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

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Derachi said:
Would it be possible to keep the current cart, and if the system’s read speeds from the cart are an issue, you can install it to the internal storage/SD card to improve speeds?
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Honestly, I don't think current carts are an issue full stop.

The major ways to improve Game Card read speeds have nothing to do with how a Game Card is manufactured or wired and everything to do with the controller and CPU access. Right now the biggest bottleneck is CPU speed. That seems like it'll be more or less squared away. Say we add dedicated decompression on top of that. Now our speeds are more or less doubling or so. Next, what really speeds up a Game Card? The Game Card controller! That's in the console, not the Game Card. So if they want faster speeds, they can do that console side, no Game Card changes necessary. What could even realistically be improved with a Game Card? They could... Add more pins? Double the bandwidth maybe? But a faster controller could make that process cheaper by offloading it to the console, while changing the Game Cards electronically would mean you couldn't have cross-gen Game Cards. If there's one thing I'm nearly certain about, there will be cross gen Game Cards, because there have ALWAYS been cross gen games on Nintendo handhelds, from Shantae to Pokémon Black and White 2.

How do I expect Game Cards to differ physically then?

I don't. They probably won't. They're fine. They're not a limiting factor. They're loved by many people, myself not included, but I understand why.

They will probably have the new console's logo on the sticker, and if they're next gen exclusives, pop up an error message on older consoles. Just like New 3DS and DSi games being plugged in to a 3DS or DS Lite.
 
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Nintendo knows they still sell a lot of physical games, especially to kids, no way do they limit carts for BC on Switch 2.
 
Concernt said:
Honestly, I don't think current carts are an issue full stop.

The major ways to improve Game Card read speeds have nothing to do with how a Game Card is manufactured or wired and everything to do with the controller and CPU access. Right now the biggest bottleneck is CPU speed. That seems like it'll be more or less squared away. Say we add dedicated decompression on top of that. Now our speeds are more or less doubling or so. Next, what really speeds up a Game Card? The Game Card controller! That's in the console, not the Gane Card. So if they want faster speeds, they can do that console side, no Game Card changes necessary. What could even realistically be improved with a Game Card? They could... Add more pins? Double the bandwidth maybe? But a faster controller could make that process cheaper by offloading it to the console, while changing the Game Cards electronically would mean you couldn't have cross-gen Game Cards. If there's one thing I'm nearly certain about, there will be cross gen Game Cards, because there have ALWAYS been cross gen games on Nintendo handhelds, from Shantae to Pokémon Black and White 2.

How do I expect Game Cards to differ physically then?

I don't. They probably won't. They're fine. They're not a limiting factor. They're loved by many people, myself not included, but I understand why.

They will probably have the new console's logo on the sticker, and if they're next gen exclusives, pop up an error message on older consoles. Just like New 3DS and DSi games being plugged in to a 3DS or DS Lite.
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Gotcha! I’m pretty clueless with this so this was a great explainer
 
D36 said:
Nate and MVG don't need defending. It's totally fair to put their propositions under scrutiny and the ones who go too far are a vocal minority who should be dealt with accordingly. We've gone over this already; yes they're knowledgeable, but that does not make them infallible by default.
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We are also giving a fuckin' opinion and not leaking or revealing anything. I've said a near dozen times now that late 2024 is informed speculation on my part.

Right now there is minimal industry chatter. There is zero movement on production fronts.

Are individuals in this thread that desperate for a "gotcha" moment that they are using thoughts from January that may differ from thoughts in June?
 
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TomNookYankees said:
I was thinking more that if switch 2 carts are too different in shape to switch carts then having cartridge BC would require putting two different cartridge slots into it.


Lack of cartridge compatibility wouldn't be solvable via patches.
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I think the thing is, there isn't a clear reason for Nintendo to change the shape of the cart so drastically, absent a viable alternative storage media that has some clear advantage over the existing shape.

Historically, Nintendo has used cut outs / tabs / etc in carts to make it so that a Gameboy cart could fit into a GBC, but not vice versa. Ditto for Gameboy/GBC to GBA. Ditto for DS to 3DS. If they wanted to, they could do something similar for Switch to Switch 2.

It's not that it's completely inconceivable for them to change any part of the Switch design - it's just that they wouldn't do it without a reason, especially if it risks breaking compatibility. I haven't seen a reason argued for changing the shape of the cart.
 
NateDrake said:
We are also giving a fuckin' opinion and not leaking or revealing anything. I've said a near dozen times now that late 2024 is informed speculation on my part.

Right now there is minimal industry chatter. There is zero movement on production fronts.
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I know you're giving opinions, I'm just saying this as a rule of thumb. My comments weren't directed at you two specifically.
 
NateDrake said:
Right now there is minimal industry chatter. There is zero movement on production fronts.
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I wonder if it’s that it’s still early, or if they tightened up the ship re:leaks. I don’t think folks can rule out “Nintendo has figured out how to get people to stop leaking” as a reason for why we haven’t heard much yet.
 
Derachi said:
I wonder if it’s that it’s still early, or if they tightened up the ship re:leaks. I don’t think folks can rule out “Nintendo has figured out how to get people to stop leaking” as a reason for why we haven’t heard much yet.
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They're not even that good at it if that is the case. At least, from where I'm sitting.
 
D36 said:
I know you're giving opinions, I'm just saying. My comments weren't directed at you two specifically.
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My comments aren't directed towards you, specifically. Just some of the absurd takes in this thread that are trying to use a comment from 6 months ago as a "gotcha".

Derachi said:
I wonder if it’s that it’s still early, or if they tightened up the ship re:leaks. I don’t think folks can rule out “Nintendo has figured out how to get people to stop leaking” as a reason for why we haven’t heard much yet.
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I'd wager it's more preliminary access is limited at the moment (which will expand as the yr advances and once industry events (Gamescom/TGS) take place), there will be a rise in chatter.
 
Raccoon said:
Nintendo warned us all the dev kits weren't real...
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oh-sure-john-candy.gif
 
P4bl0 said:
Let them, they are disconnected from reality going off at other people on a forum calling them crazy and conspirationist over some video games theories and facts lmao

Team2024 is very aggressive towards Team2023, I really don't get the frustration
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You people are odd. Taking this so serious.
 
What was the thing with this new pro controller again? I know it's supposed to carry over some info or something but do we know any specifics? And do we think they could cram that same tech into the new joycons?
 
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Concernt said:
Honestly, I don't think current carts are an issue full stop.

The major ways to improve Game Card read speeds have nothing to do with how a Game Card is manufactured or wired and everything to do with the controller and CPU access. Right now the biggest bottleneck is CPU speed. That seems like it'll be more or less squared away. Say we add dedicated decompression on top of that. Now our speeds are more or less doubling or so. Next, what really speeds up a Game Card? The Game Card controller! That's in the console, not the Game Card. So if they want faster speeds, they can do that console side, no Game Card changes necessary. What could even realistically be improved with a Game Card? They could... Add more pins? Double the bandwidth maybe? But a faster controller could make that process cheaper by offloading it to the console, while changing the Game Cards electronically would mean you couldn't have cross-gen Game Cards. If there's one thing I'm nearly certain about, there will be cross gen Game Cards, because there have ALWAYS been cross gen games on Nintendo handhelds, from Shantae to Pokémon Black and White 2.

How do I expect Game Cards to differ physically then?

I don't. They probably won't. They're fine. They're not a limiting factor. They're loved by many people, myself not included, but I understand why.

They will probably have the new console's logo on the sticker, and if they're next gen exclusives, pop up an error message on older consoles. Just like New 3DS and DSi games being plugged in to a 3DS or DS Lite.
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How would those improvements translate to real-world speed? Are we talking eMMC speeds (~100-250MB/s) or UFS 2.0 speeds (~600MB/s)?
 
Can't believe we are talking about BC again or cart size when we are getting some potentially legit info on devkits.

As mentioned in the tweet, since it has been shared with an independant company, it means that Nintendo is widening the circle of partners with access to them.

Combined with the Chinese rumors, it is entirely possible that they would communicate on the new hardware over the upcoming months for a 2024 release, in order to get ahead of the leaks.

The Holiday games won't be hamstrung by the Switch power either so they won't be negatively impacted by a Switch 2 reveal.

Dont expect a showcase before 2024 tho, as they would still want the Switch to manage a great last Holiday season (which the DS was able to do in 2010).
 
Do we know if Nash Weedle has piggybacked off of leaks before? Like the Metroid Dread one?

Edit: Typo
 
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Lelouch0612 said:
Can't believe we are talking about BC again or cart size when we are getting some potentially legit info on devkits.

As mentioned in the tweet, since it has been shared with an independant company, it means that Nintendo is widening the circle of partners with access to them.

Combined with the Chinese rumors, it is entirely possible that they would communicate on the new hardware over the upcoming months for a 2024 release, in order to get ahead of the leaks.

The Holiday games won't be hamstrung by the Switch power either so they won't be negatively impacted by a Switch 2 reveal.

Dont expect a showcase before 2024 tho, as they would still want the Switch to manage a great last Holiday season (which the DS was able to do in 2010).
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What do you think would prevent them to drop the Switch 2 this holiday though ? That would drive more sales to Switch family and games for Christmas
 
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Do we know if Nash Weedle has piggybacked of leaks before? Like the Metroid Dread one?
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Not sure, but Nash Weedle was definitely not the first Dread leaker.

I remember someone back in the old site already knew about it, back in 2016. They were the same person who first hinted Samus Returns too.
 
D36 said:
Do we know if Nash Weedle has piggybacked of leaks before? Like the Metroid Dread one?
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Not sure but he is respected in Spain. And has ties with Mercury or someone close to them since that’s the only leaks he is doing
 
I don't know enough about Nash Weedle's prior claims, but I remember someone DMing back in 2022 a claim they made about Everybody 1-2 Switch being tested for new hardware & being held back for said new hardware to utilize the new features of the controller. They had also sent me tweets about info Weedle claimed to know about something named Nintendo Loop or something similar to that branding.

Here's the Everybody 1-2 Switch tweet claim I'm referencing:

 
oldpuck said:
For the studio? You're pulling higher profile engineers - the ones who actually do low level engineering and can provide broad feedback on engine feasibility - making them sign and ton of NDAs and pulling them off their core work for a minimum of 6 weeks to 3 months to do a proof-of-concept port that probably won't see the light of day. So, a dev year? Quarter of a million?

But that, actually, isn't the cost I'm referring to on Mercury Steam's side. It's the opportunity cost. Capcom has engineers who only do engine work, and support a dozen game dev projects simultaneously. Putting some of that team on a new platform doesn't slow down game development. A studio like Mercury Steam, the core engineen devs are also game devs. Pulling them to work on a skonk works project would be removing them from whatever game they are currently developing.

I want to emphasize I'm not talking about devkits, generally. The question was "would Mercury Steam be high on the list for an early devkit." And I wasn't talking about costs to Mercury Steam, I'm talking about costs generally. Early devkits are buggy, they're hand delivered, Nintendo sends an engineer to your studio to set it up because there is no documentation yet, there are only 20 people in the world who know how the whole package works, and they have to support every studio that has one.

Nintendo could make a thousand early devkits, physically, but they don't have the engineering resources to support a thousand studios playing around with them. A Nintendo hardware engineer in Kyoto will be up at midnight talking to a Mercury Steam game developer in Madrid at 6pm and an Nvidia driver engineer in San Fransisco at 8am, and a Tegra engineer in India at 8:30pm to figure out what commands to type into a serial debugger to get a backtrace so that all the data can be send to eSol, company, who makes the Horizon operating system about why the damn thing is crashing...

If Nintendo is hungry to get a launch title out, then Mercury Steam would get an early devkit. But if not, why not let Mercury Steam continue working on their late 2025 game, and get a finalized devkit six-twelve months later. It's just more productive for everyone.
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I hadn’t realised how complicated early dev kits could be. I should’ve guessed they’d be just like any other big IT project in it’s early stages, very Heath Robinson with lots of manual processes!
 
NateDrake said:
I don't know enough about Nash Weedle's prior claims, but I remember someone DMing back in 2022 a claim they made about Everybody 1-2 Switch being tested for new hardware & being held back for said new hardware to utilize the new features of the controller. They had also sent me tweets about info Weedle claimed to know about something named Nintendo Loop or something similar to that branding.

Here's the Everybody 1-2 Switch tweet claim I'm referencing:

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An adaptive stickbox would certainly be interesting
 
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NateDrake said:
I don't know enough about Nash Weedle's prior claims, but I remember someone DMing back in 2022 a claim they made about Everybody 1-2 Switch being tested for new hardware & being held back for said new hardware to utilize the new features of the controller. They had also sent me tweets about info Weedle claimed to know about something named Nintendo Loop or something similar to that branding.

Here's the Everybody 1-2 Switch tweet claim I'm referencing:

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This new controller patent seems quite similar to the PlayStation 5DualSense haptic feedback
 
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Speaking of gamecard, I wonder if they will have some crossgen card that fit inside the switch but with the new cart technology so that Switch NG can take advantage of the speed boost. Not that it would need the increase speed for Switch game but I can see Nintendo eventually update the switch cart manufacturing to use the same technology to streamline production. In the event that it happens, I'm both looking forward to and dreading rebuying my physical games for that speed boost even if minor.
 
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NateDrake said:
I don't know enough about Nash Weedle's prior claims, but I remember someone DMing back in 2022 a claim they made about Everybody 1-2 Switch being tested for new hardware & being held back for said new hardware to utilize the new features of the controller. They had also sent me tweets about info Weedle claimed to know about something named Nintendo Loop or something similar to that branding.

Here's the Everybody 1-2 Switch tweet claim I'm referencing:

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For all we know, that could have been considered at one point.
 
Concernt said:
Physical media on Nintendo Switch 2 will be just like it is on Xbox Series X|S. Some games will be digital only, even big games, some special editions will only come with a code, and I'd say it's likely there will be a model with no physical media support at all. They're not going to disappear, not when the mix is still closer to 50-50 for first party releases, but they'll definitely take a back seat.
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With how costly internal flash memory is, I don’t know if they’ll go the all-digital route like that and release a model without a cartridge port. What will probably happen is that they’ll keep releasing all their games in physical form, but they’ll be more expensive to offset the costs of bigger cartridges.
 
YugamiSekai said:
How would those improvements translate to real-world speed? Are we talking eMMC speeds (~100-250MB/s) or UFS 2.0 speeds (~600MB/s)?
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Games won't be reflective of those speeds anyway. Just expect faster load times and larger data transfers

Mr Swine said:
Witch studio is this? Metroid Dread developers?
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Hard to say. There are other big studios like Gameloft in Spain

Party Sklar said:
With how costly internal flash memory is, I don’t know if they’ll go the all-digital route like that and release a model without a cartridge port. What will probably happen is that they’ll keep releasing all their games in physical form, but they’ll be more expensive to offset the costs of bigger cartridges.
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Flash memory is cheap. Shits getting cheaper too
 
D36 said:
Ah, I see. I don't remember what comment that was.
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Possibly because you’re using the Ignore feature like some others? 😉
When I first joined this thread I’d never imagined I would use it, but it’s been a godsend the last few days
 
Guess that we also should keep software away from speculation regarding next hardware launch
Remember that after Switch reveal 3DS received 20 more first-party spreaded into 2017, 2018, 2019 until declared "dead"
 
TSR3 said:
Possibly because you’re using the Ignore feature like some others? 😉
When I first joined this thread I’d never imagined I would use it, but it’s been a godsend the last few days
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I don't have anyone on ignore currently, but you might be right. Though I don't remember everything from 6 months ago 😅
 
necrolipe said:
Guess that we also should keep software away from speculation regarding next hardware launch
Remember that after Switch reveal 3DS received 20 more first-party spreaded into 2017, 2018, 2019 until declared "dead"
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Thanks for confirming, it's refreshing since it seems that most people online believe that the Switch 2 will be revealed when the Switch 1 will be dead and have no first party games for a year
 
necrolipe said:
Guess that we also should keep software away from speculation regarding next hardware launch
Remember that after Switch reveal 3DS received 20 more first-party spreaded into 2017, 2018, 2019 until declared "dead"
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Many of those games also bombed and Nintendo learned from that experience. They thought the 3DS base would buy said releases vs the reality of interest being near non-existent. While there will naturally be some releases for Switch after Switch 2 introduction, the cross-over period may be significantly shorter than what we saw with the 3DS & Switch.
 
P4bl0 said:
False, he leaked Metroid Dread by himself, can we chill with the false claims ?
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I know this guy. He said golden sun will be in 2020, donkey kong in 2019, nintendo selects in 2021, etc etc etc (there are a lot of etc, trust me). If you shoot 600 times, one of those bullets will hit the target, but it doesn't make you an insider.

We shouldnt give relevance to people who want it and dont deserve it.
 
KCannon said:
Not sure, but Nash Weedle was definitely not the first Dread leaker.

I remember someone back in the old site already knew about it, back in 2016. They were the same person who first hinted Samus Returns too.
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Afaik nobody, especially not the person in 2016, leaked the game specifically as Metroid Dread. Most people called it a new 2D Metroid, Nate included. Anyone specifically calling it Metroid Dread would've been laughed at.
 
Zumikoi said:
I know this guy. He said golden sun will be in 2020, donkey kong in 2019, nintendo selects in 2021, etc etc etc (there are a lot of etc, trust me). If you shoot 600 times, one of those bullets will hit the target, but it doesn't make you an insider.

We shouldnt give relevance to people who want it and dont deserve it.
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So it sounds like he's full of shit and his latest stunt is likely from convenient information.
 
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