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

But it isn't? Xbox is growing. Xbox is growing... Because of Series S! It's their main source of ecosystem growth at the moment, not even XCloud.
No, Xbox is growing because of services, subs, and content. Not because of hardware.


But it doesn't matter. Switch 2 (or whatever it is called) is targeting another market entirely. It isn't trying to pretend to be the same as the Series X or PS5.

That and we will have games specifically targeting and designed around its hardware unlike the Series S which is an afterthought.
 
I meant 3x the current Switch GPU's docked performance for Switch 2's handheld GPU performance.

3x Switch GPU docked performance in handheld mode would also make Switch 2 a 9x leap in power over Switch in handheld mode considering the Switch handheld mode is 157.3gflops as standard and 193.5gflops (when special permission is asked for from Nintendo but isn't always given which would still be a x7.75 leap).
Switch has 3 handhelds profiles. The one which have (had?) limited use was the 460Mhz (235.5 GFlops).

Also, you're probably rounding up the docked flops, because 393,2×3÷193,5 = 6.10, not 7.75.
 
All this talk about how nothing about the SoC is determined is wild. If you can't trust information (stolen information, no less) from the company making the bloody chip in question that blatantly spells this out, you've lost the plot, plain and simple.

You may as well be asking someone to show their work on an equation as simple as "2+2".
 
That's like saying "Nintendo is growing because of Nintendo Switch Online and games! Not because of Nintendo Switch!"

Technically true, absolutely not accurate.
Nintendo doesn't have hardware sales issues.

Their decline is just because they are phasing from one gen to the next.

Normal for platforms near their end cycle. To compare it to Xbox which is in the middle portion of their gen cycle but suffering from hardware declines is like comparing apples and oranges.
 
They would have invested in concurrent solutions all along since 2019. We just wouldn't know about them.
You're aware that this would mean the next Nintendo device won't have BC with current Switch games nor would transfer Switch R&D and knowledge, right? Basically the next device would be a reset, blank-slate, from current Switch. Nintendo needs Nvidia if they want to release a Switch sucessor.
 
Eurogamer interviewed Phil Spencer, and his answer regarding Series S may be relevant to our hardware discussion:

  • Spencer claimed that there’s no Series S parity requirement, and implied that it’s only a fan theory.
  • MS is committed to supporting Series S because it’s important to have a low entry price point.
The Lite model, despite its lower sales figure, plays a similar strategic role. Until Nintendo is able to release a low-cost NG Lite, it will most likely remain in the product lineup. I understand that some want Nintendo to drop support for the OG to incentivize users to move on, but personally I don’t think that’d be the company’s strategy.

Because a low entry point is crucial (not to mention 129MM install base), Nintendo probably will maintain a steady cross-gen output for the OG models until the Lite NG comes out. As Spencer suggested, certain games may have to cut features on the OG (and run like a potato), but customers understand that they have an old console. This itself is an incentive for the users to upgrade, without outright cutting off the install base.

 
Man, I bet Phil Spencer can’t wait for the Switch 2 to come out.
Because then if a dev is developing a game for the Switch 2 (which understandably would be lower spec as a handheld device) then developing that same game on Series S won’t seem so much like a burden since they had to take into account both lower end machines.

Basically, there will probably be less complaining.

Unless NG Switch comes packed full of available RAM… then yeah devs will probably still complain about Series S…

Edit: spelling
 
I love the logic of "The leap is so big so it must not be true!"

There's always a chance we get something else but everything points to a big leap. Can people just be happy about that? Lol.
 
I meant 3x the current Switch GPU's docked performance for Switch 2's handheld GPU performance.

3x Switch GPU docked performance in handheld mode would also make Switch 2 a 9x leap in power over Switch in handheld mode considering the Switch handheld mode is 157.3gflops as standard and 193.5gflops (when special permission is asked for from Nintendo but isn't always given which would still be a x7.75 leap).

So saying Switch 2's GPU performance in handheld mode will be 3x Switch's GPU's docked mode is a very big expectation especially considering Nintendo will be battery / size / cooling / price sensitive in terms of Switch 2 as a product and want it to be as sleek / cool / $399 all while having a 3 hour battery life at bare minimum.

We are not seeing the usual 10x leap in tech power with every passing console generation anymore like from PS1 to PS2 to PS3. PS4 to PS5 is around a 5x leap (best case scenario) in GPU flops. Now do we really think Nintendo are going to hit a 9x leap in GPU compute in a handheld form factor especially when you consider they have DLSS as a fall back once the system is docked so in turn the handheld GPU flops don't need to be as high to then double when docked versus if they did not have access to DLSS when the console was docked.

I'm starting to sound like Scott Steiner's math now :3
There are 3 GPU clocks developers can use in portable mode. We know that Doom Eternal even switches between these 3 clocks as needed.

Portable 307MHz or 157GFLOPs upto ~240GFLOPs mixed precision
Performance 384MHz or 196GFLOPs upto ~300GFLOPs mixed precision
Boost mode 460MHz or 235GFLOPs upto ~360GFLOPs mixed precision
Docked 768MHz or 393GFLOPs upto ~600GFLOPs mixed precision

MK11 was the first game to officially support 460MHz portably, but it is available.
 
Drake's GPU doesn't have the same architecture as the switch, It has a much newer one (Switch 1 Maxwell versus Drake Ampere) that literally cannot run switch games 1 at all.

Honest question from a tech-minded (I'm actually a developer, just in a completely unrelated field) but with no game-specific skills at all: why is that the case?

I mean my understanding is that for a good while basically everything gaming-related has been going through (at least) one software layer, with minimal or no direct access to the "metal", so couldn't the new SoC achieve binary compatibility by virtue of a "translating" layer that turns Maxwell GPU calls to Ampere ones or, in the worst case scenario, source-level compatibility through an updated API + recompile?

Or am I totally missing something way more important/complex than that?
 
It will be like modern pc development except Nintendo is only optimizing for two profiles. Starfield, for example, is releasing to minimum specs of a gpu from
2016 and a cpu from 2015. People will also be playing it on their rtx4090 and 12 core cpu from 2022. It’s fundamentally the same game.

Why wouldn’t Nintendo approach their game development be like this for most their games over the next 5 years or so?

We all agree this is what will be done with the eventual Metroid Prime 4 release, yes? They are going to take the game they have been developing on the Tx1+ and use the power of t239 to make it look and run a lot better for that machine.
...

Heck, even if it’s treated and positioned exactly like a ps5 and it’s made clear it’s a gen breaking next gen console successor as it’s clear the ps5 was for the ps4/pro…you will at least agree the “cross gen” support for the OLED and Lite will be much longer than it is with the ps4 and ps4 pro…right?
Prime 4 is a special case because it was originally announced for Switch, Nintendo keeps their promises on these things, and it was well into development for Switch before the Switch 2 would have been past the conceptual stage. I expect there to be some cross-gen for a few years but not for high-profile system sellers. Most big releases will be Switch 2 exclusive after Metroid Prime 4 - maybe there will be an outlier or two like Kirby's Adventure, but it won't be the norm. Software sells hardware, especially where Nintendo first party is concerned. I will be very surprised if the next 3D Mario is playable on Switch 1.

Maybe there was a "Switch +" planned at some point and then dropped, perhaps due to the pandemic. But at this point the ship has sailed on that sort of incremental upgrade and we're not going to get just a 4K 60fps Switch Pro.
 
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I meant 3x the current Switch GPU's docked performance for Switch 2's handheld GPU performance.

3x Switch GPU docked performance in handheld mode would also make Switch 2 a 9x leap in power over Switch in handheld mode considering the Switch handheld mode is 157.3gflops as standard and 193.5gflops (when special permission is asked for from Nintendo but isn't always given which would still be a x7.75 leap).

So saying Switch 2's GPU performance in handheld mode will be 3x Switch's GPU's docked mode is a very big expectation especially considering Nintendo will be battery / size / cooling / price sensitive in terms of Switch 2 as a product and want it to be as sleek / cool / $399 all while having a 3 hour battery life at bare minimum.

We are not seeing the usual 10x leap in tech power with every passing console generation anymore like from PS1 to PS2 to PS3. PS4 to PS5 is around a 5x leap (best case scenario) in GPU flops. Now do we really think Nintendo are going to hit a 9x leap in GPU compute in a handheld form factor especially when you consider they have DLSS as a fall back once the system is docked so in turn the handheld GPU flops don't need to be as high to then double when docked versus if they did not have access to DLSS when the console was docked.

I'm starting to sound like Scott Steiner's math now :3
The biggest problem here is that we're doing multipliers for things where multipliers don't actually work. I know we say "6x at minimum" but there's a lot of asterisks there. It assumes a lot of spherical cows to work

Honest question from a tech-minded (I'm actually a developer, just in a completely unrelated field) but with no game-specific skills at all: why is that the case?

I mean my understanding is that for a good while basically everything gaming-related has been going through (at least) one software layer, with minimal or no direct access to the "metal", so couldn't the new SoC achieve binary compatibility by virtue of a "translating" layer that turns Maxwell GPU calls to Ampere ones or, in the worst case scenario, source-level compatibility through an updated API + recompile?

Or am I totally missing something way more important/complex than that?
The problem is that Switch games have their shaders compiled already and ampere can't read them directly. But you are right in that Nintendo/Nvidia can make a translation layer. It's what's expected to be done
 
The biggest problem here is that we're doing multipliers for things where multipliers don't actually work. I know we say "6x at minimum" but there's a lot of asterisks there. It assumes a lot of spherical cows to work
Great point, this is something we should all keep in mind, it's actually a pretty common thing for us to talk like this, but for people who come in here not understanding we are just talking about theoretical numbers and not including bottlenecks, this isn't what the system is ultimately capable of, no system in any game uses 100% of it's resources for every frame, there are limitations to everything, what we are doing is simply speculating about potentials.
 
The problem is that Switch games have their shaders compiled already and ampere can't read them directly. But you are right in that Nintendo/Nvidia can make a translation layer. It's what's expected to be done

Hmm so that's the major hurdle, I see... thanks.

Hopefully this is something that can be (easily?) overcomed, backwards compatibility is very important to me, especially if it ends up bringing improved performance too on the new platform.

I still really, really hope they finally reintroduce a decent pointing system with no manual recentering needed (HUGE fan of the wiimote pointer here)
 
  • Nintendo Switch Visual Improvements – A highly customized version of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2), tailored specifically for No Man’s Sky on Switch, now provides higher image quality for Switch players. This temporal upscaling technology has been combined with dynamic resolution scaling to offer not only a boost to visual quality, but also improved and smoother framerates. Learn more about FSR 2 on the AMD site.
 
That's like saying "Nintendo is growing because of Nintendo Switch Online and games! Not because of Nintendo Switch!"

Technically true, absolutely not accurate.
Xbox Series combined current monthly sales are lower than the Switch's current monthly sales. Their console side has absolutely been failing to meet sales expectations, something even Phil Spencer has acknowledged.
 
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  • Nintendo Switch Visual Improvements – A highly customized version of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2), tailored specifically for No Man’s Sky on Switch, now provides higher image quality for Switch players. This temporal upscaling technology has been combined with dynamic resolution scaling to offer not only a boost to visual quality, but also improved and smoother framerates. Learn more about FSR 2 on the AMD site.
Is this from a recent nms patch note? Link 🙏 please
 

Devs might not like Series S, but I'm sure the higher ups see millions of an install base as a good thing and totally worth sacrifcing some fidelity for.

There's no shot Microsoft is going to break the promise that Series S is a current gen system that will let you play every game Series X can.
It would be a disaster on the level of Nintendo coming out and saying "BTW Tears of the Kingdom is exclusive to the Switch OLED only, Please understand".
Breaking the trust of the consumer on that level would never fly.
 
I'd like to take a bit of time and outline from an art/development perspective what goes into reworking a game for a next gen patch. In this case we'll assume the developer cares enough to rework assets and not just set new frames and resolution targets. Cross gen titles I think are more likely to be reworked because you're still in development anyway and it would be even less of a hassle since all your assets and files are right there in front of you. Either way it wouldn't be starting from scratch.

Polygons
It is fairly common practice to work high and export low. In the case of meshes, it is a matter of opening the zbrush sculpt, retoping the mesh (simplifying, and having good mesh flow), and exporting that mesh. It's kind of a process and I wouldn't expect this to be done across the board... maybe for main characters and other important assets. Sometimes the high poly version is even in the files but the engine is told to use the low poly stuff in LOD settings so maybe even increasing LOD settings can help here.

Textures
Assuming they've kept the working files, it's as simple as opening the Substance Painter files (or whatever program) and re-exporting what they need (albedo, rough, normal etc) in a higher resolution. Then importing that into the engine to replace the existing lower resolution files. There are a lot of textures in a game so it would be a matter of effort and time but it's not super hard.

Draw Distance and LODs
This is as simple as tweaking a value assigned to certain assets which tells the engine when to use them. (usually determined by how close to the camera they should change). You kind of fiddle with it until you like the results.

Lighting
I admit I don't know a lot about lighting, especially ray tracing and how to set up and configure it or it's workflow. Though I do know It probably takes a lighting artist to go scene by scene and area by area to make adjustments whatever those are. I know that switch has limited lighting capabilities compared to even PS4 and xbone. If the game was on multiple platforms before then maybe they could re-enable existing lights that switch couldn't render. If they're going to rebuild lighting altogether that seems like a huge task and would take effort and time. Maybe others could talk about the Lighting workflow and how it differs from baked to RT, and what it would take.

Animation
Believe it or not animation is usually heavily compressed, especially on switch. Some of it may require a re-import of already existing anim assets. But it may be possible to just change the compression settings depending on the method used. Not too big of a deal, this could be automated even.

Resolution and Framerate
This could be a pretty simple adjustment. Changing the set max resolution isn't a huge issue but making sure the game performs at the resolution would take testing. Same with setting a new target framerate.

DLSS
From what I understand DLSS replaces the TAA in the rendering pipeline. So if your engine supports Temporal Anti Aliasing, then with some tweaks it can support DLSS. It's a matter of piping the information DLSS needs from the engine to the program. A couple weeks of tweaking/testing maybe.

When all is said and done like with any development changes you'd need to recompile the code and cook the build, and Q/A for the changes to make sure everything is running right, and adjust for quality. I hope this helps people understand the process of development a bit more. If anyone has more insight please chime in.
 
Hmm so that's the major hurdle, I see... thanks.

Hopefully this is something that can be (easily?) overcomed, backwards compatibility is very important to me, especially if it ends up bringing improved performance too on the new platform.

I still really, really hope they finally reintroduce a decent pointing system with no manual recentering needed (HUGE fan of the wiimote pointer here)
I don't want to say it's easy to overcome, but it's not something that's new and unusual. hell, emulators have been getting around this for years already. the very people who made the system isn't going to have the same amount of difficulty
 

I wonder how devs optimize for PC or does it get farmed out. Series S specs isn't far out from a lot of PCs and laptop gaming setups. The 10GB of RAM might be a bit less.once you add in GPU VRAM and system RAM on PC but that's also because windows easily eat.up a huge chunk of that before you even have an app or browser open.

No doubt devs would feel constrained but I can't imagine any publisher doing multiplats would tell the devs not to worry about targeting 4TF 10GB gaming devices
 
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I don't want to say it's easy to overcome, but it's not something that's new and unusual.

Oh absolutely, and by the way I didn't imply you were claiming it was going to be an easy task (I have no idea), I apologize if I gave that impression - English isn't my native language so misunderstandings can happen all the time!
 
The GPU, most people speculated 768 Cuda Cores, I was estimating 1024 Cuda Cores just based on 8nm transistor counts that would fit in a similar area to TX1... Then the data leak happened and we see it is actually 1536 Cuda Cores, the GPU here is SIX times bigger than Tegra X1, you mention portable performance of Switch 2 not being 3 times faster than Switch, but realistically, to get to 3x the raw performance of docked Switch, the GPU clock could be as low as Orin 8nm's lowest GPU clock of 422MHz, which offers 1.3TFLOPs for portable gaming here... Ampere also has features that help that 1.3TFLOPs match the PS4 in raw power, Variable Rate Shading, Tile based rendering, and Mesh shaders, all being the biggest contributors. You then throw DLSS on top, that is a drastic improvement to portable performance, and that is on 422MHz, a TSMC 4N T239 chip (process node based on Thraktor's estimates) should push the portable clock up much higher, Switch uses 460MHz on the 2D transistor 20nm chip for it's GPU, here we are probably looking at ~600MHz or 1843GFLOPs (same as PS4 before architecture is taken into account), and realistically the data breach could have very possibly leaked the portable clock of 660MHz, which puts the portable performance at just over 2TFLOPs. Tegra X1 is based on a spring 2015 chip on a bad node, this is basically 10 years later, the ability to hit 4 to 5 times the raw performance of Tegra X1 in portable mode without exceeding Nintendo's power requirements (which none of us know), is fairly easy to do by accident, and given the size of T239, there is no point in not drastically exceeding it's performance.
The funny thing is (I'm gonna play devil's advocate here), if Nintendo tries to be as similar as Switch as possible with Drake in regards to power savings and clockspeeds+discrepancy, I could totally see 422Mhz as the lowest base clock used to start off with, to maximize battery life (like Switch's 307Hz). But of course games like botw and Mk11 existed and Nintendo had an additional profile for switch (for Mk11) at 450mHz, which was roughly 50% higher than the base handheld speed.

So, I could totally see 422Mhz (1.3 tflops), 633Mhz (1.95), and 1055Mhz (3.25 tflops) on Drake. Drake doesn't need an exact 2.5x discrepancy between the lowest and highest speeds like Switch, but it allows a 720p to 1080p jump with some wiggle room left over. I expect 2.5x minimum though.

Hopefully handheld speeds give us OG switch battery life, which I would be more than happy with. It's a shame future nodes will have diminishing efficiency returns though. We likely won't see that huge efficiency gain going from 20 to 16/12 from Erista to Mariko.

Also here's hoping RAM bandwidth available is 68GB/s and 102 GB/s or 88 GB/s, 102 GB/s and 134 GB/s (😅) for handstand and docked profiles.

Besides that.. Near 2 tflops on a handheld with a respectable power draw (even at 15 watts with all of Switch 2's bells and whistles) and battery life is mind blowing to me. It took 10 years to get ballpark Xbox 360 GPU specs in a mobile device (TX1). I kinda refuse to believe until I see it for myself.

The only thing I feel really confident about is that Nintendo will at least aim for OG Switch battery life and a similar power draw. Perhaps Switch 2 will have higher power draw in handheld mode with better cooling tech and a bigger battery to make up for it, to give it OG switch to Switch lite battery life. And they will go from there. But handheld mode will always be the LCD.
This would've had weight if Xbox hardware wasn't on the decline.

Series S though is the better selling console of the two SKUS, even though some regions for some time only had the Series S option.

As for hardware... Seems like devs are letting their frustrations known:



Unlike the Switch or hybrid market that Nintendo occupies, the Series S is trying to fit in the traditional console market that AAA tech pushing devs want to make games for. It is different then what Nintendo occupies or aims for.

Watch them refresh Series S like Xbone ( X Bone to X Bone One S) with 20-25% more RAM bandwidth or RAM.. >_>
 
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CP2077 IS a last gen title, though.
Yes, a last gen title that the "HD twins" had trouble running the game. Even the "4k" twins struggle to run the game at times that they run at a 1728p in quality mode with dsr on and 1440p with dsr on performance mode...Digital foundry starts talking about resolution at the 3:50 mark




The new DLC which adds even more graphical effects, lighting, and textures is taxing on the ps5/series x. There is still time to optimize the game for the "4k" consoles but for a last gen game it still looks better than a lot of current gen game releases.




If CD projket red could get this game running on the Switch 2 at 1080p 60fps with no RT or 1440p 30fps with full Rat enabled. I would be beyond impressed.


If CD projket red could get this game running on the switch 2 with RT i would shocked.
 
No one (or outlet) is going to rush to share or report anything they get told during Gamescom.

I wouldn't expect the flood gates to open immediately, but now that we know dev kits are going out to developers and Nintendo's Gamescom presence seems entirely focused on closed door meetings, its extremely likely that there is going to be a significant increase in the number of people who have been briefed on the SNG. I expect the same to be true with TGS. Within a couple months I suspect various members in the media will have enough information to start reporting inside information.

MK11 was the first game to officially support 460MHz portably, but it is available.

Zelda BotW and Super Mario Odyssey were already using that performance profile before MK11. I'm not sure if it wasnt a performance profile available to third parties prior to MK11, but I know for certain Zelda BotW and Mario Odyssey use the 460Mhz profile.
 
  • Nintendo Switch Visual Improvements – A highly customized version of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2), tailored specifically for No Man’s Sky on Switch, now provides higher image quality for Switch players. This temporal upscaling technology has been combined with dynamic resolution scaling to offer not only a boost to visual quality, but also improved and smoother framerates. Learn more about FSR 2 on the AMD site.
To expand on this, here's a comparison shot straight from the horse's mouth.

Before:
nintendo-switch-2-1040w.jpg

After:
nintendo-switch-3-1040w.jpg
 
No, Xbox is growing because of services, subs, and content. Not because of hardware.


But it doesn't matter. Switch 2 (or whatever it is called) is targeting another market entirely. It isn't trying to pretend to be the same as the Series X or PS5.

That and we will have games specifically targeting and designed around its hardware unlike the Series S which is an afterthought.


It absolutely matters because

1. Switch 2 will be constantly compared to the LCD (X Series S) with ports since they will be close in specs.

2. Whether Nintendo openly talks about competing with Sony and MS or not, they're all competing for consumer time and money in the long run in the same home console market anyway, and they will share some ports, even if they are bared some third party exclusives due to power. But X series S being the LCD actually works in their favor. I suspect CPU will be the biggest bottleneck in regards to ports and head to head competition vs X series S too.

It's very much an apples to apples comparison, much more than say Switch vs Steam deck, where SD is a portable PC and not a gaming console, and isn't directly competing for market share. Though they do all want our time and money, which they know we have a finite amount of.

But yes, the switch is/was competing with xbone and PS4 for market share, despite the power discrepancy. Switch 2 will close the gap and have a similar power gap or even smaller than switch vs xbone/ps4. It's not that different from phones competing with each other for market share.

Edit: I want to add that the handheld factor is /the major appeal. Getting respectable performance in multiplatform games where handheld mode is comparable to X series S but at say 720p (DLSS or not), is going to draw in more people to choose a port of the Switch 2 vs Series S.

I'm honestly shocked that there are quite a decent amount of switch games that actually outperform xbone and PS4 versions sales for multiplatform games. Of course performance matters. I can easily see RDR on switch beat PS4 sales of the handheld factor. But in a more fair scenario where it's pushed more on current gen hardware, it remains to be seen. If the difference in performance is too great, then yeah switch 2 version won't sell nearly as much. But it will still take some of the market. People will weigh the handheld aspect of it, as well as some people like me who only one a single console per generation.

I don't expect switch 2 to suddenly sell 10 million copies of the next cod games. There's a long hill battle for some franchises. As long as the performance isn't totally crap and there are just as many online features, it will be in a good position.
 
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You're aware that this would mean the next Nintendo device won't have BC with current Switch games nor would transfer Switch R&D and knowledge, right? Basically the next device would be a reset, blank-slate, from current Switch. Nintendo needs Nvidia if they want to release a Switch sucessor.
Basic due diligence requires they at least consider a non-Nvidia solution. The things you are saying are absolutely true, and it's the job of the due-diligence process to put together a report that explains that clearly in executive speak, showing the loss of BC On related sales outstripping the savings of going with, say, Qualcomm.

Every now and then, the due diligence strawman wins. An example would be the Switch itself, where the TX1 was the due diligence option. We're talking about a 2024 release, T239's specs leaked in 2022. Imagine if the Mont Blanc design had leaked in 2014, right before Nintendo made the move to Nvidia.

All that said, I think that ship sailed by September last year. I can think of one, single example of a product that made it to market, whose chip made it to tape out, that saw any kind of "back to the drawing board" retrenchment.


Honest question from a tech-minded (I'm actually a developer, just in a completely unrelated field) but with no game-specific skills at all: why is that the case?
Just adding to Ol' Footsie's answer here.

Shaders are programs that run on the GPU, and just like programs on the CPU, they've gotta be compiled. Unlike the CPU, shaders on PC are generally compiled just-in-time, the moment the shader is needed, rather than ahead-of-time. There are both technical and historical reasons for this, but the big one is that, unlike x86 or ARM, there is no standardized instruction set for GPUs. AMD, Nvidia, Intel are completely different, and in fact, aren't even public.

AMD has chosen to keep their ISA backwards compatible for the last 11 years. This makes the silicon more complicated, as they have to support old instructions that might be superseded by more modern solutions, or might run poorly on the more modern GPU design, but it also means that they can more easily reuse their investment in their compiler software.

Nvidia has chosen to rethink their ISA every generation. This is a boon to the hardware design, because they can kick old silicon to the curb, and then build the optimal design for the new ISA. But their shader compiler has to support lots of neither backward nor forward compatible strains of the ISA.

For PC gaming, there is no difference for the player. Shaders are compiled just-in-time regardless. This has become a problem in recent years as mid-game stutters while the shader's get compiled are becoming more and more common, but it's equally bad on AMD and Nvidia.

On the server side, AMD's solution is nicer, but in practice, you're recompiling your software often enough that Nvidia's solution isn't exactly painful.

But on the consoles, AMD's solution is a clear winner. In the console space, you generally compile your shaders ahead-of-time. You've only got one hardware target, and you're heavily optimizing for that hardware anyway. By compiling ahead of time you not only eliminate the stutter that PCs have, you can take longer to do the compile, generating a higher quality, more optimized shader binary.

Switch games have all these embedded, compiled shaders, that won't run on any non-Maxwell GPU. Emulation solves this problem all the time - they capture the shader before it hits the GPU, de-compile the binary back to the source code, and then recompile it for the GPU underneath. But that takes a lot of CPU power, and introduces that dreaded stutter that PC games suffer from.

Nvidia and Nintendo will need to solve that for the Successor. Their advantage is that, unlike PC emulators, they only have one target machine to run on. Their disadvantage is they have to do this with what is basically a tablet CPU, and unlike PC emulation, their audience expects little-to-no stutter.
 
I wouldn't expect the flood gates to open immediately, but now that we know dev kits are going out to developers and Nintendo's Gamescom presence seems entirely focused on closed door meetings, its extremely likely that there is going to be a significant increase in the number of people who have been briefed on the SNG. I expect the same to be true with TGS. Within a couple months I suspect various members in the media will have enough information to start reporting inside information.



Zelda BotW and Super Mario Odyssey were already using that performance profile before MK11. I'm not sure if it wasnt a performance profile available to third parties prior to MK11, but I know for certain Zelda BotW and Mario Odyssey use the 460Mhz profile.
It'll be a case of cross-checking all details and getting clearance to share any information provided. Certain bits are told is strict confidence & aren't reported until approval is given by a contact/source. Some may opt to wait until TGS to get further information.
 
Hmm so that's the major hurdle, I see... thanks.

Hopefully this is something that can be (easily?) overcomed, backwards compatibility is very important to me, especially if it ends up bringing improved performance too on the new platform.

I still really, really hope they finally reintroduce a decent pointing system with no manual recentering needed (HUGE fan of the wiimote pointer here)
It's very important to many, including myself. BC is my biggest hope for the successor. I just can't imagine a Switch 2 with no BC, especially when you consider Nintendo's favorable track record with BC and the install base/software sales for Switch.
 
Well we have a conclusion of sorts with the Xbox Series S/Baldur's Gate situation. No split screen co-op for the Series S. Game comes to the S and X this year.
 


Super happy to confirm that after meeting @XboxP3 yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.
All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X. Series S will not feature split-screen coop, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.
 
This was always going to happen in my eyes. They do not want the PS5 getting timed exclusives because of a small feature like splitscreen.

They'll thumb their nose at the series s owners a bit because the stories about xbox as a whole missing out on a game the Ps5 gets is worse for the broad appeal of the xbox. Don't take an unnecessary L in a time when you are trying to flip the page on the brand starting next month.
 
Just adding to Ol' Footsie's answer here

Thanks for the detailed, yet slightly worrying answer.

I wonder though, since you're talking about stutter, hence I assume we're in the tens, maybe hundreds of milliseconds range, whether some kind of hybrid workaround would be feasible: again, totally (un)educated guess on my part, but would developers NOT willing to fully recompile their games be able to implement some kind of pre-run on-the-fly recompilation of the shaders?

Does this even make sense? Sorry if it sounds dumb, I'm just trying to picture what could end up being the actual solution for backwards compatibility.
 
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Oof, just realized that if BC is met halfway with only being able to bring your digital library over…I wont be able to play Mario 3D all stars on the new console, I got it physically. :(
 
Oof, just realized that if BC is met halfway with only being able to bring your digital library over…I wont be able to play Mario 3D all stars on the new console, I got it physically. :(
Nintendo goofed and left some good money on the table making it a limited release. At least make the game available on the eShop if nothing else. Easy money!
 
Basic due diligence requires they at least consider a non-Nvidia solution. The things you are saying are absolutely true, and it's the job of the due-diligence process to put together a report that explains that clearly in executive speak, showing the loss of BC On related sales outstripping the savings of going with, say, Qualcomm.
I doubt they really considered doing anything else this time. In the long-term, yes, they will consider other options and not just stick with Nvidia indefinitely by default, but this is only one system into a new hardware paradigm, which has been massively successful. The time frame is too short, and the successor likely too similar, for there to have been any serious consideration of breaking the status quo yet.

Oof, just realized that if BC is met halfway with only being able to bring your digital library over…I wont be able to play Mario 3D all stars on the new console, I got it physically. :(
BC won't be digital only. But even if it was, Nintendo could easily implement a system for registering physical games to a Nintendo Account and permit that account to redownload them digitally on the new hardware.
 
Nintendo goofed and left some good money on the table making it a limited release. At least make the game available on the eShop if nothing else. Easy money!
Since Mario 64 made it to NSO, I imagine the plan was/is to make them all avaliable in some other form down the road.

A random Gamecube shadowdrop for Sunshine can happen whenever, and for Galaxy they can do the same thing as Pikmin, physical dual pack of Galaxy 1/2 with the option to buy them seprate digitally

Is it totally unnessesary when they could have simply just left 3DAS on shelves and been done with it? Yes, but here we are
 
Since Mario 64 made it to NSO, I imagine the plan was/is to make them all avaliable in some other form down the road.

A random Gamecube shadowdrop for Sunshine can happen whenever, and for Galaxy they can do the same thing as Pikmin, physical dual pack of Galaxy 1/2 with the option to buy them seprate digitally

Is it totally unnessesary when they could have simply just left 3DAS on shelves and been done with it? Yes, but here we are
I actually like this approach and would be okay with it.
 
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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