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

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Wockio said:
You can't really blame him for that when your avatar is a feminine looking Mii and you don't use the pronoun feature
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If someone doesn’t have their pronouns listed, then the best thing to do, rather than assume their pronouns or gender based on their avatar, is to just use “they”—it’s gender-neutral and doesn’t assume anything.
 
RennanNT said:
So, Sony only downclocks the GPU on the Pro/PS5 or is there a difference for NGS?
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I'm not familiar with what Sony does or why, but if they do change the CPU clocks, it's not for compatibility reasons. We're past the era of console architecture where that would matter, and Switch games already operate at varying clock speeds, both officially (on Windows testing where there is no SDK-defined clock speed, and on devkits where a CPU overclock is available) and unofficially (on emulators and modded consoles that unlock clocks for performance).

I'm not saying Nintendo can't find some other reasons to limit CPU clocks, but if they do choose the original Switch's clocks, that would essentially be arbitrary and not done for compatibility.
 
RennanNT said:
So, Sony only downclocks the GPU on the Pro/PS5 or is there a difference for NGS?
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Mark Cerny mentions customising the Zen 2 cores and adding extra logic to the RDNA 2 based GPU to achieve backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 4 Pro, which suggest Sony made custom tweaks to the hardware to make the PlayStation 5 run as close to identical to the PlayStation 4 Pro when running PlayStation 4 games.

The Nintendo Switch's successor on the other hands is rumoured to have a backwards compatibility translation layer/workaround to achieve backwards compatibility.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Nintendo buying a port studio to work on third party games is very weird, lol.
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I think it makes sense, specialised port studio who can complete whole projects or consult externally all year round, quite good for live service stuff too. If nintendo and a 3rd party wanted to put out a game on switch nintendo might have to consult a studio like panic button and ask "hey when's your next project done?" now they have less of that problem. Nintendo have been bostering their own 3rd party division to get AAA ports anyway by poaching sony producers and that one guy that got all the yakuza games to the west.
 
ziggyrivers said:
Acquisition of WHAT?
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Deep Cut sold out. Literally.

Jokes aside, this is a... Fascinating choice?

This is a port house, for the most part, so. Why? Nintendo builds their own games for their own hardware, and they develop their own hardware. They don't really have expertise to gain here.

My only thought is Nintendo is building up sets of tools for all developers bringing multiplatform games to Nintendo headed into the next generation, where while porting should be easier, it's still an architectural island compared to the rest of the industry.

That's potentially a very good sign, if Nintendo can approach a studio with a desirable game, and be able to respond to a "too much work to port" with "let us publish and we'll port for you".
 
eye0h said:


Ummm

So we're acquiring now. In house port studio for 3rd party is the goal.
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Seems like the acquisition war has started. /jk

star-wars.gif


But interesting, since Nintendo are notorious to not buy company out.
 
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gnetc said:
So if they start shipping orders in the 2nd half of the year when do we expect an announcement?

I’m thinking July or August is still pretty likely, July
was when the OLED was announced so I feel like they can try to repeat that. I just don’t see them letting these orders ship and not announcing anything until September/October.
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It could be this summer or this fall
 
Concernt said:
Deep Cut sold out. Literally.

Jokes aside, this is a... Fascinating choice?

This is a port house, for the most part, so. Why? Nintendo builds their own games for their own hardware, and they develop their own hardware. They don't really have expertise to gain here.

My only thought is Nintendo is building up sets of tools for all developers bringing multiplatform games to Nintendo headed into the next generation, where while porting should be easier, it's still an architectural island compared to the rest of the industry.

That's potentially a very good sign, if Nintendo can approach a studio with a desirable game, and be able to respond to a "too much work to port" with "let us publish and we'll port for you".
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Not only that but "oh we'll send a couple of our people over to give advice to your technical director"
 
imfake2 said:
3rd party support is gonna be crazy on this thing lol
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This is extremely weird. In a sense that Nintendo are actually trying to build a huge relationships with third party’s for the Switch 2.

Like I’m wondering why Nintendo decided to buy them, since they have the philosophy of ,, we only acquired studios with talent and those who have Nintendo DNA’’.

Like we might be feasting.
 
gnetc said:
Do you remember when those started approximately? Is July considered second half?
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I don't recall anything specific, although I know there was a lot of reporting about production timing in 2016 (such as this). The main thing is just that with the Switch's mass production beginning in October, supply shipments would have begun sometime before then, i.e. in H2 (Jul-Oct). A similar timeline will likely happen this year, and my point is that "H2 shipments" don't really narrow anything down.
 
Steve said:
This is extremely weird. In a sense that Nintendo are actually trying to build a huge relationships with third party’s for the Switch 2.

Like I’m wondering why Nintendo decided to buy them, since they have the philosophy of ,, we only acquired studios with talent and those who have Nintendo DNA’’.

Like we might be feasting.
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Switch 2 will still be on ARM unlike x86 on the other two machines, so Nintendo will need all the talent and expertise they can get to make ports happen as fast as possible. Panic Button is one of the biggest porting studios that comes to mind, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo ends up acquiring them too. Even if they don't, the fame they earned during Switch's early life is noteworthy, and I'm sure they'll do more such work in the future.
 
Steve said:
This is extremely weird. In a sense that Nintendo are actually trying to build a huge relationships with third party’s for the Switch 2.

Like I’m wondering why Nintendo decided to buy them, since they have the philosophy of ,, we only acquired studios with talent and those who have Nintendo DNA’’.

Like we might be feasting.
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they tryna secure that gta 6 port 😭😭
 
HyruleanKnight said:
Switch 2 will still be on ARM unlike x86 on the other two machines, so Nintendo will need all the talent and expertise they can get to make ports happen as fast as possible. Panic Button is one of the biggest porting studios that comes to mind, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo ends up acquiring them too. Even if they don't, the fame they earned during Switch's early life is noteworthy, and I'm sure they'll do more such work in the future.
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We might be eating good in the port and third party department

big-buger-eat-buger.gif
 
eye0h said:


Ummm

So we're acquiring now. In house port studio for 3rd party is the goal.
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I can see Shiver Entertainment requesting Nintendo for acquisition from Embracer Group, with Embracer Group still evaluating whether to close down studios and lay off people.
eye0h said:
Fuck it buy panic button too let's get crazyyyyyyy
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Panic Button probably has to make the acquisition request directly to Nintendo if Next Level Games is any indication. And I don't know if Panic Button wants to stop being a completely independent company, considering Panic Button's latest project is porting Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
 
Steve said:
This is extremely weird. In a sense that Nintendo are actually trying to build a huge relationships with third party’s for the Switch 2.

Like I’m wondering why Nintendo decided to buy them, since they have the philosophy of ,, we only acquired studios with talent and those who have Nintendo DNA’’.

Like we might be feasting.
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They have very talented developers and we don't know what nintendo dna really means

Sidenote/Random fact, I remember someone in this thread very confidently debunking any discussion that there were any issues with the hogwarts legacy porting process last year 👀
 
The acquisition of Shiver by Nintendo is extremely odd because they're not buying a controlling amount of shares in the company, they've just flat out bought the company from Embracer Group.

And then the PDF states that even after the acquisition is complete they're going to continue to run Shiver the way they currently run now -- by taking commissions to port games to "multiple systems including Nintendo Switch."

That's extremely open language, and I don't know if they mean Switch and Switch 2, or if they mean they will also port to Xbox and PlayStation? Which would be very weird.

Also of note, the two games that they've ported most recently are both Unreal Engine 4 games.

Maybe the intention is to assist third parties in porting their Unreal Engine titles to Switch and Switch 2 and alleviate some of the development overhead?
 
oldpuck said:
It's difficult to describe how much better Nvidia's RT solution is over AMDs, but the short version is that even the most pessimistic estimates would put Switch 2's raw RT performance beyond Series S, anywhere from 30%-50% faster.
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Damn...didn't realize the gap was that wide :O

oldpuck said:
I expect subtle RT to be the standard on modern Switch 2 games, but modern Switch games also tend to stick to 30fps, so it's sort of an easy prediction. What I'm curious about is how far the RT hardware can be pushed while hitting 60. That will be the realm of Nintendo mostly to themselves, I think, with super optimized lighting engines, and an array of performance tricks that are married to the art style.
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Definitely super interested to see Nintendo's 60 fps efforts mixed with RT.
HyruleanKnight said:
Most of the third party AAA ports on the Switch actually look pretty good on the built-in 5-7 inch screen, it's only when you output to a TV that the concessions start to become too obvious. Even then, most look fine, save for a few (including one that shall not be named) but I feel like they could've looked far better within the same constraints if they had just a couple more GB of memory to work with.

From a PC gamer's perspective, GPUs don't actually age as fast as most people think they do. My sister has a RX 480 8GB in her PC and despite it's age, it can still run literally any game (save for Alan Wake 2) you could throw at it. I don't think I could say the same for the similarly priced GTX 1060 3GB that came out around the same time. Yes, the resolution has gone down over the years, and framerates tend to be around 30 these days, but the 8GB framebuffer allows it to make use of high or even ultra textures. The result is a very console-like experience that still looks good.

This is the reason why the Switch 2's 12GB memory is such a big deal; over time resolution will go down, framerates will go down, but the games will still look great. I wish the Switch had that same luxury; the 1060 3GB aged like milk despite having ballpark performance. For my current build I went for AMD again for the same exact reason - the choice was between a RTX 3070Ti and a RX 6800, and even if I'm missing out on DLSS and better RT, the latter will outlast the former in the order of years. I wouldn't have to buy another GPU in the forseeable future just to stay relevant.

Speaking of which, if the Switch 2 being on par with the PS4 Pro is indeed true, we're talking desktop RX 470-480 levels of performance but with support for the latest features. That bodes extremely well for the Switch 2.
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According to the googles, the nvidia equivalent of RX 480 is a GTX 970. If Switch 2 is really close to a RTX 2050, I would have expected it to be much further along than a GTX 970..
 
kingman said:
Damn...didn't realize the gap was that wide :O



Definitely super interested to see Nintendo's 60 fps efforts mixed with RT.


According to the googles, the nvidia equivalent of RX 480 is a GTX 970. If Switch 2 is really close to a RTX 2050, I would have expected it to be much further along than a GTX 970..
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The GTX 970 was a beast. And power hungry.

In terms of the RTX 10 and 20 series, the raster performance actually isn't much better than the GTX 900 series. But what they did do was increase the efficiency and add in the ray tracing.
 
Dakhil said:
I can see Shiver Entertainment requesting Nintendo for acquisition from Embracer Group, with Embracer Group still evaluating whether to close down studios and lay off people.

Panic Button probably has to make the acquisition request directly to Nintendo if Next Level Games is any indication. And I don't know if Panic Button wants to stop being a completely independent company, considering Panic Button's latest project is porting Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
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They also help out alot with Id titles (in addition to their switch ports).
 
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Dakhil said:
I can see Shiver Entertainment requesting Nintendo for acquisition from Embracer Group, with Embracer Group still evaluating whether to close down studios and lay off people.

Panic Button probably has to make the acquisition request directly to Nintendo if Next Level Games is any indication. And I don't know if Panic Button wants to stop being a completely independent company, considering Panic Button's latest project is porting Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
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Isn’t panic button latest
TamazonX said:
The acquisition of Shiver by Nintendo is extremely odd because they're not buying a controlling amount of shares in the company, they've just flat out bought the company from Embracer Group.

And then the PDF states that even after the acquisition is complete they're going to continue to run Shiver the way they currently run now -- by taking commissions to port games to "multiple systems including Nintendo Switch."

That's extremely open language, and I don't know if they mean Switch and Switch 2, or if they mean they will also port to Xbox and PlayStation? Which would be very weird.

Also of note, the two games that they've ported most recently are both Unreal Engine 4 games.

Maybe the intention is to assist third parties in porting their Unreal Engine titles to Switch and Switch 2 and alleviate some of the development overhead?
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Maybe shiver will port games to PS and Xbox with smaller scale projects, meanwhile Nintendo will have them focus mostly on larger third party games, something like Alan Wake 2 or some western developed game.

But Nintendo are probably gonna let shiver finish their last porting job and after that it’s all Switch and Switch 2.
 
I see two potential outcomes from this acquisition:
  1. Rather than subsidising or directly paying for ports of in-demand games, Nintendo could reach an agreement with the developer to port the game to Switch 2 in-house via Shiver?
  2. Nintendo is joining Sony and Microsoft in porting certain games to other platforms to maximise their reach. I could easily see some lower tier games like Tetris 99 or Everybody's 1-2 Switch being ported to other platforms because their exclusivity does not offer much of an advantage for Nintendo.
 
Please refrain from referencing Hogwarts Legacy in any capacity. For more information, please refer to the banned content list. - Lord Azrael, ngpdrew, IsisStormDragon, meatbag
Interesting purchase. I’m guessing they reached out to Nintendo like Next Level Games since Embracer is imploding. Not a very impressive port house in my opinion though. Both Wizard and MK are clearly compromised, especially the former. Maybe it’s just a resource thing but both games were announced for Switch early on and post game patches weren’t great. Still, if Nintendo is reaching out directly saying we’ll port your game at a good deal, that’s an amazing idea. I wonder if Sony and MS have something similar. I know they provide development support but not full on port job.

If possible, I would prefer Feral Interactive. Alien Isolation stand toes to toes with the PS4 version. Grid Autosport takes the original 360 game and make it run at better resolution and framerate as well as adding addition graphical effects. A standard rarely meet by other 360 ports despite the Switch’s much superior hardware for some reason.
 
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heyonme said:
I see two potential outcomes from this acquisition:
  1. Rather than subsidising or directly paying for ports of in-demand games, Nintendo could reach an agreement with the developer to port the game to Switch 2 in-house via Shiver?
  2. Nintendo is joining Sony and Microsoft in porting certain games to other platforms to maximise their reach. I could easily see some lower tier games like Tetris 99 or Everybody's 1-2 Switch being ported to other platforms because their exclusivity does not offer much of an advantage for Nintendo.
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First point is correct answer
 
heyonme said:
I see two potential outcomes from this acquisition:
  1. Rather than subsidising or directly paying for ports of in-demand games, Nintendo could reach an agreement with the developer to port the game to Switch 2 in-house via Shiver?
  2. Nintendo is joining Sony and Microsoft in porting certain games to other platforms to maximise their reach. I could easily see some lower tier games like Tetris 99 or Everybody's 1-2 Switch being ported to other platforms because their exclusivity does not offer much of an advantage for Nintendo.
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I want to live in a world where 1-2 Switch is sold on the PS5. Simply because we'd be living in the funniest timeline.
 
RE: Shiver purchase, i don't think they were bought to be port studio. Their work likely impressed someone at Nintendo and they're being bough to support games developmenmt for Switch 2 or maybe will be tasked to do a new games. This very likely removed a port Studio for Switch 2; could also be a NLG situation where they were looking to sell and Nintendo didn't want to lose them to Sony/MS/Tencent (edit: They are Embracer owned, so yeah, Embracer is offloading a assets nd Nintendo saw a good deal)

P4bl0 said:
Nintendo revealed that the next-generation console will be released within the 2024 fiscal year (by the end of March 2025). Several suppliers have indicated that orders for the new console will begin shipping in the second half of the year.
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Can you verify this translated bit that i bolder/italicized; I think Nintendo only confirmed Switch 2 be announced by the end of the fiscal year (they call if FY 2024 , but its actually FY2025). In anycase, release by end of fiscal year has been strongly speculated but not confirmed.

Unless there's something in the QA i missed, this seems like big news if true
 
Dekuman said:
RE: Shiver purchase, i don't think they were bought to be port studio. Their work likely impressed someone at Nintendo and they're being bough to support games developmenmt for Switch 2 or maybe will be tasked to do a new games. This very likely removed a port Studio for Switch 2; could also be a NLG situation where they were looking to sell and Nintendo didn't want to lose them to Sony/MS/Tencent
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It's in the press release:

Since its establishment in 2012, Shiver has partnered with publishers and developers through commissions for large scale title developments, and recently, has worked on porting and developing software titles such as [...] Mortal Kombat 1. [...] By welcoming Shiver’s experienced and accomplished development team, Nintendo aims to secure high-level resources for porting and developing software titles. Going forward, even after it becomes a part of the Nintendo group, Shiver’s focus will remain the same, continuing commissions that port and develop software for multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch.
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Besides spelling out that they'll be used for porting, the part about "continuing commissions" in particular tells me that Nintendo intends to use Shiver as part of negotiation with third parties. If Nintendo is interested in a third-party title, when they engage with the developer or publisher, they can offer to hook them up with Shiver to get the port done, rather than the third party needing to do it in-house or worry about finding a contractor on their own.
 
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For blatantly dismissing transphobia in this and other posts you have been permanently banned. - ngpdrew, Zellia, blg, mb, PS, BF, TC, LA
Tye said:
If someone doesn’t have their pronouns listed, then the best thing to do, rather than assume their pronouns or gender based on their avatar, is to just use “they”—it’s gender-neutral and doesn’t assume anything.
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Or people could simply calm down a bit by assuming something that is entirely reasonable. How many times I was mistaken for a girl when I was little because I was so cute. I didn't start throwing tantrums 😂
 
LiC said:
It's in the press release:



Besides spelling out that they'll be used for porting, the part about "continuing commissions" in particular tells me that Nintendo intends to use Shiver as part of negotiation with third parties. If Nintendo is interested in a third-party title, when they engage with the developer or publisher, they can offer to hook them up with Shiver to get the port done, rather than the third party needing to do it in-house or worry about finding a contractor on their own.
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Yeah i see that now. You're right, maybe they want a port studio around to handle high priority ports directly, rather than the current system of them connecting 3rd parties with 'for hire' studios to get the ports done.
 
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