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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

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oldpuck said:
Because if we're halfway through the Switch's lifetime, and game releases taper in the back half of a generation, then more than 50% of Switch games have been released?
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I read your 99% as meaning going forward, rather than 99% of total games as of Drake day 0.

oldpuck said:
The rest will be multiplats that turn on features on Drake that are cut for classic switch, but that are likely not heavily optimized for Drake's hardware, again letting the raw power do the job rather than optimizing for the architecture.
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Sure. And letting the Drake portable UI match what was already the docked UI is not something that needs heavy Drake optimization.
 
Skittzo said:
I very much agree with you. Switch has somewhere between 7000 and 8000 games at this point, the vast majority of which will not be patched again in general for whatever reason (lack of time/budget, dev has moved on/ceased to exist/been acquired, etc.), so personally I find it quite silly to think most will be patched to take advantage of Drake, as that will be even tougher for most of these devs.

Mainly I think the higher profile games from bigger publishers and obviously service games are likely to be patched, not much else. I'd guess probably 5% of the library at the very most.
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I know you said at the very most, but 5% of 7000 is 350. I don't think close to 350 games will be patched.
 


This seems like a big ask, but I'm hoping that current third-party ports which modders have been able to crack open with res/framerate improvements (like the ones in this vid) get official Drake patches, since these mods have usually just been editing config files and overclocking. I've seen how many times Assassin's Creed, DOOM '16, Dark Souls, Skyrim, etc. go on sale on the eShop - it'd be nice to draw more attention and sales by advertising patches on the new Switch. I'm not asking for DLSS updates at the moment (though that'd be amazing).
 
I mean 480p didn’t look that bad on the Wii U screen and I believe that was the same or a similar size.

And regarding my point about the DS/3DS display solution, how would a windowed 720p look on a 1080 display? Nintendo didn’t care about DS games being stretched out on the 3DS and allowed for the original aspect ratio to be preserved. How much worse would it look compared to having those boxes on the side of 4:3 content?
 
mariodk18 said:
I mean 480p didn’t look that bad on the Wii U screen and I believe that was the same or a similar size.

And regarding my point about the DS/3DS display solution, how would a windowed 720p look on a 1080 display? Nintendo didn’t care about DS games being stretched out on the 3DS and allowed for the original aspect ratio to be preserved. How much worse would it look compared to having those boxes on the side of 4:3 content?
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2000px-Common_Video_Resolutions_2.svg-57a359045f9b58974a21db67.jpg

Move mentally the 720p to the center and you have your pixel perfect with large bezels.

EDIT: 720p is 2/3 of 1080p in both width and height, so imagine a 4:3 image on 16:9 screen and then you cut on the top and bottom of it until it becomes 16:9.
 
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mariodk18 said:
I mean 480p didn’t look that bad on the Wii U screen and I believe that was the same or a similar size.

And regarding my point about the DS/3DS display solution, how would a windowed 720p look on a 1080 display? Nintendo didn’t care about DS games being stretched out on the 3DS and allowed for the original aspect ratio to be preserved. How much worse would it look compared to having those boxes on the side of 4:3 content?
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The borders would be comparable to GBA games in 1:1 mode on 3DS.
 
mariodk18 said:
Could they further scale that image by x% to fill in the screen more?
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Not if the goal is an integer scale. You'd need a screen that's at least 1440p for that.

If you're okay with a non-integer scale (which Nintendo demonstrably is), it'll just fill the entire screen, because there's no way they're using a non-16:9 screen.
 
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One thing that helped Wii U Gamepad image quality A LOT was that the image was effectively Super Sampled from 720-1080p. Many of the artifacts that many are complaining about the current Swtich screen are aliasing artifacts, which only worsens when you upscale the image.
 
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Aether said:
depending on what the reason is, there is a chance that without a patch bayonetta will have the same slowdowns.
Or, if the problem is the bandwidth, then there is a chance that even without an update it removes the slowdowns.

But the Tensor cores...no. Simply cause 1080 would be in need for more rendering then less, and that would mean higher clock speeds -> more power draw.

Im curious what the unanounced would be.
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Oh I don’t expect a Bayonetta patch 😝

I think on the whole people will be disappointed with regards to patches. Sure games that are dynamic resolution or don’t hit their target framerate will max out on the new hardware but I really don’t expect Nintendo to pay teams to go back and patch the likes of Astral Chain to target 60fps etc. Same thing is happening on PS5 with the likes of The Last Guardian and Bloodborne not getting patched. I do expect the big hitters like BotW, SMO, Smash etc to get DLSS patches though just like Sony have patched their big internal games to run at 60fps on PS5.
 
Polygon said:
Oh I don’t expect a Bayonetta patch 😝

I think on the whole people will be disappointed with regards to patches. Sure games that are dynamic resolution or don’t hit their target framerate will max out on the new hardware but I really don’t expect Nintendo to pay teams to go back and patch the likes of Astral Chain to target 60fps etc. Same thing is happening on PS5 with the likes of The Last Guardian and Bloodborne not getting patched. I do expect the big hitters like BotW, SMO, Smash etc to get DLSS patches though just like Sony have patched their big internal games to run at 60fps on PS5.
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It will be interesting to see how many evergreens get patches, and what kind. MK8DX holds up so well at any scale, and already maxes out frame rate and res, one could imagine giving it not just a DLSS bump but perhaps some raytracing effects for extra pop. On the other hand, BotW, give consistent fps and that will feel huge.

On Switch the heavy hitters have such an insanely high attach rate that Nintendo can't sell more of them without selling more Switches. Nintendo might patch these games purely to give people who upgrade to Drake a stack of base games that look good. Or it might expect Drake to spike new buyers - bring Xbox and PS gamers off the fence - in which case they might give more care to evergreens, expecting a software sales bump to come along with.
 
oldpuck said:
It will be interesting to see how many evergreens get patches, and what kind. MK8DX holds up so well at any scale, and already maxes out frame rate and res, one could imagine giving it not just a DLSS bump but perhaps some raytracing effects for extra pop. On the other hand, BotW, give consistent fps and that will feel huge.

On Switch the heavy hitters have such an insanely high attach rate that Nintendo can't sell more of them without selling more Switches. Nintendo might patch these games purely to give people who upgrade to Drake a stack of base games that look good. Or it might expect Drake to spike new buyers - bring Xbox and PS gamers off the fence - in which case they might give more care to evergreens, expecting a software sales bump to come along with.
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MK probably doesnt even need dlss to reach 4k. Assuming it only gets a res bump.
 
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oldpuck said:
Because if we're halfway through the Switch's lifetime, and game releases taper in the back half of a generation, then more than 50% of Switch games have been released? Because most games aren't AAA or AA games with the budget or resources for second devkits and Drake specific features in order to please the subset of Pro owners who are also handheld players? Because there will be a gap after the Drake launch where teams that do not have devkits yet will be acclimating to the new hardware, while eyeballing sales numbers to decide when to invest?

Perhaps I am wrong here, but I expect the minority of games to have any Drake specific features. The Visual Novels that @Aether pointed out aren't being developed by teams targeting Drake. Indies aren't going to be leveraging the ray tracing features. Games that "struggle" on Switch will improve simply by virtue of running on newer hardware. Nintendo first party games will implement DLSS by default, the Big Franchises will get some more bespoke engine optimizations, as well as any company that Nintendo pays to throw it on top. The rest will be multiplats that turn on features on Drake that are cut for classic switch, but that are likely not heavily optimized for Drake's hardware, again letting the raw power do the job rather than optimizing for the architecture.

If the Switch lifetime is long and Drake sales are good I would expect to see that situation improve, but I strongly believe that we should assume if this is a revision, that the hardware will almost never be taken solid advantage of. Throwing a lot of power into a revision is about putting enough raw silicon in there that you get inefficient-but-easy-and-ubiquitous wins.

I would be very excited to be wrong about that
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Polygon said:
Oh I don’t expect a Bayonetta patch 😝

I think on the whole people will be disappointed with regards to patches. Sure games that are dynamic resolution or don’t hit their target framerate will max out on the new hardware but I really don’t expect Nintendo to pay teams to go back and patch the likes of Astral Chain to target 60fps etc. Same thing is happening on PS5 with the likes of The Last Guardian and Bloodborne not getting patched. I do expect the big hitters like BotW, SMO, Smash etc to get DLSS patches though just like Sony have patched their big internal games to run at 60fps on PS5.
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I mean, for many the improvement for Dynamic Resolution games and games that have Slowdowns whill already be a godsendt.

It clearly depends a lot on how nintendo handles the whole situation (how hard it is to patch, what the documentation/tools are, if there will be a Dev Kit exchange program because they want developers to update and want to give them an incentive)...

I think evergreens will get updates. With many indies, you see them pushing updates years after release, and i could see some of them adding.
Like, im shure there will be a mario kart update, a BotW update, an Animal Crossing update... but not an Arms or Bayonetta update.

Im just not convinced that its a run of the mill revision as the New 3DS was. I feel like this is the switch 2. Its to late for a simple revision, and to keep up. 2 years from now, just running switch games on a somewhat upscaled resolution will not be enough to keep the momentun as is.

Also i want my HDR update for older switch games, i want i want i want =P
 
Serif said:
This seems like a big ask, but I'm hoping that current third-party ports which modders have been able to crack open with res/framerate improvements (like the ones in this vid) get official Drake patches, since these mods have usually just been editing config files and overclocking. I've seen how many times Assassin's Creed, DOOM '16, Dark Souls, Skyrim, etc. go on sale on the eShop - it'd be nice to draw more attention and sales by advertising patches on the new Switch. I'm not asking for DLSS updates at the moment (though that'd be amazing).
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Aether said:
It clearly depends a lot on how nintendo handles the whole situation (how hard it is to patch, what the documentation/tools are, if there will be a Dev Kit exchange program because they want developers to update and want to give them an incentive)...

I think evergreens will get updates. With many indies, you see them pushing updates years after release, and i could see some of them adding.
Like, im shure there will be a mario kart update, a BotW update, an Animal Crossing update... but not an Arms or Bayonetta update.
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I believe that we may see a surprising number of games receiving updates/patches for the new model, even if only to unlock the resolution and/or frame rate (no RT, DLSS, or anything fancy). It'd be a relatively low-cost marketing that benefits the developers, especially if Nintendo creates a new "Drake optimized" section/filter in the eShop to aid their visibility and discoverability. Developers who have released any smartphone games are familiar with this update-as-marketing tactic. I detailed rest of my reasoning in a previous post on Era.
 
fwd-bwd said:
I believe that we may see a surprising number of games receiving updates/patches for the new model, even if only to unlock the resolution and/or frame rate (no RT, DLSS, or anything fancy). It'd be a relatively low-cost marketing that benefits the developers, especially if Nintendo creates a new "Drake optimized" section/filter in the eShop to aid their visibility and discoverability. Developers who have released any smartphone games are familiar with this update-as-marketing tactic. I detailed rest of my reasoning in a previous post on Era.
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I think this is a great point for smaller developers. Counter-intuitively, they may be better positioned to decide to re-open their IDE and complete a new build against the new hardware since they dont have corporate bureaucracy holding them up. Especially if integrating DLSS is straight forward.
 
Foltzie said:
I think this is a great point for smaller developers. Counter-intuitively, they may be better positioned to decide to re-open their IDE and complete a new build against the new hardware since they dont have corporate bureaucracy holding them up. Especially if integrating DLSS is straight forward.
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fwd-bwd said:
I believe that we may see a surprising number of games receiving updates/patches for the new model, even if only to unlock the resolution and/or frame rate (no RT, DLSS, or anything fancy). It'd be a relatively low-cost marketing that benefits the developers, especially if Nintendo creates a new "Drake optimized" section/filter in the eShop to aid their visibility and discoverability. Developers who have released any smartphone games are familiar with this update-as-marketing tactic. I detailed rest of my reasoning in a previous post on Era.
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Totally agree. Larger studios have both a higher testing burden for their games, but might not have a team dedicated to those games anymore. Some manager has to push through the bureaucracy only to hear "we don't want an update to X at time Y because it will dilute Z, when we want to put X in a collection in Year Q", but an indie dev after the stegosaurus tail can just move.

That said, recertification blows, and it will be up to Nintendo to make that as smooth as possible for publishers
 
fwd-bwd said:
I believe that we may see a surprising number of games receiving updates/patches for the new model, even if only to unlock the resolution and/or frame rate (no RT, DLSS, or anything fancy). It'd be a relatively low-cost marketing that benefits the developers, especially if Nintendo creates a new "Drake optimized" section/filter in the eShop to aid their visibility and discoverability. Developers who have released any smartphone games are familiar with this update-as-marketing tactic. I detailed rest of my reasoning in a previous post on Era.
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Jep, thats what im thinking. Heck, there are only 2 recent examples of games getting significant updates long after they had the last update:
Mario Kart 8 with the new DLC, and Furi with new dlc after...dont know ho many years.
And generally GaaS profits from frequent updates that every time there is something you get a small spike ins sales.

oldpuck said:
Totally agree. Larger studios have both a higher testing burden for their games, but might not have a team dedicated to those games anymore. Some manager has to push through the bureaucracy only to hear "we don't want an update to X at time Y because it will dilute Z, when we want to put X in a collection in Year Q", but an indie dev after the stegosaurus tail can just move.

That said, recertification blows, and it will be up to Nintendo to make that as smooth as possible for publishers
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Thats what i meant! Yeah, i think its in nintendos interest to make the recert process as easy as possible. They wont have a ton of games from the start that are made with that hardware in mind (like... with every launch), so they will be happy about all options to showcase the power. Compare it to the overlap between PS4 and PS5.
 
Skittzo said:
To be fair there was the Chinese back piece leak, if you count that as a leak.
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Which leak was that? Didn't see it in the OP and Google searches come back with unhinged results. Did it come with an image/any speculation about form factor or changes to controllers?
 
Brofield said:
Which leak was that? Didn't see it in the OP and Google searches come back with unhinged results. Did it come with an image/any speculation about form factor or changes to controllers?
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The "leak" was minimal and deleted from the Chinese forum it originated from. The basic summary is: a back piece with some changes vs the current Switch entered test-production at a factory.
 
NateDrake said:
The "leak" was minimal and deleted from the Chinese forum it originated from. The basic summary is: a back piece with some changes vs the current Switch entered test-production at a factory.
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Ahh, so nothing to even remotely suggest extra space in joycons for updating the triggers to analog?
 
NateDrake said:
The "leak" was minimal and deleted from the Chinese forum it originated from. The basic summary is: a back piece with some changes vs the current Switch entered test-production at a factory.
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Going to still keep my expectations in check. For all we know, this isn’t really anything big (some slight cosmetic change).
 
oldpuck said:
It will be interesting to see how many evergreens get patches, and what kind. MK8DX holds up so well at any scale, and already maxes out frame rate and res, one could imagine giving it not just a DLSS bump but perhaps some raytracing effects for extra pop. On the other hand, BotW, give consistent fps and that will feel huge.

On Switch the heavy hitters have such an insanely high attach rate that Nintendo can't sell more of them without selling more Switches. Nintendo might patch these games purely to give people who upgrade to Drake a stack of base games that look good. Or it might expect Drake to spike new buyers - bring Xbox and PS gamers off the fence - in which case they might give more care to evergreens, expecting a software sales bump to come along with.
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It needs to max out 60fps for more than 2 players 🤔...

Would be amazing to see it be 4k 60fps on Drake with 3-4 players, but that's probably not happening without DLSS, unless it's like 3 TFLOPs docked.
 
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SiG said:
Going to still keep my expectations in check. For all we know, this isn’t really anything big (some slight cosmetic change).
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Could be any number of things. Until a creditable report of production/manufacturing has begun, approach any such details with hesitance.
 
@Thugstas : do you think these leaks are somehow organized, controlled and specifically tailored? Are they a 'shadow' marketing campaign aimed at fueling hype among the hardcore crowd?

If yes, is Nate part of it?

I wouldn't mind if my hype levels are the result of a manipulation but I am interested in the answer in order to gain more insights in modern marketing tactics.
 
Kenka said:
@Thugstas : do you think these leaks are somehow organized, controlled and specifically tailored? Are they a 'shadow' marketing campaign aimed at fueling hype among the hardcore crowd?

If yes, is Nate part of it?

I wouldn't mind if my hype levels are the result of a manipulation but I am interested in the answer in order to gain more insights in modern marketing tactics.
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Most of the hype comes from the NVidia leak as it indicates much more capable hardware than expected. Which is not marketing.
 
Kenka said:
@Thugstas : do you think these leaks are somehow organized, controlled and specifically tailored? Are they a 'shadow' marketing campaign aimed at fueling hype among the hardcore crowd?

If yes, is Nate part of it?

I wouldn't mind if my hype levels are the result of a manipulation but I am interested in the answer in order to gain more insights in modern marketing tactics.
Click to expand...

Nate is an insider but not a leaker. He’s mainly playing the experienced keep your expectations in check guy, who comments on available rumors and how to put them in perspective.
 
Foltzie said:
Most of the hype comes from the NVidia leak as it indicates much more capable hardware than expected. Which is not marketing.
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Its such a nieche audience that even cares about these leaks, it wouldn’t be very effective marketing.

I do believe in fake leaks, but they mainly exist to flush out leakers. I believe star fox Grand Prix was an example.
 
Hermii said:
Its such a nieche audience that even cares about these leaks, it wouldn’t be very effective marketing.

I do believe in fake leaks, but they mainly exist to flush out leakers. I believe star fox Grand Prix was an example.
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Which is a shame cuz that idea sounded fun as hell.
 
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Wait, Nate, youre having something and wait for another vonfirmation before mentioning it?
While i am curious, i would say dont force it, your position as a safety check For other leaks is something i feel is needed.

I asume the backplate will be an evolution of the OLED one. Maybe a change for the Micro SD card or something.
Im confident that the joycons will stay mostly the same maybe some interenal v2 changes, like improved HD Rumble, or some other sensors.

Thinking of it... heck, where are the games that use the IR camera!

If there are changes, i expect the old switch to be interoperable with the new joy cons, and that the new ones replace the old ones.
 
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mariodk18 said:
I mean 480p didn’t look that bad on the Wii U screen and I believe that was the same or a similar size.

And regarding my point about the DS/3DS display solution, how would a windowed 720p look on a 1080 display? Nintendo didn’t care about DS games being stretched out on the 3DS and allowed for the original aspect ratio to be preserved. How much worse would it look compared to having those boxes on the side of 4:3 content?
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With no scaling... well, imagine another similar step down in size progression from OLED -> regular -> Lite -> unscaled.

With scaling, integer scaling is best, but if you can't do that something exactly in between is next best. 720p to 1080p is next best at 1.5x. That's one step better than DS->3DS, which was 1.25x to go from 256x192 to 320x240.
 
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Can I take a moment to ask about the Switch 2 dock? The internet went wild when it was revealed the OLED dock would have a chip in it. We now know that the chip is the most basic of chips and is just for background tasks and whatnot and in no way enhances the visuals or performance of OLED. But what IS a feasible hypothetical version that could? I ask because I see all the hype from Nvidia about Orin x2, x4, xwhatever that's going to power autonomous cars, and it got me thinking. Could Nintendo design a dock with some form of chip that would assist in enhancing visuals? This would obviously not be cheap, and I would expect Nintendo to sell this optional accessory separately for the "graphics crowd". Again, I know very little about how electronics work, but is USB-C, the connection between Switch and the dock, fast/efficient enough to allow one SoC to communicate well with another chip in the dock? Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions here. :oops:
 
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Cuzizkool said:
Can I take a moment to ask about the Switch 2 dock? The internet went wild when it was revealed the OLED dock would have a chip in it. We now know that the chip is the most basic of chips and is just for background tasks and whatnot and in no way enhances the visuals or performance of OLED. But what IS a feasible hypothetical version that could? I ask because I see all the hype from Nvidia about Orin x2, x4, xwhatever that's going to power autonomous cars, and it got me thinking. Could Nintendo design a dock with some form of chip that would assist in enhancing visuals? This would obviously not be cheap, and I would expect Nintendo to sell this optional accessory separately for the "graphics crowd". Again, I know very little about how electronics work, but is USB-C, the connection between Switch and the dock, fast/efficient enough to allow one SoC to communicate well with another chip in the dock? Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions here. :oops:
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the chip does the same thing that's in the launch dock: convert display port to HDMI

as for performance enhancement, they could, but it's a bad idea. it's unnecessary added cost for a throwaway part. another performance profile that devs have to be saddled with, another chip that Nintendo has to pay for, another design that Nvidia has to R&D. all for a crowd that's too small to properly cater to out of the potential Drake crowd
 
ILikeFeet said:
the chip does the same thing that's in the launch dock: convert display port to HDMI

as for performance enhancement, they could, but it's a bad idea. it's unnecessary added cost for a throwaway part. another performance profile that devs have to be saddled with, another chip that Nintendo has to pay for, another design that Nvidia has to R&D. all for a crowd that's too small to properly cater to out of the potential Drake crowd
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Direct performance enhancements as in an extra gpu, I agree is a bad idea. Indirect performance enchancement, as in a fan providing extra cooling allowing Drake to run faster isn't such a terrible idea imo.
 
Hermii said:
Direct performance enhancements as in an extra gpu, I agree is a bad idea. Indirect performance enchancement, as in a fan providing extra cooling allowing Drake to run faster isn't such a terrible idea imo.
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I don’t see Nintendo adding another fan to the system. They’ll probably just iterate on the current one.
 
I see. So it’s feasible with current tech and hardware, but doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint. I like the idea of another fan though. Anything to bring up the clock speeds for Drake.
 
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