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

I’m just like extremely optimistic about the succ using DLSS/FSR with many og switch games mostly first party already targeting 30/60fps
I'm not completely gung-ho on DLSS being used for Nintendo games, at least. EPD is probably gonna go without AA still. the costs for DLSS to 4K output might be a bit on the high side for most games. maybe either let the tv upscale it or spatial scale to 4K
 
The question is if its worth it to go beyond 8GB with Xbox Series S sitting at 8GB. Series S has basically set the baseline so would developers really get much out of having an extra 4GB of memory? Maybe because Switch 2 wont be using an SSD having the ability to store more assets in RAM would be a big deal?
4k frames eat up quite a bit of memory, if Nintendo is serious about wanting 4K games then more than 8GB would be smart.
Series S was made to target 1440p and yet it ends up typically running games around 1080p.
 
I'm not completely gung-ho on DLSS being used for Nintendo games, at least. EPD is probably gonna go without AA still. the costs for DLSS to 4K output might be a bit on the high side for most games. maybe either let the tv upscale it or spatial scale to 4K
DLSS is anti-aliasing if that is what you are referring to here.
 
I'm not completely gung-ho on DLSS being used for Nintendo games, at least. EPD is probably gonna go without AA still. the costs for DLSS to 4K output might be a bit on the high side for most games. maybe either let the tv upscale it or spatial scale to 4K
They might forego DLSS in bc titles, but definitely not in Switch 2 titles. They might not all be 4k, but they’ll definitely use DLSS in general.
 
That makes sense, yeah. I don't doubt there might be some exclusive features that only Drake could pull off whether access to certain accessories or additional horsepower under the hood, I guess I'm just trying to brainstorm what kind of firmware improvements could still be made as features to announce to Switch owners now before Drake releases to justify a full number jump. Within the confines of no themes, I'm honestly drawing a blank, and with that I guess nothing substantial could be added until Drake releases and we see what it's capable of.
I can definitely think of a few features they could add, like improving the UI for the groups feature a bit or adding per game button remapping profiles. I just don't think stuff like that is going to be prioritized until Drake is ready to go.
 
That's what I'm referring to. EPD might still go for a raw image
I doubt it. But it'll depend on the game. They're not nearly as allergic to AA or image reconstruction as people make them out to be. They just make that decision as a matter of optimisation. DLSS will make that decision a lot easier. Games that don't need if don't need it. Games that need it need it. Targeting a lower-than-native output resolution will do them no favours. And no developer is going to lean on a TV's internal upscaling for anything.
 
If Switch 2 is sending a 2160p signal to a 4K TV, regardless of whatever resolution the content is the TV will not upscale it by default since it's a 1:1 pixel mapping, the upscaling to 3840x2160 for subnative content will be done by the Switch 2's GPU and may be nearest neighbor or bilinear unless otherwise specified. Like on my NVIDIA GPU I always have the output set to 4K but run some games at 1080p integer scaled.
 
I doubt it. But it'll depend on the game. They're not nearly as allergic to AA or image reconstruction as people make them out to be. They just make that decision as a matter of optimisation. DLSS will make that decision a lot easier. Games that don't need if don't need it. Games that need it need it. Targeting a lower-than-native output resolution will do them no favours. And no developer is going to lean on a TV's internal upscaling for anything.
a lot of EPD's games could use some AA, to be honest

That wouldn’t make much sense when DLSS would be cheaper than native.
Why render native 1440p when they can do DLSS for example?
I'd say the same with TAA, especially after Xenoblade 3 made good use of it, TAA might be more limited in usage than DLSS, but for a lot of their games, it would have cleaned up the image a good bit
 
a lot of EPD's games could use some AA, to be honest


I'd say the same with TAA, especially after Xenoblade 3 made good use of it, TAA might be more limited in usage than DLSS, but for a lot of their games, it would have cleaned up the image a good bit
The big difference is that TAA doesn’t save performance versus running the game with no AA, while DLSS is all about performance savings. Like Concert said, I think their lack of AA is usually more of an optimization thing, and using DLSS would line up with that development philosophy perfectly. Why would they waste power and performance on running a game natively at a higher res?
 
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Why limit to 8? Flagships have 12GB or 16GB of ram. Some have 20GB


Yes. Devs are cutting some features because the Series S is lacking ram. Sure Drake I'll be weaker than the series S, but if the ram is cheap enough, no reason to not use it. 12GB is a common enough option for it to be on the table
the standard S23 is still 8GB, the Ultras have 16GB
I'm thinking along the lines of how plentiful the 8GB modules could be vis-a-vis other configurations. If the new phone are using 8GB modules in a single block, then i feel it increases the chance Drake could use 2x of those.

Edit: pulled up an old S22 teardown and it appears the memory module is a single chip. so i would assume S23 would be the same.

 
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the standard S23 is still 8GB, the Ultras have 16GB
I'm thinking along the lines of how plentiful the 8GB modules could be vis-a-vis other configurations. If the new phone are using 8GB modules in a single block, then i feel it increases the chance Drake could use 2x of those.

Edit: pulled up an old S22 teardown and it appears the memory module is a single chip. so i would assume S23 would be the same.

16GB would kind of help with the way slower read speeds (presumably, still means third parties would need to manage their assets differently and load more strategically into the ram), but man, that would hold almost TotK as a whole in its memory... (i know, after sharing it with the OS and the GPU that's not true anymore, but it also doesn't need to)

Im just curious how much power 16GB would draw compared to say 8 or 12.
 
16GB would kind of help with the way slower read speeds (presumably, still means third parties would need to manage their assets differently and load more strategically into the ram), but man, that would hold almost TotK as a whole in its memory... (i know, after sharing it with the OS and the GPU that's not true anymore, but it also doesn't need to)

Im just curious how much power 16GB would draw compared to say 8 or 12.
16GB will be the best, 12GB will be good, 8GB will be bad
 
16GB will be the best, 12GB will be good, 8GB will be bad
oh, i am not sure if 8 would be bad, but it would not be ideal. 12 is what i expected, 16 would be great.
Im still interested in how big the power draw impact is compared between those 3.
 
is there a way for someone to find out what was redacted from the CMA documents lol when i heard this news yesterday when i was at work, i was hoping for something more concrete
 
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Sure, but the exciting thing is that there is no reason to update the OS with this feature unless the its going to apply to a future model. Which tells us they are starting to prepare the OS to be compatible with a new model that has a lot more memory than current Switch. At this point its nice to see anything that suggest Nintendo is preparing their systems for the next Switch. How far in advance would they start to implement these features? Nobody knows for sure, but to me it seems reasonable that the next Switch will be arriving by the time OS revision 17.0 drops. Could be wishful thinking, but I cant help but really hope we will be gaming on Switch 2 within the next 13 months, so anything that helps keep that hope alive is welcome.

The fact that they're updating the OS to support higher RAM capacities is definitely an indication that they're adding support for a new model, I was just responding to a suggestion that the fact that it technically supports RAM capacities >32GB means they're already preparing for hardware after the new model (Switch 3 or Switch 2 Pro or whatever).

Nintendo is a little harmed by the fact that mobile RAM is awful for gaming and there's no real reason to do R&D on making it better.

The Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck are the only devices that could significantly benefit from large bandwidth, low power-draw RAM so large bandwidth, low power-draw RAM doesn't exist.

Mobile RAM is far from awful, and I'd actually wager that more R&D money goes into improving LPDDR than any other memory type. It's simply limited by physics; moving data to and from RAM consumes power, and the more data you move the more power you're consuming. A device like the Switch can only afford to allocate a handful of Watts to RAM, so they're limited to whatever memory type gives them the most bandwidth within that power constraint. LPDDR memory types designed entirely to optimise for this, giving the highest bandwidth per Watt that current technology (and cost) allows, so they're as good a fit for Switch as you're going to get.

The only way to improve bandwidth per Watt meaningfully with today's technology would be to go the HBM route, with a wider, slower interface, connected via an interposer rather than over PCB traces. A hypothetical LP-HBM memory designed for that purpose would probably get higher bandwidth than LPDDR5X in the same power constraint, but would almost certainly be way too expensive for any device in Switch's price range.

As of today, for regular LPDDR5, I do see 64-bit 18 GB modules on Samsung's website, so make that 36 GB.
And if we stretch our definition of 'LPDDR5' to include 5X, there is Grace with a stated max of 512 GB on 512-bit bus, thus implying that 128 GB on 128-bit bus should be theoretically possible.

I think that 64-bit 4 GB modules have been seen in the wild? As that's why our current floor is 8 GB total.
There are both 32-bit and 64-bit 8 GB modules. There are no 128-bit modules at all (so forget the idea of a single module setup).

I'm still not yet sold on the possibility of 8 GB:
1. I am 99% confident that the [REDACTED] will outlive regular LPDDR5, just like base Switch did regular LPDDR4. Whether it's now or a revision down the road, there will be a move to LPDDR5X.
2. While not at the same level, I'm still highly confident that in the scenario where [REDACTED]v1 uses regular LPDDR5 and then [REDACTED]v2 switches to 5X, both v1 and v2 will have the same amount of ram. Ergo, the floor I'm keeping an eye on is 5X's. As of today, that floor is still 12 GB for a 128-bit bus.

Thanks, I'd forgotten about the weird 18GB modules.

At the moment, the only 4GB 64bit LPDDR5 modules I'm aware of are used in Apple's M2 MacBooks, which use two 4GB modules for the 8GB configuration. However, those are on-package with the SoC, and I don't think they're standard LPDDR5 modules, so they may still not be available off-the-shelf for a customer like Nintendo.
 
Would be very funny if EPD decided to just do 1080p with no DLSS because they have a bizarre hatred of anything like anti-aliasing.
EPD games that target 1080p on Nintendo Switch would be able to run natively at 4K on Drake.

1080p isn't going to disappear with Drake, but I'll be the exception rather than the rule.
 
Nintendo teams can put out technically impressive games if the hardware allows. I don't think it's useful to discuss scenarios where they skip a key feature in their own hardware. I would assume DLSS would be at the SDK level and would be widely used by the team
 
Would be very funny if EPD decided to just do 1080p with no DLSS because they have a bizarre hatred of anything like anti-aliasing.
They often don't use any AA because it's computationally expensive on something like a Switch and is blurry af on low resolutions. I actually applaud the lack of TAA on Switch games, because I prefer an aliased image over a vaselined one.

But DLSS has the advantage of greatly helping performance while often being less blurry than TAA and other cheap AA techniques. Even more so when starting from a higher internal resolution, which will be the case considering the big jump in performance.

Also we have to keep in mind Nintendo can customize some aspects of DLSS, by chosing a profile that reconstructs less but with less ghosting/blurring.
 
EPD games that target 1080p on Nintendo Switch would be able to run natively at 4K on Drake.

1080p isn't going to disappear with Drake, but I'll be the exception rather than the rule.

That is exciting to think about. A game like Mario Kart 8 could run native 4K on Drake with higher resolution textures, superior texture filter, better lighting and shadows and still not drop a frame. We really are talking about a generational leap in hardware. All the teams at Nintendo have been very savvy with making the most of their limit resources on the current hardware and they are about to get a massive boost in performance to work with.

Metroid Prime Remastered looks great on Switch, but after 30 hours of play there are still some limitations that show up. Texture filtering looks to be trilinear and you will notice some LOD pop in here and there. If Prime 4 were to be a cross gen title, its not hard to see how the game could target the base Switch and still look very nice similar to Remastered, and on Switch 2 all those little visual blemishes would go away. 4K resolution with proper AA, far superior texture filtering and absolutely no visible LOD pop in would make for a very fine looking Switch 2 game.
 
That is exciting to think about. A game like Mario Kart 8 could run native 4K on Drake with higher resolution textures, superior texture filter, better lighting and shadows and still not drop a frame. We really are talking about a generational leap in hardware. All the teams at Nintendo have been very savvy with making the most of their limit resources on the current hardware and they are about to get a massive boost in performance to work with.

Metroid Prime Remastered looks great on Switch, but after 30 hours of play there are still some limitations that show up. Texture filtering looks to be trilinear and you will notice some LOD pop in here and there. If Prime 4 were to be a cross gen title, its not hard to see how the game could target the base Switch and still look very nice similar to Remastered, and on Switch 2 all those little visual blemishes would go away. 4K resolution with proper AA, far superior texture filtering and absolutely no visible LOD pop in would make for a very fine looking Switch 2 game.
Honestly I wouldn't expect many, if any, changes to textures or polygons. Texture filtering, sure. I don't think many Switch games actually NEED improvements to much other than resolution and framerate, and as it happens those are the easiest to implement. Unless it's cross gen, I expect a lot of games with Drake updates to be nothing more than code changes, lightweight and less time consuming, still extremely appealing. Of course, such a solution still helps with pop-in!

I don't mean to sound like I'm dooming, this is what I WANT them to do. Bayonetta 3 is visually pretty flawless, all it needs is a res bump and a stable framerate.

Though I remember when Switch launched, people were complaining about bilinear scaling and sighing about how it couldn't do trilinear. Now here we are bemoaning trilinear.
 
That is exciting to think about. A game like Mario Kart 8 could run native 4K on Drake with higher resolution textures, superior texture filter, better lighting and shadows and still not drop a frame. We really are talking about a generational leap in hardware. All the teams at Nintendo have been very savvy with making the most of their limit resources on the current hardware and they are about to get a massive boost in performance to work with.

Metroid Prime Remastered looks great on Switch, but after 30 hours of play there are still some limitations that show up. Texture filtering looks to be trilinear and you will notice some LOD pop in here and there. If Prime 4 were to be a cross gen title, its not hard to see how the game could target the base Switch and still look very nice similar to Remastered, and on Switch 2 all those little visual blemishes would go away. 4K resolution with proper AA, far superior texture filtering and absolutely no visible LOD pop in would make for a very fine looking Switch 2 game.
Regarding MP I think including some actually good realtime lighting could be a massive plus. In MP Remastered the baked lighting looks fantastic, but the dynamic lights are very meh and Samus' suit could really benefit from some AO.
 
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Honestly I wouldn't expect many, if any, changes to textures or polygons. Texture filtering, sure. I don't think many Switch games actually NEED improvements to much other than resolution and framerate, and as it happens those are the easiest to implement. Unless it's cross gen, I expect a lot of games with Drake updates to be nothing more than code changes, lightweight and less time consuming, still extremely appealing. Of course, such a solution still helps with pop-in!

I don't mean to sound like I'm dooming, this is what I WANT them to do. Bayonetta 3 is visually pretty flawless, all it needs is a res bump and a stable framerate.

Though I remember when Switch launched, people were complaining about bilinear scaling and sighing about how it couldn't do trilinear. Now here we are bemoaning trilinear.

There's a few gaps between DMC5 and Bayonetta 3 other than framerate and resolution.
 
Honestly I wouldn't expect many, if any, changes to textures or polygons. Texture filtering, sure. I don't think many Switch games actually NEED improvements to much other than resolution and framerate, and as it happens those are the easiest to implement. Unless it's cross gen, I expect a lot of games with Drake updates to be nothing more than code changes, lightweight and less time consuming, still extremely appealing. Of course, such a solution still helps with pop-in!

I don't mean to sound like I'm dooming, this is what I WANT them to do. Bayonetta 3 is visually pretty flawless, all it needs is a res bump and a stable framerate.

Though I remember when Switch launched, people were complaining about bilinear scaling and sighing about how it couldn't do trilinear. Now here we are bemoaning trilinear.
there definitely will be higher res textures (perhaps less compression?) and maybe higher poly assets ... I could see polygons mostly staying the same but on the dev side you'll have two completely separate branches for a game being cross platform developed

If you're just talking about patching older games then it may be too much work to be worth it for most games ... yeah.
 
there definitely will be higher res textures (perhaps less compression?) and maybe higher poly assets ... I could see polygons mostly staying the same but on the dev side you'll have two completely separate branches for a game being cross platform developed

If you're just talking about patching older games then it may be too much work to be worth it for most games ... yeah.

Do we expect Switch carts to work on Switch 2?
Do we expect cross-gen games to have two distinct SKUs or eShop entries?

I hope Nintendo handles cross-gen the same way as Xbox.
I would buy a digital game on the eShop and I would be able to play it on either my current Switch or the Switch 2 when I get it.
I would buy a physical game for both Switch and Switch 2 and it would download a distinct configuration file and high-res DLC pack for Switch 2.

In which case, cross-gen games would be a single codebase with varying configurations.
 
Do we expect Switch carts to work on Switch 2?
Do we expect cross-gen games to have two distinct SKUs or eShop entries?

I hope Nintendo handles cross-gen the same way as Xbox.
I would buy a digital game on the eShop and I would be able to play it on either my current Switch or the Switch 2 when I get it.
I would buy a physical game for both Switch and Switch 2 and it would download a distinct configuration file and high-res DLC pack for Switch 2.

In which case, cross-gen games would be a single codebase with varying configurations.
however they manage their project files- I'd expect different builds for each hardware so yeah- Switch build would have it's own settings and Switch Next would have it's settings with the appropriate resolution assets...

I'd expect old carts to work on new systems...
If I were the one making the calls you buy one sku of the game and it knows the system and downloads the appropriate patches if you're on a newer system exactly like you said.
 
Do we know what the technical issue was with macronix mass producing 32GB cards for Switch? It was slated for sometime in 2019 and it's been radio silence since. We known they can make them but not at the prices Nintendno was expecting and most games these.days default to 16GB cards
 
Do we know what the technical issue was with macronix mass producing 32GB cards for Switch? It was slated for sometime in 2019 and it's been radio silence since. We known they can make them but not at the prices Nintendno was expecting and most games these.days default to 16GB cards
I believe Takahasi Mochizuki mentioned Nintendo having technical issues with 64 GB Game Cards, not 32 GB Game Cards. But nobody knows what the technical issues are.
 
I suspect as long as the technology exists to put 8-16 gigs of your game on a cart and have the consumer download the rest ... no one will ever use more than that ... maybe a few outliers ...
But there really is no incentive for developers to use larger carts
 
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There are a few minor issues with gamecard compat, all of which I imagine are solvable.

Considering how storage bound gamecards are, Nintendo is unlikely to ship Switch and NuSwitch versions on the same cards. Because of that, I assume they would want to make them physically distinct. You wouldn't want users to plug-in NuSwitch carts into Mariko based devices then report the cart as defective, or for NuSwitch users to buy Switch carts and then get a reduced experience and complain.

If Nintendo would like to push storage speeds, then they'll also probably want to update the pinout to increase bandwidth. DS shipped with two card slots, considering how I imagine NuSwitch will have a space premium, I don't think they'd go that route. Making a connector that readily supports multiple form factors sucks it's easily the pissiest engineering problem. Users will find a way to stick in wrong.
 
There are a few minor issues with gamecard compat, all of which I imagine are solvable.

Considering how storage bound gamecards are, Nintendo is unlikely to ship Switch and NuSwitch versions on the same cards. Because of that, I assume they would want to make them physically distinct. You wouldn't want users to plug-in NuSwitch carts into Mariko based devices then report the cart as defective, or for NuSwitch users to buy Switch carts and then get a reduced experience and complain.

If Nintendo would like to push storage speeds, then they'll also probably want to update the pinout to increase bandwidth. DS shipped with two card slots, considering how I imagine NuSwitch will have a space premium, I don't think they'd go that route. Making a connector that readily supports multiple form factors sucks it's easily the pissiest engineering problem. Users will find a way to stick in wrong.
I imagine they could make the carts have extra pins that only can be read in the new device... thus allowing the same carts to be put in either system? not sure the engineering that goes into that (lanes and speeds and i/o issues)
 
There are a few minor issues with gamecard compat, all of which I imagine are solvable.

Considering how storage bound gamecards are, Nintendo is unlikely to ship Switch and NuSwitch versions on the same cards. Because of that, I assume they would want to make them physically distinct. You wouldn't want users to plug-in NuSwitch carts into Mariko based devices then report the cart as defective, or for NuSwitch users to buy Switch carts and then get a reduced experience and complain.

If Nintendo would like to push storage speeds, then they'll also probably want to update the pinout to increase bandwidth. DS shipped with two card slots, considering how I imagine NuSwitch will have a space premium, I don't think they'd go that route. Making a connector that readily supports multiple form factors sucks it's easily the pissiest engineering problem. Users will find a way to stick in wrong.
I severely doubt cross-generation titles will use seperate Game Cards. I also doubt we'll see any change to the Game Cards other than pin changes in the region of the Game Card PCB already visible from the outside.

Like today, if a Switch [REDACTED] game can't fit everything on the card, it can fit the rest on the eShop servers. That's how Xbox deals with it.

I really don't think it's that big a deal - or that big a hurdle. There just wasn't that much of a stink made about New 3DS cards fitting 3DS, or DSi Cards in DS.
 
Do we expect Switch carts to work on Switch 2?
Do we expect cross-gen games to have two distinct SKUs or eShop entries?

I hope Nintendo handles cross-gen the same way as Xbox.
I would buy a digital game on the eShop and I would be able to play it on either my current Switch or the Switch 2 when I get it.
I would buy a physical game for both Switch and Switch 2 and it would download a distinct configuration file and high-res DLC pack for Switch 2.

In which case, cross-gen games would be a single codebase with varying configurations.
I expect the physical cart interface to remain backwards compatible, and allow for carts that support both. For space/offline reasons, I expect there will be even less separation between the versions of a game than on Xbox, as Nintendo would likely want both on a single cartridge to be the norm.
There are a few minor issues with gamecard compat, all of which I imagine are solvable.

Considering how storage bound gamecards are, Nintendo is unlikely to ship Switch and NuSwitch versions on the same cards. Because of that, I assume they would want to make them physically distinct. You wouldn't want users to plug-in NuSwitch carts into Mariko based devices then report the cart as defective, or for NuSwitch users to buy Switch carts and then get a reduced experience and complain.

If Nintendo would like to push storage speeds, then they'll also probably want to update the pinout to increase bandwidth. DS shipped with two card slots, considering how I imagine NuSwitch will have a space premium, I don't think they'd go that route. Making a connector that readily supports multiple form factors sucks it's easily the pissiest engineering problem. Users will find a way to stick in wrong.
They usually use tabs to ensure you can't insert a cart where it doesn't belong, but not always. Sometimes the game is just reported as incompatible. Could go either way, especially if the update partition is kept compatible.
 
I expect the physical cart interface to remain backwards compatible, and allow for carts that support both. For space/offline reasons, I expect there will be even less separation between the versions of a game than on Xbox, as Nintendo would likely want both on a single cartridge to be the norm.

They usually use tabs to ensure you can't insert a cart where it doesn't belong, but not always. Sometimes the game is just reported as incompatible. Could go either way, especially if the update partition is kept compatible.
I wonder if there exists games with larger update partitions than the game file.
 
Nintendo re-posted an updated NSO trailer. They've done it before usually around when they expect a fresh wave of customers like around the holidays.
 
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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