Some thoughts… A prospective successor will be around for 7-8 years, possibly more. 7 has been the standard for HD consoles. Games are escalating in their scale and increasingly expensive to develop. Also, part of the “uncharted territory” is selling as much as they are in the 7th year. On a successor, said territory is no longer uncharted. That’s just as true for their partners. 7 years or more was also common for their portables - DS was around for 7 years, and in production for about 9. 3DS was around for 7 years, and in production for about 8. For all sorts of logical and practical reasons, there won’t be a “Pro” for their successors, and there never will. You can thank me for telling you this so that you don’t get sucked into rumour mill grifts driven by certain Youtubers and gaming publications. Developers don’t want it, especially smaller studios which target multiple platforms, and where an extra performance profile would stretch resources thin/to a point where port costs aren’t worthwhile.
8nm is highly unlikely because it’s an end-of-the-line process, which alludes to further shrinkages being near impossible - That’s something they’ll need to consider when doing a Lite/hardware revision. Also, it’s clear that this SoC has been developed alongside Nvidia’s Lovelace products, and there were whispers about a future Nintendo console having a Lovelace GPU in it as far back as 2021 - Some conflated this with the idea of a “Pro” system, but it was always the successor, and that’s been why I’ve always said that it’s better to exercise more patience, if it means we get a higher performance in the next console. Lovelace starts on Nvidia’s custom 4nm/5nm process, and it offers the best value, as others have demonstrated here - So, before “Nintendo is cheap” trolls get in their drive-by car, you’ll have to decide if that “cheapness” means they’ll apply it to get the better process, or pay more for a worse one because of a foundationless, perceived “aversion to the idea of more performance”. Take your pick. It can’t be both. I have thoughts on whether it’s full Ampere, or full Lovelace, or elements of both, but I won’t go into more details in this post (I refuse to call it Lovelamp, so, let’s go with Amperada…).
But let’s also speak to the possibility of the 8nm process - If they decide to go with that, it’s because they’ve done enough due diligence to give it the green light. So, I’m not seeing it right now for the panic, it feels a little overcooked on here. The Orin products and others made on this process have featured automotive elements, and it’s entirely possible that this was a factor in the SoC performance, heating issues, and clock speed limitations. Also, the CPUs were multi-clustered. Furthermore, the Orin products haven’t been built with RT or DLSS in mind. The truth is that none of us have enough to determine the extent to which these factors were a hindrance, whether it was the sum of those elements rather than the process itself. However, Nintendo’s SoC won’t have any of these concerns I listed, so, the Orin tools posted much earlier in this thread are extremely flawed for that reason, and they shouldn’t be taken as an indicator of the power consumption or performance. We can also concentrate on what’s being reported, where it can be traced to the horse’s mouth and developers. If, between now, reveal, and launch, developers express dissent or dissatisfaction with the successor’s performance, then, and only then will there be a reason to be concerned. I don’t believe we’re anywhere near close to that point at all, and we can continue daring to expect, based on the latest reports.
