No, not really, I remember all the Project Cafe leaks.
-
Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)
- Thread starter Dakhil
- Start date
Νεφέλωμα
Switch 3 enthusiast
- Pronouns
- He
wolftendo
Shiny hunter wolf
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I miss the soapdish shaped bezelless screen of that NX "leak" that supposedly came from Sweden... I want more fake leaks like that one.
I also need more leaks with a full on presentation/video made for them. Does anyone remember the XDS? The Nintendo Cross?
I also need more leaks with a full on presentation/video made for them. Does anyone remember the XDS? The Nintendo Cross?
"Crucifixion is Making a Comeback!" Scott the Woz
D36
#ITSXENOVER
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This really looks like an early look at what the Switch Lite would wound up becoming.
It probably would (Orin had it for a reason), but I assume Nintendo did a cost benefit analysis weighing price/ extra die size/ power consumption/ performance and didn't find it worth it.
Shoulder
Koopa
For the sake of argument, say it was 50 cents per chip they would save if those cores were removed for Mariko. When the Lite came out, the Mariko was the new chip, Switch was at around 40 million sold worldwide in mid to late 2019. So now you figure about 80 million systems sold thereabouts with Mariko, or close to it. That's still 40 million in savings, which isn't totally chump change even for a multi-billion dollar corporation like Nintendo.
Whether it's pennies, or dollars, if there's enough quantity, it'll all add up significantly over time.
For us normies, it'd be like if everyday, we went to Starbucks to get a 16oz coffee. Sure, doing it once or twice once in awhile it's not bad, but do it everyday at say 4-6 dollars per coffee, that shit adds up considerably (not to mention Starbucks isn't great to begin with). If you are an everyday coffee drinker like myself, you do a much better service brewing the coffee yourself where a 16oz coffee brewed at home is now about 50 cents, maybe closer these days to 60-70 cents due to inflation, and the cost of beans nowadays.
D
Deleted member 2
Guest
You're sure it'll happen, but it's extremely unlikely?
D
Deleted member 2
Guest
Think about it. Every Switch game would not work with this setup.
Almost every game has + and - do different things. One button cannot serve two functions without a serious patch that would be unique to every single game.
Truno
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Apologies if this topic has been discussed ad nauseum on here, but the Switch's first-party pipeline has been really impressive, especially this year (7th market year!!)
The thought of next-gen hardware is exciting, especially since it'll be the biggest jump in Nintendo hardware in over a decade. Considering that, do you think that Nintendo's pipeline will struggle with much stronger hardware?
The thought of next-gen hardware is exciting, especially since it'll be the biggest jump in Nintendo hardware in over a decade. Considering that, do you think that Nintendo's pipeline will struggle with much stronger hardware?
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
I'm interested to see this myself. Nintendo has really got themselves in a great place organizationally, and I think that, more than anything, is Iwata's legacy with the company.
Nintendo's pace has partially been due to an aggressive game-banking strategy which was enabled by a lot of Wii U ports early on. I don't think the hardware itself will be an issue, just banking enough next gen games to get the pace up.
And presumably that's part of why all the remakes and remasters late in the consoles life are for.
indeed, removing fakes doesn't accomplish anything unless there's something damaging about it. and fake renders definitely aren't that
PedroNavajas
Boo
- Pronouns
- He, him
People should stop with "Nintendo is cheap" thinking. A game company that is still pushing for game cards in 2023 cannot be thought as one looking to save penny's on hardware as a main concern.
- Pronouns
- he/him
On one hand, I hear you, and this is all very logical.I’m going to be real with you.
Those pennies don’t mean anything at the scale they operate at or anything they would be worried about. If they need those pennies, at their size and scale, it’s because they are inefficient at using that money they have and have to save somewhere.
I mean like, assume they cut enough to where they save 50-60¢ per units, that’s “only” 500-600k. Across a whole console generation. They routinely spend >10x that for game dev and hardware R&D
Like by March 2021, spending nearly 800Million for game dev, hardware, market research, etc that happened in the previous fiscal year total. Doesn’t account for the previous years. So, I’d be more sensible about that penny pinching description that’s given to them. It’s not that worth it to them.
But this is off topic I think, or it might be a derail I should say. Just wanted to nitpick at this.
On the other hand, Nintendo has maintained - from the launch of the Switch to this day - two separate compilations of the Switch firmware, one with support for microSDXC cards and one without. All to avoid paying royalties to Microsoft over exFAT usage for users who don't actually use exFAT by not actually giving them a version that supports it until a mircoSDXC card is inserted. I don't know of a single other company that does anything like this.
Nintendo has no problems spending money, but they do seem to hate spending unnecessarily - especially with regards to production hardware, even if it'd just amount to a rounding error at the scale they operate.
Or maybe they just hate royalties lol. Tracks with their lack of support for DVDs, Blu-ray, sensible sound formats over HDMI (Dolby Digital/DTS)... and exFAT on the 3DS. HDMI is just about the one thing they've just bitten the bullet on straight up when they had a reason to, but they also didn't really have a choice due to the reality of consumer TVs.
Not singling out Nintendo, all game consoles are budget devices. And nobody likes dead silicon.
I was wondering about the patenting thing since the Linux kernel has an exFAT filesystem support module/driver developed by Samsung, which is licensed under the GPL version 2 terms, but quickly answered my own questions due to:
- It was Samsung who developed it and licensed it, and it apparently did not make exFAT turn royalty-free/patent-unencumbered, as in "Samsung holds copyright to that implementation of exFAT, but the tech invention pool is still patented by Microsoft, with a grant for the Open Invention Network (of which Nintendo is not a part of)
- The release was in 2019, which is too deep into the Nintendo Switch lifecycle already anyway to warrant a review and a legally clear pipeline update for an already ongoing procedure that so far is encountering zero actual problems (that we see, anyway. Who knows what's going on in behind the scenes?
)
Last edited:
MadMarvainy
Moblin
- Pronouns
- He/Him
DF talked a bit about the T239 leaks in their latest episode.
Nothing new but to sum it up Rich thinks it's a "really really solid upgrade", just don't expect something on par with Series S.
Nothing new but to sum it up Rich thinks it's a "really really solid upgrade", just don't expect something on par with Series S.
they have before, through the linux updates. they won't acknowledge stolen data which is why they keep referring to Orin despite the fact we know it's not a cut down Orin
also, they keep bringing up that comment by Furukawa about being cautious of the transition and somehow tied it in with backwards compatibility fears. can't say I like the narrative, but it's pretty clear they just don't know anything of merit right now
Dizzle
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Unless...
Motion control. Shake each Joycon a specific way to do plus or minus. Or better yet, make an exaggerated plus or minus symbol in the air in front of you using both. Handheld mode? You're gonna be shaking the whole console.
I'm a genius.
- Pronouns
- he/him
Yeah - in fairness, it's probably taking them very little effort to actually maintain this system. I imagine >99% of whatever dev time was spent on it was back before launch, and even that probably wasn't much.The release was in 2019, which is too deep into the Nintendo Switch lifecycle already anyway to warrant a review and a legally clear pipeline update for an already ongoing procedure that so far is encountering zero actual problems (that we see, anyway. Who knows what's going on in behind the scenes?
It's just the mere existence of it tells you what Nintendo's mentality is with this stuff. The fact that someone there even asked if it could be done this way, and then actually had someone implement it... like, seriously, are there other examples I'm missing of companies locking functionality behind optional updates they provide for free just to save a buck?
MadMarvainy
Moblin
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I must've missed this, good to know. I've been told before that they typically won't comment on stolen stuff on here before.
The BC boogeyman won't stop, but I am not really worried, I think the system will find a great middle ground solution for BC that ends up working just fine. I feel like almost everything Furukawa has said about the next generation has been misunderstood, same with the little that Miyamoto has said.
- Pronouns
- he / him
I mean, they're not doing it out of charity or because of an intense philosophical belief in physical media. They think there's money to be made in having the physical games, and the game cards we've got were the best option at hand.
eye0h
"aggressively persue a multiplatform strategy"
- Pronouns
- He/Him
nonono you don't understand, that's what the sliding joycon are for!
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
PC-focused people are too traumatized by shader stutter to have any belief in video games right now.
(The solution to shader stutter will just be compiling shaders after launching the game whenever there's been a driver update, but devs will just optimize shader compilation to make it much faster in the future)
I imagine any dev that avoids compiling shaders at game launch after a driver update is just worried that consumers will stop booting up the game due to what is equivalent to long load times at the start of the game, but I'm guessing there's a ton of low hanging fruit with shader compilation speed as the speed has never really mattered before.
(The solution to shader stutter will just be compiling shaders after launching the game whenever there's been a driver update, but devs will just optimize shader compilation to make it much faster in the future)
I imagine any dev that avoids compiling shaders at game launch after a driver update is just worried that consumers will stop booting up the game due to what is equivalent to long load times at the start of the game, but I'm guessing there's a ton of low hanging fruit with shader compilation speed as the speed has never really mattered before.
UE5's solution is to do both first launch shader compilation as well as better live compilation with hiding any uncompiled shaders until completion
if BC is handled like GCN and Wii games with the gpu emulated, I would guess either the hardware is fast enough to do shader translation or there's a pre-launch step
MilkyChance
Cappy
- Pronouns
- they/them
People tend to forget, Nintendo is very conservative and buys whatever in bulk for low costs. But Nintendo's biggest strength has always been finding ways to make limited resources into something very good.
The Competition
Piranha Plant
I dont think it will change much personally. The stronger hardware might even make some development efforts easier actually as their devs will need to spend less time optimising, allowing the hardware to brute-force some of the parts of some games that they would otherwise have to optimise for weaker hardware.
Maybe some stuff will take longer to develop if its especially ambitious, but I think that'll be the minority of cases. Overall I think 1st party output will remain at the same frequency, and increased 3rd party support (fingers tightly crossed) will mean a denser release schedule than even Switch 1.
TomNookYankees
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm pretty sure they still use game cards mainly because they don't have any other choice. Disks are not a viable format on a handheld device which is why even Sony eventually stopped trying to make it work after the PSP.
Giancarlo
Nintendo connoiseur
a brand new 3D Mario or the rumored 2D Donkey Kong game is likely to be a launch title for Switch sucessor, 2D Legend of Zelda is a possibility(be it a brand new game or a remake of a previous game of the franchise, such as the Oracle games or a Link to the Past/Minish Cap, 3D Legend of Zelda the only possibility is the remasters of Wind Waker/Twilight Princess coming to Switch sucessor, since the next mainline game of the franchise, will not be ready at on year 5/6 of the console(2029/2030),
Animal Crossing i could see Nintendo releasing the next game on year 2/3 of the console
the next Mario Kart, in that regard Nintendo might release a 2/3 years after the final DLC of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, to give the franchise some distance and not interfere in it sales
the next Super Smash Bros game might be a defintive edition of Super Smash Bros Ultimate with all content on it
Giancarlo
Nintendo connoiseur
waggle now in 4K?
Pretty sure Xbox is generally known for being super stingy with DVD/Blu-ray playback. If I understand correctly (never owned one), they even charged extra for the feature on the original Xbox.
Even on their more recent consoles, putting in a DVD or Blu-ray gives you a store link to the Blu-ray app if you haven't done it before.
Adulfzen
Like Like
- Pronouns
- he/him
Plans are already in place to expand Nintendo such as more office space in Japan. Aside from that, studios like NST seems to be growing and perhaps will be in a state to develop their own software. Nintendo will also keep relying on their relationships with third party studios to assist on EPD titles or developing projects like Astral Chain.
Aside from that It's also important to realize that with increased fidelity and growing ambitions for some franchises, games will take longer to develop and ship which is probably why we will see more remasters/remakes/ports from 3DS and Gamecube/Wii as a way to pad their year.
Tho I suspect Nintendo won't ever run into the same issues as either Sony or Microsoft when it comes to long droughts without first party releases.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
I will say I've talked to Rich about T239 a couple times, fairly recently.
I am sure that he - and literally every journalist in video games - has heard things we've not heard. But the gap between "pretty sure this is the situation" and "I am ready as a journalist to deal with the consequences of breaking this story" is pretty big.
It also makes speculation a mine field - if you say something contrary to what you've heard, that is potentially irresponsible, but you also can't come hard down on a situation that might be in flux. Meanwhile there is a cluster of the internet trying to parse your words as some form of code.
I don't envy anyone that, I'm happy to play Mycroft Holmes and play the intellectual exercise without being yelled at if I get it wrong.
I am sure that he - and literally every journalist in video games - has heard things we've not heard. But the gap between "pretty sure this is the situation" and "I am ready as a journalist to deal with the consequences of breaking this story" is pretty big.
It also makes speculation a mine field - if you say something contrary to what you've heard, that is potentially irresponsible, but you also can't come hard down on a situation that might be in flux. Meanwhile there is a cluster of the internet trying to parse your words as some form of code.
I don't envy anyone that, I'm happy to play Mycroft Holmes and play the intellectual exercise without being yelled at if I get it wrong.
Sol
Moblin
Let's assume Nintendo is targeting a November 2024 release date for the Switch 2.
Is it already too late for them to add more RAM if they wanted to? If they had initially gone with 8 GB of LPDDR5, and just now decided to go with 12 GB of LPDDR5X, is that a decision they could make right now without affecting the Fall 2024 target release date?
Is it already too late for them to add more RAM if they wanted to? If they had initially gone with 8 GB of LPDDR5, and just now decided to go with 12 GB of LPDDR5X, is that a decision they could make right now without affecting the Fall 2024 target release date?
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
There is like no chance they finalized this 2.5 years (at minimum) before release. People have got to stop caring about this LinkedIn profile, it doesn't make sense how this is being interpreted.
It's had this lifespan of
"He worked on the tapeout project he says, this must mean the chip is finalized so it's releasing very soon!"
to
"Okay, the Switch 2 isn't coming out until Fall 2024 or later, but the chip must have been finalized mid 2022."
And IDK. Why would Nintendo ever do this. What are the benefits of finalizing your chip at least 2.5 years before you plan to release hardware using it. Couldn't these be like finalized chips for testing hardware that will never be released a consumer device with the actual chip having slight differences and not being finalized until 2024.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Soooooooo we should ignore evidence of tapeout because the timing wouldn't easily match the decision you've made as to when Nintendo will release the system?
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
"as to when" ?
It's not coming until Fall 2024 most likely. I don't know if that's the optimal release time, but it's just way more likely than any time before Fall 2024. There's no room left in 2023, a Q1 release seems very unlikely due to how late in the game we already are, and only one system in the last 39 years has launched between April and August inclusive (the N64 due to Mario 64 delays)
I'm not making a call on optimal release time, I'm just stating something obvious.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are there even controllers that are compatible with lpddr5 and lpddr5x?
Because there's no particular difference in tapeout then and tapeout now. What would even change?
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
1. Only one console in the last 39 years has had its initial release date be from April to August (inclusive). This was the N64 due to the Mario 64 delays. It's not impossible to release in this timeframe, but it's very unlikely as every console ever made (post-NES) has aimed to release in the holidays or right before.
2. The other timeframes left before Fall 2024 are the rest of 2023 or Q1 2024.
3. A release in 2023 would involve Nintendo revealing a console out of nowhere (within the next couple of weeks) and having by far the shortest reveal to release of any console in gaming history. It would also involve the next console launching with Mario Wonder and Mario RPG as its big games which would be very weird as launch games.
4. This leaves Q1 2024 as the only semi-realistic release window before Fall 2024, but this window already only has 8 months until it closes and there's just nowhere close to any serious chatter about a major upcoming Switch 2 blowout that would need to happen within the next 3 months for me to believe in a Q1 2024 release.
5. This leaves Fall 2024 as the earliest realistic release window.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
Okay, so the post of "I don't think the Switch 2 will have LPDDR5X because the Switch 2's chip was taped out before LPDRR5X was common" has been made 10-20 times.
But... Why would you tape it out before you could have it be compatible with LPDRR5X as... You know LPDDR5X is going to be more available soon and will be better to use for your system?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's not evidence, that's patterns and lack of chatter.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
Except these patterns have underlining theories that make sense.
1. Systems don't release in April to August (inclusive) because every game system launch has aimed for the holidays and the ones that miss the holidays miss by only a few months. The N64 is the only exception post-Famicom.
2. When you are near release of a system, you must inform 1000s of people so tons of leaks and chatter will happen. None of that is happening right now.
This isn't pattern chasing, the theory backing both is strong.
RennanNT
Bob-omb
who says it isn't using LPDDR5X?
and because LPDDR5 is still more than acceptable for Drake. the expected config would be faster than what's in the steam deck
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I appreciate the strength of the theories backing your statements. But if we have evidence pointing towards movement, and you say "my theories indicate that movement shouldn't be happening yet, so people should ignore that evidence," you understand why that lands a bit weird, right?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Two things I keep in mind here:
I appreciate the strength of the theories backing your statements. But if we have evidence pointing towards movement, and you say "my theories indicate that movement shouldn't be happening yet, so people should ignore that evidence," you understand why that lands a bit weird, right?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
And
Pennies matter in quantities of a million.
Anyone who contradicts these consistently I tend to ignore.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
What do you think the standard is?
What are you talking about? There are multiple ones - I think you might be misremembering and thinking the interpretation of the data changed, not that the data changed.
In December 2021, Nvidia was working with a software simulator
In April they were working on the tap delay in SD controller. This is a case where tiny voltage changes can cause bugs, and this is setting how wide the tolerances would be, and the data came from the SSG team. It's likely "SSG Team" is "slow slow global", which is a chip validation phase, along with FFG ("fast fast global"). This occurs right before sampling.
In March, the contracted designers for T239 left the project. That was one LinkedIn Profile.
In April, electrical engineers began working on validation tools for T239. This is only possible once the hardware is finalized.
Last edited by a moderator:
