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

I mean, Metroid should be judged vs other Nintendo first party games. Not $300 million AAA titles made by the biggest western studios. No one would compare Xenoblade 3 to Final Fantasy XVI and say that Xenoblade 3 looks much worse. That is just natural and everyone knows why that is the case.

They're absolutely comparable because they're coming from two different video game developers who want the same price for their products. One looking significantly worse is absolutely a problem and something consumers would consider. Now if Nintendo charged significantly less I could see the argument that they're not comparable, but games releasing around the same time, priced the same should absolutely be held to the same standards.
 
I mean, Metroid should be judged vs other Nintendo first party games. Not $300 million AAA titles made by the biggest western studios. No one would compare Xenoblade 3 to Final Fantasy XVI and say that Xenoblade 3 looks much worse. That is just natural and everyone knows why that is the case.

I mean, then Metroid Prime should have a significantly different art style to avoid being compared to its peer titles.
 
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I mean, you don’t need to keep the same move set and weapon set and proportions for the Space Pirates.

Or even keep the Space Pirates in general…

But they did for some reason and they reused the same animations from 1 after choosing to do so.

The lack of any responding to be hit animations outside of a basic stagger animation and death animation looks horrible for 2024 though.

The lack of any environmental responsiveness is even more alarming.

Game just looks so old and limited.
@ItWasMeantToBe19 on his way shit talking about Prime 4 teaser.

business-man-vikram-aditya.gif


At the end it's your opinion, but personally the game looks awesome and it'll somehow look way better, since it's a prime contender of being a cross gen title.
 
They're absolutely comparable because they're coming from two different video game developers who want the same price for their products. One looking significantly worse is absolutely a problem and something consumers would consider. Now if Nintendo charged significantly less I could see the argument that they're not comparable, but games releasing around the same time, priced the same should absolutely be held to the same standards.
Most people consider the gameplay and Story, I for one played Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and thought the art styles and graphics looked good, I think the story is one of the best in the series, I did not play Final Fantasy 16 and I still want to. If I had to compare the two I still say Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the better game. Not everyone is going to head to head these games who are interested in them they are quite different audience from different games platforms. Not everyone owns both. That's also not consumers think.
 
They're absolutely comparable because they're coming from two different video game developers who want the same price for their products. One looking significantly worse is absolutely a problem and something consumers would consider. Now if Nintendo charged significantly less I could see the argument that they're not comparable, but games releasing around the same time, priced the same should absolutely be held to the same standards.
All that would be relevant if it had any effect on sales. Does Nintendo have problem selling their consoles and games compared to PS and Xbox? No. So in what way is there a problem for Nintendo?

I mean its very likely the Donkey Kong country remaster will outsell the PS5 Astrobot game, even though it will look much worse and have zero budget in comparison. So Nintendo games looking worse than their rivals has not mattered anything at all and will probably not start to matter soon.
 
The Direct marked a MAJOR shift in how the website works in regions outside the US. While the UIs are still different by region, EU and JP have been subsumed under .com

This has led to some quirks in the change, but this is a good thing.

The last time Nintendo rejigged their websites (at least in my regions) on a large scale was early 2017, and we all know what happened there.

While I don't think this means "launch now", I do think it's indicative of Nintendo's typical start of generation shake-up, and is encouraging to see.

Notable for me is that support and warranties have been moved to .com fully after years of moving bits and pieces.
 
All that would be relevant if it had any effect on sales. Does Nintendo have problem selling their consoles and games compared to PS and Xbox? No. So in what way is there a problem for Nintendo?

I mean its very likely the Donkey Kong country remaster will outsell the PS5 Astrobot game, even though it will look much worse and have zero budget in comparison. So Nintendo games looking worse than their rivals has not mattered anything at all and will probably not start to matter soon.

I mean, the issue is that Prime has never sold well and the only time it did was when it was peerlessly visually. I do think Prime 3 having such bad visuals compared to like Half Life 2 really hurt its sales because Prime 1's appeal to many people was how visually ground breaking it was.

I don't know if the series has any financial future considering Nintendo's hardware has to be low spec to work as a handheld.
 
I mean, the issue is that Prime has never sold well and the only time it did was when it was peerlessly visually. I do think Prime 3 having such bad visuals compared to like Half Life 2 really hurt its sales because Prime 1's appeal to many people was how visually ground breaking it was.

I don't know if the series has any financial future considering Nintendo's hardware has to be low spec to work as a handheld.
Well, that's where I think a lot of us expect the Switch 2 will help MP a boost in sales from new launch appeal. Again, Bomberman R was a series High and the gameplay can be replicated on the NES. Maybe the multiplayer would need the SNES, so you don't need anything high spec. Good gameplay, my friend.
 
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Well, that's where I think a lot of us expect the Switch 2 will help MP a boost in sales from new launch appeal. Again, Bomberman R was a series High and the gameplay can be replicated on the NES. Maybe the multiplayer would need the SNES, so you don't need anything high specced. Good gameplay, my friend.
I do think there's a difference in that Switch 2 has BC and there's thousands of games available for it day 1. Sure they won't be "optimized" but I bet you a significant number of games will have patches at launch.
 
I do think there's a difference in that Switch 2 has BC and there's thousands of games available for it day 1. Sure they won't be "optimized" but I bet you a significant number of games will have patches at launch.
I agree, but I think that as far as MP4 go, it will have a switch 1 and switch 2 logo. With Switch 2 as the primary marketing target.
 
I mean, the issue is that Prime has never sold well and the only time it did was when it was peerlessly visually. I do think Prime 3 having such bad visuals compared to like Half Life 2 really hurt its sales because Prime 1's appeal to many people was how visually ground breaking it was.

I don't know if the series has any financial future considering Nintendo's hardware has to be low spec to work as a handheld.
Prime has been pretty consistently profitable, even when it's a shadow dropped high budget remaster.

Framing mobile as "low spec" isn't the whole picture, especially when we're so aware of T239.

Just not sure what you're getting at to be honest.
 
I mean, the issue is that Prime has never sold well and the only time it did was when it was peerlessly visually. I do think Prime 3 having such bad visuals compared to like Half Life 2 really hurt its sales because Prime 1's appeal to many people was how visually ground breaking it was.

I don't know if the series has any financial future considering Nintendo's hardware has to be low spec to work as a handheld.

But i'm puzzled why you think Metroid dies just because Halo looks better. Metroid Prime wasn't competitive with Halo in popularity 20 years ago either. So from that standpoint nothing has changed. Metroid gameplay is not the same as Halo and the fanbases are entirely separate for that reason.
 
Prime has been pretty consistently profitable, even when it's a shadow dropped high budget remaster.

Framing mobile as "low spec" isn't the whole picture, especially when we're so aware of T239.

Just not sure what you're getting at to be honest.
I kinda get what he is saying. I think the series had a lot growth. While metroid never truly a gap (except for 64). Prime was gone for almost two decades. The series did technical plateau and this is a triple A budget game. Even with the T239, if they have made any core changes visually, that would be different but it isn't. He felt like that should have change.


Me on the other hand I see it as, it just needs to be on Switch 2. No upgrade outside of framerate, image quality, and resolution. That's it. We have to see it two ways. What do the customer see when they are in the store? They see a dedicated section for Switch 2 games and see a brand new game and it seems like a big adventure. That will help make the game sell not better but longer as well.

Also, digital, it depends on how Nintendo do their store so they integrate both Switch 1 and 2 in the same area or do you have to go to the old Switch 2 eshop? Because if they are separate then you will have a handful of games on the Switch 2 and there will be more focus on Switch 2 titles.


Also, a lot of people who aren't "graphics savvy" will assume that what they saw was for the Switch 2. My friend asked me if this was for the Switch 2 yesterday.
 
But i'm puzzled why you think Metroid dies just because Halo looks better. Metroid Prime wasn't competitive with Halo in popularity 20 years ago either. So from that standpoint nothing has changed. Metroid gameplay is not the same as Halo and the fanbases are entirely separate for that reason.

I'm saying Metroid Prime is not really a financially viable series on low-spec hardware with this style of gameplay and they seem to have maintained the same style of gameplay.
 
It really isn't trolling if 3 million isn't enough to sell well. I am not saying that MP4 will do horrible but we have to remember that we are in an industry with ballooning budgets and where 3 million is under performing.
Keep in mind that Metroid as a series does not have any mass market potential at this time, and Nintendo will not require the Metroid series to be mass marketed, just as Nintendo would have continued to put the Zelda series out if there was no BOTW, and even though Metroid is a legacy of Yokoi Gunpei, there is still a wider audience in North America so it will continue to be put out, and Nintendo does not require that all of their games have to hit a set profit margin at this time.
 
I'm saying Metroid Prime is not really a financially viable series on low-spec hardware with this style of gameplay and they seem to have maintained the same style of gameplay.
That would be true if Nintendo were not into building a console ecosystem dependant on getting as many different types of games as possible into the ecosystem. For example, the reason Nintendo funds Monolith Soft to make Xenoblade games is not because they get a gigantic return on investment from selling 2 million copies of a Xenoblade game, but because they diversify the content they provide in their ecosystem. The same is true for Metroid games.

If Nintendo were just a third party developer they probably would not make Xenoblade, Metroid, Fire Emblem etc but focus on stuff like Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing and other big sellers only. Of course Nintendo wants these more niche stuff to sell as well as possible but that is not the main reason why they fund games that they know doesn't have a great return on investment, its because they want a diversified lineup of games coming exclusively to Nintendo ecosystem.
 
That would be true if Nintendo were not into building a console ecosystem dependant on getting as many different types of games as possible into the ecosystem. For example, the reason Nintendo funds Monolith Soft to make Xenoblade games is not because they get a gigantic return on investment from selling 2 million copies of a Xenoblade game, but because they diversify the content they provide in their ecosystem. The same is true for Metroid games.
Absolutely, that's what the Metroid series is worth to Nintendo right now.
 
That would be true if Nintendo were not into building a console ecosystem dependant on getting as many different types of games as possible into the ecosystem. For example, the reason Nintendo funds Monolith Soft to make Xenoblade games is not because they get a gigantic return on investment from selling 2 million copies of a Xenoblade game, but because they diversify the content they provide in their ecosystem. The same is true for Metroid games.

If Nintendo were just a third party developer they probably would not make Xenoblade, Metroid, Fire Emblem etc but focus on stuff like Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing and other big sellers only. Of course Nintendo wants these more niche stuff to sell as well as possible but that is not the main reason why they fund games that they know doesn't have a great return on investment, its because they want a diversified lineup of games coming exclusively to Nintendo ecosystem.

Ehh, Xenoblade and Fire Emblem are made much faster by lower wage employees. They also don't have that high of employee counts working on the game.

Prime 4 will have a dev cycle of nearly 7 years while being made in one of the highest paid areas of the world and from a studio of 150-200 people that worked mostly on this game.
 
It really isn't trolling if 3 million isn't enough to sell well. I am not saying that MP4 will do horrible but we have to remember that we are in an industry with ballooning budgets and where 3 million is under performing.
they weren't talking about you, lol

hard to say what's the floor for sales for Nintendo. Texas ain't that cheap unlike Asia, so I'm sure Nintendo is eyeing a franchise record with this game



keeping with Metroid, Nintendo World Report did a pixel count and came to 720p via the screenshots Nintendo put out. there's also some effects like SSAO that are limited to Samus herself while the dynamic objects in the environment are missing details like shadows




I also want to bring up that it is possible to add RT to a game with baked lighting as Alan Wake 2 does this. you can use the light maps as cache to sample color from for diffuse GI. that said, MP4 would be more limited as there are probably not other things to sample like actual lights. it is a 60fps game after all and cutting down on dynamic lights would save costs
 
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Ehh, Xenoblade and Fire Emblem are made much faster by lower wage employees. They also don't have that high of employee counts working on the game.

Prime 4 will have a dev cycle of nearly 7 years while being made in one of the highest paid areas of the world and from a studio of 150-200 people that worked mostly on this game.
Where is your source on monolith soft employees having lower wages?
I mean, wtf does the employee wages and a switch game not looking like halo on the new gen have anything to do with the quality of a game you saw 15 seconds for?

Like seriously I am puzzled, what are you trying to get at, everything you have posted since yesterday is pure nonsense I really dont get it fam.
 
Where is your source on monolith soft employees having lower wages?
I mean, wtf does the employee wages and a switch game not looking like halo on the new gen have anything to do with the quality of a game you saw 15 seconds for?

Like seriously I am puzzled, what are you trying to get at, everything you have pisted since yesterday is pure nonsense I really dont get it fam.

... People in Japan are paid much less than people living in the United States?
 
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But Id went back and added raytracing to Doom Eternal.

Ray tracing support in Doom Eternal was planned long before it released, they just left it to a post-launch patch because it wasn't very high on their priority list, given a lot of people buying the game wouldn't be able to use it.

More importantly, though, the only thing Doom Eternal uses RT for is reflections. The game features a lot of reflective surfaces, and it's relatively straightforward to take out the existing reflection implementation (cube maps/SSR/whatever) and replace it with RT reflections. If you're wondering why so many of the first games which supported RT only used it for reflections and shadows, it's because they're the two use-cases where it's easiest to insert into a rendering pipeline which was never designed for RT.

In Metroid Prime 4's case, it's quite clearly using the same or a very similar rendering pipeline to Metroid Prime Remastered, including baked environmental lighting. That makes a lot of sense for a game that's trying to squeeze as much as possible out of the Switch (and at 60fps, to boot), but it means swapping in a dynamic ray-traced lighting system for Switch 2 would be an enormous amount of work. Realistically, the only two RT effects we could expect them to add for Switch 2 are reflections and shadows, for the same reasons mentioned above.

It's possible they might squeeze in some RT reflections, but I don't expect it to have anywhere near the amount of reflective surfaces as Doom Eternal does, particularly if the last scene in the trailer is an indication of the kind of settings to expect from the game. We could see some subtle use of RT reflections here and there, like Samus's suit in cut scenes, but it wouldn't be a transformative change. RT shadows are also a possibility, but if they can achieve good enough results with traditional shadow maps they might not see much of a benefit.
 
For the love of Dakhil's sanity (and a plea made recently), let's all try to keep the discussion about hardware/technology. That means if we're gonna talk about the trailer for MP4 (a game that's only announced for the Switch), we should be tying the discussion to the hardware and technology (especially the successor, since that's what's got us all hyped!). We shouldn't be debating soley whether a trailer for a Switch game looks bad.
 
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For the love of Dakhil's sanity (and a plea he made recently), let's all try to keep the discussion about hardware/technology. That means if we're gonna talk about the trailer for MP4 (a game that's only announced for the Switch), we should be tying the discussion to the successor. We shouldn't be debating whether it looks bad.
The conversations don't necessarily have to be explicitly tied to the Nintendo Switch's successor. But the conversations should be related to hardware and/or technology since that's the name of this thread.

A perfect example is this post from ILikeFeet.
 
For Prime 4 and most other Nintendo first-party games, RT is just clearly a lower priority and not the low hanging fruit that devs should address first on Switch 2.

Texture quality is probably the biggest one other than DLSS boosting the resolution and getting rid of jaggies.

Then reducing pop-in.

Dynamic lighting is extremely expensive (screenspace global illumination is much cheaper than RTGI and SSGI cost 4.5 ms for UE4 on PS4... That's a lot) and most Nintendo games run at 60 FPS so there's going to be very little RT.

The most RT you can probably expect is something comparable to like AC Shadows, where it's just barely there at all and makes no real difference.

Improved texture quality, reduced aliasing, reduced pop-in, and higher output resolutions are what people should expect from Switch 2 along with probably more objects on screen due to the better CPU.
 
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There is no need to push for a cost narrative about Nintendo games.

We all know that Nintendo's gaming profits are much higher than Sony's, at least twice as much. The cost issue is still far from Nintendo's games, it's just a matter of earning more or less.

Nintendo will not pay attention to the profit of a particular game, as it is still in the expansion stage and will not lay off employees like other companies. Now its key is to maintain game supply and provide hype.
 
The conversations don't necessarily have to be explicitly tied to the Nintendo Switch's successor. But the conversations should be related to hardware and/or technology since that's the name of this thread.

A perfect example is this post from ILikeFeet.
I've amended my original post, but 100%. I've learned a lot about raytracing, CPUs, and technology development from many posts that aren't about the successor at all.
 
I'm saying Metroid Prime is not really a financially viable series on low-spec hardware with this style of gameplay and they seem to have maintained the same style of gameplay.
So what you're saying is that it didn't evolve. I don't think it is just gameplay.


It is hard for me to pick an example but when Nintendo had a franchise that jumped in visuals from one system to the next, they do well depending if the that specific game evolved. Look at at zelda, pokemon, mario, and Kirby. While Kirby might be the best example while made it first transition in HD a long time ago and the visual was upgrade by a huge margin.... it still feels like a last gen (wii) game. It wasn't until the first true 3D Kirby the game sold the highest. Does that make sense?

Realistically, the only two RT effects we could expect them to add for Switch 2 are reflections and shadows, for the same reasons mentioned above.

It's possible they might squeeze in some RT reflections, but I don't expect it to have anywhere near the amount of reflective surfaces as Doom Eternal does, particularly if the last scene in the trailer is an indication of the kind of settings to expect from the game. We could see some subtle use of RT reflections here and there, like Samus's suit in cut scenes, but it wouldn't be a transformative change. RT shadows are also a possibility, but if they can achieve good enough results with traditional shadow maps they might not see much of a benefit.
And that's what I am expecting after seeing the trailer.
they were talking about you, lol

hard to say what's the floor for sales for Nintendo. Texas ain't that cheap unlike Asia, so I'm sure Nintendo is eyeing a franchise record with this game
I believe so, I think this game will get the "Switch effect". I think this can go up to 10 million sold.
 
MP4 looks amazing for a Switch game let’s be realistic.

What improvements may we realistically expect for a Switch 2 version ?
Ambient occlusion on objects, real time lighting, better shadows ((f needed).

NWR reports this game is 720p and mostly 60fps based off the trailer. So yeah, an easy 1080p 60fps bump in handheld. Docked I think should at least be 1440p native.

Half expecting a RT mode at 1080p 60fps in docked.

edit: I didn't see ilikefeets post about NWR.
 
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I did feel equally underwhelmed by MP4 and I think that (to keeps things on-topic), it was due to that I expected so much more graphically. I also believed in the narrative that development had moved onto the Switch 2. After seven years, It was a fair assumption. We got an official statement by Furukawa about the next system before we saw something!

But there was so little pomp or celebration. There was no big "Here's a game that you've all been waiting a very long time for". The game itself neither looks to be a re-invention of the wheel like Breath of the Wild was nor a big huge 4k graphical jaw-dropper that felt very cinematic with mo-cap performances or something.

On some level, I think I expected all of these thing after all this time. Not only did it look very much like Prime Remastered -- a game originally released on the Gamecube -- Nintendo themselves didn't seem super jazzed about it. It got the end of the Direct, but...

I just expected more haha. From the graphics, from the gameplay, and more excitement from Nintendo themselves. Instead, it just looks like Prime Remastered Part 2. Which is fine because Prime 1 is a fantastic game and more of that isn't a bad thing, but...

TLDR: I think we're all just very ready to move onto the next console now.
 
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I did feel equally underwhelmed by MP4 and I think that (to keeps things on-topic), it was due to that I expected so much more graphically. I also believed in the narrative that development had moved onto the Switch 2.
I don't even know where this idea came from because there's clearly a misunderstanding here, mp4 officially started production after the 2019 reboot around 2020 after mpr was made, at which point drake hadn't even finalized the basic specs.
 
I don't even know where this idea came from because there's clearly a misunderstanding here, mp4 officially started production after the 2019 reboot around 2020 after mpr was made, at which point drake hadn't even finalized the basic specs.
Well, let's say there is a cross gen version. How long would Retro knew?
 
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I don’t get the people complaining about the graphics. It‘s a Switch game, the Direct footage is from Switch and you can‘t expect Raytracing or 4K from it. It‘s still one of (or the) best looking games on Switch, and will look even more stunning on NG (if it gets patched/ a new version for it, which I expect).
 
I don't even know where this idea came from because there's clearly a misunderstanding here, mp4 officially started production after the 2019 reboot around 2020 after mpr was made, at which point drake hadn't even finalized the basic specs.

Which is completely fair, but most people don't know that or much of anything with regards to the development of the Switch 2. They just assumed given how long Prime 4 has been in development and how near the end of the Switch 1 is that development moved over to the new console. I certainly was one of them.

But yeah, given everything we know about the Switch 2's development -- the Nvidia hack, that Drake wasn't finalized until late 2022, devkits going around in 2023...it would have been completely impossible for Prime 4 to be built on the new hardware. If it was, it wouldn't be released until 2027-2028.
 
I don't even know where this idea came from because there's clearly a misunderstanding here, mp4 officially started production after the 2019 reboot around 2020 after mpr was made, at which point drake hadn't even finalized the basic specs.
Three things -

This isn't a misunderstanding, games moving from one generation to the next due to extended development timelines isn't unusual.

Drake was well into the planning stages by time it moved from design to implementation and they would have been able to access relevant development hardware and software as soon as any other team.

Even without this, cross gen patches don't need to be considered from the get go to work, many launch day Xbox patches were made in just a matter of months due to Microsoft's extremely late delivery of finalised development hardware.
 
I did feel equally underwhelmed by MP4 and I think that (to keeps things on-topic), it was due to that I expected so much more graphically. I also believed in the narrative that development had moved onto the Switch 2. After seven years, It was a fair assumption.
how is that a fair assumption? it restarted development in january 2019, before the switch 2 was being mapped out, and it was announced for the switch 1 on the systems launch year! nintendo doesn't just ditch a platform it announces a game for, they still put breath of the wild on the wii u for crying out loud

that being said, the breath of the wild scenario where an upgraded version comes out for the newer hardware might be the ideal outcome, though i don't see why there can't be appreciation for how impressively good the game looks for the switch hardware
 
Three things -

This isn't a misunderstanding, games moving from one generation to the next due to extended development timelines isn't unusual.

Drake was well into the planning stages by time it moved from design to implementation and they would have been able to access relevant development hardware and software as soon as any other team.

Even without this, cross gen patches don't need to be considered from the get go to work, many launch day Xbox patches were made in just a matter of months due to Microsoft's extremely late delivery of finalised development hardware.
It's obviously not a question of whether they'll make a patch for the switch2 version, it's a question of whether or not mp4 has been developing for both switch1 and switch2 from the start, yet that's not realistic.

Just to be clear, this is not consistent with botw, it's not a generational leap between wiiu and ns, the two hardware share the same graphical feature standard, whereas switch1 and switch2 are true generational leaps and ray tracing and light baking are two different technology choices.

Also I'm pretty confident that they'll make patches for the switch2 version in terms of resolution and lighting, when it says 2025 release and no specific release date has been set, I'm 100% confident that it'll be coming to the switch2 at the same time.
 
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I don’t get the people complaining about the graphics. It‘s a Switch game, the Direct footage is from Switch and you can‘t expect Raytracing or 4K from it. It‘s still one of (or the) best looking games on Switch, and will look even more stunning on NG (if it gets patched/ a new version for it, which I expect).

Agreed. I had somewhat low expectations coming in..We all knew the game was built for the current switch models. My guess it would be MPR level.

i admit I wasn't too impressed by it at first either when I saw the video, until I saw some comparison videos with MPR. There's definitely an upgrade in areas, like Samus's model, her ship, and how detailed the environments are (mainly outside) If this game ends up 720p docked like the trailers, then they are definitely pushing something, cause MPR is 900p docked, and the same engine is being used.

An MP4 is basically PS4 level fidelity at 720p on Switch.

A MP game built for the Switch 2 from the ground up will look absolutely stunning. Halfway between PS4 and PS5, and believe believe it will use DLSS (probably 720p native handheld and 1080p native docked.
 
Please read this new, consolidated staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
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