Yamanoi
I paid $70 for this tag
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I'm just wondering because if people ask about future Switch stuff in any conversation or forums, I would prefer to link to Famiboards threads like this, once I know there's accurate info. That's all.
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
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Bob-omb
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Bob-omb
Apologies; forgot it was even in HIDE in the first place.
Individualised
Bob-omb
The PS5 Pro is supposedly being announced in September. I know 2025 for Switch 2 is being brought up now (and I have been admittedly dismissive of it; though I still think it's unlikely) but isn't the common consensus still 2024? Even Nate seems to be very certain it's 2024 - I think most people missed that post. I don't see how a PS5 Pro announcement would affect a Switch 2 announcement that would have probably already happened months prior?
Kenka
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Keep in mind reminding your friends that information here should always be taken with a grain of salt regardless how trustworthy it seem to be. Rumors often don’t show the full picture, can be misinterpreted or be just outdated. No one can ensure that what they share is accurate except for Nintendo.
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Ehh, someone's got to. At least what I am saying is factual and not like those old twitter users that would post "Mother 3 HD Remake getting announced at the Nintendo Direct tomorrow!!!" lmao.
I also have been on these forums for far too long, and I won't post anything that I don't know is true. I'm not trying to be in the insider game but the little info I do have is exciting.
The last time I had any information was in 2017 when I was told by a friend who worked with SE that FFVII Remake would be three parts and I posted that on Era and haven't said anything since.
There is no HIDE, only HYDE
There are a lot of devs with devkits
LuigiBlood
Mage Robot
You have to tell me why people keep asking for proof for most insider info when 99% of alleged insider information have usually 0 evidence backing them up aside from credibility from the person telling them. Like, no one is willing to snitch on their sources which is both a blessing and a curse.
It's okay if you don't believe anything, just do basic courtesy. Don't be like people who constantly shills or hates on insiders, they all hate it.
It's okay if you don't believe anything, just do basic courtesy. Don't be like people who constantly shills or hates on insiders, they all hate it.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
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necrolipe
Universo Nintendo Owner
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Maxrunner
Bob-omb
Why? it would be literally in the dock.
Kenka
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Quick reminder: brainchild (hi buddy!) mentioned this in two of his posts more than a year ago:
From the viewpoint of an indie developer, support for the UE5 toolset is more important that the raw specs themselves. And based on the reports from GDC, we can assume that the next Switch has the aces up its sleeve that would content developers.
Thus, I suggest we tone down the discussion about raw specs and pivot to a discussion about which games are viable on the next gen and which are not.
Personally, I assume that most indie outputs that are built using ray tracing will be ported. Desordre and Jusant to name just two very recent titles will likely come to Switch 2. Racing games, combat games and sports games in general from all kinds of publishers will likely also be considered to be ported. Even some sandbox games might make the jump. Imagine playing Dead or Alive, The Crew or WRC with ray tracing enabled on portable mode. That in itself is an exciting prospect.
With all due respect, I completely disagree with this take.
First, you do not need a big team to create models with high poly counts and high resolutions. What you need are comprehensive resources and access to powerful procedural, generative, and/or machine learning tools. Houdini, for instance, allows you to create cities on the scale of that Matrix demo, even if you're only one person. I should know as I have already done it. If you use open street map data, your turnaround time will be even faster.
In fact, the Matrix demo artists used Houdini to generate the city in the demo:
And the presenter above explicitly mentions its benefits for smaller teams:
There are even tools that convert 2D photos into high-quality 3D models, which I also use. Converting such assets to Nanite is trivial and allows indies to create game worlds on a scale comparable to AAA productions.
Also, the Lumen comparison is flawed since the lighting was not replaced with any alternative solutions. Simply turning Lumen off as if any game would actually ship like that is not a fair comparison. RTXGI with sufficient probe sampling will produce better results (mainly due to reduced visual latency) and yet yield much better performance. Lumen is simply not production-ready and other solutions have already been proven to work just fine. The problem is that there aren't that many examples of Nanite assets being illuminated by GI solutions other than Lumen. I can assure you, however, RTXGI looks great on Nanite assets. In fact, procedurally produced Nanite assets + DirectX ray-traced reflections + RTXGI = Indie cheat code for scalable, photorealistic AAA graphics.
EDIT:
Also, NVIDIA Omniverse is great for indies. I'm excited to use the new UE5 connector, but I want to wait until I can migrate my UE4 project first.
From the viewpoint of an indie developer, support for the UE5 toolset is more important that the raw specs themselves. And based on the reports from GDC, we can assume that the next Switch has the aces up its sleeve that would content developers.
Thus, I suggest we tone down the discussion about raw specs and pivot to a discussion about which games are viable on the next gen and which are not.
Personally, I assume that most indie outputs that are built using ray tracing will be ported. Desordre and Jusant to name just two very recent titles will likely come to Switch 2. Racing games, combat games and sports games in general from all kinds of publishers will likely also be considered to be ported. Even some sandbox games might make the jump. Imagine playing Dead or Alive, The Crew or WRC with ray tracing enabled on portable mode. That in itself is an exciting prospect.
I mean that situation is present today with the Switch as is. Look at the Batman Arkham ports or the recent Mortal Kombat game. Would you rather have the option to overclock the system (legally) and get proper performance out of the game if you owned it? We've seen clearly it's possible to get much better performance from Batman by overclocking, and no one's system is melting or anything like that. It's just an issue of battery draining faster.
To be honest a battery pack + maybe a stand for a cheap upgrade price is more consumer friendly than even the DSi and New 3DS approach where you'd have to buy a completely new system to get the benefit of extra horsepower and certainly more consumer friendly than Sony/MS' mid-gen refreshes that cost hundreds of dollars.
Nintendo could sell an official battery pack + stand for like $25 if they really wanted to. To me that's more consumer friendly than saying "hey pay another $400 for a Switch 2 Pro".
Or you could even just integrate the solution into Joycons. I mean they are literally two attachments on the side of the system with batteries inside of them, why not let them function like a battery extender to unlock a performance mode if the player wants to do that? If the main battery in the systems is say 5000 MaH size battery, but into the Joycons you can squeeze an extra 1200 MaH on each side, well suddenly you have an overall battery "pool" that's fairly large.
TLZ
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Somebody spill the beans already.
Ghostsonplanets
Ghost in the Sales
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ziggyrivers
thunder
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My sentiments exactly. It’s like Nintendo’s Legal Department is on par with Disney’s: everyone’s scared.
Why at CES, tho? Isn’t the video game business not so present?
Exactly. Plus that type of revision is usually for the more hardcore crowd. The PS5 Pro isn’t like a Switch OLED: it’s pretty much for everyone
No, especially since Nintendo devices have been companion devices for years (a Nintendo console sharing household with a Sony/Microsoft one).
AxkilAvenger
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Had to google them.
Only game I recognize is the one with the girl android beating the crap out of things. Did that one come out for switch yet?
ziggyrivers
thunder
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lemonfresh
#Team2024
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My friends uncle who works at nintendo also has a dev kit or so I heard
LuigiBlood
Mage Robot
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CalmMind
Unconventional wisdom
Apologies to all those who replied!
I don't know why I thought the PS4 Pro had two APU's and was not just a 2x overclock.
With that said, a dock that included it's own separate T239 that provided an extra boost to hardware performance without the need of a separate developer profile would satisfy the few who primarily play in docked mode.
I don't know why I thought the PS4 Pro had two APU's and was not just a 2x overclock.
With that said, a dock that included it's own separate T239 that provided an extra boost to hardware performance without the need of a separate developer profile would satisfy the few who primarily play in docked mode.
EDIT: disregard, misread
Ghostsonplanets
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Some users here asked yesterday in this thread why it might not be viable to shrink T239 to newer nodes if it's fabbed on a bleeding edge node such as TSMC 4N. Nikkei Asia released an story that provides some good insights into why and has opinions of some people who are inside the silicon manufacturing chain:
asia.nikkei.com
It's a good read
And while it's true that a Dock housing Switch 2 structure inside would be a solution for players only interested into Docked play, I'd question the economic feasibility of this, be it the fact it would need a separately designed dock or be it that the pool of Docked only player is very small. Besides, it dilute the value of Switch hybrid solution.
The great nanometer chip race
China looks for shortcuts as TSMC, Samsung and Intel push the limits of miniaturization
asia.nikkei.com
It's a good read
PS4 Pro is an entirely new APU. It isn’t just a 2x overclock. You might be mistaking it for the butterfly GPU structure, which basically mirrors PS4 GPU layout and doubles it.
And while it's true that a Dock housing Switch 2 structure inside would be a solution for players only interested into Docked play, I'd question the economic feasibility of this, be it the fact it would need a separately designed dock or be it that the pool of Docked only player is very small. Besides, it dilute the value of Switch hybrid solution.
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redmutineer75
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I'm assuming this cost figure per chip is assuming a constant size rather than a constant transistor amount? Obviously a 1 cm² chip on 2 nm will be a lot denser than one on 28 nm.Some of people here asked yesterday why some users in this thread say that it might not be viable to shrink T239 to newer nodes if it's fabbed on a bleeding edge node such as TSMC 4N. Nikkei Asia released an story that provides some good insights into why and has opinions of some people who are inside the silicon manufacturing chain:
The great nanometer chip race
China looks for shortcuts as TSMC, Samsung and Intel push the limits of miniaturization
It's a good read
Ghostsonplanets
Ghost in the Sales
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Given that these are estimatives for Apple SoCs, probably not. The biggest factors driving the rising costs are due to fact newer nodes require more intensive capital R&D, new materials, solutions and techniques into the fabbing process, increased usage of EUV machinery and increased cycle times, lesser to no scaling of SRAM, etc. Which increases the costs of a chip fabbed on each newer node. You can see this by looking at the wafer costs per node and see how they're quickly increasing, specially after 5nm and EUV. And, to boot, the gains of jumping between node to node are becoming marginal, while costs are surging.
Shoulder
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I think there's more to it than we even realize as well.
I am not a programmer, never typed in a line of code in my life, but I do at least understand that all these systems are very complicated with thousands and thousands of lines of code that must work in harmony. Case in point, the whole concept of going from Docked to Handheld with the Nintendo Switch. There must be some code written that tells the system "Hey, you're in docked mode, so do X,Y, and Z to the SoC." "Ok, great. Thanks!" I'm probably oversimplifying it, but my point is this whole process of going from docked to handheld, and vice verse must work. Every. Single. Time. And work fast, work well, and each game is coded in a way to adjust that on the fly whether it's the game itself doing it, or the system. I don't know specifically. Again, with the Switch, it just works. And it works very well. I can attach, and remove the Switch from the dock over and over again, and it'll always work. That to me just sounds like good programming, but maybe I'm again oversimplifying it.
I think I'm right in saying no current eGPU setup, where it's any Thunderbolt 4 Laptop w/ an eGPU enclosure, or the Asus ROG Ally w/ the XG Mobile, can do what the Switch can do in terms of just picking the device up, and it works. No input needed from the user.
This is something Nintendo would want to solve with a Supplemental Computing Device. It couldn't have any lag, or require external input from the user. It would have to work like the Switch 1 currently works going from docked to handheld, and vice versa. I remember this SCD patent showing up during the Wii U days, and I do wonder if this was something Nintendo at one point prototyped, but decided it was cheaper, and less complicated if they simply had an additional chip that would communicate directly with the Switch to tell it if it was in docked, or handheld mode.
Like you said, was probably better to have a beefier chip on board, and underclock it between the two modes rather two separate chips.
Again, if someone smarter than me can correct me on certain details, and nuances of how the Switch works between the two modes, please feel free.
Cuzizkool
Shriekbat
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Can someone with knowledge describe the difference between what the CPU does, and the GPU? Like maybe in terms of a game like TOTK? (Ex: the CPU handles load times while GPU handles enemies on screen, or whatever I’m sure I’m wrong.) A few pages ago it was said the A78C is much weaker than Zen2, and I just want some real world context. From my understanding, CPU and RAM bandwidth will be the biggest bottlenecks for Switch2. I want to learn more about what CPUs do in general. Like what is a “CPU heavy” game?
redmutineer75
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A CPU is a Central Processing Unit. Its main goal is to turn the game data from storage into game logic and respond to your inputs. A GPU is a Graphics Processing Unit. Its main goal is to turn that game logic into images that can be projected by the screen. If a game has a lot of data to turn into game logic, e.g. a large world, complex enemy AI, large amounts of NPCs, etc., it's considered CPU heavy. If a game has a lot of image data that needs processing, e.g. ray tracing effects, global illumination, anti-aliasing, etc., it's considered GPU heavy. A game like Total War or Shadow of Mordor is super CPU heavy because it has to calculate thousands of soldiers, but have relatively light graphics, whereas Minecraft or Portal RTX is super GPU heavy because ray tracing is very graphically intensive, but have relatively simple game logic.
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Personally I wouldn't believe anything you say given your penchant for dishonesty regarding thread stealing
Shoulder
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Sorry to be pedantic, but isn't it Central Processing Unit?
EDIT: See you corrected yourself. lol
Darknut85
#TeamRemake
At the same clock a A78C is more powerful because it has a higher ipc (even though the Zen 2 has two times the threads) but since the Switch 2 will be a portable device, which can‘t clock as high as stationary devices due to battery live, it will be less „powerful“ and developer‘ll have to cut down a bit on cpu bound games, or lower the framerate or both.
redmutineer75
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Frankly, it doesn't matter what Xbox does at this point. They're always gonna be on the backfoot against PlayStation, and have been continuously since 2013.
Langstonboy
Yes
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Microsoft is focused on getting as many people to play there games via services as possible
robertman2
Chain Chomp
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Nvm
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The thing is the Playstation brand is so strong. Sony doesn't really have to do much but people will buy their consoles for the EA games, for fortnite, for Call of Duty, etc etc. Microsoft has to make in roads there but they are struggling and it really isn't their focus. Although now they have Call of Duty lmao.
GPUs are specialized processors designed to run tasks related to graphics. They are broadly responsible for generating the image that you see, but little else. Sometimes they can also be leveraged to accelerate certain kinds of compute heavy tasks, such as physics, but it's fairly situational, and not universally done. This role may sound limited, but graphics workloads are quite heavy in general, especially in high budget modern games, which is why we needed a dedicated processor for it to begin with.
There are frequently also some other smaller dedicated processors/blocks that assist with tasks like audio and encoding and decoding video files. More recently, blocks for file decompression have begun appearing, and T239 is expected to include one of those.
CPUs are general purpose processors that do basically everything else, including telling the specialized processors what to do.
lattjeful
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I'd prefer my ports to be functional in the first place.
I not sure what you meant by dock with a t239. There’s no power difference from using the t239 in the dock vs in the console. If you meant a dock that will play Switch 2 game on your Switch then that’s a stationary console with more steps.
Aether
Tingle
I can only guess how it works and would also like an explanation to be honest.
(but my guess would be: when the system is docked, after the USB handshake happened and the system knows to what it was docked it sends an interrupt and the game pauses after the last frame, it sets a flag that from the next frame the engine should use the different render profile, sends a command for the gpu driver that it should switch to the different profile (higher clocks, external out instead of display), and when this has done sends the game another interrupt to comunicate to resume. Now the game starts again and renders the next frame, but with the new gpu profile.
At least thats my guess.
Game logic (where is what, what is happening, physics, what needs to be kept track, what needs to be rendered,...) -> CPU
Visuals (deciding what of the objets that are given are visible, rendering the scene, post processing, filters, compositing different rendering steps, etc) -> GPU
Thats the reason that cpu load cant really scale between docked and handheld (it would lead to it being able to handle less stuff in handheld mode, think: having problem with 50 enemies on screen while its fine docked, or that the physics simulation would be less precise and would feel different between handheld and docked), and is also why a strong cpu is important for ports. In the worst case you would need to cut framerate to have more time per frame to calculate the stuff.
Easy tricks how ports reduced cpu load on switch ports: render less background characters then the other consoles, having flags not be moving in the background, etc. But thats between different consoles, that would hardly be an option between different states like the switch.
On the other hand, if the gpu is weaker, you can reduce the amount of details to reduce the amount of work it has to do.
Rendering less pixel -> bam. rendering the shadows with so much details takes way to long? no problem, render everything in high resolution, but shadows (since its rendered in its own step) in a quarter of the resolution.
There are obviously limits to how much you can scale GPU tasks.
And the reason why ram can switch between fast and slow modes between docked and handheld:
its shared with the cpu, the GPU will use less of its bandwidth when its using a lower clock speed, and the cpu is not using more, so there is free bandwidth that is not being used. So reducing the clock speed means it needs less voltage and less power without impairing either CPU or GPU.
Shoulder
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I'm not a marketing expert, but perhaps Microsoft should've stopped with the goddamn confusing names, and just kept it simple. Seriously, it started with Xbox, then Xbox 360 (which means it made a full circle, and ended up right back where it started?), Xbox One (which WTF, Microsoft?), and now Xbox Series, which I still don't understand what that's suppose to mean.
Sony at least kept up the naming continuity with 1, 2, 3, 4, and now 5. Simple. Straight to the point, and everyone knows it's new.
Should've been Xbox, Xbox 2, Xbox 3, and then Xbox 4. Even if the successor to Xbox 360 was Xbox 720, it would've maintained some consistency, though I'd be curious what Xbox Series would've been named. Xbox 1080? Xbox 1440? Which at that point sounds like they were referring to its resolution output.
Legitimately, the name "Xbox" is an awesome name for a gaming console, but the naming schemes they use are awful imo, which I think have at least partially contributed to them falling from grace since the 360 days.
MS are just terrified of being behind Sony in the numbering.
Imo they should have called 360 Xbox 3 (where is 2? who cares it's just a name), and continued with straight numbering from there.
Shoulder
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Microsoft have Wii Ued themselves into a corner with names.
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