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

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Serif said:
Would be funny if they were accidentally right.
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I mean the stuff they are claiming sound reasonable enough. But it‘s on the same level like a horoscope. Keep it vague so you can afterwards interpret anything into it.
 
Skittzo said:
I'm still not understanding what they're claiming here which is anything different from current info/expectations. If they're right that doesn't mean they had inside info, it means everything they shared was safe and uncontroversial.
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But isn’t the bit about a new camera feature on the NG Switch in that potential leak not new?

Or had we already seen rumors/leaks about the NG Switch having a camera?
 
TheSentry said:
But isn’t the bit about a new camera feature on the NG Switch in that potential leak not new?

Or had we already seen rumors/leaks about the NG Switch having a camera?
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There's been a bit of activity and speculation on AR in the next console going back months from various sources such as Nintendo's augmented and mixed reality patents, the smartphone patents, the historical basis from having already used AR in some consoles, the partnership with Niantic, and more recently from Furukawa's comments on researching various new technologies while focusing on advancing the gameplay experience further - would be easy enough to conclude from all this there's likely going to be an AR aspect running parallel to PlayStation and Xbox's VR efforts, therefore a camera would be necessary
 
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TheSentry said:
But isn’t the bit about a new camera feature on the NG Switch in that potential leak not new?

Or had we already seen rumors/leaks about the NG Switch having a camera?
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There have been a number of other rumors recently suggesting a new camera.

Also, to be a bit pedantic, Switch already has one camera. Technically 2, if you count the ambient light sensor :D
 
The Reddit post just said "New camera feature." which is vague. Doesn't say anything about where the camera is or what it's for.
"[BC]. New cartridge. New camera feature.". I just leaked the 3DS and Vita.
 
The Competition said:
Many thanks for this, interesting, useful and thorough write up. I may not know much about hardware beyond the basics, but I am a high-performance software developer, so this isn't going over my head. Just wish I knew the details of how the different components of game engines used the hardware but anyway.
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I come from an HPC background myself. A lot of what I've picked up is just by osmosis, I haven't found a great text on modern rasterization. The best book by far on the subject is The Black Book, which is 26 years old at this point, and describes how the Quake engine works, but is extremely low level and unconnected to modern hardware.

Jason L. McKesson's Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming is highly fixated on OpenGL which is hardly modern anymore in a DX12/Vulkan world, but can bring up up to speed on the unified shader model that the Xbox 360 created, and all GPUs since are based on. If anyone else has some better texts on modern GPU designs, I'd love to see them.


The Competition said:
I hear you and agree, expecting every AAA multiplat to hit Switch NG is asking to be disappointed, but I do think it's going to be much better than last gen.
I think games making the most of the PS5 and Xbox Series is going to be rarer than games making the most of the PS4, it's just too expensive, and some games just don't need to by design (e.g. MK1, hence releasing on Switch).
Instead, I imagine many games, even some big ones, will, and probably already are, using the horse power to brute force through computation problems that in the past, would have required a lot of optimisation work instead. This puts Switch NG in a good position. Panic Button said it themselves once, if a game is super well optimised for the original platforms, that can make the Switch port harder, because then they have to make cuts to get the game running, instead of just making performance gains through pure programmatic optimisation.

So then it just becomes about time and money, like you said. But again, I think Switch NG will have an advantage over Switch. Switch is almost the best selling hardware ever, yet many games that could have been downgraded for it, skipped it. Why? Because even though the MK11s and Witcher 3s sold well, they didn't sell unbelievably well, because you look at those games and immediately see how butchered they were. Witcher 3 is borderline unplayable on a large TV.
But diminishing returns in graphics are 100% real, and I think it's going to help Switch NG big time. I honestly can't see the difference between Mortal Kombat 11 and Mortal Kombat 1.
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I think you're right that diminishing returns are real. But we also say that every generation, and we're stepping into a totally different rendering paradigm with ray tracing. And the other console manufacturers have an incentive to create experiences that play best on their machines, and to create machines that play games best. That financial dynamic will drive games to take advantage of the hardware available to them.

But that's what I picked the CPU out as the limiting factor. Graphics scale, but CPU logic doesn't Geralt fights an enemy, that enemies AI is the same whether it's 1080p or 4k.
 
Skittzo said:
I'm still not understanding what they're claiming here which is anything different from current info/expectations. If they're right that doesn't mean they had inside info, it means everything they shared was safe and uncontroversial.
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Saying a new card format plus BC is noteworthy and somewhat controversial given the uncertainty around the latter, and the former having been a constant talking point as to whether it would limit BC or not. Not exactly groundbreaking, but not nothing either.
 
oldpuck said:
I come from an HPC background myself. A lot of what I've picked up is just by osmosis, I haven't found a great text on modern rasterization. The best book by far on the subject is The Black Book, which is 26 years old at this point, and describes how the Quake engine works, but is extremely low level and unconnected to modern hardware.

Jason L. McKesson's Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming is highly fixated on OpenGL which is hardly modern anymore in a DX12/Vulkan world, but can bring up up to speed on the unified shader model that the Xbox 360 created, and all GPUs since are based on. If anyone else has some better texts on modern GPU designs, I'd love to see them.



I think you're right that diminishing returns are real. But we also say that every generation, and we're stepping into a totally different rendering paradigm with ray tracing. And the other console manufacturers have an incentive to create experiences that play best on their machines, and to create machines that play games best. That financial dynamic will drive games to take advantage of the hardware available to them.

But that's what I picked the CPU out as the limiting factor. Graphics scale, but CPU logic doesn't Geralt fights an enemy, that enemies AI is the same whether it's 1080p or 4k.
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Continuing what was mentioned earlier regarding the Jaaaaaaaaaaag CPU Cores vs. the A57 cores, doesn’t also the fact they run on two entirely different architectures also factor into their overall performance?

ARM being RISC I’d imagine be a bit more efficient at running code compared to the Jaaaaaaaaaaag cores being x86 CISC. But maybe I’m simplifying it too much.

Maybe we already talked about it already, and my memory has the retention of a goldfish, but in terms of overhead, would the Arm cores be better in that regard compared to the Zen 2 cores?
 
Instro said:
Saying a new card format plus BC is noteworthy and somewhat controversial given the uncertainty around the latter, and the former having been a constant talking point as to whether it would limit BC or not. Not exactly groundbreaking, but not nothing either.
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It may have been a talking point for the sake of covering all bases but I don't think it's ever been presented as a real possibility. Others in this thread have already presented possible solutions and GBC, GBA, and 3DS handled physical BC and cartridge changes just fine. I'm not convinced the uncertainty / anxiety around BC is justified.
 
Individualised said:
I'll be honest, as someone who has been lurking for a while without an account, I'm not sure if I get the recent hype that's happened over the last few days
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Sometimes, there are just things to talk about, even if those things end up being bullshit, and the thread goes faster. When the thread goes faster, there is a sense of momentum. Even if expectations don't change, the sense of momentum increases hype.

Last year, the response to Switch 2/Pro outside of the thread was mostly "It's not happening, stop talking about it." It doesn't take an announcement from Nintendo for anyone to realize that the successor is getting closer - the fact that there are fake leaks is, in it's way, an indication of things moving again. It creates excitement out of itself.
 
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Shoulder said:
Continuing what was mentioned earlier regarding the Jaaaaaaaaaaag CPU Cores vs. the A57 cores, doesn’t also the fact they run on two entirely different architectures also factor into their overall performance?

ARM being RISC I’d imagine be a bit more efficient at running code compared to the Jaaaaaaaaaaag cores being x86 CISC. But maybe I’m simplifying it too much.

Maybe we already talked about it already, and my memory has the retention of a goldfish, but in terms of overhead, would the Arm cores be better in that regard compared to the Zen 2 cores?
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no. RISC vs CISC hasn't mattered in decades now. RISC designs have been moving up the ladder at the expense of efficiency while CISC has been moving down the latter for more efficiency at the expense of power.
 
RennanNT said:
That reminds me of an old question of mine about how Nintendo could leverage DynamIQ in their favor.
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I have wondered myself about multiple profiles, perhaps all in the same power envelope, but specialized for different loads. Like one which favors the GPU over the CPU or vice versa
Shoulder said:
Continuing what was mentioned earlier regarding the Jaaaaaaaaaaag CPU Cores vs. the A57 cores, doesn’t also the fact they run on two entirely different architectures also factor into their overall performance?

ARM being RISC I’d imagine be a bit more efficient at running code compared to the Jaaaaaaaaaaag cores being x86 CISC. But maybe I’m simplifying it too much.

Maybe we already talked about it already, and my memory has the retention of a goldfish, but in terms of overhead, would the Arm cores be better in that regard compared to the Zen 2 cores?
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You're not wrong, but you're also simplifying too much :)

Developers don't write assembly code anymore - or at least, extremely rarely. They write in higher level languages and expect the compiler to take care of the rest. I run Chrome on my ARM based Mac and my x86 based Windows PC, and 90% of the code is the same between the two.

When you see a benchmark that runs on multiple architectures, what happens is you have high level code, usually based on something from the real world that is often used by consumers, that is then compiled with industry leading compilers for both arches, then run hundreds of times to determine performance. Geekbench, in fact, has a sub-benchmark based on Chrome. So the numbers there reflect how code really works out in the world, as opposed to some narrow, theoretical performance win of one arch over the other.
 
The good thing about Square already have a ready to go port of FFVIIR1.

As I said before, considering Switch NG range of specs, its technology like DLSS, modern features, etc + massive Switch 1 success I think it is natural that Nintendo will prepare a "everyone is here" presentation showcasing third party support with confirmed ports (exclusive to Switch NG) from all third party publishers, some of them with multiple titles. All these games will be available at Switch NG Year 1 ( a few at 2 at most).
 
Did the original Switch leaked in a way similar to what is happening right now? (Assuming all of this is real ofc)
 
Quoted by: LiC
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Tachita said:
Did the original Switch leaked in a way similar to what is happening right now? (Assuming all of this is real ofc)
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If you're talking about the "chatter," questionable camera rumors, etc. -- then no, not really. Almost all rumors about the NX prior to July 2016 were either extremely vague and somewhat off-base*, or completely made-up. And after the big July 2016 report by Eurogamer, there were no again real leaks until the system was revealed in October.

But in terms of concrete reporting, I would say they are very similar so far.

*Like a Mochizuki report in October 2015 about SDKs saying the hardware would "likely include both a console and at least one mobile unit that could either be used in conjunction with the console or taken on the road for separate use." This kickstarted all the hybrid console speculation which was eventually confirmed, but the actual thing they're seeming to describe here is not correct.
 
oldpuck said:
I come from an HPC background myself. A lot of what I've picked up is just by osmosis, I haven't found a great text on modern rasterization. The best book by far on the subject is The Black Book, which is 26 years old at this point, and describes how the Quake engine works, but is extremely low level and unconnected to modern hardware.

Jason L. McKesson's Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming is highly fixated on OpenGL which is hardly modern anymore in a DX12/Vulkan world, but can bring up up to speed on the unified shader model that the Xbox 360 created, and all GPUs since are based on. If anyone else has some better texts on modern GPU designs, I'd love to see them.
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I believe this is the standard reference book these days, and it has a few chapters about hardware: https://www.realtimerendering.com/

The authors also prepared a detailed list of other references:

Real-Time Rendering Graphics Books Page

www.realtimerendering.com www.realtimerendering.com

(With the disclaimer that I‘ve only skimmed the book and am not a graphics engineer. I just know that it’s the current standard textbook for real-time rendering classes at universities).
 
MadMarvainy said:
When you close your eyes and thing of the Switch 2, what do you see?
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SgVBt.gif
 
Hermii said:
I guess the risk of further leaks outweighed legitimizing the original leak, from Nintendos pow?
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That is a good point. If the user got to know something about the devkit, maybe they afraid he will leak further
 
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LiC said:
No, they didn't. Your link is to a random Era poster saying "Heard from a little birdie it was the nintendo ninjas" based on nothing. Please, some Internet literacy, I beg of you (everyone in this thread).
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Yeeeeaah I agree that comment looks a little sketch, dog
 
LiC said:
No, they didn't. Your link is to a random Era poster saying "Heard from a little birdie it was the nintendo ninjas" based on nothing. Please, some Internet literacy, I beg of you (everyone in this thread).
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That is unnecessarily hostile. Thought someone could know the person and even the OP on that thread seems to be aware they got into some trouble.

But fine (y)
 
Unrelated to this drama, I have an unimportant (and not upcoming hardware-related), but fun tidbit to share: Someone digging through the big e-mail archive that was part of the gigaleak recently discovered evidence about what the 3DS's codename "CTR" actually comes from! It's セントレア (Centrair), which is the name of an airport in Japan.

開発技術部ではＤＳ以降のテーマとして、ＣＴＲ（セントレア＝開発コード名）の開発を行なっていますが、Ｗｉｉ発売もほぼなり、開発関係者の方々も少し落ち着いたタイミングを見て、ＣＴＲの現状確認、今後の方向性についての議論を行なう場を設定したいと考えます。
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Machine translation:
In the development engineering department, we are developing CTR (Centrair = development code name) as a theme after DS, but the Wii release is almost here, and everyone involved in development saw the timing when they calmed down a little, and confirmed the current status of CTR. , I would like to set up a place to discuss future directions.
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Years back, someone shared what they said was evidence that the codename came from "Citrus," because the icon file for some test application was named "CiTRus." Personally I think this was likely just someone having fun with the CTR product code. The capitalization in particular makes it look that way, and I think the reference in the e-mail from 2006, the earliest kickoff of the project/concept, is pretty definitive about where it came from.

That said, something I usually like to note is that a lot of Nintendo's codenames and product codes don't really "stand for" anything as such. The DS (NTR) was referred to a lot as Nitro, but the 3DS was really only ever referred to as CTR, not Centrair. Even this e-mail, besides explaining where the name came from, is not indicating that it was really called "Centrair" internally. It's still just CTR.
 
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Sorry, had to get that out of me after hearing about the new rumors being discussed. Now for something contributing to discussions.

It's gonna be exciting to finally possibly see at least one cross-generation game from Nintendo that is actually released on a big generational leaps. Both Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild released on consoles that didn't have that big of a gap between their power, thus barely having anything it could add to the game's visual fidelity, so instead they'd sell them by using the consoles gimicks as insentives. Performance wise it just ended up running a bit better at most.

Now that they can realisticlly use this generatinal leap to make cross-generational games so much more enhanced on the Switch 2 I guess the question would be, would Nintendo even want to do that and how far would the want to go with it? You never really know with Nintendo, but I'd say even they would be smart enough to know how easy it would be to show the jump in power to people and incentivise them to experience the games on the new console instead of waiting by giving any game that releases on both consoles a sizable visual difference. How far would they want to go with beefing up the visuals? Would it hurt the sales to make the games look too good for the Switch 2 compared to the Switch lol, imagine them trying to sell a game releasing on both the N64 and Switch 2, with that big of a difference people wouldn't even bother settling for the N64 version and just not buy it until they got a Switch 2. There's also how much money would be sank into making the visuals more Next Gen for games like Metroid Prime 4 and any other game that targeted releasing on the og switch originally, and if it'd be worth it putting their absolute all making it a truly Next Gen difference between the 2. The same questions goes for Next Gen updates for existing switch games that they're probably gonna keep selling on the Switch 2 (Mario Kart 8, Smash Ultimate).
 
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oldpuck said:
I come from an HPC background myself. A lot of what I've picked up is just by osmosis, I haven't found a great text on modern rasterization. The best book by far on the subject is The Black Book, which is 26 years old at this point, and describes how the Quake engine works, but is extremely low level and unconnected to modern hardware.

Jason L. McKesson's Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming is highly fixated on OpenGL which is hardly modern anymore in a DX12/Vulkan world, but can bring up up to speed on the unified shader model that the Xbox 360 created, and all GPUs since are based on. If anyone else has some better texts on modern GPU designs, I'd love to see them.



I think you're right that diminishing returns are real. But we also say that every generation, and we're stepping into a totally different rendering paradigm with ray tracing. And the other console manufacturers have an incentive to create experiences that play best on their machines, and to create machines that play games best. That financial dynamic will drive games to take advantage of the hardware available to them.

But that's what I picked the CPU out as the limiting factor. Graphics scale, but CPU logic doesn't Geralt fights an enemy, that enemies AI is the same whether it's 1080p or 4k.
Click to expand...
Sadly all of my courses were focused more on the theoretical side of computer graphics, or on PBR (especially focusing on https://www.pbrt.org/), so my experience with OpenGL, at least in courses, had to be learned through projects, code review, trial and error, etc. But I did find that for Vulkan which I started learning earlier this year, https://vulkan-tutorial.com/Introduction was a great resource on quickly learning its pipeline, though again its far more focused on learning how to actually use the API, and less how to use it for performance based applications or specifically for un-abstracting its use with hardware. Those are though the "current" resources on either PBR or Vulkan right now though.
 
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Ajimi said:
I work at retail in France, and today we received "new" Smash amiibos (Link, Luigi and DK so far). They are the same as before, but the back of the box is different, a lot more neutral (no pictures and no mention of a specific game or console).

I absolutely don't know if the Smash rumours are true (I wish), but some talked about amiibos earlier, and it's technically hardware soooo…
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Follow-up on this since people seemed interested, here's a picture :)
hello-famiibo-oldnew.jpg

hello-famiibo.jpg

Cheers Fami !

Edit: FORTY-FOUR YEAH for a photo of a packaging Arceusdammit 😂
 
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Individualised said:
I'll be honest, as someone who has been lurking for a while without an account, I'm not sure if I get the recent hype that's happened over the last few days. It seems that someone mentioned that they were an insider, but didn't really give any new details, and then a lot of hype spawned from that? Even more than when whatever Nintendo showed at Gamescom was called "impressive". Could someone explain why the recent stuff is a big deal to a newcomer?
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A bit like that too. Am waiting for yet another unexpected/special innovation. But I guess we need to trust them to provide experiences with the camera (if there is nothing else) and do produce even better sequels to their games which were of exceptional quality on switch. I m thinking the games is what will blow us away, not to mention all sorts of experiences which we could not get because switch is now old hardware.
 
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Ajimi said:
Follow-up on this since people seemed interested, here's a picture :)
hello-famiibo-oldnew.jpg

hello-famiibo.jpg

Cheers Fami !
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This is so weird. The back just looks... Really not good. A giant wall of text followed by a giant wall of smaller text. Obviously something must be happening, but why didn't they wait until the next system released and then put it on there too? The old box has the Switch, Wii U and 3DS. No reason why they couldn't put the Switch 2 next to the Switch (1) in a year.
 
Ajimi said:
Follow-up on this since people seemed interested, here's a picture :)
hello-famiibo-oldnew.jpg


Cheers Fami !
Click to expand...
Interesting for our discussion in some aspect
This move allows Nintendo to use marketing for their amiibo with any game (on corresponding character franchise) & system (and we're expecting a new system next year)

Judging by this, we can say that reprint & restock will occur more often than before when only Smash was the main reason
 
Ajimi said:
Follow-up on this since people seemed interested, here's a picture :)
hello-famiibo-oldnew.jpg

hello-famiibo.jpg

Cheers Fami !
Click to expand...

This new back looks so sad :(
A big part of my brain is telling me Nintendo is just trying to make people forget about Wii U and 3DS now that both systems are officially burried, but the tiny part of it left just wants to hype me up for what's to come!

(Also, I used to work retail selling video games here in France too, and you make me miss this job so much!)
 
necrolipe said:
Interesting for our discussion in some aspect
This move allows Nintendo to use marketing for their amiibo with any game (on corresponding character franchise) & system (and we're expecting a new system next year)

Judging by this, we can say that reprint & restock will occur more often than before when only Smash was the main reason
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Considering how long it's taken them to get rid of the 3DS stuff from the amiibo boxes, I don't think they were particularly concerned about it, but it is more hardware agnostic now, yes.

It is not the only example of Nintendo doing this sort of thing in the Switch era (for example, the Ultimate run of GCN adapters had a Nintendo logo instead of a Switch logo), however.
 
Naming wise, I'm feeling the best way to go about it is either sliding with the very simple yet clear and effective "Switch 2" or dropping the switch name entirely, and shoot for something completely unique, yet still fits thematically and gets the point across, like "Nintendo FUSION" "Nintendo TITAN" "Nintendo SWAP" "THE VIRTUAL BOY 2".
They could even do a total knee slapper like "Nintendo SWITCHAROO".

But yeah they need to get the point across to the most permanently-offline grandparent that there's a fancy new nintendo thingamajiggle for little timmy and nancy out, and those 2 naming conventions are the best ways of doing it imo.
Stuff like Super Switch sounds cool but could definitely confuse a lot of people into thinking its a switch pro or something.

"Mom! MOM! i want the SUPER AWESOME SUPER SWITCH!"
"How many times have I told you Randy, you already have a switch!"
"But mom this is a totally new console!"
"NO BUTS!"
 
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eye0h said:
NWeedle hearing about a definitive edition of Ultimate. Considering all the smash news kicking up maybe they’re really doing the MK8DX strategy for Switch 2. Necrofelipe also alleges ther
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That doesn't make any sense to me, why would they bother to port it with all the licensing issues when they could just make It backward compatible ?
 
Mrcostard01 said:
That doesn't make any sense to me, why would they bother to port it with all the licensing issues when they could just make It backward compatible ?
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What is your source on licensing issues ? Have you read their licensing agreements ? Maybe (and most likely tbh) it's a future proof deal.
 
P4bl0 said:
How ? It doesn’t even include Switch on the packaging.

If anything it shows that Amiibos will be future proof for any kind of device.
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Assuming Nintendo chooses a new name for the next console, I imagine the priority would be to specify even on products that have already existed for some time (such as amiibo) that these can also work on something you don't know. So you should put the console/logo/something to avoid confusion among the consumer. At least a text with "Compatible with Nintendo FOCUS (lol) and Nintendo Switch"

Removing all references, the most plausible path to me is that the next console will still have the Switch name, and consumers already know that amiibo work on consoles with this name, so there is no confusion/very little.

But this is just my opinion, let's see!
 
I had some free time so I decided to go through my wish list and see how much storage space I’d need for everything on it and what I already have (which has basically filled a 1tb micro sd). I’d need at least 2tb. This doesn’t even include what COULD come to the next system. I hope they don’t go the expensive proprietary card route like the Vita. Especially if we’re getting current gen games and the price of M.2 nvme’s being as cheap as they are, we get something like that for expandable storage.
 
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