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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

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ezidro3 said:
A new DF Direct is out and they talk about Switch 2 (briefly, due to the Sharp LCD rumour). Most notably is that Rich thinks that it won’t launch until Holiday 2024 since Nintendo said no new hardware in the financial year, and (imo he says this as fact) that we would be hearing more from game developers at this point if it was launching in April for example and that devkits were out at one point but not anymore.
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Going to have to give this a listen/watch.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
There are a lot of BG&E2 leaks actually.

From six months ago

insider-gaming.com

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is Still in "Early Development"

Insider Gaming understands that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still referred to as a game in early development.
insider-gaming.com insider-gaming.com
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To be fair, with how often that project kept restarting I just assumed it was the team showing some bullshit project to whoever so people wouldn’t figure out that the development was a fraud, especially with how the studio outright shutdown the moment French authorities so much as hinted at investigating them.
 
ezidro3 said:
A new DF Direct is out and they talk about Switch 2 (briefly, due to the Sharp LCD rumour). Most notably is that Rich thinks that it won’t launch until Holiday 2024 since Nintendo said no new hardware in the financial year, and (imo he says this as fact) that we would be hearing more from game developers at this point if it was launching in April for example and that devkits were out at one point but not anymore.
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Makes it a little more likely that nintendo opted out of using Drake.
 
Thraktor said:
No, they didn't. Bloomberg published an article following the financial report which included a quote from an analyst who didn't expect new hardware this FY. VGC published their own article, citing Bloomberg as the source, claiming Nintendo said they weren't going to release new hardware this FY. They later removed this from their article, but as other outlets had repeated VGC's claim by that point it just kept being repeated. Nintendo published a transcript of the Q&A a day later in Japanese and a couple of days after that with an English translation, and neither had any reference whether they would release new hardware this FY.

Edit: The Bloomberg article also stated that Nintendo's 15 million hardware forecast didn't include new hardware, but that's a very different thing than saying there's no new hardware. Nintendo historically haven't forecast sales numbers for new generations of hardware even when they've been announced.
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So Rich was quoting one of those articles and not the Q&A from a few days ago? That's kinda irresponsible, even if it's ultimately irrelevant to his speculation.
 
TomNookYankees said:
Makes it a little more likely that nintendo opted out of using Drake.
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I don't think so since Drake's the newest (and best) Arm based SoC from Nvidia that Nintendo could use until early 2025 at the absolute earliest, unless Nintendo plans on waiting to release new hardware until after early 2025, which I don't think is very likely.
 
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Hermii said:
You probably won't answer, but I'll ask anyway.

You know if the new device you heard about, has the same soc as the one that was supposed to launch about now?
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The specific SoC was never mentioned to me. Just features, performance range & some tech bits.

No contact ever said, "Yes, this is the Drake!"

I know devkits were out and then recalled.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I'm saying that if the Switch 2 was very close to release, a ton of Ubisoft devs would have Switch 2 dev kits and a lot of Switch 2 information, and as Ubisoft leaks constantly, we would have tons and tons of Switch 2 leaks right now.

So therefore the Switch 2 is probably not close to release currently.
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Probably not very close, but I'd say we can be fairly certain that there are people in Ubisoft who are aware of the console and worked with the dev kits.
 
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DF Direct misquoted the Nintendo financial report.

What else is new.

It wasn't malice or incompetence. People make mistakes, trust sources that make mistakes, etc.

But that context should be kept in mind.
 
NateDrake said:
The specific SoC was never mentioned to me. Just features, performance range & some tech bits.

No contact ever said, "Yes, this is the Drake!"

I know devkits were out and then recalled.
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Aren't third parties angry after working on those devkits and then overnight having to return them?

Wasting time, work and trust for the new console to come out 2 years later, right?
 
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D36 said:
So Rich was quoting one of those articles and not the Q&A from a few days ago? That's kinda irresponsible, even if it's ultimately irrelevant to his speculation.
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It happens. A lot of these "journalist" follow the gaming industry more casually. Basically, they aren't spending as much time on Nintendo related news as we are here because they cover they cover everything videogames. Misinformation gets everybody from time to time.

NateDrake said:
The specific SoC was never mentioned to me. Just features, performance range & some tech bits.

No contact ever said, "Yes, this is the Drake!"

I know devkits were out and then recalled.
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You did say you were hearing PS4 Pro levels of performance though, and that is very much inline with Drake. The problem here is that even in 2024, there isn't really an SOC that can deliver much more than that within the power constraints of Switch. You don't cancel hardware that uses an SOC that delivers PS4 Pro levels of performance only to turn around a 18-24 months later with hardware is maybe 25% more powerful. So the real question is did the hardware get canceled or did it get delayed significantly, and potentially repositioned as a true successor rather than a Switch Pro? If it were just canceled, I would have to believe that Nintendo would have to give developers some indication of why it was canceled, but we have never heard any leaks about that. Not only that, Nintendo wouldn't be able to cancel hardware mere months from its target release date only to go back to the drawing board starting from scratch and get this new product to market it under two years.
 
Superstarxalien said:
what if the world was made of pudding
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Do you know the Muffin Man?

—————

In all seriousness, I seriously doubt a company like Nintendo commissioned the creation of a custom SoC and then proceeded to cancel it.

This is the same company that, apparently, had some plans with the Switch OLED pertaining to 4k and decided to repurpose it to a simple refresh.

I doubt Nintendo wants to start from zero during the 6th year of their current console.
 
invwar said:
Assassin's Creed only started to get released by 2019, so its safely to assume either Ubisoft have not bothered to bring their AC games to Switch before it was a proven success or they couldn't give them earlier the devkits. It started with AC3 because it was working on the WiiU already and likely Nintendo was able to give them cross compiler. The Remastered for other consoles was likely just a side product of this attempt, but unlikely that dev started here before Switch Release.
If Ubisoft had early devkits for the AC team, they had ported for sure AC Ezio Edition, which was just out when the Switch was released.
It not showing up before 2022 shows to me, that Ubisoft had no interest or wasnt allowed to give the notable leaker teams devkits.
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AC3 on switch has nothing to do with the WiiU version.
It is a remastering made in the new ACOrigins engine, made by Ubisoft Barcelona. Project proposed by that same studio from the beginning as a multiplatform launch.


And the ACTeam as such does not exist, Ubisoft has a thousand teams and they all touch on certain projects. At the same time, the original Ezio Collection was not even an internal project, it was a project subcontracted to Virtuos (and it had certain problems due to outdated code, they are complicated ports), it is with Ubisoft Chedgu (Ubisoft's internal studio currently dedicated to Switchports)and the port to Switch where it has been done internally .
 
i have a feeling Nintendo might use Gamescom 2023 to show the final version of Switch 2 devkit to third parties, explaning why Switch sucessor might release only on holiday 2024/early 2025.
 
TomNookYankees said:
To be fair, with how often that project kept restarting I just assumed it was the team showing some bullshit project to whoever so people wouldn’t figure out that the development was a fraud, especially with how the studio outright shutdown the moment French authorities so much as hinted at investigating them.
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its unlikely, since T239 Drake its the best what they can use ang next Tegra, Tegra Thor will not relased until sometimes in 2025
 
I agree that Drake is the best possible SoC til early 2025. What if the dev kits were recalled because Drake was reworked on a smaller process node with more advanced LPDDR5X RAM? Changing those could go a long way and render the older dev kits obsolete.
 
nyaako said:
Honestly, I'm expecting them to do something similar to when Switch was announced.

Announce the next console on Oct-Nov 2023, with a release window on Mar-Apr 2024.
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A key difference between then and now, is that Switch is actually selling. There was no risk in ruining any holiday sales.
 
I don’t think NVidia Thor is using anything that has any relevance to gaming. I think its GPU is entirely just DC based, unlike Drake that has a gaming branch of the Ampere ISA.


Thought I could be wrong, but I think it is rumored to be hopper? And the previous one, Atlan, was rumored to be Lovelace based (which does have a game branch)
 
ezidro3 said:
A new DF Direct is out and they talk about Switch 2 (briefly, due to the Sharp LCD rumour). Most notably is that Rich thinks that it won’t launch until Holiday 2024 since Nintendo said no new hardware in the financial year, and (imo he says this as fact) that we would be hearing more from game developers at this point if it was launching in April for example and that devkits were out at one point but not anymore.
Click to expand...

I think that the big takeaway for this thread is is their observation of the performance of the Asus ROG, considering the very high power consumption despite advanced node manufacturing. Even in 15w APU mode, the system gets into the high-20s watts of consumptions .

Then he cautions people on assuming anything close to a series S for the next Switch given that it will consume much less power

In before Arm vs x86
In before DLSS
 
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ReddDreadtheLead said:
Tbh, if you want a technical showcase the only option you have is pretty much CP2077 due to the age of it vs the other titles…

And ER has other technical issues associated to it lol
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4k 60fps Zelda with better lighting, draw distance and shadows, MP4 at 4k 60 fps would be technical showcases imo...
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
What if Nintendo cancelled Drake to slightly re-do it and equip it with LPDRR5X as well as any special hardware needed to do DLSS 4.0 (which I'm hoping does 30 FPS to 60 FPS and 20 FPS to 40 FPS well).
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4.0? DLSS 3 just barely came out lol
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
I don’t think NVidia Thor is using anything that has any relevance to gaming. I think its GPU is entirely just DC based, unlike Drake that has a gaming branch of the Ampere ISA.


Thought I could be wrong, but I think it is rumored to be hopper? And the previous one, Atlan, was rumored to be Lovelace based (which does have a game branch)
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Thor like Atlan is Lovelace
 
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Vash_the_Stampede said:
I think that the big takeaway for this thread is is their observation of the performance of the Asus ROG, considering the very high power consumption despite advanced node manufacturing. Even in 15w APU mode, the system gets into the high-20s watts of consumptions .

Then he cautions people on assuming anything close to a series S for the next Switch given that it will consume much less power

In before Arm vs x86
In before DLSS
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he also talks about games being make for the system instead of of being a wrapped PC game. DLSS isn't gonna help that much, but we already know about ARM efficiency.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
What if Nintendo cancelled Drake to slightly re-do it and equip it with LPDRR5X as well as any special hardware needed to do DLSS 4.0 (which I'm hoping does 30 FPS to 60 FPS and 20 FPS to 40 FPS well).
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Cuzizkool said:
I agree that Drake is the best possible SoC til early 2025. What if the dev kits were recalled because Drake was reworked on a smaller process node with more advanced LPDDR5X RAM? Changing those could go a long way and render the older dev kits obsolete.
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If Drake came equipped with a LPDDR5-6400 controller, then Nintendo and Nvidia would have to replace the LPDDR5-6400 controller with a LPDDR5X-7500 controller, or a LPDDR5X-8333 controller, and do another tape out, which, at that point, won't be called T239/Drake anymore.

Once a SoC's been taped out, no more physical changes, outside of the CPU, GPU, and RAM frequencies, and the amount of RAM, and the internal flash storage amount, can be made.
 
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What kind of gigantic fuck up would require Nintendo to pull the SDK from all parties?

I have no idea how in this day and age developers just sat there, as Nintendo claimed back the devkits on which people had spent X months developing/porting games. This is beyond me.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
I don’t think NVidia Thor is using anything that has any relevance to gaming. I think its GPU is entirely just DC based, unlike Drake that has a gaming branch of the Ampere ISA.


Thought I could be wrong, but I think it is rumored to be hopper? And the previous one, Atlan, was rumored to be Lovelace based (which does have a game branch)
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It’s the CPU (an ARM Neoverse design) which is designed for DC/enterprise workloads. The GPU will be Lovelace. I doubt it will be Hopper as the target market will be automotive rather than data centres, but not much is known about it.

If Nintendo wanted a similar games console SoC based on this, in the same way Drake is based on Orin, then I guess Nvidia could develop one. But like Lovelace, Thor will be produced on N4 node, and if I remember correctly @Thraktor wrote an extended comment earlier this month explaining why most of Lovelace’s performance improvement over Ampere was mostly due to the efficiency of the smaller node rather than any design improvements. So if you wanted to improve on Drake, Nintendo would probably be better off just waiting for enough wafer capacity on N4, rather than going for a new design which probably adds little GPU performance anyway
 
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ezidro3 said:
A new DF Direct is out and they talk about Switch 2 (briefly, due to the Sharp LCD rumour). Most notably is that Rich thinks that it won’t launch until Holiday 2024 since Nintendo said no new hardware in the financial year, and (imo he says this as fact) that we would be hearing more from game developers at this point if it was launching in April for example and that devkits were out at one point but not anymore.
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Just finished watching it and yeah, looks like it won't be any sooner than Holiday 2024 if not later. They would've 100% been hearing things from devs by now, and Rich even mentions that devs kits were out there but were snatched back (Switch Pro most likely). So basically nothing we didn't already know but this cements 2024/2025 for me.
 
DariliumA said:
What kind of gigantic fuck up would require Nintendo to pull the SDK from all parties?

I have no idea how in this day and age developers just sat there, as Nintendo claimed back the devkits on which people had spent X months developing/porting games. This is beyond me.
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It's been mentioned that Nintendo beefed up the amount of RAM that would be in the switch at Capcom's request (yes i know that was before tape out), so my best guess is that post-tape-out a few big third parties (Capcom likely among them) told nintendo that the taped out SoC had some problems that needed to be addressed if nintendo wanted certain key third party games on it.

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TomNookYankees said:
It's been mentioned that Nintendo beefed up the amount of RAM that would be in the switch at Capcom's request (yes i know that was before tape out), so my best guess is that post-tape-out a few big third parties (Capcom likely among them) told nintendo that the taped out SoC had some problems that needed to be addressed if nintendo wanted certain key third party games on it.

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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Actually, the amount of RAM can be changed after the SoC's been taped out.

But what can't be changed after the SoC's been taped out is the type of RAM since the RAM controller's integrated into the SoC.
 
Dakhil said:
Actually, the amount of RAM can be changed after the SoC's been taped out.

But what can't be changed after the SoC's been taped out is the type of RAM since the RAM controller's integrated into the SoC.
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What about power consumption? If the increase in RAM necessitated a change in wattage in handheld mode would that still be doable on the same taped out SoC?
 
TomNookYankees said:
What about power consumption? If the increase in RAM necessitated a change in wattage in handheld mode would that still be doable on the same taped out SoC?
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I believe the power consumption of the RAM is determined primarily by how high the RAM frequency is, not the amount of RAM. And the RAM frequency can be tweaked after the SoC's taped out.
 
TomNookYankees said:
It's been mentioned that Nintendo beefed up the amount of RAM that would be in the switch at Capcom's request (yes i know that was before tape out), so my best guess is that post-tape-out a few big third parties (Capcom likely among them) told nintendo that the taped out SoC had some problems that needed to be addressed if nintendo wanted certain key third party games on it.

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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That kind of feedback would not have happened post tape out.

With the switch, it was an off the shelf chip. So pretty much the only thing Nintendo had any control over, was ram.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Yes, that is a good point (as different parties have different incentives at a micro and macro level), but I'm just unclear that Ubisoft can literally do that as they have been unable to plug any leaks over the last year no matter how embarrassing.

The recent "Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still not close to completing pre-production" leaks were humiliating to the company and I'm sure they would want those leaks to stop and they have not managed it.

21k employees across 12 countries is just really hard to stop leaking from.
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chocolate_supra said:
Ubi employees might just be more afraid of Nintendo then they are of their own employer. 🤣
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Ubisoft is a terible troubled company with MANY toxic bosses. And the big boss still not understand, whats wrong. Some of the definitely toxic bosses were so long in the company, you can assume the Guillemot brothers are well aware about their behavior, but looked away. So leaking stuff, hurting the own company is more as expected, as this is the best weapon an employee has. So leaks regarding internal processes and games exist, because so many employees gives a shit about the company. And likely are disapointed about the progress. Skull and Bones was 3 or 4 times restarted and just kept alive because Ubisoft got a non refundable cheque by Singapore government. BG&E2 was Michel Ancels baby, and surprise surprise, he left the company to do something with wildlife - totally unrelated to any allegations. There is so much wrong in Ubisoft, thats why they leak the shit out of the company.
But as stated, leaking something related to Nintendo is different, if Nintendo is hunting leaker down. Because this will 100% only hurt the leaker and his team - nothing a sane person wants. So as long no one is hacking into his boss account and leak Nintendo stuff from there, I don't see reasons for them to leak anything. Teams with close relations to Nintendo like Ubisoft Milan would even less likely leak anything.
 
nyaako said:
Honestly, I'm expecting them to do something similar to when Switch was announced.

Announce the next console on Oct-Nov 2023, with a release window on Mar-Apr 2024.
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no way Nintendo will anounce the sucessor of Nintendo Switch during the holiday season, they will not risk losing the precious holiday sales, a late spring anouncement/early summer for Switch sucessor for a holiday 2024/early 2025 release seens more likely that Nintendo will do.
 
DariliumA said:
What kind of gigantic fuck up would require Nintendo to pull the SDK from all parties?

I have no idea how in this day and age developers just sat there, as Nintendo claimed back the devkits on which people had spent X months developing/porting games. This is beyond me.
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Devs get payed either way. Even if what they're working on don't materialize. If Nintendo wants to pull devkits, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

My theory right now, is that the device that was supposed to release around now, was literally an oled with Drake, or something very close to that. Nintendo got cold feet and wanted more product differentiation/ more newness. They're not changing what's under the hood (Drake), but a lot of other things (industrial design/ features).

It's the best theory I can come up with.
 
Giancarlo said:
no way Nintendo will anounce the sucessor of Nintendo Switch during the holiday season, they will not risk losing the precious holiday sales, a late spring anouncement/early summer for Switch sucessor for a holiday 2024/early 2025 release seens more likely that Nintendo will do.
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True, if Switch 2 really is Holiday 2024, we most likely must wait to H1 2024 for announcement
 
0
No where in Nintendo’s translated Investors Meeting Q&A is there an outright denial of hardware in forecast sales. People need to stop accepting it as fact because it isn’t
 
Giancarlo said:
i have a feeling Nintendo might use Gamescom 2023 to show the final version of Switch 2 devkit to third parties, explaning why Switch sucessor might release only on holiday 2024/early 2025.
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I was about to quote this reply of yours from yesterday and ask if you now thought that Gamescom would be the perfect tine for nintendo to reintroduce updated Switch 2 devkits with the benefit being that because it would be similar to the original switch 2 dev kits then devs wouldn't have to spend as much time to get fully familiarized with the new kits.
Giancarlo said:
if Nintendo is going to Gamescom 2023 to show devkit for Switch sucessor, i would expect the launch of Switch sucessor in 2025, the third party would need time to know all the know how behind Nintendo next gen hardware and prepare games for the launch of the console.
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ziggyrivers said:
No where in Nintendo’s translated Investors Meeting Q&A is there an outright denial of hardware in forecast sales. People need to stop accepting it as fact because it isn’t
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THANK YOU!!!! Sometimes I wonder if some of us on this thread are either forgetful or they don't stick around for when vital info rolls around.
 
Switch U will be announced in January 2024 and will launch on May 10, 2024. The biggest technical achievement we'll see will be Monolith Soft's action game which will be a launch title for the Switch U.
 
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