thought exercise for what could happen.

We heard some unsubstantiated rumors a month ago that the OLED model would be replaced by the new Switch hardware, mostly keeping all the exterior as-is. It’s conceivable that this new hardware is specifically for extending the current Switch and it’s specific feature set for another few years. A hypothetical new system a few years later could bring about additional hardware gimmicks (VR) and be based on a die shrunk Drake. That hardware would seamlessly pick up from where the first Drake hardware left off.

I’m not saying it’s likely, but I’m certainly not going to say it’s “impossible.” Some have said that Nintendo might define new generations by their gimmicks and features, and as of now we don’t have any evidence of change for the Drake model. Also, we don’t have a specific agenda to talk about here, so what’s the harm?

 

[Stinky Horse]

Imo, it’s too late in the lifecycle, and to much of a leap for that.

Mariko at higher clocks, with 6 gb of memory would have served perfectly fine as a pro I 2019.

I'd argue that as long as people are complaining about the performance of Switch games, as opposed to wanting a new generation of games that similarly overstretch new hardware, then it's still a viable time.

I guess Xenoblade 2 has finally been retired as an often cited reason why we need a Switch Pro, but that came out 5 years ago.
A Switch U is bound to have early exclusives that give people new things to complain about, like pushing DLSS to breaking point or whatever.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Why are we back to the idea of Drake being a pro model, and a true successor coming out like 3 years later again?

Lack of something else to discuss?

The R&D and marketing for this device will rival that of putting out a next generation console - no different than Sony launching PS5.

This is demonstrably not true. Designing Drake as an offshoot of Orin, using stable architectures is absolutely significantly cheaper than Sony building custom APUs on top of an at-the-time-unfinalized RDNA2. The presence of Linux drivers implies that Nvidia intends to sell Drake based products of its own, again bringing down costs.

If Nintendo is reusing the Switch form factor with compatible accessories, the design and manufacturing process for the whole console is cheaper than any other console launch.

All rumors indicate a launch in the next 8 months, and even a 6 month saturation marketing plan will be cheaper than PS5's elaborate, year long hard sell.

It’s going to be expensive, it’s going to have exclusive games and we’re going to see a lot of older games get upgrades. There’s no realistic scenario where Nintendo will allow millions of people to buy this new device only to say ‘only joking, here’s the real Switch successor’ a couple of years down the line.

Allow me to present you with a realistic scenario.

Nintendo launches the "NuSwitch" a 4k capable device, heavily emphasizing backwards/forwards compatibility. The retire the OLED, and NuSwitch jumps right into pole position as the lead selling unit. However, it doesn't rejuvenate Switch sales overall, which stay strong for a devices seventh year, but don't jump up to "first year of a next gen device" levels. NuSwitch is a huge leap in power, but it's never taken proper advantage of, due to the cross-gen period holding games back, which is part of why Switch sales don't spike up, which extends the cross-gen period, which exacerbates the problem.

Nintendo didn't want this possibility, but knowing it existed, they execute plan B. A new console is announced, TV only, with a brand new gimmick. The chip inside is Drake, but unconstrained by handheld power demands and passive cooling, it is significantly more powerful, with an SSD and more RAM to boot, and the unified arch allows them to support two pieces of hardware more readily than during the DS era.

I can think of other scenarios as well. I think folks are right when they say Nintendo isn't going to launch a Nu Switch next year, then launch a Nuer Switch 3 years after that which breaks backwards compatibility.

But saying that NuSwitch is Nintendo's only platform for the next 6 years is presuming a lot. It's presuming that Nintendo wouldn't like to experiment with form factors other than handheld, and diversify their hardware portfolio. It presumes that Nintendo would need to reinvent Drake for new hardware, instead of simply using it in a new form factor, die shrinking or overclocking it. Or simply building something new using off the shelf parts, much as the Switch itself did. It also presumes that NuSwitch strategy is successful, and that Nintendo only has one strategy for the future.

Obviously scaremongering about "maybe this machine we've been salivating over for years is just a blip" is foolish. But Nintendo is doing something no other console manufacturer has ever done, and I am not convinced by anyone who thinks their post-game is obvious.