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

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ziggyrivers said:
I wonder if because Nintendo survived the Wii U era they’re comfortable in staying longer under “uncharted territory” 🤔
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Even though Wii was extremely successful for Nintendo, they had to move on from it by 2012. Wii sales were declining very quickly and software support had started to dive pretty hard in 2011. The Switch has been unique for Nintendo because it not only has sold very well, but it has sold well for so many years and software sales have been just as strong. To say Nintendo is concerned about the transition to new new hardware would be an understatement. They have had so many successes that are followed up with disappointment. Not all of them have been flops, but selling considerably less than the predecessor is always a disappointment. So while its true that Nintendo has been able to do very well with Switch longer than expected, its not a plan to just sit and do nothing watching the inevitable decline.

Nintendo only has one platform to sell now unlike the days where they had a console and a portable on the market. During the Wii U era we saw what it looked like for Nintendo when they were selling less than 10 million units of hardware in a year and software sales were low, they hemorrhaged money. Nintendo is only healthy when selling lots of hardware and lots of software. I am confident the plan is not to wait for Switch sales to bottom out before moving on. Why would they risk a year in the red just so they can milk the Switch for everything its worth? A good plan is to have the new hardware roll out once the current hardware is trending downward. In order to maintain healthy profits, they will need to maintain hardware sales north of 15 million units per year. This is most likely the final year Nintendo can do that. We are at the point of market saturation, so even a handful of big first party releases can only do so much to maintain enthusiasm for the platform. We also have also seen Nintendo roll out a new Switch model like clockwork every two years since it came out in 2017. The OLED came out in October of 2021 and now its 2023, combine this history with the fact that the second half of the year is still a mystery as far as software is concerned and its very plausible for new hardware to roll out later this year.
 
bixente said:
Nintendo abandoning the Switch name would be catastrophically stupid.
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The main brand is Nintendo and their most successful systems were all the first in their sub brand.

Not saying they dropping "Switch" name would make Drake a success/failure, mind you, but people who wants "the same but better" will know about it even if the name changes. Nintendo even have direct communication with their player base (emails, notifications, social networks, Directs, etc).

So the sub brand should ideally pick the attention from those who didn't care about the previous product, like the Wii/DS/Switch did. But for that, they need a big selling point the previous didn't have, of course.
 
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Goodtwin said:
Even though Wii was extremely successful for Nintendo, they had to move on from it by 2012. Wii sales were declining very quickly and software support had started to dive pretty hard in 2011. The Switch has been unique for Nintendo because it not only has sold very well, but it has sold well for so many years and software sales have been just as strong. To say Nintendo is concerned about the transition to new new hardware would be an understatement. They have had so many successes that are followed up with disappointment. Not all of them have been flops, but selling considerably less than the predecessor is always a disappointment. So while its true that Nintendo has been able to do very well with Switch longer than expected, its not a plan to just sit and do nothing watching the inevitable decline.

Nintendo only has one platform to sell now unlike the days where they had a console and a portable on the market. During the Wii U era we saw what it looked like for Nintendo when they were selling less than 10 million units of hardware in a year and software sales were low, they hemorrhaged money. Nintendo is only healthy when selling lots of hardware and lots of software. I am confident the plan is not to wait for Switch sales to bottom out before moving on. Why would they risk a year in the red just so they can milk the Switch for everything its worth? A good plan is to have the new hardware roll out once the current hardware is trending downward. In order to maintain healthy profits, they will need to maintain hardware sales north of 15 million units per year. This is most likely the final year Nintendo can do that. We are at the point of market saturation, so even a handful of big first party releases can only do so much to maintain enthusiasm for the platform. We also have also seen Nintendo roll out a new Switch model like clockwork every two years since it came out in 2017. The OLED came out in October of 2021 and now its 2023, combine this history with the fact that the second half of the year is still a mystery as far as software is concerned and its very plausible for new hardware to roll out later this year.
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Resting on laurels is a dangerous game, even if it can work out if you're absolutely confident in your product and marketing.
Nintendo learned it the hard way, and while it's technically possible for them to wait for the bottoming out of Switch sales, I don't think Nintendo is dumb enough to let a flame die down a second time.

Granted, we're yet to see how big that flame is for TotK. Come back in two weeks time when it's reported that TotK sold 10 million in a week somehow and I'll give a more nuanced answer
 
NateDrake said:
Hogwarts remains in active development and has been making fine progress on Switch.

The cancellation of Midnight Suns for Switch was circulating last yr soon after the game bombed.
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I try not to mention HL on here but I am genuinely curious to see if they will be able to get it to run on Switch. Just as a tech nerd, I’m curious to see what the developers are capable of with the Switch hardware.
 
SoldierDelta said:
Resting on laurels is a dangerous game, even if it can work out if you're absolutely confident in your product and marketing.
Nintendo learned it the hard way, and while it's technically possible for them to wait for the bottoming out of Switch sales, I don't think Nintendo is dumb enough to let a flame die down a second time.

Granted, we're yet to see how big that flame is for TotK. Come back in two weeks time when it's reported that TotK sold 10 million in a week somehow and I'll give a more nuanced answer
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Its not a question if Switch sales will bottom out, but when? Being in the seventh year on the market, its hard to believe Switch wont experience a significant year over year decline. It is kind of funny though, Nintendo will likely sell more Switch units in its seventh year on the market than Wii U sold during its entire life. Pretty impressive for Switch and highlights just how poorly Wii U did.

Zelda TotK is going to do massive sales, but its effect on hardware sales will be short lived. There are 125+million Switch units on in the wild with 30 million copies of BotW sold, the reality is that most people who want to play TotK probably already own a Switch. Could it help move 5+ million OLED units? Possible, but that's probably optimistic. By the end of this fiscal year Nintendo will have sold around 140 million Switch units, that is a monumental accomplishment, one that very few consoles have ever done. Its rare for a console in its seventh year on the market to still resonate with consumers and put up good sales numbers. This should reassure Nintendo that the Switch concept is a winner and they do not need to reinvent the wheel. Just like Apple reiterates on the Iphone, Nintendo can and should continue the Switch appeal by releasing a more or less straight forward successor. New and better, but not significantly different.
 
Goodtwin said:
Its not a question if Switch sales will bottom out, but when? Being in the seventh year on the market, its hard to believe Switch wont experience a significant year over year decline. It is kind of funny though, Nintendo will likely sell more Switch units in its seventh year on the market than Wii U sold during its entire life. Pretty impressive for Switch and highlights just how poorly Wii U did.

Zelda TotK is going to do massive sales, but its effect on hardware sales will be short lived. There are 125+million Switch units on in the wild with 30 million copies of BotW sold, the reality is that most people who want to play TotK probably already own a Switch. Could it help move 5+ million OLED units? Possible, but that's probably optimistic. By the end of this fiscal year Nintendo will have sold around 140 million Switch units, that is a monumental accomplishment, one that very few consoles have ever done. Its rare for a console in its seventh year on the market to still resonate with consumers and put up good sales numbers. This should reassure Nintendo that the Switch concept is a winner and they do not need to reinvent the wheel. Just like Apple reiterates on the Iphone, Nintendo can and should continue the Switch appeal by releasing a more or less straight forward successor. New and better, but not significantly different.
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Yes, absolutely.
The Switch is an excellent idea for a console. The only thing that remains for it, sadly, is for it to be improved on. TotK will likely have a dramatic effect on Switches sold, but I do agree that it'll be short lived. The Switch cracking 130 or 140 million is monumental, as mentioned, and I think that's a damn fine way to cap off a console that brought Nintendo from the brink with the Wii U's failings.
 
Dutchie said:
So, when do you all think this hypothetical next system from Nintendo will be announced and released? I'm curious to hear all of your takes on this.
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That's basically all we talk about!

Personally my expectation is:

June reveal.
H2 release.

June:

Two weeks breathing room from TOTK.

A month out from their next game with nothing announced after it.

Their usual time for an event, be that a Partner Showcase, Direct, or E3 event.

This year, I think that event will be the reveal, and I think a LOT of third parties will be there, even more than the Switch's January 2017 presentation.


H2 reveal:

The Gigaleak showed Nintendo's intent to release Nintendo Switch 18 months after Tegra X1 sampling. It would appear that Tegra T239 would hit 18 months later this year.

As a custom chip, there isn't an alternative product to absorb production that has likely already started. Design finalised, functional, and production started, at least on a small scale, last year in time for September when Linux support was added, PCIe lane timing tests appear to have been done in May, which would have needed final production hardware itself.

Leaks indicating the distribution of Software Developer Kits (SDKs) since at least 2021. Sending out kits 3+ years in advance would be slightly unusual, but 2 years is reasonable and enough time for the porting process.

Nintendo has never gone this far between a hardware update of some kind.

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I say H2 rather than holiday, winter or autumn because those vary by culture and climate. The window I think is August to November inclusive, with August being the absolute earliest and least likely, and October or November being the most likely.

Altogether this reveal to release schedule is similar to that of Nintendo Switch Lite, Nintendo Switch - OLED Model and the intended timeline for Nintendo 3DS. So this isn't unfamiliar. June to November is also comparable to the October to March lead up Nintendo Switch has, and unlike then, Nintendo has to worry about the effect the reveal will have on sales of their existing, successful home console, so a more condensed timeline might be advantageous to them.

So there.
 
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I'm personally expecting just a Switch with better performance - Switch 2, Super Switch, etc - regardless of what it's called and how different the architecture is it'll still perform the role of a mid-gen refresh, where the goal is to keep momentum within the Switch ecosystem and not necessarily to switch over all users from OG Switches to the Switch 2.

It'll get very few exclusives. Nintendo's output will largely cross-gen games where you get ray-tracing, faster/more stable frame rates, and/or 4k capabilities if you play on Switch 2 - a single purchase will allow you to play on either and transfer between either for free. The most demanding games will be 3rd party ports like Cyberpunk 2077 or whatever the '23/'24 equialent to Witcher 3 would be

We were supposed to get this in '21. But it was a really awkward time with Covid and chip shortages and supply chain issues, so we got the OLED instead as a stop gap. Holiday '23 will be 2 years later and the appropriate time for take 2. It's certainly a slot that Nintendo would like to hit. They might, or maybe they got to greedy waiting for chips to drop in price for a really good deal, and it just won't be ready by then.

Since it's purpose is just the refresh the ecosystem the marketing window doesn't need to be long. A June reveal for holidays isn't unrealistic. But if they can't meet it they don't have to wait until holiday '24 either. They can reveal in September for a March release - coupled with OG Switch price cuts for the holidays, making it clear that both devices will be supported with most of the games they're showing - and they can still hit 20 million total units for the FY. They could even reveal in February '24 for a May release. Why not? It's not normal but being the hot new thing over summer break actually seems like a great time slot to drop in, and they could hold off on a reveal until after the holidays.

Holiday '24 really feels like the absolute latest they can wait, and that's pushing it. If they wait too long then they really do need to market it as a replacement with some exclusives and strong incentives to switch over, and have likely lost a lot of momentum.

They're holding games close to the chest because, of course, they'd like to market games alongside the Switch 2. But since they are all cross-gen and it's important to Nintendo to keep a steady drip of games, it's not the end of the world to release a game ahead of the Switch 2. If the Switch 2 will be ready by the holidays, we'll get a reveal in June and a blowout of games. If not, then we'll still get the 2H slate which will include a new Mario and/or Prime 4 and a smattering of other notables.

I definitely know absolutely nothing tho and am just going off of gut and heavy extrapolation/speculation based off a few cherry picked things Nintendo execs have said:
metro.co.uk

Nintendo plans to support Switch for 7 to 10 years

The head of Nintendo has said he wants to support the Switch for much longer than the usual five or six-year console life.
metro.co.uk metro.co.uk
www.nintendolife.com

Nintendo Says It Wants To Avoid A Repeat Of Wii U With Switch's Successor

The generational transition must be "as smooth as possible"
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
Late 2025 release with a potential early 2026 if there is a delay.
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This would actually lineup better with the rumors of a Switch Pro for late 2022 or early 2023 being canceled. Nate did say he was hearing PS4 Pro levels of performance for the Switch Pro, lining up very closely to Drakes specs, so if this hardware was truly a thing that got outright canceled with Nintendo going back to the drawing board, a 2025 release is actually more believable than 2024, the turnaround to go from concept to market is going to take over two years.

One thing I am confident about is that the second half lineup of software is going to be great. I really feel that we either get new hardware that will be accompanied with some new excellent software, or there is no new hardware but Nintendo's lineup of software is going to be as good or better than 2017. I can imagine a scenario where Prime 2 stealth drops at the next Nintendo Direct, they give a very brief Prime 4 trailer but give it a November release date and will fully show it off in September. We learn that F-Zero, Donkey Kong Country and a new 2D/3D Mario are all coming this year. Many of us have hypothesized that Nintendo would do cross gen for a few years, so if the new hardware got canceled, its not like these titles weren't being development for OG Switch anyway. Not saying this is what I want or even believe to be true, but I do not see a shit second half this year, the first half was too good to go completely dry in the second half. I think there are some real bangers coming, new hardware or not.
 
kvetcha said:
well that escalated quickly
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Switch is still doing well. No need for something else.

D36 said:
I can't tell if you're actually serious or just fuckin around at this point, but the former is low-key my second guess.
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🤷🏾‍♂️

I mean, it’s doing fine and we don’t know anything from anyone even if it’s 6 months, 11months or hell, 16 months out. 2023/24 aren’t at all guaranteed and it could be a late 2025 release as they don’t do early releases unless forced to.

Never rule it out.

Goodtwin said:
Nate did say he was hearing PS4 Pro levels of performance for the Switch Pro
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Mmm, not to diss at Nate but he has said many things. This I’m not too confident in myself and it’s taken with copious amounts of salt with anything hardware whether it’s performance or when it releases.

It’s best to draw your own conclusions on the matter and not rely on any insider for your own track or thought.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
Switch is still doing well. No need for something else.


🤷🏾‍♂️

I mean, it’s doing fine and we don’t know anything from anyone even if it’s 6 months, 11months or hell, 16 months out. 2023/24 aren’t at all guaranteed and it could be a late 2025 release as they don’t do early releases unless forced to.

Never rule it out.


Mmm, not to diss at Nate but he has said many things. This I’m not too confident in myself and it’s taken with copious amounts of salt with anything hardware whether it’s performance or when it releases.

It’s best to draw your own conclusions on the matter and not rely on any insider for your own track or thought.
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You're either trolling or overcompensating. You might turn out to be right, but if you did, I would look back and say you were right for the wrong reasons.
 
Dizzle said:
You're either trolling or overcompensating. You might turn out to be right, but if you did, I would look back and say you were right for the wrong reasons.
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The switch is still doing “fine” in its 7th year, there’s literally nothing trolling about this.
 
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The Switch is not doing well enough to justify releasing a console in late 2025/early 2026.

The current fiscal year is probably looking at 13-14m consoles. The following fiscal year would be 9-10m consoles at best. And the subsequent drop in software sales would be immense. They already failed to sell the expected amount of consoles in Q3. Software is significantly down in NA. Third party support is drying up and it will be nothing but significant declines going forward. While they certainly can release new software, there is no where near enough life in this platform to sustain the type of profits that shareholders would expect.

The longer the horizon to launching the next platform, the more risk they assume and it is a shit ton of risk to think that they can make their new platform attractive simply because their old platform was. I'll never put it past Nintendo to fuck up a generational shift because they are experts at it but this idea that you can sit on your hands forever with the switch and consumers will all wait is not founded in any logic. There is no business logic in waiting to fully exhaust your current platform before launching a new one.

The Switch is objectively not doing well enough to launch a new platform 34 months from now. That's ridiculous.
 
It's getting to the point where it feels like we're all going crazy......... again!!!


















Live footage of the Nintendo Switch riding out its last two years on the market before its successor.
 
D36 said:
It's getting to the point where it feels like we're all going crazy......... again!!!


















Live footage of the Nintendo Switch riding out its last two years on the market before its successor.
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We go crazy once a week minimum xd
 
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I still really don't know why the OLED didn't go for the full clocks of the Switch with the improved memory bandwidth.

At 1.78 GHz on the cpu, 550 Gflops docked, 300-350ish portable and 33 GB/s of bandwidth at 4GB or even an ambitious 6GBs of RAM coming out in 2021, it would have been enough of an upgrade to quell most of the concerns with the current Switch until a successor arrived.

This is a device I easily would have purchased. Simply suggesting small performance improvement along with build improvements would have been more than enough. The current Switch specs certainly are not hurting its sales but it feels like it would have been the easiest win to just launch a ticked up Switch to keep the more enthusiast aspect of the userbase engaged.

Upclocking has shown to be able to get good performance increases out of most Switch software. Just feels like a wasted opportunity to me.
 
Gotdatmoneyy said:
I still really don't know why the OLED didn't go for the full clocks of the Switch with the improved memory bandwidth.

At 1.78 GHz on the cpu, 550 Gflops docked, 300-350ish portable and 33 GB/s of bandwidth at 4GB or even an ambitious 6GBs of RAM coming out in 2021, it would have been enough of an upgrade to quell most of the concerns with the current Switch until a successor arrived.

This is a device I easily would have purchased. Simply suggesting small performance improvement along with build improvements would have been more than enough. The current Switch specs certainly are not hurting its sales but it feels like it would have been the easiest win to just launch a ticked up Switch to keep the more enthusiast aspect of the userbase engaged.

Upclocking has shown to be able to get good performance increases out of most Switch software. Just feels like a wasted opportunity to me.
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Similar thought, but I think that the branching point goes back further; it could've been the V2.
Once the decision was made to keep the V2's performance related specs the same, that sealed the fate of all Mariko based models.
 
Dutchie said:
So, when do you all think this hypothetical next system from Nintendo will be announced and released? I'm curious to hear all of your takes on this.
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Personally I expect the reveal in close proximity to Nintendo's next big Direct/presentation, with the release this fall. Seems like one of the most likely reasons for the current announcement event horizon.
 
Look over there said:
Similar thought, but I think that the branching point goes back further; it could've been the V2.
Once the decision was made to keep the V2's performance related specs the same, that sealed the fate of all Mariko based models.
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Yeah. Tis a shame. The increased memory bandwidth really feels like it could improve the performance of a lot of titles.

Feels like with the OLED they had a really good opportunity to break the trend set with the V2s. Performance would be smoothed out on basically all titles :(

Seeing TW3, Bayonetta 3 and Wolfenstein smoothed out has me wishing.
 
Dutchie said:
So, when do you all think this hypothetical next system from Nintendo will be announced and released? I'm curious to hear all of your takes on this.
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I think we'll get a an announcement that something is being announced this year and a codename at the earnings report on Tuesday.

The actual reveal will likely be in mid-June, right before a Pikmin 4 Direct.

Then there will be a presentation in September at their usual Direct time then.

This is all assuming a Fall release.
 
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