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

[Bonejack]

While we wait for the official Q&A transcript, I found a couple hardware related quotes by Nintendo via Japanese press:

Mainichi Shimbun:

Is a "no comment" better than "no plan for new hardware"?

NHK:

They acknowledged that hardware sales is slowing down. The familiar "unique ways to play" boilerplate doesn't mean much, but "promote sales" probably suggests new SEs and sales (e.g., game vouchers back in the US).

A "no comment" is always better than a flat out denial, yeah.

 

[arsen]

Is a "no comment" better than "no plan for new hardware"?

we're getting closer

 

[eye0h]

While we wait for the official Q&A transcript, I found a couple hardware related quotes by Nintendo via Japanese press:

Mainichi Shimbun:

Is a "no comment" better than "no plan for new hardware"?

NHK:

They acknowledged that hardware sales is slowing down. The familiar "unique ways to play" boilerplate doesn't mean much, but "promote sales" probably suggests new SEs and sales (e.g., game vouchers back in the US).

I get chest pains every time they say unique ways to play

 

[Skittzo]

I get chest pains every time they say unique ways to play

Probably not playing enough Ring Fit

 

[eye0h]

Probably not playing enough Ring Fit

You double owned me there LOL

 

[Bonejack]

Probably not playing enough Ring Fit

Playing Ring Fit though gives you everywhere pain.

Source: Me having everywhere pain.

 

[Foltzie]

As I've mentioned in discussion on this topic a few times, there's anywhere from something close to 10 integrated circuits you could outright remove and not replace on a Switch between the console and the dock, because most of the ones in the dock are to facilitate the single USB-C connection to deliver power, USB accessory use and video signal and then convert it all in and out to the dock connections and back to the device, and there's no small number related to the screen and battery (ambient light sensor, for example).
You also forgot the speaker assembly.
The amount of parts Nintendo could shave off the bill of materials for a TV-only device is staggering and shows how much goes into Switch's hybrid design but also how much cost is associated with getting there.

Can you repoint me to your post. I'm having trouble imagining big savings, because while you can remove the dock connections, you still need the IO support, which maybe the SOC can address directly, but I would also presume would functionally be sharing the USB-C line even on a Switch-TV motherboard.

My greater point being USB ports, HDMI, and LAN connects would be expected on a putative Switch TV.

Along with whatever controller decision Nintendo makes, be it Pro, Joy-Con plus Charging grip, or none.

There are savings to be had, certainly, but I dont know that such a device is automatically considerably cheaper than say a Switch Lite

Edit: lost an edit, but in addition to cleaning this up a bit I pointed out the ShieldTV is being sold at $180 w/o a controller.

Not trying to be pedantic. I’m legitimately interested in what the current BOM for Switch is and how that might inform future hardware moves.

 

[Hosermess]

What? No hastily written, poorly translated tweets about investor questions that get overanalyzed to death until everybody realizes it was just a simple misinterpretation all along?

I'm disappointed.


Anyway, interesting stuff to me is that software sales went up (vs last year) everywhere but The Americas and OLED took over as the best selling model in every region. V2 will be gone sooner rather than later.

 

[Bonejack]

Given the site died for the anticipation of an announcement for a Direct (and to be killed by Spongebob), and now the same almost happening again today, i can safely say that Famiboards won't survive the moment Nintendo actually announces Drake.

 

[LiC]

The Bloomberg/Nikkei reports about HW forecast were for the upcoming year (04/23 - 03/24). Not the ongoing one (04/22 - 03/23).

No, there were two separate claims. One for the current FY and one for the next.

Nintendo Co. plans to increase production of its six-year-old Switch console in the coming fiscal year after shipping roughly 21 million Switch consoles in the year ending March, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Kyoto-based company had lowered its sales forecast for the console to 19 million units in November because of component shortages, but is now convinced it can make more and demand remains strong, said the people, asking not to be named because the discussions aren’t public. The move to increase output is an unexpected measure at a late stage in the console's lifecycle.

Nintendo has told suppliers and assembly partners it intends to churn out more Switch units in the fiscal year starting April, but has not yet communicated a precise target, the people said.

This was published January 19, 2023.

Claim 1: Nintendo will ship 21m Switch consoles in the current year ending this March. They previously cut the forecast to 19m, but now believe they can hit their original target of 21m.

Claim 2: In the next financial year starting this April, Nintendo has told suppliers and assemblers to expect higher orders than in the year before.

The first one is the one that was decidedly proven wrong since the 19m forecast was not increased, but was cut again to 18m.

 

[LobstrsaurusRex]

Given the site died for the anticipation of an announcement for a Direct (and to be killed by Spongebob), and now the almost happening again today, i can safely say that Famiboards won't survive the moment Nintendo actually announces Drake.

just like my diet starting on new years day... the site will be dead before it even had a chance

 

[fwd-bwd]

There are many signs of a slowdown in the latest financial results briefing.

we are seeing many consumers choose Nintendo Switch – OLED Model as a replacement or as an additional purchase.

Although evergreen titles are not selling at the same pace as previous years, their sales remain steady.

The decline of evergreen titles indicates that fewer first-time buyers were entering the Switch platform. This trend is likely to get worse.

For the months of October through December 2022 which encompass the holiday season, the effects of shortages of semiconductors and other components was largely resolved, and shipments generally went according to plan. However, unit sales were down compared to the same period last year

for the months of October through December, the upswing in sales during the holiday season was smaller than those of the past two years.

The semiconductor shortage impacted the hardware sales in Q1 and Q2, but no longer in Q3. There were less people buying, plain and simple.

In the recent Bloomberg report, two claims were made:

1. "People familiar with the matter" indicated that the shipment of FY03/2023 will be roughly 21MM
2. Suppliers and assemblers were told to expect making "more Switch units" in FY03/2024

Since Nintendo just revised their hardware forecast from 19MM down to 18MM, these "people familiar with the matter" were apparently misinformed or untrustworthy (I saw Taiwanese articles pumping the stocks of Switch suppliers). If the second claim (production increase) also came from the same sources, we probably can write that off now.

However, if there remains any validity to Bloomberg's production increase and Nikkei's 20 millions claims, considering the aforementioned slowdown I can't fathom how Nintendo can achieve that without introducing a new Switch model. Either both papers were wrong (quite possible, if they talked to the same "people"), or a new model is being released in FY03/2024.

Edited for clarity

 

[Hosermess]

This FY meaning next FY? Ending in Mar '24?

 

[Concernt]

What? No hastily written, poorly translated tweets about investor questions that get overanalyzed to death until everybody realizes it was just a simple misinterpretation all along?

I'm disappointed.


Anyway, interesting stuff to me is that software sales went up (vs last year) everywhere but The Americas and OLED took over as the best selling model in every region. V2 will be gone sooner rather than later.

As pointed out before, the V2 just doesn't make much sense to keep on the market. It's less popular, sells for less money, and has a higher component cost and a higher internal complexity compared to OLED Model. OLED Model is hugely complexity reduced which must help with production costs some portion.

 

[Hosermess]

As pointed out before, the V2 just doesn't make much sense to keep on the market. It's less popular, sells for less money, and has a higher component cost and a higher internal complexity compared to OLED Model. OLED Model is hugely complexity reduced which must help with production costs some portion.

Oh I know. I just recall some people (or maybe it was just one person posting it multiple times) who thought they would discontinue the OLED and keep the v2. This was waaay back though.

 

[fwd-bwd]

This FY meaning next FY? Ending in Mar '24?

Sorry I meant FY03/2024. Edited

 

[Aether]

There are many signs of a slowdown in the latest financial results briefing.



The decline of evergreen titles indicates that fewer first-time buyers were entering the Switch platform. This trend is likely to get worse.



The semiconductor shortage impacted the hardware sales in Q1 and Q2, but no longer in Q3. There were less people buying, plain and simple.

In the recent Bloomberg report, two claims were made:

1. "People familiar with the matter" indicated that the shipment of FY03/2023 will be roughly 21MM
2. Suppliers and assemblers were told to expect making "more Switch units" in FY03/2024

Since Nintendo just revised their hardware forecast from 19MM down to 18MM, these "people familiar with the matter" were apparently misinformed or untrustworthy (I saw Taiwanese articles pumping the stocks of Switch suppliers). If the second claim (production increase) also came from the same sources, we probably can write that off now.

However, if there remains any validity to Bloomberg's production increase and Nikkei's 20 millions claims, considering the aforementioned slowdown I can't fathom how Nintendo can achieve that without introducing a new Switch model. Either both papers were wrong, or a new model is being released this FY.

Thats what i expected to happen. Them increasing the expectation up from 19M never seemed reasonable in any way to me, and now we have the confirmation.

Now lets hope that the "incresed production" claim IS true, then that means we get a successor this FY (or some updated mariko version they hope sells well..but that would be idiotic...)

Im curious what we will see tomorrow. If there is any indication about the future of switch.

 

[LiC]

There are many signs of a slowdown in the latest financial results briefing.

The decline of evergreen titles indicates that fewer first-time buyers were entering the Switch platform. This trend is likely to get worse.

The semiconductor shortage impacted the hardware sales in Q1 and Q2, but no longer in Q3. There were less people buying, plain and simple.

In the recent Bloomberg report, two claims were made:

1. "People familiar with the matter" indicated that the shipment of FY03/2023 will be roughly 21MM
2. Suppliers and assemblers were told to expect making "more Switch units" in FY03/2024

Since Nintendo just revised their hardware forecast from 19MM down to 18MM, these "people familiar with the matter" were apparently misinformed or untrustworthy (I saw Taiwanese articles pumping the stocks of Switch suppliers). If the second claim (production increase) also came from the same sources, we probably can write that off now.

However, if there remains any validity to Bloomberg's production increase and Nikkei's 20 millions claims, considering the aforementioned slowdown I can't fathom how Nintendo can achieve that without introducing a new Switch model. Either both papers were wrong, or a new model is being released this FY.

It's really such a weird thing to claim, 19 days after the close of the holiday period, and coincidentally also 19 days before the earnings release, that "the company now believes" they can hit 21m, when that obviously cannot have been the case. Mochizuki's sourced reporting continues to absolutely faceplant.

 

[Skittzo]

It's really such as weird thing to claim 19 days after the close of the holiday period, and coincidentally also 19 days before the earnings release, that "the company now believes" they can hit 21m, when that obviously cannot have been the case. Mochizuki's sourced reporting continues to absolutely faceplant.

Yeah in my memory I mistakenly gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that was more of an analyst prediction than a "people familiar with the company's plans"

Like, this is a situation where we can clearly with no doubt say him or his source were very wrong.

 

[pelusilla6]

What a bad streak he is having in his last articles lol, im feeling bad for him

PD: he meant next FY but still :/

 

[balgajo]

I think they missed the opportunity of releasing a stationary console that plays Switch games with better performance and quality.
There are at least 150M+ people around is fine with a console attached to a TV and is used to good image quality. Nintendo games have a great artstyle, usually a resolution bump and some other minor stuff is enough to make them look really good.

 

[Nyrnvs]

Maybe someone with better financial understanding/background can help me here, but if Switch is trending down wouldn’t that better speak to a successor this year? Why would Nintendo limp along and continue to slash forecasts for almost 1-1.5 years (based on Nate and DF speculation) for a late 2024 delivery of a successor? There’s no way their board and investors would have that.

Also if Mochi is getting his ass handed to him by bad sources time and again lately, I can only assume that Nate and DF have suspect sources now, too. So basically, we’re back at square one before the whole podcast/cancelation drama.

 

[Concernt]

Oh I know. I just recall some people (or maybe it was just one person posting it multiple times) who thought they would discontinue the OLED and keep the v2. This was waaay back though.

That might have been me, but I know I'm not the only one who said that in this thread.

 

[Concernt]

He knows something we don't.

 

[Goodtwin]

Should help paint a clearer picture of how strong the lineup for Switch is going to be for this year. While it will mostly be about first half titles, they always talk about a couple big releases for later in the year.

 

[Bonejack]

He knows something we don't.

I mean ... he's the head honcho of one of Nintendo's biggest branch, we should be worried if he didn't know things we're not knowing.

 

[jaycie]

direct announcement says "focusing on titles launching in the first half of 2023"

I'm probably clowning but...could this mean there are "other" plans for second half?

 

[Skittzo]

Maybe someone with better financial understanding/background can help me here, but if Switch is trending down wouldn’t that better speak to a successor this year? Why would Nintendo limp along and continue to slash forecasts for almost 1-1.5 years (based on Nate and DF speculation) for a late 2024 delivery of a successor? There’s no way their board and investors would have that.

Also if Mochi is getting his ass handed to him by bad sources time and again lately, I can only assume that Nate and DF have suspect sources now, too. So basically, we’re back at square one before the whole podcast/cancelation drama.

Nintendo can't necessarily always release it at the exact perfect time, realities of production will get in the way of that.

Mochi's sources seem to be on the production/assembly side, and those appear to be very very wrong. Nate's tends to be on the game dev side, so I'm not sure we can correlate the two. But yeah it's likely nobody really knows the full picture outside of a handful of people at NCL.

 

[Nintendojitsu]

He knows something we don't.

I wouldn't be surprised. He is definitely less friendly to media types than his predecessor. That alone could very well be his best asset.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Maybe someone with better financial understanding/background can help me here, but if Switch is trending down wouldn’t that better speak to a successor this year? Why would Nintendo limp along and continue to slash forecasts for almost 1-1.5 years (based on Nate and DF speculation) for a late 2024 delivery of a successor? There’s no way their board and investors would have that.

Hardware takes years and years to make. The Switch took 2.5 years from the time the chip was out to launch, and they were going as fast as they could to replace the Wii U. We know Nintendo is getting a custom chip this time, so that process is even longer. Whatever schedule they're on for new hardware, it was laid before the pandemic.

 

[Concernt]

Wii Mini actually launched in Canada ahead of Wii U.

Wii Mini launched in Canada on December 7th, 2012. Wii U launched in the US and Canada on November 18th, 2012.

 

[RennanNT]

direct announcement says "focusing on titles launching in the first half of 2023"

I'm probably clowning but...could this mean there are "other" plans for second half?

It is the exact same messaging of the Feb 22 Direct, down to the length, so you can just look at that for general expectations:

 

[Cybergatuno]

Yeah in my memory I mistakenly gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that was more of an analyst prediction than a "people familiar with the company's plans"

Like, this is a situation where we can clearly with no doubt say him or his source were very wrong.

Is Nintendo's 18M forecast explicitly about the existing hardware line-up?

Bloomberg's sources are in the supply chain. Maybe an increase in supplied components led them to think Nintendo would increase their forecast, when in reality Nintendo started building a new model this quarter. The 2-3M difference would make a reasonable launch batch in April.

Ah, fuck Bloomberg. I'm still holding to every hope we'll see Drake soon.

 

[KCannon]

Direct based on first half Switch lineup does indicate no new hardware in the next months, considering Nintendo's tendency to space out announcements.

E3 time is still a mystery, but it's possible that they might indeed fill H2 with remasters, with Prime headlining it.

 

[jaycie]

It is the exact same messaging of the Feb 22 Direct, down to the length, so you can just look at that for general expectations:

damn
well I'm still on team 2023 (inching my way towards 2024 tho)

 

[Goodtwin]

Hardware takes years and years to make. The Switch took 2.5 years from the time the chip was out to launch, and they were going as fast as they could to replace the Wii U. We know Nintendo is getting a custom chip this time, so that process is even longer. Whatever schedule they're on for new hardware, it was laid before the pandemic.

That is also why I dont buy into the idea that because Switch is still doing well in its sixth year that we wont see the successor any time soon. There is no way Nintendo could have known Switch would still be doing this well. By the time we got into the pandemic, Nintendo would have been getting serious about planning out the new hardware no later than 2021 since Switch would have been the market for over 4 years at that point, and it takes 2-3 years to take hardware from prototype to retail.

 

[10k]

damn
well I'm still on team 2023 (inching my way towards 2024 tho)

Take it from a guy who's been on Team Launches with TOTK (BOTW2) since 2021, it's over.

This is 2024 hardware. Don't care what the Nvidia leak showed or how hardware manufacturing fab time is booked.

 

[Mr Swine]

Direct based on first half Switch lineup does indicate no new hardware in the next months, considering Nintendo's tendency to space out announcements.

E3 time is still a mystery, but it's possible that they might indeed fill H2 with remasters, with Prime headlining it.

With 40 minutes they will focus on software and at E3 they will focus on games for the rest of the year.

We would be lucky if the fall Direct has hardware announcements

 

[Hosermess]

I've moved on to spring '24 for a Drake release. Announcement 2nd half of '23.

And yes, I've been wrong every other time I've had a guess but...

 

[LiC]

Hardware takes years and years to make. The Switch took 2.5 years from the time the chip was out to launch, and they were going as fast as they could to replace the Wii U. We know Nintendo is getting a custom chip this time, so that process is even longer. Whatever schedule they're on for new hardware, it was laid before the pandemic.

I agree with the point here, but IMO it was more during the pandemic than before. In 2019 they may have been deciding the big picture of what they wanted to do, but the project seems to have gotten underway in 2020, which might advantageously have given them perspective from the pandemic near the start of development.

 

[Aether]

Take it from a guy who's been on Team Launches with TOTK (BOTW2) since 2021, it's over.

This is 2024 hardware. Don't care what the Nvidia leak showed or how hardware manufacturing fab time is booked.

Im almost there. i will wait till tomorrow, and depending on whats shown i will jump to 24 or stay at 23.

 

[Nintendojitsu]

#Team23 knows only how to win.

 

[olobolger]

He knows something we don't.

I am ready for the announcement of the Nintendo Duster.

 

[Dakhil]

So

1) I FINISHED THE DLSS CALCULATOR
(and it's not looking that good...)

Here it is : https://www.calconic.com/calculator...or-3000/63dec5fcd47bb900296c3ff9?layouts=true

2) the technical stuff

Spoiler

I wanted to give an detailed explanation about the whitepapers and the source code but @Anatole did it far better than I ever could. So go read his posts first if you want to understand what comes after. I just want to add a few points :

1) Why is full rate FP32 accumulation disabled on desktop Ampere, when it could have easily been enabled ? The answer : artificial segmentation.
Nvidia don't want AI researchers to use the gaming cards. @oldpuck made the assumption that FP32 accumulation is only useful for training; and it's higly possible this assumption is 100% true. Looking at the Internet, model training is the only use case I see mentioned. It would make sense for Nvidia, who wants to sell the AI researchers the more expensive stuff, to cripple the gaming cards in that specific task, making it much less useful for AI researchers but with no incidence on gamers since FP32 accumulation is only for training, not inference.
But that leads us to point
2) The full rate accumulation in Drake will probably be useless. It's there because Nvidia doesn't see the point in intentionally crippling Drake as it's not like it's gonna be used for AI research, but that doesn't mean that full rate will bring any actual improvement to DLSS performance.
3) (minor point) DLSS probably uses FP16 and not INT8 because in each marketing material where they talk about DLSS, they talk about TFLOPS and not TOPS. The schematics they use to illustrate the AI operations for DLSS are also the same as for FP16.

Now, regarding the calculator :
I used 2 videos from Digital Foundry : the one about an eventual Switch pro, and the one reviewing DLSS2.3 vs FSR2.0. I ended up using almost exclusively that second video, because the frame time costs were very different probably because of the different versions, and also in that first video they say some flat out wrong stuff, like DLSS cost is only related to output resolution (it's not)(Edit : actually it may be true which would indicate the 2nd video is the bogus one. Oops).
To approximate the ms cost, I based the calculator on the RTX 3080 data. The RTX 3090 data doesn't change much, and the other data point is the 2060 which doesn't benefit from sparsity, and as we don't know what would be the improvement this is a pretty bad base to estimate Drake performance. I did however use the 2060 data , combined with the 3080 data as the Ampere reference, to estimate what would be that sparsity improvement: I calculated it a 1.25x, which tracks with what @Anatole said about the performance boost likely being far from the theoretical max of 2x because of the real-time aspect of DLSS (If I understood correctly).
I do think this calculator would really benefit from more data, as what's in the DF videos is really limited and leaves a huge margin of error. I you have any idea where I can find more data, I'd love to hear it.

Edit : Just discovered new and significantly better sources of data. Will update when I can.

https://www.calconic.com/calculator...or-3000/63dec5fcd47bb900296c3ff9?layouts=true
Your numbers are identical to mine - not surprising because except for the sparsity boost, our methodology is identical.

However, I pulled my stuff because, like you, I didn’t have a lot of data points. There are some additional benchmarks out in the wild but I haven’t audited them for quality.

My suspicions that most games releasing on Nintendo's new hardware probably won't be targeting 4K after enabling DLSS, but rather a range between ~1440p to ~1800p after enabling DLSS, doesn't seem so crazy, especially if 4K DLSS in general seems to incur a high latency penalty cost, and with memory bandwidth likely being one of Nintendo's new hardware's biggest bottlenecks, although probably not to the same extent as with the Nintendo Switch.

 

[Deleted member 887]

I agree with the point here, but IMO it was more during the pandemic than before. In 2019 they may have been deciding the big picture of what they wanted to do, but the project seems to have gotten underway in 2020, which might advantageously have given them perspective from the pandemic near the start of development.

I was thinking "what was 3 years before today", but you are of course correct

 

[Instro]

I'm going to stick with the FY briefing as a place where they will say something. With these 3rd quarter results, and what we know of sales in this current calendar year, the decline of the platform is very evident. I don't think Nintendo can go into the next fiscal year, with what will be an even lower forecast for hardware and software sales, without providing some guidance as to what comes next.

 

[Thraktor]

While we wait for the official Q&A transcript, I found a couple hardware related quotes by Nintendo via Japanese press:

Mainichi Shimbun:

Is a "no comment" better than "no plan for new hardware"?

NHK:

They acknowledged that hardware sales is slowing down. The familiar "unique ways to play" boilerplate doesn't mean much, but "promote sales" probably suggests new SEs and sales (e.g., game vouchers back in the US).

Edit: Minor translation fix

Is this the first time they've given a "no comment" when asked about new hardware? I feel like in the past they've always gone with something like "We're always working on new technology, but Switch is doing great, and we have nothing to announce at this time". Not worth reading too much into, but it's interesting if there is a change from their standard response.

 

[FrakEarth]

While we wait for the official Q&A transcript, I found a couple hardware related quotes by Nintendo via Japanese press:

Mainichi Shimbun:

Is a "no comment" better than "no plan for new hardware"?

NHK:

They acknowledged that hardware sales is slowing down. The familiar "unique ways to play" boilerplate doesn't mean much, but "promote sales" probably suggests new SEs and sales (e.g., game vouchers back in the US).

Edit: Minor translation fix

This is encouraging. Looking forward to reading the full Q&A

 

[HankyPanky]

Maybe someone with better financial understanding/background can help me here, but if Switch is trending down wouldn’t that better speak to a successor this year? Why would Nintendo limp along and continue to slash forecasts for almost 1-1.5 years (based on Nate and DF speculation) for a late 2024 delivery of a successor? There’s no way their board and investors would have that.

Also if Mochi is getting his ass handed to him by bad sources time and again lately, I can only assume that Nate and DF have suspect sources now, too. So basically, we’re back at square one before the whole podcast/cancelation drama.

optimal time to have the new system out was always with Zelda, the biggest title with the widest audience, before the decline phase really sets in. presumably something happened or a decision has been made to push it back further but that doesn't mean it's a good decision.

strike while the iron is hot. Nintendo is clearly nervous about this next trasnsition but a wait till well into 2024 is a fumble. it's not a disaster it'll still sell like hot cakes but Nintendo are far from infallible. they've made worse decisions but having the Switch limp along for it's last year or two is not a good look. the giant success & userbase was always something that begged for a large cross-gen window to maximise sales from all angles and keep everyone happy.

tomorrow's Direct is the last chance for H1 2023 and depending on what is shown maybe 2023 period.

 

[LiC]

Is this the first time they've given a "no comment" when asked about new hardware? I feel like in the past they've always gone with something like "We're always working on new technology, but Switch is doing great, and we have nothing to announce at this time". Not worth reading too much into, but it's interesting if there is a change from their standard response.

I don't think there's any one usual answer, or something that makes this one different. The previous time In November was Shiota saying "we're not at a stage where we can talk about next-generation hardware" (where, to be clear, "next-gen hardware" was just repeating the phrasing used in the investor's question).

Nintendo is clearly nervous about this next trasnsition