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

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OniLgnd said:
This isn't really the place to talk about Sony/Xbox, and I know this isn't a popular take, but Gamepass is not here to stay. It has a ton of hurdles to overcome before it is truly profitable, hurdles that I don't think it can overcome. And that is on top of the subscription bubble that is going to pop eventually, which will hit gamepass hard.

I also think it is strange the concern here is for Sony when the PS5 is selling much, much more than Xbox Series, and PS5 is ahead of PS4 sales, but Xbox Series is behind the Xbone.

I don't really think any of them need to worry about Apple, for a lot of different reasons. But if any of them do, it certainly isn't Sony.
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I've heard those "Game Pass is a money sink" comments over and over.
They don't make sense to me.

There are maybe around 25M subscribers. Between first subscriptions, deals and tricks, each pays maybe around $120 a year.
That's $3B every year.
(After Starfield, there probably a lot more subscribers right now)!

Considering maybe around 30% tax, around $2B remains.
They have to run services and maintain servers. I have no idea how much it costs, let's say $300M, which is a lot. $1.7B remains.
Do they spend $700M every year on 3rd-party deals? That seems like a fucking lot!!!! But let's assume it, $1B remains.

How much did Ragnarok cost to develop? $200M?
The money that's left is enough to fully pay for 5x Ragnarok ... every year ... plus $700M for other deals.
(And they get big sums from collector editions and early plays, despite being on Game Pass).
Let that sink in.
 
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brebre73 said:
So physical Switch 1 games would still be limited by cartridge speed, right? I hope there’s an option to install games then
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The main culprit for long loading times on Switch is decompression. The internal storage is already 6+ times faster than game cards, but the gap in loading time is quite small.

BC most likely won't use the dedicated file decompressor nor the full power of the new CPU. And thus, the gap between OG game card and a downloaded BC game won't increase that much.

Even limited, the better CPU will likely reduce loading times by 20~60% depending on the game, but to really get minimum loading times, the devs will need to make a native version of the game and players will have to download it fully (regardless if they bought it digital or physical).
 
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oldpuck said:
A17 is a neat chip. Apple could potentially be a player in the console space.

But if they wanted to do that, it would be more cost efficient to buy Ubisoft than to moneyhat AC:M
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Apple is about the marketing hype...we already have RE: Village running on Apple hardware natively and it's impressive with the m1 pro/max variants but base m1/M2 gaming is underwhelming.




Unless the a17 chip is better than the m1 chip. Console equivalent in apple speech could mean it runs 1080p 30fps with metal FX on...
 
OuiOui said:
Could we get visuals like Horizon: Forbidden West on the next-gen switch?
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considering that game is also on PS4, definitely

Quailman said:
Apple is about the marketing hype...we already have RE: Village running on Apple hardware natively and it's impressive with the m1 pro/max variants but base m1/M2 gaming is underwhelming.




Unless the a17 chip is better than the m1 chip. Console equivalent in apple speech could mean it runs 1080p 30fps with metal FX on...
Click to expand...

since it's using MetalFX, what's the internal resolution?

EDIT: watched the MetalFX segment of that video. holy fuck that's bad. that is not temporal upscaling, my dude (the person in the video seems to think so)
 
Quailman said:
Apple is about the marketing hype...we already have RE: Village running on Apple hardware natively and it's impressive with the m1 pro/max variants but base m1/M2 gaming is underwhelming.




Unless the a17 chip is better than the m1 chip. Console equivalent in apple speech could mean it runs 1080p 30fps with metal FX on...
Click to expand...


For a device that uses less than 10W for the whole SoC and no active cooling, that's pretty impressive.
 
OuiOui said:
Could we get visuals like Horizon: Forbidden West on the next-gen switch?
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In theory something similar. It’ll be like Zero Dawn plus some at the very least compared to base model PS4.

In general yes the next gen switch should finally be able to handle all of the open or semi open world games similar to stuff like GTA, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter World, FFXIV, Forza Horizon, Horizon, Star Wars, Destiny, Division etc as examples.
 
Vanillalite said:
In theory something similar. It’ll be like Zero Dawn plus some at the very least compared to base model PS4.

In general yes the next gen switch should finally be able to handle all of the open or semi open world games similar to stuff like GTA, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter World, FFXIV, Forza Horizon, Horizon, Star Wars, Destiny, Division etc as examples.
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Especially if it's running the Matrix demo without noticeable downgrades. If it can even run that, it can run everything with the exception of the highly CPU bound.
 
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OuiOui said:
Could we get visuals like Horizon: Forbidden West on the next-gen switch?
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It's also important to keep in mind that game was leaked to cost around 212 million... Even with the hardware being leaps and bounds over the PS4, Nintendo still has to fund the likes of those games (talking about first party, that is).
 
I think the biggest takeaway from the A17 Pro is that it highlights what we already knew - arm can do a lot at low power.
A 20% performance boost over last year for their Pro phones isn't that significant, i'm a bit more interested in how it's "more energy efficient for sustained performance while gaming" but they didn't provide figures.
Apple has historically had a very difficult time trying to break into the gaming market, and I think they would have to at least show tens of billions of dollars in investments to get a more compelling catalog of games, porting a few old AAA games and a prettier honkai star rail won't cut it.

Compared to REDACTED, iphone has these problems for gaming:
  • No physical media
  • Storage is a premium and has to compete with other apps/media
  • No thoughtful controller system - how do I play on a desk, couch, bus?
  • Docking/connecting to TV
  • Price of not just the device, but all the accessories you would want/need
  • Fragmentation of different iphone models
  • Metal vs RTX/DLSS
  • GAMES
If they put serious investment into it and solve most of these problems, it could be a threat, but they'd be looking at timelines where they would be competing against the Switch 3 not 2.
 
Mr_F_Snowman said:
Not doing something today does not mean you won't do it tomorrow.
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And, like I said, Apple could be a very interesting player in the space. But that didn't change just because they launched a $1000 phone with a few ports.

The iPhone isn't a threat to Nintendo. Phones in general are a threat to Nintendo, as there are more things competing for leisure time, and everyone owns a portable piece of hardware.

If you've gotten locked into the idea that Nintendo was going to "win" because of how powerful T239 is, I'm sorry to say this, but Nintendo's next handheld will not be the most powerful portable gaming device at any point in it's lifetime. Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung are locked in an aggressive three way battle for a market that sells 1.5 billion phones a year.

That level of competition will push their SOC technology to the limit, and it is iterated on, yearly. If the battle is being fought on power, then Nintendo has already lost. But you know what, that's also been true for the last decade, a period in which Nintendo did okay selling some handheld gaming devices.

Nintendo will succeed by making a compelling gaming experience. The SOC is only part of that equation. First party software is another. Hardware you actually want to use to game, good battery life, the docking experience - all of these things that Apple doesn't have an answer to.

And why would they? Nintendo's hardware sales are a rounding error. Nintendo sold 23 million Switches in 2021. Apple sound 242 million iPhones that year. They sold something on the order of 50 million Watches last year. And they sell the hardware at profit!

Apple could make the most successful console of all time, and it would be a drop in the bucket of their hardware sales in units, and would cause them to lose money to price it competitively. The money is owning the ecosystem, making first party software, and charging third parties to publish.

Apple is not making the moves into first party development, focusing content creation around much cheaper streaming TV and movies. Apple has repeatedly tried and failed to make their ecosystem friendly to AAA publishers, but for all the units sold, folks don't spend $50 on games there.

In 3 years, Nintendo's console will have the rough performance of an "entry level" phone, and Apple won't have a single AAA first party game, and this SOC will not change the fundamental dynamic one whit.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
considering that game is also on PS4, definitely


since it's using MetalFX, what's the internal resolution?

EDIT: watched the MetalFX segment of that video. holy fuck that's bad. that is not temporal upscaling, my dude (the person in the video seems to think so)
Click to expand...
MetalFx is an API that does include upscaling features called MetalFx Upscaling or for short metalfx.

At least from the video it just doesn't look good. Maybe it can be a bad example of it's implementation or there's limitations to Apples upscaling techniques.
 
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FireGrey said:
I think the biggest takeaway from the A17 Pro is that it highlights what we already knew - arm can do a lot at low power.
A 20% performance boost over last year for their Pro phones isn't that significant, i'm a bit more interested in how it's "more energy efficient for sustained performance while gaming" but they didn't provide figures.
Apple has historically had a very difficult time trying to break into the gaming market, and I think they would have to at least show tens of billions of dollars in investments to get a more compelling catalog of games, porting a few old AAA games and a prettier honkai star rail won't cut it.

Compared to REDACTED, iphone has these problems for gaming:
  • No physical media
  • Storage is a premium and has to compete with other apps/media
  • No thoughtful controller system - how do I play on a desk, couch, bus?
  • Docking/connecting to TV
  • Price of not just the device, but all the accessories you would want/need
  • Fragmentation of different iphone models
  • Metal vs RTX/DLSS
  • GAMES
If they put serious investment into it and solve most of these problems, it could be a threat, but they'd be looking at timelines where they would be competing against the Switch 3 not 2.
Click to expand...
I think Apple's thought process is that they don't want to make dedicated hardware. quite frankly, they don't have to. the Apple TV makes for a compelling console as is, same with their PCs. they just need to incentivize people to make games and buy them there
 
Cybergatuno said:
I kinda agree.

PS definitely has great games. If you're ONLY into over-the-shoulder-camera cinematic gaming twice a year, go for it. It also has a few 3rd-parties which you pay full price for.

In terms of ecosystem value, Nintendo, with their very diversified output and great indie ecosystem, and Xbox with Game Pass which is unparalleled in value and diversity, are just a few steps above, IMO.

Switch/Game Pass is best combination I ever had, and I tried them all.
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I have them all, and Xbox gets the absolute least usage. Both Nintendo and PS are equally good. Both give great value in 1st party, 3rd party and Indies. Xbox on the other hand has a lot to catch up to. They just came out with Starfield which looks like it's a banger, finally. But they're still a long way. They need a lot more consistency over time. Game pass is not unparalleled. It's ok, but I hardly even touch it. I play much more NSO and PS+ games in comparison.

Also, let's end all this silly talk here. We're in the Nintendo hardware speculation thread.
 
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No AAA console game will come to iOS unless Apple pays a huge upfront fee to the game company, because it's not profitable to release AAA games on mobile unless they're free-to-play.
Unless mobile gamers' love affair with free-to-play games ends, I don't see the iPhone putting Nintendo's console business in jeopardy.
 
Cybergatuno said:
I've heard those "Game Pass is a money sink" comments over and over.
They don't make sense to me.

There are maybe around 25M subscribers. Between first subscriptions, deals and tricks, each pays maybe around $120 a year.
That's $3B every year.
(After Starfield, there probably a lot more subscribers right now)!

Considering maybe around 30% tax, around $2B remains.
They have to run services and maintain servers. I have no idea how much it costs, let's say $300M, which is a lot. $1.7B remains.
Do they spend $700M every year on 3rd-party deals? That seems like a fucking lot!!!! But let's assume it, $1B remains.

How much did Ragnarok cost to develop? $200M?
The money that's left is enough to fully pay for 5x Ragnarok ... every year ... plus $700M for other deals.
(And they get big sums from collector editions and early plays, despite being on Game Pass).
Let that sink in.
Click to expand...

I think you misinterpreted my post. I'm saying Gamepass success can't be measured like that. It isn't about how much Ragnarok cost to develop, it's about how much Ragnarok made by being a standard release game.

To find out if Gamepass is a true success you have to look at money made from Gamepass subscriptions vs what those games would have made if they were released normally. Not money made from gamepass subscriptions vs how much it cost to develop the games on it. I apologize if my wording is weird here, just trying to explain it in another way.

Here is another example that doesn't use real world sales numbers. You estimate that, after outside costs, Gamepass will pull in 1.7B in a given year. Continuing with that number, lets say Starfield costs 200M to develop. So with the standard way of thinking of things, that would be a "success". Because subtracting the development cost of starfield would still leave them with 1.5B.

But lets say (again these are fake numbers I'm using just for the sake of the discussion, not a real estimate) that if Starfield released normally, it would have pulled in $3.5B in profit in that same year. That would mean Microsoft would make more money without Gamepass, thus Gamepass is not a true success.

And like I said before, you have to do that math for every single game that releases on Gamepass, not just a single title. There is a reason that Sony and Nintendo have stayed away from releasing their big games day one on a subscription service, and it's because the math does not add up.
 
Quailman said:
Apple is about the marketing hype...we already have RE: Village running on Apple hardware natively and it's impressive with the m1 pro/max variants but base m1/M2 gaming is underwhelming.
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They also announced RE4 and Mirage.
ILikeFeet said:
EDIT: watched the MetalFX segment of that video. holy fuck that's bad. that is not temporal upscaling, my dude (the person in the video seems to think so)
Click to expand...
A17 Pro the Metal FX runs on the NPU, not the GPU like the M1/M2. It should be greatly impoved on the A17 Pro and later the M3.


All that said, the Nintendo Platform is gaming first and one I go mainly because of IP. For Apple its a side hustle. The ray tracing will be nice for the next gen vision pro and Mac producs like Belnder and whatnot.
 
Onizuka said:
Yes, for 800 dollars, you can have it at home, one for each member of the family-
Or just one for the whole house as if it were a console bought exclusively to play for 800 dollars.
You will also have the incredible pace of third party game releases supporting the iPhone (note the irony).
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Did they confirm it for the lower end models or only the 1000 or up models?
 
Raccoon said:
...wait, do you all not want consoles to die?
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Creating_Bugs_Bunny%27s_%22No%22.jpg
 
Lugia667 said:
unless these companies give actually numbers theses are just ancedotes though. Switch sells around what 60-70k a week in Japan atm. The queston is if these PC handhelds can do that or are they just stuck with hardcore enthusiats
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And the Wii U sold 13 million in its life - what’s your point? Sentiments and fortunes can change at any moment. I already said before that it’s not about where these companies are now, it’s where they could be in the future. Steam Deck is already doing exceptionally well for itself, and the story around Windows handhelds is only improving.

“They are just stuck with hardcore enthusiasts” is exactly what Nintendo shouldn’t be saying. It’s not much of a leap in my mind for the Steam Deck one or two generations down the line to be a bit of a juggernaut in the gaming space.
 
Noleth said:
But spec wise, how does it compare to Switch 2? I imagine it's at least 2x better.
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I’m commenting twice I’m sorry, but GPU wise Drake is on Shader count better, having more. Cache, the Apple silicon is better having more, RT capabilities remain to be seen on the Apple silicon so I think it’s best to wait on that. API sophistication is probably a tie between them, Nvidia and Apple are no slouch when it comes to that. Memory Bandwidth Drake would or should be better unless Apple is doing a 128b interface. Memory Amount, Drake should be better. CPU wise Apple is significantly better.

Actual game support at a console-like optimization level, Drake is better


Price wise, Drake is better by virtue of being cheaper. Availability of the product, well Apple is better. Having to pay for ports to happen on their platform, it’s a wash but for this case Drake is better cause it tends to not need to do that :p


Also, I need to stress that this is a portable device and the iPhone is a portable device. The iPhone will throttle down and is never at its maximum 100% of the time for a long period. Drake will be in a console with active cooling and will 100% be at its assigned portable maximum. And finally, Drake will clock higher when docked, the iPhone will not and it isn’t designed for that. On top of that, one is suited for phones, the other is literally not.


This phone is to the switch 2 what high end PCs are to the PS5 and XBox Series
 
The iPhone stuff reeks of something that dies off real quick, like every attempt to do console games on mobile.

Normies don't want to buy games on mobile!
 
ILikeFeet said:
considering that game is also on PS4, definitely


since it's using MetalFX, what's the internal resolution?

EDIT: watched the MetalFX segment of that video. holy fuck that's bad. that is not temporal upscaling, my dude (the person in the video seems to think so)
Click to expand...
MetalFX Quality is temporal while MetalFX Performance is spatial according to DF
 
GigaUltraMoon said:
It's the 13th now in Ireland which means the Direct announcement is only 13 hours away!

Just for the craic, should we weigh in on the likelihood of an NG Switch confirmation or an October 'join us for a very special event' message at the end of it?


(Team Spicy)
Yes:

(Team Sweet)
Maybe:
  • Jafin
  • Concernt
  • Meself
(Team Sour)
No Chance:
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team sour( as i stated severals times and many membre here too, anouncing next hardware soon, would impact Switch holiday sales heavily.
 
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.
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This has to be the most bizarre post in this thread and I’ve read many bizarre posts in here.
 
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