Sure, I'll play:
- Release in Q1 of FY 03/2024
- Pretty much everything that has been discovered from reliable sources up to this point is factually accurate (eg. 8-core-single-cluster A78 CPU, GPU's SP count, Tensor and RT cores, etc.)
- eUFS internal storage 128GB or higher
- Either UFS Card slot that can load games or a microSD slot with no game loading off the card
- PS4 cross-gen titles make a quick jump to the new hardware
- $400 or lower, with price cuts for all available Switch models at or shortly after new hardware launch
If they've been sitting on hardware for 2 years, it means that it's not an Orin-based chip, since that didn't even get
sampled until H2 2021, and with everything we've read pointing at an Orin-based SoC design, this is 100% verifiably Tales From One's Ass™.
Indeed. It's like they constructed a narrative that solely fits Nintendo's alleged needs and doesn't factor in the 3rd-party development pipeline
at all. And say what you will about Nintendo and 3rd-parties, but even the most unflattering characterization of their indifference toward 3rd-parties would never extend THAT far.
Switch was priced at $300 based on costs for components in 2016/2017. What you would pay for, say, a die of eMMC in 2017 at its size gets you more bang for your buck nowadays. That also holds true for SoCs, as well, so long as you're not chasing the newest and hottest nodes.
You have 4 major expenses for a device like this: SoC, display, RAM and battery (and probably in that order, too). Those are the big ones that make up between half and 3 quarters the cost to build it. So let's look at what costs can be expected for these parts.
The display, be it OLED or LCD, is likely going to be the same cost-wise as you would see in Switch unless they push for a 1080p display, because it's unlikely to get any bigger than it already is.
Likewise, if the SoC is hitting the same TDP, they can use the same battery as found in Switch, which has declined in cost through the sheer volume Nintendo requires, but Li-Ion battery density improves by about 2% year over year while seeing little in the way of cost increases, so they could opt for more battery life in a similar package and pay what they paid for the Switch's battery at launch. Either way, the cost is either smaller or the same as it was in 2017.
Likewise, when you
review retail prices on RAM historically, you can see that better RAM eventually equals the price one would pay for the prior generation. 2 x 8GB of DDR4-3000 RAM in 2017 was available for $75-80 (which is more than what went into Switch), while in 2022, 2 x 8GB of DDR5-4800 is
$63. So that's... as low as $4.69 per GB of DDR4 in 2017 vs. $3.94 per GB of DD5 in 2022. Keeping in mind that this is retail price analysis for computer parts, it bodes well for the jump in RAM quantity in Drake not being that much more money, all things considered. It'll be more, but not enough that one should consider a $200 price increase to the hardware to be reasonable.
So only the SoC remains... the RAM price increase would,
at most, bump cost up by $50 per unit, and that's being really kind to the notion of inflated cost for parts. So, one would have to consider, if $500 is the expectation, will the cost of an SoC of similar die size and TDP not on the newest and hottest node constitute reason to suspect a $150 cost increase per unit? My feeling is that the answer to that is a resounding "no".
No, you're not wrong.
I think Switch maintaining its $300 MSRP for its entire lifespan has grossly distorted what people believe the costs of components for new hardware will be instead of considering how much of that $300 price for a Switch actually ends up in Nintendo's pocket.
