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

[Charamiwa]

A generational leap for Nintendo games, that's all I ever wanted... Switch was (and still is) incredible as a generation jump for portable hardware but Nintendo games have been stuck in a similar ballpark since 2012. If you want to get even more absurd with it, the Wii U was close to the 360, so we're still in some kind of remnants of a 2005 jail. It's going to be so good to see what they cook up with this.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

My estimation that this system will be the SNES part 2 seems to be lining up, now Nintendo just need to upgrade their online/social integration, and this should be Nintendo's best system overall imo.

 

[kinshaad]

Does having the Matrix demo running on the device or dev kit validate the hypothesis of a faster Reading speed from internal memory? Is a SSD needed to run the Matrix demo?

 

[YolkFolk]

It's so over for the competition.

Reveal sooooon

Hopefully Q1 2024 but Q2 2024 is possible as well in terms of a hardware announcement. The full games blowout will probably be in June 2024.

 

[Goodtwin]

Flood gates are certainly starting to open, and there should be even more fuel added to the fire after TGS. It seems like Eurogamer and VGC seem to be the outlets willing to start reporting on this inside info, with many of the others only willing to corroborate the info after its been reported. With the report about the Matrix demo not only running on the SNG but also looking very nice, I think its fair to assume Drake is definitely on 4N with performance being at or north of 3 Tflop in docked mode. This also makes the report about a 1080p screen seem even more likely. Nintendo may very well be in a good position to market this as a 4K device. Now I just hope that we get a welcome surprise and it launches in 1H 2024, and I will remain somewhat optimistic that it could happen. I still feel that it was odd for Furukawa to mention that no new or upgraded hardware is factored into Nintendo's annual forecast. If there is no chance that that Nintendo might release new hardware before the end of the fiscal year, why even bring that up?

 

[Skittzo]

48 Tensor Cores

Whoops, thanks for the correction. I thought it was 2 per block, not 4.

 

[ghostboltz]

I'm too hyped for Switch 2 right now lol

 

[Shoulder]

Nintendo Snap

Nintendo Snap Crack And Pop

another report from VGC
Sources: Nintendo showed Switch 2 demos at Gamescom | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

I have serious doubts it would be DLSS 3.5, though DLSS w/out Frame Gen I do anticipate to be the case.

Yeah, that's just a guess.
Probably 4k, to showcase the 4k output, no way it is less, no use to show higher resolution even if possible.
60fps, it's just the most likely, I don't think they'll go with higher framerates

Anyway, just my 2 cents

Going from 900p to 4K native, plus 30fps to 60fps would be feasible given the power differences between X1, and Drake.

Though given what is known about Drake, showcasing improvements in loading would probably be demonstrated. So imagine if fast travel did not have an actual loading screen? Given the concerns about how slow read/writes are on Switch 1, showing the power of the Decompression Engine built into Drake would I think help ease tensions.

Also, improvements in draw distances, shadow quality, and textures would be feasible as well I would hope. And if a native 4K isn’t doable, then DLSS to 4K could work.

If there was a BOTW demo shown, it doubt it’d only be just resolution and frame rate.

EDIT: Nvidia, why must you make numbering conventions difficult? DLSS 3 has frame gen, but 3.5 has Ray Reconstruct, but not frame gen?

Go home, Nvidia. You’re drunk.

 

[Bonejack]

I'm too hyped for Switch 2 right now lol

Live image of ghostboltz:

 

[lattjeful]

Eurogamer's Tom Philips this morning: "Damn ... it's way too quiet right now. sips morning coffee"

Next DF Direct should be damn fun, especially if Tom is on.

 

[ghostboltz]

Live image of ghostboltz:

Hell yeah baby

 

[Deleted member 4629]

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

 

[Serif]

Also, improvements in draw distances, shadow quality, and textures would be feasible as well I would hope. And if a native 4K isn’t doable, then DLSS to 4K could work.

If there was a BOTW demo shown, it doubt it’d only be just resolution and frame rate.

Yup. I expect it to look like this or better, improved level of detail.

 

[OTBWY]

This has been on my mind for a long time. What did Denmark have to do with the Switch 2?

 

[Ghostsonplanets]

Just a reminder that DLSS 3.X doesn't mean DLSS Frame Generation. Nvidia grouped every DLSS solution into DLSS 3.X. So running DLSS 3.X can mean DLSS Upsampling (Formely known as DLSS 2.X), Ray Reconstruction (Announced as DLSS 3.5) or FrameGen (Announced as DLSS 3). With the limited information we know, Frame Generation might not be feasible due to performance requirements, but there's no definitive answer. But DLSS Upsampling and DLSS Ray Reconstruction is available for T239.

 

[Bonejack]

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

In very VERY basic terms:
Instead of wasting a lot of performance natively rendering in a certain resolution, you actually render in a "low" resolution and spend a fraction of the performance you would need for native rendering on some little extra cores, who take the "image" and scale it up to the resolution you want.

You can then use the performance you "freed" up by that for other things!


For better explanation, wait for ILikeFeet, Oldpuck, Redd or any other of the tech friends.

 

[Herb Alpert]

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

This stuff takes low resolutions and bring them to higher ones thanks to dedicated hardware thingies.
With it, the console can render a game at low resolutions (like xenoblade 2), except this time you have a, say, 4k game displayed.

 

[P4bl0]

Hopefully Q1 2024 but Q2 2024 is possible as well in terms of a hardware announcement. The full games blowout will probably be in June 2024.

In terms of hardware release you mean ?

 

[Ryuji]

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

Resolution upscaling powered by AI.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

It's a machine learning algorithm that guesses how a lower resolution image would look at a higher resolution. The algorithm works very well and uses less computational power than displaying the image at a higher resolution (like a 30% to 70% FPS boost).

There are other features to the algorithm that are less likely to be used.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Necrolipe just said he heard people say DLSS 3.1. Go catch up on reading the thread before shutting people down.

and I'm talking about frame gen, not anything else. take your condescending self somewhere else

Well if we are talking about DLSS 3.1, it was still exclusive to lovelace and was only referring to frame gen.
The naming is confusing af so it doesn't mean much I agree, but still it gives me some hopes.

Frame gen has its drawbacks, but it could be still a good trade off to enable difficult UE5 ports.
I wish we get it on Switch2. We are already getting games with FSR in ultra performance mode on next gen console, upscaling with DLSS won't help much to close the gap.

the number doesn't matter, the feature used matters. this is why I never mention which version because people will get confused. Frame Gen is technically possible, but won't be practically possible in 99% of use cases. the overhead is high and the minimum a game has to be is also high. it's just not realistic to expect it, I think

Can someone explain DLSS to me and how it impacts Nintendo's next system as someone who knows nothing about that kinda stuff?

DLSS is a suite of features: super resolution, frame gen, and ray reconstruction (in the future). super resolution is the key point here, it upamples a lower resolution image to a higher resolution one while trying to mimic the quality of the higher resolution image

 

[Alovon11]

Flood gates are certainly starting to open, and there should be even more fuel added to the fire after TGS. It seems like Eurogamer and VGC seem to be the outlets willing to start reporting on this inside info, with many of the others only willing to corroborate the info after its been reported. With the report about the Matrix demo not only running on the SNG but also looking very nice, I think its fair to assume Drake is definitely on 4N with performance being at or north of 3 Tflop in docked mode. This also makes the report about a 1080p screen seem even more likely. Nintendo may very well be in a good position to market this as a 4K device. Now I just hope that we get a welcome surprise and it launches in 1H 2024, and I will remain somewhat optimistic that it could happen. I still feel that it was odd for Furukawa to mention that no new or upgraded hardware is factored into Nintendo's annual forecast. If there is no chance that that Nintendo might release new hardware before the end of the fiscal year, why even bring that up?

 

[casualreader]

Yeah I'm looking at gen 10 in (i hope) 2026

It s every three years, so more likely 2025 no ? Have they communicated otherwise ?

 

[YolkFolk]

Also, improvements in draw distances, shadow quality, and textures would be feasible as well I would hope. And if a native 4K isn’t doable, then DLSS to 4K could work.

This hardware is unlikely to give us native 4K.

 

[YolkFolk]

In terms of hardware release you mean ?

No. Just like how it’s definitely not being announced in July during which you were posting celebratory South Park gifs thinking a reveal was almost guaranteed .

 

[Giancarlo]

Things hit different when the fringe rumor includes names of the software it can theoretically run behind closed doors.

Still treating this as a rumor until 2024 says otherwise. I doubt any possible showing at TGS2023 (if at all) will be for the eyes of the public. Get the feeling that it's best to wait until after Christmas to show their hand.

Nintendo will be in the business area, possibly showing Switch sucessor to third party

 

[kvetcha]

This hardware is unlikely to give us native 4K.

*generally speaking

 

[lattjeful]

Yup. I expect it to look like this or better, improved level of detail.

This but with better shadow draw distance and maybe the additional cell shading color layer that's apparent in cutscenes and TotK would be the best looking game on any platform LOL

already is tbh

 

[Noleth]

What's the likelihood of the Switch 2 containing Ray Reconstruction? If it does that'd be pretty exciting especially for a Nintendo system. In general, this kind of tech seems too good to be true for Nintendo, makes me wonder what the catch is.

 

[Bonejack]

*generally speaking

2D game from Shin'en: "Native 4K Challenge accepted!"

 

[Lugia667]

will Nintendo sell it at a profit is the question? Last time they took a loss was on the Wii U and I doubt they wanna repeat that

 

[Anatole]

Well not really, DLSS need tensor cores. The better those are, the better DLSS works. And the DLSS 3 feature, frame generation, needs specific hardware (only available on their 40serie cards).

So even if Switch2 is based on Ampere, I really hope the rumors are true and that Nvidia and Nintendo made it as future proof as possible with some mix-up Lovelace tech, like 4th gen tensor cores.

Well the good news is that the tensor cores themselves are just matrix multiplication boxes, and that’s not going to change. It’s unlikely that a lower precision than FP8 or INT4 will be introduced, since the dynamic range would be unusably low. So all you can really change going forward is increasing the throughput. Nothing about that will prevent older versions of the tensor cores from running newer versions of the core DLSS model.

Of course, if forthcoming versions of DLSS require inputs that are accelerated by other dedicated hardware, like how the OFA provides an optical flow field for frame generation, then those versions of DLSS may not be supported. But as far as the tensor cores are concerned, math is math.

 

[Serif]

This hardware is unlikely to give us native 4K.

Depends on the game, the GPU is 6x bigger and the Switch already renders some games at 1080p.
No native 4K for current-gen demanding titles.

 

[Goodtwin]

Does anybody know if DLSS is memory bandwidth intensive? A big factor for a mobile based SOC not being able to deliver 4K is directly related to bandwidth limitations, but does the bandwidth usage directly scale down to the internal rendering resolution? For example, any game that renders at 1080p or lower should not be bandwidth limited on Drake unless of course DLSS uses quite a bit of bandwidth when reconstructing those frames up to 4K.

 

[kvetcha]

2D game from Shin'en: "Native 4K Challenge accepted!"

I absolutely guarantee they could get The Touryst running in native 4K. It was downsampled from 8k on PS5.

What's the likelihood of the Switch 2 containing Ray Reconstruction? If it does that'd be pretty exciting especially for a Nintendo system. In general, this kind of tech seems too good to be true for Nintendo, makes me wonder what the catch is.

Ray Reconstruction is supported by all RTX hardware so...pretty good.

 

[Machrider]

When the Tegra X1 was unveiled they showed it off with the Unreal Engine 4 demo back then, so Matrix Awakens being used this time to showcase UE5 just sorta makes sense.

While frame generation is exclusive to 40 series cards, other DLSS 3.5 features aren't. The better resolution scaling and ray reconstruction from DLSS 3.5 works with 20 and 30 series Nvidia cards, basically anything with RTX cores, so it's entirely possible the Switch 2 is for example utilizing the ray-tracing reconstruction feature from DLSS 3.5.

 

[ILikeFeet]

something I want to bring up about the Steam Deck videos we're posting as a comparison: I don't think these are running with Lumen on.

standard UE5 settings have Lumen on at High, Epic, and Cinematic settings. go below that to Medium, and you just get screen space ambient occlusion. a lot of these videos turn settings down to their lowest to draw out performance, so I don't think they're running with Lumen on.

if Nintendo is showing off the demo, it should be assumed that Lumen is turned on and running at, at least, 30fps, making it way above the Steam Deck

 

[Skittzo]

This hardware is unlikely to give us native 4K.

That's a bit of a blanket statement. Switch right now could render some games at 4k (just not output it) it'll vastly depend on the game itself.

 

[Teal'c]

oh they finally start chatting...

So are the super BOTW demo and the (incredible) Matrix demo the only things shown behind closed doors? or are there other rumours
I'm honestly waiting for more opinions on the Matrix demo.

The best feature of Switch 2 will be developer support.
If they are confident in showing something like the Matrix UE5 demo running on this hardware, that tells me they are aiming for AAA 3rd party support again, not shying away from playing in the same league as Playstation/Xbox.

The newest AAA multiplatform-games, japanese developers not having to deal with Sony‘s shenanigans… that‘s what I‘m most excited about.

I would be very surprised if Square-Enix continued to maintain this exclusivity with Sony after the performance of the last chapter of FF

 

[Deleted member 5146]

will Nintendo sell it at a profit is the question? Last time they took a loss was on the Wii U and I doubt they wanna repeat that

They may sell at a loss and make up the difference with an increased NSO monthly subscription cost - from which they're already making a billion a year - and higher base-level game prices

 

[YolkFolk]

Depends on the game, the GPU is 6x bigger and the Switch already renders some games at 1080p.
No native 4K for current-gen demanding titles.

Native 4K will be something not even worth the effort and would be a waste of resources considering the upscaling capabilities of the hardware. It’s something I would very rarely expect to see.

 

[Ghostsonplanets]

What's the likelihood of the Switch 2 containing Ray Reconstruction? If it does that'd be pretty exciting especially for a Nintendo system. In general, this kind of tech seems too good to be true for Nintendo, makes me wonder what the catch is.

Ray Reconstruction is supported as its requirements are just a RTX 2000 (Turing) and above card.

 

[lattjeful]

Does anybody know if DLSS is memory bandwidth intensive? A big factor for a mobile based SOC not being able to deliver 4K is directly related to bandwidth limitations, but does the bandwidth usage directly scale down to the internal rendering resolution? For example, any game that renders at 1080p or lower should not be bandwidth limited on Drake unless of course DLSS uses quite a bit of bandwidth when reconstructing those frames up to 4K.

Somebody more knowledgeable than me can chime in and correct, but iirc in terms of bandwidth, DLSS is more bandwidth intensive than natively rendering at the internal resolution, but not as bandwidth intensive as if you were rendering natively at the output resolution?

Edit: I'd also like to add that my interpretation of the bandwidth increase is due to DLSS requiring that the assets being upscaled are the ones that are made for the output resolution, not the input. But as far as how intensive DLSS itself is, I'm not sure.

 

[theguy]

Me to this thread once the Switch 2 releases:

 

[Deleted member 887]

Okay, just skimmed everything, I will wait for the thread to chill out a bit before adding to the clamor.

 

[Danny]

will Nintendo sell it at a profit is the question? Last time they took a loss was on the Wii U and I doubt they wanna repeat that

Could be that their massive war chest built over the last few years plus their new movie/theme park business makes them more willing to take chances and become more like Microsoft/Sony in being willing to lose money on console sales if it leads to a massive user base and expansion of software and subscription sales.

 

[Bonejack]

Me to this thread once the Switch 2 releases:

Just in time for Switch 2 Pro speculation!

Okay, just skimmed everything, I will wait for the thread to chill out a bit before adding to the clamor.

Come ooooooooon, join the fun.

 

[Serif]

Native 4K will be something not even worth the effort and would be a waste of resources considering the upscaling capabilities of the hardware. It’s something I would very rarely expect to see.

Choosing not to implement native 4K in favor of upscaling is different from 'the hardware being unlikely to give us native 4K.' There are indeed other reasons to do so like power consumption.

DLSS still requires dev time to implement. I wouldn't expect Nightdive's next classic remaster like Quake to have it when those aren't demanding games and could hit native 4K easily. Same with less demanding indie games. 2D games and pixel art won't even have the option of DLSS, they will just ship their 4K assets or integer scale.

 

[Lixie]

What's the likelihood of the Switch 2 containing Ray Reconstruction? If it does that'd be pretty exciting especially for a Nintendo system. In general, this kind of tech seems too good to be true for Nintendo, makes me wonder what the catch is.

Ray reconstruction works on all RTX cards. The tech is just a denoiser.

 

[Advator]

Was this already shared?

VGC reports Switch 2 was demoed with "The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo" feauring DLSS, advanced raytracing and "visuals comparable to Sony and Microsoft’s current-gen consoles"

Reddit - Dive into anything

reddit.com

[VGC] Sources Claim Switch Successor Runs Matrix UE5 Tech Demo With Comparable Graphics to PS5/XSX Rumor - Nintendo

Another VGC source claimed that Nintendo showcased Epic's impressive The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo – originally released to showcase the power of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021 – running on target specs for its next console. The demo is said to have been running...

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