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

[Chaotic Neutral]

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.

Unreal Engine 4/5 Pokemon?

Unreal Engine 2D-HD Pokémon a la Octopath Traveller.

Please.

 

[Thraktor]

I was playing around a bit with the new "RT Overdrive" mode in Cyberpunk, and although it's a bit of a stretch for my 3070, it was still interesting to play around with, even at very low resolutions.

It's actually a very good test case for Ada's architectural improvements over Ampere. Most of the changes to Ada (shader execution re-ordering, improved RT cores, larger L2 cache) are aimed at improving RT performance, and the RT Overdrive mode in Cyberpunk is the heaviest stress test of RT performance at the moment. It also uses Nvidia's RTXDI, and seems to have been implemented in close collaboration with Nvidia, so we would expect it to be well-optimised for the newest Nvidia GPUs.

Tom's Hardware did some benchmarks here, and for a point of comparison I'm going to use the difference between the RTX 3070 and RTX 4070, as they both use 46 SMs. According to the benchmarks, the RTX 4070 outperformed the RTX 3070 by 42.3% at native 1080p. The RTX 4070 runs at higher clocks, though, with a boost clock of 2,475MHz compared to 1,725MHz on the 3070. That's a 43.5% increase in clocks for a 42.3% increase in performance with the same number of SMs. Not exactly what I was expecting.

There's a big caveat here in that advertised boost clocks typically don't represent the actual clock speeds GPUs run at. Without knowing what clock speeds the GPUs were running during Tom's Hardware's benchmarks it's impossible to say exactly what the per-clock performance difference is, but it seems unlikely that Ada offers a significant performance per clock benefit over Ampere even in RT heavy workloads, which is honestly quite surprising to me. There are some other caveats like memory bandwidth only being about 10% higher on the 4070, although I'd expect the much larger L2 to be a big benefit there.

Offering little to no performance-per-clock improvement even on heavy RT tasks is particularly disappointing when you consider the massive increase in transistor counts with Ada. The GA104 die used for the RTX 3070 is a 17.4 billion transistor part. The AD104 used for the RTX 4070 is a 35.8 billion transistor part. The AD104 does have more SMs on board, 60 compared to the 48 on GA104, but accounting for that we're still looking at 65% more transistors per SM. Of course most of those added transistors aren't in the SMs themselves (I would guess the 48MB L2 cache accounts for a lot of them), but it's still a significant increase in transistor count overall for very little increase in per-clock performance.

Bringing this back to the topic of the thread, it doesn't look like Nintendo's missing much by using Ampere over Ada. I was assuming that Ada would offer a nice boost to RT performance, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Ada is much more power efficient than Ampere, but this tracks what we'd expect from the move to a better manufacturing process, and we should expect the same benefit shrinking Ampere to 4N.

In fact, with Ada being a much more transistor-heavy architecture, if you're trying to optimise for the best performance within limited die size/transistor count, it seems like Ampere on 4N would actually comfortably outperform Ada, even on RT-heavy workloads.

Frame generation in DLSS 3 is of course another aspect to consider, but as I've said before, I don't think frame generation would be a sensible or feasible option for Nintendo even if they were using Ada. The additional latency and artefacting when running at lower frame rates (ie rendering at ~30fps for 60fps output) would be one thing, but I strongly suspect that the tensor core performance required for frame generation (which runs at the output resolution of DLSS's upscaling step, so 4K if that's what you're expecting) would be beyond what we could expect for a GPU small enough to be viable for use in a device like the Switch.

 

[Jafin]

Unreal Engine 2D-HD Pokémon a la Octopath Traveller.

Please.

I was thinking about this last week and I wouldn't be mad if the eventual Gen5 remakes were in this style.

 

[ziggyrivers]

I was thinking about this last week and I wouldn't be mad if the eventual Gen5 remakes were in this style.

I wanted FF6 to be remade in this entine

 

[D36]

I was thinking about this last week and I wouldn't be mad if the eventual Gen5 remakes were in this style.

PLEASE!!!!! Gen 5 was the pinnacle of sprite art for this franchise, to see it in that art style would be a dream come true.

 

[ILikeFeet]

The fact that they upped the assets tells me they’re still gonna use their current engine

the two have nothing to do with each other. the improved quality of assets would show on any engine

 

[Advator]

I noticed the summary on page1 from @Op with the latest one from 2 April, but I noticed this article that mention this board.
So I think I'm missing maybe some latest rummors?
Do someone could tell me what the latest rumors are that are not mentioned yet on page1?
(if preferred I will go through all the pages until 2 April)
Thank you

 

[Foltzie]

I noticed the summary on page1 from @Op with the latest one from 2 April, but I noticed this article that mention this board.
So I think I'm missing maybe some latest rummors?
Do someone could tell me what the latest rumors are that are not mentioned yet on page1?
(if preferred I will go through all the pages until 2 April)
Thank you

As always, the OP contains a chronological list of relevant facts, rumors, and opinions.

Otherwise, the reddit post has all of the information of that rumor. If there is validity to this rumor, more leaks should follow as marketing and retail are much more likely to leak than a developer/engineer.

One note: any new hardware shipping from Nintendo would certainly be the Drake Switch. . . On the PS5 front, I would caution folks that a new model could just as easily be a "slim" instead of a Pro. I have no inside information on this point, but would make a healthy wager that Sony would rather recognize cost savings than more horsepower at this stage.

 

[ziggyrivers]

I noticed the summary on page1 from @Op with the latest one from 2 April, but I noticed this article that mention this board.
So I think I'm missing maybe some latest rummors?
Do someone could tell me what the latest rumors are that are not mentioned yet on page1?
(if preferred I will go through all the pages until 2 April)
Thank you

Nothing major:
• Switch successor reveal in June/July
• Release this Holiday with 3D Mario and next gen patch for Zelda, Pokemon and Metroid
• Retail Uncle allegedly asked industry people and said that the upcoming consoles are Switch Pro and PS5 Pro (Switch Pro is most certainly Switch 2)

 

[SpaceGodzilla]

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.

on a scale of 1 to 10 how confident are you in all of this

 

[Thugstas]

Nothing major:
• Switch successor reveal in June/July
• Release this Holiday with 3D Mario and next gen patch for Zelda, Pokemon and Metroid
• Retail Uncle allegedly asked industry people and said that the upcoming consoles are Switch Pro and PS5 Pro (Switch Pro is most certainly Switch 2)

Keep an eye on FY

 

[SpaceGodzilla]

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.

except Metroid prime 1 WAS a system sell for GameCube even out selling zelda during it's early years

 

[iag]

The illegal Nvidia leaks, and Nvidia's commits on Linux and GitHub, made no mention of which type of internal flash storage is being used.

So nobody knows which type of internal flash storage Nintendo's going to ultimately use for Nintendo's new hardware.

Guess they meant the slow hdd drive from PS4.

 

[Dakhil]

I noticed the summary on page1 from @Op with the latest one from 2 April, but I noticed this article that mention this board.

I'm personally sceptical of the reliability of the source, which is why that wasn't added to the OP.

---

Guess they meant the slow hdd drive from PS4.

eMMC 5.1, which the Nintendo Switch uses, is faster than a HDD based on the specs (p. 15). But Nintendo probably limited the sequential speeds due to the the Nintendo Switch's CPU frequency being very low.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The Switch 2 not using UFS 4.0 with installs would just be a big disappointment.

 

[ILikeFeet]

except Metroid prime 1 WAS a system sell for GameCube even out selling zelda

WW ended up selling way more

 

[Hosermess]

Nothing major:
• Switch successor reveal in June/July
• Release this Holiday with 3D Mario and next gen patch for Zelda, Pokemon and Metroid
• Retail Uncle allegedly asked industry people and said that the upcoming consoles are Switch Pro and PS5 Pro (Switch Pro is most certainly Switch 2)

Regarding the highlighted, I do not think this is what his tweet says. If you go by the Twitter/Google translate: "Wow, you're going to become a great manufacturer, a wholesaler ●●." maybe that's vague/gibberish-y enough you could think that.

The DeepL translation is:
Switch PRO
PS5 PRO
Wow wow wow wow!
Manufacturer, wholesaler
I'm sure you'll be a big fan of this.

Which to me seems like it's a general message to industry people (manufacturers/wholesalers) not from them. And where did he get the Switch Pro/PS5 Pro stuff from? Maybe the same fucking youtube videos as everyone else. That's' my guess.

Even his earlier tweet about Zelda, Splatoon and Mario does not imply any knowledge in my opinion. I think it's just an assumption of his based on history/patterns. It's funny though for that tweet, the DeepL translation is the nonsensical one and the Twitter/Google one is comprehendible.

 

[Advator]

I hope they will implement ray tracing dlss 3.0 and 60fps.


Maybe some addonn you could attach to make it as a VR device like oculus quest. Wouldn't be that difficult todo I think?

Care less about 4k. With dlss 3.0 they could upscale it to 4k with almost not being noticeable.

 

[ShaunSwitch]

The Switch 2 not using UFS 4.0 with installs would just be a big disappointment.

I would say prepare to be disappointed. Nintendo will go with what makes the most sense in a cost vs what performance they need kind of way, plus mandating installs goes against the whole idea of the cartridges on switch and may even make the initial hardware more expensive.

I imagine Emmc or UFS 2.1/3.0 (whichever is cheapest at scale and will still be manufactured for years). Even if they use UFS 3, I don't think it will run full tilt. It's why they probably got Nvidia to put the FDE on the SOC. So they can use cheaper and slower storage and just use heavy compression. Might even be the lack of speed of removable storage which drove that decision.

Ultimately I think they will aim for parity across cartridge, removable storage and internal installs in terms of read speed. Ergo, the lowest common denominator will be the speed they settle at.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I would say prepare to be disappointed. Nintendo will go with what makes the most sense in a cost vs what performance they need kind of way, plus mandating installs goes against the whole idea of the cartridges on switch and may even make the initial hardware more expensive.

I imagine Emmc or UFS 2.1/3.0 (whichever is cheapest at scale and will still be manufactured for years). Even if they use UFS 3, I don't think it will run full tilt. It's why they probably got Nvidia to put the FDE on the SOC. So they can use cheaper and slower storage and just use heavy compression. Might even be the lack of speed of removable storage which drove that decision.

I have no idea why mandating installs would go against the idea of carts.

The PS5 also has a dedicated decompresseser despite having a comically fast SSD as well.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I would say prepare to be disappointed. Nintendo will go with what makes the most sense in a cost vs what performance they need kind of way, plus mandating installs goes against the whole idea of the cartridges on switch and may even make the initial hardware more expensive.

I imagine Emmc or UFS 2.1/3.0 (whichever is cheapest at scale and will still be manufactured for years). Even if they use UFS 3, I don't think it will run full tilt. It's why they probably got Nvidia to put the FDE on the SOC. So they can use cheaper and slower storage and just use heavy compression. Might even be the lack of speed of removable storage which drove that decision.

Ultimately I think they will aim for parity across cartridge, removable storage and internal installs in terms of read speed. Ergo, the lowest common denominator will be the speed they settle at.

Yes, they will obviously go with parity if there's no mandatory installs to internal memory... But that's bad as Switch carts are super slow.

Not a fan of this idea.

 

[Gotdatmoneyy]

I hope they will implement ray tracing dlss 3.0 and 60fps.


Maybe some addonn you could attach to make it as a VR device like oculus quest. Wouldn't be that difficult todo I think?

Care less about 4k. With dlss 3.0 they could upscale it to 4k with almost not being noticeable.

It won't have the optical flow accelerator of Ada. Also, frame generation for such a low powered device seems unlikely.

 

[Dakhil]

The Switch 2 not using UFS 4.0 with installs would just be a big disappointment.

I don't expect Nintendo to use UFS 4.0, especially since UFS 4.0 is only starting to be adopted by flagship Android smartphones this year, which means that UFS 4.0 is likely very expensive.

I think Nintendo's fine if Nintendo uses UFS 2.1/2.2 at a minimum since Mark Cerny mentioned third party developers requested a NVMe SSD with at least a sequential read speed of 1 GB/s for the PlayStation 5. And UFS 2.1/2.2 can achieve sequential read speeds really close to or exactly at 1 GB/s.

 

[ShaunSwitch]

I have no idea why mandating installs would go against the idea of carts.

The PS5 also has a dedicated decompresseser despite having a comically fast SSD as well.

Part of the benefit of the switch using carts is that you can pop a cartridge in and just play the game, with no need to install it or download an update.

The PS5 has the advantage that it doesn't have to run off a battery, so the storage can draw more power than the entire switch does. It also has one storage format it has to load from. A storage format that is cheap because of its prevalence in the PC market which has need for high capacity storage.

With the switch, the market it shares storage with is phones, where large storage is reserved for premium models, as users are expected to use cloud to store things like photos and videos, making high capacity UFS prohibitively expensive for Nintendo. Larger sized storage medium will be needed though because if games will be targeting 4k they will be getting bigger. But Nintendo is not going to want to market a 512GB Switch 2 that costs $750.

The way Nintendo deals with this is by offloading this cost to publishers (including itself) via cartridges for games, thus reducing the need for more storage on board the device and consumers by basically making the purchase of a microsd card necessary. This reduces the initial cost of the platform, making it a more attractive mass market product.

 

[Concernt]

Unreal Engine 2D-HD Pokémon a la Octopath Traveller.

Please.

Please, goodness, gracious, no... I can't go back to random encounters.

 

[ziggyrivers]

Regarding the highlighted, I do not think this is what his tweet says. If you go by the Twitter/Google translate: "Wow, you're going to become a great manufacturer, a wholesaler ●●." maybe that's vague/gibberish-y enough you could think that.

The DeepL translation is:
Switch PRO
PS5 PRO
Wow wow wow wow!
Manufacturer, wholesaler
I'm sure you'll be a big fan of this.

Which to me seems like it's a general message to industry people (manufacturers/wholesalers) not from them. And where did he get the Switch Pro/PS5 Pro stuff from? Maybe the same fucking youtube videos as everyone else. That's' my guess.

Even his earlier tweet about Zelda, Splatoon and Mario does not imply any knowledge in my opinion. I think it's just an assumption of his based on history/patterns. It's funny though for that tweet, the DeepL translation is the nonsensical one and the Twitter/Google one is comprehendible.

Thanks for the clarification! That’s why I asked, funnily, how Japanese boards are towards the Switch successor subject

 

[Giancarlo]

I think it can also be another Nintendo IP getting work by Monolith.

isnt theres a rumor Monolith Soft could be working on a Legend of Zelda game?beside helping Nintendo on Tears of the Kingdom

 

[ILikeFeet]

Yes, they will obviously go with parity if there's no mandatory installs to internal memory... But that's bad as Switch carts are super slow.

Not a fan of this idea.

the switch carts are slow because of the cpu, which will be alleviated with Drake. same for the emmc. just because a thing is new, doesn't mean there are tangible benefits.

isnt theres a rumor Monolith Soft could be working on a Legend of Zelda game?beside helping Nintendo on Tears of the Kingdom

no. they're working on an action game, but what IP it will be (new or otherwise) is unknown

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

eMMC maxes out at 400 MB/s which is a good bit slower than UFS 4.0 (and UFS 4.0 could hit eMMC speeds at a much lower electricity cost if needed)

I'm not sure what the Switch carts max out at as a hypothetical.

The Switch 2 probably isn't coming out for 19 months or longer so I'm not really sure how expensive UFS 4.0 would be then either.

 

[Giancarlo]

So in 2024, how do you feel if the only new Switch 1 games published by Nintendo are Metroid Prime 4, Pokémon games, and a couple of remasters/remakes while the Switch 2 gets new IPs and new entries that are also published by Nintendo.

it will depend when Switch 2 release, i believe Nintendo will follow a similar path Sony followed with PS5 and PS4, a few cross-gen games such as Metroid Prime 4 for 2/3 years, before they transition for a full focus on Switch sucessor games, they cant ignore a install base of 100+milions players for it next hardware

 

[MP!]

Part of the benefit of the switch using carts is that you can pop a cartridge in and just play the game, with no need to install it or download an update.

unfortunately more than a few games do not work like that... there are always patches and updates or free DLC that will always be download only and some are required to even play the game.

edit: The fact that devs have the option to use the cheapest 8GB cart, and then make the rest of the game a mandatory download means that most will always choose to do that.
And in a world where game sizes are increasingly getting larger... AND with new, more capable hardware on the horizon it might be time to let this dream go.
(especially if developers need more storage speed)
Discs are already glorified licenses/installers... I can see carts going that way already. I mean there could be a world where next gen switch carts are much faster ... but I'm not sure if it's realistic.

Last thought: I don't know if Nintendo would actually make mandatory installs a thing either... this is one of my biggest concerns for the future, storage isn't getting large enough, cheap enough, fast enough. And so we'll have some weird solutions for a while it seems.

 

[D36]

Please, goodness, gracious, no... I can't go back to random encounters.

Meh, you'll live if it does happen. Just stock up on repels.

 

[Pokemaniac]

eMMC maxes out at 400 MB/s which is a good bit slower than UFS 4.0 (and UFS 4.0 could hit eMMC speeds at a much lower electricity cost if needed)

I'm not sure what the Switch carts max out at as a hypothetical.

The Switch 2 probably isn't coming out for 19 months or longer so I'm not really sure how expensive UFS 4.0 would be then either.

UFS 4.0 is impractical, as it's unlikely they could have memory cards available to match that. Even the UFS card spec intentionally lags behind the embedded version, and is currently 2 generations behind in terms of speed, as far as I can tell.

The carts I'm not worried about. They'll be built to whatever spec Nintendo requires.

 

[Nintendojitsu]

Who invited the Speculation Police?

 

[Deleted member 645]

A much better CPU
Far more modern architecture
Ray tracing
DLSS/Neural Unit
Performance & Efficiency Gains
More shader cores than Vanilla PS4
Better GPU than XBox Series S
Full Cream Unreal Engine 5 support

So, those are just a few of the things it will have going for it VS the PS4 and its Pro Model. At least, the leaks have alluded to that very strongly. Apart from the facts that decade-old PS4-tier power is impressive to nobody in 202X, least of all Switch owners, that it would be wholly unfit for a generational purpose for a system releasing in that time, and that mobile CPUs have had the PS4 beaten for years, this will beat it because it has to. There is no other choice, except a worse-than-Wii U-fate, if Nintendo and Nvidia can’t deliver a console with the appropriate facilities. A PS4 Pro has some of the same problems as the PS4 (CPU bottleneck, dated architecture), and while its GPU has more cores, it remains generations behind. Furthermore, I wrote in a fairly recent past post that smarter engineering, NOT raw power will ultimately prevail here.

I agree with your last statement. We have seen many amazing “Impossible Ports” on the switch. I’m not concerned about the next switch, as long as Nvidia is involved. Architecture, development tools and assets will take it a long way. Nintendo is not in the game of pushing raw power and promoting it. DLSS is the saving grace and main feature. It’s a game changer for Nintendo.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

UFS 4.0 is impractical, as it's unlikely they could have memory cards available to match that. Even the UFS card spec intentionally lags behind the embedded version, and is currently 2 generations behind in terms of speed, as far as I can tell.

The carts I'm not worried about. They'll be built to whatever spec Nintendo requires.

You could just have the SD cards as backup storage instead of storage you can play from.

 

[arsen]

Who invited the Speculation Police?

Happens everytime a reddit karma farmer post a link to this thread.

 

[Armoured_Bear]

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.

I'm not "looking for dooming", whatever eventually comes may be better than speculated, I didn't say we shouldn't speculate.
My point is the use of "we know" is incorrect.
People pop in here all the time asking what the lates is, not everyone reads every post and then they read "we know this, we know that", it's misleading.

 

[Dakhil]

eMMC maxes out at 400 MB/s which is a good bit slower than UFS 4.0 (and UFS 4.0 could hit eMMC speeds at a much lower electricity cost if needed)

I'm not sure what the Switch carts max out at as a hypothetical.

The Switch 2 probably isn't coming out for 19 months or longer so I'm not really sure how expensive UFS 4.0 would be then either.

The same can be said about UFS 2.1/2.2 and UFS 3.0/3.1.

And Nintendo has shown with the Nintendo Switch to do cost cutting with the internal flash storage using eMMC 5.1 instead of using UFS 2.0/2.1.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The same can be said about UFS 2.1/2.2 and UFS 3.0/3.1.

And Nintendo has shown with the Nintendo Switch to do cost cutting with the internal flash storage using eMMC 5.1 instead of using UFS 2.0/2.1.

The Switch 1 was a successor to the 3DS (which sold OK, but not great) and the WiiU (a historic failure)

The Switch 2 is the successor to the Switch 1 which is a top 3 best selling system of all time.

I think they can afford to go a little more expensive here.

Would much rather have very short load times with a weaker GPU than a stronger GPU with longer load times.

 

[Pokemaniac]

You could just have the SD cards as backup storage instead of storage you can play from.

The idea that Nintendo would return to a Wii-esque storage arrangement is laughable. I don't think a console is going to get away with not letting you run games off of external storage in 2023.

 

[Foltzie]

The Switch 1 was a successor to the 3DS (which sold OK, but not great) and the WiiU (a historic failure)

The Switch 2 is the successor to the Switch 1 which is a top 3 best selling system of all time.

I think they can afford to go a little more expensive here.

Would much rather have very short load times with a weaker GPU than a stronger GPU with longer load times.

Nintendo cannot, should not, and will not ever spend money that doesn't directly result in a better product at a good value.

Whatever storage Nintendo has picked for [REDACTED] will probably be fine, the presence of the file decompression engine in Drake already indicates that they have a solution in mind to provide more data and faster data to the system. That paired with with whatever internal and expansion storage will likely be "fine".


Edit: clarified a bit.

 

[ILikeFeet]

are we forgetting that Steam Deck can run on an emmc for the cheapest variant? it's gonna be limiting, but not as much as we think. it does mean third parties will have to be smart about how they're streaming data, but games don't stream in that much into at once

 

[YugamiSekai]

1GB/s storage speed across all mediums or bust, IMO.

 

[Hocot8]

I'm not "looking for dooming", whatever eventually comes may be better than speculated, I didn't say we shouldn't speculate.
My point is the use of "we know" is incorrect.
People pop in here all the time asking what the lates is, not everyone reads every post and then they read "we know this, we know that", it's misleading.

You're yelling at a brick wall really. I've had this conversation here already. Unfortunately, there is still a hostile minority in this thread. If you are out of the loop you are either treated as an idiot or you are talked down to.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Ironic. Not even going to bother.

 

[Christer]

I think they can afford to go a little more expensive here.

I mean it’s not really about what Nintendo can afford so much as how much it’s going to cost for consumers.

 

[Foltzie]

The idea that Nintendo would return to a Wii-esque storage arrangement is laughable. I don't think a console is going to get away with not letting you run games off of external storage in 2023.

Well. . . Nintendo has a unique problem, one they can't solve the same way as the PS5/Xbox.

Current MicroSD cards (UHS-1) top out at ~90MBs and there aren't yet any cards in that format that are faster*. Even the current emmc in the switch supports up to 250MBs.

If the [REDACTED] does have much faster internal storage at some point Nintendo has a decision to make. Do you limit the MicroSD to fridge storage only or do you limit the guaranteed read speed to 40-90MBs to developers?

*I know previous conversation about CFexpress and SD Express have occurred, but even over the life of this thread, have any of those options become more realistic?

EDIT: to be clarify I dont claim to have a specific answer. Assuming Nintendo uses UFS for internal storage that only increases the speed delta between internal and microSD external.

 

[kasparov77]

Could switch 2 have an equivalent to dx12's direct memory access?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Well. . . Nintendo has a unique problem, one they can't solve the same way as the PS5/Xbox.

Current MicroSD cards (UHS-1) top out at ~90MBs and there aren't yet any cards in that format that are faster*. Even the current emmc in the switch supports up to 400MBs.

If the [REDACTED] does have much faster internal storage at some point Nintendo has a decision to make. Do you limit the MicroSD to fridge storage only or do you limit the guaranteed read speed to 40-90MBs to developers?

*I know previous conversation about CFexpress and SD Express have occurred, but even over the life of this thread, have any of those options become more realistic?

there are other non-pcie SD card options that go up to 300MB/s sequential

Could switch 2 have an equivalent to dx12's direct memory access?

yes. it's not even a new thing, just new to Windows pcs