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

[Ozeiyo]

Outdated ? In what world ? What systems allowed u to play BotW, MK8D, Skyrim type of games on the go and in Full HD on the big screen in 2016/2017 ?

Having less raw power than stationary systems doesnt mean a system is underpowered, let alone that its outdated.
Thats like calling the SteamDeck outdated or underpowered because it doesnt outperform PS5/XSX.

How was it outdated from the get go? I thought the Switch punched above it’s weight class in some aspects compared to other tech at the time.

I think I didn't choose my words correctly, and I'm sorry if it came across as dismissive of the switch itself, which wasn't my intention. I agree with the both of you. The Switch was, at launch, a great piece of tech (as revolutionary in this regard as the PSP when it came out), allowing you to play console-type games on the go and was a leap for portable gaming as a whole.

By "outdated" what I meant to point out here is that we've known since the release of the Switch that it wasn't as powerful as stationary consoles, that it has struggled to run some games and that ports ran worse. That was fine, and it hasn't stopped it from outselling them every year. My point was, and still is, that it being inferior in terms of hardware compared to Xbox and PS isn't the reason why "we need" new hardware, or why it will end up coming out.

Maybe it was a poor choice of words, I simply wanted to give a good explanation about why the market wanted a beefier Switch model so early in its lifecycle (compared to past generations).

My original point to your comment was that Switch has always been less powerful, that Nintendo has consistently released consoles that were less powerful than its competitors since the Wii and that talks about successors or refresh coming out in 2020 or 2021 were more due to enthusiasts lamenting its lack of power than what the market actually wanted, as we've seen with the switch consistently outselling PS4 and Xbox One, and then even PS5 and Series X. The market hasn't necessarily been clamoring for a new system, enthusiasts have. We love the system and want to play its games with a higher framerate and resolution, but this hasn't been bothering the general public as much.

 

[Serif]

The Tegra X1 was barely two years old at the time the Switch was revealed. I don't think it was outdated then, and in reading many discussions about this, I don't know of an alternative Nintendo could have used at the time.

It is obviously stretched thin at this point, that's why I'm excited we're getting a custom chip in Drake.

 

[Hermii]

Outdated ? In what world ? What systems allowed u to play BotW, MK8D, Skyrim type of games on the go and in Full HD on the big screen in 2016/2017 ?

Having less raw power than stationary systems doesnt mean a system is underpowered, let alone that its outdated.
Thats like calling the SteamDeck outdated or underpowered because it doesnt outperform PS5/XSX.

I think outdated here refers to outclassed by newer tech.

A57 cores are from 2012. Maxwell was a last gen architecture . Sony and Ms slim consoles that came out half a year before, was on the superior 16nm process.

While we don’t know the final specs of Drake, from a certain point of view that will launch with outdated specs too. Ampere is last gen, the Samsung 8nm process is considerably worse than 7nm which the other consoles are using. A78 is a 3 year old cpu.

 

[Serif]

I think outdated here refers to outclassed by newer tech.

A57 cores are from 2012. Maxwell was a last gen architecture . Sony and Ms slim consoles that came out half a year before, was on the superior 16nm process.

While we don’t know the final specs of Drake, from a certain point of view that will launch with outdated specs too. Ampere is last gen, the Samsung 8nm process is considerably worse than 7nm which the other consoles are using. A78 is a 3 year old cpu.

How does the Steam Deck fare in comparison?

( Honestly, want to gauge if I should wait for an OLED model of Steam Deck 1 or wait longer for Steam Deck 2 while praying for eGPU support )

 

[Aether]

Nvidia has unified their architectures for the consumer and the datacenter, with Nvidia offering DLSS branded tech as a way to use all that silicon that datacenter demands that consumers traditionally haven't had a use for. Medium term, however, I doubt this will scale.

Were at a different problem: the scale in which needed dies size and power consumption jumps up on consumer cards for marginal real world benefits is not sustainable baring a technological shift. (obviously a big point of discussion, but i don't see many outlets at all screaming for 8k like they did for FHD or 4k back then... and more then 120fps is a niche... and yeah, those are not the only metrics that can improve, but i feel like asset creation, even with all improved tools in mind is another hurdle...as is project management on that AAA level)

And currently i dont see a big change happening, becuase of that im confident that the size/power comsumption will be the aspect that will lead them to diverging data center cards from consumer cards. i mean some power supplies by themselve are 1k - 1k6 W, thats half of the allowed power per breaker. (230Vx16A), add to that an "average (getbest4k.com, no idea if valid, no time to check)" gaming monitor with 300W, a sound system, say 100 (they can go way up, but lets keep it reasonable).
Many gamers have 2, and you're at say 500W for the monitors. That's a peak of 1250-2100W at worst, were in an area where another high power tool (toaster, hair dryer, personal space heater) will trigger the fuse.

As it is, is the extreme scenario, but pc gaming hardware (especially graphic cards and bigger brighter monitors) are really pushing it, there isn't that much more room. And with rising energy prices the power consumption factor will become way more important.
To set things in perspective, switch is sub 30W as far as i remember when its docked.
(maybe sub 40W, ballparks fine), and its charging.
PS5 is i thing 250? way under 500W. Power just does not scale well to performance...or the other way around.

My point? They will have to split enterprise and consumer cards again, but not because of the design.

 

[Seboss]

Not by default, but if a game requests the additional resources, it performs better.

I had no idea, thanks for the clarification. I assume it's only possible for cross-revision games or games patched to request additional resources though.
The architectural differences between Tegra X1 and Drake paint a completely different picture, I suppose.

I've shelved quite a few games that notoriously struggle on X1, as I hope that Switch games will natively run better on Drake. But considering Nintendo's history, I'll try to remain cautiously optimistic.

 

[Deleted member 887]

it’s really not what you think it is, it’s literally just the shaders that they added more instructions to it. This isn’t anything like tensor cores, it’s straight up, just shaders. Despite the slide, it’s being misread/misinterpreted/misunderstood


The “dedicated AI unit” is really a RDNA3 shader executing the task, it’s not anything like the tensor cores which has it as a completely separate unit in its WGP.

To make it clearer, it’s straight up how AMD has the Texture Mapping Units perform Ray Tracing tasks, while it doesn’t have any exact dedicated RT unit/core like the type in Intel or NVidia GPUs.

AMD calling it “dedicated” is misleading, but I guess it depends on what perspective you look at it. Is there hardware that only does that? No. Is there shader units that are meant to do “double duty” solely for this? Yes. That’s what they are doing.

Source?

 

[RedSpring]

What is the consensus on backwards compatibility between OG Switch and Drake, specifically regarding an improved experience for existing Switch games on the new platform?

Nintendo has always offered some form of backwards compatibility between its console generations, from the Wii for home consoles and the GBC for handhelds. But, perhaps with the exception of the GBC, the new platform has never offered a better experience for existing games. Gamecube games don't run faster on the Wii, nor do Wii games run faster on the Wii U. It's the same for handhelds, even between revisions of the same generation. If I'm not mistaken, 3DS games don't run faster on the New 3DS / New 2DS XL despite a much more powerful hardware.

Beyond the obvious hardware reasons (incompatible architectures and consoles using previous generation hardware), it might be desirable for Nintendo to ensure and identical experience across generations for several reasons.

First, to ensure optimal compatibility. There is no guarantee that without a patch, a game designed to run at maximum speed on its original platform will run correctly on a more powerful platform. And it doesn't seem to me to be relevant for most publishers/developers to patch an old game to improve its performance on a new platform. It can be a big effort, if it is even possible (disbanded development teams, legal issues) and it can cause legal problems. And it involves maintaining an older game for an additional platform. No clear financial incentive there without Nintendo sweetening the deal. So it might be a good rule of thumb to throttle the hardware down to the original target platform envelope.

Then, I imagine that Nintendo will still be selling original Switch consoles for months or even years. A game made for the original Switch offering a much better experience on the new machine would put the original Switch in a very unfavorable light, give an unfair advantage in online games, etc.

Finally, Nintendo is the world champion at reselling the same games to players multiple times. Whether it's through simple ports or HD or remastered versions that often do the bare minimum.

I am well aware that the Xbox and Playstation ecosystems are rather generous in this respect. They often offer a greatly increased game experience on XBox Series X or PS5 for games of the previous generation (and even older) in a totally transparent way. And it does seem like the way to go to promote the new platform, in a most consumer-friendly way.

But Nintendo doesn't work this way. It's probably among the most consumer-hostile entertainment company there is. Maybe for traditionalist reasons or maybe because they don't have the same core market as their competitor (core-gamer US vs family-friendy Japan), not really sure about that.

But long story short, is there any reason to believe Drake will be any different?

History got to start somewhere. Sony didn't have a history of being generous with improved previous generation games until they did with the PS5. Chances are, Nintendo will take the same approach as Sony. Without adding the Switch chip to Drake, games will have to run on new very different faster hardware. From that point on, it's a matter of testing what games doesn't work and blacklist them.

 

[Kenka]

My original point to your comment was that Switch has always been less powerful, that Nintendo has consistently released consoles that were less powerful than its competitors since the Wii and that talks about successors or refresh coming out in 2020 or 2021 were more due to enthusiasts lamenting its lack of power than what the market actually wanted, as we've seen with the switch consistently outselling PS4 and Xbox One, and then even PS5 and Series X. The market hasn't necessarily been clamoring for a new system, enthusiasts have. We love the system and want to play its games with a higher framerate and resolution, but this hasn't been bothering the general public as much.

You might be right.

Fact is, the general public prefers the OLED model to the regular Mariko one. That would strongly imply that an enhanced Switch would indeed sway hearts. There is no way to know without proper market research.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Of course I'd love 4K 60 fps Age of Calamity on Drake

coincidentally, this wouldn't even be nintendo's choice as it's a licensed game

 

[Link_enfant]

coincidentally, this wouldn't even be nintendo's choice as it's a licensed game

From what I've seen, locked 30fps at the very least would be nice and is, hopefully, something we can expect in the "worst" case.
I hope I can eventually start playing this in decent conditions, cause I also plan to go through BotW again in Expert mode before TotK =)

 

[AxkilAvenger]

I think I didn't choose my words correctly, and I'm sorry if it came across as dismissive of the switch itself, which wasn't my intention. I agree with the both of you. The Switch was, at launch, a great piece of tech (as revolutionary in this regard as the PSP when it came out), allowing you to play console-type games on the go and was a leap for portable gaming as a whole.

By "outdated" what I meant to point out here is that we've known since the release of the Switch that it wasn't as powerful as stationary consoles, that it has struggled to run some games and that ports ran worse. That was fine, and it hasn't stopped it from outselling them every year. My point was, and still is, that it being inferior in terms of hardware compared to Xbox and PS isn't the reason why "we need" new hardware, or why it will end up coming out.



My original point to your comment was that Switch has always been less powerful, that Nintendo has consistently released consoles that were less powerful than its competitors since the Wii and that talks about successors or refresh coming out in 2020 or 2021 were more due to enthusiasts lamenting its lack of power than what the market actually wanted, as we've seen with the switch consistently outselling PS4 and Xbox One, and then even PS5 and Series X. The market hasn't necessarily been clamoring for a new system, enthusiasts have. We love the system and want to play its games with a higher framerate and resolution, but this hasn't been bothering the general public as much.

What exactly is an enthusiast when it comes to vidya games? I’ve been playing Nintendo consoles pretty much daily since the nes and a more powerful console has never been the main reason for me to upgrade. It’s always been about the type of games and how they play. Does an enthusiast have to chase hardware power? Or can they chase game play instead?

 

[ILikeFeet]

What exactly is an enthusiast when it comes to vidya games?

answering true to this question

 

[daybreak]

Tinfoil hat time: Hogwarts Legacy just got a two month delay from early February to early April.

They also announced the Switch version for July 25. Previously there was no release date for Switch.

Assuming the two month delay for the game across the board, it may have been initially supposed to release in mid-May for Switch...in line with TotK. Potentially it's a title that was initially supposed to release with the Switch successor on both the Switch and the New Switch?

 

[Truno]

Tinfoil hat time: Hogwarts Legacy just got a two month delay from early February to early April.

They also announced the Switch version for July 25. Previously there was no release date for Switch.

Assuming the two month delay for the game across the board, it may have been initially supposed to release in mid-May for Switch...in line with TotK. Potentially it's a title that was initially supposed to release with the Switch successor on both the Switch and the New Switch?

The game releases on February 10, 2023 on PS5, Xbox X|S, and PC. April 4, 2023 on PS4 and Xbox One. July 25, 2023 on Nintendo Switch.

There was no delay, they just announced the release date for the PS4, Xbone, and Switch versions

 

[Mirev]

The game releases on February 10, 2023 on PS5, Xbox X|S, and PC. April 4, 2023 on PS4 and Xbox One. July 25, 2023 on Nintendo Switch.

There was no delay, they just announced the release date for the PS4, Xbone, and Switch versions

PS4 and Xbox One got delayed.

 

[Dakhil]

NERD posted a job listing for an emulation engineer.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Source?

 

[Pokemaniac]

What is the consensus on backwards compatibility between OG Switch and Drake, specifically regarding an improved experience for existing Switch games on the new platform?

Nintendo has always offered some form of backwards compatibility between its console generations, from the Wii for home consoles and the GBC for handhelds. But, perhaps with the exception of the GBC, the new platform has never offered a better experience for existing games. Gamecube games don't run faster on the Wii, nor do Wii games run faster on the Wii U. It's the same for handhelds, even between revisions of the same generation. If I'm not mistaken, 3DS games don't run faster on the New 3DS / New 2DS XL despite a much more powerful hardware.

Beyond the obvious hardware reasons (incompatible architectures and consoles using previous generation hardware), it might be desirable for Nintendo to ensure and identical experience across generations for several reasons.

First, to ensure optimal compatibility. There is no guarantee that without a patch, a game designed to run at maximum speed on its original platform will run correctly on a more powerful platform. And it doesn't seem to me to be relevant for most publishers/developers to patch an old game to improve its performance on a new platform. It can be a big effort, if it is even possible (disbanded development teams, legal issues) and it can cause legal problems. And it involves maintaining an older game for an additional platform. No clear financial incentive there without Nintendo sweetening the deal. So it might be a good rule of thumb to throttle the hardware down to the original target platform envelope.

Then, I imagine that Nintendo will still be selling original Switch consoles for months or even years. A game made for the original Switch offering a much better experience on the new machine would put the original Switch in a very unfavorable light, give an unfair advantage in online games, etc.

Finally, Nintendo is the world champion at reselling the same games to players multiple times. Whether it's through simple ports or HD or remastered versions that often do the bare minimum.

I am well aware that the Xbox and Playstation ecosystems are rather generous in this respect. They often offer a greatly increased game experience on XBox Series X or PS5 for games of the previous generation (and even older) in a totally transparent way. And it does seem like the way to go to promote the new platform, in a most consumer-friendly way.

But Nintendo doesn't work this way. It's probably among the most consumer-hostile entertainment company there is. Maybe for traditionalist reasons or maybe because they don't have the same core market as their competitor (core-gamer US vs family-friendy Japan), not really sure about that.

But long story short, is there any reason to believe Drake will be any different?

It's not impossible that Nintendo surprises us, but right now there's no evidence of the sort of hardware necessary to accomplish Nintendo's typical approach to BC. It's looking more likely software driven, which means at least some light improvements are likely.

 

[Truno]

PS4 and Xbox One got delayed.

I stand corrected. But I still don't think it means much

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

NERD posted a job listing for an emulation engineer.

The Company

Nintendo European Research and Development (NERD) is a French subsidiary of Nintendo. We are a company of about 75 employees who share a passion for creating key software technologies and cutting-edge solutions deployed on a wide scale of homogeneous devices. Working in close collaboration with counterparts in Japan and USA, we contribute to emulation, signal processing, content generation, computer vision, machine learning, system development, optimization and security for Nintendo 3DS™, Nintendo Switch™ and other Nintendo platforms. Come discover an engaging and welcoming work environment in the heart of Paris and join our unique team in its mission to put smiles on people’s faces!



Position Duties

NERD is looking for an Emulation Engineer who will contribute to our internal expertise and push the state of the art in the following ways:

• Developing and maintaining retro hardware emulators
• Reverse engineering and debugging legacy games, hardware and firmware
• Game binary patching and improvement
• Researching productivity techniques and new features in emulation products
• Implementing a wide spectrum of High Level Emulation (HLE) and Low Level Emulation (LLE) techniques, for CPU, rendering or sound emulation
• Researching, implementing and optimizing interpretation, dynamic recompilation and static recompilation

Candidate Profile

We are looking for programmers who:

• Are passionate about retro gaming and/or legacy hardware
• Are team players
• Are eager to learn, improve their skills and share their knowledge
• Aim for the best but know when to be pragmatic when faced with engineering problems
• Are willing to understand the constraints and tradeoffs of production environments and deploying software to millions of users, then updating it
• Don't shy away from writing GUI tools, scripts or unit tests when needed
• Understand the value of robust software design, debuggability, portability and regression testing
• Are perseverant and attentive to detail
• Have a good general computer science culture
• Can multitask when needed
• Have a good knowledge of C++ 03
• Have a good knowledge of debugging techniques

Bonus points if you:

• Have a good ability to read assembly code, and a basic ability to write some
• Have a good knowledge of emulation techniques
• Thrive when faced with a variety of architectures and tasks
• Know some micro electrical engineering

We expect candidates to be proficient in English, both written and spoken. Knowledge of French and Japanese is appreciated. Eligibility to work in the EU is required and candidates are expected to relocate near Paris.

 

[Concernt]

Forgive my tinfoil hatting but I find it interesting how developers have gone from saying "Nintendo Switch" to simply "Nintendo" or "Nintendo platform".

In the past week or so we've had both Platinum Games (via Hideki Kamiya) and Xbox (via Phil Spencer) refer to "Nintendo platform" and not Switch to describe where future games will go. I can't help but think with all the noise we've heard about the next device, that they're holding their tongue just enough to not tread on Nintendo's toes.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The last time Nintendo was so successful was during the DS and Wii era. Their respective life cycle lasted seven and six years.

I can't understand the impatience, which has existed for several years now, about a new generation of Switch.

If a new generation comes out in 2023, it will just be in line with normal Nintendo practices when a product is successful. The same amount of time also passed between the SNES and the N64.

If Switch was in the same position as DS, the successor would've been announced July 3 of this year, shown off September 25 of this year, and be released on June 8 of next year.

If Switch was in the same position as Wii, the successor would've been announced August 7, 2021, shown off September 19, 2021, and release March 3 of next year.

If Switch was in the same position as SNES, the successor would've been announced (vaguely) December 4, 2019, shown off March 4 of this year, and released October 4 of this year.

If Switch was in the same position as NES, the successor would've been announced April 28, 2021, shown off July 11 this year, and release July 10, 2024.

So for most of those we're still in the period before the successor actually arrived, but in all cases early versions of the hardware had been demonstrated well before now. Game Boy must be the only exception.

Nintendo is usually consistent with at least 1 gen BC except in a handful of cases. They are probably the most consistent with handheld BC.

Sony portables have a 100% track record, just not a very long one.

 

[Hermii]

Forgive my tinfoil hatting but I find it interesting how developers have gone from saying "Nintendo Switch" to simply "Nintendo" or "Nintendo platform".

In the past week or so we've had both Platinum Games (via Hideki Kamiya) and Xbox (via Phil Spencer) refer to "Nintendo platform" and not Switch to describe where future games will go. I can't help but think with all the noise we've heard about the next device, that they're holding their tongue just enough to not tread on Nintendo's toes.

Context though. "We will support Nintendo with Cod for 10 years", it's a certainty the current Switch won't be around the next decade.

Same goes for a new Bayonettta game that hasn't even started development.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Nintendo hasn’t really done cross gen before (with a couple of exceptions).

I think assuming MK 9 (or any other game) is cross gen, will change the equation on release timing.

If MK9 is cross gen that makes it less likely to show up so soon, only 3 months after the previous title got its last update. It’s still going to sell for some time after that.


And it also defeats the purpose of using that to even acquire a new device, or really reduces it I should say.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I stand corrected. But I still don't think it means much

part of me feels like it's an intentional misdirect by AMD

 

[kvetcha]

What exactly is an enthusiast when it comes to vidya games? I’ve been playing Nintendo consoles pretty much daily since the nes and a more powerful console has never been the main reason for me to upgrade. It’s always been about the type of games and how they play. Does an enthusiast have to chase hardware power? Or can they chase game play instead?

Counterpoint: it’s been pretty apparent that even Nintendo is bumping up against hardware limitations in their first-party titles. I’m sure the EPDs would like some beefier silicon to work with as much as anyone else.

 

[Dakhil]

The question is how soon is Nvidia and/or Nintendo going to shift from Arm to RISC-V?

 

[Pokemaniac]

Nintendo hasn’t really done cross gen before (with a couple of exceptions).

I think assuming MK 9 (or any other game) is cross gen, will change the equation on release timing.

If there was going to be a cross-gen Mario Kart 9, I don't think we'd be getting the Booster Course Pass right now. That really seems to signal that a new Mario Kart is still fairly far off.

 

[Hermii]

If MK9 is cross gen that makes it less likely to show up so soon, only 3 months after the previous title got its last update. It’s still going to sell for some time after that.


And it also defeats the purpose of using that to even acquire a new device, or really reduces it I should say.

That’s why I think MK 9 will be a significant departure from the rest of the series, something that can coexist just fine with 8 Deluxe on the same platform. The obvious guess is Smash Kart, but who knows.

MK tour and Booster Pass surely haven’t taken up all of EPD 9s capacity for all these years

 

[MP!]

The question is how soon is Nvidia and/or Nintendo going to shift from Arm to RISC-V?

what would be the benefit is RISCV more efficient?

 

[Dakhil]

what would be the benefit is RISCV more efficient?

One benefit is that unlike Arm, RISC-V is royalty free.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

That’s why I think MK 9 will be a significant departure from the rest of the series, something that can coexist just fine with 8 Deluxe on the same platform. The obvious guess is Smash Kart, but who knows.

MK tour and Booster Pass surely haven’t taken up all of EPD 9s capacity for all these years

That makes no sense for it to be cross gen, that makes less sense as a departure from traditional Mario kart.

It hasn’t taken up all resources but has taken its share of resources.

what would be the benefit is RISCV more efficient?

Royalty Free.

But RISC-V has many issues with it that will take quite some time to fix, and even by then ARM and x86 would be a leap ahead. It’s best usecase at the moment, is more like…. as a coprocessor of sort on silicon.


Hardware is improving but software is lightyears away from what the likes of the former two can or have offered for their clients.

 

[Intoxicate]

What puzzles me a bit is, I thought one of the lessons learned from Nintendo was to not wait too long for the “HD” upgrade. The Wii U came too late and the Wii momentum was already dead.
I know a lot of Switch owners bought the Switch because it plays other games than Nintendo First Party. To keep that momentum a successor or pro was due when the next generation launched, but definitely now.
It‘s hard following the leaks without any official news. To me that just means the new hardware is getting older… I don’t expect Nintendo to upgrade to better nodes etc with more time passing by.

 

[Stinky Horse]

What puzzles me a bit is, I thought one of the lessons learned from Nintendo was to not wait too long for the “HD” upgrade. The Wii U came too late and the Wii momentum was already dead.

Have they ever said anything to that effect? It's not like the Wii U was giving an HD upgrade to existing games, it's just a new console in that regard.
They normally talk about needing to keep up a consistent line up of new software, as opposed to Wii which went to a trickle after 4 years.

 

[AxkilAvenger]

Counterpoint: it’s been pretty apparent that even Nintendo is bumping up against hardware limitations in their first-party titles. I’m sure the EPDs would like some beefier silicon to work with as much as anyone else.

As of late yes. But people are revising history with talks of how the Switch was severely under powered since launch. Like the system only sold 112 million on good will or something.

 

[Truno]

What puzzles me a bit is, I thought one of the lessons learned from Nintendo was to not wait too long for the “HD” upgrade. The Wii U came too late and the Wii momentum was already dead.

Thing is, the momentum for Switch is not stopping. It just broke the record for the biggest launch of a console exclusive and it's still competitive with current-gen consoles in terms of hardware sales. On the other hand, the Wii was pretty much dead by this point in its lifecycle. First-party devs had moved onto new hardware and people weren't interested in the console's third-party support.

Take Skyward Sword for example. A Zelda game that launched on the Wii, a console that had a user base of 100m+, and it sold only 3.52 million units. TotK is probably gonna sell more than that in its first 3 days

 

[Pokemaniac]

what would be the benefit is RISCV more efficient?

Similar to how ARM proliferated while x86 got stuck in a (slowly shrinking) market segment in the first place, it's an alternative with a much more open licensing model, which is becoming a more and more appealing factor in a world where there are export controls and lawsuits starting to raise questions about the long term access to ARM IP. It's also starting to win market share on it's own merits in the microcontroller space, to the point where even Drake itself is likely to contain a RISC-V core operating in this capacity within the GPU, as Nvidia dropped their in-house Falcon design in favor of RISC-V.

For a variety of reasons, I don't expect Nvidia to be an early adopter of RISC-V as a primary CPU core, but if the rest of the industry starts shifting in that direction (which will not be a fast process), then they'll probably eventually follow.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Sure, that all tracks. But to go back to my original point about the CU layouts being similar, the fact that the "matrix accelerator" is just scheduling hardware that forwards execution back to the existing SIMD lanes doesn't matter. The RT hardware is more sophisticated, but not a dissimilar approach, but from a layout perspective, they still both have "RT cores".

What AMD and Nvidia is doing with matrix math is not in anyway comparable, but I wasn't trying to compare them

 

[Deleted member 887]

For a variety of reasons, I don't expect Nvidia to be an early adopter of RISC-V as a primary CPU core, but if the rest of the industry starts shifting in that direction (which will not be a fast process), then they'll probably eventually follow.

They're sticking RISC-V anywhere they can in controller cores, though, and Peregrine is an interesting experiment. It feels like they're saving some money in the short term by stripping out random ARM bits, but teeing themselves up to move quickly on RISC-V in the long term

 

[Dakhil]

Have they ever said anything to that effect? It's not like the Wii U was giving an HD upgrade to existing games, it's just a new console in that regard.
They normally talk about needing to keep up a consistent line up of new software, as opposed to Wii which went to a trickle after 4 years.

Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned wanting to transition to HD sooner.

 

[boodream]

If Switch was in the same position as DS, the successor would've been announced July 3 of this year, shown off September 25 of this year, and be released on June 8 of next year.

If Switch was in the same position as Wii, the successor would've been announced August 7, 2021, shown off September 19, 2021, and release March 3 of next year.

If Switch was in the same position as SNES, the successor would've been announced (vaguely) December 4, 2019, shown off March 4 of this year, and released October 4 of this year.

If Switch was in the same position as NES, the successor would've been announced April 28, 2021, shown off July 11 this year, and release July 10, 2024.

So for most of those we're still in the period before the successor actually arrived, but in all cases early versions of the hardware had been demonstrated well before now. Game Boy must be the only exception.

This is a good point, the situations are not exactly similar. As other posts have noted, this is also because the Switch's current situation is still very dynamic, not just in terms of sales but also in terms of game releases. I imagine it's important for them not to weaken sales during the holiday season.

Honestly, my only hypothetical concern would be related to possible new component shortages.

 

[Stinky Horse]

Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned wanting to transition to HD sooner.

Thanks, definitely read that before so I should have remembered that one.

 

[Concernt]

The question is how soon is Nvidia and/or Nintendo going to shift from Arm to RISC-V?

As soon as Nvidia:
A. Moves to RISC-V for Tegra.
B. Proves that the new chip can virtualize the old chips good enough that Nintendo doesn't have to leave the library behind.

I'd say the Switch after Drake is a possibility, but more likely the one after that. Maybe 10 years time.

 

[mjayer]

Without having any idea what the current mood in the room is, just from the fact that Nintendo is not telling us anything about a Zelda game that is supposed to release in 5 months, I can almost believe there will be at least a hardware revision coming in time for that game's release, & they're only not telling us right now because holiday sales.

Am I the only one?

Yes. Yes. Yes. BOTW was blown out like crazy by now. Long epic trailers (imo some of the best video game trailers of all time) showcasing story elements and gameplay. In contrast we've had 3 very short trailers that I would more classify as teasers, honestly. For a major tentpole piece of software, that's coming very soon, what are they waiting for?

Tinfoil hat time: Hogwarts Legacy just got a two month delay from early February to early April.

They also announced the Switch version for July 25. Previously there was no release date for Switch.

Assuming the two month delay for the game across the board, it may have been initially supposed to release in mid-May for Switch...in line with TotK. Potentially it's a title that was initially supposed to release with the Switch successor on both the Switch and the New Switch?

Bro that's not tinfoil hat, that's detective ish right there. I think you're on to something.

 

[Concernt]

Context though. "We will support Nintendo with Cod for 10 years", it's a certainty the current Switch won't be around the next decade.

Same goes for a new Bayonettta game that hasn't even started development.

He actually said it in reference to something (other than Bayonetta) which IS in development.

He said it wouldn't be "Nintendo exclusive", but not that it would (or wouldn't) be on Nintendo.

Also interesting to me is Bayonetta 3 ending with the line "To he continued in a new generation..." which strongly implies that the next Bayonetta game (that isn't a prequel) will be either Viola centric, on next gen hardware only, or my take, both.

 

[ShadowFox08]

Would be very surprised if we don't get a 3d Mario game in Q4 2023. Like a spiritual successor to Odyssey.

The last time Nintendo was so successful was during the DS and Wii era. Their respective life cycle lasted seven and six years.

I can't understand the impatience, which has existed for several years now, about a new generation of Switch.

If a new generation comes out in 2023, it will just be in line with normal Nintendo practices when a product is successful. The same amount of time also passed between the SNES and the N64.

I'm not at all pronouncing on the need for new hardware, obviously there needs to be one and that's not my point, but I find this general turmoil quite astonishing and I don't think it has existed in the past in such proportions.

The Wii was pretty much dying in it's fifth year. There was a pretty sharp decline with third parties in it's last two years.

If MK9 is cross gen that makes it less likely to show up so soon, only 3 months after the previous title got its last update. It’s still going to sell for some time after that.


And it also defeats the purpose of using that to even acquire a new device, or really reduces it I should say.

Late 2024 or 2025 release me thinks.
I don't think mk9 should be cross platform. It feels messed up saying this but mk8d-while it is a Wii u port... It's a really enhanced Wii u port with more modes and all the Wii u dlc.. But also all the paid dlc tracks on switch make it an ultimate version, which is great... And kind of it's own game.
I say this also cause switch will be in its 8th-9th year when 2024-2025 rolls around, and Drake won't be pushed to it's potential, since it will likely just be a switch port with 4k.

Either way, I'm getting it on Drake. Nintendo could definitely release MK8 with all DLC included Drake for $60 or something to give us 4k 60fps in end of 2023 somehow (or maybe via patch if we have it on switch already. It could sell a lot of Drake consoles if sold separately But yeah, 2025 for mk9 might
actually sound better then...

At least for the switch, besides TotK, Pikmin 4, and MP4 multiplatform releases, I'm hoping for 3D Mario as well. If they wanna pull off XCX ad a multiplaform on switch too in 2024, I guess that's fine too. But I'm hoping new Nintendo games after are on Drake (2025).

 

[bloopland33]

We knew the Switch version of Hogwarts was always coming late but I do wonder if WB's studios got devkits between Hogwarts and Arkham still being officially MIA. I feel pretty good hedging bets that Arkham will launch after May and be Drake-enhanced, so it's more a question of if the Hogwarts team got a kit as well.

 

[MP!]

Bro that's not tinfoil hat, that's detective ish right there. I think you're on to something.

 

[mariodk18]

Iwata himself, in the January 2013 Direct, said that each system gets one MK title. If you’re expecting MK9 to be cross gen, then what were your thoughts on MK7 not releasing on DS on that massive 154 M install base? Or 8 on Wii?

When Switch 2 is out and someone asks, “what’s the big difference with the old switch?”, when they get told “it has MK9”, then they’ll want to go out and buy the new system. Certain franchises, can or will have multiple entries per system (generally single player), like Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem, DK, etc. but not Animal Crossing, Smash, or MK.

That’s because those are the true, massive system sellers that you stand to lose more than you gain if you release them cross gen. Sure you make more money and might sell more of your older system, but you lose out on THE biggest incentive for someone to buy a new system.