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

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LukasManak22 said:
For our dedicated video game platform business, we are planning to release our next generation machine in September 2024 globally. We are planning to announce additional details in the coming months, starting in March.
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Man if only Nintendo was ever this transparent , at most im hoping we get something as vague as "We at Nintendo will be a releasing a successor to our critically acclaimed Nintendo Switch system sometime this year, more news to come at a later date"
 
Dark Cloud said:
We’re back to abandoning the joycons cycle? We did this two weeks ago
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Everything be a cycle. Whether it's Five Element Theory in Traditional Chinese Medicine, or the endless circus of topics we revisit as if we're a bunch of Grumpy Old Men who can't hear shit.

giphy.gif
 
LiC said:
It's an easier task than what Switch emulators have to do, since (a) there's only one target GPU you need to worry about, (b) that GPU is also in a SoC with similar architecture instead of being in some Windows desktop PC, (c) Nvidia are the ones who made both the original and new GPU, and (d) there should be some headroom for translation since you're running less demanding last-generation games on strictly upgraded hardware. However, it can't be done ahead of time, because shaders can be created on the fly and sent to the GPU from anywhere, anytime. Even for the majority of shaders, which are precompiled rather than created on the fly, there's no consistent place in the game ROM image to find them.

This and the API issue are solvable problems. And they've surely already been solved.
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I'm sure I've brought this up at some point before, but I've always wondered if for every build of a game/update/etc on Switch, Nvidia/Nintendo kept a reference to every single shader location/size. If they did, while it wouldn't do anything for Switch itself, it would help for something like the Switch 2. Just kind of imagining that with the Switch 2, its FW/OS also includes for every Switch 1 game ever released physically (whether v1.0 or a later build on cart) a compressed file that contains the list of locations/sizes for every shader so that upon first launch, it can technically recompile ahead of time. Anything digital like updates, DLC, etc would be handled differently because that already requires internet access. So a Switch digital game could technically be refactored as a Switch 2 game if there was an easy process on their end.
 
Zedark said:
I don't think that's going on here. Seems to me more like that they believe the initial report that T239 is on 8nm and are working backward from there. The subsequent reasoning ('therefore they need to make the device bigger, and an 8 inch screen shows that they are doing that') can easily be countered by pointing out that they might have gone for an 8 inch screen because they are going for a 1080p screen (which rumours suggest that they are) and want to have more screen real estate for that resolution, and furthermore a 1080p screen suggests that they did not need to go low on the clock speeds, which in turn suggests they got a more performant process node.

Note how both direction in the reasoning are not solid, and that is because everyone simply does not know.
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i think you've nailed it and making the system bigger to accomodate to a larger less performant chip is totally counterintuitive when the resolution is doubled. it's more like they want a bigger screen to show off the visuals as going to 1080p handheld is a big leap. plus other design choices we don't know about.

seems like they're off the mark here which is fair enough as it's all guesswork. from the reasoning for a larger device to 8nm being cheaper to joycons being ditched. guess we'll see shortly.
 
Shoulder said:
There's also an elephant in the room, which is the screen size. Historically, Nintendo almost always goes larger with their next generation of handhelds, so it's not out of the realm of possibility for Nintendo to go larger than 7in (177.8mm) for NG Switch.
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This made me curious. Looking at launch models.

GB -> GBA -> DS (single screen) -> 3DS (top screen) -> Switch -> 7.91"?

Square inches
3.1 -> 3.9 (+26%) -> 4.4 (+13%) -> 5.5 (+25%) -> 16.2 (+195%) -> 26.7 (+63%)

Based on the bounds of previous shifts, on the low end we might've expected a 6.6" screen. On the high end, uhhh 10.6".
Concernt said:
Furthermore a camera on the body of the console is a little silly; Nintendo has already solved the question of where the camera goes on a hybrid, the controller. Moving that camera to the main body would make TV Mode worse, but it's a hybrid, and they're incentivised not to do that.
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Like gyros, the more the merrier.
 
Shoulder said:
To be fair to John, for Nvidia and Nintendo, deciding on what process node to manufacture the chip would be something determined prior to the actual design of the system itself, correct?

So IF it was decided early to stick with 8nm, despite the 12SMs in T239, that can result in the design of the NG Switch to be larger than intended.

HOWEVER...

T239 at 8nm is said to be maybe the size of the chip in the Series S, or thereabouts? That alone seems extremely large for a handheld device. Plus, Nintendo and Nvidia would've known early on about 4N, and given the bespoke custom nature of T239, the likelihood of them using a more advanced node process, especially for a battery-power device, would be heavily considered.

There's also an elephant in the room, which is the screen size. Historically, Nintendo almost always goes larger with their next generation of handhelds, so it's not out of the realm of possibility for Nintendo to go larger than 7in (177.8mm) for NG Switch.

So if the argument is, "Nintendo is using an 8in (203.2mm) screen because they're using an 8nm process for the chip to help with the size," I don't buy it. Not to say 8nm is completely out of the question, but given all we know concerning T239, I think it's more likely than not to use a smaller node than 8nm.
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yeah but the process as part of the design would be decided first and a core reasoning for it being on the smaller node.
 
lexony said:
That‘s misrepresenting what he says. What he meant is that the Chip could be quite big, so Nintendo decided to make the whole thing bigger and therefore also went with a larger screen because there is more space now. More in the sense of the screen is larger because the body needs to be bigger anyway.
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Drake would be smaller than TX1 Erista on 4nm though.
 
Digital Foundry's clout on Nintendo hardware topics has been entirely coasting on that time people straight up sent NX SDK documentation to Tom Phillips in 2016. Nowadays they have no information on Nintendo, and their uninformed speculation is mostly bad.

Discostew said:
I'm sure I've brought this up at some point before, but I've always wondered if for every build of a game/update/etc on Switch, Nvidia/Nintendo kept a reference to every single shader location/size. If they did, while it wouldn't do anything for Switch itself, it would help for something like the Switch 2. Just kind of imagining that with the Switch 2, its FW/OS also includes for every Switch 1 game ever released physically (whether v1.0 or a later build on cart) a compressed file that contains the list of locations/sizes for every shader so that upon first launch, it can technically recompile ahead of time. Anything digital like updates, DLC, etc would be handled differently because that already requires internet access. So a Switch digital game could technically be refactored as a Switch 2 game if there was an easy process on their end.
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You couldn't reliably find all the shaders in every binary, as they could be located anywhere, often inside compressed archives, etc. Even if you could, it wouldn't help with shaders that are constructed at runtime.
 
lexony said:
That‘s misrepresenting what he says. What he meant is that the Chip could be quite big, so Nintendo decided to make the whole thing bigger and therefore also went with a larger screen because there is more space now. More in the sense of the screen is larger because the body needs to be bigger anyway.
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I haven't watched the video, but if he's arguing that the screen is big because the chip is more power hungry, then I suspect he has things the wrong way around.

When Nintendo approached Nvidia about what would become T239, they would have done so with a clear idea of the form-factor, size, weight and desired battery life of the hardware they want the chip to go into, because all of those things are going to determine how much power the chip is going to be able to work with. Aside from how much Nintendo were willing to spend, the power budget would have been the biggest factor in what chip Nvidia would end up designing, so I can't imagine any world in which Nintendo just said "we'll worry about that later" and told Nvidia to design something with no regard for power draw.

Although there's always the possibility for the final chip to consume more power than anticipated, that would be a pretty big surprise here, particularly with an Ampere GPU on 8nm, which would have had extremely well understood power draw by the time they worked on the chip. If I could have said that 12 Ampere SMs on 8nm would be way too power hungry for a device like the Switch, then the countless experts within Nvidia and Nintendo absolutely would have identified it as a problem before it got off the drawing board, not waited until the chip is complete and then saying "well I guess Switch 2 will have to be a lot bigger now".

That said, the size of the console will have some bearing on how much power the SoC can consume, by virtue of being able to fit a larger battery, but I don't think a move to ~7.9" screen would be the difference between 8nm being viable or not, unless they simultaneously make the console a lot thicker, which I doubt. I'd expect that they'll want to keep the device relatively thin both for portability, but also weight. Nintendo's hardware team seems to set pretty strict weight limits for their designs, which IIRC they talked about after the Wii U launch, where the gamepad was designed to come in under 500g (it was 491g). I don't know if they confirmed it for the Switch, but the weight of the original Switch model being 398g with joy-cons attached makes me think they had a pretty strict 400g limit there too.

I'd actually wager we'll see Switch 2 coming in at somewhere from 495-499g with joy-cons attached, with Nintendo having set a 500g limit for the design. Just scaling up the OLED model to be 13% taller and wider to accommodate the 7.9" screen would already go over 500g, without even changing the thickness of the device, so I'd expect they'll be doing everything they can to keep weight down in the console, which will set a pretty firm limit on how big a battery they can fit in.
 
Brofield said:
It's not complete though without some condescension to the community here with "Because Nintendo." strawmen arguments
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Good, I‘ll try: Because Nintendo has never listened to fans and launched historically underpowered consoles, with the last one, Switch, having 12 GB less than the superior Steam Deck. I said „Nintendo gonna Nintendo“ during the Wii U era but No one believed me until Nintendo launched the Wii U with only 1GB RAM available for games. I‘m sure Nintendo‘ll disappoint all of us and give us Switch 2 with only 8 GB of RAM and 64 GB storage. I know you don’t believe me, but like Sen Ttu said once: „Nintendo fans always set themselves up for disappointment if they speculate on their hardware.“ We‘ll see us in 2025 and I know who‘ll be right. Uh and almost forgot: DOA!

Was that good enough?
 
Regarding the Joy Cons, I think Nintendo has really done a great job making their games have optional motion controls! I hope that continues for the next generations of Nintendo hardware
 
Darknut85 said:
Good, I‘ll try: Because Nintendo has never listened to fans and launched historically underpowered consoles, with the last one, Switch, having 12 GB less than the superior Steam Deck. I said „Nintendo gonna Nintendo“ during the Wii U era but No one believed me until Nintendo launched the Wii U with only 1GB RAM available for games. I‘m sure Nintendo‘ll disappoint all of us and give us Switch 2 with only 8 GB of RAM and 64 GB storage. I know you don’t believe me, but like Sen Ttu said once: „Nintendo fans always set themselves up for disappointment if they speculate on their hardware.“ We‘ll see us in 2025 and I know who‘ll be right.

Was that good enough?
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It was so good, I bought it for a second
 
I don't know if a battery capacity is a linear function of its volume (or to simplify, its area, since we expect the Switch 2 to be the same depth as the current model).

But even so, a battery that has the same size as the screen would only offset the increase in size, not the increase in resolution.

I am frankly puzzled as to why Nintendo wanted to increase both. It just results in more power draw that would be better consumed elsewhere.
 
NintenDuvo said:
Is Shareholders selling stock a good thing or a bad thing for us regarding big news?
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Hermii said:
Bad I would presume.
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Not necessarily. Can be shareholders cashing in to their speculation, seeing good news is coming, so they're taking profits. Shares often fall once good stuff is announced (so they want to cash in before the drop has a chance to do that to their shares)

But it can also mean shareholders think the news is going to be underwhelming, so they're selling before shares have a chance to drop down further from the news once it's announced.

Either way, I don't think it really tells us anything. Shareholder Chad might disagree though - he follows the stock movements much closer than I do (I am just a long term buy-and-holder)
 
Kenka said:
I don't know if a battery capacity is a linear function of its volume (or to simplify, its area, since we expect the Switch 2 to be the same depth as the current model).

But even so, a battery that has the same size as the screen would only offset the increase in size, not the increase in resolution.

I am frankly puzzled as to why Nintendo wanted to increase both. It just results in more power draw that would be better consumed elsewhere.
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Presumably because they think they can deliver 1080p games in handheld mode, and they want to show that off (and having a larger screen allows you to see more of the fine detail).
 
darthdiablo said:
Not necessarily. Can be shareholders cashing in to their speculation, seeing good news is coming, so they're taking profits. Shares often fall once good stuff is announced (so they want to cash in before the drop has a chance to do that to their shares)

But it can also mean shareholders think the news is going to be underwhelming, so they're selling before shares have a chance to drop down further from the news once it's announced.

Either way, I don't think it really tells us anything. Shareholder Chad might disagree though - he follows the stock movements much closer than I do (I am just a long term buy-and-holder)
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Could just be cashing in because they don't know what's going to happen. Could be good news, could be bad news, could be no news. If they sell now they'll have made some money, but if they let their wager ride, they may not.
 
Individualised said:
So expect nothing, right?
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It’s what I am expecting.

NintenDuvo said:
Is Shareholders selling stock a good thing or a bad thing for us regarding big news?
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It’s kind of like a weather forecast. 65% chance of rain (from our tears)

darthdiablo said:
Wouldn't that suggest they somehow got inside information and are already "cashing in" on their speculation?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised though if that was the case..
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Most likely.

darthdiablo said:
Not necessarily. Can be shareholders cashing in to their speculation, seeing good news is coming, so they're taking profits.

But it can also mean shareholders think the news is going to be underwhelming, so they're selling before shares have a chance to drop down further from the news once it's announced.

Either way, I don't think it really tells us anything. Shareholder Chad might disagree though - he follows the stock movements much closer than I do (I am just a long term buy-and-holder)
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It’s an observable percentage based thing. You outlined two great possibilities. In my travels, I see a sell off before a business meeting usually give 65% odds of that event not meeting expectations. Expectations for comments on switch 2 being the obvious one
 
bmfrosty said:
Could just be cashing in because they don't know what's going to happen. Could be good news, could be bad news, could be no news. If they sell now they'll have made some money, but if they let their wager ride, they may not.
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Yup, that's assuming they're simply cashing in for the sake of cashing in, not based on any information.

Shareholder Chad mentioned it tells him all he needs to know, whatever that means. 🙃 (edit: i posted this before I saw his reply above)
 
monstaar said:
Regarding the Joy Cons, I think Nintendo has really done a great job making their games have optional motion controls! I hope that continues for the next generations of Nintendo hardware
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many of nintendo's best sellers make ample use of the joycons, so it's a ridiculous assertion by John. there's no worry of them dumping it
 
darthdiablo said:
Yup, that's assuming they're simply cashing in for the sake of cashing in, not based on any information.

Shareholder Chad mentioned it tells him all he needs to know, whatever that means. 🙃
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See my comments above 💀
Edit: Posted this before I saw his comment saying he saw my comment before I edited…
I’m confused now 😂

Procheno said:
Neither,

Shareholders buy on rumor, sell on news. So some shareholders may be cashing out ahead of either the quarterly report or the announcement of their FY2024 plans to pre-emptively avoid selling during the dip
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using the age old “buy the rumor, sell the news” bit is a layman’s explanation for insider trading boom/bust stock movements. See charts for years like I have and you see rumors get sold and news get bought and the opposite.

“So it means nothing”

Kinda unless you know the percentages through years of observation and trading these kind of events. (65-35 is my percentage of bad news vs. good news regarding a sell off before a “business” event)
 
Procheno said:
Neither,

Shareholders buy on rumor, sell on news. So some shareholders may be cashing out ahead of either the quarterly report or the announcement of their FY2024 plans to pre-emptively avoid selling during the dip
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So in layman's terms... so I understand...

If there is no-show of the Switch 2 by the quarterly report, there will be a natural dip from reactive shareholders...

which people who sold now, could buy back in after it dips

which those stocks would rise again upon the reveal of the Switch 2...

am I getting that right?
 
Shareholder Chad said:
using the age old “buy the rumor, sell the news” bit is a layman’s explanation for insider trading boom/bust stock movements. See charts for years like I have and you see rumors get sold and news get bought and the opposite.

“So it means nothing”

Kinda unless you know the percentages through years of observation and trading these kind of events. (65-35 is my percentage of bad news vs. good news regarding a sell off before a “business” event)
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Interesting. I'm a newer, small time stock investor in the general space so I appreciate the insight. I have very tiny stock in Nintendo but as someone who doesn't have a lot of free income at the moment as I shape up my filmmaking career, it's honest work lol
 
ILikeFeet said:
many of nintendo's best sellers make ample use of the joycons, so it's a ridiculous assertion by John. there's no worry of them dumping it
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Yeah I just mean that during the Wii days they forced Motion Controls, I like that Nintendo is cool with players not using them. I hope they keep that sentiment :p
 
Could be that they’re selling because the Switch 2 will be spoken about as well. Stocks are weird they can sell off really hard if there is good news as well. Especially when people are trying to maximize profits.
 
Thraktor said:
but if he's arguing that the screen is big because the chip is more power hungry,
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Not really how he was saying it. He seemed to argue more from a design perspective.

People shouldn‘t take it too serious anyway, it sounded just like simple speculation.
 
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lexony said:
Maybe bigger battery?
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Smaller node process have lower power requirements, but yes it potentially allows for “bigger battery” if space is premium inside Switch 2 body, something we don’t know.

But given the same battery size, 4N will drain the battery slower than 8N
 
lexony said:
Maybe bigger battery?
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I think that's a safe assumption at this point. There are upsides to portability from a larger device, a larger battery can mean bettery battery life even with a bigger screen, and a bigger screen means better tabletop mode.
 
darthdiablo said:
Smaller node process have lower power requirements, but yes it potentially allows for “bigger battery” if space is premium inside Switch 2 body, something we don’t know.

But given the same battery size, 4N will drain the battery slower than 8N
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What do you think how much influence on the battery would it have when the screen is larger? Would this already be balanced out by the slower drainage of the chip or does it have not that much of an influence at all because it being a LCD with a simple backlight and only being marginally bigger?
 
darthdiablo said:
Smaller node process have lower power requirements, but yes it potentially allows for “bigger battery” if space is premium inside Switch 2 body, something we don’t know.

But given the same battery size, 4N will drain the battery slower than 8N
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I do also kind of expect the power draw of the chip to be lower than Erista. Somewhere between Erista and Mariko.

For one, I don't think Nintendo was ever happy with Eristas battery life, it was a compromise to get Zelda running semi decently.

For 2, they can't rely on a huge efficiency boost from a die shrink this time for a lite, because they aren't launching on a terrible node to begin with.
 
Zedark said:
Presumably because they think they can deliver 1080p games in handheld mode, and they want to show that off (and having a larger screen allows you to see more of the fine detail).
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