• 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| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

Reader mode
Zedlars said:
After recent reports, how much do you think they'll charge for the new console?

349.99 MSRP IMO.
Click to expand...
350$ is way too low.
It's going to be either 400$ or 450$.
500$ will only happen if they will have a second deluxe SKU, and I really don't think they will.
 
pelusilla6 said:
What tweet?
Click to expand...
It was this tweet. It mentions low-powered consoles, and was written in January 2023 (meaning months after the rumoured tape-out). Unless they’re making one for a platform host other than Nintendo, that is surely the closest thing we have to nailing on the likeliest amount of RAM. It’s entirely possible that there are games in development right now, which didn’t require the full 16GB (Cross-Gen stuff, late wave XB1/PS4 ports), and so, the reports of 12GB for consumer products could be what was understood earlier on. It might also be worth noting that the reporters of some of these sites have got the RAM wrong on Nintendo platforms before. Wii U was going to have 768MB or 1GB at most. It had 2GB at retail. Switch was going to have 2GB. It had 4GB. Could they score a unique hat-trick here? Look, If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen!! We won’t let a few trolls kill our joy. We’re still going to play the hell out of Bayonetta 4, the next LOZ, Super Mario, and whatever MonolithSoft are cooking. Those games won’t only look amazing, new ideas will be possible and their ambitions won’t be held back by hardware limitations. We’ll also have a chance of finishing Red Dead Redemption 2 and a ton of other games because they’ll be portable. So, while some might dare to believe and/or expect, the real message to take from all we’ve heard today is that the next platform will be ambitious, and they’re aiming much higher than most imagined initially. For me, I’ve always been willing to exercise more patience if it meant we would get a higher performance. My hope is that fans will be able to play all the third party non-exclusive content without feeling forced to pay a $499 SPIT Charge (Secondary Platform Inconvenience Tax) for it, and I’m satisfied that they’re taking the right steps. 💕✨
 
Concernt said:
$399.99/€399.99/£399.99

Is it a little brave to suggest they'll unify prices so drastically? Maybe, but it slooowly took place in Europe due to currency fluctuations, and the Pound is... well. Weakening. You know how many Euro cents I get from a CREDIT UNION for a pound? 93! That's LESS than one to one, and for profit banks offer even worse rates. The pound is in a position right now where it's... almost valuable, but it's becoming harder to spend as it gets withdrawn as a reserve currency and is used less and less in international trade. Almost as if they left a huge international trading bloc or something, huh. Point is, Euro strengthening, Pound weakening, we could see the first Nintendo launch with a unified price across Europe and the US, and I think that's a single SKU (well, not counting possible controller colours), $399.99 offering.

OLED drops to $299.99 to make room in the market.
Click to expand...

Imo

$449 Switch 2 (ouch)
$349 OLED
$219 Lite

Highly doubt they going to drop OLED price in the near future, they still have to sell them for 2-3 more years (till the Switch 2 Lite comes out basically)
 
LongDrake said:
"RAM memory"
Click to expand...
"PIN number" ;)

Serif said:
The goalposts will be moved to 'it's not even Series S power'.
Click to expand...
Makes me think of how when messing with Toyotas and rotary Mazdas back in the day I used to catch hell from muscle car guys saying "okay yeah maybe it makes 400hp on paper but it pulls that off with RPM, not with displacement like a 'real' engine"

I am bracing for "okay yeah it outputs 4K but it pulls that off with upscaling, not natively like a 'real' console" :p
 
P4bl0 said:
Imo

$449 Switch 2 (ouch)
$349 OLED
$219 Lite

Highly doubt they going to drop OLED price in the near future, they still have to sell them for 2-3 more years (till the Switch 2 Lite comes out basically)
Click to expand...
I'm thinking $424.99 for the Switch 2, and then everything in the Switch 1 family is getting $50 shaved off
 
P4bl0 said:
$219 Lite
Click to expand...
That would be a price increase.

Price drops have been RESISTED by Nintendo, but there's two things to keep in mind. One, this ISN'T a price drop for the SYSTEM. Nintendo Switch is still 299.99! Without an OLED price drop, if V2 gets dropped, and it will be, the de-facto price of a hybrid Nintendo Switch has just jumped 50 bucks. Cutting V2 and dropping the OLED price is a price cut without a price cut: the middle model of Switch remains at 299.99

Two, it's a NEW GENERATION, OF COURSE THE LAST GENERATION NEEDS A PRICE DROP! It's that or drop dead. Lowering the OLED Model price allows them to "drop the price" without actually lowering the cost of buying a hybrid Nintendo Switch device.
 
chocolate_supra said:
"PIN number" ;)


Makes me think of how, when messing with Toyotas and rotary Mazdas back in the day, I used to catch hell from muscle car guys saying "okay yeah maybe it makes 400hp on paper but it does it with RPM, not with displacement like a 'real' engine"

I am bracing for "okay yeah it outputs 4K but with upscaling, not natively like a 'real' console" :p
Click to expand...
I saw discussions on a Discord server earlier today when everyone was confused on DLSS 3.5 and we were talking the hypothetical scenario where it had frame gen, and some guy went on a rant about how they're not "real frames". Like huh? What does that even mean???
 
Concernt said:
That would be a price increase.

Price drops have been RESISTED by Nintendo, but there's two things to keep in mind. One, this ISN'T a price drop for the SYSTEM. Nintendo Switch is still 299.99! Without an OLED price drop, if V2 gets dropped, and it will be, the de-facto price of a hybrid Nintendo Switch has just jumped 50 bucks. Cutting V2 and dropping the OLED price is a price cut without a price cut: the middle model of Switch remains at 299.99

Two, it's a NEW GENERATION, OF COURSE THE LAST GENERATION NEEDS A PRICE DROP! It's that or drop dead. Lowering the OLED Model price allows them to "drop the price" without actually lowering the cost of buying a hybrid Nintendo Switch device.
Click to expand...

I want to believe, but I feel like Nintendo been cocky these past years and can pull a "no price drop" if the Switch 2 drops at $449
On the other hand if it drops at $399, price drop is more likely
 
Quoted by: LiC
1
A question for the future … would the use of Nvidia technologies (like DLSS) in Switch 2 games hinder BC from Switch 2 -> Switch 3 if Nintendo decide they won’t use Nvidia for Switch 3? Not that I think they will drop Nvidia soon, but it could happen someday.
 
carbvan said:
I saw discussions on a Discord server earlier today when everyone was confused on DLSS 3.5 and we were talking the hypothetical scenario where it had frame gen, and some guy went on a rant about how they're not "real frames". Like huh? What does that even mean???
Click to expand...
Wow, I didn't realize when a GPU renders frames natively they immediately become things that exist in the real, tangible world.
 
P4bl0 said:
I want to believe, but I feel like Nintendo been cocky these past years and can pull a "no price drop" if the Switch 2 drops at $449
On the other hand if it drops at $399, price drop is more likely
Click to expand...
Picking a lower starting price, not a higher one, is more conducive to replicating the Switch's success with never needing to cut the price.
 
fwd-bwd said:
The following info is extremely vague, and only fit for entertainment purposes. If vaguebooking frustrates you, feel free to skip.

Short version: On Tuesday buyer uncle encountered a leak that shookt him. His cryptic tweets seem to be related to either Nintendo or Sony’s console models. The timing led him to suspect an announcement at the Tokyo Game Show.

Long version: At 1:04 PM on Sep. 5th (Japan time), buyer uncle posted the following tweet.

Based on his past tweeting pattern (example), I think that “某〇〇” mean “某機種” (certain console model). If so, the tweet can be translated to: “A surprising disclosure regarding a certain console model. Confidentiality?”

23 minutes later he posted an update:

“It has been corrected, hastily. This is peculiar.”

55 more minutes passed and he tweeted:

“〇－ムショウ” is obviously “ゲームショウ” (Tokyo Game Show), and “〇〇〇” is likely either “任天堂” (Nintendo) or “ソニー” (Sony). The translation would be: “That thing was corrected, but one would notice before [Nintendo or Sony fixed it]. Perhaps they’ll announce it at the Tokyo Game Show. I don’t know.”

My interpretation is that buyer uncle saw something regarding a certain console model on his wholesale ordering system. The info was so surprising that he immediately questioned its confidentiality. Lo and behold the info was hastily fixed (modified or deleted? unclear) in the system, causing buncle to suspect that it wasn’t a simple mistake. His last tweet seems to suggest it being a Nintendo or Sony product. Possibly due to the timing, he speculated that the info may be revealed at the Tokyo Game Show.

Personally I believe that it’s too early to see the Switch NG in the wholesale system. A few potential explanations include a new PS5 revision, end-of-life for Switch v2, or permanent price cut for a Nintendo/Sony model. There’s not enough to go on, but fun to chew on.
Click to expand...
That could just be a PS5 Slim? It was rumoured to be announced this month
 
carbvan said:
I saw discussions on a Discord server earlier today when everyone was confused on DLSS 3.5 and we were talking the hypothetical scenario where it had frame gen, and some guy went on a rant about how they're not "real frames". Like huh? What does that even mean???
Click to expand...
I feel like the recent debacles surrounding "AI" has rotted people's brains.

For the record, I don't think Frame-gen is the most reliable thing in the world and that the visual artifacts can be very jarring, but if the developers are fine with it existing... then hell yeah keep it in. Literally the only thing that frame-gen isn't that great at is reaction timing (a 120fps frame-gen game isn't as responsive as a natively 90fps game), but that literally doesn't matter at all for most games outside of, like, Shooters.
 
chocolate_supra said:
I am bracing for "okay yeah it outputs 4K but it pulls that off with upscaling, not natively like a 'real' console" :p
Click to expand...
This would be such an absurd ironic thing for them to say considering how many games actually render at somewhere between 1440p and 2160p.

At least (Nvidia) PC and Switch 2 gamers will be united in their appreciation of hallucinated pixels.
 
I don't think that it's the actual 'Slim' so much as a 'separate the optical drive from the rest; now it's an optional buy'?

So, nice burst of activity. Good to see the excitement. (y) all around.

...for the most part. Prior to reading this news, there were a couple of things I wanted to talk about as downtime filler, but now it'll seem more like derailing during an active time :whistle:
 
Serif said:
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.
Click to expand...

DLSS doesn't really require much dev time at all. NVIDIA has gone about making it as easy as possible - if the game engine already uses TAA or especially FSR2, most of the work is already done and it would take maybe a couple of days. If they use none of those at all then it might be a bit longer, but then it will be easier on future games in the engine.

It's true that 2D games won't need it, but stuff like Nightdive remasters could actually benefit from it through improved battery life.
 
TomNookYankees said:
So I assume the performance stuff is about when its in Docked mode right?

Assuming we know what its like in docked mode and will have 12GB of RAM and a SSD internal storage, do we have an idea of what the performance will look like in handheld mode?
Click to expand...
I think "half docked" is still a good baseline. But I don't think we can reverse engineer much in the way of performance from this latest leak. I could speculate pretty heavily...

Serif said:
There's also 'dynamic DLSS', added in 2020.
Click to expand...
SoldierDelta said:
I doubt many games (even including the highly intensive Monolith Soft games) will use dynamic upscaling like the Switch 1 games did, however I do think this is another huge boon for the system.
Click to expand...
There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that some of DLSS's improvements have actually been driven by the need to support Nintendo. This is one of those improvements (Ultra Performance mode, and the aggressive improvements in that mode specifically, being the other).
 
Good potential launch title that could help show how the system is running would be Fortnite. I’m assuming the Switch 2 will get the modern Unreal Engine 5 version with lumine and nanite in tow.
 
Serif said:
This would be such an absurd ironic thing for them to say considering how many games actually render at somewhere between 1440p and 2160p.

At least (Nvidia) PC and Switch 2 gamers will be united in their appreciation of hallucinated pixels.
Click to expand...
Yep! similar to arguments I'd get into with muscle car guys how a lot of their favorite V8s are actually supercharged and therefore don't make their stated power natively, and they would twist things around to decide that actually still counted :ROFLMAO:
 
d519m0k-ae8314f2-e079-41b6-81e1-400f2faeb146.gif
 
Lugia667 said:
I feel like there would be much more smoke if the reveal was next week
Click to expand...
Was there a lot of leaks about the Switch before the October reveal? I know the general power and the fact it was portable was leaked but aside from that I don't think people knew much more.
 
Translated via Twitter's built-in translation:
Nintendo recently filed a patent for a magnetic field generated in control.This is certainly a technology to annihilate the "drift" in the analog sticks of the next controllers (and in my opinion) should be applied immediately on the next console
Click to expand...
 
oldpuck said:
There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that some of DLSS's improvements have actually been driven by the need to support Nintendo. This is one of those improvements (Ultra Performance mode, and the aggressive improvements in that mode specifically, being the other).
Click to expand...
I thought UP was for 8K dick waving. even if it's for nintendo, it's pretty damn aggressive. though being an integer scale of 4k might help
 
bmfrosty said:
I quite like that, and I almost never like anything other than "Switch 2". Easy to go Third or Fourth (or Forth!) later. It's very self explanatory, and anyone who wants to call it "Switch 2" can because it's very interchangeable.
Click to expand...
Yeah, thinking about it more, this could work really well.

  • You can do some clever marketing stuff by using second as a unit of time.
  • Gear Second is the most iconic power-up since Super Saiyan in Japan.

The only issue I see is “second” also being used as a negative in expressions like “second place” or “second-rate.”
 
Last edited:
chocolate_supra said:
"PIN number" ;)


Makes me think of how when messing with Toyotas and rotary Mazdas back in the day I used to catch hell from muscle car guys saying "okay yeah maybe it makes 400hp on paper but it pulls that off with RPM, not with displacement like a 'real' engine"

I am bracing for "okay yeah it outputs 4K but it pulls that off with upscaling, not natively like a 'real' console" :p
Click to expand...
The funny thing is how underestimated the rx-7 (and to an extent the rx-8) were when they first hit the track. Put a little trust in Nintendo everybody. They would never release an egregiously underpowered console with a similar name its predecessor. Why would they? :)
 
wolftendo said:
I don't envy them, having to go from 3DS/gamecube specs to Series S specs in less than 10 years must be extremely difficult.
Click to expand...
Honestly I think they nailed it in terms of scope in Scarlet and Violet, they just needed an extra year in the oven. With how late Hidden Secret Part 2: Indigo Disk is coming relative to release, they might even be able to fix it up in the end. According to the DLC leaker, they plan to.

More staff and more time is my dearest hope. Take 2024 off to focus on supporting Violet, then take 2025 off for good measure, outsource a Legends: Kyurem if you're desperate, and just focus on making a GOOD gen 10. With Indigo Disk looking like it's 2024, a 2025 remake and a 2026 new gen would STILL be a blazing fast yearly release schedule, just not WHITE HOT FAST like they've been since 2016.
 
Thraktor said:
A few more thoughts on the UE5 Matrix demo:

The more I think about this, the more it makes sense as a demo for Nintendo to use. Obviously they want to show off UE5 itself to show that third party games can run well on the hardware, but there are a few reasons the Matrix demo itself works well. The first one is obvious; it was originally used to show off the PS5 and XBSX/S, so it's a statement of intent from Nintendo that the new Switch hardware should be considered in a similar league to those. Secondly, it really plays to Switch 2's strengths.

The new hardware won't match the PS5 or XBSX (or even the XBSS) in raw horsepower on either the CPU or GPU, but it has a much better upscaling solution (DLSS), much better relative RT performance than the RDNA architecture, and potentially much better RT denoising integrated into their upscaling solution if they're using DLSS-RR. So, if you want a demo that plays to Switch 2 strengths, you want to go heavy on the RT and the upscaling. The UE5 Matrix demo is pretty much the most RT-heavy thing on consoles, and I think it's the only UE5 software on consoles which actually uses hardware RT Lumen (Immortals of Aveum might, but either way it's not a great showcase). Switch 2's better RT hardware means it's, relatively, taking a much smaller hit to run Lumen with full hardware RT, doubly so if it's using DLSS-RR and can get away with lower ray counts. Then, on top of that, DLSS itself will produce much better results than Epic's TSR. Digital Foundry noted that XBSS had "very chunky artefacts" on the demo (at approx 4x scaling), and you can push DLSS pretty hard without it getting "very chunky".

Put Switch 2 next to the PS5 or XBSX in a pure native res benchmark with no RT and it will obviously look a lot worse. Crank up the RT (which PS5 and XBSX are relatively bad at, and Switch 2 is relatively good at) and temporal upscaling (again, benefitting Switch 2), and you can close the gap a lot. I have no doubt the PS5 version of the demo looks better side-by-side than Switch 2, but if they can get results with are anywhere near the ballpark of the far more power hungry home consoles, then that's a win.

A lot of people think that because Switch 2 is a hybrid it's necessarily in Nintendo's interests to hold back on ray tracing (or even disable it in handheld mode, as I've heard suggested a few times), but the reality is the opposite. Nintendo now has the best RT hardware in the console space, and will do for the rest of the generation, and it's in their interest to push that as hard as possible, particularly when selling the hardware to devs. Relative to its performance in purely rasterised graphics, RT is much cheaper on Switch 2, so the harder you're pushing RT, the better the Switch 2 looks compared to the competition.

As a point of reference, let's compare the Nvidia RTX 3070 (about 20Tflops, same Ampere arch as Switch 2), and the AMD RX 6800XT (about 20Tflops, full RDNA2 that's better in some ways than the architectures used in PS5 and XBSS/X). The RTX 3070 launched at $499, and the RX 6800XT launched at $649 about a month later. In benchmarks of Cyberpunk 2077 without RT, the 6800XT beats the 3070 by about 25%, which is about what you'd expect from the price difference.

However, in the game's recently added RT overdrive mode (which is the most RT-intensive game around by some margin), the results are very different. At native 1080p, the RX 6800XT hits an average of 7.9 fps, where the RTX 3070 hits 21.3 fps. Now, obviously neither of these are playable (and Switch 2 definitely won't be running this), but by moving from a purely rasterisation test to an extremely heavy RT test, we're moving from RDNA2 beating Ampere by about 25% at a similar Tflop count, to Ampere being 2.7x faster than RDNA2. Furthermore, these tests are without upscaling. Cyberpunk's RT overdrive mode looks far better with the new DLSS ray reconstruction, so if we were comparing Ampere with DLSS-RR vs RDNA2 with traditional denoising and FSR2, the win for Ampere becomes even bigger.
Click to expand...

You don't even need to use the 6800XT there. The 3070 even beats the 7900XTX in RT Overdrive, which really is shocking.

It will also be interesting to see the degree to which Ray Reconstruction allows devs to lower the ray sample count while still retaining a decent image.
 
chocolate_supra said:
yall I just had this thought of a Xenoblade X port using raytracing and I think I need it in my life now (though I'd settle for a year from now)
Click to expand...
Just add it to your own personal list of games to will into existence. Like how mine has a Yoshi's island god game/life simulator as well as a grand strategy/4X game starring Bowser.
...heck, just today, I added another one to the list, but I'll save mentioning that one for downtime. (you may or may not find that one interesting)
 
Concernt said:
Honestly I think they nailed it in terms of scope in Scarlet and Violet, they just needed an extra year in the oven. With how late Hidden Secret Part 2: Indigo Disk is coming relative to release, they might even be able to fix it up in the end. According to the DLC leaker, they plan to.

More staff and more time is my dearest hope. Take 2024 off to focus on supporting Violet, then take 2025 off for good measure, outsource a Legends: Kyurem if you're desperate, and just focus on making a GOOD gen 10. With Indigo Disk looking like it's 2024, a 2025 remake and a 2026 new gen would STILL be a blazing fast yearly release schedule, just not WHITE HOT FAST like they've been since 2016.
Click to expand...

Nah 2024 Remake/SpinOff, 2025 New Gen

They are not going to work on violet in 2024 lol. They have been working on the enhancement patches since 2022 according to the leaker, it’s not going to take them 2 years to do a graphics patch
 
0
fwd-bwd said:
Cool find. Thanks for sharing. Hall effect analog stick isn’t new, and there are already prior patents. This new patent is about an analog stick that contains “a resistance section using a magnetorheological fluid whose viscosity changes in accordance with an intensity of a magnetic field”. So after you move the stick and it bounces back, the feel and velocity of the feedback force is changeable dynamically via an electromagnetic field. The patent is not about eliminating drifts, which has been solved by other patents.

Edit: One example I can think of is when Mario is swimming in a watery stage, the stick can be made feeling sluggish.
Click to expand...
Adaptive Sticks???

This would be cool idk

Imagine it combined with the HD rumble giving the sense of tension from the water in your example 😯
 
chocolate_supra said:
Yep! similar to arguments I'd get into with muscle car guys how a lot of their favorite V8s are actually supercharged and therefore don't make their stated power natively, and they would twist things around to decide that actually still counted :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...
Finally, the petrolheads reveal themselves
ILikeFeet said:
I thought UP was for 8K dick waving. even if it's for nintendo, it's pretty damn aggressive. though being an integer scale of 4k might help
Click to expand...
You're probably right
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Please read this staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
Last edited:


Back
Top Bottom