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

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The Wii U had so many problems I think it's difficult to tease out the two SKUs as a major issue, but the value proposition of the Basic vs the Premium wasn't great.

I can absolutely see Nintendo launching a REDACTED Lite with the REDACTED, if the price on the base model is too high. The value proposition would be clear, the existence of Switch Lite having clearly established what the product is, and the Series S and Series X having done well.

But again, I don't think it's necessary, because Nintendo can get REDACTED's price sub $400 if they want to. @Concernt mentions wanting/expecting more, which is totally fair. My point about listing inflation adjusted MSRP is that a reasonable device can be produced just by following industry improvements in memory, storage and screen, and the Orin pricing suggests that Nvidia can deliver an SOC at Drake's expected power level at the same cost they were delivering Erista in the first place.

If Nintendo can deliver something that sits in the same price window as all their other consoles, then they will, and if the cost is borderline on their side, then Nintendo is going to cut something to get under 400 - even if that cut is to their margin.

Nintendo is going to want to save a Lite-like revision for later in the lifecycle - but they're also going to want their OLED model. DLSS 2 opens up some interesting possibilities for what a small clock bump could do, and extra RAM or a better screen would track as well. If some of us wind up being a little disappointed by the launch specs then I don't think we have to worry for too long
 
Eclissi said:
What does the protocol foresee in the next phase? I don't remember if it includes name guesses or the BC discussion 🤔
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I love that we've taken REDACTED to heart. It neatly sidesteps the "I think it'll be called a Switch Too", is ambiguous about the form factor, while being unambiguous about talking about The Next Device. Hopefully we've punted the naming discussions to when Nintendo inevitably announces the announcement of REDACTED
 
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oldpuck said:
The Wii U had so many problems I think it's difficult to tease out the two SKUs as a major issue, but the value proposition of the Basic vs the Premium wasn't great.

I can absolutely see Nintendo launching a REDACTED Lite with the REDACTED, if the price on the base model is too high. The value proposition would be clear, the existence of Switch Lite having clearly established what the product is, and the Series S and Series X having done well.

But again, I don't think it's necessary, because Nintendo can get REDACTED's price sub $400 if they want to. @Concernt mentions wanting/expecting more, which is totally fair. My point about listing inflation adjusted MSRP is that a reasonable device can be produced just by following industry improvements in memory, storage and screen, and the Orin pricing suggests that Nvidia can deliver an SOC at Drake's expected power level at the same cost they were delivering Erista in the first place.

If Nintendo can deliver something that sits in the same price window as all their other consoles, then they will, and if the cost is borderline on their side, then Nintendo is going to cut something to get under 400 - even if that cut is to their margin.

Nintendo is going to want to save a Lite-like revision for later in the lifecycle - but they're also going to want their OLED model. DLSS 2 opens up some interesting possibilities for what a small clock bump could do, and extra RAM or a better screen would track as well. If some of us wind up being a little disappointed by the launch specs then I don't think we have to worry for too long
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When you start talking about Pro versions of successors, I think you lose me a bit. A Pro version would mean another 2 profiles for Devs to optimise for on a platform that already has them doing 2 to 4.

Plus, the OLED Model was more like the DS Lite to the DS. Shrinking components and a better design allowed for a superior console, but no other changes were made. Internally, the OLED Model isn't a pro model, it's a slim model, it's a complexity reduced model. It's Lite-sized circuitry in a HAC-001 sized body, and that's what allowed for the new design.

I think whatever it launches with power wise is where it will sit until the replacement comes along, whether that's a soft replacement like New Nintendo 3DS or a hard replacement like Wii U. As Microsoft have said, the possibility of a slim and pro model nowadays is low, because silicon density isn't trending up like it used to. New features and better looking games come from dedicated hardware acceleration more and more, and the Switch [REDACTED] will launch brimming with almost as much hardware accelerated optical flow or AI processing as possible in its form factor.
 
KMStwo said:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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22888cb0240a34464defaf9b07f5052d.gif


Legit love stupid 4chan rumors. Post them ALL.
 
Concernt said:
When you start talking about Pro versions of successors, I think you lose me a bit. A Pro version would mean another 2 profiles for Devs to optimise for on a platform that already has them doing 2 to 4.
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I'm not sure there will be 2 hardware profiles on REDACTED.

Sony and Microsoft have already gone with DVFS strategies on their consoles, and they've long been standard in mobile environments. It's just really rare/difficult for a game to push the GPU and all the CPU cores at the same time - even in TV only consoles, where power isn't at a premium, using locked clocks for both doesn't make sense from a thermal perspective.

Nintendo already crudely approximates DVFS with things like the "loading screen mode" on Switch, and they opened up additional handheld power late in the day with an SDK update. If Nintendo allowed CPU and GPU clocks to scale within a power draw envelope it seems likely they could improve battery life and performance at the same time.

Output resolution detection is probably going to be needed on the TV side as well. Half of TVs in the States are still 1080p, and who knows what the penetration of 8k will look like by 2030. Dynamic resolution is already pretty standard in games, even without changing from docked to handheld.

I think a DVFS, dynamic res solution is probably the way REDACTED will go. And if so, that vastly opens up Nintendo's options for revisions

Concernt said:
Plus, the OLED Model was more like the DS Lite to the DS. Shrinking components and a better design allowed for a superior console, but no other changes were made. Internally, the OLED Model isn't a pro model, it's a slim model, it's a complexity reduced model. It's Lite-sized circuitry in a HAC-001 sized body, and that's what allowed for the new design.
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I didn't suggest that OLED was a Pro. Nor do I think of it as a slim - it's an XL.

The Pro and Slim revisions of PS consoles are built on the same tech - a node shrink. Nintendo has released a "Better screen, better battery life" revision of (almost*) every single handheld they've ever made. GameBoy Light, GameBoy Advance SP, DS Lite, DSi XL, 3DS XL, New 3DS XL, and the Switch OLED. In many of these cases, Nintendo also managed to make the device cheaper to make, cheaper to ship or both.

I don't know what Nintendo is going to do, or can do for a REDACTED XL - or a REDACTED Lite for that matter. But DVFS would put a number of options on the table for both, including resolution changes. If REDACTED launches with a 1080p screen, a smaller, 720p Lite using binned chips with reduced max clocks seems eminently viable, for example




*Not the Pokemon mini. Even most of the original Game and Watch games were reissued in the Wide Screen and New Wide Screen series. And I guess it depends on how you categorize the GBC.
 
ooh, that is in fact a fun one

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lattjeful said:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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I don't think it's a December release personally, but I do think it'll launch BEFORE December. Personally I think a June-July reveal and an August-October release, just like every other Switch "revision" so far. It clearly works; V2 was a tiny upgrade and sold out day one in many places.
 
LinkURL said:
Could we expect NVidia Reflex support on Drake? It would be good for FPS and fighting games.
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Theoretically speaking, there's nothing stopping Drake from supporting Nvidia Reflex since Nvidia mentioned Nvidia Reflex supports GTX 900 series and newer. (So that means the Tegra X1 could theoretically support Nvidia Reflex.)

But I imagine that depends on if Nintendo and Nvidia feel like support for Nvidia Reflex is worth adding to NVN2. (I don't believe support for Nvidia Reflex is currently added to NVN.)
 
Alright. I’m going to ask the dumbest question ever: the T239 leak in March of last year. Did the leak actually say this thing was taped out? With a potential launch in 2024 (or later? 😖), could the leak be old information at this point? Could it have been updated since?
 
Cuzizkool said:
Alright. I’m going to ask the dumbest question ever: the T239 leak in March of last year. Did the leak actually say this thing was taped out? With a potential launch in 2024 (or later? 😖), could the leak be old information at this point? Could it have been updated since?
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there's nothing that talks about tape out. that wouldn't be in the leak anyway. the only way the info could be old is if Nintendo isn't using Drake anymore. can't really change anything at this point without making a whole new chip
 
Cuzizkool said:
Alright. I’m going to ask the dumbest question ever: the T239 leak in March of last year. Did the leak actually say this thing was taped out? With a potential launch in 2024 (or later? 😖), could the leak be old information at this point? Could it have been updated since?
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Its highly unlikely that it will be latter than 2024
 
(pp. 93 - 96)
Technical specifications and price

7.57 We first assess the closeness between the three consoles in terms of their technical specifications. This is important because gamers require high performance devices (eg in terms of memory, processing speed) to play graphically intensive games such as CoD. To the extent that a console does not meet these technical requirements, it is likely to compete less closely with other consoles for those games.

7.58 Xbox and PlayStation are similar in terms of their technical specifications, while Nintendo's technical specifications differ significantly from either of the two. As can be seen from the table below, the Nintendo Switch has significantly lower energy usage, fewer cores in the CPU, a lower clock speed, a significantly lower value of graphics processing power and performance and a smaller RAM as compared to PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.295 By contrast, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are very similar to each other in terms of these parameters.

Table 7.2: Comparison of technical characteristics of the Nintendo Switch, Xbox X and PlayStation 5
Specification​
Xbox Series X​
PlayStation 5​
Nintendo Switch (TV mode)​
Launch Date​
10 November 2020​
12 November 2020​
8 October 2021​
Energy Usage​
153 W​
208.8 W​
7 W​
CPU: number of cores​
8​
8​
4​
CPU: clock speed​
3.8 GHz​
3.5 GHz​
1 GHz​
GPU: performance​
12 TFLOPS​
10.3 TFLOPS​
~0.77 TFLOPS​
RAM​
16 GB​
16 GB​
4 GB​
Sources: 'Unveiling New Details of PlayStation 5 Hardware Technical Specs' accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023; 'Energy Efficiency: Active Power Consumption' accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023; 'Xbox Series X' accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023; 'About power options on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S' accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023; https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/ accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023; [✂️] response to the CMA's RFI; 'Nintendo Switch OLED Model', accessed by the CMA on 24 January 2023; and 'PlayStation 5 Release Date, Pricing, and Launch Games', accessed by the CMA on 24 January 2023.

7.59 The Nintendo Switch is also different in terms of its portability. Unlike Xbox or PlayStation, which need to be connected to a monitor to function, the Nintendo Switch is a portable device that contains its own monitor. The Switch is also significantly cheaper (currently at most £310) than the flagship Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles (sold at £449 and £480, respectively), and is closer in price to the technically less capable Xbox Series S console (sold at £250).

7.60 Activision's internal documents note the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch console. For example, one Activision document notes in an early-stage assessment that, to produce a CoD title on the Nintendo Switch, the CoD game would need [✂️]296 (whereas most current CoD titles require from 125 - 175 GB of storage on console or PC).297 The document also refers to Apex Legends's [✂️].298 Another Activision document analysing potential studios [✂️] CoD assesses the additional work required [✂️] and notes technical issues in other games [✂️].299

7.61 We have also seen evidence that large shooter games do not run as well on Nintendo's consoles due to its technical differentiation. One third party submitted that graphically intensive shooters may often be targeted originally at PlayStation and Xbox due to the specific characteristics of their console performance, and that porting to the Nintendo Switch may require financial investment and compromises on graphical quality, or the use of cloud-gaming solutions.300

7.62 Publishers' views similarly indicated that developing a game for Switch is a significantly different task relative to doing it for Xbox and PS due to its technical differences. One publisher stated that it encountered technical difficulties when bringing a game to Nintendo Switch but no difficulty in bring the same game to Xbox or PlayStation. The publisher noted that the Switch's limited graphics and storage are technical limitations that affect the performance of competitive games more than that of game(s) brought to Xbox or PlayStation.301 Another publisher stated that several of its games are not available on Nintendo as Nintendo has different capabilities from PlayStation and Xbox.302

7.63 We note the Parties' submission that challenges with porting a game to Nintendo Switch has not impacted Nintendo's ability to compete on the downstream console market, as it offers more games than Xbox and PlayStation, including major games such as Apex Legends, Fortnite and Doom Eternal. 303 However, we consider the evidence above shows that, relative to the Xbox and PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch (i) does not currently offer the same suite of graphically intensive games that PlayStation and Xbox compete on (with the exception of a few games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends), (ii) may not be capable of offering certain graphically intensive multiplayer games (such as CoD), and (iii) does not offer a similar user experience (eg, in terms of storage, graphics, and framerate).

7.64 We also note the Parties' submission that Nintendo’s partnership with Ubitus' cloud streaming technology to release Resident Evil Village on Switch enables gameplay with levels of graphical fidelity comparable to that found on a high-level PC, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.304 However, as discussed above, we consider that there are currently significant differences between cloud gaming and gaming on consoles (eg, the need for an internet connection to stream games from cloud gaming services). Also, the ability of the Switch to connect to a third party cloud gaming service provider would not make it a closer competitor to Xbox and PlayStation in the console gaming market.

7.65 Overall, the evidence shows that the product characteristics of Nintendo Switch are significantly different from those of Xbox and PlayStation, including its technical specifications, capability to host graphically intensive games and prices. Xbox and PlayStation are more similar in this respect.

295 This is measured in TFLOPS, or Tera floating point operations per second.
296 Activision Internal Document.
297 See for example, Minimum and Recommended System Requirements for Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera on PC (activision.com) and Minimum and Recommended System Requirements for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on PC (activision.com), accessed by the CMA on 17 January 2023.
298 Parties Internal Document.
299 Parties Internal Document.
300 [✂️] response to the CMA’s.
301 [✂️] call note.
302 [✂️] response to the CMA’s RFI.
303 Microsoft, response to working papers; and Microsoft response to the phase 2 Issues Statement, 31 October 2022, paragraph 3.46(c).
304 Microsoft response to the phase 2 Issues Statement, 31 October 2022, paragraph 3.46(c).
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Concernt said:
Forgive my ignorance but, what does this mean, if anything? There doesn't seem to be any references to new hardware, at least on first look.
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according to Activision's internal testing, the biggest problem regarding CoD on switch is file size. now this doesn't really say if it's something they can overcome, but it's a pain point that Nintendo would eventually have to address. any potential CoD in the future will have to deal with any size limitation in some way regardless on nintendo systems
 
ILikeFeet said:
according to Activision's internal testing, the biggest problem regarding CoD on switch is file size. now this doesn't really say if it's something they can overcome, but it's a pain point that Nintendo would eventually have to address. any potential CoD in the future will have to deal with any size limitation in some way regardless on nintendo systems
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Hmm, well, that seems a little disingenuous. A mix of lower quality assets and compression would slash that size since most of it is textures, not mechanically relevant code.

Still, it's something I think Nintendo will address somewhat. Using cheaper eMMC to opt for more storage, with my personal expectation being 128GB. Plus, MicroSDUC support, and likely access to faster and more efficient compression techniques (including its very own FDE).
 
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ILikeFeet said:
according to Activision's internal testing, the biggest problem regarding CoD on switch is file size. now this doesn't really say if it's something they can overcome, but it's a pain point that Nintendo would eventually have to address. any potential CoD in the future will have to deal with any size limitation in some way regardless on nintendo systems
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MicroSD will be basically required but it's no better now, 128GB Storage in switch 2 should help to development
 
ILikeFeet said:
according to Activision's internal testing, the biggest problem regarding CoD on switch is file size. now this doesn't really say if it's something they can overcome, but it's a pain point that Nintendo would eventually have to address. any potential CoD in the future will have to deal with any size limitation in some way regardless on nintendo systems
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For Take Two and others the file size is not a problem.


In adition make comparison between consoles and only put PS5, Series X and Switch it doesnt make sense.
They should also put PS4 and One, if they really wanted a real comparison. After all, they receive CoD on equal terms.
 
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Ojoloco said:
For Take Two and others the file size is not a problem.


In adition make comparison between consoles and only put PS5, Series X and Switch it doesnt make sense.
They should also put PS4 and One, if they really wanted a real comparison. After all, they receive CoD on equal terms.
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CMA its stupid and attack storage, they also think that Nintendo dosent work on next hardware
 
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From what I could make of 16.0.0’s memory related changes I’d wager that the Switch 2 running the same Horizon OS or at least sharing some similarities in regards to the kernel &/or services would mean easier BC in one front [with the other being microarchitectural differences and many other things]

Edited for clarity
 
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oldpuck said:
I think a DVFS, dynamic res solution is probably the way REDACTED will go. And if so, that vastly opens up Nintendo's options for revisions
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I think I see what you're getting at there, and the appeal of something that would be flexible beyond even options the system is launching with, but it seems like in practice that would just be a bigger pain in the butt to develop for. Rather than "Let's test docked mode and undocked mode and see if they're both working like we want." it might become "Let's test 480p and 720p and 1080p and 1440p and 4K and see if they're all working like we want."
 
LinkURL said:
Could we expect NVidia Reflex support on Drake? It would be good for FPS and fighting games.
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Dakhil said:
Theoretically speaking, there's nothing stopping Drake from supporting Nvidia Reflex since Nvidia mentioned Nvidia Reflex supports GTX 900 series and newer. (So that means the Tegra X1 could theoretically support Nvidia Reflex.)

But I imagine that depends on if Nintendo and Nvidia feel like support for Nvidia Reflex is worth adding to NVN2. (I don't believe support for Nvidia Reflex is currently added to NVN.)
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Reflex seems to be a suite of technologies, and I don't 100% understand how the primary one - the frame cap - works. A t least one of its features is a brief overclock of the GPU past what the boost clock makes possible. Considering the power and thermal requirements of the Switch, it might not be worth it.
 
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JoshuaJSlone said:
I think I see what you're getting at there, and the appeal of something that would be flexible beyond even options the system is launching with, but it seems like in practice that would just be a bigger pain in the butt to develop for. Rather than "Let's test docked mode and undocked mode and see if they're both working like we want." it might become "Let's test 480p and 720p and 1080p and 1440p and 4K and see if they're all working like we want."
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Detecting the output res will be required for TV mode anyway, I'm just suggesting they use the same mechanism telling games about the handheld screen's resolution, rather than having one method for the TV, and another for undocking. It works the same way on the PS5/Xbox Series consoles, and Sony did, indeed, add support for new screen resolutions to the OS after launch.

Testing docked versus undocked isn't about testing the resolution it's about testing the performance in that limited mode. DVFS and dynamic res don't change that. I'm not suggesting that Nintendo will add new screen resolutions in the future, I'm suggesting that if Nintendo adopts industry standard practices, then they have lots of flexibility going forward.
 
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Yeah, that 4chan ”leak” is almost certainly fake, but the idea of Drake having some Lovelace stuff despite being Ampere isn’t totally out there. PS5 is similarly a weird mix of RDNA and RDNA2, isn’t it?
 
It would be funny if, thanks to the CMA and the Microsoft-Nintendo deal with CoD, they had to pivot and consider a memory increase in this last year before its release.

We all win boyss
 
oldpuck said:
I'm not sure there will be 2 hardware profiles on REDACTED.

Sony and Microsoft have already gone with DVFS strategies on their consoles, and they've long been standard in mobile environments. It's just really rare/difficult for a game to push the GPU and all the CPU cores at the same time - even in TV only consoles, where power isn't at a premium, using locked clocks for both doesn't make sense from a thermal perspective.

Nintendo already crudely approximates DVFS with things like the "loading screen mode" on Switch, and they opened up additional handheld power late in the day with an SDK update. If Nintendo allowed CPU and GPU clocks to scale within a power draw envelope it seems likely they could improve battery life and performance at the same time.

Output resolution detection is probably going to be needed on the TV side as well. Half of TVs in the States are still 1080p, and who knows what the penetration of 8k will look like by 2030. Dynamic resolution is already pretty standard in games, even without changing from docked to handheld.

I think a DVFS, dynamic res solution is probably the way REDACTED will go. And if so, that vastly opens up Nintendo's options for revisions
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I'm pretty sure only Sony's setup is truly dynamic. On Xbox it seems that it's just a choice between higher clock without SMT or lower clock with SMT. For a class of device that's traditionally meant to act very predictably, it's a bit of a risk, and it's hard to say if it's really paying off for Sony or if certain other decisions made on Xbox Series are coming back to bite them (splitting the memory into fast and slow pools comes to mind). While I could definitely see Nintendo expanding the options on a SoC with more flexible clocks, I have a hard time seeing them going fully dynamic and just setting different power targets per mode.

Regarding output resolution, it's worth remembering that the fact that games don't know what it is right now is a choice. All 3 platform holders decided whether or not to keep letting games access output resolution when they moved to HD. Sony did, while Nintendo and Microsoft both decided to hide it and have the system take care of scaling the image to fit (I'm detecting a pattern here). While there are certainly some niche benefits to Sony's approach, it can lead to some very idiosyncratic results at times, where the output resolutions a game supports can matter. Nintendo and Microsoft's approach of treating output resolution as something games should not concern themselves with definitely has some philosophical appeal and keeps things simpler for users and developers, even though you're giving up a bit of tweakability. There are pros and cons to both approaches, and it's worth noting that certain versions of "games know the resolution" can actually limit flexibility, complicate things, and cause technical jank, as notably happened on the PS3. I don't know if future PlayStations improved that situation or if games are just less idiosyncratic about output modes now.
 
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As far as Nintendo is concerned, Epic is not the Fortnite maker but the developer of Unreal Engine, something we have seen makes or breaks third party support (think once again of Dragon Quest XIS).

They are probably the first developer they approached with devkits
 
Zaimokuza said:
As far as Nintendo is concerned, Epic is not the Fortnite maker but the developer of Unreal Engine, something we have seen makes or breaks third party support (think once again of Dragon Quest XIS).

They are probably the first developer they approached with devkits
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I think the timeline in the background has been something like this:

SDKs 2021 distributed to major partners.
Developer briefing 2022 around June
Press briefing around September 2022
Hardware development kits late 2022

And now, smaller partners and companies probably have hardware development kits and SDKs.

Could be wrong.
 
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