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

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#2023
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D36 said:
The ideal price point would be $400, but some suggest that it could go up to $450.
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$399 is my guess, but I could see them adding a premium SKU that would ultimately be the more popular option but still be able to advertise "starting at $399". Something like Redacted with an LCD screen and 64 GB of storage for $399 or a OLED model with 256GB of storage for $499. The profit margins would actually be better on the premium model because 64GB versus 256 GB of storage is likely a difference of just a few dollars to Nintendo and thanks to Nintendo getting a head start on sourcing OLED panels for Switch, they will be able to source OLED panels for Redacted for just a bit more than LCD panels. If they only have one SKU at launch, it will be $399, I just cant see Nintendo going higher than that.

Evil Lucario said:
RDR1, I can see since it was just rated in Korea. Still skeptical of RDR2 though, because L.A. Noire was in the works for all consoles at the time so it was just another platform to add. But who knows...
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I actually think RDR1 will end up being a surprise announcement for Switch during the September Direct and launch later this year.
 
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Goodtwin said:
$399 is my guess, but I could see them adding a premium SKU that would ultimately be the more popular option but still be able to advertise "starting at $399". Something like Redacted with an LCD screen and 64 GB of storage for $399 or a OLED model with 256GB of storage for $499. The profit margins would actually be better on the premium model because 64GB versus 256 GB of storage is likely a difference of just a few dollars to Nintendo and thanks to Nintendo getting a head start on sourcing OLED panels for Switch, they will be able to source OLED panels for Redacted for just a bit more than LCD panels. If they only have one SKY at launch, it will be $399, I just cant see Nintendo going higher than that.



I actually think RDR1 will end up being a surprise announcement for Switch during the September Direct and launch later this year.
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I would pay $499 for that premium sku at launch if Nintendo played that card.
 
Bonejack said:
Okay i ask ... Are you by chance also the only Uncle of your two nephews? ;D

(Also, you can toally be a cool Uncle by allowing them to do parties in your basement when they're teenagers.)
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I am not the only Uncle (all four of my Wife's sisters are married), but two of them don't really have a relationship with those nephews as they both live in different parts of the country. And the other Uncle (we'll call Jake) is a narcissistic, and racist dirtbag who at the end will just scoff it off as all, "It's just a joke, bruh." He has a punching bag for a massive gut that I would love to practice my training on. So by default, I'm the favorite because I actually care about them, and I let them play my Switch when they're here. One is almost 3, and the other is almost 7. :cool:

Mrs. Shoulder and I don't want kids, so we're happy to spoil them, as well as the other nephews, plus the nieces in the family.
 
Goodtwin said:
$399 is my guess, but I could see them adding a premium SKU that would ultimately be the more popular option but still be able to advertise "starting at $399". Something like Redacted with an LCD screen and 64 GB of storage for $399 or a OLED model with 256GB of storage for $499. The profit margins would actually be better on the premium model because 64GB versus 256 GB of storage is likely a difference of just a few dollars to Nintendo and thanks to Nintendo getting a head start on sourcing OLED panels for Switch, they will be able to source OLED panels for Redacted for just a bit more than LCD panels. If they only have one SKY at launch, it will be $399, I just cant see Nintendo going higher than that.
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After owning the OLED for half a year, let me tell you: they can up-charge me whatever they’d like for the premium model, I WILL pay it because that screen is delicious
 
D36 said:
Not letting go til the end of the month, but I'm losing hope!

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Keep this up and you might turn into ssj4 Pikachu!

Keep up the good fight despite switching to team 2024...I would be more than happy if we got a surprise announcement for this year.
 
Meanwhile I'm on Team FY24 so as long as it's our before the end of March I win (Arguably a bit into April still is a win as they'd open FY25 with it)
 
Derachi said:
After owning the OLED for half a year, let me tell you: they can up-charge me whatever they’d like for the premium model, I WILL pay it because that screen is delicious
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When you play a native 720p game on the Switch OLED, especially if they have any sort of quality AA, the image quality is great and is why I think 720p is fine for Redacted, as long as its OLED. The Steam Deck has a middle of the road LCD panel, but even that has shown that 720p can be just fine for a 7" screen, but if the Deck had a quality OLED panel, It think games would look notably better than they do currently.
 
Goodtwin said:
When you play a native 720p game on the Switch OLED, especially if they have any sort of quality AA, the image quality is great and is why I think 720p is fine for Redacted, as long as its OLED. The Steam Deck has a middle of the road LCD panel, but even that has shown that 720p can be just fine for a 7" screen, but if the Deck had a quality OLED panel, It think games would look notably better than they do currently.
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720p on that OLED with solid AA is not just “fine for Redacted,” it’s ideal. I personally think it’d be a complete waste of battery pumping out all the pixels to get it to 1080p. Save the high resolutions for docked mode, keep handheld mode sipping ever-so-slowly on that battery and give me like 8-10 hours
 
You know, if I give my Logan Switch to my nephews, I'll be forever their favorite, and the detriment to my SIL & BIL. But it would give me a reason to buy a Switch OLED, preferably a Famicom version because I so want it to exist. :D
 
ILikeFeet said:
not a problem for Nintendo, I feel
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It's not. The Switch's battery already meets the definition of sufficiently replaceable given in the law:

A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it. Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.
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The only things you need to replace a Switch's battery are a common screwdriver, a commercially available tri-wing screwdriver, and knowing the one or two connectors to disconnect.
 
Shoulder said:
You know, if I give my Logan Switch to my nephews, I'll be forever their favorite, and the detriment to my SIL & BIL. But it would give me a reason to buy a Switch OLED, preferably a Famicom version because I so want it to exist. :D
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Isn't that Erista instead of Logan, or do you mean something else?
 
I don't know if it's part of the EU regulation or not, but there should be some king of a pawn solution. Were you pay say 50€ more for your electronics, that you get back when you return the battery.
 
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With EA actually putting effort into the Switch version of their new football game and the potential for CoD coming next year, it makes you feel more confident 3rd party support is going onwards and upwards on Switch/Switch 2.
 
ILikeFeet said:
a user on reddit tested ray tracing on a Radeon 5700XT and Ryzen 3600 thanks to the new mesa drivers. gives you a good idea of how AMD scales with ray tracing sans hardware acceleration

for comparison, an RX6400 plays Quake 2 RTX at 60fps max settings at 378p, the RX6500 plays at 60fps at 540p

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imagine how amazing a Metroid/Luigi Mansion game with Ray-Tracing would look.
 
Shoulder said:
But will be for Apple. :D

Probably already foaming at the mouth.

(Yes, it will affect other companies as well I'm well aware of that)
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Apple likely is fine too. In addition to regulation carve outs for devices subject to water, their current design is mostly in compliance already.

So the only real question is about the need for thermal heat to open the device, which is common in all phones with strong water resistance.
 
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Shoulder said:
So based on those, it’s reasonable to theorize the Switch 2 might be using UFS for its internal storage, potentially up to 256GB of it to boot, and at least 8GB of ram, though I have some thoughts on that last one.

I believe it was you who said for LPDDR5 ram modules, the 2GB modules are not used much anyone, and 4GB modules are starting to be phased out in favor of 6GB modules. Don’t remember if you said if those capacity of ram modules are specific to LPDDR5, or if it’s what’s simply available in the industry as a whole.

I think the Switch uses two ram modules in the PCB for a total of 4GB if I remember correctly, so it would also be reasonable to suggest two ram modules for the Switch 2. So the question then is, do Nintendo go with 2 of the 4GB modules, or go for broke with the 6GB modules for that rumored 12GB, which I also believe was in the Drake documents, no?

Then again, by the time Switch 2 does launch, potentially in 2024, the ram capacities in most Android smartphones may cross into that 12-16GB realm, so it could still line up.

I somewhat have trouble believing that Nintendo would undersell on ram given what they learned from Capcom's suggestion of going with 4GB instead of 2 for the Switch. But if we think of this from a different angle, the PS4 has 8GB of ram (yes, it’s GDDR5 memory, and not typical DDR type. I know), and the Switch has half of that. If we think the Switch will have half the ram of what the PS5 has, then 8GB sounds about right, if not a little underwhelming.
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I would say UFS is almost guaranteed. Even ignoring anything to do with performance, Nintendo presumably want to keep selling Switch NG for 6+ years, which means they'll need to be able to continue buying parts for it for that long (or introduce hardware revisions if they can't). Only 13% of phones reviewed by Notebookcheck in 2022 used eMMC, and as both Qualcomm and Mediatek have stopped supporting it in their new SoCs, it's not going to last much longer in the smartphone market. That's a pretty big issue for Nintendo using it in a new console, because they'd quickly become the only customer for high capacity eMMC, meaning they'd either need to pay over-the-odds to keep it in production, or introduce an early revision of the console which uses UFS instead.

Regarding RAM, there aren't any leaks or reliable rumours about RAM quantity, but both the Nvidia leak and Linux commits indicate a 128-bit memory bus, most likely LPDDR5 (although I don't think LPDDR5X is completely ruled out). The Switch had a 64-bit memory bus and used two 32-bit 2GB LPDDR4 modules, which were switched to LPDDR4X on Mariko models. The change to 128-bit is important, because Nintendo will now need to use a pair of 64-bit LPDDR5 modules. Entry level and mid-range phones typically use 32-bit memory modules, whereas only high-end phones will use 64-bit modules. Given high-end phones usually have more RAM than lower end phones, this means 64-bit modules aren't usually available in lower capacities like 32-bit modules are.

In the case of LPDDR5, I'm not aware of any phone which uses a 4GB 64-bit LPDDR5 module. The M2 MacBook Air in the 8GB configuration uses a pair of 4GB 64-bit LPDDR5 chips, but I don't believe they're standard LPDDR5 modules, as they're on-package with the M2. A handful of phones have used 6GB 64-bit LPDDR5 modules, including the iPhone 14 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE and the Google Pixel 6a, so those modules are in production. Again, from a parts availability point of view that makes 8GB of LPDDR5 pretty tricky, as they'd likely have to get the 4GB modules custom made, which would result in a price premium, and they wouldn't be able to multi-source, which usually helps drive prices down over time. In comparison, 6GB modules seem to be readily available, which would make a 12GB configuration much more straight forward to manufacture.
 
LiC said:
It's not. The Switch's battery already meets the definition of sufficiently replaceable given in the law:



The only things you need to replace a Switch's battery are a common screwdriver, a commercially available tri-wing screwdriver, and knowing the one or two connectors to disconnect.
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The adhesive under the battery could stand to be a little looser, took me about 3 different tools to pry it off.
 
Dakhil said:
Or Nintendo could put pull tabs on the battery to make battery removal easier.
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Or Nintendo could not glue in the battery at all because requiring stress or pressure to remove a LITHIUM ION battery seems like a bad idea repairability wise.

I understand why it can't just be under a one screw door like DS models, but maybe just have it held in with some brackets we can unclip and unscrew?

(They won't do this, obviously, if anything I expect them to superglue it to the midplate, as a joke.)
 
Z0m3le said:
Other then it being 128bit memory bus
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I've seen a lot of people floating the idea of 12GB RAM around and I'm confused as to whether that would be possible with a 128-bit bus, given that GPUs with a 128-bit bus will have either 8GB or 16GB (the source of the recent controversy with the 4060/4060ti having less VRAM than their predecessor because NVIDIA didn't want to fork out for 16GB), does anyone know if LPDDR modules scale differently to GDDR and would allow for 'in-between' total ram amounts to be used?
 
NZZN said:
I've seen a lot of people floating the idea of 12GB RAM around and I'm confused as to whether that would be possible with a 128-bit bus, given that GPUs with a 128-bit bus will have either 8GB or 16GB (the source of the recent controversy with the 4060/4060ti having less VRAM than their predecessor because NVIDIA didn't want to fork out for 16GB), does anyone know if LPDDR modules scale differently to GDDR and would allow for 'in-between' total ram amounts to be used?
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Thraktor just went into it above, but yes, module's are generally differently sized than GDDR and 12GB is a more likely config than 8GB. Orin does use in some of their modules, but just like Apple, it's a custom on-module job.

I do believe Micron now manufactures 4GB, 64bit LPDDR5 modules, but I admit that Micron's datasheets always trip me up, so @Look over there may have to correct me.

Edit: Samsung definitely does not, however, so @Thraktor is right, that Nintendo would only have one significant vendor if they went with 8GB
 
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Looking back at everything I would be a 2024 person. And then I would guess an April/May release. I do expect something this year in some form of mentioning the system. But I do expect the new system next year. Then again if it doesn't arrive I am not too disappointed as I have time to finish my backlog :D
 
NZZN said:
I've seen a lot of people floating the idea of 12GB RAM around and I'm confused as to whether that would be possible with a 128-bit bus, given that GPUs with a 128-bit bus will have either 8GB or 16GB (the source of the recent controversy with the 4060/4060ti having less VRAM than their predecessor because NVIDIA didn't want to fork out for 16GB), does anyone know if LPDDR modules scale differently to GDDR and would allow for 'in-between' total ram amounts to be used?
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They do scale differently. Series S for example has a 128b memory bus interface and comes with 10GB of RAM, 8GB faster GDDR6 and 2GB of slower GDDR6. But it is also able to hold a lot more modules than something like Drake.

If Drake was a larger stationary device, it would have less to worry about.
 
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olobolger said:
Here you have gameplay:

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Looks good. EA doesn't do anything for fun or free.

And while they did port Frostbite to Switch for PvZ a few years ago and this could well where they intended to land in terms of FIFA engine support on Switch, the fact remains Fifa 2022 and 23 remained as legacy editions, despite regularly charting on eshop, so they were certainly making bank.

I suspect they made this move with high confidence their Switch fork of Frostbite will be carried forward for many more years into the succ and their investment won't be wasted. I can't see them doing this just for the sunset years of Switch, when they were selling just fine with legacy editions.
 
Sol said:
Does the 128-bit memory bus mean were getting either 8 or 16 GB of RAM?

Wouldn't it need to have a 192-bit bus to make 12 GB of RAM work?
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No, as it would be using LPDDR5/5X memory. Those don’t sit at the same capacity as GDDR.

If it had a 192b bus and was with GDDR6 Mem Controller in the silicon, it would be a different discussion.
 
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MilkyChance said:
It took EA this long to put effort on their Switch port?
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Yeah, but once FC is on Frostbite, their work of portingh to Switch goes down.

Switch FIFA was bespoke (recall the FIFA 2018 coverage) so they stopped supporting it after creating the engine and everything and gave us stat updates.
The actual effort to support future editions won't be that great since they'll just port down their Frostbite master version.
 
Sol said:
Does the 128-bit memory bus mean were getting either 8 or 16 GB of RAM?

Wouldn't it need to have a 192-bit bus to make 12 GB of RAM work?
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Not if there are 6GB modules, which there are. And are in fact common in cellphone land where 16GB is overkill and 8GB is pretty tight
 
Sol said:
Does the 128-bit memory bus mean were getting either 8 or 16 GB of RAM?

Wouldn't it need to have a 192-bit bus to make 12 GB of RAM work?
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Anyone else feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the memory bus is split between the RAM modules. So, two 64-bit modules would fill the 128-bit bus. Whether each module is 4GB (for 8GB total) or 6GB (for 12GB total) isn't relevant to bus width, except as a design decision.
 
oldpuck said:
Not if there are 6GB modules, which there are. And are in fact common in cellphone land where 16GB is overkill and 8GB is pretty tight
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My concern is the Galaxy S23 RAM situation. Samsung went back down to 8GB on their flagship phones but the memory does run faster comparted to the 12GB on earlier models. I wonder if that could impact Nintendo's decision making especially if they are on a tight BOM budget.
 
Shoulder said:
I thought Erista was the original codename for the chip itself, but the Switch version (since it was binned slightly) was codenamed Logan?
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Logan is the previous generation TK1, which has a Kepler GPU, Erista didn't exist on a road map until a year before release on March 25th 2014 at GTC. Before this, it went from Logan to Parker (now known as TX2) but at this GTC, shortly before they approached Nintendo, when Switch was a GBA like device with a Sony Ericson SoC and 1GB of RAM (this is data from the gigaleak).

Parker BTW was Maxwell on 16ff, which does indicate that Nvidia originally thought of Pascal as a more efficient Maxwell chip, though this was in 2013, the architecture borrowed more and more from Volta, until it became different enough from Maxwell to call it it's own architecture, at least this is why Volta never had a gaming chip, it made more sense to move right to Turing at this point.

Tegra 1 2010
Tegra 2 2011 (almost used in the 3DS)
Tegra 3 2012 (Ouya)
Tegra 4 2013
Logan is Tegra K1 (Kepler) 2014
Erista is Tegra X1 (Maxwell) 2015
Parker is Tegra X2 (Pascal) 2016
Xavier is Tegra Xavier (Volta) 2018
Mariko is Tegra X1+ (Maxwell) 2019
Orin is Tegra Orin (Ampere) 2022
Thor is Tegra Thor (Ada Lovelace) 2025

Mobile technology slowed down a lot in the last 6 years, but Switch is still using technology from 8 years ago at this point, so the 9x raw performance jump on the GPU and even CPU that we are expecting, is very exciting. It's the first major graphics jump since the Wii U, 11 years ago and will ultimately be a longer period of time without a major jump in Nintendo hardware than any other in their history, though certainly in line with Gameboy to Gameboy Advance (just under 12 years) and Gamecube to Wii U (11 years).
 
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