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

[Kevin]

Seems unlikely.

because it's happening in 2022

Ha ha I like your optimism!

 

[Hosermess]

Along with having a buffer for logistics and production issues, it's possible that another reason for the increased stockpile of raw materials and supplies could be inflation and expectation of it continuing/rising for the foreseeable future. Might be cheaper to buy more than you currently need at a lower cost today and store it, than to buy as needed at a higher price in the future. Who knows. So many factors involved.

 

[Pokemaniac]

500MB is the absolute minimum, but it’s more like 750MB-1GB for the OS and 1 core.

Switch eShop is so slow because it’s not a native app, maybe it all be a native app on the succ/2/pro with enough RAM.

The eShop not being a native app is most likely a very intentional decision. There are some very real maintenance and future proofing benefits of doing it this way

 

[ArchedThunder]

500MB is the absolute minimum, but it’s more like 750MB-1GB for the OS and 1 core.

Switch eShop is so slow because it’s not a native app, maybe it all be a native app on the succ/2/pro with enough RAM.

Because it’s not a native app wouldn’t stronger hardware still mean better performance?

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

I’m not quite sure why people are expecting Nintendo to radically change the wheel. Previously, Nintendo systems were different and it also helped to be different from the rest of the market. The switch is already a very different concept while also having “traditional console elements” to it that it’s competitors also share. But the uniqueness of it is that it’s a tablet with two controllers attached to it, no other console on the market is like it. It’s different enough that it speaks for itself as being unique.

It’s PlayStation and XBox that have to do more work to differentiate themselves from the RotM because they are more similar.


PlayStation is doing this with something like PSVR2 and the DualSense.


Microsoft is leveraging their services which has always been their strongest element.

That said, I’m not saying that the switch has to stay the exact same either. Just that it doesn’t seem like it needs to be radically different to be noticed.

The eShop not being a native app is most likely a very intentional decision. There are some very real maintenance and future proofing benefits of doing it this way

It is an intentional design, it would have caused more bloat and slowdown which they wanted to avoid. They did want lean and minimalism after all….. eShop being one of the “paths of least resistance” where it doesn’t matter it being a native app for the console or not probably made it easier since they didn’t really lose anything by making it a browser.

Though, the native app thing is still my dream. , give me the music!

Same for the NSO “app”

Because it’s not a native app wouldn’t stronger hardware still mean better performance?

For the eShop? No. This is more of an issue off the switch than on the switch.

 

[Pokemaniac]

It is an intentional design, it would have caused more bloat and slowdown which they wanted to avoid. They did want lean and minimalism after all….. eShop being one of the “paths of least resistance” where it doesn’t matter it being a native app for the console or not probably made it easier since they didn’t really lose anything by making it a browser.

Though, the native app thing is still my dream.

Same for the NSO “app”

You've actually got it backwards. The web eShop and NSO app would be way faster and less bloated as native apps. They were made web apps for maximum flexibility in terms of updates.

 

[ArchedThunder]

For the eShop? No. This is more of an issue off the switch than on the switch.

That doesn’t make sense to me, the reason the web features are so slow compared to other platforms should be in large part due to the tiny amount of resources allowed to be used for them.

 

[My Tulpa]

Sorry for the quote blasts…I’m not able to post very often

I mean they can market and choose to use it however they want, but that statement is going to be a really hard sell.

You don't need 1,534 cuda cores and a vastly superior set of cpu cores like A78's, to run games designed for 256 Cuda cores and a quad-core A57, but in 4k with better performance. It's such vast overkill for that job, that saying it was designed to do that job sounds goofy.

I don’t think it’s overkill for DLSS functioning, though.

What we seem to be getting spec wise, is basically the minimum to effectively run decent DLSS upscaling and some RT functions at an extremely low power draw. No?

If you wanted a switch designed to do “4K” switch games, here I’ll design a system for you:

512 Maxwell based CUDA cores, clocked to 460MHz portable and 921MHz docked
6GB LPDDR4X memory with 51GB/s, 128-bit
4 A72 cores running at 1.5-1.8GHz


This could be enough to offer what the PS4 Pro did to the PS4 games. And you know what res most of those games were.

And what technique it used at times for that…CBR anyone?

8nm node.


471GFLOPs portable, an uplift of over twice for most switch games. And 943GFLOPs docked, would have traded blows with XBox One GPU wise.


Reminder that the PS4 Pro was a 2.27x increase over the PS4. And some games managed to be 4K on that. Most didn’t, but for the market Nintendo operates in doesn’t matter since you need a 4K Tv anyway.

Games would have run notice smoother on this vs the base switch. Dynamic would be closer to pretty much locked. Faster loading, nicer images on both modes, etc.


I updated the CPU cores too, because A72 exists on that node , A57 doesn’t I think.



You don’t need Drake for that with the subject is switch games.

But I have the feeling Nvidia convinced Nintendo DLSS is the future of Nvidia SoC rendering going forward.

So, let’s get started learning how to effectively utilize it NOW, while the Switch ecosystem is still growing rather than waiting a few more years when it’s in great decline.

Nintendo always laments how it entered HD gaming development too late. Waiting until the Wii was pretty much dead and trying to figure it out during the Wii U transition.

So, it makes absolute sense for Nintendo to spend the capital and invest in their future hybrid gaming designs now, they can play around with it and not have to worry about devoting EVERYTHING to it because for now, it’s just another model option in the Switch ecosystem for those willing to spend ~$500 for better graphics/performance of Switch games (for the most part)

Yes, they could have gone with a non DLSS non RT SoC design that’s cheaper if all they cared about was running 1-2 Switch at 4K natively/60fps. But this is about DLSS and more forward looking. They need to start getting their sea legs on DLSS and RT rendering as soon as possible, but not necessarily having to rely on it completely just yet.

This is exactly what i'm thinking. The idea that drake is to play Switch games in 4K no more and no less is really really baffling to me.

Why? You think Nintendo is going to sit Switch fans down and explain exactly what DLSS is and how the AI/RT cores work?

lol no. They are going to present it far more simply than that.

I don’t see how else they will try to sell it any way OTHER than to show the graphics/performance increases it gives to, say, BotW2 over the other models.

What else can they say/show? I mean, maybe something clever in using the tensor cores for some really cool AI gaming experience…but it won’t be a huge thing.

Yeah, I've said it before, but Drake really doesn't look like hardware designed to play Switch games, but better. There are much simpler ways to achieve that that would have required a lot less work from Nintendo/Nvidia. If that was all they wanted to do, switching to a new, incompatible GPU arch seems actively counterproductive. Drake looks like hardware intended to enable games not possible on the current Switch, and eventually become the new baseline.

To me, it looks like a portable SoC designed to be able to take a game that runs 900p/20-30fps on the OLED and allow it to render at 720p/1440p and AI upscale it to a beautiful 4K image when docked…at rock solid 60fps with some headroom for simple ray tracing elements and better graphical bells and whistles.

It’s still going to be a console machine with a 720p screen.

Drake doesn’t look like anything more than Nintendo wanting to figure out development for DLSS/RT gaming while still not having to ignore/slow down their current models gaming output. Drake is perfect for that.

Sure, when the next model after Drake comes out in ~4 years or so, the Drake can act as a lower priced option for those Switch gamers that haven’t moved on from the Lite/hybrid/OLED models…but it doesn’t have to do that any time soon.

It’s more so than that, you can have the Fidelity for a 720p display but the output resolution is 1080p. Imagine 360 games but at say… 4k. At it’s core it’s still a 360 game and looks very much of its era.

Nintendo could’ve done a “4K” switch that takes the fidelity of the current switch games, but raise the resolution. This makes them look nicer with more memory to work with and a better GPU for the target display.

Drake on the other hand is going above and beyond just a simple resolution focus, it’s also doing a whole generational leap in terms of fidelity.

That is nothing to scoff at. Calling it a “pro” system does a disservice to what the device is or seems to be.

What do you think the minimum specs are to effectively utilize DLSS and ray tracing cores for 4K gaming at a 25-30w power draw?

Which is why still entertaining the idea of a "pro" console more than 5-6 years into the life of a machine which demonstrably didn't need that at all to become one, if not the most successful console of all time is kind of weird, in my opinion.
Whatever comes next is a successor in the switch line, and I don't even expect Nintendo to hide it.

Nintendo has intimated quite a bit the last few years that they want to avoid being caught flatfooted when it comes to future hardware/software development. They have said they want to be aggressive and not let success/growth make them complacent in forward momentum.

This is ABSOLUTELY the right time to push a iterative mid gen forward looking “pro” type model.

They expect the current Switch lifespan to last another 4-5 years. This model is absolutely essential to keep Switch gaming engagement high during that time for the core gamers who might lose interest for what they feel is increasingly outdated looking visuals/performance.

That’s what a mid gen system is designed to do. All about software engagement.

Even the OLED model, I am positive, made Switch gamers who bought it, buy and play more Switch games over the last year than they would have otherwise on their launch model. It breaths new life in the games, even just the slightly bigger screen and OLED.

The Drake will breathe even more life into Switch gaming engagement for much longer. That’s all it needs to do.

 

[My Tulpa]

I don't think Nintendo needs to sell drake at a loss to make a reasonable (AKA $400) price.
They're making a huge profit margin now and outside of the GPU, CPU and RAM they don't really need to change that much. I'm pretty sure they can find a way to make that work at 400.

They sold the much older, widely produced Tx1+ SoC with “just” a new OLED screen for $350 at about cost…but they can produce and release this brand new Drake SoC model for just $50 more?

I don’t buy that.

But I agree that they don’t need to sell this additional model option at a loss. It can have a slower uptake ala the Lite model.

I honestly don't think "Look, this game you can buy on Switch 1 now you can play it better on Switch 2 too" is the kind of ad to build hype with a new console. They need some new games exclusive for Switch 2, even if there is a long crossgen period.

They won’t position it as a new console. They will position it as a new Switch model that joins the Switch family.

It really doesn’t “need” major Nintendo exclusives to sell.

IMHO Nintendo's counting on a lot of people doing this. I feel BOTW2 will be a cross gen Switch 2/Pro/4K launch window title. They don't have to do much, just advertise the improved performance and IQ. And it serves to address their existing market while appealing to power users. It's the best ace they have.

Yes, now apply this to every major Nintendo game release from 2023-2027 or so. They will all serve the same function.

Nintendo doesn’t really need to put exclusives on on Drake outside a couple of interesting “niche” type titles. 3rd party exclusive efforts will probably lift more of it.

Assuming hardware is coming this year, this is my sentiment as well. Although I'd have thought they'd need to have something in July, not August. They're running out of time to market any additional major titles launching before October.

They could easily announce it at the end of Sept and release it Oct/Nov if they wanted.

I don’t think any major Nitnendo published games releasing in 2022 need to be held back for the announcment, tbh

 

[Skittzo]

Two things, neither of which I'm an expert on:

1) Monster Hunter Rise on PC now supports DLSS. Do with that what you will.

2)

According to their most recent balance sheets Nintendo has 1.28B yen in "construction in progress" assets, which (again I'm no expert) would probably cover any and all construction related raw materials they claim to own.

1.28B yen is roughly $8.8M USD, while the 66B yen figure for their total raw materials inventory is closer to $488M USD.

In other words, the construction materials, if any exist, are not making any dent in that raw materials inventory number.

 

[Crusters]

Sorry for the quote blasts…I’m not able to post very often



I don’t think it’s overkill for DLSS functioning, though.

What we seem to be getting spec wise, is basically the minimum to effectively run decent DLSS upscaling and some RT functions at an extremely low power draw. No?

There are no longer practical Nvidia products in existence for Nintendo to use that do not have tensor cores or rx cores. The last time Nvidia created a product without tensor cores was...... Irrc pascal. Creating a custom solution to remove these things would be much more expensive. It's not about Nvidia convincing Nintendo of dlss. It's that a practical product that does not contain the hardware dlss runs on no longer exists and making one would be paying much much much more for an inferior product.

The vast majority of what is needed for DLSS is performed by the tensor cores. Not on the shader cores, which render a scene.

The tensor cores come packaged with a certain amount of alu's per sm, Tensor cores, Ray tracing cores, and cuda cores. Iirc it's 128 cuda cores, 1RTX core and.... 4 Tensor cores (this is for the a100 series irrc, Drake may be different in specific number per sm, but the practice is the same). This is decided by Nvidia on a architectural scale. All their architectures of a lineage will have fixed numbers. A customer demanding anything deviating from this will be paying for a very very very expensive custom job.

In order to get enough tensor cores to make dlss practical, whatever that may have been, each they would need to add SM's with a certain number of Tensor cores, like for example 4, until they got the desired number of Tensor cores for practical dlss performance that meets their target.

Drake has 12 SM's , if they soley designed a system around the number they wanted for their performance target of dlss, it took 12 SM's to reach.

Each sm, also comes with 128 Cuda Core shaders. They needed 12 SM's, to get the tensor cores needed for DLSS. That's 1,536 Cuda Core shaders.

Once again I am pointing out, it is the tensor cores that perform the DLSS workload. Not the Cuda Cores. They still handle crunching polygons, and graphical effects, bells, and whistles, along with other various tasks. They are not impacted by having to do dlss, that is offloaded to the tensor cores.

The original switch had 2 SM's, with 256 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks.

Drake has 12 SM with 1,536 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks. And it's a seperate group of processors in the GPU that do dlss.

This is a massive and inescapable increase in raw power. In order to get the tensor cores, to 'barely be able to do dlss' 6x the number of shader cores had to come along for the ride.

 

[ToniC139]

IMHO Nintendo's counting on a lot of people doing this. I feel BOTW2 will be a cross gen Switch 2/Pro/4K launch window title. They don't have to do much, just advertise the improved performance and IQ. And it serves to address their existing market while appealing to power users. It's the best ace they have.

They didn't advertise that for Botw 1 tho. Just said it has better environmental sound. In my opinion Nintendo will never make a show of a console's power.

Unrelated to that:

unpopular opinion but I 100% expect original Switch games to run in "Switch Mode" on the next console. Like Wii on Wii U, DS on 3DS and even normal 3ds games on new 3ds. It seems to me that Nintendo cares much more about accuracy than improvements haha.

 

[My Tulpa]

I feel like I ask this every so often; so what's the current consensus? Switch 2 or Switch Pro in the same vein as the PS4 Pro and the XBOX One X?

effectively switch 2. what they actually call it is up for discussion

Effectively a Switch mid-gen upgrade.

I think people misunderstand how Nintendo is going to position it and utilize it because of its modern architecture and power differential.

 

[ArchedThunder]

There are no longer practical Nvidia products in existence for Nintendo to use that do not have tensor cores or rx cores. The last time Nvidia created a product without tensor cores was...... Irrc pascal. Creating a custom solution to remove these things would be much more expensive. It's not about Nvidia convincing Nintendo of dlss. It's that a practical product that does not contain the hardware dlss runs on no longer exists and making one would be paying much much much more for an inferior product.

The vast majority of what is needed for DLSS is performed by the tensor cores. Not on the shader cores, which render a scene.

The tensor cores come packaged with a certain amount of alu's per sm, Tensor cores, Ray tracing cores, and cuda cores. Iirc it's 128 cuda cores, 1RTX core and.... 4 Tensor cores (this is for the a100 series irrc, Drake may be different in specific number per sm, but the practice is the same). This is decided by Nvidia on a architectural scale. All their architectures of a lineage will have fixed numbers. A customer demanding anything deviating from this will be paying for a very very very expensive custom job.

In order to get enough tensor cores to make dlss practical, whatever that may have been, each they would need to add SM's with a certain number of Tensor cores, like for example 4, until they got the desired number of Tensor cores for practical dlss performance that meets their target.

Drake has 12 SM's , if they soley designed a system around the number they wanted for their performance target of dlss, it took 12 SM's to reach.

Each sm, also comes with 128 Cuda Core shaders. They needed 12 SM's, to get the tensor cores needed for DLSS. That's 1,536 Cuda Core shaders.

Once again I am pointing out, it is the tensor cores that perform the DLSS workload. Not the Cuda Cores. They still handle crunching polygons, and graphical effects, bells, and whistles, along with other various tasks. They are not impacted by having to do dlss, that is offloaded to the tensor cores.

The original switch had 2 SM's, with 256 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks.

Drake has 12 SM with 1,536 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks. And it's a seperate group of processors in the GPU that do dlss.

This is a massive and inescapable increase in raw power. In order to get the tensor cores, to 'barely be able to do dlss' 6x the number of shader cores had to come along for the ride.

The idea that it’d only “barely be able to do DLSS” is basically a left over from Digital Foundry’s speculative video that came out months before we found out the system would have way more SMs than anyone expected. With what we know now it should be able to very comfortably do DLSS.

 

[Deleted member 645]

Effectively a Switch mid-gen upgrade.

I think people misunderstand how Nintendo is going to position it and utilize it because of its modern architecture and power differential.

It makes the most sense. Call it a switch 4K and be done. It will get third party games current switch can’t get. It will be backwards compatible. 1st party games will be available on both. You can keep the switch name alive and well.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Effectively a Switch mid-gen upgrade.

I think people misunderstand how Nintendo is going to position it and utilize it because of its modern architecture and power differential.

I'm not seeing how going from 256, 12nm Maxwell cores to 1536, 7/5nm Ampere cores is a "mid gen upgrade". that's a bigger paper jump than the PS4 to PS5

now I'm curious as to what a proper next gen system even means in your eyes, because I doubt it physically exists right now

 

[Skittzo]

I'm not seeing how going from 256, 12nm Maxwell cores to 1536, 7/5nm Ampere cores is a "mid gen upgrade". that's a bigger paper jump than the PS4 to PS5

now I'm curious as to what a proper next gen system even means in your eyes, because I doubt it physically exists right now

I don't think they were talking about the specs upgrade, rather how it will be positioned.

 

[Crusters]

The idea that it’d only “barely be able to do DLSS” is basically a left over from Digital Foundry’s speculative video that came out months before we found out the system would have way more SMs than anyone expected.

I agree. I was meeting the scenario under it's own premise. Because even as such, it's still inescapably overkill for just switch fidelity games dlss'd to 4k.

 

[Bosintang]

This is ABSOLUTELY the right time to push a iterative mid gen forward looking “pro” type model.

They expect the current Switch lifespan to last another 4-5 years. This model is absolutely essential to keep Switch gaming engagement high during that time for the core gamers who might lose interest for what they feel is increasingly outdated looking visuals/performance.

That’s what a mid gen system is designed to do. All about software engagement.

Even the OLED model, I am positive, made Switch gamers who bought it, buy and play more Switch games over the last year than they would have otherwise on their launch model. It breaths new life in the games, even just the slightly bigger screen and OLED.

The Drake will breathe even more life into Switch gaming engagement for much longer. That’s all it needs to do.

If Nintendo wanted a machine to play Zelda at 1080p, they would have done it earlier with Mariko.
The machine that leaked should be closer to a Series S than to a PS4 and will include modern features such as DLSS and Ray tracing, along with a much much (much) better CPU. There will be exclusive games, from release I would bet, and increasingly so over time. While all Switch may share the same eShop, which will allow the current model to receive the least demanding games for a few more years, this new machine should be as much a new generation as the PS5.

 

[hologram]

I'm not seeing how going from 256, 12nm Maxwell cores to 1536, 7/5nm Ampere cores is a "mid gen upgrade". that's a bigger paper jump than the PS4 to PS5

now I'm curious as to what a proper next gen system even means in your eyes, because I doubt it physically exists right now

Nintendo aren't the kind of company to advertise relative graphical power. It's not like the PS5 or XSX where they'll talk about how many teraflops the GPU is capable of. So while the performance leap will seemingly be very large, I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that this might not factor hugely into how Nintendo markets the product

 

[ArchedThunder]

While I definitely think it will be positioned as an upgrade in the same family at first, I do think it will basically be a typical Nintendo “3rd pillar” situation, with the original Switch slowly being phased out and the new one slowly getting more exclusives. The big bonus this time will be that games released on the old Switch will actually be playable on the new one, unlike 3DS games during the early Switch days, and a lot of those games will probably be at least slightly enhanced on the new hardware, unlike most games in previous portable generational transitions. Game Boy Color is probably the best comparison point in that regard because most GB games after its release had color when played on the system, but Switch 4k will be a massive spec boost and probably last a full 6 years before the next comparable hardware jump, unlike the GBC being replaced by the GBA after 3 years. A healthy cross gen period would also make it the best generational transition for Nintendo when it comes to people who don’t jump in right away, they’ll still get lots of games and as long as cross gen games are released on a single card then the new games they get will also be an investment towards their eventual purchase of the new hardware.

 

[Crusters]

I don't think they were talking about the specs upgrade, rather how it will be positioned.

I am very distinctly not getting this impression.

Particularly since both feet and I prefaced everything with 'Nintendo will market it however they want, but the specs are'

 

[Skittzo]

I am very distinctly not getting this impression.

Particularly since both feet and I prefaced everything with 'Nintendo will market it however they want, but the specs are'

Yeah just realized that he was replying to feet saying the opposite.

 

[My Tulpa]

Why you and others cant say: „In my opinion…“ But you always act as if you are the CEO of the company themself…

This wasn’t addressed to me, but it needs to be said that in forums like this EVERY statement post that doesn’t refer to sourced quotes/links should be inherently considered “IMO”. Every one of them. To actually type it out every time is overkill and unnecessary.

imo

I'm pulling for $400. Any higher and it better have the power to go with it.

My bets 400 also, but that was before inflation so now wouldn't be surprised. But also imagine oled gets price dropped to 300 shortly after, and Redbox discontinued

I can only see $400 if they drop the OLED price end of this year. I wasn’t expecting that’s something they’d do only a year after launch but I guess it couldn’t happen?

I’m guessing it’ll be $450. OLED stays the same, and 2017 sees an official price cut.

I don’t see why they wouldn’t just go with $499.

They don’t need it to sell mass quantities. It’s an optional model for those who want what it offers that the other models don’t. And by pricing it that high, certainly highlights that it is indeed the premium model and offers power/performance different then the normal hybrid/OLED.

Nintendo isn’t afraid of premium pricing when there are plenty of price point options to offer.

Plus, I don’t see how this new model wouldnt be $100-$150 more price intensive to R&D and produce than the OLED model.

$449-$499 is my guess

The reason I think we need a new system soonish is due to third parties, now they are getting to grips with PS5/XsX the gap between them and Switch is huge so chances are less and less devs will be bothered with Switch ports/versions unless they get a boosted system where they don’t need to downgrade things so much that it’s more hassle than it’s worth.

Nintendo is not releasing this new model for 3rd party multiplats. They don’t even factor that in on any design decisions they do.

And I don’t think we will see any 3rd party multiplat support (ports) over the next few years different than we have seen on the current models the last 3 years.

 

[Ragna]

I could see 450 now with inflation but I feel they would want to avoid 499 to not be compared as much to the PS5

 

[Hermii]

yeah, i mentioned that, and thats the reason why they could have improved it if they wanted, ba replacing it with a System Update with an Native App.
As it stands, it was clearly not a priotiry

What do you mean? They couldn't have downloaded more ram through an update.

 

[Serif]

They didn't advertise that for Botw 1 tho. Just said it has better environmental sound. In my opinion Nintendo will never make a show of a console's power.

Unrelated to that:

unpopular opinion but I 100% expect original Switch games to run in "Switch Mode" on the next console. Like Wii on Wii U, DS on 3DS and even normal 3ds games on new 3ds. It seems to me that Nintendo cares much more about accuracy than improvements haha.

I recall they mentioned the resolution difference and faster loading times alongside the improved sounds. The context is different, too. They wanted to highlight the Switch's portability when it was first revealed, which is a more striking feature than the minor performance improvements.

In this case, a Switch successor will be just as portable as the Switch, there is not much to differentiate it beside potential performance improvements, new joy-cons, or OS features. And the gap from Switch to Drake, according to the leaked specs, is much bigger than the gap from Wii U to Switch. It would also be the first Nintendo console to support 4K. They advertised 1080p on the Wii U's box and 4K is a sexy marketing bullet point that they will mention.

I disagree that there will be no improvements. They already patched games like BotW for faster loading times using the Switch's CPU boost. At the bare minimum, games will run at their existing capped framerate/res smoothly, and I expect certain games to be patched. Otherwise, why would I buy this shiny new device on launch day if there are no first-party exclusives or performance boosts?

Nintendo may not advertise 'power' directly, but they will let the games speak for themselves. The first Switch reveal had BotW and Skyrim running on a tablet, which immediately communicated that it was a huge leap above the 3DS.

 

[KeijiKG]

I just find it strange that Nintendo is suddenly going back to the Game Cube philosophy of "an equal but more powerful console" for a successor. I need to see something else, new and different, to truly believe it.
It's hard to me to believe that they are going to change their philosophy after Wii, Wii U, DS, 3DS and Switch.

Wii U was Nintendo chasing the tailwind of PS3 and XBox 360 at a too little, too late time and grossly underestimating the resources to needed to stream to the GamePad.

I don't doubt the bottom line is to be the most affordable to the consumer but being viable to 3rd parties has also been the goal too. I don't think Nintendo's abandoning that philosophy just because NVidia wants to sweeten the pot of their partnership seeing how they have nothing to gain from holding out on them for promoting their later ARM SoCs. Especially since they no longer work with MS or Sony and the only other place for later hardware to go is in cars since Shield TVs don't seem to be due for another refresh anytime soon.

And suffice it to say, Switch transitioning to new hardware is more than just a graphical update. They are games that could stand to use faster memory clocks and system bandwidth just for better loading.

 

[Hermii]

Nintendo is not releasing this new model for 3rd party multiplats. They don’t even factor that in on any design decisions they do.

And I don’t think we will see any 3rd party multiplat support (ports) over the next few years different than we have seen on the current models the last 3 years.

I mean, not to the same extent as MS and Sony, but certainly more than nothing.

Are you saying the decision to go with Nvidia tech that's easy to develop for, and plays nice with most engines had absolutely nothing to do with third parties?

What about adding another gb of ram?

Or having Skyrim as one of the big initial selling points?

Edit: Or had a third party direct, literally today?

 

[My Tulpa]

Having to deal with the same joycons, the same interface and the same online service until 2028 is a nightmare for me, tbh. I want something new and exciting.

They can easily offer “new and exciting” gameplay and ways to game different as a peripheral to the Switch ecosystem.

They don’t need to solely devote to a single console for it.

But I agree with the other poster who feels the Switch hybrid type ecosystem will persist as the mainline Nintendo console for another decade or two, minimum.

 

[John Omaha]

I could see 450 now with inflation but I feel they would want to avoid 499 to not be compared as much to the PS5

The Switch's launch price was the same as the PS4 Slim's at the time. I agree that Nintendo would rather avoid a high MSRP, but not because of potential comparisons with PS5/XSX.

 

[YolkFolk]

Ultra Switch 64

 

[Dekuman]

It's all about perceived value because the early adopters have the means. The steamdeck and PS5 / Series S all set a pretty comfortable price range for the Switch 2 to sell at Given its speculated performance

A portable device with AI upscaling and some RTX features will be kind of a big deal.

Anyone blindly picking a price like $450 and declaring the device is DOA if it launches at that price can expect to get egg on their face. I personally think $399 makes the most sense for Nintendo. But not ruling out $449

 

[My Tulpa]

Two things, neither of which I'm an expert on:

1) Monster Hunter Rise on PC now supports DLSS. Do with that what you will.

Just curious, how many Capcom games currently support DLSS? I genuinely do not know.

There are no longer practical Nvidia products in existence for Nintendo to use that do not have tensor cores or rx cores. The last time Nvidia created a product without tensor cores was...... Irrc pascal. Creating a custom solution to remove these things would be much more expensive. It's not about Nvidia convincing Nintendo of dlss. It's that a practical product that does not contain the hardware dlss runs on no longer exists and making one would be paying much much much more for an inferior product.

The vast majority of what is needed for DLSS is performed by the tensor cores. Not on the shader cores, which render a scene.

The tensor cores come packaged with a certain amount of alu's per sm, Tensor cores, Ray tracing cores, and cuda cores. Iirc it's 128 cuda cores, 1RTX core and.... 4 Tensor cores (this is for the a100 series irrc, Drake may be different in specific number per sm, but the practice is the same). This is decided by Nvidia on a architectural scale. All their architectures of a lineage will have fixed numbers. A customer demanding anything deviating from this will be paying for a very very very expensive custom job.

In order to get enough tensor cores to make dlss practical, whatever that may have been, each they would need to add SM's with a certain number of Tensor cores, like for example 4, until they got the desired number of Tensor cores for practical dlss performance that meets their target.

Drake has 12 SM's , if they soley designed a system around the number they wanted for their performance target of dlss, it took 12 SM's to reach.

Each sm, also comes with 128 Cuda Core shaders. They needed 12 SM's, to get the tensor cores needed for DLSS. That's 1,536 Cuda Core shaders.

Once again I am pointing out, it is the tensor cores that perform the DLSS workload. Not the Cuda Cores. They still handle crunching polygons, and graphical effects, bells, and whistles, along with other various tasks. They are not impacted by having to do dlss, that is offloaded to the tensor cores.

The original switch had 2 SM's, with 256 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks.

Drake has 12 SM with 1,536 shader cores for producing graphics/shader tasks. And it's a seperate group of processors in the GPU that do dlss.

This is a massive and inescapable increase in raw power. In order to get the tensor cores, to 'barely be able to do dlss' 6x the number of shader cores had to come along for the ride.

No, I get that Nvidia doesn’t make SoC’s without tensor cores anymore.

What I was intimating is that Nvidia sold them on what those cores and DLSS could provide Nintendo in terms of efficiency and output without needing to keep pushing rendering power and heat.

I wasn’t suggesting that Nintendo had a bunch of other options to push mobile gaming hardware outside of modern Nvidia mobile SoC’s, but to suggest pushing them into DLSS/RT design sooner rather than offering an older SoC with tensor cores disabled for cheaper if all they wanted was a native resolution/performance bump.

My point was that the R&D and costs put into this new model was about investing in their future portable hardware gaming designs sooner rather than later. They didn’t have to use DLSS capable SoC as their pro performance increase right now. They are willing to invest the money because they now value how it will ease them into gearing their games to utilize it effectively going forward.

This was to combat people saying “Nintendo wouldn’t spend this much money and have it so powerful if it was just to play Switch games with better graphics and performance!”

Of course they would, considering what it offers them at this point in time.

The idea that it’d only “barely be able to do DLSS” is basically a left over from Digital Foundry’s speculative video that came out months before we found out the system would have way more SMs than anyone expected. With what we know now it should be able to very comfortably do DLSS.

Yes, comfortably to be able to effectively utilize DLSS and RT core functions at 20w with, relatively, extremely low clocks.

Going extremely wide with 12SM’s…while more expensive…makes tons of sense to be able to do the above. Going more narrow and hotter doesnt.

The 12 SM’s isn’t overkill. It’s what seems to be needed to make DLSS function…effectively/comfortably…at 20w and low clocks.

So yes, “barely able” as in what the minimum requirements would be to do it.

 

[Aether]

What do you mean? They couldn't have downloaded more ram through an update.

reduce the overehead by having a natively running app instead of using a browser (or applet or how you wanna call it) and running the eshop as an webapp in that.

Having a precompiled native app would probably help a lot.
But since its such an integral part of the OS, a new E-Shop would mean updating the OS.
No, i dont mean they could download more ram...

 

[Eos]

Since we haven't got any kind of announcement, I was wondering when the presentation of the new console could be. August? September? Next year?

 

[Vash_the_Stampede]

Since we haven't got any kind of announcement, I was wondering when the presentation of the new console could be. August? September? Next year?

There is about 303 pages of comments in here of people speculating on timing.

 

[My Tulpa]

I'm not seeing how going from 256, 12nm Maxwell cores to 1536, 7/5nm Ampere cores is a "mid gen upgrade". that's a bigger paper jump than the PS4 to PS5

now I'm curious as to what a proper next gen system even means in your eyes, because I doubt it physically exists right now

Power jump differentials has nothing to do with how a console is marketed/positioned/utilized.

The Xbox One X has a larger power jump over the Xbox One than the Series S had over the One X

Despite this, the former was utilized as a mid gen pro existing alongside the other models and the latter was utilized as a gen-breaking successor making the One X obsolete.

 

[Skittzo]

Anyway, to put into perspective the whole "raw materials" thing (not yet a smoking gun mind you), their current (as of April 2022) value level of raw materials is about 10x higher than that time last year, and the percentage of raw materials value compared to total inventory value is about 5x higher.

This can definitely be explained in part by the cost of OLED components being somewhat higher than the other models, but one wouldn't expect that to be a 10x difference in cost of course. It can also be partially explained by the idea that they'd bump up their production schedule by a few months to help bolster holiday stock amidst shortages, but if that were the case why would their forecast be for a ~3M YOY decline in hardware sales when they are seemingly preparing an increase of ~10x of material value to sell?

Another idea is maybe assembly lines are all tied up and they have no choice but to wait and sit on raw components while assembly is only possible for a small percentage that makes it into the market. The problem with this idea though is that their level of finished goods at that same point in time is also about 1.5x higher than at that point last year.

So there are a number of factors which can explain this, and it's very likely to be a combination of some or all of these. But the staggering size of the difference makes me tend to think they are holding at least a fair amount of more expensive components for a more expensive model. On top of some combination of these other factors of course.

Just curious, how many Capcom games currently support DLSS? I genuinely do not know.

As far as I know this is the first RE Engine game that supports it. I could be wrong there.

 

[Blue Monty]

Since we haven't got any kind of announcement, I was wondering when the presentation of the new console could be. August? September? Next year?

Nintendo Switch first look was in October for a March release, I think we will see a similar 6 month ish period between the event and release date, so 6 months before release is my bet. The console existence will get announced earlier tho, so if it's early 2023 we should get news before Sept

 

[Skittzo]

Since we haven't got any kind of announcement, I was wondering when the presentation of the new console could be. August? September? Next year?

The past two revisions were revealed in July. If we don't see anything by the end of July it's likely we won't see anything until next year.

 

[Aether]

It's all about perceived value because the early adopters have the means. The steamdeck and PS5 / Series S all set a pretty comfortable price range for the Switch 2 to sell at Given its speculated performance

A portable device with AI upscaling and some RTX features will be kind of a big deal.

Anyone blindly picking a price like $450 and declaring the device is DOA if it launches at that price can expect to get egg on their face. I personally think $399 makes the most sense for Nintendo. But not ruling out $449

Im mixed. I dont want to pick a price point, but while in the short therm they will sell out (heck, i think even the Wii U sold out at the beginning), if they want a widespread adoption like with the switch, in a time when people start to struggle financially because of inflation...
then the price cant go up to far. And just slashing the price a year in also sounds like asking early adopters to be mad.

(And for those that say: but inflation, they need to increase prices to!
well, if i see that basic food products did increase between 10% and 50% , but my (or from other people) salary did not... what do you think where will i put my limited funds to, a luxury product that increases in price, or essentials, morgages, fuel,.. and before you argue "then you already have a problem, since you should have enough money to not life paycheck to paycheck... well:
As inflation heats up, 64% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck
)

 

[Kenka]

I've learned a lot from hanging around here, including from your posts. I have a technical background, but in a totally different field. It's awesome that we can have an ongoing conversation.


It definitely doesn't. I realize I was a little unclear here. What I was getting at was the tradeoff between tensor cores and shader cores. On games where DLSS is NOT useful, how much better would those games look/run if Nintendo had replaced the tensor cores with just more raw shader cores?

It's a really hard question to answer, but probably not much? The GTX 1650 attempted to do just that, relative to the 1660, and doesn't seem to have managed to squeeze any extra performance out relative to its die size/power draw. Someone here might have a better answer. But think of it this way. There are roughly three classes of games

1. Games that aren't going to have a problem reaching "max" resolution using just shader cores. Anything pure pixel art, for example.
2. Games that benefit from DLSS. Imagine a game running a comfortable 1080p60fps on the core hardware, that can get down to 720p90fps, leaving them ample time in their framebudget to DLSS up to 1440p60fps, and still look good.
3. Games that push the hardware, but can't create the room in their framebudget for DLSS without looking bad. These are the games that, in theory, would benefit from dropping Tensor Cores and replacing that with more shader cores or higher clocks.

Group 3 needs a really weird performance profile. If a game runs like a powerpoint at the target res, then they'd need huge amounts of extra shader perf, and sacrificing tensor cores probably won't get you there. If the game runs, say, at a stable 30fps at 1080p, then you probably can get to 720p60fps with enough room in the frame budget for DLSS to get you back up to 1080p60fps.

The place where you really want to toss Tensor Cores for Shader Cores is something like a game running 55fps at your target res. You're close enough that a little bit of extra GPU perf is going to push you over the finish line, but DLSS might be a noticable IQ drop for a tiny boost in performance, and would rather just hand tune themselves back up to 60fps. I think the number of games in that bucket is going to be small, and regardless, the sacrifices those games will have to make will also not be dramatic.

I needed a night sleep before going back to this and I think you are right with your classification. There might always be room for DLSS in the frame budget but that would imply that the developers would knowingly and deliberately sacrifice shader and post-effect quality to 'shoe horn' it in.

Does that constitute an additional step in planification? If yes, does that violate the principle that game development should increasingly get simplified with time?

Frankly, I don't know. But if the choice of using DLSS in itself can cause headaches to developers, even mildly, then I think it is argument against its use. At least in Nintendo's mind.

 

[Glio]

They can easily offer “new and exciting” gameplay and ways to game different as a peripheral to the Switch ecosystem.

They don’t need to solely devote to a single console for it.

But I agree with the other poster who feels the Switch hybrid type ecosystem will persist as the mainline Nintendo console for another decade or two, minimum.

You can innovate with new hardware without ditching the hybrid idea, they are not contradictory

 

[Hermii]

You can innovate with new hardware without ditching the hybrid idea, they are not contradictory

This is where I think Tensor cores comes in. Yes dlss is nice, but not every game needs it. If any dev will get creative with dedicated ml hardware, I believe it’s Nintendo.

 

[Kenka]

Getting hyped for another potential Direct/unveiling while the one planned for today wasn't even aired yet?

I have the sensation that some actual Nintendo workers are involved in this forum. The transition from 'get hyped for the direct!' to 'get hyped for the NEXT THING!' was a little too smooth. It felt engineered.

Spoiler

we don't mind you, Nintendo workers.

 

[Blue Monty]

Getting hyped for another potential Direct/unveiling while the one planned for today wasn't even aired yet?

I have the sensation that some actual Nintendo workers are involved in this forum. The transition from 'get hyped for the direct!' to 'get hyped for the NEXT THING!' was a little too smooth. It felt engineered.

If it works I'm scared that from now on Nintendo will create a situation were there is a constant hype cycle for the next Nintendo event instead of a clear schedule of 3 directs + extra smaller ones per year

 

[ArchedThunder]

The past two revisions were revealed in July. If we don't see anything by the end of July it's likely we won't see anything until next year.

I’m all in on it releasing in March, so I think a reveal around October, like with the original Switch, makes a lot of sense.

 

[Deleted member 2551]

Getting hyped for another potential Direct/unveiling while the one planned for today wasn't even aired yet?

I have the sensation that some actual Nintendo workers are involved in this forum. The transition from 'get hyped for the direct!' to 'get hyped for the NEXT THING!' was a little too smooth. It felt engineered.

Spoiler

we don't mind you, Nintendo workers.

The fabled “uncle who works at Nintendo” is actually real?

 

[Skittzo]

I’m all in on it releasing in March, so I think a reveal around October, like with the original Switch, makes a lot of sense.


It aired hours ago.

Personally I don't think they'd sabotage their holiday sales by announcing new hardware before the holidays that you can't buy during the holidays.

It was okay in 2016 since the Wii U was dead already.