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

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Danny said:
If that is true then that will leave Nintendo in an incredibly strong position in the future, i mean the Steam deck fans have long gloated that they can play Nintendo games much better than the Switch itself. That will soon no longer be possible. Will leave the Steam deck even further behind Switch 2, not to mention the Switch 2 upgrades already making the steam deck obsolete in other ways as well.

Nintendo have for decades wanted to eliminate emulation, which i assure you they have always seen as a bigger threat to them than everything else. Because Nintendo knows that their strong IPs leave them secure if their platforms are the only way to play their IPs, that is why they fear emulation because that is the only thing that in any way can threaten their otherwise totally safe business.
Click to expand...
The key to eliminate emulation has always been making competent hardware.... And even beyond power, the software released for the Switch isn't nearly as complex as the software releasing on Drake, especially when we're talking about titles with fleshed out BvH trees even more complex than those of PS5 and Xbox Series. Complexity is massively increasing, and the already tall order of emulating the eight A78Cs is only one part of the ecuation.
 
I can see the threads on Era now…

“New iPhone set to destroy the Switch”

“Lol, Nintendo is about to get stomped”

“REAL portable gaming has arrived. RIP, Nintendo

Just wait…
 
TechnicalTip6578 said:
so i took a look at the attendees present at gamescom, obviously not the full list & excluding nintendo ofc but for some of you guys, do you think most of these companies are possibly invested in Switch 2 thanks to the tech demos? (as well as specs)
attendant.PNG
Click to expand...
I'd say most of these companies already have a more "personal" partnership with Nintendo and are part of those devs who got already some form of a devkit.
 
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TechnicalTip6578 said:
so i took a look at the attendees present at gamescom, obviously not the full list & excluding nintendo ofc but for some of you guys, do you think most of these companies are possibly invested in Switch 2 thanks to the tech demos? (as well as specs)
attendant.PNG
Click to expand...

Numerous mentioned should already have had devkits quite some time ago.
 
0
GPKs3 said:
I can see the threads on Era now…

“New iPhone set to destroy the Switch”

“Lol, Nintendo is about to get stomped”

“REAL portable gaming has arrived. RIP, Nintendo

Just wait…
Click to expand...
ERA isn't too bad, its Twitter (I refuse to call it X) that's the problem
 
lexony said:
I'd say most of this companies already have a more "personal" partnership to Nintendo and are part of those devs who got already some form of a devkit.
Click to expand...
good point though that would leave other companies like Hoyoverse, Pearl Abyss, Level Infinite & Amazon Games in question whether or not they're interested although it's not necessarily an issue or anything lmao
 
0
Dark Cloud said:
Every generation there’s a new competitor to take them out. You’d think Nintendo would be buried 100 feet underground by this point.
Click to expand...
Even the "Steam Deck will bury Nintendo" narrative was annoying on the first day because it was just another PC in the end, which is less of a competitor and more like a neutral pillar.
 
oldpuck said:
oldpuck said:
I won't say "easily" but I'll say "that's about what I would expect." Thraktor did a deep dive on loading times, but let me give you an ELI5 on it all.

When a 4k60fps game starts from a menu it needs to :
  1. Load the data off of storage
  2. Convert it into something it can use
  3. Start up the game's simulations
    • These first 3 steps take about 30 seconds, currently.
    • The first menu screen takes ~1.4 seconds to fade out, before the loading screen.
    • "Instant" needs to be about 1.5 seconds, then.
  4. Draw 8.3 million pixels to the screen
    • On Switch, Zelda is 900p, so that's only 1.4 million pixels
  5. Draw 8.3 million pixels again, 16.6 milliseconds later.
    • On Switch, Zelda is 30fps, so that's 33.3ms
Let's go step by step, and talk about how the "expected" Next Gen Switch changes these steps, to make this no-loading, 4k60 Zelda happen.

1. Load: Storage go brrrr​

This is by far the slowest part of this process, and the Switch has three places it might load the data. From internal storage, from a cartridge, or from the SD card. Switch NG updates at least two of these

The same kind of storage that is in a phone
Switch's internal storage is eMMC - which is basically dead. It is sticking around in budget phones, but modern phone chips don't even have the option to use it.

Just about every Android phone has moved to UFS. At the low end, you can expect something like 5x improvement over the Switch.

A new cartridge format to match
There are solid rumors that Nintendo has updated their cartridge format to something much faster. That's not just for Moar Power, but large carts with the old tech were getting expensive to make, and games are only getting larger.

What about expansion storage?
There isn't any clarity here yet, so this is kind of an asterisk

2. Convert: Zip Zap Zop​

The second step is mostly decompression - turning compressed assets on disk to uncompressed formats that the game can consume. Switch NG adds two new tools

Dedicated decompression hardware
Switch NG is pretty much confirmed to have dedicated decompression hardware. In days of slower storage, compression actually sped things up too, because storage was so slow. Reading smaller amounts of data that you then had to decompress was faster than reading giant gobs of uncompressed data to memory.

Modern systems have the opposite problem. Storage is fast, but CPUs are busier than ever. But games are also big so compression is still necessary. Decompression hardware takes the CPU out of the equation entirely, decompressing faster than the CPU could, but without any CPU load.

New formats
It's not just the hardware that is evolving but the software. Nvidia has been developing new compression formats designed to work with faster storage. This demo likely wasn't just "Breath of the Wild on new hardware" but "Breath of the Wild ported to our new set of tools" including new formats.

3. Simulate: Strong ARM​

For game startup this is might take longer, but in normal game play you have to do this every frame. The thing to keep in mind is that this mostly have nothing to do with resolution. Breath of the Wild physics is the same a 4k as it is at 540p, same for Bokoblin AI. So it's all about frame rate. 30fps->60fps is twice as fast.

Just plain faster CPUs
Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Switch CPU was designed in 2012. The Switch NG CPU was designed in 2020, by the fabled ARM Austin team, and is still in many ways the peak of their work, with new ARM cores only now getting back to where this one was.

Here is an overclocked Switch up against the Orin NX (which is basically Switch NG's cousin, with nearly identical CPUs). Way more than a 2x leap

Just plain more of them.
Switch has 4 cores. Switch NG has 8 of them. Not all tasks can be split up to run twice as fast on twice as many cores, but one of the better contenders is, in fact, loading where lots of different setup tasks happen independently of each other.

4. Draw: Fastest in the West​

1.4 million pixels to 8.3 million pixels. That's a 6x leap. How?

A big ass GPU
The Switch has a 256 core GPU. Switch NG has 1536 cores. That's your 6x leap, done. GPUs are very good at scaling with more cores, unlike CPUs, and this kinda of "just throw more cores at it" really does work exactly how you'd naively assume it would.

That's all assuming that the cores run at the same speed as the Switch. Generally, the advances that let you stick more cores into a similar sized chip also bring along with it a little extra power efficiency, letting you push clocks higher. So 6x represents the floor here, with additional clocks getting anywhere from 7-8x.

5. Repeat: A Super Sampler
But we're still only 30fps. It's pretty clear how we get the game logic to 60fps - we have twice as much power in the CPU, we just go faster. But we have just enough GPU power to get to 4k, much less do it twice as many times per second, right?

DLSS 2
The answer is Deep Learning Super Sampling. DLSS is an Nvidia technology that lets you get (most of) the detail of a high resolution game with (most of) the frame rate of a lower resolution game.

There are a lot of deep dives on how DLSS works in thread, but I'll give you the short-ish version. Temporal reconstruction is a group of techniques that remember details from older frames, and combines them smartly into a new frame, at a higher resolution.

DLSS is Nvidia's version of that technology that uses AI to do that combining. That AI is possible on a home computer because of special AI accelerators that Nvidia has built, called tensor cores. It is widely considered the highest quality upscaling technique, producing the best looking results, in the fastest time.

Here is a video comparing Starfield using "real" 4k on the left, AMD's temporal reconstruction (called FSR) in the middle, and DLSS on the right. I wouldn't even call it "good" - the DLSS version just plain looks better than native, to me. But that's not the real point, look at the frame rate graph at the middle. Notice how DLSS is nearly double the frame rate of native?

That's because the GPU is only drawing half the pixels each frame, with DLSS preserving that detail across frames. And that's the ticket here. Switch NG's big as GPU "only" has to draw 1440p images each frame, with DLSS making a gorgeous 4k image out of it, and with DLSS, anti-aliasing is effectively free on top.

TL;DR. SWITCH TOO GOOD​

Breath of the Wild's assets are converted to a new format designed for modern hardware. They gets blitzed into memory by an ungodly fast storage solution, decompressed in real time by special hardware. Meanwhile a cluster of 8 CPUs working at quadruple speed setup the initial game data in milliseconds. A new, more powerful GPU draws 3 times as many pixels as before. AI transforms those pixels into 4k, while the CPU and the GPU run ahead to render at 60fps.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Please add onomatopeia in all future ELI5 posts.
 
oldpuck said:
Here is a video comparing Starfield using "real" 4k on the left, AMD's temporal reconstruction (called FSR) in the middle, and DLSS on the right. I wouldn't even call it "good" - the DLSS version just plain looks better than native, to me. But that's not the real point, look at the frame rate graph at the middle. Notice how DLSS is nearly double the frame rate of native?
Click to expand...
... there are moments where i do think native is better.

But heck, thats just magic. And i assume that devs will either find clever tricks for stuff like the stars in that demo (small details -> flickering), or they will accept that some aspects of the game will look slightly worse on a handheld console...
 
Apple obviously has the resources and userbase to seriously pursue any realm they wish. But they are literally no threat to any kind to Nintendo. Being able to natively play the likes of major console releases on Iphone is a great feature but one that faces a huge roadblock to competing with Nintendo. Games of that fidelity and size such as Resident Evil and Assassin Creed require much more time invested to reap the experiences they have to offer. And the time of phone users is often split between numerous apps, essentially reducing the necessity for console quality games to even be there. People spend so much being on Twitter, TikTok, Youtube, IG, Facebook, receiving phone calls/texts, etc., I don't really think it's even possible for Iphone to be a threat to a dedicated portable experience such as the Switch 2
 
oldpuck said:
I won't say "easily" but I'll say "that's about what I would expect." Thraktor did a deep dive on loading times, but let me give you an ELI5 on it all.

When a 4k60fps game starts from a menu it needs to :
  1. Load the data off of storage
  2. Convert it into something it can use
  3. Start up the game's simulations
    • These first 3 steps take about 30 seconds, currently.
    • The first menu screen takes ~1.4 seconds to fade out, before the loading screen.
    • "Instant" needs to be about 1.5 seconds, then.
  4. Draw 8.3 million pixels to the screen
    • On Switch, Zelda is 900p, so that's only 1.4 million pixels
  5. Draw 8.3 million pixels again, 16.6 milliseconds later.
    • On Switch, Zelda is 30fps, so that's 33.3ms
Let's go step by step, and talk about how the "expected" Next Gen Switch changes these steps, to make this no-loading, 4k60 Zelda happen.

1. Load: Storage go brrrr​

This is by far the slowest part of this process, and the Switch has three places it might load the data. From internal storage, from a cartridge, or from the SD card. Switch NG updates at least two of these

The same kind of storage that is in a phone
Switch's internal storage is eMMC - which is basically dead. It is sticking around in budget phones, but modern phone chips don't even have the option to use it.

Just about every Android phone has moved to UFS. At the low end, you can expect something like 5x improvement over the Switch.

A new cartridge format to match
There are solid rumors that Nintendo has updated their cartridge format to something much faster. That's not just for Moar Power, but large carts with the old tech were getting expensive to make, and games are only getting larger.

What about expansion storage?
There isn't any clarity here yet, so this is kind of an asterisk

2. Convert: Zip Zap Zop​

The second step is mostly decompression - turning compressed assets on disk to uncompressed formats that the game can consume. Switch NG adds two new tools

Dedicated decompression hardware
Switch NG is pretty much confirmed to have dedicated decompression hardware. In days of slower storage, compression actually sped things up too, because storage was so slow. Reading smaller amounts of data that you then had to decompress was faster than reading giant gobs of uncompressed data to memory.

Modern systems have the opposite problem. Storage is fast, but CPUs are busier than ever. But games are also big so compression is still necessary. Decompression hardware takes the CPU out of the equation entirely, decompressing faster than the CPU could, but without any CPU load.

New formats
It's not just the hardware that is evolving but the software. Nvidia has been developing new compression formats designed to work with faster storage. This demo likely wasn't just "Breath of the Wild on new hardware" but "Breath of the Wild ported to our new set of tools" including new formats.

3. Simulate: Strong ARM​

For game startup this is might take longer, but in normal game play you have to do this every frame. The thing to keep in mind is that this mostly have nothing to do with resolution. Breath of the Wild physics is the same a 4k as it is at 540p, same for Bokoblin AI. So it's all about frame rate. 30fps->60fps is twice as fast.

Just plain faster CPUs
Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Switch CPU was designed in 2012. The Switch NG CPU was designed in 2020, by the fabled ARM Austin team, and is still in many ways the peak of their work, with new ARM cores only now getting back to where this one was.

Here is an overclocked Switch up against the Orin NX (which is basically Switch NG's cousin, with nearly identical CPUs). Way more than a 2x leap

Just plain more of them.
Switch has 4 cores. Switch NG has 8 of them. Not all tasks can be split up to run twice as fast on twice as many cores, but one of the better contenders is, in fact, loading where lots of different setup tasks happen independently of each other.

4. Draw: Fastest in the West​

1.4 million pixels to 8.3 million pixels. That's a 6x leap. How?

A big ass GPU
The Switch has a 256 core GPU. Switch NG has 1536 cores. That's your 6x leap, done. GPUs are very good at scaling with more cores, unlike CPUs, and this kinda of "just throw more cores at it" really does work exactly how you'd naively assume it would.

That's all assuming that the cores run at the same speed as the Switch. Generally, the advances that let you stick more cores into a similar sized chip also bring along with it a little extra power efficiency, letting you push clocks higher. So 6x represents the floor here, with additional clocks getting anywhere from 7-8x.

5. Repeat: A Super Sampler
But we're still only 30fps. It's pretty clear how we get the game logic to 60fps - we have twice as much power in the CPU, we just go faster. But we have just enough GPU power to get to 4k, much less do it twice as many times per second, right?

DLSS 2
The answer is Deep Learning Super Sampling. DLSS is an Nvidia technology that lets you get (most of) the detail of a high resolution game with (most of) the frame rate of a lower resolution game.

There are a lot of deep dives on how DLSS works in thread, but I'll give you the short-ish version. Temporal reconstruction is a group of techniques that remember details from older frames, and combines them smartly into a new frame, at a higher resolution.

DLSS is Nvidia's version of that technology that uses AI to do that combining. That AI is possible on a home computer because of special AI accelerators that Nvidia has built, called tensor cores. It is widely considered the highest quality upscaling technique, producing the best looking results, in the fastest time.

Here is a video comparing Starfield using "real" 4k on the left, AMD's temporal reconstruction (called FSR) in the middle, and DLSS on the right. I wouldn't even call it "good" - the DLSS version just plain looks better than native, to me. But that's not the real point, look at the frame rate graph at the middle. Notice how DLSS is nearly double the frame rate of native?

That's because the GPU is only drawing half the pixels each frame, with DLSS preserving that detail across frames. And that's the ticket here. Switch NG's big as GPU "only" has to draw 1440p images each frame, with DLSS making a gorgeous 4k image out of it, and with DLSS, anti-aliasing is effectively free on top.

TL;DR. SWITCH TOO GOOD​

Breath of the Wild's assets are converted to a new format designed for modern hardware. They gets blitzed into memory by an ungodly fast storage solution, decompressed in real time by special hardware. Meanwhile a cluster of 8 CPUs working at quadruple speed setup the initial game data in milliseconds. A new, more powerful GPU draws 3 times as many pixels as before. AI transforms those pixels into 4k, while the CPU and the GPU run ahead to render at 60fps.
Click to expand...
You've explained this beautifully! I can't wait for them to reveal it so we can see all this in action. Thank you so much!!
 
RaymondBryce said:
From what we know so far, how different is T239 from T234? Will the Switch 2 SoC be more customised than the Switch SoC?
Click to expand...
I'm by no means expert on this subject matter but i'm almost certain Switch 2 SoC will be more customized than Switch's Tegra X1 was.

Nintendo and nvidia has been good for each other's business.
 
RaymondBryce said:
From what we know so far, how different is T239 from T234? Will the Switch 2 SoC be more customised than the Switch SoC?
Click to expand...
Drake is built for Switch 2 and no one else (outside of binned chips)

the differences are
  • t239 has 8 cpu cores, t234 has 12
  • t239 has 1536 gpu cores, t234 has up to 2048
  • t239 has hardware decompression, t234 does not
  • t239 does not have a lot of extra silicon for camera, inference, etc functions, t234 does
 
kvetcha said:
I think Ampere's got an OFA but it's questionable whether it's performant enough to allow for frame generation.
Click to expand...
Not enough for the big boy Ampere GPUs without tight power restrictions to use it effectively.
LinkURL said:
Well, in fact, if you also add PS3 + X360, you will see that the market for high-performance consoles has actually stagnated, as PS4 + XOne achieved basically the same total sales and still had refresh versions in the middle of the generation. If you count the sixth generation then it's even worse since PS2 + XBOX already beat the total sales without even counting GC and DC.
So in fact the PC market has made the high-performance console market stagnate in sales, and we can argue that it has actually decreased.
Click to expand...
There's no perfect way to make intergenerational comparisons since there are so many differences, but trying to use PS2 as an example of how things change over time especially doesn't work because about a third of its hardware sales didn't even happen until it was coexisting with PS3. It's definitely safe to say the first three years of either PS4+One or PS5+Series are bigger than the first three years of PS2+Xbox, though. PS360 generation numbers are a bit harder to come by.
 
Lugia667 said:
a pivot would be more than paying for a few games at an event each year
Click to expand...
To be the devil's advocate. Apple has been building for a few years an integrated software + hardware ecosystem for a family of devices.

One underlying take of this presentation could be that their ecosystem is fully capable of delivering fully featured, non-casual game experiences, and even in a mobile form factor.

If they decide they want to get a share of that market, pivoting would simply mean to add another device to thier family, specifically designed for it, which would be totally feasible for them.

The wrong take imo, is that Nintendo would be the most threatened company in that scenario. I think threat of new entrants is actually the most relevant reason of MS spending spree in acquisitions.
 
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Still a Switch 2 SOC are heavily customised for gaming compare to multipurpose A17 SOC inside the Iphone 15 Pro. Gaming still better on a Switch 2 + so many Nintendo IP's. Even A17 max out at 30fps only with Ray Tracing unlike Switch at 60fps with RT
 
Skittzo said:
Assuming you're referring to Silksong A) that game certainly won't be technically demanding enough to skip Switch and its gigantic userbase and B)

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
Click to expand...
Hidden content is only available for registered users. Sharing it outside of Famiboards is subject to moderation.
 
Aether said:
... there are moments where i do think native is better.
Click to expand...

Oh absolutely. And it's a little cheating here, because we're in youtube, where both have compression artifacts, and the higher frame rate is especially smooth on the DLSS side.

Aether said:
But heck, thats just magic. And i assume that devs will either find clever tricks for stuff like the stars in that demo (small details -> flickering), or they will accept that some aspects of the game will look slightly worse on a handheld console...
Click to expand...
In this case, it's a DLSS mod on top of FSR. DLSS provides some tools to fight that flicker that might not be properly employed here. But yeah. Magic. Half magic at least
 
0
GigaUltraMoon said:
Nintendo's new security measures that have made it impossible to crack the V2 which is why all games need to be jacked through the V1, so NG Switch is probably locked down to the point it'll only be able to run on itself
Click to expand...
We don't really know if V2 is impossible to crack. I'm pretty sure no one's really been diligently on top of it because V1 was so easy and universal that they could just do everything they needed on it. It wouldn't surprise me to learn someone did crack V2 but never went public with it because there was no need.
 
TechnicalTip6578 said:
so i took a look at the attendees present at gamescom, obviously not the full list & excluding nintendo ofc but for some of you guys, do you think most of these companies are possibly invested in Switch 2 thanks to the tech demos? (as well as specs)
attendant.PNG
Click to expand...
lexony said:
I'd say most of these companies already have a more "personal" partnership with Nintendo and are part of those devs who got already some form of a devkit.
Click to expand...
IMO, this.

I think those are the companies that had some hosting capacity. Most of them, if applicable, would already have a devkit, and maybe attended Nintendo's booth to further cement the relationship.

Hundreds of other companies were represented in the form of attendees. Pubslishers, tech leads and devs officially representing their companies but not appearing on any bulletin. Those were probably the main target of Nintendo's presentations.

But I don't think any of this is relevant for launch titles, or even titles launching in the first year. Devs would need months, if not years, to make anything of it. First-year titles were probably negotiated a long time ago and sparsely scheduled to maximize demand and revenue. Nintendo will want that launch window for themselves and their partners before opening the flood gates to third-parties at large and dilute their own sales.
 
ILikeFeet said:
Drake is built for Switch 2 and no one else (outside of binned chips)

the differences are
  • t239 has 8 cpu cores, t234 has 12
  • t239 has 1536 gpu cores, t234 has up to 2048
  • t239 has hardware decompression, t234 does not
  • t239 does not have a lot of extra silicon for camera, inference, etc functions, t234 does
Click to expand...
With more CPU and GPU cores wouldn't the T234 have been a better choice, or is there a reason why the T239's unique structural modifications weren't build around those more cores? Could a 12-core CPU, 2048-core GPU be a possible variant for a hypothetical updated ('Pro') NG Switch some years from now?
 
Apple increasing their gaming presence is absolutely a threat to Nintendo, but it’s not going to materially impact Switch 2 sales. It’s a threat in the sense that they cannot ignore any major player in the handheld/gaming space.

The same goes for the Steam Deck and the new wave of Windows handhelds. They’re niche right now, but Nintendo should feel threatened by them. We’re only seeing the first wave of more mainstream handheld Windows devices - will things change when Windows creates a competent “Handheld mode”?

The point isn’t where these companies are right now it’s where they could be further down the line. Nintendo is in a strong position right now but they will be heads down, “threatened” by the potential of these big players disrupting the market.
 
GigaUltraMoon said:
Wow! Is this anything at all like how you get a PS5 game on disc but you have to partially install it first and copy it to the console directly before it's playable?
Click to expand...
Sorta! Discs are slow because they physically have to spin around. Solid state drives don't have to do that, so you copy the data to the solid state drive, boom.

A game card is effectively a little mini solid state drive, all on it's own, that you can hotplug directly into the system. Assuming that card is fast enough - and the rumors seem to indicate it will be - you won't need an install from game card, it'll Just Work.
 
LinkURL said:
I think you guys are REALLY underestimating Apple this time. Just rebutting some points I read on this page.

1- "Price". Yes, the iPhone 15 Pro will be at least 2x more expensive than the Switch 2, but that never stopped Apple from selling more iPhones in 1 YEAR than Nintendo has produced Switches since 2017. These phones are already ultra-popular playing mobile games, Having console-level games will only increase its appeal. It's 1200 dollars to take a portable video game + all the functions that iPhones already do today.
2- Smartphones have always been more powerful than the Switch. This is partly true, but until then this power had never been used to its full extent, now we are seeing games that are at console level running on these machines, at least 6 months before Nintendo launches its console that has the biggest selling point (outside the exclusives) would be exactly that.
3- "Controls": iPhone controls better than Joy-con are nothing new.
4- "Battery": perhaps the most dubious factor so far, however the A17 Pro will be produced on a node that we wouldn't even dream of having in Drake, that is, it will be more energy efficient, and with access to fast charging and perhaps even a bigger battery than the one present in the Switch 2.
5- "Temperature": this first interaction will certainly be the A17 Pro's Achilles heel, but what about in 2 or 3 years? We will have an even more powerful and efficient chip.

This will be just the first iteration of an iPhone with access to AAA games, and they still managed to deliver before the launch of the Switch 2. We will see more and more games and with each generation the distance to Nintendo's hardware will increase.
Great masterstroke by Apple that only continues to enrich its ecosystem. Mac, iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro all sharing the same software and same hardware, unfortunately this is not something Nintendo can compete with.
Click to expand...
Polish_20230912_180609515.png
 
karmitt said:
Apple increasing their gaming presence is absolutely a threat to Nintendo, but it’s not going to materially impact Switch 2 sales. It’s a threat in the sense that they cannot ignore any major player in the handheld/gaming space.

The same goes for the Steam Deck and the new wave of Windows handhelds. They’re niche right now, but Nintendo should feel threatened by them. We’re only seeing the first wave of more mainstream handheld Windows devices - will things change when Windows creates a competent “Handheld mode”?

The point isn’t where these companies are right now it’s where they could be further down the line. Nintendo is in a strong position right now but they will be heads down, “threatened” by the potential of these big players disrupting the market.
Click to expand...
You're right that it's good to be cautious but it feels like a completely different arena of competition between the handheld PCs with each other vs. themselves with Nintendo hardware, for one thing there isn't much a handheld PC can do that a decent notebook or laptop already can't, and they don't have the foundation of a dozen iconic and universally renowned franchises to build on

Personally speaking anyway, a Switch is far more appealing than an Ally, Deck, Neo or a Legion because it's the only one of those offering something unique this nifty little Asus can't do

Until somebody like Sega come out with a unique handheld with exclusive offerings like SMT and Persona, Sonic, Bayonetta, Monkey Ball, Miku etc. there'd be no need to be concerned beyond a cursory market checkover, no idea what the situation with Apple and phone games could be though, but seeing 'Raid: Shadow Legends!' blabbed about all over YouTube constantly by people that clearly never intend to play it is enough to steer clear of mobile gaming altogether
 
oldpuck said:
Sorta! Discs are slow because they physically have to spin around. Solid state drives don't have to do that, so you copy the data to the solid state drive, boom.

A game card is effectively a little mini solid state drive, all on it's own, that you can hotplug directly into the system. Assuming that card is fast enough - and the rumors seem to indicate it will be - you won't need an install from game card, it'll Just Work.
Click to expand...
Gonna have to brush up on what these things are to fully appreciate what you're even saying, but you succeed every time in making each little bit of news or possible development pathways sound so much more optimistic for everybody here
 
0
GigaUltraMoon said:
With more CPU and GPU cores wouldn't the T234 have been a better choice, or is there a reason why the T239's unique structural modifications weren't build around those more cores?
Click to expand...
AGX Orin costs $2,000, is 4 times as big, physically, as the Switch's chip and consumes 50W of power. That's why.

There is probably no use for 12 CPU cores anyway. Modern games struggle to figure out how to use 8. Unlike GPUs, more cores aren't always better.

GigaUltraMoon said:
Could a 12-core CPU, 2048-core GPU be a possible variant for a hypothetical updated ('Pro') NG Switch some years from now?
Click to expand...
Switch T234 is almost as advanced as it is possible to get right now, and they hardware itself hasn't been released. What's possible in 4-5 years is difficult to predict. What NIntendo will want to do - and be willing to compromise to get it - in 5 years is impossible to predict.
 
0
D36 said:
I've seen Microsoft get crap thrown their way from time to time, albeit from Sony zealots. But yeah, it feels like it's been that way since the Wii days.
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Sadly, "Nintendo is teh d00m3d" has been a thing since Gamecube days at least - I remember those days on the IGN forums. Calls for Nintendo to abandon the hardware manufacturing area and just develop games.

I remember the dumb comments suggesting Gamecube looked like a "purple purse" that would cause the average US gamer to be turned away, that sort of thing.
 
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