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

[ertaboy356b]

Not sure if this is the right thread to bring this up, but apparently, Mortal Kombat 1 will be Switch's second $70 game. Just wondering if there's anything hardware related to gleam from this.

Ah yes youtubers making money from youtube drama.

 

[ertaboy356b]

Mortal Kombat 1 has a file size of 31.3 GB.

And considering a 32 GB Nintendo Switch Game Card probably has an actual capacity of 29.8 GB, if the DLC is >1.5 GB and is not included inside the Nintendo Switch Game Card, then there's a possibility WB Games used a 32 GB Nintendo Switch Card for Mortal Kombat 1.

That price only makes sense if digital copy is somehow cheaper than the physical version.

 

[D36]

Thoughts?

 

[TomNookYankees]

$70 is going to become standard across AAA devs (including Nintendo) very quickly because as AAA games take longer dev cycles to make that means developers are being contracted for much longer which is the biggest cause of development cost increases.

It's why Indie games are becoming much more popular these days and why Nintendo is leaning on promoting indie stuff more. Cheap indie games are just more reliable than the AAA stuff these days.

Thoughts?

Lets be honest, this is wishful thinking. All indications at the moment point to nintendo dealing with some major delays the past few years and it's why it seems they have no event planned for June and why there's this big empty question mark for after July.

 

[Dekuman]

The issue isn't the tech, it's the price. If 32 gb cards already costs 14$ on the current speed, then forget any dev going with something even more premium,.

prices change. That price was from last year, before Macronix announced thee 96 layer chips , which had been long delayed and is probably the 64GB modules we've been waiting on all this time. I would imagine that means an immediate price cut to the 32GB chips.

Usually the older nodes drop in price as new ones are released. There's no point mass producing these new chips if the prices just keep rising, for one Nintendo would not be buying them anymore.

 

[Kazuyamishima]

I mean, you're not doing anything wrong, you're playing the game! It's not like there are settings to tweak. If you're seeing worse performance than folks in YT videos are getting, then I would make sure you've got the day 1 patch (assuming you're physical).

The renderer doesn't like transparency, and struggles with post processing effects, so I see frame dips in rain, when turning on Ultrahand, but most commonly when climbing trees - the giant transparency of the foliage covers the whole screen and frame rate chugs. If you get on a sky island, you're not in a tree, and you don't have ultrahand on, and you're seeing 20fps, then that sounds like you're missing the patch.

I suspect we've already seen the impact in Nintendo's much higher R&D investments over the last few years. Nintendo is definitely financing the design of the chip, unlike last time. Big upfront costs when a company has a lot of liquid cash are easy to amortize. In other words, Nintendo can afford to make the R&D investment back over the lifetime of REDACTED, spread over both hardware and video games sold. That has only a tiny impact on the price of products.

The per-unit cost of T239 is probably in the same ballpark as TX1. There is some evidence that's true, just by comparing Orin prices and TX1 prices, but also, Nintendo has a price target and they co-designed the chip to meet their needs. Nintendo's consoles have been pretty consistent in price when you adjust for inflation, so it seems extremely likely that is the ballpark they're aiming for, and any extra money spent in one area is going to be made up elsewhere.

Prepare for more $70 titles though...

I have the patch i made sure it was installed day 1

 

[D36]

$70 is going to become standard across AAA devs (including Nintendo) very quickly because as AAA games take longer dev cycles to make that means developers are being contracted for much longer which is the biggest cause of development cost increases.

It's why Indie games are becoming much more popular these days and why Nintendo is leaning on promoting indie stuff more. Cheap indie games are just more reliable than the AAA stuff these days.



Lets be honest, this is wishful thinking. All indications at the moment point to nintendo dealing with some major delays the past few years and it's why it seems they have no event planned for June and why there's this big empty question mark for after July.

While Sony moving Nintendo to do something is iffy at best, I can't agree that they won't announce at least something next month. I'm not even sure if there's any indication that there won't be a Direct.

 

[SirArthur]

Thoughts?

I think given the schedule of games, years of the system and like he mentions sorta unknowns surrounding Nintendo is what stirs these conversations. At best is wishful thinking. But hey at least based on the TOTK marketing beats, they are not oblivious to sentiment.

 

[Discostew]

Thoughts?

The return of Banjo Boy and Flute Guy?

 

[Hermii]

prices change. That price was from last year, before Macronix announced thee 96 layer chips , which had been long delayed and is probably the 64GB modules we've been waiting on all this time. I would imagine that means an immediate price cut to the 32GB chips.

Usually the older nodes drop in price as new ones are released. There's no point mass producing these new chips if the prices just keep rising, for one Nintendo would not be buying them anymore.

How does the layering work? Can you choose between speed and capacity? So a 96 layer card could be 64 gb at 100mb/s or 32 gb at 200gb/s? It's probably doesn't scale linearly, but you get my drift.

 

[Cybergatuno]

.

 

[eye0h]

Thoughts?

Our best shot at nintendo being forced to do anything was the courts during the microsoft fiasco. They would need GTA6 or something

 

[Bonejack]

Thoughts?

Nintendo is crazy, so is this world, so i'm weary to say flat out "never going to happen" ... but it's very unlikely that they care for anything Sony does.

 

[Kingpin722]

Seeing how complex and dense the physics and interactivity of TOTK is has really made me uber confident in whatever power Nintendo decides to go with in Switch 2. I know they’ll get more than what anyone thinks they can out of it.

Ironically TOTK also shows me how much they are underachieving with the hardware we have on PS and Xbox side. No way we shouldn’t have full destruction in games on that hardware.

 

[Concernt]

Whatever Nintendo does won't be in response to Sony.

But Sony does tend to respond to Nintendo. Maybe the Sony event is earlier than usual because they know they want to steer clear of something bigger in the coming weeks.

 

[Ojoloco]

Mortal Kombat 1 has a file size of 31.3 GB.

And considering a 32 GB Nintendo Switch Game Card probably has an actual capacity of 29.8 GB, if the DLC is >1.5 GB and is not included inside the Nintendo Switch Game Card, then there's a possibility WB Games used a 32 GB Nintendo Switch Card for Mortal Kombat 1.

Maybe Shang Tsung and dub in extra languages need dowloads.

 

[TSR3]

Whatever Nintendo does won't be in response to Sony.

But Sony does tend to respond to Nintendo. Maybe the Sony event is earlier than usual because they know they want to steer clear of something bigger in the coming weeks.

It looks like you're right about Sony responding to Nintendo. I've just read this on another site ...

Random: Nintendo's Brand Momentum Has Been Flat Since 2018, Says Sony

We're not sure we believe that...

www.nintendolife.com

... where Sony are claiming PS has more 'brand momentum' than their competition?!

 

[Hosermess]

no, Nintendo choose a 32GB cartdridge for Tears of The Kingdom because the game is massive, the game feature 3 planes of exploration(sky, surface and undeground, with underground been a mirrored darker version of Hyrule, with the same size of Breath of the Wild Hyrule, with the 120 shirnes in the surfaces equalling the Lightroot in the undeground)

spoiler alert

 

[pelusilla6]

Mochi is on fire (Not his numbers ofc but still)



About 550k at the end

 

[Hosermess]

Whatever Nintendo does won't be in response to Sony.

But Sony does tend to respond to Nintendo. Maybe the Sony event is earlier than usual because they know they want to steer clear of something bigger in the coming weeks.

I'm fairly certain that Nintendo didn't learn about the date of the Playstation Showcase via Twitter like everybody else. They all probably hash these things out beforehand for the most part.

 

[ziggyrivers]

It looks like you're right about Sony responding to Nintendo. I've just read this on another site ...

Random: Nintendo's Brand Momentum Has Been Flat Since 2018, Says Sony

We're not sure we believe that...

www.nintendolife.com

... where Sony are claiming PS has more 'brand momentum' than their competition?!

The validity of that data is veeery questionable. If anything, it could be data collected for something else and they stretched its meaning. Could be that they asked people “which brand comes to mind” when asked about a video game console or a home console specifically.

Mochi is on fire (Not his numbers ofc but still)



About 550k at the end

That’s old, but for anyone saying Nintendo might enter the VR market, this is more than enough proof that it wouldn’t be worth it. Nevermind the fact that Nintendo would have to get back to the pre-Switch era and have two dev departments again: one for Switch, one for VR. Nevermind the fact of trying to incorporate Switch games into their hypothetical VR console, plus making an OS specifically for the VR console and creating synergy between both Switch and VR. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

I'm fairly certain that Nintendo didn't learn about the date of the Playstation Showcase via Twitter like everybody else. They all probably hash these things out beforehand for the most part.

That’s assuming they even know beforehand. Corporate espionage is a thing, and so is “people know each other”, but officially, they have no way of knowing beforehand.

 

[Hosermess]

That’s assuming they even know beforehand. Corporate espionage is a thing, and so is “people know each other”, but officially, they have no way of knowing beforehand.

What I meant was that I'm assuming they inform each other of the date, or at least general timeframe, of any of their planned showcases/directs/etc. I doubt any of them want to end up having something scheduled for the same day - or even the following day now that they don't have to squeeze everything into E3.

I didn't watch the video, but it's not like Nintendo's plan is just to do nothing for the rest of the year. And even if you believe that, thinking because of Sony they'll change their mind and do something? Nah. Would they toss in a little something extra or make slight alterations to their plan after seeing the Showcase? I wouldn't rule that out.

 

[Hermii]

That’s old, but for anyone saying Nintendo might enter the VR market, this is more than enough proof that it wouldn’t be worth it. Nevermind the fact that Nintendo would have to get back to the pre-Switch era and have two dev departments again: one for Switch, one for VR. Nevermind the fact of trying to incorporate Switch games into their hypothetical VR console, plus making an OS specifically for the VR console and creating synergy between both Switch and VR. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

Well, psvr 2 is 530$ on top of a 500$ console.

Drake VR wouldn't be anywhere near that.

Not saying Nintendo VR would be successful, just saying it's not apples and apples.

 

[Thraktor]

I see people proposing mandatory installs or mandatory downloads for a Game Card, but I really don't think they'll do that. They're dirty words for a reason. Mandatory installs from a cartridge just won't go down well with anyone.

If a game can't function on a Game Card, it can always be download only. That's already the case for plenty of big Switch games where a Game Card proved troublesome due to price or size constraints. If a game works on a Game Card but provides optional installs for a better experience, I don't think anyone would complain about that.

I don't think we have to worry about mandatory installs for Game Cards. Not just for the above but also because, unlike disks, they can get faster, get bigger, get better, without some hugely new format. If they choose to go for fast storage (>200MB/s) on the new device, which personally I actually doubt, little stops them from using faster Game Cards. There's plenty of room for extra pins with plenty of tolerance.

As, I think, Dakhil pointed out, increased density from more layers can mean more speed. These are "controller-less" Game Cards, the storage controller for them is on the Nintendo Switch system itself. As such, if you expect internal storage to improve in speed considerably, what's so hard to believe about them improving the controller for the Game Card, with say, a faster clock? Or adding more pins? Or both?

What's hard to believe is that it would be a far larger jump than we've seen in previous generations of game cards. While it's all well and good to speculate about game card speeds based on what SSDs can do, they're only partially related technologies, and what Nintendo uses is a niche format where there's one major supplier (Macronix) and one major customer (Nintendo), so there are likely very few people outside those two companies who know what is technologically or economically feasible. What we can do, though, is look at the historical trend and try to project from that.

There have been three generations of Nintendo hardware using the same or similar game card technology up to this point, which have the following read speeds:

Nintendo DS - 4.2MB/s / 6.7MB/s
Nintendo 3DS - 16.6MB/s
Nintendo Switch - 50MB/s

That's around a 3x improvement in speed each generation. Absent of any other information about the underlying technology, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the trend to continue with about a 3x improvement with [redacted] game cards.

For comparison, let's look at the progression of internal storage speeds. The DS didn't launch with internal storage, but the 3DS had 2GB of flash memory built in. I haven't been able to find reliable information of the speed of the 3DS flash, but we can make a reasonable estimate based on contemporary devices. The Samsung Galaxy S2 launched at about the same time with 16GB of storage, and I can find a benchmark showing peak read speeds of 47MB/s. I don't think the 3DS would have been using storage quite as fast as a flagship phone, so let's say the 3DS's storage was somewhere around 30MB/s. The precise number doesn't matter that much.

As confirmed by users with hacked consoles, the original Switch's eMMC is capable of 300MB/s, even if games weren't able to utilise it due to CPU bottlenecks. So 200MB/s storage in [redacted] would be a downgrade over the previous generation, which would be an interesting choice to say the least.

Anyway, for internal storage, we can compare two of the consoles we have above:

Nintendo 3DS - ~30MB/s
Nintendo Switch - 300MB/s

That's a 10x generation-on-generation improvement. I don't personally expect another 10x jump here, but the rate of improvement in the technology available to Nintendo hasn't slowed down. At the time the 3DS launched, the fastest phone storage was around 47MB/s. At the time the Switch launched, it had jumped to 485MB/s. The fastest phone now has storage capable of 4.5GB/s read speeds. If we're assuming that Nintendo was about 33% behind the state of the art with the 3DS storage, and was about 33% behind the state of the art with the Switch storage, then 33% behind the state of the art now would be 3GB/s, another 10x jump.

When we've got one format with an exponential growth rate of 3x per generation, and another with an exponential growth rate of 10x per generation, the gap between them also grows exponentially. The 3DS internal storage was (at a guess) about 2x as fast as the game cards. The Switch's internal storage in 6x as fast as the game cards. Projecting out, we would expect a next generation console to have internal storage 18x as fast as its game cards. This kind of mismatch is why mandatory installs became a thing for Sony and MS 10 years ago.

The 3DS only had a small difference between internal storage and game cards, and although the Switch had a larger one, CPU limitations meant the real-world performance difference was similarly small. The existence of the FDE means there shouldn't be a CPU bottleneck on [redacted], though, so it's entirely possible that we could be looking at a real-world performance difference of 10x between internal storage and game cards. That's not just a "better experience", that's games built around internal storage just straight-up not being possible on game cards.

I also disagree with the notion that mandatory installs "won't go down well with anyone". Mandatory installs have been standard in the rest of the industry for a decade now. There are kids playing games who literally haven't lived in a world where you can play a game directly off physical media on anything but a Nintendo device. Nintendo's the exception here, not the norm. Besides, if game card speeds progress as we'd expect them to, we'd be looking at 32GB games installing in under 5 minutes. That's a minor inconvenience at worst. I fail to see how forcing ambitious games to be download only is a better solution than that.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

And there she is, 185mm^2 for the die on 4N. For AD106.

 

[Hermii]

And there she is, 185mm^2 for the die on 4N. For AD106.

Context?

 

[Armoured_Bear]

I also disagree with the notion that mandatory installs "won't go down well with anyone". Mandatory installs have been standard in the rest of the industry for a decade now. There are kids playing games who literally haven't lived in a world where you can play a game directly off physical media on anything but a Nintendo device. Nintendo's the exception here, not the norm. Besides, if game card speeds progress as we'd expect them to, we'd be looking at 32GB games installing in under 5 minutes. That's a minor inconvenience at worst. I fail to see how forcing ambitious games to be download only is a better solution than that.

I agree, think we think in a bubble at times.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Context?

I've seen counts of around 22B transistors. if true, we can guesstimate the size of Drake, from a wafer perspective

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Context?

It’s the die that’s going to be in the 4060TI which will be a $400 product.

(8GB of VRAM)

And it’s sold at a profit, like the rest of NVidia’s GPUs.

The BOM is surely less than $150-180, from the die, to the board, to the memory, etc.

Imagine a die that’s sub-100mm^2, just the die.

 

[Gotdatmoneyy]

Yeah personally, the general public woupdn't have any issue with mandatory installs. I just think the issue for Nintendo is will they ship with adequate on board storage and how will they handle storage expansion.

But I think even if game cards shipped at speeds of 300MB/s, most streaming issues would be solved. I don't think the storage solution is a huge deal if Nintendo could utilize the full speed of the eMMC in the current Switch. Obviously it is not going to be competitive with the PS5 or Xbox Series but it just needs to be enough to make ports feasible. It doesn't need to be earth shattering.

I would think 300MB/s would be fine and 500MB/s would be plentiful.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

This is where perhaps the “multiple SKUs with multiple Storage options” may be a thing they do.

I mean, they did it before. And they somewhat did it again with the switch, though that was to give it more of an incentive to actually upgrade besides just the pretty screen.

So, who’s to say they wouldn’t do it again?

128-256GB $349.99-&399.99 version and a 256-512GB $449.99-$499.99 version

 

[Hocot8]

Whatever Nintendo does won't be in response to Sony.

But Sony does tend to respond to Nintendo. Maybe the Sony event is earlier than usual because they know they want to steer clear of something bigger in the coming weeks.

Or they want to dominate the gaming mind share without distractions from SGF??? I don't think it's complicated to see why Sony has separated itself. This is a massive showcase for them. But also, uh Grubb was talking about the timing of this showcase in March or February iirc.

I don't think Sony is concerned with Nintendo this summer lol.

 

[ILikeFeet]

This is where perhaps the “multiple SKUs with multiple Storage options” may be a thing they do.

I mean, they did it before. And they somewhat did it again with the switch, though that was to give it more of an incentive to actually upgrade besides just the pretty screen.

So, who’s to say they wouldn’t do it again?

128-256GB $349.99-&399.99 version and a 256-512GB $449.99-$499.99 version

I don't see the need for it if the margins are there. we've seen time and time again that the higher tiers win out. I get having the psychological win with the lower tier, but I think it's a waste

 

[Hermii]

This is where perhaps the “multiple SKUs with multiple Storage options” may be a thing they do.

I mean, they did it before. And they somewhat did it again with the switch, though that was to give it more of an incentive to actually upgrade besides just the pretty screen.

So, who’s to say they wouldn’t do it again?

128-256GB $349.99-&399.99 version and a 256-512GB $449.99-$499.99 version

And it went so well the last time they did it

Not counting oled.

 

[Dekuman]

How does the layering work? Can you choose between speed and capacity? So a 96 layer card could be 64 gb at 100mb/s or 32 gb at 200gb/s? It's probably doesn't scale linearly, but you get my drift.

Honestly this is not clear to me. But I've always assumed the layers are tied to the process nodes. 48 layers were <19nm as per this Anand tech article, the node prior to 48 layers was on 19nm.

So while 96 layers could herald the 64GB chips, I assume they could use the same process for 32GB chips

Given the timeline involved with them just releasing 48 layer chips in 2019 , this means a good chunk of the Switch NANDs from launch likely were on an even older process. And the only way 3rd parties could be selling 16GB carts around 2019 and 2020 at sub $60 MSRP was those chip prices coming down. Either because the old process node was deprecated and the chips sold really cheaply or they were using the new process to manufacture them, requiring less materials.

Granted given everything over 4GB is just a chip with pins and we have no evidence of the chips changing physically in size, i can only conclude its the former (the older process dropping in price as a new process is introduced).

I do wonder with a product refresh if Nintendo will be looking to move the all their chip procurement to a new process 8/16/32/64 or just rely on the old process nodes to fullfill lower capacity carts, and use the new nodes for the larger cards.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I also disagree with the notion that mandatory installs "won't go down well with anyone". Mandatory installs have been standard in the rest of the industry for a decade now. There are kids playing games who literally haven't lived in a world where you can play a game directly off physical media on anything but a Nintendo device. Nintendo's the exception here, not the norm. Besides, if game card speeds progress as we'd expect them to, we'd be looking at 32GB games installing in under 5 minutes. That's a minor inconvenience at worst. I fail to see how forcing ambitious games to be download only is a better solution than that.

Maybe it's a disagreement about the word mandatory? I read that and think "Every game has to install, because it is mandatory." But if a fraction of games require it for technical reasons? OK, fine. Already games can require SD cards or other specific accessories.

 

[Hajeman]

And it went so well the last time they did it

Not counting oled.

Yup Wii U showed to Nintendo not to release a different SKU

 

[Foltzie]

Whatever Nintendo does won't be in response to Sony.

But Sony does tend to respond to Nintendo. Maybe the Sony event is earlier than usual because they know they want to steer clear of something bigger in the coming weeks.

If Sony moved their showcase up it was in response to Apple and its potential headset announcement at WWDC on Monday June 5th.

 

[#Salt]

I know I'm derailing this gamecard conversation, but I was thinking; can the A78C run 6 or even 4 cores at higher clocks( if higher single core grunt is required by the game) and just not run the other CPU cores? Like could devs decide if they want to work with 4 2.4ghz cores or 7 1.8 ghz ones? Or is this just a redundant feature

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

And it went so well the last time they did it

Not counting oled.

It did, I mean the Wii U Deluxe was the most popular one. If they want to raise a potential bracket, this is one way of doing so while maintains specs parity between models.

I don't see the need for it if the margins are there. we've seen time and time again that the higher tiers win out. I get having the psychological win with the lower tier, but I think it's a waste

The only real waste would be if there is too many of one or another model.

 

[Concernt]

What's hard to believe is that it would be a far larger jump than we've seen in previous generations of game cards. While it's all well and good to speculate about game card speeds based on what SSDs can do, they're only partially related technologies, and what Nintendo uses is a niche format where there's one major supplier (Macronix) and one major customer (Nintendo), so there are likely very few people outside those two companies who know what is technologically or economically feasible. What we can do, though, is look at the historical trend and try to project from that.

There have been three generations of Nintendo hardware using the same or similar game card technology up to this point, which have the following read speeds:

Nintendo DS - 4.2MB/s / 6.7MB/s
Nintendo 3DS - 16.6MB/s
Nintendo Switch - 50MB/s

That's around a 3x improvement in speed each generation. Absent of any other information about the underlying technology, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the trend to continue with about a 3x improvement with [redacted] game cards.

For comparison, let's look at the progression of internal storage speeds. The DS didn't launch with internal storage, but the 3DS had 2GB of flash memory built in. I haven't been able to find reliable information of the speed of the 3DS flash, but we can make a reasonable estimate based on contemporary devices. The Samsung Galaxy S2 launched at about the same time with 16GB of storage, and I can find a benchmark showing peak read speeds of 47MB/s. I don't think the 3DS would have been using storage quite as fast as a flagship phone, so let's say the 3DS's storage was somewhere around 30MB/s. The precise number doesn't matter that much.

As confirmed by users with hacked consoles, the original Switch's eMMC is capable of 300MB/s, even if games weren't able to utilise it due to CPU bottlenecks. So 200MB/s storage in [redacted] would be a downgrade over the previous generation, which would be an interesting choice to say the least.

Anyway, for internal storage, we can compare two of the consoles we have above:

Nintendo 3DS - ~30MB/s
Nintendo Switch - 300MB/s

That's a 10x generation-on-generation improvement. I don't personally expect another 10x jump here, but the rate of improvement in the technology available to Nintendo hasn't slowed down. At the time the 3DS launched, the fastest phone storage was around 47MB/s. At the time the Switch launched, it had jumped to 485MB/s. The fastest phone now has storage capable of 4.5GB/s read speeds. If we're assuming that Nintendo was about 33% behind the state of the art with the 3DS storage, and was about 33% behind the state of the art with the Switch storage, then 33% behind the state of the art now would be 3GB/s, another 10x jump.

When we've got one format with an exponential growth rate of 3x per generation, and another with an exponential growth rate of 10x per generation, the gap between them also grows exponentially. The 3DS internal storage was (at a guess) about 2x as fast as the game cards. The Switch's internal storage in 6x as fast as the game cards. Projecting out, we would expect a next generation console to have internal storage 18x as fast as its game cards. This kind of mismatch is why mandatory installs became a thing for Sony and MS 10 years ago.

The 3DS only had a small difference between internal storage and game cards, and although the Switch had a larger one, CPU limitations meant the real-world performance difference was similarly small. The existence of the FDE means there shouldn't be a CPU bottleneck on [redacted], though, so it's entirely possible that we could be looking at a real-world performance difference of 10x between internal storage and game cards. That's not just a "better experience", that's games built around internal storage just straight-up not being possible on game cards.

I also disagree with the notion that mandatory installs "won't go down well with anyone". Mandatory installs have been standard in the rest of the industry for a decade now. There are kids playing games who literally haven't lived in a world where you can play a game directly off physical media on anything but a Nintendo device. Nintendo's the exception here, not the norm. Besides, if game card speeds progress as we'd expect them to, we'd be looking at 32GB games installing in under 5 minutes. That's a minor inconvenience at worst. I fail to see how forcing ambitious games to be download only is a better solution than that.

The norm is not "good". They WON'T go down WELL with anyone. That's different to being rejected. I don't think they'd be rejected but let's not pretend we live in some fairy world where they would be liked.

It's not ABOUT the function of the technology itself, it's about market appeal. There is fundamental appeal in the plug and play nature of the Game Card. Disregarding a feature that actively sets them apart from the industry is, from a marketing perspective, asinine.

That growth isn't even accurate. We don't live in a world with low cost, 3GB/second storage. UFS 4.0 exists but LOW COST is what's relevant here. 3DS to Switch, we regards internal memory speeds, is not a clear or representative comparison. You might as well look at how the Nintendo Switch was thirty times more powerful and project a 15 teraflop Switch 2.

If we look at low cost options available, low cost as in 32GB of eMMC in 2017, you're getting hundreds of megabytes per second, not thousands.

The faster CPU, the dedicated FDE, these are things where "slow and efficient" benefit. More is better, sure, but once you're saturating the FDE what's the point? Nintendo Switch is limited by loading that saturates its CPU. If we consider that Game Cards in fact reach a speed closer to 100 than 50, I mean just compare the loading speed between a 100mb/s MicroSD Card and a Game Card, that would imply, by your logic, a growth to nearly 300mb/s. Meanwhile, the internal storage is likely stuck far below 1GB/s unless they intend to eat costs. Something they don't tend to do.

When the delta is, maybe not negligeble, but certainly not quite as bad as what you're portraying it as, when the FDE is surely optimised for the lowest common denominator, when going beyond saturation of it and the CPU bear no benefit, in what world does Nintendo, in their market position benefit from forced installs? It does not appear to be OUR world.

 

[Hosermess]

Is it weird I'm posting buyer uncle tweets just to keep people from starting to wonder about buyer uncle tweets? Probably.

Anyway, I still take a peek now and then when I see his tweets on my timeline. Not for leaks or anything though, they're just sometimes interesting. Here's a couple tweets from 3 days ago.

The DeepL Translation of them is:

"I think it is a bit strange that they have not even announced the lineup for the end of the year, let alone the top-end models, let alone the next-generation models.

I think. I don't know.

I don't know, but I don't think it would be good for anyone to have a current-generation model."

He may as well just start posting his guesses here.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I know I'm derailing this gamecard conversation, but I was thinking; can the A78C run 6 or even 4 cores at higher clocks( if higher single core grunt is required by the game) and just not run the other CPU cores? Like could devs decide if they want to work with 4 2.4ghz cores or 7 1.8 ghz ones? Or is this just a redundant feature

can it be done, yes. will nintendo allow it, probably not. at least not if it's not the default option. predictable performance is the priority. maybe they can have profiles available to devs, but I'm not sure if there's anything to gain. devs can just not have tasks on other threads and that achieves the same thing, practically

 

[Deleted member 887]

That’s old, but for anyone saying Nintendo might enter the VR market, this is more than enough proof that it wouldn’t be worth it.

I don't think that Nintendo is going to make a VR product any time soon, but if PSVR2 fails as a product, it's not for some underlying market reason - it's because Sony dropped an effectively 1000 dollar enthusiast product with zero marketing. It felt like Sony was actively trying to kill the product.

 

[Ashee]

Is it weird I'm posting buyer uncle tweets just to keep people from starting to wonder about buyer uncle tweets? Probably.

Anyway, I still take a peek now and then when I see his tweets on my timeline. Not for leaks or anything though, they're just sometimes interesting. Here's a couple tweets from 3 days ago.

The DeepL Translation of them is:



He may as well just start posting his guesses here.

Im going to be part of the 15m of user buying a switch this FY... i want one since it was released but i didnt have the money then(nor my family) and its kinda now or never. I know nintendo could drop the next gen tomorrow or next year(i was team 2023 btw) but for the next days im going to enjoy my new oled and i have some games that will release this summer to enjoy.

I still say that nintendo should be cooking something for them to not say anything about second half.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

The norm is not "good". They WON'T go down WELL with anyone. That's different to being rejected. I don't think they'd be rejected but let's not pretend we live in some fairy world where they would be liked.

It's not ABOUT the function of the technology itself, it's about market appeal. There is fundamental appeal in the plug and play nature of the Game Card. Disregarding a feature that actively sets them apart from the industry is, from a marketing perspective, asinine.

That growth isn't even accurate. We don't live in a world with low cost, 3GB/second storage. UFS 4.0 exists but LOW COST is what's relevant here. 3DS to Switch, we regards internal memory speeds, is not a clear or representative comparison. You might as well look at how the Nintendo Switch was thirty times more powerful and project a 15 teraflop Switch 2.

If we look at low cost options available, low cost as in 32GB of eMMC in 2017, you're getting hundreds of megabytes per second, not thousands.

The faster CPU, the dedicated FDE, these are things where "slow and efficient" benefit. More is better, sure, but once you're saturating the FDE what's the point? Nintendo Switch is limited by loading that saturates its CPU. If we consider that Game Cards in fact reach a speed closer to 100 than 50, I mean just compare the loading speed between a 100mb/s MicroSD Card and a Game Card, that would imply, by your logic, a growth to nearly 300mb/s. Meanwhile, the internal storage is likely stuck far below 1GB/s unless they intend to eat costs. Something they don't tend to do.

When the delta is, maybe not negligeble, but certainly not quite as bad as what you're portraying it as, when the FDE is surely optimised for the lowest common denominator, when going beyond saturation of it and the CPU bear no benefit, in what world does Nintendo, in their market position benefit from forced installs? It does not appear to be OUR world.

The market seems to think otherwise.

 

[kvetcha]

I don't think that Nintendo is going to make a VR product any time soon, but if PSVR2 fails as a product, it's not for some underlying market reason - it's because Sony dropped an effectively 1000 dollar enthusiast product with zero marketing. It felt like Sony was actively trying to kill the product.

and by all accounts it's a very nice product! If it were PC-compatible I'd probably own one.

 

[LitKai]

Im going to be part of the 15m of user buying a switch this FY... i want one since it was released but i didnt have the money then(nor my family) and its kinda now or never. I know nintendo could drop the next gen tomorrow or next year(i was team 2023 btw) but for the next days im going to enjoy my new oled and i have some games that will release this summer to enjoy.

I still say that nintendo should be cooking something for them to not say anything about second half.

The earliest the Switch U could be released is May 10, 2024.

You can relax and enjoy your Switch for now.

 

[etuev]

It looks like you're right about Sony responding to Nintendo. I've just read this on another site ...

Random: Nintendo's Brand Momentum Has Been Flat Since 2018, Says Sony

We're not sure we believe that...

www.nintendolife.com

... where Sony are claiming PS has more 'brand momentum' than their competition?!

I mean it's definitely true when it comes to home consoles, not for handhelds though.

Playstation as a brand is a HUGE behemoth that cannot be stopped. From the PSX onwards, they began to absolutely wipe the floor with the incumbent console makers, forcing them both to diversify/fall back on their strengths - SEGA focused on the arcades, Nintendo on handhelds (the Wii was an exception which gave their home consoles a temporary lifeline, until that ended with the Wii U). Obviously that happened to Sony too eventually after the Vita, they fell back to their strength of being the de facto home console, even Sony was unable to support 2 platforms. Their brand is so strong that Sony's black sheep, the PS3 which was needlessly self-indulgent and ridiculously complicated, ended up catching up to Xbox 360 which already had a headstart on time, price and everything else. The PS3 launch/design almost had everything done wrong/suboptimal to some degree yet they still caught up. It's insane. The Playstation brand mindshare is just that strong and fair play to 'em.

Nintendo and Sony are sort of opposites in that PS has the strongest brand in home consoles, and Nintendo in portables (since there's literally no other mass market option available they have it by default.)

 

[Paul_Subsonic]

"There's no way Nintendo will ever do mandatory installs"

People in this thread forgetting the Wii U is a thing episode n°687749288543