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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

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ziggyrivers said:
That’s be veeery magical and record breaking! That’s like almost 1/3 of Switch lifetime sales in a year!

I know you’re probably joking, but that’d be one hell of a feat
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I think with Wii, and Switch, they could have sold those numbers in year one.

I also think that the manufacturing capacity is out there. Apple sells 225m phones a year.

I think that if Nintendo arranged to manufacture 50m Switch 2 units in year one, they'd still cut it down to 20m for year 2 though.

I think it's a matter of Nintendo believing that they could sell that many.
 
Concernt said:
Honestly I don't mind interlacing.

Something I'm genuinely excited for with T239 is really intense resolution optimisation. I mean fuck it, why not? Interlace, DLSS, FSR, hardware scaler! Stack it alll up! Bring that frame time to the brink of breaking and get that image bigger, bigger, BIGGER.

540i->1080i->4Ki and slap a sharpening filter over it. Do everything, stretch it, stretch it, stretch it!

This isn't because I WANT bad image quality, it's because I want to see what can be done targeting high fidelity and stretching the internal resolution that requires out. If it breaks, it breaks, we've seen Switch games struggle with their resolution, it'll just be a lot more fun next gen.
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My thoughts are technology like FSR, or DLSS make techniques like Interlacing kind of moot and/or unnecessary if the objective is optimization. Just my opinion though. I think the concept of interlacing is fine, but normally it comes with additional blurriness like you said. I just remember not being a fan of interlacing back in the old days, and couldn't wait to get on the Progressive Scan train. Remember being wowed when I bought a CRT with Component, and hooked up my PS2 to it. Going from Composite to that was massive for my young self.
 
Hocot8 said:
yeah I'm pretty sure we've accepted a fall/holiday release for the most part. I was a May guy but it's looking less likely. I'll give it a couple weeks to completely right it off but I'm just expecting a spring announcement with a late June blowout followed by a release ~4 months later
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It’s astonishing how little faith you have, the first month isn‘t even over and you‘re jumping out of the boat.
 
Shareholder Chad said:
Id shit myself. You want investors to stay? That’ll make their momma buy and hold Nintendo stock.

It’d be single greatest market accomplishment in recent memory for the video game sector.
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I think it would have to be literal magic. Even if the demand is there, I don't think the shipping/warehouse facilities exist to manage that many units in 12 months.
 
bmfrosty said:
I think with Wii, and Switch, they could have sold those numbers in year one.

I also think that the manufacturing capacity is out there. Apple sells 225m phones a year.

I think that if Nintendo arranged to manufacture 50m Switch 2 units in year one, they'd still cut it down to 20m for year 2 though.

I think it's a matter of Nintendo believing that they could sell that many.
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I’d say it’s possible, but not very probable. It took Nintendo two years to reach 50 million. To reach that in 12 months would be very low probable, only because of hardware competitors, manufacturing, shelve space, in summation, a lot of factors they can’t directly control
 
I know Nintendo wants to keep the console a la carte, and not have much room for tinkering on the consumer side, but if they nixxed the SD card slot, could they allow for multiple price points using swappable NVMe storage? Your 128GB Switch 2 Lite, your standard LCD 256GB Switch 2, and your primo top o' the line 512GB OLED laminated screen Switch 2? Buy the console you want, and upgrade storage later like PS and Xbox.

Assuming that those levels of data storage would influence price that drastically
 
Brofield said:
I know Nintendo wants to keep the console a la carte, and not have much room for tinkering on the consumer side, but if they nixxed the SD card slot, could they allow for multiple price points using swappable NVMe storage? Your 128GB Switch 2 Lite, your standard LCD 256GB Switch 2, and your primo top o' the line 512GB OLED laminated screen Switch 2? Buy the console you want, and upgrade storage later like PS and Xbox.

Assuming that those levels of data storage would influence price that drastically
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Because of the Capture Button and backwards compatibility, I don't see them nixxing the SD card slot. Not that you'll necessarily be able to play Switch 2 games off it.
 
Concernt said:
Because of the Capture Button and backwards compatibility, I don't see them nixxing the SD card slot. Not that you'll necessarily be able to play Switch 2 games off it.
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Mmm, good point, I guess that'll be enough for Nintendo to stick with microSD for expandable storage.

What does PS and Xbox do for their screen captures and recording though? Or do they have compatible software/networking to transfer photos and videos to your phone/computer in a less cumbersome way than Nintendo's current method for wirelessly exporting batch photos to your phone?
 
ziggyrivers said:
I’d say it’s possible, but not very probable. It took Nintendo two years to reach 50 million. To reach that in 12 months would be very low probable, only because of hardware competitors, manufacturing, shelve space, in summation, a lot of factors they can’t directly control
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I wouldn't disagree much. I think it's a logistics problem and drives Nintendo's costs per unit some amount (competition for hardware manufacture and outsourcing of additional warehousing needs), but isn't impossible by any means.

I think the question is about their confidence in their ability to sell through (they can definitely sell more than 20m), and whether it would be worth the increased cost per unit to have the very fast ramp of install base that it would represent.
 
oldpuck said:
I think it would have to be literal magic. Even if the demand is there, I don't think the shipping/warehouse facilities exist to manage that many units in 12 months.
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Not unless literally every shipping/warehouse facility in the game industry decided to drop Xbox physical and go all aboard the Nintendo train. Keep in mind, negotiations between companies, factories and wholesalers/shipping companies take months to iron out all the details and expected capacity. It'd be a feat of black magic that even Medea and Circe would faint at.

Hell, even if we're being kind that Nintendo could get shipping, wholesalers and factory demand up to snuff, I can't find a system that'd manage to get even close to 50 million at launch year. Seems like the rough margin for the Wii, PS2, DS and Switch are around 10-15 million... You better hope that a third of the Switch's install base buy that thing @Shareholder Chad...
 
Serif said:
Apparently the PS Portal screen is laminated, so I'm assuming having a laminated 1080p LCD panel isn't an issue of cost.

That would make a fairly big difference for me. I obsess over the inky blacks of an OLED but I would be satisfied with the LCD panel with (1) slimmer bezels and (2) laminating the display. The absence of these were my two main issues with the Switch LCD.

non-laminated vs laminated
1630664427433921.jpg


I just bought a modded Game Boy Color and had the option of laminated vs not, I didn't really know what it meant at the time but I went for the laminated display and it looks stunning.

Despite my personal gripes with the Switch LCD screen today, I remember it being well-received at the time and I agree, it looks comparatively worse than the OLED to me but I never considered the screen to be cheap or terrible on its own.


And I would expect a 2023 LCD to be better, anyway.
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I miss her content, that's how I learned more about TN and IPS panels back then. I have one of the double IPS panel n3DSes which is great.

Glad Nintendo isn't doing the panel lottery anymore with their handheld devices.
 
fwd-bwd said:
I don’t know why Mochizuki called his report an “exclusive” when he was only relaying Omdia’s forecast. Regardless, the projected numbers don’t add up for me:

CmTVc0J.png


According to Bloomberg Japan:

Translation: “Omdia forecasts that shipments of displays for game console applications will be 12 million units in 2023 and 26.6 million in 2024, with the increase of 14.6 million all from Nintendo’s new model.”

Why I found the forecasts rather peculiar:
  • Omdia’s 2023 shipment estimate seems too low.
    • First of all, Omdia’s reports use CY not FY. They estimate that from 01/2023 to 12/2023, the total number of console displays was 12 million unit—this (I think) includes PS Portal, Steam Deck, and all other handheld gaming devices.
    • However, Nintendo’s own forecast for 04/2023 to 03/2024 is 15 million units. Since the Switch shipments have been trending down YOY since 04/2021, we may presume that the Switch’s CY23 shipment would be higher than the FY projection of 15MM.
    • So how is it possible that the total console display shipments (12MM) was lower than Nintendo’s alone (15MM+)? Even if the Omdia prediction excludes all non-Switch devices, the number still doesn’t work.
  • The projected volume increase in 2024 is overly optimistic.
    • I got the sense that more people expect the new model to be released in September than any other months. If that’s indeed the case, Omdia is projecting Nintendo to ship 14.6MM Switch 2 in mere 4 months (09/2024 to 12/2024).
    • At the pandemic induced height from 10/2020 to 12/2020, Nintendo shipped 11.57MM units. I fail to see how the Switch 2, which most likely will be priced above the OLED model, can reach 14.6MM in 2024—even with the extra month of September.
    • Further more, I think that the Switch 1 shipments will crater after the announcement of NG. So the forecasted incremental sales from Switch 2 actually should be much higher than 14.6MM.
  • Granted it is possible that these shipment projections include inventory buildups, but IMHO that doesn’t make the forecast more believable.
    • Let’s assume that Nintendo warehouses a reserve of display panels enough for 2 months’ supply. This would make the 2024 increase of 14.6MM for consoles to be shipped from 09/2024 to 02/2025.
    • However, even at the historic height of 10/2020 to 03/2021, the total console shipment was 16.29MM; the second highest was 14.78MM from 10/2021 to 03/2022.
    • Without the shelter-in-place demands, I’m very skeptical of the 14.6MM forecast. And as mentioned above, the Switch 1 sales probably will crater, therefore the NG shipment total may be substantially above 14.6MM.
  • I’m also scratching my head at the 2025 to 2027 projections. Why do they expect no growth at all?
Either the Omdia analysis was way off base, or certain details were lost or misrepresented by the reporters.
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The low 2023 numbers could be due to Nintendo stockpiling to avoid shortages in the preceding years. Furukawa discussed this in the investor Q&A from May last year (Q5), stating that they have been buying parts in advance, and that it would take time for cost decreases of parts to impact their hardware costs. Of course he doesn't really say anything about how far in advance they had been purchasing parts, so it's hard to say whether it could account for a disparity of a few million units we see here.

The forecast for 2024 onwards is definitely off, though. You're right that it implies Switch 2 shipments should be well over 14.6 million for the CY, because original Switch sales will drop off significantly when Switch 2 appears (and would likely drop by a few million vs last year even without Switch 2). Even with parts purchases coming a few months before shipment, say around 3 months, meaning display sales would in CY24 would represent Switch 2 shipments through the first quarter of CY25, that would be implying somewhere close to 20 million units shipped in around 7 months. Which would be absolutely absurd, to put it mildly.

The really weird part is after CY24, though. The report seems to imply that this is almost all driven by Switch 2, and it projects an absolutely record-smashing first year for the console, and then drops for each of the next two years? I'm not aware of any console that's had a sales trajectory remotely like that. Look at the sales of pretty much any console over the past 20-30 years, and you'll see sales invariably peak in the 3rd or 4th year on the market. Even Wii, which was a relatively front-loaded console in terms of sales, peaked in its third year, IIRC. A reasonable Switch 2 sales projection should see a peak in 2026 or 2027, but here we've got both of those years projected at less than the launch year.

I don't think this necessarily negates the claim of launching late this year with an 8" LCD, but it does highlight why these analyst reports should be taken with a grain of salt. The author may have some expertise in the display market, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have any better an understanding of the video games market than many people in this thread, and it definitely doesn't mean they have a crystal ball.
 
My only big problem with Switch 2 having an LCD instead an OLED is what it might mean in terms of added input latency, which is already going to be a concern for a console expected to heavily rely on DLSS for performance (or in the case of backwards compatibility, the fact that BC will likely need a translation layer for the GPU).
 
Concernt said:
A standard amount. Sometimes you "one hand" the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode, such as to use the touch screen, and so all that weight goes through the Joy-Con Rail of one Joy-Con. After about a year, crrk, something goes.
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To be fair, this is in part due to the shape of the joycons lacking any real grip. I use my switch with a satisfye grip and that makes both two handed and one handed holding much less painful.
 
Brofield said:
Mmm, good point, I guess that'll be enough for Nintendo to stick with microSD for expandable storage.

What does PS and Xbox do for their screen captures and recording though? Or do they have compatible software/networking to transfer photos and videos to your phone/computer in a less cumbersome way than Nintendo's current method for wirelessly exporting batch photos to your phone?
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I can't speak for PlayStation, but on Xbox Series X you can kind of do anything.

The last 90 days of all captures are stored on Microsoft's servers, you can move them to OneDrive for permanent storage, either in bulk or selectively. The Xbox network (last 90 days) captures are viewable in the Xbox mobile app where you can download and/or share them. Of course any moved to permanent storage are viewable indefinitely in the OneDrive app or web client.

For local storage, you can choose the medium yourself. Want to store them on the internal drive? It won't stop you. An official high speed expansion card? Go ahead. An external USB HDD or SSD? Sure, it just has to check the speed first. Especially if you do something like use a mass storage device a-la USB stick or SD Card and adapter. External devices for game storage require USB 3.X and at least 128GB of storage, but captures can go on anything fast enough, albeit with caveats (the system will switch back to defaulting to the internal system drive if anything goes wrong, even momentarily.)

The only thing it DOESN'T allow is the niche and ridiculous CFe Card, unless you use it with a USB adapter. It has a CFe Type B slot but only supports Xbox branded "Expansion Cards" for various, complicated reasons (mainly technical and not economic).

My hope for storage expansion on NG Switch is frankly CFe Type A. As for captures, keep the Micro SD Card slot, and better support USB. HDDs were originally planned to be supported in TV mode but this never came to be, but they could allow it next gen for captures and cold storage if they like. Let me wire my Switch and phone together with a USB C cable and do the transfer- While in wired transfer mode, Nintendo Switch refuses to negotiate the host/device decision and so will only transfer over a USB C to A cable in handheld mode. Stop doing that! Allow me to do it in TV mode! Allow any cable! Heck, with content creators being a marketing boon and NG Nintendo Switch 100% having real time encode, let a user plumb the device into their PC with a USB C cable for a USB video class device in handheld mode. Maybe have an extra USB C port on the dock to let people do it in TV mode.

I want more options, more outputs, more flexibility!
 
SoldierDelta said:
Not unless literally every shipping/warehouse facility in the game industry decided to drop Xbox physical and go all aboard the Nintendo train. Keep in mind, negotiations between companies, factories and wholesalers/shipping companies take months to iron out all the details and expected capacity. It'd be a feat of black magic that even Medea and Circe would faint at.

Hell, even if we're being kind that Nintendo could get shipping, wholesalers and factory demand up to snuff, I can't find a system that'd manage to get even close to 50 million at launch year. Seems like the rough margin for the Wii, PS2, DS and Switch are around 10-15 million... You better hope that a third of the Switch's install base buy that thing @Shareholder Chad...
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I think we'd have to dig through old NeoGAF and ResetERA sales threads, but I have no idea where all the consoles landed for their 1st 12 months. I know that the Wii and Series X were difficult to find and actively being scalped for well over a year. Wii was hard to find (anecdotally) for about 2 and a half years. I feel that we've had systems that could have sold well past 20M in a year, but haven't been manufactured in sufficient quantity to do so.
 
SoldierDelta said:
Not unless literally every shipping/warehouse facility in the game industry decided to drop Xbox physical and go all aboard the Nintendo train. Keep in mind, negotiations between companies, factories and wholesalers/shipping companies take months to iron out all the details and expected capacity. It'd be a feat of black magic that even Medea and Circe would faint at.

Hell, even if we're being kind that Nintendo could get shipping, wholesalers and factory demand up to snuff, I can't find a system that'd manage to get even close to 50 million at launch year. Seems like the rough margin for the Wii, PS2, DS and Switch are around 10-15 million... You better hope that a third of the Switch's install base buy that thing @Shareholder Chad...
Click to expand...

Yea it’s why I’d shit myself. 50 million isn’t realistic by any means. My expectations for Switch 2 1st year sales has a ton of variables and can’t be calculated at the moment. Especially with geopolitical factors, Competition factors (ps5 pro this fall?), etc. so much needed context before any realistic estimate or expectations.
 
Shareholder Chad said:
Yea it’s why I’d shit myself. 50 million isn’t realistic by any means. My expectations for Switch 2 1st year sales has a ton of variables and can’t be calculated at the moment. Especially with geopolitical factors, Competition factors (ps5 pro this fall?), etc. so much needed context before any realistic estimate or expectations.
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Please stop shitting yourself at everything Nintendo does or we'll never be done dealing with the biohazard. Or at least invest in some incontinence briefs.

This is meant in jest, to be clear, I absolutely agree that 50 million in one year would be a huge shock. It doesn't even seem physically possible, because as you say, supply lines.
 
bmfrosty said:
I think we'd have to dig through old NeoGAF and ResetERA sales threads, but I have no idea where all the consoles landed for their 1st 12 months. I know that the Wii and Series X were difficult to find and actively being scalped for well over a year. Wii was hard to find (anecdotally) for about 2 and a half years. I feel that we've had systems that could have sold well past 20M in a year, but haven't been manufactured in sufficient quantity to do so.
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I mainly dug up those "10-15m" numbers through their respective Wikipedia pages. That's a reasonable guess, and I guess you can bump it to 20 million if you want to. But yeah, it's not easy to find any details about sales numbers of pre-2012 consoles.
Shareholder Chad said:
Yea it’s why I’d shit myself. 50 million isn’t realistic by any means. My expectations for Switch 2 1st year sales has a ton of variables and can’t be calculated at the moment. Especially with geopolitical factors, Competition factors (ps5 pro this fall?), etc. so much needed context before any realistic estimate or expectations.
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I also want to bring up basic "lifetime sales" things. The first 2 years of a system are fairly confidently the "hardcore capital G Gamer" crowd, and the rest of the Switch 2 sales would have to come from casual consumers picking it up from good word of mouth. Casual consumers are a bit of a risk to rely on for sales, so you kinda have to rely on both? So for the majority of the global sales-base to pick up the system in the first 12 months is... a bit unrealistic. Depends on how much Japan latches onto the thing from the goodwill made through the Switch 1 ig.
 
bmfrosty said:
Right. IIRC, we had Bloomberg verify that we were getting something like a mid-cycle upgrade (pro?) in 2020 or 2021 and then we got the OLED.

Am I remembering correctly that that appeared to be a cancelled product at the end of the day? Probably due to COVID realities?
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There is nothing other than the TX1 they could have used that we know of.

It's been theorised that HDR was a planned feature for the Oled. The screen supports it and the dock supports it. That would also have nescessitated a clock boost for HDR mode.
 
Concernt said:
Please stop shitting yourself at everything Nintendo does or we'll never be done dealing with the biohazard. Or at least invest in some incontinence briefs.

This is meant in jest, to be clear, I absolutely agree that 50 million in one year would be a huge shock. It doesn't even seem physically possible, because as you say, supply lines.
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To be fair, The only thing Nintendo has done that is shit pants worthy is Mobile games and Combining Handheld/console teams via Switch.

I usually use that statement with unrealistic hypothetical situations.

Also, I’d invest in a heavy duty, Shit resistant underpants. Collapsible second compartment for sealing? Maybe we can…

Wow, you are so interested in this you clicked the spoiler tag? Fascinating. But also…why?
 
Shareholder Chad said:
To be fair, The only thing Nintendo has done that is shit pants worthy is Mobile games and Combining Handheld/console teams via Switch.

I usually use that statement with unrealistic hypothetical situations.

Also, I’d invest in a heavy duty, Shit resistant underpants. Collapsible second compartment for sealing? Maybe we can…

Wow, you are so interested in this you clicked the spoiler tag? Fascinating. But also…why?
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Maybe the Virtual Boy‘d be also worthy, having a red monochrome display is really a accomplishment for a VR device…
 
Can someone remind me if the Switch itself is Nintendo gonna Nintendo or not, I'm not up to speed

I remember the notion of Nintendo releasing an HD handheld outperforming the 360/PS3 being a scoffed at
 
SoldierDelta said:
I mainly dug up those "10-15m" numbers through their respective Wikipedia pages. That's a reasonable guess, and I guess you can bump it to 20 million if you want to. But yeah, it's not easy to find any details about sales numbers of pre-2012 consoles.
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My 50M was full of hyperbole. I think Nintendo has said something about having plenty of hardware available in some manner. That feels right?

A more conservative way to interpret that would be that they have more units available at launch and more units on an ongoing basis. I think Switch had it's best year at about ~25m units. What if we get a 1st year with 6.66m units available in the launch month, with an average of an additional 1.66m units available for each month after, and an average of 2.05m units available per month in year 2.

That's 50m units in the first two years instead of the first 3.
 
bmfrosty said:
My 50M was full of hyperbole. I think Nintendo has said something about having plenty of hardware available in some manner. That feels right?

A more conservative way to interpret that would be that they have more units available at launch and more units on an ongoing basis. I think Switch had it's best year at about ~25m units. What if we get a 1st year with 6.66m units available in the launch month, with an average of an additional 1.66m units available for each month after, and an average of 2m units available per month in year 2.

That's 50m units in the first two years instead of the first 3.
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Yeah that's a fair guesstimate for getting a lot of sales in a short timeframe. Nintendo just needs good, steady sales. I'd be lying to myself if i said Nintendo needs "50 million" year one because... like... no

By the way, how many units at launch did the Switch 1 have?
 
Concernt said:
Forgive my ignorance, what is "box scaling"? Heuristics based?
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You're probably looking at the Imgur link I posted, yeah? I don't remember exactly where I found that name, but it seemed like the best name for a type of scaling I've seen with different names--PaintShop Pro uses "weighted average". But imagine it like the new pixel grid being laid over the old image perfectly, and then whatever is contained within the "box" of a pixel being equalled out to form the result pixel.

720->1080 is a 50% increase, so essentially every 2x2 grid of pixels becomes a 3x3 grid. With box scaling/weighted average/whatever, the four corner pieces are still entirely the original colors. The four side pieces end up combining two colors. The one middle piece combines all four original colors.

dEBczbM.png
 
omniryu said:
The boomerang always come back... unlike my step dad who went out for cigarettes and milk.

In public perception, yes.
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If true than the public is truly stupid haha. Oldpuck posted a very good post about how other hardware manufacturers do the same thing. If the internals are good the screen won't matter. People will be okay with it. Plus we all kow the next Mario game is going to look beautiful and the color palette will show wonderfully on the screen.
 
SoldierDelta said:
Yeah that's a fair guesstimate for getting a lot of sales in a short timeframe. Nintendo just needs good, steady sales. I'd be lying to myself if i said Nintendo needs "50 million" year one because... like... no

By the way, how many units at launch did the Switch 1 have?
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The only numbers I can find - and they're of poor quality from vgchartz.com - is about 2.2m in launch month. 1.4m in launch week.

From my perspective, I was in line about 2 hours before Target opened on Switch launch day and people behind me in line didn't get a Switch that day.
 
Hocot8 said:
Well a new Rog Ally system is coming later this year too so the Nintendo Switch 2 is DOA. Nintendo waited too long!

/s
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I saw that announcement and must give the Steamdeck credit.
These PC hardware manufacturers are going to over saturate the market with portable gaming PC's and Vavle are at least letting a breath of time go by between models.
 
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