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

[JoshuaJSlone]

At this point it's basically PS2 and DS, and those two had VERY different patterns in late year sales, Switch and DS are the only ones to pass 100m while still selling 20+ million a year. DS started dropping pretty fast once it reached about 130 million, but that's also when they started talking about 3DS.

A bit off topic in here, but this made me curious if I could make a chart with the X axis being LTD and the Y axis being shipments from the previous year. Luckily with the numbers in place it was easy in LibreOffice. Slight PS2 discontinuity from where they changed shipment reporting methods.

Spoiler

 

[Mr Swine]

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

Depends entirely from title to title. Switch 2 games will benefit from having a low OS overhead and being optimized for the hardware whereas Steam Deck has a higher OS overhead and brute forcing games since it’s not running games on native OS.

I think a game like RDR2 that would run on mixed low/high settings at 1080p (PS4 settings) FSR2.0 on deck would run 1440p with DLSS in Drake

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

A bit off topic in here, but this made me curious if I could make a chart with the X axis being LTD and the Y axis being shipments from the previous year. Luckily with the numbers in place it was easy in LibreOffice. Slight PS2 discontinuity from where they changed shipment reporting methods.

Spoiler

The DS was that beautiful parabola. Well, almost

Depends entirely from title to title. Switch 2 games will benefit from having a low OS overhead and being optimized for the hardware whereas Steam Deck has a higher OS overhead and brute forcing games since it’s not running games on native OS.

I think a game like RDR2 that would run on mixed low/high settings at 1080p (PS4 settings) FSR2.0 on deck would run 1440p with DLSS in Drake

It also depends on the application. Not all respond the same way.

 

[Crusters]

Well it would be cool to have, I don’t really see the purpose in doing this. The tensor cores are much better at performing FP16 calculations than the shaders, they have a much higher throughput and FP16 can be offloaded to those cores if need be or use those if they need more FP16. If anything, the alteration the 8.8 has would probably fall on the ray tracing aspect not the tensor core aspect or the shader aspect. Or if it does have some minor modification to the shaders it is how it processes the ray tracing code path to be a bit more efficient/ less demanding and producing less heat overall here.


Based on the previous findings, it seems like the Drake Tensor cores follow the Desktop configuration if I’m not mistaken, and the FP32:16 is 1:1 rather than 1:2.


Rather than ORIN’s configuration that has it at double the throughput.

I think this is where I am at currently as well. I feel like any code that would benefit from half precision if full is not needed, would benefit more offloading it onto one of the fixed function logic sets with the room, where it can be done and returned with screaming speed compared to the Cuda cores.

 

[Pokemaniac]

The patches would be for older games only. Anything that releases day and date with the new system will already come with the visual improvements included. Handheld mode should easily be able to get a free boost day 1 resolution wise at least by allowing the current docked settings to be run in handheld mode and the loading speed improvements could be a free bonus as well depending on how fast the data speeds are on the new system.

If devs want older games to take full advantage of the newer hardware I assume it won't be as simple, which can warrant a fee. Just call the section for the upgrades REMASTERD and include it in the expansion pak, base NSO and/or charge a $10-30 fee per game. This will make it more much more likely for older games to get a significant reconfiguring since there will be money to be made by doing so. I would expect Nintendo to launch the program with games like Zelda BOTW, and the Xenoblade games, and Yoshi.

I personally wouldn't rebuy full price remasters just to play my favorite switch games with much better Fidelty, but I wouldn't mind paying the price of one remaster to have access to upgrades for a bunch of my favorite switch games. Obviously, Nintendo going back and upgrading their entire back catalog of Switch releases to 1440p/4K and 60 fps with improved effects etc. for Free would be the best solution for consumers, but Nintendo is a business, and I don't think they like us that much lol.

Trying to force docked mode in handheld is most likely not going to happen because games know which mode they're in and react accordingly.

Most likely what will happen is they'll release some basic updates that bump resolution for some specific games that are either popular or that they want to bring attention to. Anything more than that should probably only be expected for new and actively supported games.

 

[ArchedThunder]

I can't wait to see Monolith Soft get their hands on the next gen switch.

They're able to produce something like this on a system with 393.2 Gflops.

Their first exclusive for next gen hardware is gonna be purdy.

 

[Concernt]

Their first exclusive for next gen hardware is gonna be purdy.

400GFLOPS is nothing to sneeze at, but yes, incredibly impressive.

 

[Look over there]

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

Just to tack on one more thing that further complicates comparisons:
How the Steam Deck's power budget gets split between the CPU and GPU has a lot more variance than something like the Switch. And that's due to the difference in CPU cores. The Zen 2 cores in the Steam Deck are designed for low single digit watts per core while Arm's Cortex A- series cores are more like some tenths of a watt per core. The end result being that with the Steam Deck, from one of the videos posted in this thread I think that I saw a variance in CPU power usage of up to like 5 watts or so. With a static, low power budget (like the default 15 for the Deck), ~5 watts is a lot to shift from GPU to CPU. And that introduces questions to what's limiting the Deck to run so and so game at 1080p/30.
I wouldn't expect that level of variance with Drake. Of course, we don't have specs yet, but for reference, Erista/Switch V1's CPU power budget ought to be under 2 watts. My personal guess is for Drake's CPU power budget to hang around the 2 watt area, maaaaybe push up to 2.5 watts. I've seen other guesses here for more like 3-3.5 watts. Conversely, it's worth keeping in mind that a budget closer to 1-1.5 watts is in play (my guess for Mariko/V2's CPU power usage is in that range).

Edit: Well darn, realized I had a brainfart towards there in the end.
1 recent node's worth of die shrinking would bring the CPU budget down to the 1-1.5 watt range, but going from TSMC 20nm to 16FF should actually probably bring it down to sub 1 watt. Criminy that was a good jump.

 

[RennanNT]

Trying to force docked mode in handheld is most likely not going to happen because games know which mode they're in and react accordingly.

Do we know for sure if available input methods is tied to the graphical profile?

To me, it would have been quite shortsighted of Nintendo/NVidia not split them in 2 separate things. Not only they could quickly offer handheld upgrade across the board, they could cut down costs on BC*

*Assuming Drake can run BC docked mode with decent battery life through DynamIQ and turning off SMs

 

[Instro]

I can't wait to see Monolith Soft get their hands on the next gen switch.

They're able to produce something like this on a system with 393.2 Gflops.

Yeah Monolith's environment art, design, topography are incredible. Gonna be really fun to see how all that translates on new hardware.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Do we know for sure if available input methods is tied to the graphical profile?

To me, it would have been quite shortsighted of Nintendo/NVidia not split them in 2 separate things. Not only they could quickly offer handheld upgrade across the board, they could cut down costs on BC*

*Assuming Drake can run BC docked mode with decent battery life through DynamIQ and turning off SMs

It's not entirely clear. I suppose it's possible they can be detected separately, but I'm fairly certain there are some non-input related changes some games do, like changing text size.

Regardless, even if it can be detected separately, that doesn't mean much unless Nintendo is strictly enforcing it. The chances of something breaking are very high if they aren't.

 

[SiG]

With my 2060
I did some simple test comparisons on MH World back in the day ... DLSS 1.something
at 4k no DLSS was 25 FPS average
4K DLSS was 35 FPS average same image quality or better in some cases as native 4K... so a performance improvement of about 30%

Again it's not too scientific and it was DLSS 1.1 or something... and it was a cruddy old 2060 (not even a super)

Spoiler: Images if you want to see

Top Native--- Bottom DLSS

The thing I noticed is DLSS allowed for relief on the vram so it could actually bring in higher res textures... where as in native 4K my vram usage was maxed out and it seemed like the engine compressed a lot of stuff so it could render the pixels instead.

another thing to think about: in native 1080p I was getting ~70fps so if DLSS was building off 1080 it cost about 25 frames or 35% overhead to get it to 4K... (AGAIN... this is old data... newer DLSS implementation is more efficient and can scale from lower resolutions at, I think, less of a cost.)

I should do some newer tests... I just don't own any newer DLSS compatible games... any suggestions?

Doesn't Monster Hunter Rise for PC have DLSS?

Also HITMAN III.

 

[Deleted member 1324]

You really think they would release those Zelda games only a few months before botw 2? Unless they came out in October and botw 2 came out in April.

Personally I think the ship may have sailed already for any Zelda ports for the rest of the year.

Oh those games are coming to Switch 100% imo be it separately digital for $40 a pop or a $60 physical double pack. They’ll be at the next Direct and launch probably sometime in November. Easy $$$ in the holiday window before BotW.

 

[Serif]

I'm gonna be on Twitter begging for game patches when Drake comes out. Hades in 4K would be sweet. Bloodstained especially needs one. And please expose an integer scaling option for developers with 2D pixel art games, I don't want a bilinear filter from 1080p to 4K.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

I'm gonna be on Twitter begging for game patches when Drake comes out.

 

[Blue Monty]

I can't wait to see Monolith Soft get their hands on the next gen switch.

They're able to produce something like this on a system with 393.2 Gflops.

Considering how much they take on making a new Xenoblade game we will probably have to wait until 2027

 

[Deleted member 887]

Do we know for sure if available input methods is tied to the graphical profile?

Not graphical profile but docked status. Touch screen is obviously not available in docked mode. But also games might choose to alter control schemes if handheld/docked or if the joycons are docked - consider a game with motion controls that disables them in handheld mode so that waggling the Switch doesn't cause random inputs.

If you tell games they are docked when they aren't, then some games will break without patches.

The performance profile is a different thing. There are preset combination of CPU clock speed, GPU clock speed, and memory clock speed that a game can request on the fly during the game, and what modes are allowed changes based on whether or not you are docked. So for example, there is a mode that turns the GPU down to almost nothing, but runs the CPU and Memory at very high clocks. You couldn't run a whole game that way, but it's a very fast way to load levels up, and you get just enough GPU power to run a loading screen.

The way overclocking works is that overclocked Switches ignore the requested amount of CPU/GPU/Memory speed and run at full speed all the time. This also breaks games - that's why the OC community provides community patches, and recommended settings for games.

The same was true for the PS4Pro by the way. The solution was what we've talked about several times here - there was a list of games that without patches were known to run well even if overclocked, and so the PS4 pro would ignore whatever they asked for, and run at full speed. Games not on the white list would run in a PS4 compat mode. Patched games would start in a PS4 compatibility mode, but would be able to detect they were on a Pro, and then request the higher level of power.

I expect a white list solution for Nintendo, as is in a very similar boat. There is one caveat, but I'm going to put in a spoiler tag, so the tangent doesn't hijack the discussion.

Spoiler

One major thing that is different between One X/PS4 and drake is that drake is fundamentally a new microarch for the GPU, with 2 major new features (DLSS and RT). If Drake's BC solution is software based, then one expects "true" Drake native features and power to require a "native" version. It's highly likely that the Nintendo SDK will make this easy, with a driver stack that supports both machines.

But what about high res textures and similar? It's easy to imagine a game that supports both machines to need double versions of every texture, one of which is quite huge and totally unused by average Switch owners. Fitting all that on physical is going to be a nightmare.

I suspect that will get a lot of "Only classic Switch on physical, download the patch for Drake support"

 

[ILikeFeet]

Doesn't Monster Hunter Rise for PC have DLSS?

Also HITMAN III.

Monster Hunter Rise can hit 4K on damn near any decent gpu. Hitman would be a challenge. maybe too much if RT is turned on

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

I think this is where I am at currently as well. I feel like any code that would benefit from half precision if full is not needed, would benefit more offloading it onto one of the fixed function logic sets with the room, where it can be done and returned with screaming speed compared to the Cuda cores.

I wonder if they’d decide to move some physics over to the RT cores to help take a load off the CPU….

400GFLOPS is nothing to sneeze at, but yes, incredibly impressive.

It’s not really rendering at that 400GFLOP though.

Portable mode doesn’t run that high.

Docked mode gets to that but they are used mostly in resolution (or lack of for xenoblade games ).


So this is done on something that is 150-200GFLOPs.

If you want to use such a metric, personally I don’t like using that metric though because it’s more nuanced than this and not as simple.

 

[JRPGHurtsWallet]

Their first exclusive for next gen hardware is gonna be purdy.

On one hand I can't wait to play these games, on the other I can't help but feel how much better Xenoblade 3 and Kirby and the Forgotten Land would be on the next gen hardware. 60fps, AA, locked 1440p with DLSS, more detailed environments.

 

[Blue Monty]

Next Level Games will probably be the first of the studios known for impressive visuals to make a Drake exclusive game, Nintendo EPD will probably take a bit longer to make one of the big games Drake exclusive. (Retro might not make it to make a Drake exclusive and will skip to Switch ‘3’ )

 

[daase ko]

With my 2060
I did some simple test comparisons on MH World back in the day ... DLSS 1.something
at 4k no DLSS was 25 FPS average
4K DLSS was 35 FPS average same image quality or better in some cases as native 4K... so a performance improvement of about 30%

Again it's not too scientific and it was DLSS 1.1 or something... and it was a cruddy old 2060 (not even a super)

Spoiler: Images if you want to see

Top Native--- Bottom DLSS

The thing I noticed is DLSS allowed for relief on the vram so it could actually bring in higher res textures... where as in native 4K my vram usage was maxed out and it seemed like the engine compressed a lot of stuff so it could render the pixels instead.

another thing to think about: in native 1080p I was getting ~70fps so if DLSS was building off 1080 it cost about 25 frames or 35% overhead to get it to 4K... (AGAIN... this is old data... newer DLSS implementation is more efficient and can scale from lower resolutions at, I think, less of a cost.)

I should do some newer tests... I just don't own any newer DLSS compatible games... any suggestions?

Went from 72 to 106 fps average for me.
And while I booted it let me talk a bit about world.
It's HARD to get back to it when you're in the middle of rise. I really think that the team wanted to be showy and it results in a busy game coupled with a neutered palette with less contrast it's a hard for my eyes. I would like for them to show some restraint for the next game. And it still baffles me how while the maps are less rich than rise they're so hard to navigate! And obviously trying not to activate wirebugs is an exercice of self control.
I'm really appreciative of the rise team's work.

 

[Mr Doggo]

Next Level Games will probably be the first of the studios known for impressive visuals to make a Drake exclusive game, Nintendo EPD will probably take a bit longer to make one of the big games Drake exclusive. (Retro might not make it to make a Drake exclusive and will skip to Switch ‘3’ )

Fr it will most likely be 5 years into the next console until we see their next gaem

 

[Blue Monty]

Fr it will most likely be 5 years into the next console until we see their next gaem

Depends on Nintendo approach to Retro and if they will make Prime 5 (or a non mainline Prime) for Drake re-using Prime 4 assets. A smaller game could also make it to being a Drake exclusive

 

[Hidden04]

A lot of these prolonged dec times for EPD could very well have to do with COVID delays though. ACNH launched in March 2020, and did not receive much new content (that was datamined) until October 2021.

 

[karmitt]

On one hand I can't wait to play these games, on the other I can't help but feel how much better Xenoblade 3 and Kirby and the Forgotten Land would be on the next gen hardware. 60fps, AA, locked 1440p with DLSS, more detailed environments.

Any other 4K perverts waiting a bit to play XC3 just in case the hardware does launch this year and supports it?

Already have my preorder, but I could easily wait to play it with the right incentives.

 

[Lelouch0612]

Any other 4K perverts waiting a bit to play XC3 just in case the hardware does launch this year and supports it?

Already have my preorder, but I could easily wait to play it with the right incentives.

XC3 on Switch and the Torna-like expansion on Drake is my plan.

 

[RennanNT]

Not graphical profile but docked status. Touch screen is obviously not available in docked mode. But also games might choose to alter control schemes if handheld/docked or if the joycons are docked - consider a game with motion controls that disables them in handheld mode so that

I know all of that.

All I'm saying is that these don't need to be tied to each other. They could just inform developers what are the inputs available. E.g. [touchscreen, railed-in-joycons] vs [split joy cons] vs [pro controller, single joycon] vs etc.

If touchscreen is available then they get input from the touchscreen, if it's unavailable then stop listening inputs. Why should it matter if it's docked or not for this? In a more practical example, montion controls DO work in handheld as long as you connect a controller compatible with it.

All I'm doing is questioning if they're really tying multiple things to a "docked" vs "undocked" state or if people are just assuming so. And if it's the case, as a software developer, I believe this was shortsighted of them.

 

[ShadowFox08]

Oh those games are coming to Switch 100% imo be it separately digital for $40 a pop or a $60 physical double pack. They’ll be at the next Direct and launch probably sometime in November. Easy $$$ in the holiday window before BotW.

I do there's a high chance they will come on switch eventually, but I do think timing matters...

Historically speaking it's been every 2 years at least per main line Zelda game per platform and that includes ports/remasters (but not spin offs, which are usually a year apart in between).

For switch's case; 2017 Botw, 2019 Link's Awakening, 2021 Skyward Sword and 2023 Botw 2.
Spin offs include Hyrule Warriors Remastered in 2018, Cadence of Hyrule in 2019 and Hyrule Warriors AOC in 2020. Spin offs don't matter as much, since they are completely different genre wise and done by third party companies.

Would Nintendo risk cannibalizing their mainline games at only 6 months or less apart? I think nintendo would want to maximize their sales between games. Maximize botw 2 on switch and Drake is their priority, but they also wouldn't want to take sales away from remastered games like TP HD and WW HD, which would be overshadowed by Botw 2.

We'll see. I would personally have at least have a full year at least between main line games, if I was Nitnendo. I would be shocked if TP HD or WW HD came out this Fall and botw 2 out in March/April.

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

IMO, I think the only thing in the bag right now is Switch quality games that are already running at 1080p 60fps, to run at a native 4k 60fps. And given Drake's 1500 cuda cores/2-3 TFLOPs GPU speculation as well as 8 A78s and 102 GB/s bandwidth, that shouldn't be a problem to get to 4k native/without DLSS for most 1st party games. Perhaps even for some 900p games.

I think we could see PS4 quality games run at 2k 60 fps, with DLSS (PS4 pro level). I don't think we will get xbone quality games at 4k with DLSS (which one x does natively), but who knows. Kind of tempering my expectations.

The node size and manufacturer tech that Drake is made from is going to be important.

 

[Blue Monty]

Any other 4K perverts waiting a bit to play XC3 just in case the hardware does launch this year and supports it?

Already have my preorder, but I could easily wait to play it with the right incentives.

Will just replay it , only decision based on Drake I have made is to save money to be able to afford it without any issues when it is out, waiting for it’s to release when it might take more than a year to play games seems a bad idea to me especially if XC3 is an upgrade performance wise as reviews say it is and I might not get Drake day 1 due to stock issues.

 

[Pokemaniac]

I know all of that.

All I'm saying is that these don't need to be tied to each other. They could just inform developers what are the inputs available. E.g. [touchscreen, railed-in-joycons] vs [split joy cons] vs [pro controller, single joycon] vs etc.

If touchscreen is available then they get input from the touchscreen, if it's unavailable then stop listening inputs. Why should it matter if it's docked or not for this? In a more practical example, montion controls DO work in handheld as long as you connect a controller compatible with it.

All I'm doing is questioning if they're really tying multiple things to a "docked" vs "undocked" state or if people are just assuming so. And if it's the case, as a software developer, I believe this was shortsighted of them.

On the current Switch, there isn't really a logical distinction between allowed clocks and the rest of the stuff that goes with docked vs handheld. It all happens together. As a result, a hard distinction between the various aspects is going to require active enforcement from Nintendo to maintain, and I don't think we have any hard info on whether they're doing that or not.

It's a much safer assumption that docked and handheld will remain as is, and the only enhancements will come from architectural improvements and possibly juicing the clocks.

 

[mariodk18]

Is it reasonable to expect that most of the games that received DLSS 2.0 support over the past few years will come to Drake? Maybe devs were just practicing and getting used to DLSS and figured they’d kill two birds with one stone while also preparing for Drake ports?

 

[karmitt]

Will just replay it , only decision based on Drake I have made is to save money to be able to afford it without any issues when it is out, waiting for it’s to release when it might take more than a year to play games seems a bad idea to me especially if XC3 is an upgrade performance wise as reviews say it is and I might not get Drake day 1 due to stock issues.

There’s a few benefits in waiting from my view. I’m far less likely to engage with DLC Hero content if I beat it in July - probably would park the game until the story DLC hits. Drake patch wouldn’t need to be up to 4K as well - even if we only got a boost-mode type thing to prevent any dynamic resolution ugliness I’d be happier. And as mentioned I’ve got enough games I could play even if this is near the top of my most wanted.

Regardless I’m not waiting indefinitely. Im not sure where the point of no return is for a 2022 release, but I assume we haven’t hit it yet. People are floating august and even September. When we get to that point I’ll drop it. XC2 and Torna we’re among my favorite Nintendo titles for Switch and both of them were crap in handheld. I don’t yet trust that handheld mode will be good

 

[chocolate_supra]

Any other 4K perverts waiting a bit to play XC3 just in case the hardware does launch this year and supports it?

Already have my preorder, but I could easily wait to play it with the right incentives.

Nah, it looks so good as it is that I won't worry. Plus I have a tendency to play through XB games twice so there's a good chance I'll just do a second playthrough once Drake and all the DLC are out.

 

[Lord Azrael]

Considering how much they take on making a new Xenoblade game we will probably have to wait until 2027

Not really? They are a pretty fast studio. 2010 -> 2015 -> 2017 -> 2018 (Torna) -> 2022

 

[RennanNT]

It's a much safer assumption

This isn't about making safe assumptions, I'm asking because I would like to know how it truly works and there might be people here who may be able to answer that.

 

[karmitt]

Nah, it looks so good as it is that I won't worry. Plus I have a tendency to play through XB games twice so there's a good chance I'll just do a second playthrough once Drake and all the DLC are out.

Very few games have convinced me to play twice. Really just BotW if I exclude titles like Diablo or rogue-lites.

If I ever came back to XC3 it would be like 5+ years out. Not impossible just unlikely

 

[Blue Monty]

Not really? They are a pretty fast studio. 2010 -> 2015 -> 2017 -> 2018 (Torna) -> 2022

2023 (XC3 'Torna') -> XC4 2027, only chance of another Xenoblade earlier would be a Xenoblade X port which would little sense to make Drake exclusive. With the Xenoblade games becoming bigger I don't think they will have such a lot turnaround as XCX -> XC2 again

 

[Lord Azrael]

2023 (XC3 'Torna') -> XC4 2027, only chance of another Xenoblade earlier would be a Xenoblade X port which would little sense to make Drake exclusive. With the Xenoblade games becoming bigger I don't think they will have such a lot turnaround as XCX -> XC2 again

Have they become bigger though? X is still the biggest by far

 

[Deleted member 887]

I know all of that.

All I'm saying is that these don't need to be tied to each other. They could just inform developers what are the inputs available. E.g. [touchscreen, railed-in-joycons] vs [split joy cons] vs [pro controller, single joycon] vs etc.

If touchscreen is available then they get input from the touchscreen, if it's unavailable then stop listening inputs. Why should it matter if it's docked or not for this? In a more practical example, montion controls DO work in handheld as long as you connect a controller compatible with it.

All I'm doing is questioning if they're really tying multiple things to a "docked" vs "undocked" state or if people are just assuming so. And if it's the case, as a software developer, I believe this was shortsighted of them.

Sorry I wasn’t clearer. Let me try again

Joy-con, USB devices, and the touchscreen all have different interfaces from the dev perspective.

Joy-con and USB devices are event driven, and games receive disconnect and connect events. When games boot connect events are dummied as part of the boot.

These aren’t hardware ports that are listened to, as the “player 1” device is a abstraction that can change hardware during gameplay, or stay the same hardware while change physical port (such as replacing a dead joy-con mid game or docking the joycons)

The touchscreen is different, as you do connect to it and listen for touches.

None of these are gated by the docked/undocked state directly, however touchscreen and on rail joycons are indirectly gated by docked state, as the hardware will power down the touchscreen when docked, and either force a undocked state change or or put the joycons in a charge only mode when they are railed.

In practice however, the emulation community has discovered that games adjust their control schemes and inputs based on the docked state. Games will ignore touchscreen inputs when docked, even if you emulate them, likely to eliminate a select in the latency sensitive controller loop - possibly an optimization that the higher level portions of the NintendoSDK provides.

Similarly some games with wii like pointer controls will disable them in handheld mode regardless of whether or not the joy-cons are on the rails, not because of any limitation of the hardware but just to provide the “expected” user experience.

I mention how games behave, not for you specifically, but for the larger discussion about how to boost games on Drake. The idea of telling games they’re in docked mode when handheld comes up occasionally as an “easy” win, but the community has already found the pitfalls.

In an ideal world Nintendo would hire some folks in the OC/emu community to bring in the clever and well tested solutions from that world, but it likely invites serious legal problems with third parties.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Is it reasonable to expect that most of the games that received DLSS 2.0 support over the past few years will come to Drake? Maybe devs were just practicing and getting used to DLSS and figured they’d kill two birds with one stone while also preparing for Drake ports?

yea, probably

 

[Deleted member 1324]

I do there's a high chance they will come on switch eventually, but I do think timing matters...

Historically speaking it's been every 2 years at least per main line Zelda game per platform and that includes ports/remasters (but not spin offs, which are usually a year apart in between).

For switch's case; 2017 Botw, 2019 Link's Awakening, 2021 Skyward Sword and 2023 Botw 2.
Spin offs include Hyrule Warriors Remastered in 2018, Cadence of Hyrule in 2019 and Hyrule Warriors AOC in 2020. Spin offs don't matter as much, since they are completely different genre wise and done by third party companies.

Would Nintendo risk cannibalizing their mainline games at only 6 months or less apart? I think nintendo would want to maximize their sales between games. Maximize botw 2 on switch and Drake is their priority, but they also wouldn't want to take sales away from remastered games like TP HD and WW HD, which would be overshadowed by Botw 2.

We'll see. I would personally have at least have a full year at least between main line games, if I was Nitnendo. I would be shocked if TP HD or WW HD came out this Fall and botw 2 out in March/April.

A cut price Remaster aimed at the holiday market won’t cannibalise BotW 2 sales lol. As you wrote, Zelda is almost a yearly franchise at this point for Nintendo between main line, remakes, spin offs and remasters.

 

[Pokemaniac]

This isn't about making safe assumptions, I'm asking because I would like to know how it truly works and there might be people here who may be able to answer that.

@oldpuck has provided some more concrete examples, but the point I'm trying to get at is that, at least with what we know of the docked/handheld dichotomy on the Switch, it's just not really possible to technically enforce a separation between the graphical and power aspects of switching from the rest of it. It can only really happen if Nintendo enforces it by policy, which doesn't really appear to be the case.

 

[MondoMega]

A Xenoblade X remaster feels like a pretty good cross-gen project for 2024-2025. Enhanced on the new model but no reason to be exclusive. Only after that will we see a game from Monolith Soft developed primarily with Drake in mind, I feel.

As for other Nintendo owned studio adoption of Drake, I could imagine:

Retro Studios: Prime 4 will probably be Drake-enhanced at launch (Prime Remastered patched post-launch; hopefully Tropical Freeze too). If they've got their dev pipeline together maybe they can get another game out during the Drake's lifecycle; cross-gen or exclusive depending on the project.

Next Level Games: If they've been working on another project alongside Strikers, it'll be cross-gen. If they've only started planning their next title after Strikers there's a chance it could end up exclusive.

NERD: Could patch rewind support into the N64 app with the Drake's extra memory. Might make platforms like GC and Wii more feasible too.

 

[iNess]

2023 (XC3 'Torna') -> XC4 2027, only chance of another Xenoblade earlier would be a Xenoblade X port which would little sense to make Drake exclusive. With the Xenoblade games becoming bigger I don't think they will have such a lot turnaround as XCX -> XC2 again

 

[iNess]

 

[Hidden04]

Yeah, I think if we see Metroid Prime 1 Remaster or Prime 4 this year, it will be shown alongside new hardware. Zelda Sequel could be shown in fall with a mini update to the original with 4K and 60fps coming before the game's sequel releases.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

Out of curiosity, how come you hide these? There doesn’t seem anything sensitive worth hiding in this.

 

[Dakhil]

Job Openings - Careers at Nintendo of America

Associate Engineer - GPU Tools (NTD), Software Development

careers.nintendo.com

Associate Engineer - GPU Tools (NTD)​

⋮
Description Of Duties

• Development and maintenance on core components of the GPU Tools applications
• Ability to use or learn a variety of languages currently used in development, including C++ and C#
• Writes correct and clean code to defined specifications
• Debugs code effectively within primary area
• Effectively and proactively documents work
• Collaborates with peer groups at Nintendo Co., Ltd. (NCL) and its subsidiaries
• Up to 10% travel; domestic and international

Summary Of Requirements

• 0-3 years related experience
• Solid knowledge of application software design and emerging technologies
• Proficient in C, C++, C# or equivalen
• Experience with WPF is a plus
• Experience with graphics (OpenGL/Vulkan/DirectX) or graphics profiling is a plus
• BS or MS in engineering or equivalent
• Valid passport may be required

 

[ILikeFeet]

speaking of NTD, NERD had a NA branch and a Singaporian branch when they were still Actimagine. we know the NA branch was merged with NTD (apparently it was based in Delaware; I assumed it was shuttered and folks were moved to redmond), but what happened to the Singapore branch?

https://www.edn.com/actimagine-raises-3-7-million/