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

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abcfsk said:
System seller doesn't have to be the biggest franchise. It can be a visual showcase. It can showcase a gimmick. Quite frequently systems launch without the very biggest franchises. Metroid isn't top tier, but the past two releases on Switch, neither of which are as big or as pushed as 4 will be, have done very well.
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No, a system seller has to sell systems. Which Metroid won't do, not even Prime 4. We're talking about a series that took 35 years to crack 3 million units.
 
MusicProposition said:
Has Bloomberg ever talked again about new Switch hardware? Or did they give up lol
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Don't think it has been mentioned again and they probably got quite burned by Nintendos denials and the fact that the OLED model obviously wasn't the device they had been reporting on.

I have no idea what happened but I think it is safe to assume that lots of third party devs had some type of dev-kit, but in hind sight it seems to have been to early to have been dev kits for the next device. Maybe what happened was that Mochizuki got info that developers had a new dev kit (that was for the oled-model) and paired that with separate snippets of info that said that the next switch would be capable of DLSS. Based on his reporting profile I would assume that he has sources in the semi-conductor business that might have had some intel about the capabilities of the new chip from Nvivida. But who knows.
 
NateDrake said:
Why "must" Prime 4 be a launch title?
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I think the bigger issue is the Odyssey team should be ready to reveal their next big Mario game, Miyamoto has already stated that we will see Mario in an upcoming direct, and that Drake not getting botw sequel, means that Mario is almost certainly the launch title, also it's likely that totk patch via DLC will probably be there for Drake, likely coming in the first 12 months of totk's release. Then the only insider to leak real information and tying it into Switch 2 info, is the Pokemon dev who said the Drake patch for pokemon is coming this winter. I'd place the end of winter for Nintendo at March 1st 2024, which is a friday, but the pokemon patch can come AFTER Switch 2's launch, and doesn't have to be that far into "winter". It's also known that Drake is physically complete, and is publically still being worked on via Linux patch notes, so we know it was never canceled.

Thraktor's discovery of expensive circuitry in Switch OLED model, only done to allow 4K output, along with Mariko's known higher clocks (650GFLOPs, near double CPU speed) was most likely the "pro" that was canceled, as you and I both heard about it way back in 2019? and we knew something had been in the works for years at that point, which we know Drake's origins is late 2019/2020 from the Nvidia hack, it doesn't fit with the original Pro information we had both heard about, so tying the canceled project to Drake is a fools errand IMO.

Drake as far as we know is ready for mass production, almost certainly launching with a Mario game, and now you have Metroid Prime 4 estimated out by the end of this FY, but possibly late by a few months. We've also clearly seen that Switch has peaked and been in decline for 3 years straight now, there is no reason for Nintendo to delay Drake that we are aware of, and as many of us have brought up, Nintendo has nothing scheduled publically after July, and only 1 known title after that, with a Direct in June, I don't see how they avoid announcing a bunch of titles, and they are very clearly avoiding the 2H of this year, releasing games with built in million seller audiences with no fan fare or marketing push, like Metroid Prime being a shadow drop or XBC3 DLC having a week from announced date to release. Why anyone without inside knowledge of Nintendo's reasoning/release schedule for Drake, would believe that it is coming any later than this FY, is far beyond me. It's also just not surprising that it would come in 2023, 3 years after Ampere and A78 hit the market, that is the same time frame as Maxwell in the Switch.

Anyways, you'll likely be pleasantly surprised, hope you enjoy the summer direct, as I'm confident (via speculation and some insider chatter saying they have heard it is this year) that the summer direct will have Mario shown off for the new generation hardware and we will see it launch this FY, likely this calendar year to fully take advantage of the Mario movie and the cleared calendar Nintendo has opened up for new games that haven't been announced for this holiday.
 
Going to be honest, the only thing that could "cure" my current Zelda obsession that started with the last trailer is some new, reliable leak or someting official about ReDraketed.

So in other words ... i'm going to have that obsession for another 3 weeks ...

ReddDreadtheLead said:
The internet is a flat circle.
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But unlike the Discworld, it's not resting upon 4 elephants who stand on a giant turtle, it's resting on the heads of 4 Doge's who stand on a giant trollface flying through what could be described as a flaming infernal hellscape.
 
YolkFolk said:
Against all odds.
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Sure, but if the way he said it, doesn't strike you as plans are already underway, I don't know what to tell you, maybe that if it misses this holiday, it will have a larger development cycle than totk, and that there is literally nothing else they could fill this holiday with that would make sense with Nintendo clearing out the 2H of this calendar year.
 
I guess another way of looking at this is that management at Nintendo have been and are under quite heavy pressure from the financial market to get new hardware out this FY. The stock price is going to tank if they signal in the investor call in May that they won't launch new hardware this FY. The only way to save the stock price and stop software and hardware sales from dwindling even further throughout the year is if they have something really big for Switch in the second half of the year like new Pokemon, new 3D Mario or new Mario Kart. And to me it seems really strange that they wouldn't save those titles to have a strong launch for new hardware which to frank kind of have to come out in 12-18 months if Nintendos management isn't ready to weather a real doozy of a storm around the sinking stock price in the coming 12 months.
 
I do believe in Switch Drake releasing this fiscal year, but I don't get why people think Nintendo can't have a good H2 even without it.
  • Metroid Prime 4
  • Donkey Kong 2D / Mario 2D
  • Tomodachi Life
Are all big titles which can reasonably release this holiday season and carry it on their own.
 
Zemya said:
Hi guys, I've been away for maybe a months or 2 due to overloaded duties IRL. Last time I was around page 700 lol

Any TLDR?
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On the eastern hardware front, too.
 
Ninty didn't do a first-party Summer Direct last year which was a bummer. Hope they have one now, but they could also ride the Zelda + Pikmin + Mario Kart/Splatoon DLC marketing train until September. That'd be a... decision though :p .

BTW, I just did the unthinkable: imagine Zelda didn't exist. Without Zelda, Switch is looking mighty barren right now, for the first time since launch when i even bought i am setsuna because there wasn't a whole lot of single player goodness on switch outside of zelda
 
Z0m3le said:
Sure, but if the way he said it, doesn't strike you as plans are already underway, I don't know what to tell you, maybe that if it misses this holiday, it will have a larger development cycle than totk, and that there is literally nothing else they could fill this holiday with that would make sense with Nintendo clearing out the 2H of this calendar year.
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We are one 2D Mario announcement away from this whole theory to be meaningless. It explains Miyamoto's comments and the current empty schedule. Not saying it will happen 100% but there's always a simpler explanation.
 
manfromthedam said:
Ninty didn't do a first-party Summer Direct last year which was a bummer. Hope they have one now, but they could also ride the Zelda + Pikmin + Mario Kart/Splatoon DLC marketing train until September. That'd be a... decision though :p .

BTW, I just did the unthinkable: imagine Zelda didn't exist. Without Zelda, Switch is looking mighty barren right now, for the first time since launch when i even bought i am setsuna because there wasn't a whole lot of single player goodness on switch outside of zelda
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I think they will do a June/July Direct. Even if it's no "big" games, they want to have some stuff announced throughout summer and fall, because the September Direct usually covers more of the early next year.

Also, NEVER give me such a nightmare thought again ... TotK not existing. ;_;
 
Charamiwa said:
We are one 2D Mario announcement away from this whole theory to be meaningless. It explains Miyamoto's comments and the current empty schedule. Not saying it will happen 100% but there's always a simpler explanation.
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Yeah I'm still semi-expecting 2D Mario to be the big holiday release and Switch 2 to push into 2024. Sure, it could be Switch 2 and 3D Mario this year, but it's not where my intuition lies.
 
Charamiwa said:
We are one 2D Mario announcement away from this whole theory to be meaningless. It explains Miyamoto's comments and the current empty schedule. Not saying it will happen 100% but there's always a simpler explanation.
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Honestly, if I had to choose between [REDACTED] this FY or a NEW new 2D Mario... Well, ultimately it's all about the games :p .
Bonejack said:
I think they will do a June/July Direct. Even if it's no "big" games, they want to have some stuff announced throughout summer and fall, because the September Direct usually covers more of the early next year.

Also, NEVER give me such a nightmare thought again ... TotK not existing. ;_;
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I'm so SO sorry Bonejack, I will never do blasphemous thought experiments like that ever again!

also it's out in three weeks or so they say, still can't believe it
 
Charamiwa said:
We are one 2D Mario announcement away from this whole theory to be meaningless. It explains Miyamoto's comments and the current empty schedule. Not saying it will happen 100% but there's always a simpler explanation.
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Given what is factually known, publically because of hackers and open source projects. The simple answer is new hardware that completed last August, is ready for release this holiday. You basically have to jump through a bunch of hoops to explain why it wouldn't happen this FY, which also happens to involve ignoring the only credible leaker who has gone on record that Switch 2 will be out this winter. Or why they banned that leaker on the chinese forums. Occums razor is clearly that Drake is just coming out in the next 11 months and will be shown off soon.
 
TomNookYankees said:
Every time nintendo stuck with the same name for the successor the successor sold worse. Super NES sold worse than NES. Gameboy Advance sold worse than Gameboy. WiiU sold worse than Wii. Nintendo 3DS sold worse than Nintendo DS.
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Because general public didn't know that the word super, advanced, u & 3 (infront) are for a new gen. Majority of them prefer number at the end as a new generation in any products. That's why I strongly suggest Nintendo just put a Switch 2 name to avoid previous worst successors
 
JorgenRaft said:
Just because something might be "ready," it doesn't mean it has to be released soon.
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It's speculation, part of the reason I don't post in Nintendo forums very much anymore is because the majority of people who come in here, forget that this is a speculation thread, speculating different things, my post took facts and knowledge about new Switch hardware, it showed my reasoning, and it stated it was speculation. Yet you think coming in and posting that it isn't fact, somehow adds to the discussion, all it does is try to dismiss my speculation as a wild promise. I didn't jump the shark, I'm just confident that I'm right.

I will say this though, it does have to actually be released soon. T239 was completed in August 2022, for a product that will hit the market before 24 months, fab process and mobile technology moves too fast to delay a new chip design into a 3rd year after it is completed, you don't design a chip 6 years in advance, because by the time you reach year 6, it's obsolete. The idea that T239 could be for a product in 2025, yet designed in 2020 and completed in mid 2022, is frankly uneducated guess work.
 
Mekanos said:
No, a system seller has to sell systems. Which Metroid won't do, not even Prime 4. We're talking about a series that took 35 years to crack 3 million units.
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Not true. Metroid Prime and Prime 3 sold systems to core gamers just like 3D Mario and Zelda do.

In fact I would say Metroid Prime did a better job selling the GameCube than the Wind Waker did due to the outlandish hatred over the art style.
 
Z0m3le said:
It's speculation, part of the reason I don't post in Nintendo forums very much anymore is because the majority of people who come in here, forget that this is a speculation thread, speculating different things, my post took facts and knowledge about new Switch hardware, it showed my reasoning, and it stated it was speculation. Yet you think coming in and posting that it isn't fact, somehow adds to the discussion, all it does is try to dismiss my speculation as a wild promise. I didn't jump the shark, I'm just confident that I'm right.

I will say this though, it does have to actually be released soon. T239 was completed in August 2022, for a product that will hit the market before 24 months, fab process and mobile technology moves too fast to delay a new chip design into a 3rd year after it is completed, you don't design a chip 6 years in advance, because by the time you reach year 6, it's obsolete. The idea that T239 could be for a product in 2025, yet designed in 2020 and completed in mid 2022, is frankly uneducated guess work.
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All I did was state a fact as well.

Not to mention it’s been a couple decades since Nintendo has been concerned about releasing hardware that might be outdated and below current standards. Part of their approach for the last few generations has been manufacturing hardware they can sell at a point that’s considered cheap compared to the competition, while also avoiding selling at a loss.
 
JorgenRaft said:
Not to mention it’s been a couple decades since Nintendo has been concerned about releasing hardware that might be outdated and below current standards.
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This is another piece of speculation from my part, but: we have a new management now. Could have differing styles from what we’re used to. Other than that, R&D has been spent on this product. I doubt they’ll sit on it after years of costs
 
ziggyrivers said:
This is another piece of speculation from my part, but: we have a new management now. Could have differing styles from what we’re used to. Other than that, R&D has been spent on this product. I doubt they’ll sit on it after years of costs
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Sure, it’s just hard to say. There are things we know but it doesn’t feel like enough atm (IMO) to be sure of something happening “soon.”

I would assume something is happening in 2024, so maybe it’s just dependent on one’s definition of what “soon” is.
 
JorgenRaft said:
All I did was state a fact as well.

Not to mention it’s been a couple decades since Nintendo has been concerned about releasing hardware that might be outdated and below current standards. Part of their approach for the last few generations has been manufacturing hardware they can sell at a point that’s considered cheap compared to the competition, while also avoiding selling at a loss.
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Drake architecture is 3 years old, Switch's Tegra X1 architecture was also 3 years old when the Switch launched, Maxwell launched with the GTX 750 GPU in spring 2014, Switch came out in Spring 2017. A78 CPUs launched in 2020, Ampere in 2020, Drake launching this year is no newer a technology than Switch was in 2017. Heck even DLSS 2.0 is from Spring 2020.

My point is that I had already stated that I'm speculating. Your fact, is already covered in my post.
"Anyways, you'll likely be pleasantly surprised, hope you enjoy the summer direct, as I'm confident (via speculation and some insider chatter saying they have heard it is this year) that the summer direct will have Mario shown off for the new generation hardware and we will see it launch this FY"

Lastly, I have to repeat, you don't finish a chip 3 years before you start mass producing it. It has to release relatively soon, the reasonable window is November 2023 to March 2024, I'm simply leaning to this calendar year, but my stance has been those 5 months for quite a while now.
pelusilla6 said:
What still seems strange to me is that this information has come out of nowhere in DF and by Nate last month...
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DF said that hardware in the past was canceled, Nate jumped on that and tied it to Drake, Thraktor proved that OLED model had canceled aspects of it, specifically that it would output 4K in some way, as the OLED model added complexity that would make it far more expensive to print the board, and they ended up also allowing the dock to output 4K via another expensive 4K enabled media chip. It's pretty clear that the OLED model was indeed intended to output 4K at this point, and there are confirmed clocks for Mariko chips that allowed the GPU to clock to 1.267GHz for ~650GFLOPs when docked, Switch only hits 393GFLOPs when docked, so this is actually a noticeable upgrade. Literally months later, tying what Digital Foundry said to Drake is still unsupported, particularly hard to do so when Drake was completed last year and is still getting software updates currently. For a canceled piece of hardware, it sure is getting a lot of resources thrown at it.
 
Z0m3le said:
My point is that I had already stated that I'm speculating. Your fact, is already covered in my post.
"Anyways, you'll likely be pleasantly surprised, hope you enjoy the summer direct, as I'm confident (via speculation and some insider chatter saying they have heard it is this year) that the summer direct will have Mario shown off for the new generation hardware and we will see it launch this FY"
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You’re referring to a post of yours I wasn’t even replying to.
 
0
Armoured_Bear said:
All we know is that at some point in the last few years Nvidia had developed the T239 chip with Nintendo (in mind), that's it. Time is dragging on and on and we know nothing. We have no idea if Switch 2 will use this chip, no idea if or how Nintendo have changed plans, what technical difficulties there have been, if it is that chips, no idea on clock speeds, throttling, anything.
Speculation is fine and there's a very good chance it will be T239 based but we do not KNOW anything so no idea why people keep saying we do.
If Nate is right (and I have no clue , he's accepted here as an impeccable insider, I have no idea what he revealed before) then the machine will come out something like 4 years after T239 development.

tl;dr
We don't know anything about Switch 2 for sure, despite people repeatedly saying we do.
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you don’t need to know all of that to know it can be better than the PS4. We don’t know the ceiling, we simply can know the base. The base even using the switch clockspeed can deliver this. Unless you think that Nintendo is going to clock it even lower, but at this point what’s the whole R&D for making a large chip? There has to be a justification for these actions that make logical sense, and throwing money at the wall because they can is not what Nintendo does.


A lot of the points you brought up are really weird, “we don’t know if the switch 2 will use it”, so is there another chip that the switch 2 will use? Because that’s the only one that’s custom and not really exposed to the public like ORIN.

If Nintendo “changed plans” at this point in time, then people need to stop discussing the switch 2 because they aren’t getting a new console anytime soon for the next couple of years at that point. And do you actually believe they would suddenly change plans knee deep at this point?


Nintendo is pretty slow, they would still take years to release a product even after a quick decision to drop T239. It wouldn’t release in two days or ten months, try in at least 3 years. At least. Even assuming they use the same TX1 and clock it higher, why? Because there’s more to a system than the chip that is inside it. Especially for a Nintendo system.



Saying we don’t know anything is doing a massive disservice and doing a lot of work to completely dismantle a lot of valuable information that is acquired and speculation that has been built.


TL;DR we don’t know exacts yet, but this is unreasonably pessimistic and looking for dooming for no logical reason even if it’s not intentional.


We don’t know that Sony will release a PS6, because we don’t know what’s going on at Sony HQ. They could go bankrupt and have to sell the PlayStation division in a few years which would be spun off into TencentHardware console number 1. We don’t know, that doesn’t mean this is a likely scenario. Nor does it mean that it should be used to dissuade speculation about the subject with what we are aware of.
 
If the Switch 2 arrives holiday 2024, which is what I originally expected years ago, I'm going to be so annoyed I ever considered an earlier date.

abcfsk said:
System seller doesn't have to be the biggest franchise. It can be a visual showcase. It can showcase a gimmick. Quite frequently systems launch without the very biggest franchises. Metroid isn't top tier, but the past two releases on Switch, neither of which are as big or as pushed as 4 will be, have done very well.
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A system seller has to sell systems. It's not a visual showcase or anything like that. What you're thinking of is closer to a killer app.

Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Zelda, Pokemon. Those are system sellers.
 
Wockio said:
Dude... no. GameFreak just sucks.
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I mean, both can be true; GF was having serious trouble getting SV to run properly due to their extreme tech debt, so they decided to leave it in its shitty state (or give up on improving it) so it could be buoyed by more powerful hardware.
 
JorgenRaft said:
All I did was state a fact as well.

Not to mention it’s been a couple decades since Nintendo has been concerned about releasing hardware that might be outdated and below current standards. Part of their approach for the last few generations has been manufacturing hardware they can sell at a point that’s considered cheap compared to the competition, while also avoiding selling at a loss.
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If it's possible for Nintendo to wait for the technology to cheapen, then it's even more possible for it to launch as an expensive product, sell to enthusiasts, while the production line is hot the technology cheapens even faster than if it had just waited, and then of a time makes a price cut.
 
kirbyfan407 said:
Bayonetta Origins DLC? Was something announced? This is a tangent, but if someone could provide a link to info on this, that'd be greatly appreciated. I'm having trouble finding information on it and seemingly missed it.

Anyway, I have the same feeling as you on some level. I'm very curious how they'll fill the second half of the year. I'm not sold on it being hardware, but I would definitely not rule it out either until we get some solid reporting saying otherwise.
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There isn't any, I made a mistake and retract my message. Sorry y'all. 🫡

I read a mistranslation that called it an "update", the intent was more like "news", informing people that it exists, as while it's been present since launch, it has never been mentioned outside of the game for spoiler reasons.

That said, it does mean that Nintendo has shoved Bayonetta Origins marketing into the same week as 1+2 Rebootcamp, XBC3 DLC, etc. So while not as meaningful as I thought, I also don't think it's null.
 
Z0m3le said:
It's speculation, part of the reason I don't post in Nintendo forums very much anymore is because the majority of people who come in here, forget that this is a speculation thread, speculating different things, my post took facts and knowledge about new Switch hardware, it showed my reasoning, and it stated it was speculation. Yet you think coming in and posting that it isn't fact, somehow adds to the discussion, all it does is try to dismiss my speculation as a wild promise. I didn't jump the shark, I'm just confident that I'm right.

I will say this though, it does have to actually be released soon. T239 was completed in August 2022, for a product that will hit the market before 24 months, fab process and mobile technology moves too fast to delay a new chip design into a 3rd year after it is completed, you don't design a chip 6 years in advance, because by the time you reach year 6, it's obsolete. The idea that T239 could be for a product in 2025, yet designed in 2020 and completed in mid 2022, is frankly uneducated guess work.
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Z isn't pulling proverbial punches and I am HERE FOR IT.
 
Bonejack said:
~1 year within of after The Sequel of Tears of the Kingdom, of course.
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Please be excited for the sequel to the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

Bonejack said:
It would take quite some time to change/adapt, but in the end i still think Gamefreak would benefit so much from switching to a 3rd party engine.
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Unreal Engine 4/5 Pokemon?

Concernt said:
There isn't any, I made a mistake and retract my message. Sorry y'all. 🫡

I read a mistranslation that called it an "update", the intent was more like "news", informing people that it exists, as while it's been present since launch, it has never been mentioned outside of the game for spoiler reasons.

That said, it does mean that Nintendo has shoved Bayonetta Origins marketing into the same week as 1+2 Rebootcamp, XBC3 DLC, etc. So while not as meaningful as I thought, I also don't think it's null.
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Yes lol everyone was confused by that trailer of Once Upon a Time. Maybe it was a Tarantino callback…
 
ziggyrivers said:
Please be excited for the sequel to the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom


Unreal Engine 4/5 Pokemon?
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Well, there's also Unity, so it's not like they don't have the option to chose the one that would fit them best.
Though ... why not UE, yeah.

Also, i'm obsessively hyped for Zelda and having to wait three more weeks is pure torture for me, so you excuse me if i don't waste a single second of thought about any Zelda game coming after TotK. ;D
 
Bonejack said:
Well, there's also Unity, so it's not like they don't have the option to chose the one that would fit them best.
Though ... why not UE, yeah.
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The fact that they upped the assets tells me they’re still gonna use their current engine

Bonejack said:
Also, i'm obsessively hyped for Zelda and having to wait three more weeks is pure torture for me, so you excuse me if i don't waste a single second of thought about any Zelda game coming after TotK. ;D
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Which is precisely why I havent seen the gameplay video nor the trailer: hype in check xD
 
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