Welcome everyone!
The purpose of this thread is to be the one and only place on FamiBoards to speculate and discuss news and/or rumours that may or may not pertain to future Nintendo hardware and technology.
Disagreeing with other members is a normal and inevitable part of speculation and discussion. But please don't dismiss the opinions of other members when speculating and discussing. And the site rules apply to this thread, such as:
And there are a couple of rules exclusive to here that I hope the mods will strictly enforce, such as:
And please avoid discussing aspects other than the hardware and technology aspects of games if possible.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of speculation and discussion?
No worries! I'll be continuously updating this thread with any news and rumours coming from the speculation and discussion as quickly and as often as I possibly can.
It should be noted that any links to potentially relevant rumours from potential insiders will be hidden to people who at least do a couple of posts in order to protect potential insiders. But not all potentially relevant rumours involve potential insiders.
The newest news and rumours will be on the very top whilst the oldest will be on the very bottom.
Last updated: 28 November 2024 05:03 (UTC-08:00)
[2024]
~November 2024~
Relevant news:
28 November 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A former senior software engineer at Nvidia from August 2022 to July 2024 mentioned solving silicon bring-up issues with a Nintendo SoC in 2 weeks.
20 November 2024 → Nvidia: Gaming revenue was up 15% from a year ago and up 14% sequentially based on the sales increase of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and video game console SoCs for Q3 2025.
6 November 2024 → Twitter: Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, mentions that the Nintendo Switch games will be playable on the Nintendo Switch's successor, and Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the Nintendo Switch's successor. And he also mentioned that Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the Nintendo Switch's successor at a later date.
5 November 2024 → Bluesky (here and here): Nintendo Switch Online Playtest code mentioned adding meshlet support for the Nintendo Switch, reconfirming the Nintendo Switch's successor's support for mesh shaders. And Nintendo EPD's standard graphics library for the first time has a setting that allows for changing the resolution of the NVNwindow, which is responsible for outputting to a screen, which strongly implies support for outputting in 4K.
~September 2024~
Relevant news:
18 November 2024 → FamiBoards: Based on the leaked picture of the Nintendo Switch's successor's prototype motherboard, there are 25 pins for the Nintendo Switch's successor's Game Card slot vs 17 pins for the Nintendo Switch's Game Card slot.
18 September 2024 → Reddit: Pictures of the Nintendo Switch's successor's prototype console and Joy-Con shells and printed circuit boards have leaked on Chinese social media (here and here).
10 September 2024 → FamiBoards: Ounce is the Nintendo Switch's successor's codename. And BEE is the final product code for the Nintendo Switch's successor, analogous to HAC, etc.
~August 2024~
Relevant news:
28 August 2024 → Nvidia: Gaming revenue was up 16% from a year ago and up 9% sequentially based on the sales increase of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and video game console SoCs for Q2 2025.
10 August 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from June 2024 mentions there's a fan inside the dock.
7 August 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from June 2024 mentions a 60 W AC adapter from Delta Electronics/Innergie, the supplier of the Nintendo Switch family's AC adapter, which supports USB Power Delivery.
~July 2024~
Relevant news:
4 July 2024 → Nintendo: During the Q&A session for the 84th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, mentioned the best countermeasure against scalping for the Nintendo Switch's successor is to produce enough units to meet demand, which has been Nintendo's strategy since last year, taking into account circumstances for each region, and what measures can be taken within the limits permitted by law. He also mentioned that semiconductor shortages have been resolved and shouldn't be the issue with production of the Nintendo Switch's successor, unlike last year and the year before with Nintendo Switch hardware. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that although generative AI can be used in creative ways, generative AI can also be in conflict with intellectual property rights.
~June 2024~
Relevant news:
8 June 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from April 2024 mentions MT3681AEN, which is likely a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip from Mediatek.
~May 2024~
Relevant news:
10 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Muji is revealed to be the codename for the Nintendo Switch's successor. (Ounce's the codename for the Nintendo Switch's successor.)
10 May 2024 → Nintendo: During the Q&A session for the financial briefing for the fiscal year ending on March 2024, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, commented on how developing the Nintendo Switch's successor takes many years of preparation. He mentioned that the hardware sales for the fiscal year ending on March 2025 doesn't include the Nintendo Switch's successor. And although Nintendo believes the announcement of the Nintendo Switch's successor and future related announcements do affect Nintendo Switch sales, Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that Nintendo hopes to maximise Nintendo's hardware sales forecast of 13.5 million units by maintaining a good balance between new demand and demand for multiple systems, although that's not easily achievable. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that investments in the Nintendo Switch's successor is not Nintendo's main focus of cash utilisation since investment in the Nintendo Switch's successor has already been carried out as part of Nintendo's normal business activities. He confirmed that Nintendo Accounts will continued to be actively used for the Nintendo Switch's successor. Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that although digital sales has grown with the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's policy is to maximise game software sales, including physical software sales, and not only digital software sales, which will not change moving forward. He also mentioned that Nintendo needs to enhance the user friendliness for both consumers who play physical software and digital software. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that Nintendo doesn't expect semiconductor supply to be an issue with the Nintendo Switch's successor since there's currently no semiconductor shortage like back in 2022. He also mentioned that information about the Nintendo Switch's successor will be released in stages leading up to launch, like with previous hardware announcements. And Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that although Nintendo will devote the fiscal year ending in March 2025 to preparing the Nintendo Switch's successor, Nintendo's top priority is to maintain the Nintendo Switch's momentum and preparing the Nintendo Switch's successor.
9 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from March 2024 mentions magnets are used in the Nintendo Switch's successor to connect controllers, as well as for the speakers.
8 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from March 2024 shows that the Nintendo Switch's successor uses two of Micron's 64-bit 6 GB (48 Gb) LPDDR5X-7500 modules for 128-bit 12 GB LPDDR5X-7500 for the RAM and Kioxia's 256 GB UFS 3.1 module for the internal flash storage. Nvidia's production part number for T239 is GMLX30-R-A1, with GML being short for Gimle, X30 being the revision number, and A1 being the tapeout code. And the Nintendo Switch's successor features a built-in microphone.
7 May 2024 → Twitter: Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, announced that Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the Nintendo Switch's successor sometime during the fiscal year ending on 31 March 2025, but not during the Nintendo Direct scheduled for June 2024.
Relevant rumours:
9 May 2024 → FamiBoards: NateDrake has heard 16 GB off RAM in discussions, which turned out to be for devkits.
1 May 2024 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard ~600 MHz touted as the frequency.
~April 2024~
Potentially relevant news:
11 April 2024 → Western Digital: Western Digital announced 128 GB and 256 GB SanDisk SD Express and microSD Express cards, which are 4.4x faster than Western Digital's fastest SanDisk UHS-I SD and microSD cards, and are expected to be released in summer 2024.
~March 2024~
Relevant rumours:
19 March 2024 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake has heard from sources that Nintendo had reached out to third party partners and asked for assets of some of the games third party studios are developing for the Nintendo Switch's successor.
~February 2024~
Relevant rumours:
26 February 2024 → Nikkei Asia: Nikkei has heard that Nintendo plans to launch the Nintendo Switch's successor on March 2025 at the earliest, which likely can be used as a handheld similar with the Nintendo Switch, and uses a larger display, to prioritise streamlining initial sales, and giving game developers more time to develop popular titles. But to avoid shortages and scalping, Nintendo could delay the launch of the Nintendo Switch's successor, depending on the progress in establishing production capability and developing key games that affect initial sales. Nintendo plans to combine marketing with Nintendo's popular IPs (e.g. films based on Nintendo's characters) to expand sales of the Nintendo Switch's successor.
16 February 2024 → Bloomberg: According to people with knowledge in the matter, who asked not to be identified since the news hasn't been announced, that third party video game publishers are being advised by Nintendo about Nintendo's next-gen console will be delayed until 1Q 2025. And Nintendo told some third party publishers to not expect the new console until March 2025 at the earliest.
16 February 2024 → Twitter: Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, a journalist from Brazil, has heard from 5 different sources from 3 different continents that the Nintendo Switch's successor is launching in 2025. Eurogamer mentioned about hearing similar whispers of an early 2025 launch from industry sources this week, with Eurogamer later corroborating with industry sources that the Nintendo Switch's successor's launch was moved into early 2025, but still within the upcoming coming financial year (ending on March 2025), to ensure as many titles are included in the launch line up as possible. And after Video Games Chronicle published an article reporting on Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe's rumour and whispers from Eurogamer's industry sources, multiple sources said that Nintendo informed third party companies that the Nintendo Switch's successor's now launching in Q1 2025, with third party companies being recently briefed about the internal delay for the launch timing of the Nintendo Switch's successor from late 2024 to early 2025, with one third party publishing source speculating that Nintendo delayed the launch of the Nintendo Switch's successor to prepare a stronger first-party software line up for launch. And NateDrake mentioned that the launch delay to Q1 2025, which he heard this week, was very recently relayed to third party partners.
Potentially relevant news:
28 February 2024 → Samsung: Samsung announced sampling has started for Samsung's 256 GB SD Express microSD cards, which has up to 800 MB/s of sequential read speed, supports Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology to ensure stable performance and reliability for the small form factor, and to maintain optimum temperature, especially during long usage sessions, and will be made available for purchase later in 2024. Samsung also mentioned the development of Samsung's SD Express microSD card was the result of a successful collaboration with a customer to create a custom product, which potentially suggests Nintendo's the customer Samsung's working with, especially with T239 having support for SD Express cards.
4 February 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: Someone who was formerly a physical design intern at Nvidia mentioned porting physical designs from Samsung's 10 nm* process node to TSMC's 5 nm* process node using the (Cadence) Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) and (Synopsys) IC Compiler II (ICC2) tools, implementing physical design activities at the partition level on TSMC's 5 nm* process node technology, debugging and automating fixes in the flow using Tool Command Language (Tcl) for a seamless physical implementation, and creating a syntax checker in Python for a Nvidia specific tool.
Potentially relevant rumour:
9 February 2023 → Reuters: Nine sources familiar with Nvidia's plans mentioned that Nvidia plans on creating a business unit focused on designing custom chips for other companies (e.g. cloud computing firms, etc.), such as advanced AI processors, etc. Dina McKinney, a former AMD and Marvell executive, heads Nvidia's custom chip unit, and her team's goal is to make Nvidia's technology available for customers in cloud, 5G wireless, video games, and automotives, according to her LinkedIn profile, before those mentions were scrubbed, and her title changed, after Reuters sought comment from Nvidia. And Nvidia does plan on targeting the automotive and video game markets with Nvidia's new custom chip unit according to sources and public social media postings.
~January 2024~
Relevant news:
18 January 2024 → GDC via FamiBoards: According to a poll of anonymous developers from the 2024 State of the Game Industry report. 8% of developers are currently developing games for the Nintendo Switch's successor, and 32% of developers are most interested in the Nintendo Switch's successor.
Relevant rumour:
26 January 2024 → Bloomberg: Hiroshi Hayase, an analyst from Omdia, whose research is focusd on small and medium displays, and who bases annual forecasts on checks with display companies in the supply chain, says that Nintendo will be releasing a new console equipped with an 8" LCD display this year, which will be responsible for the shipments of "amusement displays" to double in 2024.
Potentially relevant news:
10 January 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A resume for someone who's a former silicon solutions engineer at Nvidia mentions bringing up T239 (as well as T234 and Grace) to ensure robust memory performance baselines under varying LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X workloads while providing time-critical validation test plan coverage, collaborating with cross-functional teams to design and automate regression and reboot test suites using python scripts across 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB memory modules for T239 (and Grace) for performance characterization for Nvidia's automotive customers, and generating DTB/DTS (device tree blob/source) and .axf files for T239 (and Grace) platforms with 48 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB memory density for regression tests to ensure performance reliability across Standard and Derated memory modes.
8 January 2024 → Moor Insights & Strategy and Arm via The Register: Patrick Moorehead from Moor Insights and Strategy was told that Arm plans to ship Blackhawk, Arm's next-gen Cortex-X CPU core, in smartphones at the end of 2024 as Arm CEO Rene Haas's strategy to "eliminate the performance gap between Arm-designed processors and custom Arm implementations". He was also told that Blackhawk reflects the "largest year-over-year IPC performance increase in 5 years", with Arm citing Geekbench 6, and that Arm believes Blackhawk provide "great" LLM performance. And Arm's spokeperson confirmed to The Register that the information in Moor Insight & Strategy's research note on Blackhawk is accurate.
1 January 2024 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a job posting for a CPU profiler software engineer intern who will join the team working on Nintendo's CPU profiling tool and needs strong C# programming skills and experience with C++, with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) knowledge being a plus.
[2023]
~October 2023~
Relevant news:
October 2023 → GitHub: Nvidia mentioned that the File Decompression Engine for Tegra is designed to decompress data stored in the LZ4 format.
Relevant rumours:
21 October 2023 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard that ray tracing is going to be a common feature for Nintendo's new hardware. And although developers do have the option to disable ray tracing in handheld mode to avoid performance issues, many developers say that DLSS and ray reconstruction works well enough to use.
19 October 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake has heard that the SoC for Nintendo's new hardware has ray reconstruction.
Potentially relevant news:
19 October 2023 → SD Association via Business Wire: SD Association announced the SD 9.1 specifiation, which doubled the microSD Express card sequential speeds of up to 2 GB/s by using a PCIe Gen4 x1 lane, and introduced four new SD Express Speed Classes to ensure guaranteed minimum sequential performance levels.
Potentially relevant rumour:
23 October 2023 → Reuters: Nvidia's designing Arm based SoCs for PCs that run on Microsoft Windows for after 2024 since Qualcomm's exclusivity for designing Arm based SoCs for PCs running on Microsoft Windows ends at the end of 2024. Arm CEO Rene Haas confirmed in an interview with the Stratechery on 11 January 2024 that Qualcomm's exclusivity for designing Arm based SoCs for PCs running on Microsoft Windows ends at the end of 2024.
~September 2023~
Relevant news:
19 September 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A person who's formerly a Samsung SDS senior software engineer from July - September 2022 mentioned collaborating with Samsung DSR on a test case development for the eMMC protocol and a host level verification for a Nintendo Game Card project.
18 September 2023 → The Verge: During the fourth day of the FTC v Microsoft hearings on 28 June 2023, internal emails were presented where Activision executives were meeting with Nintendo executives to be briefed on Nintendo's next-gen console on 15 December 2022. One of the documents attached to the internal emails titled "NG Switch Draft.pdf", which was heavily redacted, mentioned that Nintendo's next-gen console's closely aligned with 8th gen consoles in terms of performance.
17 September 2023 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a contract job posting for a machine learning data engineer who's responsible for porting machine learning frameworks to embedded platforms, evaluating and benchmarking machine learning hardware solutions, and selecting and optimising machine learning. models to fit power, memory, and CPU budgets.
Potentially relevant news:
23 September 2023 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a contract job posting for a senior data scientist who's responsible for assisting with the development of deep learning neural networks, which include, but are not limited to, audio enhancement and computer vision, which focuses on iterating over the training, quantisation, and evaluation of neural networks implemented in PyTorch and/or TensorFlow.
Relevant rumours:
11 September 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake heard that the Breath of the Wild tech demo was running at 4K at 60 fps. And the main focus of the Breath of the Wild tech demo was to showcase improved loading times, with the Breath of the Wild tech demo going from the main menu to the game with no loading times. NateDrake also heard that DLSS 3.5 was used, but perhaps not the full feature set of DLSS 3.5, hearing DLSS Frame Generation is omitted. NateDrake heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience showcased very advanced ray tracing that was identical, if not better, than what was shown on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S with respect to The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience. And NateDrake heard March 2024 more than once during discussions at Gamescom 2023, but without any context about if March 2024 is referring to the launch date, the launch window, or the reveal date.
7 September 2023 → FamiBoards: NateDrake has heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was running on hardware targeting the Nintendo Switch's successor's specs, not on the actual Nintendo Switch's successor's hardware.
7 September 2023 → Twitter: necrolipe has heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was running on DLSS 3.1 rather than DLSS 3.5 as reported by Video Games Chronicle initially, and that retail hardware has 12 GB of RAM. (True based on customs data from March 2024.)
7 September 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: One of Video Games Chronicle's sources mentioned Nintendo was also demoing The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, which was running via DLSS 3.5, with advanced ray tracing enabled, and with visuals comparable to the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S. (But that doesn't mean that the Nintendo Switch's successor's raw performance is anywhere near the PlayStation 5's and the Xbox Series X|S's raw performance.)
7 September 2023 → Eurogamer: Eurogamer has heard there were developer presentations, specifically tech demos, for the Nintendo Switch's successor at Gamescom 2023, with Video Games Chronicle corroborating. One of the tech demos was a souped up version of Breath of the Wild. (There's no suggestion Breath of the Wild is planned for re-release.) And Eurogamer understands that Nintendo prefers to launch the Nintendo Switch's successor sooner than 2H 2024 if possible.
~August 2023~
Relevant rumours:
28 August 2023 → ResetEra: Nintendo's new hardware appears to have a camera function, although unknown if for VR.
4 August 2023 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard Nintendo's new hardware won't be equipped with 16 GB of RAM.
3 August 2023 → Video Games Chronicle via YouTube: Andy Robinson admitted hearing contradictory information with respect to backwards compatibility, with one developer he talked to with access to a dev kit for Nintendo's new hardware was told Nintendo's new hardware doesn't have backwards compatibility, whilst other developers said Nintendo's new hardware does have backwards compatibility.
2 August 2023 → FamiBoards: Nintendo's new hardware looks to use 7.91" 1080p LCD displays from Innolux and Tianma based on older information. (These are likely to be used for devkits.)
2 August 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake's heard from 1-2 sources before Video Games Chronicle's article was released on 31 July 2023 that holiday 2024 is the launch window, which he considered informed speculation due to the lack of additional sources corroborating. MVG mentioned he heard nothing about Nintendo's new hardware from developers during GDC 2023. Some of NateDrake's sources (his sources' studios or his sources' colleagues) confirmed having access to devkits a couple of weeks ago in very recent times. NateDrake's heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, that Nintendo's new hardware's going to ramp up production in Q1 2024, specifically between January 2024 to March 2024. NateDrake's also heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, and that he considered as informed speculation, that Nintendo's new hardware's going to use a 8" LCD display to reduce costs. And NateDrake's also heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, and that he considered as informed speculation, that Nintendo plans on equipping Nintendo's new hardware with a fairly significantly amount of internal flash storage, with the ceiling being 512 GB. Video Games Chronicle has corroborated what NateDrake said during the Video Games Chronicle podcast on 3 August 2023. And necrolipe corroborated NateDrake hearing whispers of Nintendo's new hardware using a 8" LCD display, but also mentioned that his source heard that the LCD display is of better quality compared to the LCD display on the Nintendo Switch, and the resolution of the LCD display is 1080p. (No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
~July 2023~
Relevant news:
28 July 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: In an interview with Video Games Chronicle, Norichika Meguro from Jupiter Corporation mentioned in his final words to Picross players that the next Picross game is coming to new hardware down the road, which suggests Nintendo's new hardware is coming as soon as early 2024, considering Picross has only been released on Nintendo consoles, and Picross has an annual release schedule.
21 July 2023 → GitHub via FamiBoards: Nvidia enabled apbmisc_base register space access for T239, which is required for various APIs in SD Express mode, on 21 April 2022, which implies that T239 does support SD Express cards.
Relevant rumours:
31 July 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: Nintendo's likely to release a next-gen console in 2H 2024 according to multiple people with knowledge of Nintendo's next-gen console plans. Video Games Chronicle's sources indicated that Nintendo's next-gen console can be played in handheld mode, suggested that Nintendo's next-gen console could use a LCD display instead of an OLED display to lower costs, especially with higher fidelity games requiring increased amounts of storage, and Nintendo's next-gen console can run physical games via the Game Card Slot. And although details about backwards compatibility support for Nintendo's next-gen console remains unclear, some third party developers expressed concern that backwards compatibility with Nintendo Switch games can negatively impact sales of next-gen games. (No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
31 July 2023 → Eurogamer: Eurogamer's source heard that Nintendo's next console has a launch window of 2H 2024 and can be played in handheld mode.
(No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
7 July 2023 → FamiBoards: Nintendo's new hardware looks to have a backwards compatibility translation layer/workaround to achieve backwards compatibility.
~June 2023~
Relevant news:
30 June 2023 → Nintendo: At the Q&A session during the 83rd Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, when asked about Shuntaro Furukawa's thoughts about making purchased digital Nintendo Switch games available on Nintendo's next-gen console, he said that he wants to refrain from making any specific comments about Nintendo's future hardware at this time, but Nintendo always looks at future hardware specs from various angles. When asked about if Nintendo have any specific measures for transitioning to Nintendo's next-gen console, Shuntaro Furukawa said Nintendo will make good use of Nintendo Accounts for transitioning from the Nintendo Switch to Nintendo's next-gen console. When a shareholder mentioned wanting Nintendo to implement countermeasures against reselling when Nintendo eventually releases a next-gen console, Shuntaro Furukawa said that manufacturing and shipping a satisfactory amount of units to satisfy consumer demand is of paramount importance when Nintendo releases a next-gen console. And Nintendo will also consider whether there are any other countermeasures that can be implemented against reselling.
28 June 2023 → The Verge: During the fourth day of the FTC v Microsoft hearings, when the FTC mentioned that Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, only heard about Microsoft's 10 year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms from news reports, which also implies releasing Call of Duty on Nintendo's future console, Bobby Kotick mentioned that Activision will consider bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo's future console once Activision has the specs for Nintendo's future console, which Activision doesn't have currently. Bobby Kotick also said in a previous testimony that he thinks Activision will likely make a new Call of Duty game for Nintendo's future console. And although he can't say there are specific plans, but he can say that Activision is considering bringing a new Call of Duty game to Nintendo's future console.
20 June 2023 → GamesIndustry.biz: In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Yves Guillemot, the co-founder and CEO of Ubisoft, mentioned that Nintendo had advised Ubisoft to do one iteration of Mario + Rabids per Nintendo console. But Yves Guillemot admitted that Ubisoft released Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope too early, and that Ubisoft should wait until the launch of Nintendo's new console to release Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, mentioning that Ubisoft plans to update Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope for Nintendo's new console.
Relevant rumours:
1 July 2023 → Twitter: Nash Weddle has heard that a developer in Spain has received dev kits for Nintendo's new hardware, with necrolipe independently corroborating on 5 July 2023.
~May 2023~
Relevant news:
28 May 2023 → Khronos via GitHub: Khronos added the "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" extension to Vulkan 1.3.25, with Daniel Story from Nintendo being one of the contributors. "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" removes some restrictions in the
"apiext:VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering" extension, which allows render pass instances and bound pipelines within those render pass instances to have an unused
attachment specified in one, but not the other. "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" also allows pipelines to use different formats in a render pass as long the attachment is NULL.
12 May 2023 → Nintendo: During the Q&A for the financial results briefing for the fiscal year ending on March 2023, Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that reaching a certain number of annual playing users doesn't mean there's no need to release a next-gen platform. Although Shuntaro Furukawa can't say anything specific about a next-gen platform currently, Nintendo's always working on various projects aimed at providing new and unique entertainment. But Nintendo's top priorities currently are maintaining and expanding the utilisation of Nintendo Switch. Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that overall costs remain high despite the cost of certain materials decreasing since Nintendo's doing materials procurement far enough in advance to ensure stable production due to production being highly impacted during the fiscal year ending on March 2023. Therefore, the decrease of raw materials costs isn't reflected in the manufacturing costs right away. Nintendo currently doesn't plan to decrease hardware prices during the fiscal year ending on March 2024. Although Nintendo has no plans to raise hardware prices, the Japanese yen continues to be weak, and procurement costs remain high. Nintendo expects the OLED model, which has a higher unit price, to represent a larger portion of hardware sales during the fiscal year ending on March 2024. And Shuntaro Furukawa commented that the timing of the Nintendo Switch announcement was a special case since Nintendo at the time needed to inform people that the dedicated video game platform business is still Nintendo's core business after announcing jointly developing and operate mobile gaming apps with Nintendo IPs for smart devices in global markets, and Nintendo's new online membership service via Nintendo Account, with DeNA. And Nintendo plans to provide information about hardware and software at the appropriate time for each product and strive to reach a wide range of consumers.
Potentially relevant news:
28 May 2023 → Arm via Anandtech and WikiChip: Arm announced during Arm's Client Tech Day the Armv9.2 CPUs: the Cortex-X4, the Cortex-A720, and the Cortex-A520.
The Cortex-X4 offers 15% more performance and <10% area cost (with the same amount of L2 cache as the Cortex-X3) compared to the Cortex-X3, with 2 MB of L2 cache per CPU core instead of 1 MB of L2 cache in the Cortex-X3, and support up to 10 Cortex-X4 cores and 4 Cortex-A720 cores per cluster.
The Cortex-A720 supports two configurations: area optimised configuration and full configuration. The area optimised configuration of the Cortex-A720 offers 10% more performance compared to the Cortex-A78, but at the same area size as the Cortex-A78. The full configuration of the Cortex-A720 offers 20% more power efficiency compared to the Cortex-A715, but at the cost of larger area size.
The Cortex-A520 builds upon the merged-core microarchitecture introduced by the Cortex-A510, offering 22% more power efficiency compared to the Cortex-A510, or 8% more performance than the Cortex-A510 at the same power levels as the Cortex-A510. The third ALU, which was present in the Cortex-A510, has been removed from the Cortex-A520, saving power throughout the pipeline from the issue logic to reword and forwarding. And the Cortex-A520's memory system was restructured to increase power efficiency.
DSU-120 increases the max number of CPU cores per cluster to 14 CPU cores per cluster, and the max amount of L3 cache to 32 MB of L3 cache, with the option of 24 MB of L3 cache for reduced power.
11 May 2023 → Bloomberg: Sharp CEO Robert Wu mentioned that Sharp was working with a company on a video game console during the R&D phase in an analyst call after releasing Sharp's quarterly earnings. And Sharp plans to launch pilot LCD panel production lines this fiscal year for the new video game console. But after the analyst call, the mention of a new video game console Sharp's been a supplier to has been deleted from Sharp's online presentation slides.
Relevant rumours:
9 May 2023 → Nikkei Asia: Nikkei Asia's source close to Nintendo mentioned that development is going well, but a new hardware launch isn't expected before spring 2024 at the earliest.
~March 2023~
Relevant news:
31 March 2023 → Khronos: Daniel Story from Nintendo announces that Khronos is releasing a shader objects extension on Vulkan called "VK_EXT_shader_object" that impose substantially fewer restrictions on applications compared to pipelines, and enable dynamism-heavy applications (e.g. games and game engines) to avoid explosive pipeline permutation combinatorics. There are no downsides to using shader objects on some implementations, where shader objects outperform pipelines on the CPU and perform no worse than pipelines on the GPU. On other implementations, shader object APIs can simplify application code, which allows for CPU performance improvements that result in outperforming equivalent application code redesigned to use pipelines by enough that the cost of extra implementation overhead is outweighed by the performance improvements in the application. Nvidia's Vulkan driver supports "VK_EXT_shader_object". And although "VK_EXT_shader_object" currently doesn't support ray tracing, "VK_EXT_shader_object" has been designed to account for future support for a ray tracing shader objects extension on Vulkan.
20 March 2023 → FamiBoards: Based on images of the OLED model's and the Nintendo Switch's motherboard with the solder removed, all four lanes of DisplayPort 1.2 signals from the PI3USB30532 chip are connected to the Tegra X1+ on the OLED model, in comparison to only two lanes of DisplayPort 1.2 signals connected to the Tegra X1 on the Nintendo Switch. Therefore, the OLED model could theoretically output up to 4K 60 Hz in TV mode via the RTD2172N chip (here and here) and "4kdp_preferred_over_usb30". This also implies that Nintendo could have initially planned to release the OLED model as a mid-gen refresh.
Relevant rumours:
20 March 2023 → Twitter: OreXda heard that T239 is fabricated with Samsung's 5LPP process node. (False)
~February 2023~
Relevant news:
25 February 2023 → VentureBeat: When asked by GamesBeat if Jensen Huang thinks there's an opportunity to be on Nintendo's next console, Jensen Huang mentioned keeping Nvidia's fingers crossed. Jensen Huang also mentioned that Nvidia's good at building energy efficient video game systems, and at ray tracing and AI, especially since video games are increasingly using ray tracing and AI, and Nvidia's convinced next gen video games will be heavily, if not fully, ray traced, and be based on generative AI.
~January 2023~
Relevant news:
07 January 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards (here and here): A person mentioned working at an ASIC design services company that specialises in tape out critical tasks for chips from October 2018 to March 2022, with one project being working on T239 for Nvidia, strongly implying that T239 was taped out at around 1H 2022.
06 January 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A person who worked as a hardware engineer at Nvidia from April 2022 to present mentioned one of the responsibilities being managing execution to electrically characterise and validate I/O interfaces (e.g. IC2, SPI/QSPI, etc.) of the RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace) GPUs and T239, which strongly implies that Nvidia was working with T239 physically as actual silicon since at least April 2022.
Relevant rumours:
19 January 2023 → Nate the Hate: MVG heard some developers have access to updated Nintendo Switch devkits at GDC 2022. NateDrake heard rumblings at around summer 2022 that new hardware was no longer planned to be released at late 2022 or early 2023.
Potentially relevant news:
24 January 2023 → SK Hynix: SK Hynix announces developing LPDDR5T, which has a data rate of 9.6 Gbps, 13% faster than the data rate of SK Hynix's LPDDR5X DRAM at 8.5 Gbps, with sample products sent to customers. SK Hynix's LPDDR5T DRAM is fabricated using SK Hynix's 1anm* process node, the fourth generation of SK Hynix's 10 nm* process node technology, and integrates a HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) technology. And SK Hynix plans to start mass manufacturing LPDDR5T DRAM at the second half of 2023.
2 January 2023 → LinkedIn: Nvidia posted a job listing for a senior SoC design engineer (build) who's responsible for defining and developing system-level methodologies and tools for building SoCs in an efficient and scalable manner, improving build, release, and integrate tools and procedures, supporting IP teams with chip build related issues, and identifying pain points and inefficiencies in the front-end chip implementation process and propose ideas to solve them.
Potentially relevant rumours:
19 January 2023 → Bloomberg: Nintendo purportedly plans to increase production of Nintendo Switch units in the fiscal year starting in April 2023 since demand for the Nintendo Switch remains strong and Nintendo's confident in being able to make more units. However, Nintendo has not yet communicated a precise target of how much more Nintendo Switch units to make to Nintendo's suppliers and manufacturers. And Nintendo could revise plans later in the year if Nintendo Switch demand underwhelms.
[2022 and 2021]
Click here to see news and rumours from 2022 and 2021.
~* → a marketing nomenclature used by all foundry companies~
And are you confused by how DLSS works? No worries, for @ILikeFeet made an excellent post on the previous thread on ResetEra about how DLSS works on an engine level, which can be read here.
Have fun, everyone!
The purpose of this thread is to be the one and only place on FamiBoards to speculate and discuss news and/or rumours that may or may not pertain to future Nintendo hardware and technology.
Disagreeing with other members is a normal and inevitable part of speculation and discussion. But please don't dismiss the opinions of other members when speculating and discussing. And the site rules apply to this thread, such as:
- no trolling
- no sexual and/or objectifying posts
- no bigoted posts
- no platform wars
- no hostility towards other members
- no engaging in off-site drama
- no accusations of astroturfing
And there are a couple of rules exclusive to here that I hope the mods will strictly enforce, such as:
- no unwarranted negativity
- no off-topic, throwaway comments (e.g. "I'm posting, so I can get access to the hidden post.", "Nintendo's gonna Nintendo.", etc.)
- no incessant nagging towards potential insiders, reputable insiders, and/or reputable sources, for more information
And please avoid discussing aspects other than the hardware and technology aspects of games if possible.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of speculation and discussion?
No worries! I'll be continuously updating this thread with any news and rumours coming from the speculation and discussion as quickly and as often as I possibly can.
It should be noted that any links to potentially relevant rumours from potential insiders will be hidden to people who at least do a couple of posts in order to protect potential insiders. But not all potentially relevant rumours involve potential insiders.
The newest news and rumours will be on the very top whilst the oldest will be on the very bottom.
Last updated: 28 November 2024 05:03 (UTC-08:00)
[2024]
~November 2024~
Relevant news:
28 November 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A former senior software engineer at Nvidia from August 2022 to July 2024 mentioned solving silicon bring-up issues with a Nintendo SoC in 2 weeks.
20 November 2024 → Nvidia: Gaming revenue was up 15% from a year ago and up 14% sequentially based on the sales increase of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and video game console SoCs for Q3 2025.
6 November 2024 → Twitter: Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, mentions that the Nintendo Switch games will be playable on the Nintendo Switch's successor, and Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the Nintendo Switch's successor. And he also mentioned that Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the Nintendo Switch's successor at a later date.
5 November 2024 → Bluesky (here and here): Nintendo Switch Online Playtest code mentioned adding meshlet support for the Nintendo Switch, reconfirming the Nintendo Switch's successor's support for mesh shaders. And Nintendo EPD's standard graphics library for the first time has a setting that allows for changing the resolution of the NVNwindow, which is responsible for outputting to a screen, which strongly implies support for outputting in 4K.
~September 2024~
Relevant news:
18 November 2024 → FamiBoards: Based on the leaked picture of the Nintendo Switch's successor's prototype motherboard, there are 25 pins for the Nintendo Switch's successor's Game Card slot vs 17 pins for the Nintendo Switch's Game Card slot.
18 September 2024 → Reddit: Pictures of the Nintendo Switch's successor's prototype console and Joy-Con shells and printed circuit boards have leaked on Chinese social media (here and here).
10 September 2024 → FamiBoards: Ounce is the Nintendo Switch's successor's codename. And BEE is the final product code for the Nintendo Switch's successor, analogous to HAC, etc.
~August 2024~
Relevant news:
28 August 2024 → Nvidia: Gaming revenue was up 16% from a year ago and up 9% sequentially based on the sales increase of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and video game console SoCs for Q2 2025.
10 August 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from June 2024 mentions there's a fan inside the dock.
7 August 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from June 2024 mentions a 60 W AC adapter from Delta Electronics/Innergie, the supplier of the Nintendo Switch family's AC adapter, which supports USB Power Delivery.
~July 2024~
Relevant news:
4 July 2024 → Nintendo: During the Q&A session for the 84th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, mentioned the best countermeasure against scalping for the Nintendo Switch's successor is to produce enough units to meet demand, which has been Nintendo's strategy since last year, taking into account circumstances for each region, and what measures can be taken within the limits permitted by law. He also mentioned that semiconductor shortages have been resolved and shouldn't be the issue with production of the Nintendo Switch's successor, unlike last year and the year before with Nintendo Switch hardware. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that although generative AI can be used in creative ways, generative AI can also be in conflict with intellectual property rights.
~June 2024~
Relevant news:
8 June 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from April 2024 mentions MT3681AEN, which is likely a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip from Mediatek.
~May 2024~
Relevant news:
10 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Muji is revealed to be the codename for the Nintendo Switch's successor. (Ounce's the codename for the Nintendo Switch's successor.)
10 May 2024 → Nintendo: During the Q&A session for the financial briefing for the fiscal year ending on March 2024, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, commented on how developing the Nintendo Switch's successor takes many years of preparation. He mentioned that the hardware sales for the fiscal year ending on March 2025 doesn't include the Nintendo Switch's successor. And although Nintendo believes the announcement of the Nintendo Switch's successor and future related announcements do affect Nintendo Switch sales, Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that Nintendo hopes to maximise Nintendo's hardware sales forecast of 13.5 million units by maintaining a good balance between new demand and demand for multiple systems, although that's not easily achievable. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that investments in the Nintendo Switch's successor is not Nintendo's main focus of cash utilisation since investment in the Nintendo Switch's successor has already been carried out as part of Nintendo's normal business activities. He confirmed that Nintendo Accounts will continued to be actively used for the Nintendo Switch's successor. Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that although digital sales has grown with the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's policy is to maximise game software sales, including physical software sales, and not only digital software sales, which will not change moving forward. He also mentioned that Nintendo needs to enhance the user friendliness for both consumers who play physical software and digital software. Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that Nintendo doesn't expect semiconductor supply to be an issue with the Nintendo Switch's successor since there's currently no semiconductor shortage like back in 2022. He also mentioned that information about the Nintendo Switch's successor will be released in stages leading up to launch, like with previous hardware announcements. And Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that although Nintendo will devote the fiscal year ending in March 2025 to preparing the Nintendo Switch's successor, Nintendo's top priority is to maintain the Nintendo Switch's momentum and preparing the Nintendo Switch's successor.
9 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from March 2024 mentions magnets are used in the Nintendo Switch's successor to connect controllers, as well as for the speakers.
8 May 2024 → FamiBoards: Customs data from March 2024 shows that the Nintendo Switch's successor uses two of Micron's 64-bit 6 GB (48 Gb) LPDDR5X-7500 modules for 128-bit 12 GB LPDDR5X-7500 for the RAM and Kioxia's 256 GB UFS 3.1 module for the internal flash storage. Nvidia's production part number for T239 is GMLX30-R-A1, with GML being short for Gimle, X30 being the revision number, and A1 being the tapeout code. And the Nintendo Switch's successor features a built-in microphone.
7 May 2024 → Twitter: Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, announced that Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the Nintendo Switch's successor sometime during the fiscal year ending on 31 March 2025, but not during the Nintendo Direct scheduled for June 2024.
Relevant rumours:
9 May 2024 → FamiBoards: NateDrake has heard 16 GB off RAM in discussions, which turned out to be for devkits.
1 May 2024 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard ~600 MHz touted as the frequency.
~April 2024~
Potentially relevant news:
11 April 2024 → Western Digital: Western Digital announced 128 GB and 256 GB SanDisk SD Express and microSD Express cards, which are 4.4x faster than Western Digital's fastest SanDisk UHS-I SD and microSD cards, and are expected to be released in summer 2024.
~March 2024~
Relevant rumours:
19 March 2024 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake has heard from sources that Nintendo had reached out to third party partners and asked for assets of some of the games third party studios are developing for the Nintendo Switch's successor.
~February 2024~
Relevant rumours:
26 February 2024 → Nikkei Asia: Nikkei has heard that Nintendo plans to launch the Nintendo Switch's successor on March 2025 at the earliest, which likely can be used as a handheld similar with the Nintendo Switch, and uses a larger display, to prioritise streamlining initial sales, and giving game developers more time to develop popular titles. But to avoid shortages and scalping, Nintendo could delay the launch of the Nintendo Switch's successor, depending on the progress in establishing production capability and developing key games that affect initial sales. Nintendo plans to combine marketing with Nintendo's popular IPs (e.g. films based on Nintendo's characters) to expand sales of the Nintendo Switch's successor.
16 February 2024 → Bloomberg: According to people with knowledge in the matter, who asked not to be identified since the news hasn't been announced, that third party video game publishers are being advised by Nintendo about Nintendo's next-gen console will be delayed until 1Q 2025. And Nintendo told some third party publishers to not expect the new console until March 2025 at the earliest.
16 February 2024 → Twitter: Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, a journalist from Brazil, has heard from 5 different sources from 3 different continents that the Nintendo Switch's successor is launching in 2025. Eurogamer mentioned about hearing similar whispers of an early 2025 launch from industry sources this week, with Eurogamer later corroborating with industry sources that the Nintendo Switch's successor's launch was moved into early 2025, but still within the upcoming coming financial year (ending on March 2025), to ensure as many titles are included in the launch line up as possible. And after Video Games Chronicle published an article reporting on Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe's rumour and whispers from Eurogamer's industry sources, multiple sources said that Nintendo informed third party companies that the Nintendo Switch's successor's now launching in Q1 2025, with third party companies being recently briefed about the internal delay for the launch timing of the Nintendo Switch's successor from late 2024 to early 2025, with one third party publishing source speculating that Nintendo delayed the launch of the Nintendo Switch's successor to prepare a stronger first-party software line up for launch. And NateDrake mentioned that the launch delay to Q1 2025, which he heard this week, was very recently relayed to third party partners.
Potentially relevant news:
28 February 2024 → Samsung: Samsung announced sampling has started for Samsung's 256 GB SD Express microSD cards, which has up to 800 MB/s of sequential read speed, supports Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology to ensure stable performance and reliability for the small form factor, and to maintain optimum temperature, especially during long usage sessions, and will be made available for purchase later in 2024. Samsung also mentioned the development of Samsung's SD Express microSD card was the result of a successful collaboration with a customer to create a custom product, which potentially suggests Nintendo's the customer Samsung's working with, especially with T239 having support for SD Express cards.
4 February 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: Someone who was formerly a physical design intern at Nvidia mentioned porting physical designs from Samsung's 10 nm* process node to TSMC's 5 nm* process node using the (Cadence) Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) and (Synopsys) IC Compiler II (ICC2) tools, implementing physical design activities at the partition level on TSMC's 5 nm* process node technology, debugging and automating fixes in the flow using Tool Command Language (Tcl) for a seamless physical implementation, and creating a syntax checker in Python for a Nvidia specific tool.
Potentially relevant rumour:
9 February 2023 → Reuters: Nine sources familiar with Nvidia's plans mentioned that Nvidia plans on creating a business unit focused on designing custom chips for other companies (e.g. cloud computing firms, etc.), such as advanced AI processors, etc. Dina McKinney, a former AMD and Marvell executive, heads Nvidia's custom chip unit, and her team's goal is to make Nvidia's technology available for customers in cloud, 5G wireless, video games, and automotives, according to her LinkedIn profile, before those mentions were scrubbed, and her title changed, after Reuters sought comment from Nvidia. And Nvidia does plan on targeting the automotive and video game markets with Nvidia's new custom chip unit according to sources and public social media postings.
~January 2024~
Relevant news:
18 January 2024 → GDC via FamiBoards: According to a poll of anonymous developers from the 2024 State of the Game Industry report. 8% of developers are currently developing games for the Nintendo Switch's successor, and 32% of developers are most interested in the Nintendo Switch's successor.
Relevant rumour:
26 January 2024 → Bloomberg: Hiroshi Hayase, an analyst from Omdia, whose research is focusd on small and medium displays, and who bases annual forecasts on checks with display companies in the supply chain, says that Nintendo will be releasing a new console equipped with an 8" LCD display this year, which will be responsible for the shipments of "amusement displays" to double in 2024.
Potentially relevant news:
10 January 2024 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A resume for someone who's a former silicon solutions engineer at Nvidia mentions bringing up T239 (as well as T234 and Grace) to ensure robust memory performance baselines under varying LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X workloads while providing time-critical validation test plan coverage, collaborating with cross-functional teams to design and automate regression and reboot test suites using python scripts across 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB memory modules for T239 (and Grace) for performance characterization for Nvidia's automotive customers, and generating DTB/DTS (device tree blob/source) and .axf files for T239 (and Grace) platforms with 48 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB memory density for regression tests to ensure performance reliability across Standard and Derated memory modes.
8 January 2024 → Moor Insights & Strategy and Arm via The Register: Patrick Moorehead from Moor Insights and Strategy was told that Arm plans to ship Blackhawk, Arm's next-gen Cortex-X CPU core, in smartphones at the end of 2024 as Arm CEO Rene Haas's strategy to "eliminate the performance gap between Arm-designed processors and custom Arm implementations". He was also told that Blackhawk reflects the "largest year-over-year IPC performance increase in 5 years", with Arm citing Geekbench 6, and that Arm believes Blackhawk provide "great" LLM performance. And Arm's spokeperson confirmed to The Register that the information in Moor Insight & Strategy's research note on Blackhawk is accurate.
1 January 2024 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a job posting for a CPU profiler software engineer intern who will join the team working on Nintendo's CPU profiling tool and needs strong C# programming skills and experience with C++, with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) knowledge being a plus.
[2023]
~October 2023~
Relevant news:
October 2023 → GitHub: Nvidia mentioned that the File Decompression Engine for Tegra is designed to decompress data stored in the LZ4 format.
Relevant rumours:
21 October 2023 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard that ray tracing is going to be a common feature for Nintendo's new hardware. And although developers do have the option to disable ray tracing in handheld mode to avoid performance issues, many developers say that DLSS and ray reconstruction works well enough to use.
19 October 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake has heard that the SoC for Nintendo's new hardware has ray reconstruction.
Potentially relevant news:
19 October 2023 → SD Association via Business Wire: SD Association announced the SD 9.1 specifiation, which doubled the microSD Express card sequential speeds of up to 2 GB/s by using a PCIe Gen4 x1 lane, and introduced four new SD Express Speed Classes to ensure guaranteed minimum sequential performance levels.
Potentially relevant rumour:
23 October 2023 → Reuters: Nvidia's designing Arm based SoCs for PCs that run on Microsoft Windows for after 2024 since Qualcomm's exclusivity for designing Arm based SoCs for PCs running on Microsoft Windows ends at the end of 2024. Arm CEO Rene Haas confirmed in an interview with the Stratechery on 11 January 2024 that Qualcomm's exclusivity for designing Arm based SoCs for PCs running on Microsoft Windows ends at the end of 2024.
~September 2023~
Relevant news:
19 September 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A person who's formerly a Samsung SDS senior software engineer from July - September 2022 mentioned collaborating with Samsung DSR on a test case development for the eMMC protocol and a host level verification for a Nintendo Game Card project.
18 September 2023 → The Verge: During the fourth day of the FTC v Microsoft hearings on 28 June 2023, internal emails were presented where Activision executives were meeting with Nintendo executives to be briefed on Nintendo's next-gen console on 15 December 2022. One of the documents attached to the internal emails titled "NG Switch Draft.pdf", which was heavily redacted, mentioned that Nintendo's next-gen console's closely aligned with 8th gen consoles in terms of performance.
17 September 2023 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a contract job posting for a machine learning data engineer who's responsible for porting machine learning frameworks to embedded platforms, evaluating and benchmarking machine learning hardware solutions, and selecting and optimising machine learning. models to fit power, memory, and CPU budgets.
Potentially relevant news:
23 September 2023 → Nintendo: Nintendo posted a contract job posting for a senior data scientist who's responsible for assisting with the development of deep learning neural networks, which include, but are not limited to, audio enhancement and computer vision, which focuses on iterating over the training, quantisation, and evaluation of neural networks implemented in PyTorch and/or TensorFlow.
Relevant rumours:
11 September 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake heard that the Breath of the Wild tech demo was running at 4K at 60 fps. And the main focus of the Breath of the Wild tech demo was to showcase improved loading times, with the Breath of the Wild tech demo going from the main menu to the game with no loading times. NateDrake also heard that DLSS 3.5 was used, but perhaps not the full feature set of DLSS 3.5, hearing DLSS Frame Generation is omitted. NateDrake heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience showcased very advanced ray tracing that was identical, if not better, than what was shown on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S with respect to The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience. And NateDrake heard March 2024 more than once during discussions at Gamescom 2023, but without any context about if March 2024 is referring to the launch date, the launch window, or the reveal date.
7 September 2023 → FamiBoards: NateDrake has heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was running on hardware targeting the Nintendo Switch's successor's specs, not on the actual Nintendo Switch's successor's hardware.
7 September 2023 → Twitter: necrolipe has heard that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was running on DLSS 3.1 rather than DLSS 3.5 as reported by Video Games Chronicle initially, and that retail hardware has 12 GB of RAM. (True based on customs data from March 2024.)
7 September 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: One of Video Games Chronicle's sources mentioned Nintendo was also demoing The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, which was running via DLSS 3.5, with advanced ray tracing enabled, and with visuals comparable to the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S. (But that doesn't mean that the Nintendo Switch's successor's raw performance is anywhere near the PlayStation 5's and the Xbox Series X|S's raw performance.)
7 September 2023 → Eurogamer: Eurogamer has heard there were developer presentations, specifically tech demos, for the Nintendo Switch's successor at Gamescom 2023, with Video Games Chronicle corroborating. One of the tech demos was a souped up version of Breath of the Wild. (There's no suggestion Breath of the Wild is planned for re-release.) And Eurogamer understands that Nintendo prefers to launch the Nintendo Switch's successor sooner than 2H 2024 if possible.
~August 2023~
Relevant rumours:
28 August 2023 → ResetEra: Nintendo's new hardware appears to have a camera function, although unknown if for VR.
4 August 2023 → FamiBoards: necrolipe has heard Nintendo's new hardware won't be equipped with 16 GB of RAM.
3 August 2023 → Video Games Chronicle via YouTube: Andy Robinson admitted hearing contradictory information with respect to backwards compatibility, with one developer he talked to with access to a dev kit for Nintendo's new hardware was told Nintendo's new hardware doesn't have backwards compatibility, whilst other developers said Nintendo's new hardware does have backwards compatibility.
2 August 2023 → FamiBoards: Nintendo's new hardware looks to use 7.91" 1080p LCD displays from Innolux and Tianma based on older information. (These are likely to be used for devkits.)
2 August 2023 → Nate the Hate: NateDrake's heard from 1-2 sources before Video Games Chronicle's article was released on 31 July 2023 that holiday 2024 is the launch window, which he considered informed speculation due to the lack of additional sources corroborating. MVG mentioned he heard nothing about Nintendo's new hardware from developers during GDC 2023. Some of NateDrake's sources (his sources' studios or his sources' colleagues) confirmed having access to devkits a couple of weeks ago in very recent times. NateDrake's heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, that Nintendo's new hardware's going to ramp up production in Q1 2024, specifically between January 2024 to March 2024. NateDrake's also heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, and that he considered as informed speculation, that Nintendo's new hardware's going to use a 8" LCD display to reduce costs. And NateDrake's also heard whispers, which he said is not confirmation, and that he considered as informed speculation, that Nintendo plans on equipping Nintendo's new hardware with a fairly significantly amount of internal flash storage, with the ceiling being 512 GB. Video Games Chronicle has corroborated what NateDrake said during the Video Games Chronicle podcast on 3 August 2023. And necrolipe corroborated NateDrake hearing whispers of Nintendo's new hardware using a 8" LCD display, but also mentioned that his source heard that the LCD display is of better quality compared to the LCD display on the Nintendo Switch, and the resolution of the LCD display is 1080p. (No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
~July 2023~
Relevant news:
28 July 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: In an interview with Video Games Chronicle, Norichika Meguro from Jupiter Corporation mentioned in his final words to Picross players that the next Picross game is coming to new hardware down the road, which suggests Nintendo's new hardware is coming as soon as early 2024, considering Picross has only been released on Nintendo consoles, and Picross has an annual release schedule.
21 July 2023 → GitHub via FamiBoards: Nvidia enabled apbmisc_base register space access for T239, which is required for various APIs in SD Express mode, on 21 April 2022, which implies that T239 does support SD Express cards.
Relevant rumours:
31 July 2023 → Video Games Chronicle: Nintendo's likely to release a next-gen console in 2H 2024 according to multiple people with knowledge of Nintendo's next-gen console plans. Video Games Chronicle's sources indicated that Nintendo's next-gen console can be played in handheld mode, suggested that Nintendo's next-gen console could use a LCD display instead of an OLED display to lower costs, especially with higher fidelity games requiring increased amounts of storage, and Nintendo's next-gen console can run physical games via the Game Card Slot. And although details about backwards compatibility support for Nintendo's next-gen console remains unclear, some third party developers expressed concern that backwards compatibility with Nintendo Switch games can negatively impact sales of next-gen games. (No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
31 July 2023 → Eurogamer: Eurogamer's source heard that Nintendo's next console has a launch window of 2H 2024 and can be played in handheld mode.
(No longer true as of 16 February 2024.)
7 July 2023 → FamiBoards: Nintendo's new hardware looks to have a backwards compatibility translation layer/workaround to achieve backwards compatibility.
~June 2023~
Relevant news:
30 June 2023 → Nintendo: At the Q&A session during the 83rd Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, when asked about Shuntaro Furukawa's thoughts about making purchased digital Nintendo Switch games available on Nintendo's next-gen console, he said that he wants to refrain from making any specific comments about Nintendo's future hardware at this time, but Nintendo always looks at future hardware specs from various angles. When asked about if Nintendo have any specific measures for transitioning to Nintendo's next-gen console, Shuntaro Furukawa said Nintendo will make good use of Nintendo Accounts for transitioning from the Nintendo Switch to Nintendo's next-gen console. When a shareholder mentioned wanting Nintendo to implement countermeasures against reselling when Nintendo eventually releases a next-gen console, Shuntaro Furukawa said that manufacturing and shipping a satisfactory amount of units to satisfy consumer demand is of paramount importance when Nintendo releases a next-gen console. And Nintendo will also consider whether there are any other countermeasures that can be implemented against reselling.
28 June 2023 → The Verge: During the fourth day of the FTC v Microsoft hearings, when the FTC mentioned that Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, only heard about Microsoft's 10 year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms from news reports, which also implies releasing Call of Duty on Nintendo's future console, Bobby Kotick mentioned that Activision will consider bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo's future console once Activision has the specs for Nintendo's future console, which Activision doesn't have currently. Bobby Kotick also said in a previous testimony that he thinks Activision will likely make a new Call of Duty game for Nintendo's future console. And although he can't say there are specific plans, but he can say that Activision is considering bringing a new Call of Duty game to Nintendo's future console.
20 June 2023 → GamesIndustry.biz: In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Yves Guillemot, the co-founder and CEO of Ubisoft, mentioned that Nintendo had advised Ubisoft to do one iteration of Mario + Rabids per Nintendo console. But Yves Guillemot admitted that Ubisoft released Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope too early, and that Ubisoft should wait until the launch of Nintendo's new console to release Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, mentioning that Ubisoft plans to update Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope for Nintendo's new console.
Relevant rumours:
1 July 2023 → Twitter: Nash Weddle has heard that a developer in Spain has received dev kits for Nintendo's new hardware, with necrolipe independently corroborating on 5 July 2023.
~May 2023~
Relevant news:
28 May 2023 → Khronos via GitHub: Khronos added the "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" extension to Vulkan 1.3.25, with Daniel Story from Nintendo being one of the contributors. "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" removes some restrictions in the
"apiext:VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering" extension, which allows render pass instances and bound pipelines within those render pass instances to have an unused
attachment specified in one, but not the other. "apiext:VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments" also allows pipelines to use different formats in a render pass as long the attachment is NULL.
12 May 2023 → Nintendo: During the Q&A for the financial results briefing for the fiscal year ending on March 2023, Shuntaro Furukawa mentioned that reaching a certain number of annual playing users doesn't mean there's no need to release a next-gen platform. Although Shuntaro Furukawa can't say anything specific about a next-gen platform currently, Nintendo's always working on various projects aimed at providing new and unique entertainment. But Nintendo's top priorities currently are maintaining and expanding the utilisation of Nintendo Switch. Shuntaro Furukawa also mentioned that overall costs remain high despite the cost of certain materials decreasing since Nintendo's doing materials procurement far enough in advance to ensure stable production due to production being highly impacted during the fiscal year ending on March 2023. Therefore, the decrease of raw materials costs isn't reflected in the manufacturing costs right away. Nintendo currently doesn't plan to decrease hardware prices during the fiscal year ending on March 2024. Although Nintendo has no plans to raise hardware prices, the Japanese yen continues to be weak, and procurement costs remain high. Nintendo expects the OLED model, which has a higher unit price, to represent a larger portion of hardware sales during the fiscal year ending on March 2024. And Shuntaro Furukawa commented that the timing of the Nintendo Switch announcement was a special case since Nintendo at the time needed to inform people that the dedicated video game platform business is still Nintendo's core business after announcing jointly developing and operate mobile gaming apps with Nintendo IPs for smart devices in global markets, and Nintendo's new online membership service via Nintendo Account, with DeNA. And Nintendo plans to provide information about hardware and software at the appropriate time for each product and strive to reach a wide range of consumers.
Potentially relevant news:
28 May 2023 → Arm via Anandtech and WikiChip: Arm announced during Arm's Client Tech Day the Armv9.2 CPUs: the Cortex-X4, the Cortex-A720, and the Cortex-A520.
The Cortex-X4 offers 15% more performance and <10% area cost (with the same amount of L2 cache as the Cortex-X3) compared to the Cortex-X3, with 2 MB of L2 cache per CPU core instead of 1 MB of L2 cache in the Cortex-X3, and support up to 10 Cortex-X4 cores and 4 Cortex-A720 cores per cluster.
The Cortex-A720 supports two configurations: area optimised configuration and full configuration. The area optimised configuration of the Cortex-A720 offers 10% more performance compared to the Cortex-A78, but at the same area size as the Cortex-A78. The full configuration of the Cortex-A720 offers 20% more power efficiency compared to the Cortex-A715, but at the cost of larger area size.
The Cortex-A520 builds upon the merged-core microarchitecture introduced by the Cortex-A510, offering 22% more power efficiency compared to the Cortex-A510, or 8% more performance than the Cortex-A510 at the same power levels as the Cortex-A510. The third ALU, which was present in the Cortex-A510, has been removed from the Cortex-A520, saving power throughout the pipeline from the issue logic to reword and forwarding. And the Cortex-A520's memory system was restructured to increase power efficiency.
DSU-120 increases the max number of CPU cores per cluster to 14 CPU cores per cluster, and the max amount of L3 cache to 32 MB of L3 cache, with the option of 24 MB of L3 cache for reduced power.
11 May 2023 → Bloomberg: Sharp CEO Robert Wu mentioned that Sharp was working with a company on a video game console during the R&D phase in an analyst call after releasing Sharp's quarterly earnings. And Sharp plans to launch pilot LCD panel production lines this fiscal year for the new video game console. But after the analyst call, the mention of a new video game console Sharp's been a supplier to has been deleted from Sharp's online presentation slides.
Relevant rumours:
9 May 2023 → Nikkei Asia: Nikkei Asia's source close to Nintendo mentioned that development is going well, but a new hardware launch isn't expected before spring 2024 at the earliest.
~March 2023~
Relevant news:
31 March 2023 → Khronos: Daniel Story from Nintendo announces that Khronos is releasing a shader objects extension on Vulkan called "VK_EXT_shader_object" that impose substantially fewer restrictions on applications compared to pipelines, and enable dynamism-heavy applications (e.g. games and game engines) to avoid explosive pipeline permutation combinatorics. There are no downsides to using shader objects on some implementations, where shader objects outperform pipelines on the CPU and perform no worse than pipelines on the GPU. On other implementations, shader object APIs can simplify application code, which allows for CPU performance improvements that result in outperforming equivalent application code redesigned to use pipelines by enough that the cost of extra implementation overhead is outweighed by the performance improvements in the application. Nvidia's Vulkan driver supports "VK_EXT_shader_object". And although "VK_EXT_shader_object" currently doesn't support ray tracing, "VK_EXT_shader_object" has been designed to account for future support for a ray tracing shader objects extension on Vulkan.
20 March 2023 → FamiBoards: Based on images of the OLED model's and the Nintendo Switch's motherboard with the solder removed, all four lanes of DisplayPort 1.2 signals from the PI3USB30532 chip are connected to the Tegra X1+ on the OLED model, in comparison to only two lanes of DisplayPort 1.2 signals connected to the Tegra X1 on the Nintendo Switch. Therefore, the OLED model could theoretically output up to 4K 60 Hz in TV mode via the RTD2172N chip (here and here) and "4kdp_preferred_over_usb30". This also implies that Nintendo could have initially planned to release the OLED model as a mid-gen refresh.
Relevant rumours:
20 March 2023 → Twitter: OreXda heard that T239 is fabricated with Samsung's 5LPP process node. (False)
~February 2023~
Relevant news:
25 February 2023 → VentureBeat: When asked by GamesBeat if Jensen Huang thinks there's an opportunity to be on Nintendo's next console, Jensen Huang mentioned keeping Nvidia's fingers crossed. Jensen Huang also mentioned that Nvidia's good at building energy efficient video game systems, and at ray tracing and AI, especially since video games are increasingly using ray tracing and AI, and Nvidia's convinced next gen video games will be heavily, if not fully, ray traced, and be based on generative AI.
~January 2023~
Relevant news:
07 January 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards (here and here): A person mentioned working at an ASIC design services company that specialises in tape out critical tasks for chips from October 2018 to March 2022, with one project being working on T239 for Nvidia, strongly implying that T239 was taped out at around 1H 2022.
06 January 2023 → LinkedIn via FamiBoards: A person who worked as a hardware engineer at Nvidia from April 2022 to present mentioned one of the responsibilities being managing execution to electrically characterise and validate I/O interfaces (e.g. IC2, SPI/QSPI, etc.) of the RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace) GPUs and T239, which strongly implies that Nvidia was working with T239 physically as actual silicon since at least April 2022.
Relevant rumours:
19 January 2023 → Nate the Hate: MVG heard some developers have access to updated Nintendo Switch devkits at GDC 2022. NateDrake heard rumblings at around summer 2022 that new hardware was no longer planned to be released at late 2022 or early 2023.
Potentially relevant news:
24 January 2023 → SK Hynix: SK Hynix announces developing LPDDR5T, which has a data rate of 9.6 Gbps, 13% faster than the data rate of SK Hynix's LPDDR5X DRAM at 8.5 Gbps, with sample products sent to customers. SK Hynix's LPDDR5T DRAM is fabricated using SK Hynix's 1anm* process node, the fourth generation of SK Hynix's 10 nm* process node technology, and integrates a HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) technology. And SK Hynix plans to start mass manufacturing LPDDR5T DRAM at the second half of 2023.
2 January 2023 → LinkedIn: Nvidia posted a job listing for a senior SoC design engineer (build) who's responsible for defining and developing system-level methodologies and tools for building SoCs in an efficient and scalable manner, improving build, release, and integrate tools and procedures, supporting IP teams with chip build related issues, and identifying pain points and inefficiencies in the front-end chip implementation process and propose ideas to solve them.
Potentially relevant rumours:
19 January 2023 → Bloomberg: Nintendo purportedly plans to increase production of Nintendo Switch units in the fiscal year starting in April 2023 since demand for the Nintendo Switch remains strong and Nintendo's confident in being able to make more units. However, Nintendo has not yet communicated a precise target of how much more Nintendo Switch units to make to Nintendo's suppliers and manufacturers. And Nintendo could revise plans later in the year if Nintendo Switch demand underwhelms.
[2022 and 2021]
Click here to see news and rumours from 2022 and 2021.
~* → a marketing nomenclature used by all foundry companies~
And are you confused by how DLSS works? No worries, for @ILikeFeet made an excellent post on the previous thread on ResetEra about how DLSS works on an engine level, which can be read here.
Have fun, everyone!
Last edited:
