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


Sean Malstrom is #Team2025 going into #Team2026. Sean can be a broken clock but I think he makes some pretty good points here. (this can't be worse than linking to 4chan, can it?)
 
I feel some people overestimates the potential success of the next gen console. It will be near impossible to make a system as popular as the Switch, but having big third party support is definitely a must.
Totally, but it would be worse to NOT have a successor then for it to sell less then switch. Even with its first party software the switch simply wont sell that much anymore, third party will dry up, and they cant sustain themselves only with first party releases.

Having a successor that gets to say 80M lifetime sales would be way lower then switch, and still a good effort that pushes them through half a decade to establish their multi media presence more as a safety net if the console after switch 2 tried to inovate more and flops.
 
Entertaining the slight possibility this leak is real, for the fun of it...

With this power draw what are the power levels, can you do your amazing analysis for us? Would we be looking at a dreamy 3.X Teraflop Switch 2? Also portable TF levels? Was he right in saying (with those numbers) it is comparable to a Series S, ish?
The GPU would draw similar power consumption as the DLSS test showed, if TSMC 4N, which Thraktor has completely convinced me on, also yeah 3.456TFLOPs Ampere would be in the neighborhood of XBSS's 4TFLOPs, especially thanks to DLSS. It can do some things better, and some things worse, targeting higher resolutions should be less of an issue for "Switch 2" but given that XBSS is ~70w and this is ~13w, I think that is more than a fair trade off. (This is largely because ARM and Ampere are far more efficient per flop/performance and the node is far better than TSMC's 7nm that XBSS is built on.
 
I feel some people overestimates the potential success of the next gen console. It will be near impossible to make a system as popular as the Switch, but having big third party support is definitely a must.
Market is still growing in size, India, Indonesia, South America might be add numbers in 2028 the current Switch couldn't yet reach.
 

Sean Malstrom is #Team2025 going into #Team2026. Sean can be a broken clock but I think he makes some pretty good points here. (this can't be worse than linking to 4chan, can it?)
It's gonna be announced in 2024 and release in 2025. There is no other way.
 
First, thanks everyone who reached out privately. Ya'll are cool.

Second, let's do some speculating/wishing. What do ya'll want from the next console other than performance. Squishy triggers? A 1080p screen? A second screen? New colors? It can be literally anything.

The rules are - reply to this message directly, but no judging each other's picks. No telling folks why it's not possible, or what it's unlikely, or why the shouldn't want it. I just want people to say what they imagine the next thing might have. It's cool if it's a weird niche thing, it's cool if it's boring. Just let me know. I'm a little tired of this rut of "the same but better" and odds are Nintendo has one surprise cooking, and if it's yours, I want to celebrate that you get your weird niche thing!

You really want me to say it, don't you? Okay, i'm not going to disappoint the expecations put on me.

Scrollwheel Shoulderbuttons.
 

Sean Malstrom is #Team2025 going into #Team2026. Sean can be a broken clock but I think he makes some pretty good points here. (this can't be worse than linking to 4chan, can it?)
The opening paragraph goes for Malstrom himself as well, of course; he's still on his blog?!

Anyways, I don't think our alt-right sympathising little friend has considered the notion of cross-gen. That'd be a first for Nintendo, but has been standard practice for both big competitors this gen, and the mobile market for many years.
 
i frequent two Facebook groups focused on Nintendo and most of the user theres is around this age, this infografic Nintendo showed us
I thought this age group does not use Facebook anymore?! Anyway, it was just a suggestion, as this stats are REALLY off and anecdotal experience is not really a proof (not that I doubt your experience, but its also just a thesis as mine)

Sure, the game which already run like **** on PC and XBox comes to Switch 2. I totally not see how this could go wrong. :D
 
Light correction, Nintendo doesn't actually run their devkits at higher clocks by default, it's something application devs can explicitly opt into if they wish (on NX it's enabled by calling nn::oe::SetCpuOverclockEnabled(bool), which sets a 1785MHz overclock. The 1224MHz profiles are unused.)
So if real those would likely be the normal operating wattages.
Hey, I somewhat remember you. You had the whole thing where backwards compatibility couldn't happen on anything but maxwell right? -Not trying to bash you btw, welcome back. I could be wrong of course.

Anyways, I'm looking at the 'leak' which claims max power draws of 11w and 28.6w for portable and docked, that assumes the higher CPU clock is "turned on" IMO.
 

Sean Malstrom is #Team2025 going into #Team2026. Sean can be a broken clock but I think he makes some pretty good points here. (this can't be worse than linking to 4chan, can it?)
read through it... i completly disagree with his position.
"2D Mario helps reinvigorate a consoles decline"... New Mario Bros Wii was in wiis third year, long before the decline was, New super mario bros wii u was a Launch Title, and on the DS/3DS it was a mid lifespan release.

"Pushing TotK further back"... i dont see them waiting another year with TotK (7 years since its predecessor where it lifts the whole map and all from, that originated on the switch?)
The reasoning with TotK as a launch title worked, when we assumed a Switch Pro, essentially the same but rendering in higher resolution stable framerate and some bells and whistles. For a successor, nope. there needs to be a bigger jump, there was just to much Wii U and switch launch DNA in it.

The jump from "Splatoon 2 was 5 years later, so they expect splatoon 3 to life for exactly 5 years more" ignoring the options that 3 years are maybe enough, that it wont imediately die when the successor is released, and that maybe it works just as well on the successor?

"macroeconomics"... sure, whatever. Hes right that a shift during pandemic, chip shortage and inflation is not great... then again, sony did it and they could not keep up with consoles and sold a ton.
If they want to wait till everything is fine, they may as well stop doing business, theres one thing adjusting plance by a year or changing strategy to some degree because of macro economics, and another to just be to affraid to act.

"ou don’t launch a game console in the collapse of the global financial system. The global market is rapidly changing before your eyes, reader. Note how some consoles’ hardware has suddenly gone UP in price due to widescale inflation?" yeah... and phone makes still release >1000k phones, graphic cards are still ridiculously expensive, and PS5s are still notoriously sold out, i never see a bigger stack standing around with electronics retailers. You cant just "stop", and you cant adjust 4-5 year game dev plans and shift them between platforms on a whim because the inflation is higher these months.

"Look at the PS5. It's not selling gangbusters" ... thats blatantly false.
Its selling better then PS4, that one did better then Ps3 on launch, and its the first console transition where sony did not fall into the red.

"The reason why Sega imploded was their focus on ‘next gen’ Saturn and no longer supporting older hardware."
Yeah, way to oversimplify a lot. Panic reactions, unnecessary add ons that muddied the water between generations, third party support (they had it, but nintendo got the bigger releases, thinking of Square and Enix in japan), being split between Arcade and retail and not managing to leverage that to their benefit...


Yeah, the article is pretty much as good as any post here, but with the benefit of being presented as a more "reasonable" take since nobody can correct him on his blog.

The opening paragraph goes for Malstrom himself as well, of course; he's still on his blog?!

Anyways, I don't think our alt-right sympathising little friend has considered the notion of cross-gen. That'd be a first for Nintendo, but has been standard practice for both big competitors this gen, and the mobile market for many years.
Oh that to? yeah, no, this opinion is more trash than any 4chan leak, at least those are amusing and creative half the time, this is just uninformed and narrow minded
 
First, thanks everyone who reached out privately. Ya'll are cool.

Second, let's do some speculating/wishing. What do ya'll want from the next console other than performance. Squishy triggers? A 1080p screen? A second screen? New colors? It can be literally anything.

The rules are - reply to this message directly, but no judging each other's picks. No telling folks why it's not possible, or what it's unlikely, or why the shouldn't want it. I just want people to say what they imagine the next thing might have. It's cool if it's a weird niche thing, it's cool if it's boring. Just let me know. I'm a little tired of this rut of "the same but better" and odds are Nintendo has one surprise cooking, and if it's yours, I want to celebrate that you get your weird niche thing!
I actually wanted a higher resolution screen just in case they decide to bring back Labo VR on the NX2 since 720p wasn't good on it. Actually bought a 3rd party headset that supported the Switch because I wanted something more sturdy than cardboard. It was good for a laugh but also as someone who had a Virtual Boy, I just liked the idea of 3D stereoscopic visuals in gaming, feeling Virtual Boy did it better than 3DS.

There are other features from other Nintendo consoles I wouldn't mind seeing, like maybe an updated IR sensor the Wii pulled off so well, though seeing how I game via a projector, it's hard to tell how much mileage I get from this since my setup is pointing away from the console. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing a more practical way of bringing back lightgun games or even the possibility of having a home port of the Luigi's Mansion arcade happen at some point. Also if it was possible to integrate a biometric sensor on the joycon or pro controller and see if they had other ways of implementing the Bio Tetris sensor in others games, like a Zelda game that reacts to the player's fear or a WarioWare game that encourages mind-over-matter.

I like to imagine the ideal Nintendo console is something that attempts to "do it all," which a lot like the NES, SNES and Wii specifically seemed fairly capable in terms of peripherals and such. So many different ways to play and accessories to boot. Down to the point where a second screen-type peripheral like a drawing tablet or successor to the Wii U gamepad might be more affordable these days. Seeing a Mario Artist/Mario Paint follow-up even if as an update/expansion to Game Builder Garage would be killing two birds with one stone and it'd be nice to paint more intuitively than a controller while also having the screen display freely and available for families and friends. Heck it doesn't have to be a peripheral, it could also be in the form of an app that streams to devices and controls the game directly, like a certain cancelled game console aspired to try.

I do also wonder if a successor to the Switch could bring back cameras and have apps and games that implement them. Like a follow-up to Game Boy Camera comes to mind but also on the Mario Artist thing, I could see the camera (and SD card slot) doing the things the capture cartridge was supposed to provide but on a more streamlined scale. People posting their faces on models, using photos as textures or skyboxes, etc.,

Heck, I'm already asking for the moon but if GameCube style pressure triggers were to come back, ZL and ZR seem right for it as a way of having one's cake and eating it too. Splatoon always reminded me of Mario Sunshine, so a 4th installment using the ZL+ZR triggers sounds like a plan if they can pull off the durability just right.

Just the idea of a Nintendo console that can do whatever's needed for just about any game you can throw at it. Kind of like an Omnibus of Nintendo consoles, while still pushing for the future.
 
I actually wanted a higher resolution screen just in case they decide to bring back Labo VR on the NX2 since 720p wasn't good on it. Actually bought a 3rd party headset that supported the Switch because I wanted something more sturdy than cardboard. It was good for a laugh but also as someone who had a Virtual Boy, I just liked the idea of 3D stereoscopic visuals in gaming, feeling Virtual Boy did it better than 3DS.

There are other features from other Nintendo consoles I wouldn't mind seeing, like maybe an updated IR sensor the Wii pulled off so well, though seeing how I game via a projector, it's hard to tell how much mileage I get from this since my setup is pointing away from the console. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing a more practical way of bringing back lightgun games or even the possibility of having a home port of the Luigi's Mansion arcade happen at some point. Also if it was possible to integrate a biometric sensor on the joycon or pro controller and see if they had other ways of implementing the Bio Tetris sensor in others games, like a Zelda game that reacts to the player's fear or a WarioWare game that encourages mind-over-matter.

I like to imagine the ideal Nintendo console is something that attempts to "do it all," which a lot like the NES, SNES and Wii specifically seemed fairly capable in terms of peripherals and such. So many different ways to play and accessories to boot. Down to the point where a second screen-type peripheral like a drawing tablet or successor to the Wii U gamepad might be more affordable these days. Seeing a Mario Artist/Mario Paint follow-up even if as an update/expansion to Game Builder Garage would be killing two birds with one stone and it'd be nice to paint more intuitively than a controller while also having the screen display freely and available for families and friends. Heck it doesn't have to be a peripheral, it could also be in the form of an app that streams to devices and controls the game directly, like a certain cancelled game console aspired to try.

I do also wonder if a successor to the Switch could bring back cameras and have apps and games that implement them. Like a follow-up to Game Boy Camera comes to mind but also on the Mario Artist thing, I could see the camera (and SD card slot) doing the things the capture cartridge was supposed to provide but on a more streamlined scale. People posting their faces on models, using photos as textures or skyboxes, etc.,

Heck, I'm already asking for the moon but if GameCube style pressure triggers were to come back, ZL and ZR seem right for it as a way of having one's cake and eating it too. Splatoon always reminded me of Mario Sunshine, so a 4th installment using the ZL+ZR triggers sounds like a plan if they can pull off the durability just right.

Just the idea of a Nintendo console that can do whatever's needed for just about any game you can throw at it. Kind of like an Omnibus of Nintendo consoles, while still pushing for the future.
I like you. Though the problem at this point is how to streamline all of this without being confusing for the average joe (many can find Mario Artist confusing honestly).
 
Why not ? It's never too late to learn a thing or three about biology.

Link trying to fuse some parts to weapons and shields when suddenly Professor Oak starts talking to him from the heavens: "This is not the time, nor the part for this!"
 
I want colour, so bored of completely black consoles, black controllers (talking about Pro controllers),
I concur. I’ve been using my Zelda OLED’s Joycons, but I want a Pro Controller. I’m 100% convinced to get the Zelda themed one, and if I can’t find one, I’ll get another themed one, ‘cause honestly, the basic Pro Controller is just that: too basic. For a $69.99 product, I wouldn’t feel satisfied spending that amount of money for something that doesn’t enamore me.
 
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Oh that to? yeah, no, this opinion is more trash than any 4chan leak, at least those are amusing and creative half the time, this is just uninformed and narrow minded
Great breakdown, he's always had a way of "bending" the facts to his narrative, often even contradicting himself from post to post.

He was a breath of fresh air in the Wii era - when the IGNs and GameSpots of the world were at the peak of their PS360 "hardcore gamers" era - writing about the Iwata era business strategy. I fell off when he started flirting with that gamer gatin', women bashin', Trump praisin' lifestyle (and gradually found out he wasn't particularly concerned with facts if it didn't suit him). Maybe he's changed but probably not, based scrolling his blog :p.
 
Y’know, I give up. The Switch really is in Uncharted Territory and I honestly don’t know when to expect a Switch 2. Be it 2024 or 2025.

But another part of me tells me that, just because the Switch is over performing doesn’t mean this performance will be a momentum that’ll stick, which is why they said it was gonna be challenging to reach 15 million.

When Nintendo comfortably reaches, and most certainly, excedes their 15 million projection, they’ll release a sigh of relief. But honestly, I can’t see them relying on the Switch the next Fiscal Year the same way they’re doing this FY. I would be VERY surprised if the OLED keeps selling as its doing, because honestly, it’s the main factor that’s carrying the Switch sales.
 
Great breakdown, he's always had a way of "bending" the facts to his narrative, often even contradicting himself from post to post.

He was a breath of fresh air in the Wii era - when the IGNs and GameSpots of the world were at the peak of their PS360 "hardcore gamers" era - writing about the Iwata era business strategy. I fell off when he started flirting with that gamer gatin', women bashin', Trump praisin' lifestyle (and gradually found out he wasn't particularly concerned with facts if it didn't suit him). Maybe he's changed but probably not, based scrolling his blog :p.
Oh , i get how he could have been a breath of fresh air back then.

Just thinking back to the switch launch, i expected it to be a hit from the beginning, having dreamed of such a device for like 8 years by then (the moment i realized that it was possible to simply output the PSP to a TV...yeah, sony was way further along in that regard compared to nintendo), but people where like "dead on Arrival", "to weak", "if its more then 200$ its to expensive"...

and even today, to many people ignore the bigger tech sphere in analyzing the situation (how the phone market since it shares a lot of DNA with it, how did tech upgrade acceptance and naming conventions change over the last 10 years,....).

but looking at the "Games im playing" column ... seems hes more NES/RETRO oriented, and there is for sure not a lack of questionable reactionary commentators with an online outlet in that field. (well, okay, the internet in general probably).
 
read through it... i completly disagree with his position.
"2D Mario helps reinvigorate a consoles decline"... New Mario Bros Wii was in wiis third year, long before the decline was, New super mario bros wii u was a Launch Title, and on the DS/3DS it was a mid lifespan release.
This is a quote from a news article about Nintendo strong sales during the 2009 Holiday Season. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nintendo-shares-idINTRE6050QB20100106
Shares in Nintendo Co Ltd 7974.OS jumped 7 percent on Wednesday after strong holiday sales in the United States helped erase market concerns that momentum for its Wii game console had peaked.
As for the DS, it and the PSP went toe to toe for a moment until the pendulum definitely started swinging towards the DS, ircc this was around the release of the DS Lite which launched with NSMB. So the pattern of NSMB reinvigorating hardware (or handheld market share in the case of DS) might not be 4/4 but it's 2/4.
The jump from "Splatoon 2 was 5 years later, so they expect splatoon 3 to life for exactly 5 years more" ignoring the options that 3 years are maybe enough, that it wont imediately die when the successor is released, and that maybe it works just as well on the successor?
You're quoting him wrong here, he says a new live service title signals that Nintendo will keep the system around for at least another 5 years (which is backed up by the infamous Switch is in the half of its life-cycle quote) and that it doesn't make sense to release a successor a year after its release, not that Splatoon will get supported for 5 years or that it won't get announced before the support is over.

I will defer to you with regard to the other points.
 
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This is a quote from a news article about Nintendo strong sales during the 2009 Holiday Season. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nintendo-shares-idINTRE6050QB20100106
With a 20% price cut... i dont think its wrong to say it helped push the console, but thats something you can say about any big first party release. If a console has no games, sales drop, if it has many great game,s sales are strong.
But okay, lets count this one...
As for the DS, it and the PSP went toe to toe for a moment until the pendulum definitely started swinging towards the DS, ircc this was around the release of the DS Lite which launched with NSMB. So the pattern of NSMB reinvigorating hardware (or handheld market share in the case of DS) might not be 4/4 but it's 2/4.
Here i would say the revision was such a huge step, that it cant be simply counted towards new super mario bros, and how do you "reguvinate" sales when you literary launch a new revision that by default will do that. I really dont see a parallel to >help a revision early in its life< to revitalizing a platform that is on a natural fall of because of saturation.

Thats in my eyes about as good as saying "as long as they release games it means they dont want to make a new platform".
You're quoting him wrong here, he says a new live service title signals that Nintendo will keep the system around for at least another 5 years (which is backed up by the infamous Switch is in the half of its life-cycle quote) and that it doesn't make sense to release a successor a year after its release, not that Splatoon will get supported for 5 years or that it won't get announced before the support is over.
And what is his reasoning if its a cross gen title? not talking about that, not even taking it into account, and ignoring that even if a platform is launched, most Switch players wont have it in the first year (impossible, supply constrained), meaning for the first years it will still have an audience of 120M Switches out there as the main switch console in the household...

Heck, they released Pokemon Black and White 2 > 1 year AFTER the launch of the 3DS. He just doesnt have a strong case here and did not expand about other possible interpretations or options, just his prefered one, and we got a real FE announcement after Switch was announced, while the Switch FE was "been worked on".
Also: nintendo dies not sell season passes or stuff for splatoon. They can just have it be enhanced on switch 2 till a sequel arrives, have it life for 3-4 years on the original before splatoon 4.
And the "5 years": its not like splatoon 2 got meaningful content for 5 years, Splatoon 3 was announced for a year of those 5 and no big updates came out in that time.

They showed the Side order, but not much. They could just as well use this as a push with the new platform.

I don't want to sound to harsh, but while there is a possibility to read his points in your way, with how lackluster his overall argumentation and substantiation is that would be giving him a overly beneficial reading that he did not deserve with the rest of the blog post in my eyes.
 
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First, thanks everyone who reached out privately. Ya'll are cool.

Second, let's do some speculating/wishing. What do ya'll want from the next console other than performance. Squishy triggers? A 1080p screen? A second screen? New colors? It can be literally anything.

The rules are - reply to this message directly, but no judging each other's picks. No telling folks why it's not possible, or what it's unlikely, or why the shouldn't want it. I just want people to say what they imagine the next thing might have. It's cool if it's a weird niche thing, it's cool if it's boring. Just let me know. I'm a little tired of this rut of "the same but better" and odds are Nintendo has one surprise cooking, and if it's yours, I want to celebrate that you get your weird niche thing!
VR support at launch, with an accessory that turns the "tablet" into a VR Headset, and camera joycons on the tips for high-quality motion capture.
 
I feel some people overestimates the potential success of the next gen console. It will be near impossible to make a system as popular as the Switch, but having big third party support is definitely a must.

It’s going to be huge tbh. If Nintendo make enough units it will probably be the fastest selling games system of all time. Not saying it will outsell the Switch since tech in terms of the cloud/streaming on mobile will evolve further and lead to greater alternatives, but I do think we’ll be looking at a 100m+ selling device.

I don’t think ‘big third party support’ is a must either. It will be successful with third party support on the level of the current Switch. I do think though that we’ll see heavy hitters from third parties earlier on in the new system’s life since these companies felt like they missed the boat when the original Switch launched as not many people expected it to be a big success. Games like Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil 4 remake would be great year one titles…
 
You really want me to say it, don't you? Okay, i'm not going to disappoint the expecations put on me.

Scrollwheel Shoulderbuttons.
Could I interest you in capacitive shoulder buttons instead? Same input capabilities, but with even more possibilities! (There's also less to break and doesn't mess with the plain L and R presses.)
 
VR support at launch, with an accessory that turns the "tablet" into a VR Headset, and camera joycons on the tips for high-quality motion capture.
A virtual boy dock with tripod that doesn't strap to your head!

It'd be cool if at least they had the labo cardboard headset built into the packaging for the new system.
 
This should be obvious,

Completely different architectures. They needed completely disparate development teams to make the 3ds game or the Wii U game, and then port it to the DS/Wii. Too much divergent development. Main reasons why the combined handheld/home development in the first place.
The hardware wasn't just handed down to them from Zeus. If continuing development primarily on the old machine while allowing it to look better on the new machine was something they wanted, they could've made it happen. Yet they have repeatedly chosen not to. And Wii and Wii U were very much built on the shoulders of their predecessors.
They can make epic/grand ToTK sized games for the next 5 years.
TOTK is maybe one of the better examples against this, I think. In a weirder world, a lot of Switch games still could've functioned as simultaneous Wii U releases. But TOTK is an example of building onto a Wii U release so much that a Wii U version would no longer be feasible. Easy easy to imagine the same happening for the next game, even if they didn't change graphical complexity much.
 
Could I interest you in capacitive shoulder buttons instead? Same input capabilities, but with even more possibilities! (There's also less to break and doesn't mess with the plain L and R presses.)
How do you propose this works? I know there's stuff like Apple's solid-state trackpad, but I don't think I've seen anyone combine that tech with a physical button. Unless you're saying they go with solid-state shoulder buttons.

edit: ignore me, I was thinking this was in response to someone mentioning analog shoulderbuttons, not scrollderwheels.
 
I was watching it, and got to almost 3 minutes. I’m going to be honest, I think he’s misinterpreting that part that included the switch. The switch was simply an example, as it is a current gen console and they are looking for people with experience shipping games on consoles or PC. Switch being included widens their reach of potential people and makes the search more favorable to appear for people who are looking for a job.


Saying “(PlayStation 5, XBox Series or Switch)” I think makes it pretty clear.


They need people pretty much for this development studio. And of course, they are hiring more people. So, when you have a dev studio looking for people, they’ll attempt to make it more favorable/likely.

It’s like a reverse filter in a sense.


I wouldn’t read much into this or these job listings as “oh it means it’ll include the switch or switch 2”, but as “they’re looking for anyone that fits this job perfectly, even those that have developed or delivered with the switch, it’s not limited to just PS5/XBS and PC”
He does consider the possibility of a MK1 situation where it's just a Switch port of games available ont he current gen.

But his deduction is this dev skipped Switch in their last game when they put out stuff on PS4/XBONE so it's a bit out of character to be supporting Switch this late. But you never know.
 
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I think 2026 Nintendo pulls out the Switch 2 Pro which has a die shrink drake that can do docked clocks portable, higher density battery and storage, AND a 4K screen… it can slot into a (sold separately) headset that adds cameras and comes with “VR JoyCons” that have tracking rings. The VR quality is roughly Quest 3 level because of the VR industries growth since apple entered, with a lot of off the shelf parts that are far superior. Nintendo has a least one killer app for VR, a new IP. It flops.
 
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Typically, key partners will have a devkit for about a yr ahead of launch. Others will get access closer to launch or after launch due to limited devkit supply and being a low priority.

The question is who would Nintendo see as a key partner as we move towards their next hardware? When you look at the majority of Western publishers, its easy to see that they see PlayStation and Xbox as their priority and Switch is just something they port some older games to. For example, EA is a major publisher and would be a priority for Sony and Microsoft, but the limited support they have shown Switch, Nintendo isnt likely to give them early access. Same with Activision. I believe the number of key partners that Nintendo will grant early access development hardware to is very small. Internally numerous teams will be working years and in advance. The recipe for success may be very similar to Switch, get the hardware out on the market with a strong launch title followed by a steady stream of quality first party titles helping to establish the new platform and then third parties will follow behind fleshing out the lineup.
 
Could I interest you in capacitive shoulder buttons instead? Same input capabilities, but with even more possibilities! (There's also less to break and doesn't mess with the plain L and R presses.)

giphy.gif


and Scrollwheel Shoulderbuttons!
 
I see, huge thanks for explaining <3


As much as I dislike "Meta" (facebook xd), since Threads will be integrating Fediverse (Mastodon, lemmy, bluesky, etc) a bit after launch, I have hope in it bringing the fediverse to the mainstream and popularising it enough to the point I can stick to Mastodon and not really miss anything I wanna see on Threads (ex. posts from big companies who only use big mainstream platforms to post official updates like Nintendo or Sony). I rarely give props to Meta but if this is pulled off well I can see the success of Threads being a win-win for everyone on the internet, including those who want a more privacy-sane internet.

Playstation is already on threads so you probably wont miss anything.
 
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First, thanks everyone who reached out privately. Ya'll are cool.

Second, let's do some speculating/wishing. What do ya'll want from the next console other than performance. Squishy triggers? A 1080p screen? A second screen? New colors? It can be literally anything.

The rules are - reply to this message directly, but no judging each other's picks. No telling folks why it's not possible, or what it's unlikely, or why the shouldn't want it. I just want people to say what they imagine the next thing might have. It's cool if it's a weird niche thing, it's cool if it's boring. Just let me know. I'm a little tired of this rut of "the same but better" and odds are Nintendo has one surprise cooking, and if it's yours, I want to celebrate that you get your weird niche thing!
A folding console with 1080p screen, that will use DLSS on portable mode. R and L scroll buttons and ZL and ZR Trigger Buttons. Some kind of tech on controller to replace the Infrared to make possible a perfect pointer. New and improved analog sticks and rumble tech. Bigger joycons than current models to a better grip.

The console itself will be more colors to choose. a way to use smartphones as a second control or a second screen for games like Nintendoland. A wireless dock mode to use the console screen and the TV at the same time.

Maybe put a camera on console to use on games like just dance. A microphone on controller for online, but that I don't know if will be that great.
 
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2d Mario has a reputation for reinvigorating a console’s decline. This happened with the DS and the Wii. The fact that Super Mario Wonder is not being on Switch 2 tells me that Nintendo plans for Switch to stick around longer.
Gonna delurk here...this isn't true. The "original" New Super Mario Bros. came out around the time the DS was really taking off. NSMB Wii came out maybe a little after the Wii's peak as a fad but before any major decline. The 3DS game was a fairly early release and the Wii U was launch. A 2D Mario coming out this late in a system's life is, well, "uncharted territory." Though actually, if you count Yoshi's Island that came out in 1995, the SNES's final year before the 64...but there isn't really a consistent pattern to all this.
 
The hardware wasn't just handed down to them from Zeus. If continuing development primarily on the old machine while allowing it to look better on the new machine was something they wanted, they could've made it happen. Yet they have repeatedly chosen not to. And Wii and Wii U were very much built on the shoulders of their predecessors.

TOTK is maybe one of the better examples against this, I think. In a weirder world, a lot of Switch games still could've functioned as simultaneous Wii U releases. But TOTK is an example of building onto a Wii U release so much that a Wii U version would no longer be feasible. Easy easy to imagine the same happening for the next game, even if they didn't change graphical complexity much.
And Switch can already barely run it as it is, let's not ignore the million framedrops... Whatever next gen exclusive Nintendo makes for Drake will make it look insanely primitive, and will NOT get ported at all. Computionally speaking, this is a ludicrous jump that rivals the likes of leaving PS3 for a PS4 without its biggest bottlenecks like CPU while bringing dedicated hardware to the table, not counting docked mode. The 6x GPU figures alone are already huge by themselves, but when you remember Ampere tflops basically play at a different league... Pretending the Switch will be able to run any of its exclusives to begin with is ridiculous, especially if DLSS and raytracing is already a factor day one.

I'd like to get some detailed information about this fact, but the decompression engine alone is probably already as fast as the available A57 cores for games on the Switch... Just to put it in perspective.
 
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After reading this article Ampere has its shader array underutilize many of the times as SM occupancy is pretty low. It's worth mentioning that they're using the giant 3090 in the test, and smaller cards would have better shader utilization. Still I'm thinking about Drake and its rather big GPU (for its class) and wonder if Drake would be bottlenecked in the same way as I mentioned above, or devs would find a way to better fill all those hungry 12SMs, or maybe Nvidia and Nintendo has done some micro customization to the architecture that alleviates the problem. What are your insights on this @Thraktor @oldpuck as this is pretty much out of my realm of understanding since I'm not a game developers nor a hardware architect.

Also I'm going to Japan this month and I might visit Kyoto which has Nintendo Co. Ltd main headquarter lol

It's difficult to tell from the article whether low shader utilisation is a general architectural issue with Ampere, or if it's the result of them comparing the huge 3090 to a couple of Pascal GPUs which are less than a quarter of the size, or indeed if it's particular to the benchmark they're using. One thing I would say is that this is one of those cases where developing for a console, and being able to optimise around a single hardware configuration, really helps. Switch developers are looking at exactly the same statistics as they run through in the article, and I mean exactly. They're using Nvidia's Nsight tools, which are the same tools provided to Switch developers to perform this kind of performance profiling, except tweaked for Nintendo's use-case (eg supporting NVN).

You can certainly use tools like Nsight to profile and optimise on PC, and devs behind good PC ports will pay a lot of attention to these things, but it's much more laborious. You need to run on a wide variety of hardware configurations, so you'd really want to profile performance on as many of these as you can, and even if that just means one GPU from each of the 3 most recent architectures from Nvidia, AMD and Intel, that's 9 times the number of profiling targets as a console release, and you'll need to use different tools from each of the manufacturers to do so. Even if you are profiling every piece of hardware you can find, you'll probably see different bottlenecks and different required solutions across all of them. A code change which improves shader utilisation on the RTX 3090 may harm performance on the RTX 3050, let alone an Intel integrated GPU or a Radeon RX 7600M laptop chip.

I'm not a game developer or a hardware architect myself, but I would expect that if any games are running with low shader utilisation on Switch NG (or any other console), then it's either a quick port where they didn't have the time or resources to tightly optimise around the hardware, or the developers have made a very conscious effort to trade off lower shader utilisation to gain performance wins elsewhere. If the latter is often the case, then you could certainly argue that there's an issue with the architecture, but it's hard to judge based on analysing a PC benchmark running on a much larger GPU.
 
One last thing I’d like to add to my wishlist.

As a dad I really want improved parental controls
My main gripe being that you can only set time limits per system instead of per profile.

A per profile time limit would solve most of the fighting in my house haha

Also a way to give more time easily (15, 30, 60 more minutes)
 
in the ongoing discussion about storage and whether or not SD cards will be fast enough, here's a notorious game for asset loading, Star Citizen, running on an SD card. the uploader says he's getting 20-40 fps, so whether or not that's from asset loading or just steam deck performance we don't know



for comparison, here's the game in an HDD, Sata SSD, and NVME SSD

 
in the ongoing discussion about storage and whether or not SD cards will be fast enough, here's a notorious game for asset loading, Star Citizen, running on an SD card. the uploader says he's getting 20-40 fps, so whether or not that's from asset loading or just steam deck performance we don't know



for comparison, here's the game in an HDD, Sata SSD, and NVME SSD



Star Citizen? Talking about the mother of all test. ;D
 
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Please read this staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
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