I said nothing of performance, I said cost. it's going to be increasingly difficult spending the cost for a mere slim revision. they're gonna have to sell you a kitchen sink with it
-
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| (New Staff Post, Please read)
- Thread starter Dakhil
- Start date
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
I wouldn’t lose hope either, but I would think March-June the latest we would know the next gen system.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, i for my part would like to have it in my hands by June. ;D
Link_enfant
Fashion Dreamer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alright, I'm now on team March release, summer reveal.
Yup, you heard me right.
On a more serious note, I've been thinking about a possible March 2024 initial release and how it would make a lot of sense considering the target demographic of this device at launch. This would be "Act 1" for Nintendo's next gen.
Then having a second "wave" of big games for holiday 2024 like Mario Kart 9, new Pokémon Legends in November and possibly 3D Mario (if it's not a launch game) would kind of allow for a big "Nintendo next gen - Act 2" launch that would target an even wider demographic with more popular games that sell a lot, even more stocks available for holidays and such.
Of course there would be other releases between March and holidays, 3rd party games and why not some cross-gen / upgrade patches but you get the idea.
I think such a "double" launch could work really well for the smooth transition they're looking for (they said it themselves iirc, not sure).
What do you think?
Yup, you heard me right.
On a more serious note, I've been thinking about a possible March 2024 initial release and how it would make a lot of sense considering the target demographic of this device at launch. This would be "Act 1" for Nintendo's next gen.
Then having a second "wave" of big games for holiday 2024 like Mario Kart 9, new Pokémon Legends in November and possibly 3D Mario (if it's not a launch game) would kind of allow for a big "Nintendo next gen - Act 2" launch that would target an even wider demographic with more popular games that sell a lot, even more stocks available for holidays and such.
Of course there would be other releases between March and holidays, 3rd party games and why not some cross-gen / upgrade patches but you get the idea.
I think such a "double" launch could work really well for the smooth transition they're looking for (they said it themselves iirc, not sure).
What do you think?
P4bl0
Project Oz H2 2024
Alright, I'm now on team March release, summer reveal.
Yup, you heard me right.
On a more serious note, I've been thinking about a possible March 2024 initial release and how it would make a lot of sense considering the target demographic of this device at launch. This would be "Act 1" for Nintendo's next gen.
Then having a second "wave" of big games for holiday 2024 like Mario Kart 9, new Pokémon Legends in November and possibly 3D Mario (if it's not a launch game) would kind of allow for a big "Nintendo next gen - Act 2" launch that would target an even wider demographic with more popular games that sell a lot, even more stocks available for holidays and such.
Of course there would be other releases between March and holidays, 3rd party games and why not some cross-gen / upgrade patches but you get the idea.
I think such a "double" launch could work really well for the smooth transition they're looking for (they said it themselves iirc, not sure).
What do you think?
This is the most plausible scenario but MK10 (not MK9, since MK9 is MKTour and number 9 is bad luck in japan) and new Mario 3D in the same year seems too good to be true, gotta pick one eh
Link_enfant
Fashion Dreamer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I agree, those were just examples that crossed my mind to reflect my point. Some Zelda remake/remaster or some next gen sequel like Luigi's Mansion 4 could also work!
Multiverse
Moblin
Zelda, Mario Kart, Mario mainline, Mario Kingdom Battle all came out at launch year. Not to mention Splatoon 2, new ip (Arms), and Xenoblade 2.
Mario Kart and Mario again aren’t too good to be true. TOTK will have to be MK8 deluxe of the new Switch.
Mario Kart and Mario again aren’t too good to be true. TOTK will have to be MK8 deluxe of the new Switch.
ziggyrivers
thunder
- Pronouns
- He/him/his
I like this idea. First few months to sasciate hardcore market, then during the Holidays attract the casualsAlright, I'm now on team March release, summer reveal.
Yup, you heard me right.
On a more serious note, I've been thinking about a possible March 2024 initial release and how it would make a lot of sense considering the target demographic of this device at launch. This would be "Act 1" for Nintendo's next gen.
Then having a second "wave" of big games for holiday 2024 like Mario Kart 9, new Pokémon Legends in November and possibly 3D Mario (if it's not a launch game) would kind of allow for a big "Nintendo next gen - Act 2" launch that would target an even wider demographic with more popular games that sell a lot, even more stocks available for holidays and such.
Of course there would be other releases between March and holidays, 3rd party games and why not some cross-gen / upgrade patches but you get the idea.
I think such a "double" launch could work really well for the smooth transition they're looking for (they said it themselves iirc, not sure).
What do you think?
P4bl0
Project Oz H2 2024
I don't see a Switch exclusive direct happening if the Switch 2 has been revealed by then
Yeah the focus has been Switch 1 when it comes to sales there is nothing new about it. However a Switch 2 reveal this year (we already 7 months in the fiscal year) doesn't mean they are not focusing on Switch 1, by revealing the successor on Month 9 since sales probably won't start before Month 12 (March 2024) or next FY April 2024.
Pushing the successor at the last quarter of the current FY doesn't mean they didn't focus on Switch 1 the whole FY if you get what I mean.
- Pronouns
- he / him
Anything not plainly stated is easy enough to wiggle into any possibility. If the new system is out for 5% of the year, sells 20% the hardware of the Switch 1, and 5% of the software of the Switch 1, it'd be hard to say the year was focused on the new thing.
Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 about a half year apart. Mario Kart Advance and Super Mario Advance several months apart, though SMA not all new. Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros. about a half year apart. Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii about a half year apart. Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 8 about a half year apart. MK8D and Odyssey about a half year apart, though MK8D was only new to the vast majority of people.
yusufied
Tektite
- Pronouns
- he/him
I want them to fix the gyro drift too. Apparently there are solutions for this now with magnetometers. Not sure how all that works but I just need a way for controllers to actively calibrate themselves like the Wiimotes could.
P4bl0
Project Oz H2 2024
Very interesting I didn't know that Mario Kart Wii released in Spring, in this case I can see Mario 3D releasing in Fall 2024 and MK10 releasing in Spring 2025
carbvan
Chain Chomp
- Pronouns
- he/him
What kinda controls overhaul? We going back to Wii remotes or something? I don't see a reason to throw out the layout of the joycon or pro controller rn, they're pretty standard. There's a reason why 2 sticks, some shoulder buttons and triggers, a dpad and 4 face buttons are standard. It just works well for everything.
YolkFolk
Tingle
Is it the most plausible scenario or the scenario you most want to happen?
Right now, Q1 feels like the least plausible scenario possible.
I guess only time will prove this to be so.
Νεφέλωμα
Switch 3 enthusiast
- Pronouns
- He
No way. You mean a closed 3DS XL?
carbvan
Chain Chomp
- Pronouns
- he/him
I don't see a world where investors let Nintendo release the Switch 2 without MK10 close to launch. 8 Deluxe has been a system seller topping the sales charts consistently for 7 years, they want to replicate that asap.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
Atlus why you hiding stuff from us?
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
Nintendo always has Mario Kart out within the first 2 years.
To me Mario Kart will be ready to go in Spring 2025 (May 2025) the latest. All these developers have disappeared for over 5 years. I think they’ve got tons of games ready. Nintendo only has one system to depend on every generation. They gonna come loaded.
the next Monolith Soft game, you play god, who was dethroned by humans, and you wage war against your creations for their insolence
Hosermess
Koopa
lol what do you expect them to do about it?
P4bl0
Project Oz H2 2024
I think they will release MK10 when they want Switch 1 install base to transit massively and immediately to the successor, perhaps at the end of first party Switch 1 support in March 2025 like Furukawa suggested
Serif
𝕽𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖌𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝕬𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖑
Overhaul feels like a strong word. The controls will most likely retain the existing layout for the sake of BC and multiplatform games. At most I expect enhanced gyro / haptics / IR and some addition of capacitive touch.
Horizonal width, not thickness.
But I think it's thinner than a closed 3DS XL, I'd have to check.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
I guess the wealthy investor might sell their shares. I shutter at the thought of that.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Cool, i love playing as the villain!
- Pronouns
- he/him
FWIW, half of Moore's law was about the pace of things getting smaller.
I don't see a world where investors dictate what Nintendo can and cannot do, tbh.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't really see the case for a reveal before Black Friday. All of these different bundles show they clearly want to sell Switches this holiday. Why even chance that success? What does showing the new hardware now and not in, say, March, accomplish?
Joy-Boy
Bob-omb
To be fair, we got 8 Deluxe and Odyssey in the same year (And 8 Deluxe was a new game for like 90% of the people who bought it)
Paraspikey
Boo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't entirely disagree that it would make investors happy if such a big game was next year, but they don't really have that much power. I do think we're going to need a big multiplayer franchise in its launch year, and my bets are currently on Smash getting something new and Mario Kart 9/10/Whatever being in 2025. That makes more sense to me currently.
With Tour shutting down possibly in July 2024, seeing the game in a June 2024 Direct though makes sense.
Foltzie
Uncle Muji
- Pronouns
- he/him
Huh. . . I never realized. Your point about 30x more power in about the same width and thickness is wild.
Horizonal width, not thickness.
But I think it's thinner than a closed 3DS XL, I'd have to check.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
When do you think this new Smash game is coming?
Joy-Boy
Bob-omb
I feel the opposite.
I think Smash skips this next generation.
Sakurai is basically retired, and Ultimate is too daunting of a task to follow up without giving it some time to figure out a new dirction.
Other Nintendo series have been fine skipping a generation here and there. Smash will survive with stuff like Ultimate Deluxe or Shadowdropped ports of Melee and Brawl throughout the next gen, and can come back in full force in Switch 3 when everyone will be hungry for it.
It's much more likely that devkits were pulled for some routine reasons (updated hardware, etc.) than the presented cancellation narrative.
If something actually was cancelled, some other major part of the narrative is likely off the mark.
Paraspikey
Boo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't really know; I can see it around the time the Sora Amiibo is given a release date. I'm not entirely convinced it's a new game. I believe it's either going to be a Pass 3 or an Ultimate Deluxe. We know the team is back together since they have to develop the Sora Amiibo code and roll out the update, which might sound easy on paper, but it's more complicated than what most people think.
If it's a Pass 3, then it can be at next-gens launch if it's in H1 2024. If next-gen isn't till H2 2024, then it's probably more of an Ultimate Deluxe. I also know there have been rumors since, like, 2021, of more content for Ultimate that did tie to new hardware, and that was a couple of months after Pyra's presentation where they said Pass 2 was the end, so I don't know if those rumors will end up panning out.
qwerp
Moblin
Smash will never skip a generation. It is way too popular. If Sakurai isn't up for the next smash game, they will simply find a new director. A Smash Bros Ultimate Deluxe would not go down well. A melee port would only really satisfy the extreme competitive community.
You are greatly over estimating how much it takes to add 1 single amiibo figurine support. It was most likely done whilst Sora was in development, and simply needs to be patched into the game.
Neoxon
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Smash skipping the generation is too big of a risk for Nintendo, especially when they’re already nervous about this generational transition. At least with MK8D, the Wii U’s failure ensured that game was new to 90% of people. The same wouldn’t apply to Smash Ultimate.
Also, the “semi-retired” thing were words put into Sakurai’s mouth by the interviewer. Sakurai never specifically used that phrase to describe his status, & even mentioned that he’s down to return & work on Smash however he can in a recent YouTube video.
Even doing a port wouldn’t be easy from a legal standpoint, as including even one third-party DLC character would require a new revenue split for EVERYONE (especially for companies who joined via DLC). At that point, you’d might as well do a new game.
Likewise, another Fighters Pass won’t exactly help sell Switch 2s when the game is still available on the original Switch.
ziggyrivers
thunder
- Pronouns
- He/him/his
Nintendo needs a Smash Ultimate type of game where they update with new characters, generates hype and is constantly on the collective mindset
A Fighters Pass 3 could do that, but I only see this happening exclusively for the next gen console, and maybe in the second or third year
A Fighters Pass 3 could do that, but I only see this happening exclusively for the next gen console, and maybe in the second or third year
Paraspikey
Boo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, then, why wasn't the code in the final update? It takes a lot of work to roll out an update, and no developer waits 2 years to add code already developed code in an update when you've already "disbanded" the team working on the game. I've talked with a couple of dev friends, and it just doesn't make sense for them to hold off purposefully unless they wanted a new Amiibo release to tie into something. Sora's Amiibo could have been decided later on, but that's also a weird theory since Sora was negotiated for at TGS 2019, so that means it took them over half a decade to get the rights, despite already working with Bamco on figures in the past of Sora and despite getting the rights of 8, Disney-owned KH songs. You'd figure music would be one of the hardest things to get.
Giancarlo
Nintendo connoiseur
a febraury Direct focused on Nintendo Switch software? but we have this since the launch of the console? why a general Direct in february/march change anything?
Neoxon
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Because Nintendo was likely still working out the legal details with Disney for who gets what regarding Sora’s Amiibo.
As I said, just another season pass for an old game won’t move systems. And Sakurai already emphasized the importance of each Smash game being distinct (even though they’re built upon the foundation of the previous game, Wii U -> Ultimate especially).
Paraspikey
Boo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't entirely disagree, I think if such an outcome happened, it would be weird. Any outcome would be weird, in my opinion, and would require some explanation, including just "nothing". In my eyes, they're gearing up for something, and I don't see it being a full-on, new game yet.
I have such a hard time believing Amiibo would be the sour spot in all of this, and even then, the team is having to go back, develop the code, and roll out the update. A similar thing happened with Sm4sh. Cloud, Bayo, and Corrin Amiibos got dated in April 2017, got released in July 2017, and then we got Ultimate revealed in March 2018.
If we do get something next year, that'll be a much shorter turn around, but I do think it's important for Nintendo to have that flagship multiplayer game around it's launch, and if Mario Kart 9/10 isn't until 2025, Smash getting something across 2024 makes sense to me.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
Frame Generation, an explainer
What the hell is Frame Generation? Don't games already generate frames?
Well, yes, sorta. Games draw frames based on game logic that is currently executing, and the geometry, textures, and effects that the GPU is processing.Frame generation is the process creating additional frames without any of that. No game logic, no geometry, no game shaders, nothing.
Wait, what? How?
I'm going to tell you, but first, a word from our sponsor,Is this DLSS? FSR?
DLSS is a suite of tools. One of those tools is Frame Generation, which Nvidia calls DLSS-FG. This tool was added in DLSS 3, so it's sometimes called DLSS 3, but that can get real confusing real fast.FSR is a similar set of tools, and one of those tools is also Frame Generation, which AMD named FSR-FMF, or Fluid Motion Frames. It was also added in version 3 of FSR, and is sometimes called FSR3. Again, confusing.
"I saw that FSR frame generation, in Quality mode-"
Lemme stop you right there, hoss. FSR-FMF doesn't have a "Quality" mode. Like I said, FSR is a suite of tools. One of them is Super Resolution, which does have a Quality mode. Remember what I said about the naming being confusing?Same with DLSS. Frame generation is either "on" or "off", no other settings apply.
How it works, the short(ish) version
Normally, when a game draws a frame, it sends it to your screen, then starts the next frame.With frame gen, the frame doesn't go to your screen immediately. It gets saved for later. Meanwhile, your game gets on to drawing frame #2. That doesn't get sent to the screen either. It also gets buffered.
Now your game is starting on frame #3. That's when frame generation gets to work. Frame gen takes frame #1 and frame #2, and tries to figure out a frame that would go between those two frames.
No game uses 100% of the GPU 100% of the time. That's part of frame gen's secret. By only using the old frames, and these idle GPU resources, frame gen (hopefully) gets you new frames effectively for free. While the CPU is busy working on frame #3, frame gen quickly assembles a frame #1.5.
Frame #3 gets buffered. Frame #1.5 also gets buffered. And finally, the original frame #1 goes out to the screen. Game engine goes on to working on frame #4, while frame gen gets to work on frame #2.5, using the buffered copy of frame #2 and the frame #3 it just got.
So far, we've done a lot of work, and we've still only put one frame on the screen. But this is the moment when the magic happens. Frame gen stops what it's doing for a second, and puts frame #1.5 on the screen, before frame #4 is done. Then when frame #4 comes in, frame #2 goes out.
When all works exactly right, you get double your frame rate. Imagine a 120Hz display. 120 times a second, tick-tock-tick-tock, the display refreshes.
Without frame gen, say you are running a 60fps game. Every tick you get a new image on screen, every tock the image just stays there. Turn on frame gen, now you get the same frames you always got on the tick, but new generated frame every tock, hugely improving how smooth the image looks.
That wasn't short at all
Believe me, it could get longer. In fact, it will!Also, I can immediately see some problems
Turns out, you're right about all of them!The Problem(s) of Frame Generation
Ghosting/Artifacting
How good are these generated frames? The answer is, pretty good but not perfect. Here is an example from Spider-Man. The circled area is a big blurry glob around Spidey's leg. You can see smaller but similar artifacting around his hands.Latency
Latency is just the measure of the time between pressing a button and something happening on screen. Frame generation depends on holding frames so you can make new frames in between then. Obviously that increases latency significantly.
Stutter/Pacing
Sometimes, frame gen won't finish in time, before the screen refreshes. When that happens, frame gen has to decide when to send out the frames it's holding - which means it might need to throw out work it's done on generated frames and start the process over again - or continue to hold the existing frames, causing a frame drop, and increased latency. Both these things will be experienced by the player as microstutter, and frame rate instability.
The Solution (singular) for Frame Pacing
Frame gen offers one solution to all these problems - only use frame generation when frame rates are already high.Ghosting/Artifacting
When you start from 20fps, objects can move a lot in a single frame. That makes it harder for frame gen to guess the right thing between the two frames, causing more visible artifacts. And with a lower frame rate, those artifacts are on screen longer, making them easier to see.But if you start from 60fps, objects can't move as far each frame, so frame gen can make smarter choices about the generated frames. And because frames are only on screen for 10ms or less, the artifacts don't stick around long before being replaced by a clean, natively rendered frame.
Latency
Frame gen needs to buffer two frames, so you get 1-2 frames of latency, at the native frame rate. If you start with a 20fps game, and add frame gen, thats 100ms of latency. Massive.But if you start from a 60fps game, that's only 33ms of latency. The higher the base frame rate, the lower the latency that frame gen adds.
Stutter/Pacing
Once you get past 90+fps, frame pacing problems are almost impossible to notice. 120fps means a frame is only on screen for 8ms. 90fps is 11ms. That difference is so tiny, that you don't detect the stutter. It's just smoothness.
The Unsolvable Problem of Frame Generation
What if there are no spare GPU cycles for frame gen to run. What then?Well... nothing. Frame gen needs spare GPU power to run. This is (one of) the key things to understand about frame generation. Frame gen doesn't exist to help small, overloaded GPUs. Frame gen exists for big, underused GPUs.
The speed at which GPUs are improving is much much faster than CPUs are improving. And where CPUs are improving is by adding more cores. Game engines are exceptionally bad at using more cores.
Nvidia and AMD would really really like you to buy their big new GPU. But if you're not able to use all that GPU power, why would you? Enter frame generation. FG could slurp up all the unused power inside the GPU and give improvements even if the games themselves couldn't keep up.
Why FG isn't good for Switch NG
Hopefully by now it should be obvious. I'm not talking about what's technologically possible. I'm talking about what's good for the system.It wasn't designed to solve the sub 30fps problem, and is pretty bad at it.
See "problems" above.It doesn't work well with small GPUs
A medium sized GPU running at 95% efficiency might have 1 spare TFLOP of performance in it's occasional idle moments. But that tiny bit of spare power that frame gen is trying to slurp up is like the entire performance of the Switch NG's GPU! Even if Switch NG is idle for significant portions of time, it's an open question of how much frame generation it would be able to do.It doesn't work well in consoles
This is kind of a subtle point, but bear with me. A PC game isn't optimized for exactly your combination of GPU and CPU, and its exact load is going to depend on the settings you put into it. There is plenty of opportunity to create PC settings which leave room for frame gen.But with a console, you've got a limited performance budget, dedicated hardware, and fewer tweakable settings. Poorly optimized games won't be able to use frame gen as a "crutch" because there won't be idle GPU power lying around, and well optimized games will be pushing the hardware to its limit.
You might be able to imagine the sort of graphically simple game that is running at 60fps, on Switch, but has the CPU pegged to the wall, while leaving plenty of GPU power idle. But does that sort of simulation heavy, low graphics game really going to play so much better at 120fps?
Why FG probably won't be on the Switch NG, Part 1
Now we are talking about the technical hurdles. And to do that, we need to do a deeper dive on Frame Gen itself.We understand how frame gen works at a high level, but the question we skipped ironically, is - how does it decide what to generate? We know what it's inputs are - it's starting with two natively rendered frames. but how does it figure out what goes between?
Optical Flow
Imagine an Instagram filter for a second. One that gives you a pair of cute little faerie horns, say. When you tilt your head to the side, the horns follow. When you lean back, the horns tilt up, when you twist your head one horn gets larger the closer it gets to the camera, the other gets smaller.How does it do that? How does it know how your head is moving in 3D space when it only has 2D pictures of your face?
The answer is pretty simple, it’s watching your eyes. Eyes get bigger, you’re closer to the camera, eyes get smaller, you’re further away. One eye gets larger, the other smaller, you’re twisting your head, the shape of your eyes seems to get wider at the bottom, you’re tilting your head up.
This is a simple example of something called optical flow. Take two images and try to figure out the 3D motion between them.
When frame gen starts working on making a generated frame, it’s first step is to perform an optical flow analysis of the two frames to figure out how to objects in the scene are moving.
Optical Flow? Sounds familiar
If you’ve heard folks talk about Nvidia’s OFA, or optical flow accelerator. Nvidia has custom hardware for these sorts of operations. In the RTX 40 cards, Nvidia increased the size of that OFA in order to improve frame generation. The reason should be pretty obvious by now - it's about being able to do optical flow at 60fps. The old, RTX 30 OFA is likely fast enough for 30fps games, but frame gen doesn't like low frame rates.AMD doesn't have optical flow hardware, so instead it uses the existing GPU to do this analysis.
Interpolation
With two native frames, and optical flow data, it's time to actually generate the "fake" middle frame.FSR does this with hand-written code that runs on the GPU. DLSS uses AI. Both are trying to do the same thing - to shift pixels so they are halfway between the first frame and the second frame, but do so in a way that doesn't make objects appear to break up into a smear of pixels. You want Spidey's hand to stay looking like a hand. Otherwise instead of more frames what your eyes actually see is lots of motion blur.
Why it won't be on Switch NG, Part 2
Performance
It seems that Switch NG won't have the larger OFA that Nvidia introduced in their newer cards. That leaves frame gen having to use the GPU for optical flow, like FSR does. And Frame Gen doesn't like low frame rates.For high frame rate frame gen, we're asking the GPU to not only render a game at 60fps, but to leave enough resources on the GPU to do optical flow at 60fps, and to interpolate at 60fps.
What about lower frame rates? What if I don't care about quality?
Well, I would suggest that most developers, who are going to control whether or not frame gen is available, do care about quality.But also, why not... lower the settings? There are other ways to increase frame rates while sacrificing image quality. Remember, frame gen only increased smoothness. It doesn't do anything else that extra frames do in video games. So if the resulting product is less smooth then why use it? Here is a quick screenshot of the main character from Forspoken on the ROG Ally, with frame generation off
Now, if you've got a good eye, you can tell that this is a YouTube clip, and that there is video compression here, and you would be right. You might be about to argue that any comparisons might not be valid, because YouTube artifacts are getting in the way. Hold your horses. This is what happens when you turn frame gen on.
I guarantee that compression artifacts aren't why she doesn't have the top of her head. With low frame rates as inputs to frame gen, it can't easily tell where the edges of objects are, and so a little head move by Freya and frame gen just erases her whole skull.
Which is not to say no games will ship with some form of frame generation. I'm sure someone will do it. But will it be common or halfway decent? Probably not!
Appendix: Anti-lag/Reflex
Nvidia's marketing has especially pushed this "lag free" narrative around frame generation, so I wanted to take a second and talk about that.Frame gen creates 2 frames of lag. Period. It always, always, always does. However, both AMD and Nvidia have introduced new lag reduction technologies, and both require that these lag reduction tools be on when using frame gen. The idea is that these tools can reduce latency in other places, to compensate for the latency added by frame-gen.
Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time it does okay. But these latency technologies can be turned on without using frame gen, and they only work if the game has latency to fix in the first place.
Nvidia's Reflex solution - the only one available on Switch NG - involves forcing the GPU to be slightly underutilized all the time. You can see that this is part of Nvidia's move to take advantage of the lots of extra power that their new GPUs offer, even if games can't use it directly. You can also see how that might be a bad fit for a small device which doesn't want to waste a drop of performance.
Neoxon
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sometimes the simplest solution is the right one: Sakurai got the band back together to work on a new Smash game for the Switch 2, & the Sora Amiibo update likely indicates that it’s Bandai Namco again. Those YouTube videos are filmed months in advance, & the output slowing down likely indicates that they’re trying to stretch out whatever videos are left before the series ends (as Sakurai is now working on Smash 6).
Will there be cuts, probably. But I doubt they’ll go below 3DS/Wii U’s launch roster unless they pull a SF/MK & completely start from scratch. Either way, Smash will sell like hotcakes. So Nintendo will continue Smash with new entries for as long as it prints money.
qwerp
Moblin
Regarding this situation, it does not take a lot of work to update the game.
It was probably not included at the time Sora was added into the game because they were unsure whether an amiibo would even be made. Fighter Pass 3 is not happening, it makes no sense for them to continue working on ultimate 5 years after launch, and 2 years after finishing DLC. It would be in the best interest of Namco and Nintendo if they put their focus towards a brand new entry.
P4bl0
Project Oz H2 2024
I can see Smash getting the MK8 Deluxe treatment this next gen, with a 4K Deluxe version on launch window.
Triistan
Moblin
Are we sure that the agreements work like this? I've always imagined that to include a third-party character, Nintendo simply pays a one-time fee to the current publisher (of course, the price varies based on the character's popularity and DLC sales estimates). In this case, all Nintendo would need to do for a remaster is pay an additional one-time fee to the various third parties.
Do we have any official information we can rely on to understand this?
Neoxon
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The two situations aren’t the same…
- Mario Kart 8 was new to 90% of people due to the Wii U’s failure, a system whose games can’t be played on the Switch natively.
- Smash Ultimate is the 3rd best-selling first-party Switch game, a system which itself is one of the biggest consoles ever. Not to mention that the Switch 2 will almost certainly be backwards compatible with Switch 1 games.
I doubt it’s that simple, especially with Disney involved.Are we sure that the agreements work like this? I've always imagined that to include a third-party character, Nintendo simply pays a one-time fee to the current publisher (of course, the price varies based on the character's popularity and DLC sales estimates). In this case, all Nintendo would need to do for a remaster is pay an additional one-time fee to the various third parties.
Do we have any official information we can rely on to understand this?
Last edited by a moderator:
