lemonfresh
#Team2024
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wouldnt be the first time snes,n64,gc and switch 1 had no bc with the previous consoles
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)
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ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
These involved pretty significant format changes and hardware changes.
But digital games are common now and this is still NVIDIA so no digital BC would make no sense unless shader compatibility is literally unsolvable.
Like, maybe there could be no physical BC for one or all models, but no digital BC would be incredibly bad.
Individualised
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Genuinely not trying to be mean but did you read the part of my post after "Nintendo would be very brave to not include BC"? I think I was pretty clear in my reasoning.
darthdiablo
+5 Death Stare
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Based on the comment you just replied to, you’re basically suggesting Nintendo would have made lies to their investors- that wouldn’t sit too well with investors.
Ghostsonplanets
Ghost in the Sales
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People will get on your case, but you're indeed right. "PS4" performance portable and that level of performance being transformed into "PS4 Pro"-ish level while Docked thanks to DLSS would be really good still. And as long as Switch 2 has comparable level of baseline memory, CPU performance and memory bandwidth, PS5 ports won't be an issue because GPU is really scalable (And we already see this with current Switch).
People sometimes forget that games like this below are from the PS4 generation:
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
Where should the big Wii U disc be inserted into the Switch?
Individualised
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Are we continuing the Ring Fit 2 stuff in this thread or the other one? It is technically hardware related. I'd like to know whatever happened with that.
I'm expecting something closer to, but not exactly the same as, Xbox. This is based primarily on speculation and my read on the various idiosyncrasies and limitations of the platforms, however.
LiC
Member
I think we should explicitly mentally guard against interpretations like this where we project our own uncertainty onto Nintendo. Their plans for this hardware were finalized long before the first detail of it left their doors and made its way to third parties or to us.
kvetcha
hoopy frood
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Each of those platforms also signified a major architectural shift that precluded the ability to easily include BC, so this doesn’t mean much.
Individualised
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Given the incompatibilities between Switch 1 and 2 hardware I doubt it will be exactly like Xbox (where Xbox Series is pretty much just an Xbox One with current gen specs) but unlike PS5 it does seem like they're going to have a more unified software experience similar to how Xbox Series and Xbox One use the exact same dashboard. The actual backwards compatibility stuff probably won't be as seamless though and there's probably gonna be some minor incompatibilities if software emulation or a compatibility layer is used for the GPU.
Angel Whispers
Follow me at @angelpagecdlmhq
Ah!! There it is… The “Because Nintendo” non-premise. Instablock. We don’t do that in these parts.
Individualised
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This is actually not true for the SNES - it's hardware is an evolution of the NES hardware and it was intended to have backwards compatibility with the NES, but it was cut due to a variety of reasons. Porting NES games to SNES is relatively easy due to this though which is why we got so many of them (including Super Mario All-Stars - the versions included are actually enhanced ports, they're not built from the ground-up, they're based on the same code as the NES games).
But I digress, this isn't relevant to my original point, which has nothing to do with what Nintendo has done in the past and rather what Nintendo have promised investors for the future.
SoldierDelta
Designated Xenoblade Loremaster
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Nintendo has changed a lot over the recent years, to the extent that we can't exactly rely on the "Because Nintendo" argument.
And that's before you get to the part where the argument is stupid and dumb and stupid in the first place.
Angel Whispers
Follow me at @angelpagecdlmhq
It’s a level of mind gymnastics that would have Simone Biles herself questioning whether she’s still the GOAT or not… and those championships were last week!!
OctoSplattack
Chain Chomp
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If the next system doesn't have backwards compatibility, it would be the most confusing thing they have ever done. If it doesn't happen, I need a 50-page report from everyone at Nintendo PTD, NERD, and Nvidia explaining what the hell they've been doing.
D
Deleted member 887
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It was "target spec hardware" so it definitely wasn't running in any kind of BC mode. That's pretty definitive by itself. But, more broadly, the reports don't match an "enhanced" patch.
"Enhanced" patches are new bits of code that would theoretically run on the old hardware, but that only make sense on the new hardware. For example, removing frame rate and resolution caps. You could remove them on Switch, but it would result in a worse, unstable experience. But on a more powerful (but backwards compatible) device, it would allow the game to take advantage of that extra performance.
This is how emulation gets you 4k60. The emulator exposes the greater power of your PC, and then applies a fan-made patch to uncap frame rate and resolution. Breath of the Wild was a 900p game, running at 30fps. That means pushing 43 million pixels a second. 4K60 is 498 million pixels a second. You can do the math, that's a 11.5x performance improvement. Well beyond the 6x we're looking at for Switch NG.
So we have to assume DLSS was involved in that demo (seemingly confirmed by Rich at DF). DLSS requires updating to NVN2, which is the core graphics library. NVN2 is not what we call ABI compatible with NVN - ABI means application binary interface. Without ABI compatibility, you have to recompile all your code, and build an NG native app.
DLSS also changes the post-processing pipeline for your game. It is unlikely that, even without NVN2, you'd be able to patch in DLSS functionality on top of a game running in BC mode. Even if Nintendo offers BC, we should expect something like PS5/Xbox Series, where Nintendo provides the possibility for an NG upgrade that is transparently downloaded and run when it's available, and games only run in BC mode (enhanced or otherwise) only when those NG upgrades aren't available.
ReddDreadtheLead
#TeamLate2025WithAPotentialForEarly2026
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I’m attempting to think of the rationale here, so let me present what I have:
Release 2 models
1 is BC the other is not
“Here’s one that lets you buy the old games and the new games, and here’s one that lets you buy only the new games, which one would you like?”
“The one that can do both”
“But that is more expensive, are you sure? The other one can play all the new games that you’ll most likely play being a new system”
“Sure, but like that one has a smaller available games, like 9. This other one has hundreds that I can try”
“Yes but that one is significantly cheaper than the other one that has backwards compatibility”
“Ok and?”
Release 2 models
1 is BC the other is not
“Here’s one that lets you buy the old games and the new games, and here’s one that lets you buy only the new games, which one would you like?”
“The one that can do both”
“But that is more expensive, are you sure? The other one can play all the new games that you’ll most likely play being a new system”
“Sure, but like that one has a smaller available games, like 9. This other one has hundreds that I can try”
“Yes but that one is significantly cheaper than the other one that has backwards compatibility”
“Ok and?”
Nakapol
Moblin
nick also unsure on this rumor tho
also his track record on Nintendo side is bad. He was also on Pro wagon 2 years ago.
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darthdiablo
+5 Death Stare
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Thanks for the explanation, makes sense and (I think) that lines up with what I was thinking would be possible (except the bit where I originally thought NVN and NVN2 was internal to the system until Concernt corrected me, I didn't realize those are shipped with games themselves).
So for the most part Switch 1 games (except perhaps a few outliers) will be able to run on Switch 2, in BC mode. Nintendo (and 3rd party) might, if they choose to do so, provide a "NG upgrade" patch (ie: Switch 2 patch for BOTW to take us closer to 4k60fps, if not all the way there).
If I have that correct, I think that lines up with my general expectations of what Switch 2 will be able to do (BC mode as a default, and then there's also discretional option of "NG upgrade" for certain Switch 1 games)
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...no, we really don't. It's possible that, alongside additional optimisations, some made possible by the new hardware like VRS, clocks have improved on top of the raw volume of silicon. If anything it seems likely, unless they go with an extremely poor node, which itself is unlikely.
I think it POSSIBLY used DLSS- but we don't HAVE to assume it. That's just not true.
TomNookYankees
Koopa
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Only way it would make sense is if it's more like:
Nintendo: "Here's one that's digital only and one that has a cartridge slot but is much more expensive. Which one do you want?"
Someone whose Switch library includes a lot of physical copies of Switch games : "I'll pay the extra money because I want to play my old games on this thing."
Someone whose library is 95-100% digital purchases: "I'll go with the digital only model. There might be 1 or 2 Switch 1 games that I can't play on this thing but that's fine."
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
I am not certain that's true. I take your point overall, that Nintendo wouldn't go to partners with uncertainty, and that we shouldn't project our uncertainty onto Nintendo. But I am open to the possibility of Nintendo being responsive to partners. And when it comes to the eShop, where there is a large library of existing titles, and where Nintendo certainly has time-limited contracts with large publishers, this would be the situation where those partners have maximum leverage.
I'll grant "waffle" was a poor choice of words, though. BC and a shared eShop removes some control from the publishers, which I'm sure they hate, and large publishers with custom profit sharing deals with Nintendo are almost certainly looking at the end of those contracts. It is easy for me to imagine that those publishers might ask for a larger cut, or threatening to pull titles as a negotiating strategy. Similarly, I can see Nintendo offering - or threatening - to keep old titles only available to Switch 1 customers by default, or requiring enhancement for Switch NG listing.
I can also easily imagine this business-as-usual negotiation resulting in ambiguous or mixed messaging to various partners. Even if I think there is only a 5% chance of this being the case, I don't think that's in "rule it out" territory. Perhaps it's my bias as a technical person, but I find a business driven reason for ambiguity to be more likely than a technical one.
Would Nintendo take both approaches? I think that if Nintendo wants to go the route of native ports for "BC", they're not gonna bother with some global BC mode and layer. They'll make "All Switch games in 4K60" a big feature/marketing point, and maybe even charge a per-game fee for support or make it part of NSO.
Xbox and PS designed their systems so that fully supporting both requires separate builds, but Nintendo is not bound to do the same thing. Since they are generally more storage constrained, they have some amount of incentive to let games reuse as much data as possible between versions, up to and potentially including the main executable. There are various techniques, such as dynamic linking or just namespaces, that could make this possible.
That said, I don't think there's any reason to believe that a demo as described would be running on BC without Nintendo explicitly communicating that. Plenty of bespoke demos created based on existing games are created for contexts like this.
Couldn't it also be that nothing is going on behind the scenes. But game of telephone and all that?
RennanNT
Bob-omb
Fake edit: Not sure if this post is still needed after @oldpuck post, but I already wrote it by the time I read it so I will just post it.
NVN is a layer between the game and the hardware. Switch games are communicating with the X1 GPU through it. And Switch 2 will use NVN2 to communicate with the Drake GPU.
For a OG game to communicate with the new GPU, devs would ideally migrate the game to NVN2. But this won't happen for the entire library, so there will be a translation layer between the NVN and the Ampere GPU.
A middle ground solution is NVN having a way for devs to know they're running on a more powerful hardware. They can then tune up the game to setting which would run in single digits fps on OG when they detect it's NG and test to make sure it's working properly on OG while enhanced on NG. But NVN would still be thinking it's a Maxwell GPU and the translation layer would translate that to Ampere.
DLSS isn't a feature present on NVN as X1 doesn't have Tensor cores, so adding support to it requires a huge lift for an unlikely case (devs having time to add DLSS but not enough to migrate to NVN2). The only way for that to make sense to me at all is if they decided to update NVN to be used for making native versions for both systems and keep NVN2 be for NG exclusives, without any legacy code. Which is not how I would expect them to handle, to be clear, but I could see some reasoning behind that at least.
It was mostly explained already, but...
NVN is a layer between the game and the hardware. Switch games are communicating with the X1 GPU through it. And Switch 2 will use NVN2 to communicate with the Drake GPU.
For a OG game to communicate with the new GPU, devs would ideally migrate the game to NVN2. But this won't happen for the entire library, so there will be a translation layer between the NVN and the Ampere GPU.
A middle ground solution is NVN having a way for devs to know they're running on a more powerful hardware. They can then tune up the game to setting which would run in single digits fps on OG when they detect it's NG and test to make sure it's working properly on OG while enhanced on NG. But NVN would still be thinking it's a Maxwell GPU and the translation layer would translate that to Ampere.
DLSS isn't a feature present on NVN as X1 doesn't have Tensor cores, so adding support to it requires a huge lift for an unlikely case (devs having time to add DLSS but not enough to migrate to NVN2). The only way for that to make sense to me at all is if they decided to update NVN to be used for making native versions for both systems and keep NVN2 be for NG exclusives, without any legacy code. Which is not how I would expect them to handle, to be clear, but I could see some reasoning behind that at least.
darthdiablo
+5 Death Stare
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What about swapping out NVN for NVN2 in the game code via a Switch 2-only patch as was suggested earlier? Would that be possible in theory?
1) OG BOTW running on OG Switch: NVN (business as usual)
2) OG BOTW running on Switch 2 in BC mode would still be using NVN, yes
3) OG BOTW running on Switch 2 (if Nintendo decides to do so with a Switch 2-only "enhancement patch" which will require additional dev work): Uses NVN2 - this is the scenario I'm wondering about
that can't be done globally. thye have to patch every one of their games which is a big ask that's unviable
Angel Whispers
Follow me at @angelpagecdlmhq
Oh, you’re totally right, except it would be straight garbage on both accounts because mobile CPUs have had the PS4 beaten for years, and the GPUs are capable of more now, too. I’ll keep saying it until everybody gets their collective Frozen on and lets the PS4 go - When we talk about the PS4, we are actually talking about a decade old system with even older parts, which the industry has moved on from, a very dated architecture, a bottlenecking CPU, no RT, no SSD, and no DLSS/neural unit. This is the same for the Pro variant. Today’s flagship-specced phones have RT, SSD, neural engines, better CPUs than the PS4 - In fact, Apple showed RE4R on their phone last month, while last year, Samsung/AMD’s Exynos 2200 SoC had a RT-capable GPU for the S22 series of phones. My point is that the Switch went with industry-leading chips. The successor will do the same - Why? Because a lesser portable experience than its contemporaries will put Nintendo in a position susceptible to failure. This is why they went with the Matrix Awakens demo, to make a statement to developers, and tell people what kind of support they want, what kind of games they want to secure on their platform… and it isn’t “more XB1/PS4 ports”. RDR2 should be a mere formality; RDR3 should be the aspiration. CP2077 should perform better than the XB1/PS4 versions; the next Witcher title should be the aspiration. There is no sustainable growth strategy for the successor which relies on “more XB1/PS4 ports”, especially when none of their partners are talking about them, when there are no games in their libraries which the Switch doesn’t have AND which could grow their success in meaningful ways, and when even mobile spaces and Indie ambitions haven’t stood still on this. Thankfully, the leaks are very encouraging, and show that Nintendo and Nvidia understand where the successor needs to be - The GPU is better than the XSS’s, and the A78C CPU has plenty going for it. The SoC is more versatile than the PS5/XS’s, and corroborated reports from developers have been overwhelmingly positive. None of that is to say “best case scenario in all cases”, but ultimately, one has to look at what Nintendo and Nvidia have actually done in this space, NOT go by “Because Nintendo” feelings and other shitposts on some vacuous hunch.
rêverie
Bob-omb
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I would say performance profiles.
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Likely a mix of both- just like the original. A default state for TV mode, and a default state for handheld/tabletop mode, with Devs having some say on the matter, and how their games react to the changes.
So every form of BC requires recompilation?
Kise Ryota
Then I'll say "I told ya"
I would like to see devs being able to choose to increase CPU clocks in detriment of GPU performance. On Switch the CPU has the same clock for gaming (the exception is a higher clock only for loadings)
Also, I'm still thinking about the possibility of some variable clocks like we see with APUs from AMD (ps5 too)
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It could be a situation where it COULD run a game at 4K60 natively, but it wouldn't look that different than running at 1080p60 upscaled with DLSS, so they might as well free up some GPU load.
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Why do both? Because "All Switch games in 4K60" is never going to happen, and "Some Switch games in 4K60 plus the other 95% pretty good too" is better than just "Some Switch games in 4K60".
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
You are welcome to assume whatever you like. I was using the Socratic "we", I wasn’t declaring my analysis as The One Truth
I see three possibilities:
- A 5+ TFLOP device, pushing well past the bandwidth limit, but still efficiently capable of upscaling Breath of the Wild with nothing but power
- A radically overhauled Breath of the Wild engine taking advantage of subtle micro optimizations resulted in a massive performance 66% uplift over the raw power of the 3 TFLOP hardware. Reports saying DLSS was used are inaccurate
- The hardware feature designed to make 4k60 possible - DLSS - was used to make 4k60 possible. Reports saying it was used are accurate
No, patching it to take advantage of native performance requires recompilation. On PC every game is recompiled the first time it runs, but on consoles shaders are precompiled cause they're targeting just one spec.
A translation layer would translate the necessary Maxwell instructions to something that's readable on Ampere. The vast majority of Maxwell instructions are supported on Ampere natively, but not 100%. This would cost some performance, but woudnt be an issue with the gap we're talking about. If devs want to patch in native shaders they're free to do so, but if not the game would run in Compatibility mode.
RennanNT
Bob-omb
Not just in theory. If you replace NVN and any other code which isn't compatible with NG with NVN2, you get a native version of the game.
darthdiablo
+5 Death Stare
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Ah ok, to have a "native version" of the game, would that be achievable in theory simply with a downloaded game patch (should the game dev choose to do the work of course)? Or would that require a complete (more involved) rewrite of game code, not something that is really achievable with a downloadable patch?
Okay, then I must have misunderstood the person I was quoting. I thought they were saying a translation layer can't be done without also updating the game code.
How much effort would it be to port the average Switch game to NVN2 and leverage DLSS?
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
Yeah, it was non-obvious to me too. There is a slight performance advantage, but it also greatly reduces how often an update breaks an older game.
My personal expectation is multi-tiered.
BC is as close to accurate as possible. It just works, with games being exactly the same.
Some games run in BC, enhanced. These are still fundamentally Switch 1 games, but they are able to signal to the BC layer that they will perform well with extra power. The BC layer effectively acts like an overclocked Switch.
Totally new, NG-native builds can be built by developers if they want. At developer discretion, the NG build can appear to the user as an “update” to the base game, even if it’s effectively a full game download. The BC layer isn’t used at all.
It’s not viable for Nintendo to do that for every game in the eShop.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Horizon is a pure static-link OS. So a NG game patch would require a totally new binary, though assets obviously could be reused.
I am filing “game of telephone” under “Nintendo playing cards close to chest” - Nintendo isn’t providing their partners with total clarity, allowing rumors to grow
lemonfresh
#Team2024
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ok we talked about bc but what about forwards compatibility you think Nintendo will still support switch 1 or 2 software on the switch 3
darthdiablo
+5 Death Stare
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That’s still called backwards compatibility lol.
But yes I’m theory Nintendo could do certain things now that will make it easier to support backwards compatible later. Too early now to be thinking of the successor to Switch successor (we don’t know if it’ll be something completely new, preventing it from being BC with Switch 2)
Then what do you mean by this:
By "enhanced" do you mean it just runs at max resolution at all times, has no frame rate drops, and faster loading times? Anything more than that would require a patch, right?
Edit: it sounds like the implication is the games in this tier would be patched to be aware of the translation layer and do things like increase max resolution or increase frame rate cap. If Nintendo is going to patch the game anyway, wouldn't they just take the time to update it to NVN2? Why update a game twice?
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CeramicPigeon
You lost the game
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I've said this before and I'll say it again: I highly doubt they're gonna charge for upgrades if they go this route.
Something something they charged for Wii U Virtual Console upgrades, sure, but charging for performance upgrades goes against their plan to make the next-gen transition "as smooth as possible."
Could go both ways.I'm about 50 50.
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