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

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John Omaha said:
I generally agree but not sure I’d make such a definitive statement. A lot of kids are getting introduced to gaming through streamers who usually play primarily on PC, which makes many of them gravitate towards the platform.

Steam is still growing. Even Japan, of all places, seems to be getting on board with PC gaming, partly because of Vtubers and other influencers.

The amount of people who are willing to deal with the hassle and more involved nature of PC gaming seems to be increasing. It may not have an immediate impact on Switch 2 sales, but it’s still a trend worth keeping an eye on.
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Truth be told, PlayStation has far more in common, and thus is far more exposed, to console attrition toward PC. A Nintendo hybrid’s painless use-case adaptation will prevent it from feeling much of the attrition, especially in Japan, where only the AAA 3rd-party releases retain PS5’s reason for purchase and nearly all of those seem to be moving in the direction of PC releases now (many even day-and-date). Seems Nintendo got out ahead of something.
omniryu said:
One thing I want to know is the WiFi. I heard it was underpowered or underclocked in the Switch. That was part of the reason why everyone blamed NSO. Do you think we will have a better solution?
Oh and can some game or maybe specific game matches have an ethernet only mode? Like would Nintendo have some API or service that can tell a developer which network the user is using?
Because Nintendo could have a smash tournament online with strictly ethernet cables.
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Network throughput on Switch is capped, it has nothing to do with the WiFi chip and everything to do with the fact that there’s only so much the device can process of incoming data packets at any given moment, so the speed at which any network data can be processed is artificially capped at a specific maximum to prevent it overtaking any other necessary computational strength or RAM capacity. Ethernet can reduce packet loss issues, which is quite beneficial, but it cannot overcome this imposed limitation.
 
Concernt said:
This makes absolutely no sense at all... Unless you mean a digital only Lite years down the line or something, giving some units BC and not others if they both have the same processor, both have a card slot and both have the same software.
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I'm assuming that no matter what even a digital only SKU would have digital BC.
 
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Terrell said:
Network throughput on Switch is capped, it has nothing to do with the WiFi chip and everything to do with the fact that there’s only so much the device can process of incoming data packets at any given moment, so the speed at which any network data can be processed is artificially capped at a specific maximum to prevent it overtaking any other necessary computational strength or RAM capacity. Ethernet can reduce packet loss issues, which is quite beneficial, but it cannot overcome this imposed limitation.
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Oh I see. Such a shame. Maybe now that they have more ram and power they can have a smoother experience.
 
Giancarlo said:
i think Nintendo kinda of expect the holiday sales to be a bit low,they must already planned Switch sucessor launch, even if 2023 holiday season was the best/worst for Switch
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I doubt they'd have misjudged holiday demand that badly - I mean it was only in the last financial briefing that they actually raised their full year guidance on revenue and profit (to the point where YoY they would barely be down at all). And from the sales data we have everything seems pretty as expected.

Also, there is always concern over their hardware selling less, talk of the Wii collapse etc etc but people conveniently ignore that the active user base of 130 million are out there buying so many games / subs that the hardware drop is barely effecting Nintendo's bottom line. And that even then while hardware unit's are dropping revenue per unit is increasing thanks to the OLED becoming the de facto go to.
 
Concernt said:
Oh god is it Happening?
Fuck. Oh god. Fuck. I don't want to lose this thread.

I'm afraid of change.

Promise me.

Whatever happens.

We'll see each other on the other side.
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The true Switch 2 is the friends that we made along the way.

Our bonds are unbreakable, so much so that even the revival of Sega cannot shake them. Unless..... There is a myth of the Wii U, where it caused a great calamity. But even the bonds created in the survival of that era, are forever etched into history.
 
Terrell said:
Network throughput on Switch is capped, it has nothing to do with the WiFi chip and everything to do with the fact that there’s only so much the device can process of incoming data packets at any given moment, so the speed at which any network data can be processed is artificially capped at a specific maximum to prevent it overtaking any other necessary computational strength or RAM capacity. Ethernet can reduce packet loss issues, which is quite beneficial, but it cannot overcome this imposed limitation.
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Are you able to elaborate this seems very interesting

If its not the Wifi Chip what specifically is it about the Switch? And how if at all could they move to rectify it, If its artificially capped that to me indicates its a software thing? You mention RAM and CPU I assume it would be naturally solved better with Switch 2 having more power then?
 
bmfrosty said:
I read books. Like 30 last year, and I'm on my 3rd one for this year. Currently reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Next one will either be Witch King by Martha Wells, or Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.
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Funny thing is a buy books and then don’t end up reading them, maybe that’ll be this New Year’s resolution.
 
SoldierDelta said:
I decided to post the classification on r/gamingleaksandrumors (don't worry @Ojoloco, i credited you for spotting it, good work man).
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You don't need this, I found it on Twitter, facebook, reddit or a similar social network. I do not remember anymore.
But I don't think it's right for you to give me credit, someone else found it, I don't remember who.
 
fwd-bwd said:
Taiwan’s Economic Daily News has a pretty bad track record when it comes to Nintendo rumors, therefore I’m highly skeptical of their latest report on Switch 2:





I don’t know whom their sources are, but this read like a fan fiction.
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I wonder when the people and media will learn that being pessimistic is not the same as being realistic. Because those specs that the news mentions are low.
 
gnetc said:
Funny thing is a buy books and then don’t end up reading them, maybe that’ll be this New Year’s resolution.
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Lol. It's all on Kindle. I have a gooseneck tablet holder attached to my bed, a tablet, and a Bluetooth remote. When it's bedtime, I go lie in bed and read until I'm falling asleep.
 
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Shubshub said:
If it does launch at $400 I wonder if it would see a price drop if sales numbers are not up to expectations
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I think $400 is just inflation. I also think OLED at $350 is inflation and this is likely to have an OLED screen to not seem like a downgrade.

I think $400 means that we're more likely to see a TV only option to put out a less expensive option earlier than later if a lite version requires a die shrink to be feasible.
 
Ojoloco said:
I wonder when the people and media will learn that being pessimistic is not the same as being realistic. Because those specs that the news mentions are low.
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I don't think it is a pessimistic thought. It just a very short process thought. I mean the most public, closest to official was Bobby kotick statement. So maybe they just assumed over there. We can't get mad that we keep hearing those estimates.


Really ask yourself this. How many people can care or maybe even understand what ray tracing is? How many people do the research of what's going on? How many people can even understand the details of the leak?

When you look at how complex this information can be, wouldn't it be easier to turn your head from this info and just toss you hands in the air and say "meh, it is probably as strong as the PS4."

I am not trying to excuse their ignorance but let's have grace when correcting those who have these wild guesses.
 
Shubshub said:
When have they done this? I'm talking specifically games that come to both platforms, Not just games that only come to the previous platform and are playable through Backwards Compatibility
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

LiC said:
I like how they just doubled all the specs and called it good. Clearly it will have a 12.4'' screen, too.
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Don't worry @Raccoon, they didn't mean it
 
chocolate_supra said:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild


Don't worry @Raccoon, they didn't mean it
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So thats one game amongst a couple other one games for other platforms they did, In my original post I mention that I also expect Metroid Prime 4 as a Cross-Gen game

The point stands that they dont really do a cross generational period outside of something that was already anounced for a platform years ago and has yet to release which is usually 0-1 games
 
bmfrosty said:
I think $400 is just inflation. I also think OLED at $350 is inflation and this is likely to have an OLED screen to not seem like a downgrade.

I think $400 means that we're more likely to see a TV only option to put out a less expensive option earlier than later if a lite version requires a die shrink to be feasible.
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Okay now you’re just directly repeating my predictions. ;)
 
Individualised said:
May the 5th be with 2.

That's my speculation for today. Didn't someone else mention May 5th on this thread?
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It's Revenge of the Fifth. Goddammit, nerd correctly! 😡
carbvan said:
Fortnite going from pure slop on the Switch to showcasing Nanite and Lumen for consoles on Switch 2 could happen and it would be very funny lol
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That's less a could and more a will. Gotta show off the mobile version of lumen somehow
 
bmfrosty said:
In all honesty, given that modern displays can be run at fairly flexible refresh rates - especially when they're more highly integrated, I wonder if the Switch 2 may support VRR.
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I think that depends on if Nintendo plans on having 120 Hz support.

All the mobile displays that support VRR seem to also happen to support 120 Hz as well (e.g. iPhone 15 Pro Max (ProMotion), Asus ROG Ally (AMD FreeSync Premium), etc.).

I suppose Nintendo could hypothetically pay display manufacturers to make customisations to 60/90 Hz displays to include VRR support. But I imagine display manufacturers could charge Nintendo a large premium to do, especially since I haven't seen any 60/90 Hz display(s) that also have VRR support.
bmfrosty said:
EDIT: Future ARM revisions (8.5 or higher, I think) drop support for 32 bit code.
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Cortex-A CPUs after the Cortex-X1, the Cortex-A710, and the Cortex-A510 (Version: 0102) dropped 32-bit support.

I don't believe Arm v9-A dropped 32-bit support since Arm said that Arm v9-A is backwards compatible with Arm v8-A. And the Cortex-A710 and the Cortex-A510 (Version: 0102) are Arm v-9A CPUs with 32-bit support.
 
bmfrosty said:
Unless I'm mistaken, T239 should support both ARM32 and ARM64 like the processor in the original Switch did. If there's a software layer to get a process into 32 bit mode on a 64 bit processor and not an additional piece of hardware, I say that's probably inherent enough.

EDIT: Future ARM revisions (8.5 or higher, I think) drop support for 32 bit code. I expect that when we get a Switch 3, certain Switch 1 games will either need patches, or will no longer be compatible. AFAIK, those are mostly games that were ported from the Wii U. I don't know why I think this is. Possibly something I read somewhere.
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To my knowledge, aarch32 is still formally part of the spec, but the number of new cores to implement it is rapidly dwindling in all but some of the lowest performance classes. This is not a concern for T239, but next time around, it is highly probable there just won't be any good options with aarch32 support.

Which Switch games are 32-bit is mainly known due to homebrew and emulation related things which are affected by the distinction between aarch32 and aarch64. We'll likely never have a complete list, but it's mainly ports from older 32-bit systems (not just Wii U) from what I've seen posted online. Why developers would choose to do this is not a question I have an answer to (don't really work with C++ that much), but I suspect it probably has something to do with certain data types typically being differently sized on 32-bit vs 64-bit compilers.

The affected portion of the Switch library is likely not huge, but contains a fair few big names like Mario Kart 8 DX, so aarch32 emulation will likely happen at some point if Nintendo wants to keep Switch compatibility around long term.
 
Dakhil said:
I suppose Nintendo could hypothetically pay display manufacturers to make customisations to 60/90 Hz displays to include VRR support. But I imagine display manufacturers could charge Nintendo a large premium to do, especially since I haven't seen any 60/90 Hz display(s) that also have VRR support.
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I was just thinking about this. Assuming that Concernt's hypothesis about the Switch 2 using HDR is true, it would fit very nicely with them being able to reuse the OLED dock. The HDMI 2.0 that it uses has just enough bandwidth for 4K HDR at 60fps with 10-bit color and full chroma.
 
Pokemaniac said:
To my knowledge, aarch32 is still formally part of the spec, but the number of new cores to implement it is rapidly dwindling in all but some of the lowest performance classes. This is not a concern for T239, but next time around, it is highly probable there just won't be any good options with aarch32 support.
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I think Nintendo could hypothetically ask Nvidia to design a custom Arm v-9A based CPU with 32-bit support (in a similar vein to Apple Silicon and Oryon) if Nintendo really wants to continue having 32-bit support for the successor to Nintendo's new console.

Of course, that could require a significant amount of R&D on Nintendo's and Nvidia's side. And I have no idea if Nintendo and Nvidia are willing to spend a significant amount of R&D on designing a custom Arm v-9A based CPU with 32-bit support.
 
Dakhil said:
I think Nintendo could hypothetically ask Nvidia to design a custom Arm v-9A based CPU with 32-bit support (in a similar vein to Apple Silicon and Oryon) if Nintendo really wants to continue having 32-bit support for the successor to Nintendo's new console.

Of course, that could require a significant amount of R&D on Nintendo's and Nvidia's side. And I have no idea if Nintendo and Nvidia are willing to spend a significant amount of R&D on designing a custom Arm v-9A based CPU with 32-bit support.
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I suspect Nintendo will phase out Switch 1 backwards compatibility in a Switch 3 and beyond and vice versa for each 2 generations back system
Much like how the 3DS Dropped GBA Support, Even though they could've easily kept the GBA Slot and had the system be more the thickness of the DS Lite
 
redmutineer75 said:
I was just thinking about this. Assuming that Concernt's hypothesis about the Switch 2 using HDR is true, it would fit very nicely with them being able to reuse the OLED dock. The HDMI 2.0 that it uses has just enough bandwidth for 4K HDR at 60fps with 10-bit color and full chroma.
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I'm not nearly as sure of reusing the OLED Model's dock as I once was, though they could still reuse the internals in a new design.

Even without that, I think 4K60HDR TV mode and 1080p60HDR handheld mode makes the most sense. 4K60HDR is basically the baseline, most 4K sets in use support at least this. But you don't want to be changing colour space in handheld mode, ideally, so it should be HDR, too. This isn't a huge expense or challenge; in fact OLED Model uses a panel AND a Dock capable of HDR, so they can justify using these components in devices that don't use it. It wouldn't make sense not to allow it on a new generation.

I'm extremely bearish on 120hz. It just doesn't seem like a Nintendo thing to do, it's pretty niche and drives up costs.

Trying to support ethernet, 4K120HDR and multiple full speed, or even high speed USB ports through the one USB C port isn't impossible, but again, you're driving up costs.
 
Shubshub said:
I suspect Nintendo will phase out Switch 1 backwards compatibility in a Switch 3 and beyond and vice versa for each 2 generations back system
Much like how the 3DS Dropped GBA Support, Even though they could've easily kept the GBA Slot and had the system be more the thickness of the DS Lite
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I don't think they'll go to great lengths to keep it, but I don't think they'll drop it just because.

If Switch 3 doesn't have aarch32 support, then those games are either not supported, need a patch, or need some thin emulation to work - I don't know what emulation of aarch32 on aarch64 is like.
 
Concernt said:
I'm extremely bearish on 120hz. It just doesn't seem like a Nintendo thing to do, it's pretty niche and drives up costs.
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That's too bad because they would be the perfect ones to support 120hz. Games like Splatoon, mario Kart and smash can benefit from 120hz. Btw, is there any fighting games that goes above 60?
 
redmutineer75 said:
Considering that Nintendo disabled native GameCube support on the Wii U, I wouldn't necessarily put it past them.
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If we see Switch 1 games get patches for Switch 2, then that'll set the precedent of Nintendo getting wise to BC-related factors that they weren't wise to before. Maybe then the momentum will continue and they'll figure out how to make BC more of a long term thing even on the Switch 3.
 
redmutineer75 said:
Considering that Nintendo disabled native GameCube support on the Wii U, I wouldn't necessarily put it past them.
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Wasn't that more because there wasn't a slot loading drive that could do both Blu-Ray capacity Wii U Optical Disc and 8cm disk? That and the controller ports, having to route the USB GCN ports to the vGCN, it would have been a lot of headache for something we enthusiasts would have appreciated yes, but would have seen vanishingly little actual usage.

Maintaining software support without having to worry about physical limitations is really a lot more straightforward, since Game Cards aren't going to get physically smaller for usability reasons and it's just not a concern on digital only devices. Switch I/O already goes through the OS you can update and modify to keep old software working with new controllers.
 
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TomNookYankees said:
I wouldn't call only 8GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage "fan fiction". That reads more like doom posting.

Seriously though if Nintendo were to release something with only 8GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage in 2024 and it's priced at $400 then they would be fucked. I have my doubts they would do something THAT dumb.
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8GB of RAM? nah, wouldn't be surprising, 64GB of storage? yeah, would definitively be a dumb idea
 
bmfrosty said:
I think $400 means that we're more likely to see a TV only option to put out a less expensive option earlier than later if a lite version requires a die shrink to be feasible.
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I think they will just go the improved battery chemistry route this time
 
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Shubshub said:
Are you able to elaborate this seems very interesting

If its not the Wifi Chip what specifically is it about the Switch? And how if at all could they move to rectify it, If its artificially capped that to me indicates its a software thing? You mention RAM and CPU I assume it would be naturally solved better with Switch 2 having more power then?
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Basically, if there was no game running, there would be no cap. The Wi-Fi chip in the Switch can max out theoretically at ~100MB/s and the Ethernet adapter (when used on other devices) achieves about the same. But the Ethernet adapter is throttled to ~8MB/s in real-world use with Switch and Wi-Fi is limited to about ~9MB/s, so the limit seems to be 10MB/s or less across all Switch network activity.

When a device receives network activity, it has to do stuff with it. Network data isn't just automatically passed through to wherever it needs to go. Whether it be writing it to the internal storage or passing it to a game as input data or preparing it for network output, it all passes through RAM and the CPU before coming to its final destination. So it eats into available RAM storage and available CPU clocks. When figuring out what the max addressable CPU and RAM are to developers, network activity might experience a cap to set a clear expectation of what is addressable for games while still leaving enough compute cycles and RAM to process incoming (and outgoing) network packets.
On top of this, if your internal and external storage can only write at a certain speed that is slower than the maximum network speed, you end up with a bottleneck regardless, as you'd have a bunch of data stowed in RAM waiting to be written to the storage medium, so it's rather typical that network traffic is capped on devices with no variation in storage write speeds.
With these 2 considerations in mind, Nintendo opted to put a hard cap on how much data could be retrieved or sent at any given moment, which Switch communicates to the device on the other end of the network connection before it starts trading that data back and forth.

What the next Nintendo hardware's real-world network speed is will be dependent on how much of its hardware Nintendo is willing to allocate strictly to processing network data and/or how well it can write data to the storage methods available.
redmutineer75 said:
Considering that Nintendo disabled native GameCube support on the Wii U, I wouldn't necessarily put it past them.
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Why enable native Gamecube support when the disc drive wouldn't take and cannot read Gamecube discs, the only official way that Nintendo ever intended to sell Gamecube software?
bmfrosty said:
I think $400 means that we're more likely to see a TV only option to put out a less expensive option earlier than later if a lite version requires a die shrink to be feasible.
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As @AshiodyneFX mentions, there are more possibilities for how a Lite might transpire this time around. Better battery is one, but there's also a possibility that the battery performance in handheld mode is already so great in the standard hybrid model that a Lite could theoretically appear immediately at launch if they wanted it to and still have better overall battery performance and lower price with a smaller display, fewer Bluetooth devices to mandatorily connect to, no dock (with its myriad ICs to facilitate docking), etc. If Nintendo is opting for the process that is being speculated, there isn't really going to be any room for a die shrink within its lifetime and what we see at launch is what Nintendo will be stuck with for the entire lifecycle. But so long as what they're stuck with is good, I don't think that matters.
 
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Terrell said:
Why enable native Gamecube support when the disc drive wouldn't take and cannot read Gamecube discs, the only official way that Nintendo ever intended to sell Gamecube software?
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Super Smash Bros 4 controller adapter, have it sold a little more than a limited time release/exclusively through the Nintendo Online Store to prevent overstock, and sell the Gamecube ROMs digitally under the virtual console banner. Price range would be about the same as the Wii ROMs they were selling in the latter years of Wii U.

I really and truly believe that GC should have been on VC ever since Wii U and it's disappointing it took Nintendo this long to finally get to these games 10 years overdue, no matter how happy I am that they're being released now. Maybe it would have happened if Wii U was a genuine success, but speculation about what could have been only goes so far
 
Terrell said:
What the next Nintendo hardware's real-world network speed is will be dependent on how much of its hardware Nintendo is willing to allocate strictly to processing network data and/or how well it can write data to the storage methods available.
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Well, hear hoping we get 16 gigs instead of 12.
 
Kise Ryota said:
Is it only on smash? If you have a CGNAT connection (where a single public IP address is shared between multiple customer's), for example, it would be a problem for every p2p game (smash, splatoon, mario kart, mario tennis, etc)
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Can confirm, asked my ISP to disable CGNAT on my end as a recommendation from a splatooner friend and I managed to get way fewer drops from matches and well, actually find matches properly instead of disconnecting nearly everytime.
 
LiC said:
No offense, but I can never understand why there are always replies like this to baseless and fake leak posts. Who cares whether it's normal/reasonable or not? This is supposed to be a leak of factual information. Veracity, not plausibility, is at issue. Being plausible (in one's opinion) doesn't change the fact that it's bullshit, and should be identified and discarded as such.
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the dooming and devil's advocate takes have been ingrained into online discourse in general since 2020. that year really fried people's brains LMAO
 
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