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

Does Rockstar target 30fps because that’s their target, or are the consoles just not powerful enough to run them at 60fps?
Kind of a tough question. I think Rockstar picks 30 FPS because they have certain design goals in mind, and I also don't think their games would be nearly as ambitious if the target was 60 FPS. If GTA5 targeted 60 FPS on 7th gen I can't imagine how compromised the game would have been compared to what we got, and look at the performance even when they targeted 30 (it also had some performance issues on 8th gen consoles too, but not as pronounced):

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Could we maybe see a 40FPS mode? Possibly, but I wouldn't count on it

edit: so tl;dr for my answer, the consoles could do 60 but it would be a completely different game
 
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An understated boon in this AAA world that we're in is that the Switch 2 makes AAA titles vastly more accessible to a whole swathe of people. What if you don't have a very good PC rig? what if you still have an aging graphics card and don't know if/when you'll have the money to upgrade?

Bam, you have a solid port on the Switch 2 that you can literally take with you wherever you want. Maybe it's only playing on "Medium" settings, but paying $60 for a Switch 2 port is far cheaper and easier than having to upgrade a graphics card, CPU, or whatever you need to play on your most ideal settings. For loads of people, especially who really care about the convenience of portability, that's "enough".
 
So...
Do you think they will end up calling the new feature "MouseCon" as so many (including myself) mention here? "JoyMouse"? "Mouse Mode"?

And do you think it will be tied with the new "C" button? Or will that be a separate feature altogether?
JoyCursor, JoyPoint, something like that. Or they don't even name it and just say it has an optical sensor and UI refers to it as such in settings and whatnot (Enable Optical Mode). Seems clunky sounding but a lot of people didn't know what gyro control meant at one point either and that concept seems less common to me than an optical sensor.
 
Seems like they already have, all their speculation about Switch 2 has been so focused on PS4 ports, while we now get more and more confirmations of PS5 games coming over. Metal Gear Solid Delta, Rebirth etc. No chance the Switch 2 is a base PS4 given the ease these publishers have in getting big PS5 games on the Switch 2. Its obvious that they are missing some key facts regarding the Switch 2 capabilities.
i personally believe DF is holding onto their switch 2 rtx 2050 rough comparison as a reference too closely and making very conservative estimates in order to have them be exceeded by final results, rather than estimating higher and having the final product potentially perform worse than anticipated

one of those two scenarios gets them a lot less backlash than the other, so honestly it's perfectly understandable for them to do
 
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JoyCursor, JoyPoint, something like that. Or they don't even name it and just say it has an optical sensor and UI refers to it as such in settings and whatnot (Enable Optical Mode). Seems clunky sounding but a lot of people didn't know what gyro control meant at one point either and that concept seems less common to me than an optical sensor.
JoyMouse, with backing track by JoyDivision
 
Seems like they already have, all their speculation about Switch 2 has been so focused on PS4 ports, while we now get more and more confirmations of PS5 games coming over. Metal Gear Solid Delta, Rebirth etc. No chance the Switch 2 is a base PS4 given the ease these publishers have in getting big PS5 games on the Switch 2. Its obvious that they are missing some key facts regarding the Switch 2 capabilities.
I guess we'll have to see. I don't think there's anything impressive about a UE4 (Rebirth) game coming over, and we haven't even seen Delta (UE5) in action yet so it's hard to say what it will be doing. I imagine it will have a 60 FPS mode on some of the current gen home consoles at least, though.

edit: Sorry we have seen gameplay of MGS Delta, and it doesn't look like a cutting edge UE5 game and they already confirmed a 1080p60fps mode for PS5 and XSX. I could easily see a lower internal res 30fps mode for the Switch 2 happening.

Most of the games that Nate heard could be making the trip over to Switch 2 aren't too surprising so far, even if you subscribe to DF's performance camp. MSFS2024 being the big exception. We'll have to see how that one pans out, I could see it being exclusively cloud streaming but if it isn't cloud and it gets a solid port that will be pretty impressive.

GTA6 coming over would silence all the doubters 100%
 
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I understand :) Though it is really impossible to judge the screen because it will basically be almost always the case this is composited. I mean you see this in both the Reveal and Oled trailer, it would be almost impossible to get the screen in so many different settings without any reflections. In the Oled trailer I believe it's even the case the whole console just is a 3D rendering at some points.

I mean for the OLED trailer it seems kinda obvious they wanted to show the best possible quality of Footage, I mean this is the whole point of this model variation.
I know, I said this in my original reply.
 
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I keep hearing about the performance mode on Rebirth, even though there's a dynamic 2160p 30 mode right there. Switch can drop to 25% of the internal render pixels down to 1080p, or lower, and DLSS to higher, with a 30 FPS target.

A 60 FPS target on NS2 is a different story.
Makes sense. I couldn't recall if I'd read last year some complaints about the 30fps mode too, or if the 30fps mode was being upscaled to 4K from a lower internal resolution
easily. FF7R2 just has a really bad implementation of TAA. it honestly shouldn't even be as bad as it is
Exciting. Didn't realize (or forgot) that TAA was the root cause of people's complaints.
 
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I think anyone expecting over 30fps for most games is setting themselves up for disappointment.
Regardless of hardware, developers have shown they will almost always target 30fps on consoles.
The only thing you can really do about that at a system level would be to implement framegen, but given what we know we shouldn't expect framegen.

Some people have been very vocal about wanting 60fps minimum (vocal minority?) but I think companies are still mostly viewing this as a premium offering like PS5 Pro.
If Nintendo decides to listen they could certainly target their own games for 60fps though.
 
I guess we'll have to see. I don't think there's anything impressive about a UE4 (Rebirth) game coming over, and we haven't even seen Delta (UE5) in action yet so it's hard to say what it will be doing. I imagine it will have a 60 FPS mode on some of the current gen home consoles at least, though.

edit: Sorry we have seen gameplay of MGS Delta, and it doesn't look like a cutting edge UE5 game and they already confirmed a 1080p60fps mode for PS5 and XSX. I could easily see a lower internal res 30fps mode for the Switch 2 happening.

Most of the games that Nate heard could be making the trip over to Switch 2 aren't too surprising so far, even if you subscribe to DF's performance camp. MSFS2024 being the big exception. We'll have to see how that one pans out, I could see it being exclusively cloud streaming but if it isn't cloud and it gets a solid port that will be pretty impressive.

GTA6 coming over would silence all the doubters 100%
I’ve been saying this about GTA for years. It kills two birds with one stone.
 
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I think anyone expecting over 30fps for most games is setting themselves up for disappointment.
Regardless of hardware, developers have shown they will almost always target 30fps on consoles.
The only thing you can really do about that at a system level would be to implement framegen, but given what we know we shouldn't expect framegen.

Some people have been very vocal about wanting 60fps minimum (vocal minority?) but I think companies are still mostly viewing this as a premium offering like PS5 Pro.
If Nintendo decides to listen they could certainly target their own games for 60fps though.

While I agree with you that 60 fps on Switch 2 games will be a lesser, there are a lot of 60 fps games on PS5 and Series X. Performance modes are pretty common now a days.

I think we'll see more attempts at 60 fps modes on Switch 2
 
Zero chance unless SE is going digital only for the FF7Rebirth port.
I think people are going to have to get used to 32GB to start the game, the rest goes on your internal memory/SD Card. Can see a lot of devs passing on even 64GB.
I thought we discovered over a year ago that there’s 128GB carts. And for what looked to be relatively cheap especially compared to the 32GB carts.


64GB here could simply be for testing purposes as A) not every game is going to be >64GB, many cases where games are just 50GB or they are 57GB or they are 60GB (these are for example purposes) and B) switch and by extension the switch 2, will be physically dominant platforms and will continue to be so for the next several years. It has a growing digital share, but physical retail is still dominant. So that will be a major factor for pubs.
 
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I know we were all banking on TSMC 4N, but headlines like these push the narrative that things are REALLY bad for Samsung right now and they gave a deal that Nintendo/Nvidia simply couldn't refuse.

Are Samsung's profit margins on chip manufacturing that much higher than on their phone sales? From what I can see, they still sell more than 200 million smartphones a year.

Would chip production for a console that's going to sell less than that in its lifetime actually move the needle on bad stock prices?
 
Are Samsung's profit margins on chip manufacturing that much higher than on their phone sales? From what I can see, they still sell more than 200 million smartphones a year.

Would chip production for a console that's going to sell less than that in its lifetime actually move the needle on bad stock prices?
I believe despite them shipping 200m smartphones a year, it doesn’t mean they ship 200m Samsung silicon.

A lot of those use TSMC iirc.
 
I think anyone expecting over 30fps for most games is setting themselves up for disappointment.
Regardless of hardware, developers have shown they will almost always target 30fps on consoles.
The only thing you can really do about that at a system level would be to implement framegen, but given what we know we shouldn't expect framegen.

Some people have been very vocal about wanting 60fps minimum (vocal minority?) but I think companies are still mostly viewing this as a premium offering like PS5 Pro.
If Nintendo decides to listen they could certainly target their own games for 60fps though.
The 60fps demand really annoys me because it has nothing to do with the console and everything to do with the targets that devs set. Lots of games on Switch are 60fps and lots of games on PS5 are 30fps. That's because 60fps in Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon 3 is the target and other targets like resolution or geometry are scaled back. Likewise, most games on PS5 are super intensive graphically because that's what PS5 users pay for and expect. And even if they could hit 60fps, they'd likely just ramp up the graphics more so that 30fps would be the target again. Even if a more powerful console makes it easier to hit 60fps, there is no console that will provide 60fps if a dev wants to turn every graphics feature available up to the max settings at max resolution in an open world game.

I'm replaying Super Mario Odyssey right now btw and I really am so impressed that this game is a rock-solid 60fps and looks as good as it does. It really doesn't even feel like there were drastic compromises to get to 60fps. It just looks terrific. It reminds me of two facts: firstly, Switch 2 will have more than enough power to make simply amazing looking games (considering Switch 1 can already deliver in this department) and secondly, you don't need even need full native resolution for games to look amazing (SMO and BOTW both look terrific at 900p on a 1080p screen). So, I think even if games on Switch 2 have to settle on 1440p DLSS output to get 60fps to work, it will work and it will look brilliant.

And all that said, I don't think 30fps is such a big deal. I love BOTW and ACNH. If it fits as a solution, it fits. I almost think it makes a game feel slightly more cinematic (so long as it's a stable, solid frame rate) a bit like how watching a film at 24 fps just feels right whereas seeing a film running at a high frame rate feels completely off.
 
I thought we discovered over a year ago that there’s 128GB carts. And for what looked to be relatively cheap especially compared to the 32GB carts.


64GB here could simply be for testing purposes as A) not every game is going to be >64GB, many cases where games are just 50GB or they are 57GB or they are 60GB (these are for example purposes) and B) switch and by extension the switch 2, will be physically dominant platforms and will continue to be so for the next several years. It has a growing digital share, but physical retail is still dominant. So that will be a major factor for pubs.

Unfortunately I think devs will just settle for the lowest denominator, they don't want to probably even give up $2 per unit for a 64GB cart instead of a 32GB.

Gamers can pay for their SD Cards or use their internal storage and I think devs are good with that.
 
Did we get an Foxconn earnings update for the 12th month yet?

Yes

The December revenue number of Foxconn Technology Co. (FTC; subsidiary of Hon Hai/Foxconn Group) has been released:

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(Unit: thousand New Taiwan Dollar)

Their eye-popping monthly growth continues unabated to 15.1+ billion NTD (460+ million USD), a 32% MoM and 382%(!) YoY increase. This is FTC’s highest monthly revenue since at least 2018 (I don’t have access to their monthly data before 2019)—higher than the v2/Lite launch (13.5+ billion NTD) and OLED model launch (12.5+ billion NTD). Since 70% of FTC’s revenue came from Nintendo alone, and the company did not forecast any revenue increases for the other lines of business, the swelling incomes of the last two months most likely were generated from the Switch 2 mass production.

As mentioned last month, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) stipulate that revenue is only recognized when control of the asset is transferred to the customer. The December revenue indicates that there were even more completed Switch 2 in retail boxes shipped to and received by Nintendo (not necessarily overseas; could be warehouses in China).

Edit: The number suggests that they are assembling a larger initial stock for Switch 2 than v2/Lite/OLED. Looks like Nintendo is going to unleash an avalanche of Switch 2 at launch.

Edit 2: Typo
 
Unfortunately I think devs will just settle for the lowest denominator, they don't want to probably even give up $2 per unit for a 64GB cart instead of a 32GB.

Gamers can pay for their SD Cards or use their internal storage and I think devs are good with that.
They didn’t do that on the switch though? There were 8GB and 16GB, even 4GB and ofc the aforementioned 32GB cards. 16GB was still the most commonly used card.

it’s tinfoil-y to suggest they’ll go for the worst possible scenario ngl.
 
Unless I'm mistaken, one of the formats supported by the FDE is what Nintendo has been using for their games since the beginning, including BotW. So a patch to move that functionality over from the CPU to the FDE wouldn't require much.
The FDE won't do much for Switch 1 games. You could dedicate the 4 free CPU cores to decompression for Switch 1 titles if you want but it won't help much in getting data off the old cards faster.
 
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I know we were all banking on TSMC 4N, but headlines like these push the narrative that things are REALLY bad for Samsung right now and they gave a deal that Nintendo/Nvidia simply couldn't refuse.

I can't read the article, does this article have anything to do with Nintendo at all? Because I'm guessing it's more about securing deals on Nvidia's future (mostly AI focused) products.
And I'd argue of how the Switch 2 affects Samsung in 2025 is mostly out of Nvidia's hands now.
 
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I can't read the article, does this article have anything to do with Nintendo at all? Because I'm guessing it's more about securing deals on Nvidia's future (mostly AI focused) products.
And I'd argue of how the Switch 2 affects Samsung in 2025 is mostly out of Nvidia's hands now.
Nvidia would be the one cutting the deal with Samsung for Drake chips. Nintendo buys said chips from Nvidia. So Samsung securing drake's production gives them a lot of product to be paid for. And it keeps lines operating for years
 
Nvidia would be the one cutting the deal with Samsung for Drake chips. Nintendo buys said chips from Nvidia. So Samsung securing drake's production gives them a lot of product to be paid for. And it keeps lines operating for years
But that already happened years ago. Nvidia can't do much about Switch 2 demand.
 
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t239 has been leaked for years and has has been finallized for quite some time too and its on 8nm things like this dont change in a morth or two or even a year...also switch 2 will definetely use more power both in handheld and docked but due to its bigger size and better cooling
None of the leaks say anything about the node of the chip. Find a source that says otherwise. And it was finalized at the same time as the Ada Lovelace chips, two years later than desktop Ampere.
 
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I know we were all banking on TSMC 4N, but headlines like these push the narrative that things are REALLY bad for Samsung right now and they gave a deal that Nintendo/Nvidia simply couldn't refuse.
This is about Samsung improving their HBM memory modules for high performance computing:

https://archive.ph/oium6

Which is a market an order of magnitude larger than the Switch 2.
 
Does anyone have a rough, ballpark estimate of how many Switch 2 consoles may have rolled off the production lines to date?
Anyone brave enough to try an extrapolation of these numbers to figure out when Nintendo is likely to have a desirable level of stock ready for launch? Say 2.5x the amount of Switch 1 consoles that were ready for launch? (bearing in mind, they've said they want to try to counter scalpers by having lots of stock at launch)
 
As far as I know, the only first party game is TOTK.

I believer Witcher 3 (not sure).
Yeah Witcher 3, and also the DQ Heroes I + II collection, but only in Japan IIRC. Also FFX+X2 remaster in Japan/Asia. Maybe a few others in Japan as well...
 
Hello everyone

Can we expect a confirmation for Thursday today or tomorrow? Or a video shadowdrop?

Probably a question best posed in the Switch 2 Speculation thread, however...

They aren't shadowdropping their new console announcement, so today or tomorrow (likely tomorrow as Donkey Kong Tuesday is upon us).
 
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I know we were all banking on TSMC 4N, but headlines like these push the narrative that things are REALLY bad for Samsung right now and they gave a deal that Nintendo/Nvidia simply couldn't refuse.
This is about Samsung finally being able to deliver HBM memory for Nvidia Blackwell and Rubin AI GPUs. They're also the ones chosen for RTX 5000 GPUs GDDR7 memory.
Curios how good the deal was?
Nvidia only pay for known good die instead of wafer.
Would chip production for a console that's going to sell less than that in its lifetime actually move the needle on bad stock prices?
Samsung Foundry is in a bad shape currently due to continued failure and lack of customers on bleeding edge nodes. So a high-volume multi-year customer like Nintendo would greatly help.
They didn’t do that on the switch though? There were 8GB and 16GB, even 4GB and ofc the aforementioned 32GB cards. 16GB was still the most commonly used card.

it’s tinfoil-y to suggest they’ll go for the worst possible scenario ngl.
There were many cases of publishers/developers choosing a smaller cart size to avoid higher costs. 32GB carts were available since launch but barely used due to exceedingly high costs.

I believe ZhugeEX said that the prices of an 8GB Switch cart was equal to an 25GB Blu-Ray Disc of PS4/XOne.
 
I think if Nintendo really wants Drake on 8nm, they will go through the hoops to make 8 nm lpddr5x memory controller.
But they don't want.

120GB/s is too much bandwidth for low clocks ampere. Since ampere only need 25 GB/s per Tflop, that mean a 4 Tflops Switch 2 is possible on LPDDR5X. below that, or much below that, is cheap use LPDDR5 or even LPDDR4X.

So, do you really think they found a way to have a Switch 2 at 4 Tflops (D)/ 2 Tflops (P) on 8nm?

The high number of SM and the high bandwidth of LPDDR5X point to high clocks. But 8nm don't. So, the wrong is Nintendo to use these or the people that think they tried to put these on 8nm?
 
But they don't want.

120GB/s is too much bandwidth for low clocks ampere. Since ampere only need 25 GB/s per Tflop, that mean a 4 Tflops Switch 2 is possible on LPDDR5X. below that, or much below that, is cheap use LPDDR5 or even LPDDR4X.

So, do you really think they found a way to have a Switch 2 at 4 Tflops (D)/ 2 Tflops (P) on 8nm?

The high number of SM and the high bandwidth of LPDDR5X point to high clocks. But 8nm don't. So, the wrong is Nintendo to use these or the people that think they tried to put these on 8nm?
Don’t forget the bandwidth needs of the CPU.
 
I don't think definitive statements on what GTA6 will or won't do make any sense. I see a lot of its going to overtax the consoles etc. We don't know what the games going to do. One thing we do know is that things like NPCs etc. are scalable as are Ai functions etc.

No one unless they work for rockstar itself and are working on GTA6 can speak definitively one way or the other.
True. I’ve just always found it strange how many people take it as a forgone conclusion that it will appear given the likely technical constraints of Switch 2 hardware and Rockstar’s precedent of sluggishness to port their games to Nintendo hardware. The fact that we JUST got RDR1 and never got a port of GTA V is wild to me.
 
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