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

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ILikeFeet said:
I can't imagine that being the case. it's not like we hear anything out of NST, Next Level, or Retro. they're the most invested so they have the least amount of reason to leak stuff.
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in the case of Retro Studios everyone know they are working on Metroid Prime 4 with a still release date unknown, Next Level games is rumored to be working on a remaster of F-Zero GX for Nintendo Switch
insider-gaming.com

F-Zero GX To Be Remastered, Rumor Claims - Insider Gaming

A new report claims that F-Zero GX is set to be remastered and released for the Nintendo Switch in the near future.
insider-gaming.com insider-gaming.com
 
invwar said:
I am definitely in for a Golden Sun. As Monolith is unlikely to unveil a REDACTED RPG, Camelot could be the one. They have to attract core gamer a first time full 3D Golden Sun could be this one.
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I agree with everything but the Monolith part. Why wouldn't they unveil their next project for Drake?
 
ILikeFeet said:
What about the Series S? It's still stronger than Drake and has faster storage et al.

You're really overblowing the loading issue. Devs never had a problem with slapping in loading screens on cross gen games for systems with worse loading than Drake. Nor do they have a problem with making pop-in more prevalent on those systems. Why does it become a problem now for Drake? That's just coming up with excuses to not support the system, but that isn't even new, just look at switch
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If you look at Drake as a platform for cross-gen games that come from PS4/XB1, then sure, it wouldn't be a problem. But what about once cross-gen is out of the picture, and devs are actually utilizing PS5/Series as they were meant to be used? That's where I'm getting at here, and how even 100MB/s won't seem like enough.

It won't be about objects popping in here and there. They could be loading in entire sections of landscapes that would definitely be an eye-sore if we had to see those pop in slowly. PS5 and Series not only have far faster storage speeds than their predecessors, but they also have their own hardware decompression units to get that much more out of them. Drake's FDE isn't unique. Why devs still develop with slow storage speed in mind? Because cross-gen is still beneficial, but once they are done with that, they are going to move on. It will be highly unlikely that 3rd-parties will continue operating with the old ways just for Drake's sake if it did have slow storage speeds.

I'm not expecting 5GB/s storage speeds. I'm not expecting 2.4GB/s or even 1GB/s, but 100MB/s just seems low if Nintendo is wanting 3rd-parties on board who are already getting familiar with developing PS5 and Series with faster speeds.
 
Giancarlo said:
in regard to file size to Nintendo next hardware, it would depend on the game scale/complexity, smaller scale games like a WarioWare i believe would be 10-20GB, with the average file size been 25-30GB, and more ambitous large scale games such as a 3D open world Mario or the next Legend of Zelda been 50-60GB, i could be wrong of course in my estimates of how file size could be on Nintendo next hardware
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A game like WarioWare that's still under 2GB on Switch, I'm not sure what would make it 10GB on Redacted unless they decided to do a bunch of 4K video. The rest seems reasonable enough, for games actually designed to take advantage of the hardware. A bit of searching shows 30-50 given as a norm for PS4 games.
Discostew said:
Going from 15MB/s with Switch carts to something like 100MB/s for Drake is going to tack on a price that's already pretty high for many devs who already choose to downgrade on cart size, requiring mandatory downloading.
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Load time on Switch whether a game is running from internal storage, game card, or microSD is near identical. The microSD reaches about 100MB/s, so it's hard to believe game cards are so slow in practice.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
Guess that’s it, there’s no evidence of anything existing. Close the thread and close up shop.

It’s joever
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FtNvqbKXoAE4ZWl.jpg


Drake's dead. See you all in 2029 for Stephanie.
 
Thraktor said:
The WSJ article used the word hybrid, but was describing something quite different to the Switch. To quote myself from a few weeks ago:
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Before we knew of the Switch concept, this is the one I latched onto, an expansion of the Wii U concept combined with Nintendo combining their handheld and console divisions (edit) combined with the patent of having a seperate device to help increase output.

Although, thinking about it now, it does seem a bit more complex than the Switch, which was what was necessary to make these big bucks for Nintendo.
 
Cuzizkool said:
More musings from me since I’m desperately trying to put off work: I’m looking forward to getting more details about Nvidia Thor, if for no other reason to see where the future of hybrid consoles could go. Not a lot of details on it right now, but I imagine it’ll be like the other automotive SoCs Xavier and Orin (with variations like AGX and NX). The highest AGX of Orin is 5.3 TFLOPS. I wonder what a full throttle Thor will be? Could it be about 8 TFLOPS? Knocking on PS5’s door? But for the sake of hybrid efficiency/functionality, I’d imagine a Switch based on Thor would be 4 TFLOPS handheld (Series S), and maybe 6 TFLOPS docked (XBoneX).
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Releasing a Switch 3 based on Thor in 2030 or so would be like releasing a Switch 2 based on Parker in 2023-2024.
 
Discostew said:
If you look at Drake as a platform for cross-gen games that come from PS4/XB1, then sure, it wouldn't be a problem. But what about once cross-gen is out of the picture, and devs are actually utilizing PS5/Series as they were meant to be used? That's where I'm getting at here, and how even 100MB/s won't seem like enough.

It won't be about objects popping in here and there. They could be loading in entire sections of landscapes that would definitely be an eye-sore if we had to see those pop in slowly. PS5 and Series not only have far faster storage speeds than their predecessors, but they also have their own hardware decompression units to get that much more out of them. Drake's FDE isn't unique. Why devs still develop with slow storage speed in mind? Because cross-gen is still beneficial, but once they are done with that, they are going to move on. It will be highly unlikely that 3rd-parties will continue operating with the old ways just for Drake's sake if it did have slow storage speeds.

I'm not expecting 5GB/s storage speeds. I'm not expecting 2.4GB/s or even 1GB/s, but 100MB/s just seems low if Nintendo is wanting 3rd-parties on board who are already getting familiar with developing PS5 and Series with faster speeds.
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I don't see how it's gonna be any different than switch now. if the devs have to put in work to overcome issues, then that's just work they'll have to put in. I don't think the loading issue is that much worse than what third parties have to do with the switch now
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Load time on Switch whether a game is running from internal storage, game card, or microSD is near identical. The microSD reaches about 100MB/s, so it's hard to believe game cards are so slow in practice.
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You're missing one vital bit of information here, and that is the decompression of game assets. Each of the storage mediums have different transfer rates, but the CPU is the same, and can only decompress data at a particular rate. I've already shown the "raw" read benchmarks of each format before, and the only caveat to take into consideration was with game dumping, where the microSD's "write" rate may be locked. However, given that dumping from internal storage was higher than dumping from cart, it's safe to assume that even if there was a hard limit that the internal storage was hitting, the cart not hitting it meant that its dumping rate is also its read speed, and that was noted at 15MB/s (internal dump to microSD was 25MB/s).
 
Pokemaniac said:
I see a lot of people assuming that carts for Drake will be exactly the same as carts for Switch, but there's really no reason to think that will be the case. For one thing, Nintendo always changes up their carts between generations, at least to boost capacity, but also there are multiple changes that could be made to the console itself, like adjusting the physical interface (they could probably add at least a few more pins without significantly changing the shape) or especially upgrading the controller ASIC that deals with cartridge communication (which has upgradable firmware, but is otherwise fixed hardware).

The current tech stack the Switch utilizes for carts is at least 6 years old by now, and I believe there's some evidence in the gigaleak that it even has some roots in the pre-Nvidia prototypes for NX. The advancement possible on current hardware is also limited by the carts being so simplified that part of them was shifted over to the Switch motherboard. Nintendo can definitely do better with carts for a next generation console. How much better is up for debate, but I think "better" is the baseline.
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I still wonder if anything came out from the rumour of Macronix sending samples of Macronix's 48-layer 3D NAND flash memory to Nintendo.
 
MadMarvainy said:
What a bizarre thing to suggest that Sony and MS would make a Nvidia deal for a portable of all things lol.

Those leaks straight-up mentioned the Switch API or the next iteration of it. It's a custom chip that Nintendo was having tested.

Around 3 teraflops would be pretty healthy for a Nintendo device. It allows Nintendo and 2nd/3rd parties to do more on their platform.

Nintendo aren't the ones to say, "too much graphics for us," I don't think they've ever done that. What they won't do is make large leaps where it doesn't make sense for them to do so from an economic viability standpoint.

I can sort of understand what they are saying but they are crazy if they think Nintendo won't take advantage of that hardware, when haven't they done that? You can overclock your Switch and get some games running at 60fps but it's obvious why Nintendo settled with the clockspeeds they did. No matter how you flip this argument it just sounds either misinformed or like he doesn't actually understand how Nintendo operates. I'm sure they will figure out things like form factor and cooling.

So my verdict is... Terry needs a timeout.
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MS has worked with NVidia on chipsets for their devices like Surface 1 RT and Surface 2 RT, and Zune HD.

I think that guy is basically saying Nintendo doesn't want too much power and they are too risk adverse. Is NVidia even making X2 hardware anymore?
 
ILikeFeet said:
I don't see how it's gonna be any different than switch now. if the devs have to put in work to overcome issues, then that's just work they'll have to put in. I don't think the loading issue is that much worse than what third parties have to do with the switch now
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I still don't think you realize the scale of this once cross-gen is out of the picture, but agree to disagree.
 
Discostew said:
You're missing one vital bit of information here, and that is the decompression of game assets. Each of the storage mediums have different transfer rates, but the CPU is the same, and can only decompress data at a particular rate. I've already shown the "raw" read benchmarks of each format before, and the only caveat to take into consideration was with game dumping, where the microSD's "write" rate may be locked. However, given that dumping from internal storage was higher than dumping from cart, it's safe to assume that even if there was a hard limit that the internal storage was hitting, the cart not hitting it meant that its dumping rate is also its read speed, and that was noted at 15MB/s (internal dump to microSD was 25MB/s).
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I get your reasoning here, but I don't think it matches with other information so I feel like there's something important missing. Nintendo recommends a microSD with a minimum of 60MB/s read speed, and some game straight up say it's a requirement. If they just had to make parity with a 15MB/s game card, that shouldn't be necessary.
 
Discostew said:
I still don't think you realize the scale of this once cross-gen is out of the picture, but agree to disagree.
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Obviously nobody's expecting this thing to have the read and write speeds of a PS5 or something, but I don't think it's as dire as you think. For what it is, the Switch's memory is pretty fast, and I'm expecting the Switch 2's memory to be faster + having a faster CPU and some decompression hardware to help it out.

Switch 2 version of current gen games - much like the Switch before it - will have lower quality assets due to a plethora of different limitations that are typical for a mobile system (thermal, power, memory, and storage limitations, etc.) It won't have as much to unpack as the home consoles. All things considered, I actually think that the Switch 2 will be in a better place with this relative to the home consoles, than the current Switch is to last gen. Compression and decompression has only gotten better, T239 seems to tick the right boxes for a portable system, and the Series S being the floor for the current home consoles makes things pretty favorable for the Switch 2 third party situation since Switch 2 and Series S will be closer together* than the Switch and Xbox One are. It's all just a matter of whether or not T239's feature set will be taken advantage of.

I get your reasoning here, but I don't think it matches with other information so I feel like there's something important missing. Nintendo recommends a microSD with a minimum of 60MB/s read speed, and some game straight up say it's a requirement. If they just had to make parity with a 15MB/s game card, that wouldn't be necessary.
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Spot on. This FAQ on NoA's support site says that microSD cards for the Switch must be UHS-I compatible and have transfer speeds of 60 - 95 Mb/s.

*somebody smarter than me please elaborate or correct me on this
 
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Discostew said:
I still don't think you realize the scale of this once cross-gen is out of the picture, but agree to disagree.
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you're welcome to show some practical examples if you got them.

I expect data limitations to be a problem in that assets will have low quality versions on screen for longer and longer load times with stuttering. but a game that completely saturates IO and decompression at all times? I don't think it's in the best interests of devs to even do that
 
John Omaha said:
Releasing a Switch 3 based on Thor in 2030 or so would be like releasing a Switch 2 based on Parker in 2023-2024.
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You confused me for a sec. I almost thought I made a post about a Switch 3 and a release date in 2030. 🤣 Thankfully, I didn’t have a stroke and I said neither of those things. I just was musing on a Switch based on Thor, not on Drake, a cousin of Orin.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
I get your reasoning here, but I don't think it matches with other information so I feel like there's something important missing. Nintendo recommends a microSD with a minimum of 60MB/s read speed, and some game straight up say it's a requirement. If they just had to make parity with a 15MB/s game card, that shouldn't be necessary.
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I'm just going by my own numbers from my own system using a very capable microSD.

I think there might be a reason why Nintendo recommends 60MB/s or higher. That rate is with regard to reading data sequentially. Games are made up of thousands upon thousands of unique pieces of data scattered across the medium, and so for a single scene, there's a lot of random accesses happening. Random access is faster on flash memory than it is on HDDs because of no moving parts, but they still tack on a significant delay each time.

Switch carts may be better in this regard for the type of ROM while sequential read speeds aren't as good. Don't they use XtraROM which, unless I'm mistaken, is a slower form of flash memory meant for better security and data retention time compared to typical flash memory?
 
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ILikeFeet said:
you're welcome to show some practical examples if you got them.

I expect data limitations to be a problem in that assets will have low quality versions on screen for longer and longer load times with stuttering. but a game that completely saturates IO and decompression at all times? I don't think it's in the best interests of devs to even do that
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I'm not expecting it to be constantly at its max for minutes on end. I doubt PS5 or Series do that outside of loading screens. But they could definitely being using it to its max across a handful of frames, enough to where you don't even realize something was being loaded in. For a game running at 60fps, PS5's 5GB/s rate is about 83.33MB/frame (which is roughly around how long it takes for PS4 to load sequential data from its HDD in one second), and Series' 2.4GB/s is about 40MB/s. Assuming Drake's storage ran on 100MB/s, that's about 1.66MB/frame.
 
www.tweaktown.com

FTC seeks info on Microsoft's 10-year Call of Duty deal with Nintendo

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking more information about the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal that Microsoft signed with Nintendo.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com

Nintendo has been subpoenaed over the Microsoft deal. Wonder if we'll see anything come from this that might be... [REDACTED] in nature.
 
Discostew said:
I still don't think you realize the scale of this once cross-gen is out of the picture, but agree to disagree.
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I think that it’s obvious that storage speeds for REDACTED will lag behind current consoles, just like CPU and GPU perf. I am dubious about that being the critical bottleneck.

It’s obvious that games natively targeting REDACTED’s performance envelop are well served by 100MB/s. Last gen games, indies and Nintendo first party games will all be in excellent shape.

Yes, other current-gen-only multiplats will have this as yet another pain point, but there is a reason that PS4 ports to the Switch were called miracle ports. I don’t expect REDACTED to get more support than it’s predecessor in that regard.

And if it does there are a number of mitigating strategies available. We don’t know how much RAM Nintendo intends to provide, but 12GB would provide a nice buffer over the Series S for preloading assets. A lower resolution target - inevitable with the much less capable GPU - will reduce asset sizes.

This discussion has ranged a bit from your initial assertion, which was that Nintendo will mandate installs from cartridges. I think it’s obvious that the majority of games won’t need faster-than-HDD speeds, and as such, Nintendo is unlikely to mandate installs by default.

I think there are economic disincentives here as well, and that Nintendo simply doesn’t have a lot of cost effective options for massive, ultra fast storage which isn’t a big power drain. Whether or not that will prove problematic for Nintendo remains to be seen, but even if it is, thems the breaks when you’re dealing with a mid budget mobile device
 
"need" is a bizarre way of phrasing it. Do you think that Switch games will be able to achieve near PS5 tier load times with a decompressor and 100 MB/s transfer speed? Because they probably could choose to have 1 GB/s transfer speed instead if they wanted to.
 
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Dekuman said:
It could be something different instead of Fire Emblem, like Dragon Quest 12.
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True

Concernt said:
www.tweaktown.com

FTC seeks info on Microsoft's 10-year Call of Duty deal with Nintendo

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking more information about the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal that Microsoft signed with Nintendo.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com

Nintendo has been subpoenaed over the Microsoft deal. Wonder if we'll see anything come from this that might be... [REDACTED] in nature.
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Doubtful. They’re even trying to avoid it
 
Concernt said:
www.tweaktown.com

FTC seeks info on Microsoft's 10-year Call of Duty deal with Nintendo

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking more information about the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal that Microsoft signed with Nintendo.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com

Nintendo has been subpoenaed over the Microsoft deal. Wonder if we'll see anything come from this that might be... [REDACTED] in nature.
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Considering Nintendo is telling them to shove it I doubt it.

Nintendo of America VP of publisher and developer relations Steve Singer apparently negotiated with MSFT to make the 10-year Call of Duty deal. FTC wants Singer to testify in the MSFT-ATVI merger case, but Nintendo lawyers say subpoena should be tossed.
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Concernt said:
www.tweaktown.com

FTC seeks info on Microsoft's 10-year Call of Duty deal with Nintendo

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking more information about the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal that Microsoft signed with Nintendo.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com

Nintendo has been subpoenaed over the Microsoft deal. Wonder if we'll see anything come from this that might be... [REDACTED] in nature.
Click to expand...
Nintendo asked for it to be dismissed and from what I've seen (youtube lawyer opinions lol) it likely will be. Apparently it was very late.
 
D36 said:
Media Vision might be a great fit, since they worked on the Shining series, which Camelot used to do before leaving Sega.
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Either way, in some form or another, I'd be thrilled. Although, if it exists, I hope it's 4 instead of a remake. They might as well finish the story they left during Dark Dawn.
 
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