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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
- Thread starter Dakhil
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Onilink97
Octorok
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I am curious, I know a few pages back you said sources weren't happy with EG and VGC reporting on the switch 2 and that you weren't sure if you were going to go ahead with a podcast, did the sources essentially just say "what the hell, cat is out of the bag, more leaks will come so record a podcast if you want to"?
D
Deleted member 5146
Guest
We're probably reaching the point where with an explosion of interest driven by legitimate leaks and bad actors spreading as much misinformation as they can both online and through actual outlets, Nintendo may be pressured to take some form of action and address the NG situation before things get out of hand if they don't already have a plan to officially announce it within the next month or so - similar to how they had to very quickly shut down the OLED/Pro rumour once it took off following Bloomberg's reporting in case it affected investor confidence
lemonfresh
#Team2024
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tommorow the floodgates open, no going back
oh yea, all this talk about the Matrix demo, I wanna know if they shown the night mode.
for those that don't know, the Matrix city is lit with only one analytical light, the sun. everything else is bounce lighting from the scene cards. in night mode, all the windows and street lights are emissives, which are stored in the scene cards and projected onto the world. it was a happy accident to the dev team as they didn't expect that
for those that don't know, the Matrix city is lit with only one analytical light, the sun. everything else is bounce lighting from the scene cards. in night mode, all the windows and street lights are emissives, which are stored in the scene cards and projected onto the world. it was a happy accident to the dev team as they didn't expect that
Alovon11
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Something to spur conversation in here? And is it positive or negative?
BreakAtmo
Moblin
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LinkURL
Bob-omb
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If a game runs natively at 4K@30 on PS5 (GPU bound), it is expected that at least in theory a machine with 2.5TFLops will be able to run at similar settings at 1080@30. With DLSS in performance mode bringing the result to something very similar to that presented by the PS5.
DLSS for 4K has its cost, which is estimated to be around 6ms from the information we have on Drake. Therefore, this hypothetical machine would actually have to run a little above 30fps to compensate for the price of DLSS, in this case each frame lasting 27ms. In other words, this machine would have to have an increase of around 23% in its gross performance to pay the "price" of DLSS.
So, at least in this scenario, a machine with 3.1 TFlops + DLSS would still achieve performance very similar to a PS5.
DLSS for 4K has its cost, which is estimated to be around 6ms from the information we have on Drake. Therefore, this hypothetical machine would actually have to run a little above 30fps to compensate for the price of DLSS, in this case each frame lasting 27ms. In other words, this machine would have to have an increase of around 23% in its gross performance to pay the "price" of DLSS.
So, at least in this scenario, a machine with 3.1 TFlops + DLSS would still achieve performance very similar to a PS5.
lemonfresh
#Team2024
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rip the series s
Kenka
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Defintely. Rich mentiones BotW's demo resolution and framerate.
If what he says is true, then it is indeed spectacular. Not only the resolution in itself but the framerate, taking in account what reconstruction technique is used.
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They talk about it 20 minutes in the DF Direct and will also make good points that go in more realistic directions.
Edit: Rich says that the current situation maybe could be like if you‘d hear "the Switch can run Witcher 3" without seeing how the game actually looks like on the console. It sounds impressive, impossible even but when you see the actual result then you get a better idea how and why it works and where the cutbacks were made. Same could be true for that Matrix Demo. I think it‘s a very good point.
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carbvan
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Portable Series S is a mighty tasty prospect. Hopefully there aren't any curve balls Nintendo throws at us. If what we're told ends up staying true. Whew.
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The fact that they put that as the clip in the tease. Clever lads.
rinku
Rattata
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...You're not suggesting frame rates higher than 60 right? Don't think I'm ready for 120 Zelda haha
Kenka
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There is a good fat chance that Drake is way less powerful in terms of raw numbers that the Series S.
However, I am convinced it can get most of the titles released on it as well thanks to its GPU features.
LiC
Member
I think that both podcasts we're expecting are going to be focused on things from Gamescom, which as far as we know was focused on tech demos, not system features. Maybe we'll hear more about specs or something that would be related to the tech demos, but as for unexpected info like BC, I would not expect that.
Lancelot
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Half of an Xbox One with only 4 cores and gigabytes of RAM to basically a Series S is a mighty jump indeed, I want to believe my body's ready but once I see those next gen offerings... I might not able to handle it lol.
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Thanks!
Don’t want to take anything more out of their content. Looking forward to the public drop. I’ve been listening to DF direct regularly for a few months now - enjoyable show to add into the rotation.
Lugia667
Gerudo
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I highly doubt they are going to distrupt the marketing schedule now because of this. This feels like the equivalent of whenever a game leaks people say "just release the game now!"
Maxrunner
Bob-omb
Who's rich?
Very unlikely. Only possibility where that might happen is if it was confirmed that the BotW demo was running under BC, but that doesn't seem like a super likely scenario.
OP
OP
DigiTimes mentioned both mobile and Windows on Arm in the article.
But saying that, DigiTimes has always been hit or miss in terms of reliability.
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Richard Ledbetter from DF.
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Digital Foundry specializes in technical analysis of gaming hardware and software, using state-of-the-art capture systems to show you how well games and hardware run.
www.digitalfoundry.net
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Not me sadly
BreakAtmo
Moblin
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Yeah, the Series S has a TSP of 71W apparently, so the chip itself is probably like 60W. Even once you consider the benefits of going from x86 to ARM, N7 to N4P, rDNA2 to Ampere, and suppose that Switch 2's docked mode might be 25W, you're just not going to quite bridge that gap in raw power. But then the RT and tensor cores come in...
Maxrunner
Bob-omb
Oh, they talk about Zelda demo? When can we see the episode?Richard Ledbetter from DF.
About Us
Digital Foundry specializes in technical analysis of gaming hardware and software, using state-of-the-art capture systems to show you how well games and hardware run.
manfromthedam
Semi Undercover Game Music Guy
GO ON LADS
D
Deleted member 5146
Guest
You've completely misunderstood what I was getting at
Lancelot
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This is why they're probably assuming it already, the only way to make Switch 2's chip seem inferior is by ignoring its hardware features and focusing on the number crunching only... That's not realistic however and the whole chip should be considered when making these claims.
D
Deleted member 887
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TFLOPS don't compare well across architectures, unfortunately. In head to head matchups, Ampere fares worse than RDNA1/2 at similar TFLOPS. So we have to be careful about getting out over our skis on those comparisons.
D
Deleted member 3433
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P4bl0
A New H1ope
You can expect at least a PS4 in handheld
Maxrunner
Bob-omb
So what is the resolution and framrate?
Angel Whispers
Follow me at @angelpagecdlmhq
Please don’t do this.
Maxrunner
Bob-omb
Forgot his name was rich....
TechnicalTip6578
Tektite
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i'd recommend going with the mindset of portable PS4+ & PS4 pro on docked with DLSS doing heavy lifting
Lancelot
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PS4 is the absolute bare minimum on handheld, it's going to punch quite a bit above it so expect equal (and potentially superior) looking offerings to what you already saw on PS4.
Noleth
Cappy
Got it, still very confused on however RT will be handled since I’m not sure it could handle RT.
P4bl0
A New H1ope
24 tensor cores dedicated To RT, so yes it will handle RT.
Thraktor
"[✄]. [✄]. [✄]. [✄]." -Microsoft
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Does the Switch game card take up an awful lot of space for a handheld? They're about the same size.
CFexpress cards are only currently supported by very high-end (mostly professional) cameras. That means there's a combination of a very small market, and a customer base which isn't price sensitive, which is a recipe for extremely high margins. The Type A cards are currently only supported by Sony, whereas Type B are supported by the other manufacturers, so it's a niche within a niche, meaning even higher margins.
It's pretty clear that current cards are being sold at extremely high margins. The cards are just NVMe drives in a plastic case, and I mean that literally. You can just buy an M.2 2230 drive and stick it in a Type B housing. Here's a 256GB M.2 2230 drive for which supports PCIe 4.0 and 5GB/s read speeds for $39.99. Those are more expensive components without the plastic case. There's no way the plastic case is costing the manufacturer $160. For another example, Delkin launched a new 1TB card a few months ago with a deal dropping the price from $400 to $100. This isn't the kind of industry where you do loss-leading, particularly on a brand new product, which means their $400 price must be at least 75% profit, if not more. This is pretty much what I'd expect, as you can get 1TB M2 2230 drives for under $100 pretty easily these days.
The reason why I'm confident that prices would drop dramatically if Nintendo entered the market is that it would completely change those two factors that are currently driving prices so high. On the size of the market, the Nintendo Switch currently outsells the entire dedicated camera industry by 2x on an off-year. You can see the yearly shipment data here for the camera industry. What's more, CFexpress is only supported by a very small portion of those cameras, the very high end ones. The average unit price of cameras sold last year (from the same report) was 85,000 yen, or about $575 USD (although this may be wholesale price, I'm not 100% sure). The cheapest cameras with CFe support start at around $2000-$3000. Switch is likely selling perhaps 20x as many units a year as the entire camera industry is selling CFe-compatible cameras. I would expect that Nintendo would probably outsell the entire current CFe install base on launch day.
This means two things, firstly that the market for CFe cards (type A specifically) would increase massively, meaning much larger economies of scale, which means lower prices. Secondly, the majority of CFe Type A buyers would be Switch 2 owners, almost instantly. Instead of professional photographers, for whom memory cards are a business expense and the risk of losing their data (which could be worth more than their equipment) is something that will discourage them from buying cheap cards, you've got a market which is largely comprised of very price-conscious Switch consumers who will happily choose a cheaper option if they have one.
Because of the shared tech with NVMe SSDs, CFe cards also have a very low barrier of entry to new manufacturers. B&H have 16 different CFe Type B card manufacturers on their website, with 154 different cards, which is a lot for such a small niche (about the same as UHS-II SD cards, which have been around for a lot longer). CFe Type A has fewer manufacturers at 7, but again it's only currently supported by Sony, so is a niche within a niche.
A low barrier of entry and low per-unit manufacturing costs means if current manufacturers don't drop their prices, someone else will just come in and undercut them. If there are tens of millions of Switch 2 consoles out there and other companies are trying to make 75% margins on the storage cards, you can come in with a product at 50% margin and take a huge chunk of the market. Then someone else can undercut you with a 30% margin and take that market share themselves. The reason this doesn't happen in the current CFe market (aside from photographers trusting existing brands more) is that there's no money to be made fighting over a tiny market at 20-30% margins. There would absolutely be money to be made fighting over a Switch-sized market at 20-30% margins.
The final issue would be prospective buyers having the same reaction as you; looking at existing CFe prices and thinking it's going to be crazy expensive. Hence, Nintendo would need to immediately announce branded cards at realistic RRPs.
Just as a frame of reference, when Microsoft launched their proprietary expansion cards for Xbox Series consoles in late 2020 (which are PCIe 4.0 CFe Type B with just enough changes to break compatibility), they were charging an RRP of $220 for the 1TB model. At the time, a cheap 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive would have cost you an RRP of $175. That's a markup of about 25% over the cheapest equivalent M.2 2280 drives. If we were to assume a manufacturing partner for Nintendo would want the same markup as they were getting on the proprietary Xbox cards at launch, then we'd be looking at prices right now of around $50 for a 1TB card, based on a base price of around $40 for PCIe 4 M.2 2280 drives today plus 25%. Competition would drive that lower among non-branded cards.
The final factor is that Nintendo's traditional card partner, Sandisk, doesn't sell CFe Type A cards yet. Ordinarily I might be worried about them not wanting to price too low to avoid undercutting their own professional cards, but they don't sell comparable professional cards, so they wouldn't have any issues there. Honestly I've been a little surprised that Sandisk haven't started selling Type A cards yet, being the largest memory card maker, and with competitors like Lexar having jumped in. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if they're holding out for Nintendo to come in. They've partnered with Nintendo on this for a long time, and Nintendo would have had to consult companies like Sandisk about CFexpress cards before committing to using them, so they may have an agreement with Nintendo to sell branded cards and see no incentive to jump into the market before then (particularly given current cards are limited to PCIe 3, whereas cards launching alongside the Switch 2 should be PCIe 4, so they'd have to change hardware at some point regardless).
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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UNLEASH THE PISS
lemonfresh
#Team2024
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Dont know whats more hype the upcoming direct or the nate podcast
BreakAtmo
Moblin
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It will be able to handle RT to a certain degree. You can play some games on Steam Deck with limited RT. Handheld Switch 2 will be similar to the Deck in raw power but with far better RT acceleration and upscaling capabilities, plus console optimisation. You won't see RT everywhere, but certainly on some games.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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Tensor Cores are for AI tasks like upscaling, and aren't dedicated at all.
RT Cores do RT, and I believe it has 12? I think?
Lancelot
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It's a fat PS4 with a modern CPU and dedicated hardware for image upscaling and raytracing, as well as the bonuses being modern offers. All while handheld, that's it I think.
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