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

[Mr.Gamerson]

Question: are dev kits manufactured in-house or are they made in a factory?

I ask this because of a random thought:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

Apparently, they said it was ugly as well so maybe it was a devkit?

 

[10k]

I dunno Fami, maybe the next Mario isn't a REDACTED launch title at all...

I'm of the belief that there's a 2D Mario for Switch this holiday, and there's a 3D Mario that will launch with the Redacted.

Donkey Kong by EPD could also help.

 

[kvetcha]

Apparently, they said it was ugly as well so maybe it was a devkit?

I don't know that devkits are built en masse in the same factories as retail units. They're often pretty cobbled together early on and don't get more streamlined/official form factors until the console actually releases. Recall the PS5 dev kit:

That said, I am not an expert, so.

 

[LinkURL]

Internally, I've already accepted the possibility of Drake releasing it only at the end of next year, I wouldn't have the money to buy it until half 2025, so it's ok.

 

[PkStarstorm]

I also thought of that, but trying to see how Nintendo will transition seems kinda difficult. I think the closest transition reference we can use for the Switch is the DS > 3DS

Best transition would be cross gen / retrocompatibility with enhanced patch and that one is the most likely, Nintendo doesn't want to miss on 100+ million potencial software buyers.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Funcles would know if they were making devkits, because they would be building shipping devices instead of testing mass manufacturing lines.

 

[Hosermess]

Could i get a reminder on what the separate streams are for rumors about future 2D and 3D Marios? I vaguely remember these being distinct rumors, but don't remember the sources.

wrong thread for that

 

[BDGAME]

two videos really relevant to this thread

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

Obviously it's time for DLSS 4.0 on the Switch 2 to bump these games from 20 to 40 FPS.

 

[TomNookYankees]

Question: are dev kits manufactured in-house or are they made in a factory?

I ask this because of a random thought:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

That's what I was thinking and what I think is the main reason Nintendo is going to Gamescom this year.

 

[ILikeFeet]

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

if you just compare raw numbers, maybe, but it's more nuanced than that. Deck has 4 Zen 2 cores and 8 threads, Drake as 8 ARM cores and 8 threads. Deck is also running windows games through a conversion layer, so you're losing performance. remember that a PC with the exact same specs as a console tends to perform worse than said console because of that lack of optimization

 

[Instro]

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

I'm not sure it's worth the comparison at this point until we see the final hardware, and see a port running on Switch 2. Considering the significant CPU overhead required for PC gaming, which is only compounded by the the compatibility layers required for these mobile PC devices, I'd expect a significant difference for the Switch 2 which will be getting bespoke ports.

 

[ShadowFox08]

I desperately want to see more HD remasters of 3DS games. We've gotten so few. Wii U has gotten tonnes of re-releases on Switch. GBA and prior have NSO apps. 3DS is unlikely to get either of those, so remasters seems like the only reasonable path.

Wii and GCN I expect to get NSO apps on the next gen, with DS coming to both gens. Once Nintendo Switch Online - Wii is released for the next system, I think they'll start trickling in full sized Switch games into the subscription. It seems like a natural progression. It's not like Wii U NSO will happen and I doubt 3DS NSO is any more likely. GCN, DS, Wii, Switch (but as individual games includes with your subscription).

More or less slowly cooking NSO until it's a Nintendo Game Pass, perhaps with a third extra premium tier later on that includes day-one releases for Nintendo published games, with the Expansion Pack tier only having say, select 2017 published games in 2026, 2018 in 2027, etc.

Agreed. I wonder if Drake will do Oot and MM justice, or its better to wait for (dare I say), Switch 3 for that. Would it be a 3DS port or a remake? I'd love to see ray tracing.

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

SD CPU is roughly 40-50% as powerful as Series S in the very best case scenario. The clock speeds are equivalent when it's at max clocks, but there's half as many cores. I don't know how often SD actually achieves 3.5Ghz, without a sacrifice in GPU powe in most settings r.. it's important to note that 1 core would be for the OS, and 3 for games, vs modern console CPUs that have 8 cores, with 6-7 for gaming. In actuality, it's probably 40% of current gen clock speeds, and that's with CPU running at 3.5GHz, and that's under the assumption they x series s/x use 7 cores for gaming (iirc, PS5 uses 6.5 cores for games and 1.5 for OS?).

The A78 CPUs are pretty close to Zen 2 in performance. I'm not sure if it was multithreaded or single core performance where Zen 2 had a bigger advantage over A78.

But in regards to Switch 2 matching SD CPU, I'm actually not worried at all. Just a modest 1.5Ghz for 7 cores for gaming each, should theoretically match SD performance in a lot of benchmarks.

What I'm really hoping with the Switch 2 is that they further close the CPU power gap from switch vs PS4/xbone--in which there was a 3.5x power gap alone in speed from clock speeds and amount of cores available.

 

[invwar]

I don't know that devkits are built en masse in the same factories as retail units. They're often pretty cobbled together early on and don't get more streamlined/official form factors until the console actually releases. Recall the PS5 dev kit:

That said, I am not an expert, so.

At least the first ones are as I am aware created internally, glued together etc, thats the versions when not everything is yet 100% set. To my knowledge this was mostly done by Intelligent Systems for Nintendo. The N64 Devkit came from SiliconGraphics and I would guess for the Switch directly from NVidia.

Nowadays they are likely produced in a similar factory as the real thing, just some variation. There are just too many developer out there today, but as said, thats later, after the reveal most of the time.

 

[Dizzle]

wrong thread for that

You're the wrong thread.

 

[eye0h]

You're the wrong thread.

goteeem

 

[Thraktor]

Re: Zelda sales, I'm going to risk quoting myself


This is from my argument for why Tears won't outsell Breath of the Wild. The install base is much larger, the anticipation is high, but I think it's unlikely that there is something in Tears that appeals to a large segment of gamers who weren't into the last game. So Tears will burn through a decent chunk of it's lifetime sales earlier on, but have a shorter tail, as the platform isn't growing at the same rate


Which is what we are on pace for.


[snip]

That's also my read on the phrase - that seemed to be the context Bowser was using when he echoed it later to the AP.

To fold these two sales threads together, and bring it back to hardware...

There is something in statistical analysis called "ceiling and floor effects." Almost everything you look at has a ceiling (like a maximum number of possible sales, ie the population of Earth) and a floor (zero sales). When ceilings and floors are far away from the actual things you're measuring, then data tends to spread out nicely, but when one of them gets close, you get data points bunching up together, screwing up your averages.

Which brings us to @Thraktor's oft documented announced games. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that this is a ceiling effect. Even if we're talking holiday 2024 for REDACTED, we are at the end of the generation. Announce a game a year in advance now, and you won't have any games to announce later, until it's time to launch the next console. Even if Nintendo is planning a bunch of cross-gen games, they still likely want to showcase those on the new hardware first, to maximize hunger for the new device.

Zelda will move units, primarily through the special edition, folks replacing hardware with the OLED, or even just knackered V1s. My close friend is buying a second Switch because since buying his first, his daughter had grown up enough to play Breath of the Wild and become a Zelda fan, and so she's due to get a Lite of her own. But it won't move 15 million. Nintendo is basically saying that they'll see 0% drop in hardware sales this year.

Nintendo needs one more shot of adrenaline to ride out the Switch, something that will move units, something to goose the holiday season which had broader appeal than Zelda, and will convince folks to buy Switches. Something with a strong younger market/first console appeal, and not Pokemon, because that's got extended support coming up.

I dunno Fami, maybe the next Mario isn't a REDACTED launch title at all...

Honestly, I don't think there's such a thing as a game that can move Switch hardware at this point. ToTK is now the third Nintendo game in 12 months that has set sales records (Splatoon 3 and Pokemon S/V being the other two), and the first two barely moved the needle in terms of hardware sales. I'm sure ToTK will cause some kind of a bump, but it likely won't be a massive one. Likewise, if Nintendo released a big new 3D Mario game on Switch later this year it would almost certainly sell a boatload of copies, but I don't see it pushing hardware sales in a significant way. I don't think it's controversial to say that there aren't many people who are interested in Nintendo's games but haven't already bought a Switch over the past six years.

One interesting thing from the investor presentation was the annual playing users metric, which I think highlights the ceiling effect on Switch's install base. Here are the Switch hardware sales and annual playing users metrics for each FY since Nintendo started publishing the annual playing users numbers:

          Sales    Users    New Users    % New Users
FY2019    16.95    35       
FY2020    21.03    56       21           99.9%
FY2021    28.83    87       31           107.5%
FY2022    23.06    103      16           69.4%
FY2023    17.97    114      11           61.2%

The two columns I added are "New Users", which is the YoY change in the annual playing users, and "% New Users", which is this as a percentage of hardware sales. The names here aren't strictly accurate, as there will be some falloff in users each year which is being made up for by new sales, and more than one user can play on a Switch, but I couldn't think of more descriptive titles.

Anyway, I think the last column is relatively informative of what's going on with Nintendo's hardware sales. In FY2020 and FY2021, the annual playing users increased pretty much in line with hardware sales (actually increasing by more than the hardware sales in FY2021). Since then, the increase in users has dropped off much more sharply than hardware sales have. In FY2022 the user count only increased by 69% of the hardware sales, and in FY2023 it was just 61%. Put another way, Switch hardware sales dropped by 38% in the two years from FY21 to FY23, but new users dropped by a much larger 65%.

For additional context, take a look at the slide from Nintendo's presentation:



(Not sure why this isn't loading, whether I use the Imgur media thingy or just try to insert the image directly. In any case, the image is here)

I don't think it's a coincidence that the drop off in new users as a percentage of hardware sales has occurred in tandem with the sale of the OLED model. Over the past two years an increasing number of Switch sales have been to people who already own a Switch, and a large proportion of those are OLED models. This is something Nintendo has spoken about in investor calls, but it's interesting to see how it's caused such a large divergence between hardware sales and player numbers.

In retrospect, the OLED model was released at exactly the right time. Without the sales of OLED models to existing owners, hardware sales over the past two years likely would have dropped off much more rapidly, to the point where we would almost certainly be discussing a sub 10 million unit forecast for FY24 right now.

The upshot of this is that Nintendo has pretty much hit the ceiling for the Switch user base, or is very close to it. New hardware sales will continue, as existing users upgrade to the OLED model and kids who were previously too young get one for their birthday or Christmas or whatever, but there's no longer a large pool of people who are interested in Nintendo games and have the disposable income, but haven't bought a Switch yet. Those are the people who cause large hardware sales spikes around major releases early in a console's life, as game X tips them over the edge to buying a console. But as Nintendo have mined away at that resource over the Switch's lifetime with successive software releases, there's not much left.

Whatever games Nintendo does release on the Switch post-Pikmin will exist to make money for their own sake rather than push hardware. There's still a very large user base there who are eager for new games, and plenty of money to be made selling those games, but probably not a lot they can do about the hardware decline at this stage.

 

[ziggyrivers]

but probably not a lot they can do about the hardware decline at this stage.

My sentiments exactly. Switch has reached its ceiling. All Nintendo can do is embrace the decline in hardware sales. What’s left for them is to decide when to release a new console. I feel like they can ride on OLED upgrades for no more than 12-18 months.

Last option they have is a price cut

 

[TomNookYankees]

And Fall 2023 would be the right time to drop the switch price if their plan is to unveil and release their next hardware in 2024.

 

[Hosermess]

Eh, if they're going to milk the Switch money train for one more year I don't see how slashing their profit on each one sold would be something they would do. Sure, they're more likely to hit their sales estimate. Which the shareholders would like. But that's also a lot less profit coming in. Which the shareholders would not like.

 

[Goodtwin]

I don't think it's a coincidence that the drop off in new users as a percentage of hardware sales has occurred in tandem with the sale of the OLED model. Over the past two years an increasing number of Switch sales have been to people who already own a Switch, and a large proportion of those are OLED models. This is something Nintendo has spoken about in investor calls, but it's interesting to see how it's caused such a large divergence between hardware sales and player numbers.

In retrospect, the OLED model was released at exactly the right time. Without the sales of OLED models to existing owners, hardware sales over the past two years likely would have dropped off much more rapidly, to the point where we would almost certainly be discussing a sub 10 million unit forecast for FY24 right now.

This is exactly why Nintendo will not announce Redacted far in advance of release. The OLED model has become the best selling Switch model and a big chunk of those sales are to existing Switch users. These repeat buyers will dry up as soon as they are made aware of a successor releasing in the not so distant future. Nintendo has forecasted 15 million Switch units sold for this fiscal year and I would bet that they are hoping to get at least half of those sales from repeat buyers leaving only about 7 million units to actual new users. As previously mentioned, there are always children coming of age to get their first gaming console, so even in its seventh year on the market, there are youngsters who will get their first Switch and I am sure with the attention Zelda TotK is getting, there will be some Xbox and PlayStation gamers that finally bite the bullet and buy a Switch. With all that said, this does suggest the decline is happening faster than hardware sales would suggest. The OLED proved to be a great stopgap model for Nintendo, but the appeal of a new Switch with a better screen wont get everyone with a standard Switch to double dip. The Zelda TotK SE OLED model will likely get the bulk of users who were right on the endge of buying a Switch OLED to take the plunge, but for everyone else its simply not a big enough upgrade to get them to make the purchase.

And Fall 2023 would be the right time to drop the switch price if their plan is to unveil and release their next hardware in 2024.

I believe Nintendo will stay true to their word and not drop the price of the Switch this year. Instead I see them doing some bundles. They could do a holiday Zelda TotK OLED bundle that includes a digital copy of the game along with a three month subscription to NSO. This is a lot of added value without actually lowering the price of the console. Switch Lite could be the exception this holiday. I could see them doing a black Friday that bundles Mario Kart 8 with a Switch Lite for $149. This would move some units to the budget conscious consumer.

 

[kvetcha]

My sentiments exactly. Switch has reached its ceiling. All Nintendo can do is embrace the decline in hardware sales. What’s left for them is to decide when to release a new console.

 

[Bosintang]

Nintendo will not abandon a console with a 100 milion+ install base,it would be foolish of Nintendo

With that reasoning, FFXVI would release on PS1.

 

[TomNookYankees]

Eh, if they're going to milk the Switch money train for one more year I don't see how slashing their profit on each one sold would be something they would do. Sure, they're more likely to hit their sales estimate. Which the shareholders would like. But that's also a lot less profit coming in. Which the shareholders would not like.

The loss in profit from a price drop will be made up for with the increase in software sales that comes from a hardware sales boost.

 

[IronTed]

Honestly, I don't think there's such a thing as a game that can move Switch hardware at this point. ToTK is now the third Nintendo game in 12 months that has set sales records (Splatoon 3 and Pokemon S/V being the other two), and the first two barely moved the needle in terms of hardware sales. I'm sure ToTK will cause some kind of a bump, but it likely won't be a massive one. Likewise, if Nintendo released a big new 3D Mario game on Switch later this year it would almost certainly sell a boatload of copies, but I don't see it pushing hardware sales in a significant way. I don't think it's controversial to say that there aren't many people who are interested in Nintendo's games but haven't already bought a Switch over the past six years.

One interesting thing from the investor presentation was the annual playing users metric, which I think highlights the ceiling effect on Switch's install base. Here are the Switch hardware sales and annual playing users metrics for each FY since Nintendo started publishing the annual playing users numbers:

          Sales    Users    New Users    % New Users
FY2019    16.95    35       
FY2020    21.03    56       21           99.9%
FY2021    28.83    87       31           107.5%
FY2022    23.06    103      16           69.4%
FY2023    17.97    114      11           61.2%

The two columns I added are "New Users", which is the YoY change in the annual playing users, and "% New Users", which is this as a percentage of hardware sales. The names here aren't strictly accurate, as there will be some falloff in users each year which is being made up for by new sales, and more than one user can play on a Switch, but I couldn't think of more descriptive titles.

Anyway, I think the last column is relatively informative of what's going on with Nintendo's hardware sales. In FY2020 and FY2021, the annual playing users increased pretty much in line with hardware sales (actually increasing by more than the hardware sales in FY2021). Since then, the increase in users has dropped off much more sharply than hardware sales have. In FY2022 the user count only increased by 69% of the hardware sales, and in FY2023 it was just 61%. Put another way, Switch hardware sales dropped by 38% in the two years from FY21 to FY23, but new users dropped by a much larger 65%.

For additional context, take a look at the slide from Nintendo's presentation:



(Not sure why this isn't loading, whether I use the Imgur media thingy or just try to insert the image directly. In any case, the image is here)

I don't think it's a coincidence that the drop off in new users as a percentage of hardware sales has occurred in tandem with the sale of the OLED model. Over the past two years an increasing number of Switch sales have been to people who already own a Switch, and a large proportion of those are OLED models. This is something Nintendo has spoken about in investor calls, but it's interesting to see how it's caused such a large divergence between hardware sales and player numbers.

In retrospect, the OLED model was released at exactly the right time. Without the sales of OLED models to existing owners, hardware sales over the past two years likely would have dropped off much more rapidly, to the point where we would almost certainly be discussing a sub 10 million unit forecast for FY24 right now.

The upshot of this is that Nintendo has pretty much hit the ceiling for the Switch user base, or is very close to it. New hardware sales will continue, as existing users upgrade to the OLED model and kids who were previously too young get one for their birthday or Christmas or whatever, but there's no longer a large pool of people who are interested in Nintendo games and have the disposable income, but haven't bought a Switch yet. Those are the people who cause large hardware sales spikes around major releases early in a console's life, as game X tips them over the edge to buying a console. But as Nintendo have mined away at that resource over the Switch's lifetime with successive software releases, there's not much left.

Whatever games Nintendo does release on the Switch post-Pikmin will exist to make money for their own sake rather than push hardware. There's still a very large user base there who are eager for new games, and plenty of money to be made selling those games, but probably not a lot they can do about the hardware decline at this stage.

After 6 years you would also expect to see a little attrition among some early adopters as well, so the divergence between active users and installbase isn't that unusual. Special editions are likely the only way to move the baseline at this point, and they are clearly well aware of that given the abundance of ZOLEDs.

 

[ziggyrivers]

If we go by a data driven approach, the REDACTED will launch in Holiday 2024.

• Nintendo has a comfortably optimistic attitude towards reaching the 15 million target. If anything, they could revise it to 13-14 million

• They really seem focused on maintaining the current lineup because the OLED is still a good performing model

• They must have something big enough for the Holidays software-wise for them to still feel confident in selling over 10 million Switches this year, a console almost everybody has. And I don’t think that software is Mario Kart 8 again. A game, like the Switch, that almost everybody has. It has to be a 3D Mario or a Mario game similar to 3D World.
— Though I am of the opinion that the perfect transition is a 2D Mario for Switch and a 3D Mario for both Switch versions

The loss in profit from a price drop will be made up for with the increase in software sales that comes from a hardware sales boost.

Playing devil’s advocate: depending on Nintendo’s forecast hardware sales for the Switch 2’s launch, they could cut or not the OG lineup’s price. But if they can keep selling the OG lineup at a profit, they’ll do it. Especially if the launch doesn’t go as planned.

At this point, only way I see Nintendo cutting price is if the Switch 2 has a phenomenal launch and they need to clear out manufacturing lines to appease Demand

 

[Hosermess]

The loss in profit from a price drop will be made up for with the increase in software sales that comes from a hardware sales boost.

They could also simply release banger games without dropping the price of the console. Which I'm assuming is their plan anyway.

Putting the Switch on clearance before having a superior product available is a bad signal to send I think.

 

[Deleted member 887]

The problem in most of the Deck games on that DF video was how limited was the CPU. They complain a lot about it.

And didn't the rumors of Switch 2 here say it will have a CPU worse than Steam Deck? If true that machine will suffer to run games from current gen.

First off, it's gonna be a portable Nintendo device. I know optimism and pessimism like to run rampant around here, but I think that we should expect, well... more Switch. Nintendo games look great, last-gen ports look great and are now playable handheld, and the solidity of the basic design allows a class of current-gen "miracle ports" that seem impossible.

Second, I agree that the CPU is probably the most likely bottleneck that games will consistently encounter. There are those who disagree - storage speeds and memory bandwidth are the other likely culprits. But every system has a bottleneck somewhere, it's inevitable. It's just "how major and how consistent is it an issue?"

Which brings me to number three - and let me quote Ollie himself from the video.

but that's less of a fault with the steam deck and more of a fault with modern PC ports. PC versions of big budget games are frequently coming in with profound CPU limitations that limit a consistent experience to the most powerful CPU hardware, and even that at times isn't enough. So when these titles hit the somewhat limited steam deck CPU with its four cores at somewhat low clock speeds on an older architecture, they can really struggle

The current state of PC ports is a mess, and UE4 wasn't built for modern multi-core CPUs. Truly "next gen" games will be built on engines that aren't yet widely available, and it remains to be seen how they will scale on the CPU side.

It's up in the air of the CPU in REDACTED will be "worse" or "better" - there aren't great benchmarks that can really tell if the Cortex A78 can go toe to toe with Zen 2 at matched clocks, but it seems likely that it will be underpowered just for battery life reasons. But the current generation has had some real serious growing pains on the CPU side, just due to cross-gen and Covid. So it's hard to game out what the next few years are going to look like.

But again - Nintendo exclusives + last gen portable + current gen "miracle ports" + more indies than you can shake a stick at. That's what you're getting, and if its better than that, great. But I wouldn't expect it.

 

[10k]

onestly, I don't think there's such a thing as a game that can move Switch hardware at this point. ToTK is now the third Nintendo game in 12 months that has set sales records (Splatoon 3 and Pokemon S/V being the other two), and the first two barely moved the needle in terms of hardware sales. I'm sure ToTK will cause some kind of a bump, but it likely won't be a massive one.

Yeah I wanted to mention this. I feel like the big releases from the last year (Pokemon SV, Splatoon 3, Zelda) are catering more to the existing install base than growing the install base. I'm curious to see what the hardware increases will be these next six months.

 

[Dakhil]

Considering there's a much larger discrepancy between the GPUs in the AMD Z1 Extreme and the AMD Ryzen 7840U than between the CPUs, I feel like AMD didn't design RDNA 3 with <15 W devices in mind.

 

[Concernt]

If we go by a data driven approach, the REDACTED will launch in Holiday 2024.

Depends on the data. From where I'm looking, I don't see a June announcement, Holiday release this year any less likely than it was a month ago. There would be no reason to be shtum about upcoming software that is supposedly going to move millions of consoles, unless their release coincides with something major they want kept under wraps.

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[Gerald]

CPU must have good clocks, better node like TSMC N4 should help with that

 

[boodream]

I dunno Fami, maybe the next Mario isn't a REDACTED launch title at all...

If the next Mario is 2D, it's even very likely. New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe has sold 15 million copies. And it's a simpleport of a Wii U title itself already similar to its non-HD predecessors. So there's no reason to wait for the next hardware to take advantage of the movie hype, while there's plenty of reason to keep the next 3D Mario for the Switch 2.

 

[invwar]

I agree, the Switch userbase is saturated at the current level. If Nintendo wants to reach more sales, they should release a discounted Switch WITH the introduction of Nintendo Selects. Especially Mario Odyssey, BOTW, Pikmin 3 and some other old releases, which already have successors or the sales dried up. Because with this, they could attract new customers, who are currently still not convinced to spent 500USD for a Switch and Mario + Zelda + Mario Kart. But a package for 350USD for all of it, would more likely convince them. Same for the PS5 user, a 350USD Switch with BOTW and TOTK would be likely a good deal for this type.
I can say from myself. Some games are potentially worth it. TOTK and BOTW would be such games, Mario Extravaganza potentially too.
I even like the idea of a boxed Switch for a steal price, the costs wouldnt be much, Display, battery and Joycons can be saved. Or they bundle it with RingFit, Mario Party, Mario Kart etc. This for 150-200USD would be a steal and would also attract new customer who just want the switch for the party games.

 

[Bosintang]

So development kits were sent in 2020 and recalled 2 f.u.c.k.i.n.g years later. And of course, none of the ~800-1000 people in the know (12 developing studios) felt betrayed and complained that Nintendo were being total dicks.

And once again, I call total bullshit for this kind of unsubstantiated fairy tales. You are being lied to.

 

[ziggyrivers]

Depends on the data. From where I'm looking, I don't see a June announcement, Holiday release this year any less likely than it was a month ago. There would be no reason to be shtum about upcoming software that is supposedly going to move millions of consoles, unless their release coincides with something major they want kept under wraps.
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

You present good points. We really don’t have a clear picture right now of what to expect

So development kits were sent in 2020 and recalled 2 f.u.c.k.i.n.g years later. And of course, none of the ~800-1000 people in the know (12 developing studios) felt betrayed and complained that Nintendo were being total dicks.

And once again, I call total bullshit for this kind of unsubstantiated fairy tales. You are being lied to.

It’s weird when you put it in that context

 

[Kingpin722]

Mario Movie went bonkers…..Check

Tears of the Kingdom surpassed BOTW and sells gangbusters…….Check

Nintendo’s IP recognition is at a peak rn. No better time than now than to try and prepare to translate a huge chunk of the current Switch user base over to the successor.

 

[Thraktor]

My sentiments exactly. Switch has reached its ceiling. All Nintendo can do is embrace the decline in hardware sales. What’s left for them is to decide when to release a new console. I feel like they can ride on OLED upgrades for no more than 12-18 months.

Last option they have is a price cut

Nintendo have said several times they don't intend to cut prices (including last week), and I honestly don't think it would increase sales all that much anyway. The majority of their sales come from the most expensive model, which doesn't suggest that the audience is all that concerned about price. If anything they'll just run more bundled game promotions as a way to increase value without cutting their margins.

This is exactly why Nintendo will not announce Redacted far in advance of release. The OLED model has become the best selling Switch model and a big chunk of those sales are to existing Switch users. These repeat buyers will dry up as soon as they are made aware of a successor releasing in the not so distant future. Nintendo has forecasted 15 million Switch units sold for this fiscal year and I would bet that they are hoping to get at least half of those sales from repeat buyers leaving only about 7 million units to actual new users. As previously mentioned, there are always children coming of age to get their first gaming console, so even in its seventh year on the market, there are youngsters who will get their first Switch and I am sure with the attention Zelda TotK is getting, there will be some Xbox and PlayStation gamers that finally bite the bullet and buy a Switch. With all that said, this does suggest the decline is happening faster than hardware sales would suggest. The OLED proved to be a great stopgap model for Nintendo, but the appeal of a new Switch with a better screen wont get everyone with a standard Switch to double dip. The Zelda TotK SE OLED model will likely get the bulk of users who were right on the endge of buying a Switch OLED to take the plunge, but for everyone else its simply not a big enough upgrade to get them to make the purchase.

I agree in general, and I do expect a pretty short timeframe from announcement to release, but I wonder if there's a downside to squeezing out those extra sales to existing owners. Someone buying a Switch for the first time this year is all good news for Nintendo, as it's very unlikely they would be buying a successor console if it were announced. People buying a second Switch, though, are exactly the kinds of people who would buy new hardware in its first year on sale. So if Nintendo sell an OLED model to someone who already owns a Switch, then announces [redacted] for sale six months later, are they losing an early [redacted] sale? Or is the thought process that anyone who buys two Switch units is basically guaranteed to buy a [redacted] at some point, so they may as well sell the extra hardware?

After 6 years you would also expect to see a little attrition among some early adopters as well, so the divergence between active users and installbase isn't that unusual. Special editions are likely the only way to move the baseline at this point, and they are clearly well aware of that given the abundance of ZOLEDs.

Yeah, there's definitely attrition in there, but attrition was basically zero for the first four years. Their choice of reporting annual users (instead of monthly active users, which is more common) probably hides a lot of attrition, as anyone who played a few minutes once a year gets counted.

 

[Hermii]

So development kits were sent in 2020 and recalled 2 f.u.c.k.i.n.g years later. And of course, none of the ~800-1000 people in the know (12 developing studios) felt betrayed and complained that Nintendo were being total dicks.

And once again, I call total bullshit for this kind of unsubstantiated fairy tales. You are being lied to.

First, what is your source on when they were being sent out?

2.Nd whywould Richard Linklater lie about devkits being recalled?

 

[Goodtwin]

Yeah I wanted to mention this. I feel like the big releases from the last year (Pokemon SV, Splatoon 3, Zelda) are catering more to the existing install base than growing the install base. I'm curious to see what the hardware increases will be these next six months.

The Q1 financial report will be pretty telling. With Zelda TotK releasing in Q1 along with the SE OLED model, I think its faire to assume that Nintendo will need a big year over year increase in hardware sales for Q1 thanks to Zelda TotK if there is any hope of moving 15 million hardware units. Probably something in the neighborhood of 4-5 million units sold. If sales were to be down year over year, then the hope of moving 15 million units is going to be very tough. Zelda had to be a big reason for some optimism, and if it doesn't help bolster some increased hardware sales, what can at this point? The holiday season will still be strong, most likely selling 5-6 million units that quarter, but Q2 and Q4 could easily be sub 2 million units. If Q1 ends up underperforming, there is no reason to be optimistic for any quarter following.

 

[TSR3]

Depends on the data. From where I'm looking, I don't see a June announcement, Holiday release this year any less likely than it was a month ago. There would be no reason to be shtum about upcoming software that is supposedly going to move millions of consoles, unless their release coincides with something major they want kept under wraps.

I think there may be a reason ...

There is something in statistical analysis called "ceiling and floor effects." Almost everything you look at has a ceiling (like a maximum number of possible sales, ie the population of Earth) and a floor (zero sales). When ceilings and floors are far away from the actual things you're measuring, then data tends to spread out nicely, but when one of them gets close, you get data points bunching up together, screwing up your averages.

Which brings us to @Thraktor's oft documented announced games. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that this is a ceiling effect. Even if we're talking holiday 2024 for REDACTED, we are at the end of the generation. Announce a game a year in advance now, and you won't have any games to announce later, until it's time to launch the next console. Even if Nintendo is planning a bunch of cross-gen games, they still likely want to showcase those on the new hardware first, to maximize hunger for the new device.

 

[Bosintang]

First, what is your source on when they were being sent out?

Literally the same as when they were being recalled

 

[Hermii]

Literally the same as when they were being recalled

So Nate?

 

[Bosintang]

So Nate?

As the rules of this forum encourage coward subposting about other contributors (and even about specific games), I refuse to answer this question without my lawyer.

I will just say that "dev kits have been sent out since 2020" was a huge argument supporting the narrative of the console releasing in 2022, and later in "H2 2023/H1 2023". This topic may sometimes have the memory of a squirrel, but the north remembers.

"Development kits were sent in 2020", "development kits were recalled 2 years later", and "no one complained that their work of 2 years was abruptly thrown to the bin" are a highly unlikely combination of factors.
And when someone is claiming something unlikely without substantiating it and having been repeatedly wrong on that specific topic, it's only fair to call bullshit. Which I did.

 

[Goodtwin]

I agree in general, and I do expect a pretty short timeframe from announcement to release, but I wonder if there's a downside to squeezing out those extra sales to existing owners. Someone buying a Switch for the first time this year is all good news for Nintendo, as it's very unlikely they would be buying a successor console if it were announced. People buying a second Switch, though, are exactly the kinds of people who would buy new hardware in its first year on sale. So if Nintendo sell an OLED model to someone who already owns a Switch, then announces [redacted] for sale six months later, are they losing an early [redacted] sale? Or is the thought process that anyone who buys two Switch units is basically guaranteed to buy a [redacted] at some point, so they may as well sell the extra hardware?

There will always be some customers with buyers remorse buying a console late in its life only to find out shortly after that a successor is coming very soon. I think that is the risk everyone takes, and honestly, if you are buying a Switch unit in its seventh year it should be pretty obvious that a successor isn't too far off. A reality to consider is that Nintendo will not be able to satisfy demand for Redacted for quite a few months. Nintendo will continue to try and sell as many Switch units as possible, its up to the consumer to make educated decisions on the products they purchase. The current risk of buying a Switch only to see a successor released in the next 18 months is extremely high and it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. That isn't Nintendo's burden to carry, that is a choice each consumer will have to make for themselves.

 

[Deleted member 887]

T239 sampled sometime between April and August of last year. 18 months was Nintendo's target date from sampling, but they went 24 months for software reasons.

That gives you a wide "data driven" window of October this year to August of next year. Within that window there aren't strong reasons to believe any one date, so it starts to become a gut check. And by definition, a gut check isn't objective.

Nintendo probably wants a holiday launch all else being equal. That's not to say that all else is equal. But if Nintendo has wiggle room in terms of software, and can stay reasonably profitable in the interim, Holiday 2024 is better than Spring 2024. The market isn't going to appreciably change in that six month window - Steam Deck still represents the peak of their competition in the handheld space, and there isn't going to be an APU that changes that in the next year, just looking at nodes and AMD's roadmap. Price cuts aren't coming to Series S|X, and while Sony seems to have some sort of cloud handheld and PS5 Pro planned, neither are going to fundamentally alter the dynamic of this generation.

I say "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" often enough that it should be my signature, but I think "evidence of absence" is also hard to define. We're looking at either an uncharacteristically long gen, or an uncharacteristically fast* marketing cycle. Yes, corporations deceive, mislead, and equivocate. But Nintendo is projecting "this uncharacteristically long generation is uncharacteristically successful."

Meanwhile, Ubisoft is leaking like crazy, trying to get someone to buy them, and yet not a whiff about an internal REDACTED project. I don't see a hole in Squeenix's schedule for a REDACTED game. Panic Button seems occupied with Series S/X support.

All of these are small weights, but they tip the balance for me. I'm moving the Official OldPuck prediction to Holiday 2024.

* Notice I don't say short. There are ways to lay the groundwork for a marketing cycle that precede the start. Steering the conversation from Tears to REDACTED, while not having any event to center it around, is wildly different from a period of quiet leading up to an E3 reveal. Which is not to say that's how Nintendo will do it, just that there is no groundwork laid for a launch that allows them to maximize eyeballs and control the narrative.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Considering there's a much larger discrepancy between the GPUs in the AMD Z1 Extreme and the AMD Ryzen 7840U than between the CPUs, I feel like AMD didn't design RDNA 3 with <15 W devices in mind.

all the marketing they're doing about gaming handhelds is them taking advantage of the situation. that said, I don't think the market will grow fast enough for them to expend resources on a proper gaming handheld APU. Van Gogh was the extent of that and that was allegedly bankrolled by MS

 

[D36]

As the rules of this forum encourage coward subposting about other contributors (and even about specific games), I refuse to answer this question without my lawyer.

I will just say that "dev kits have been sent out since 2020" was a huge argument supporting the narrative of the console releasing in 2022, and later in "H2 2023/H1 2023". This topic may sometimes have the memory of a squirrel, but the north remembers.

"Development kits were sent in 2020", "development kits were recalled 2 years later", and "no one complained that their work of 2 years was abruptly thrown to the bin" are a highly unlikely combination of factors.
And when someone is claiming something unlikely without substantiating it and having been repeatedly wrong on that specific topic, it's only fair to call bullshit. Which I did.

Well, if a lawyer is what you're looking for, I know just the guy.

 

[Bosintang]

Well, if a lawyer is what you're looking for, I know just the guy.

Defending me here would be his BOTW moment.

 

[Paxie]

Tbh the only reason I have any faith in the 2022/2023 reports is DF backing it up