Good post. I think some people are setting themselves up for disappointment by expecting the Japanese third party situation to drastically change because of more powerful Switch hardware. The big Japanese publishers are aware of the state of the market and, whether the decision is ultimately sound or not, are still pushing ahead with PC/PS/XB as their primary development platforms. You can tell where their priorities lie when a mid-low budget JRPG like Soul Hackers 2 launches on every major console but the Switch.
Ok we'll split the difference and call it a 3rd pillar
outside of Monster Hunter and catalogue, most of Capcom's sales are from games that do well on Playstation
Still Capcom main focus is on PC/XSX/PS5 as the nature of most of their games selling the best on Playstation, the chances of them adding Drake to the development pipeline is low other than certain franchises and them trying to make JP centric efforts (Capcom Dev 3). I think the support will be a lot better than Switch but don't think expecting them to release most of their games on Drake is realistic (I think they will for some but not all or even the majority).
If that's the usual timeframe, then it would be before the meeting.
Maybe some old RE ports, but don’t count on a lot of their bigger multiplats to make it over.
The problem is the next Switch will not close gap if anything it will get bigger because PS and Xbox are not crippled by Jaguar CPU's this time.
Capcom porting old games(that aren’t MH games) is the only thing I would never doubt from them considering how much they love catalog sales and them porting almost all ps3 catalog to Switch
Capcom is not EA. There's a reason their games skipped Switch. RE engine wasn't supported , they transitioned to PS4/XBOX/PC when Wii U was failing and there was no Switch
That rather depends on clocks and how power is distributed. The A57 at 1GHz was also pretty damn rough; Nintendo has a lot of ground to potentially leap there. They should also be closer to or actually matching the current consoles' core counts, which will help too.
I don't know about the 10%. the games that don't come due to technical reasons are games that are from the better supporters. the thing is, there just aren't that many of these. Square Enix has been a good supporter and the biggest issue for drake support would be moneyhats. however long it would take Forspoken and FF16 to come off playstation and PC would but a dent in potential sales/ Capcom is a wildcard though. because they primarily focused on high end games, whether they'll support drake is questionable
Those are really specific numbers, but are their any Japanese games that you can say you’re sure could be ported to switch but just haven’t been? Again, a factor to this isn’t just “is it possible” it’s also “is it insanely expensive to do” and will they make their money back. Something like Doom Eternal or the Witcher 3 were massive undertakings. On top of that sometimes they can’t do it without compromising the games vision in the eyes of the director. All are problems that would likely be solved by the drake switch.
The A57 had an IPC advantage over the jaguar cores
I disagree. The initial “rumor” report we got was a PS4 base power level with a better CPU, DLSS, and updated architecture. We see games running right now on switch not because of power but because of the architecture and tools available. There are actually early ps4 xb1 games being ported to switch. Early on everyone just assumed switch would get ps360 ports and that’s it. The next switch with Nvidia’s knowledge will take things even further. Honestly DLSS is the game changer Nintendo and switch needs.
Why would the gap get bigger bigger? Drake isn't getting eight A57 cores, let alone eight A73s. The A57s were actually more performant to Jaguars per Ghz in single threaded performance, while A78s are pretty similar in performance per GHZ to current generation Zen 2.
Not exactly? I mean yes, but the consoles have SMT enabled and that is what helps them achieve better performance, about 20% better perf.
Does Zen 2 really have just 2x IPC over jaguars? I know we are comparing seven 3.5Ghz vs six 1.6Ghz in pure CPU speeds..
A78s are not gonna go past 2Ghz. Even on a potential 6nm node (I don't know where I got the 4nm. Must have gotten it mixed up with Van Gogh 2), I think realistically we can expect around 1.5-1.7Ghz for 7 cores at the most, if Nintendo really wants to maximize GPU.
~2x IPC with 2.1875x the clock speeds with a 20-30% increase from SMT gives you about 5-6x performance over the 8 jaguar cores that the PS4 had.
oh I see. SMT is the missing link.
It’s the same.
I see.
Wait, are we talking A78 vs Zen2 being 15-25% better per GHz in Single Threaded workloads or versus Jaguar?
You can’t really compare them on per GHz like that per se. A78 at like 3GHz is about close the Zen 2 at 4.1GHz.
If Nintendo is paying for it sure or heavily incentivizes then sure. But, outside that then as you put later I don’t see FromSoft or BN doing it themselves.
Cause it has nothing to do with technical aspects of the machine. The Switch could have gotten DS 2 & 3 yet didn’t. DS 1 was such a mess marketing wise that I doubt Nintendo wants to attempt something like that again. The only way this game is coming to Drake is if Nintendo pays for it and/or heavily incentivizes both FromSoft or BN. As @Blue Monty said, really anyone paying attention to JP sales threads, FromSoft & internal BN aren’t going to bother doing it themselves. In addition to Nintendo generally not paying for older ports of games regardless of how big they are. It’s not just “aside from politics” because even if the machine could run it that would be the reason why.
Something else to note for the less savvy here is that IPC isn't just a flat number either. It's not "about" 2x because of rounding, it's about 2x because the actual number is going to vary a fair amount based on the actual instructions and context they're being called in, while measurements are further impacted by things like differences in cache size and memory bandwidth. The average will certainly give you a decent idea for most games, but it shouldn't be expected to scale perfectly and outliers will exist.
Every game released by Bandai Bamco that has skipped the Switch. (outside FromSoft stuff)
I don't see ToA being more impressive than DB:Kakarot and the last one made it to the system. They would need to touch on a lot of the lighting/effects but they had time to so, they spent 1 year making next-gen versions
Not minimal effort, but that the sales of the product on Switch would be enough to offset the costs of the port and Bamco has access to multiple partners that do Switch ports and it's not a DOOM Eternal/Witcher situation, it's a decision they make to not make Switch ports even late ports. The majority of Bamco games that release on Switch are not made by Bandai Namco Studios, in fact outside of contracted work by Nintendo 0 games made by BNS during Switch lifespan have made it to the console outside of God Eater 3 that was developed by Marvelous.
Growth area, it's not unusual if they are looking at where they can grow, since they are already strong onconsoles and they have to do minimal work to grow their PC share, relatively speaking.This is a little OT, therefore I'll keep it quick-ish.
Capcom is pursuing 3 growth opportunities: overseas (vs. Japan), digital (vs. physical), and "catalog titles" (vs. new releases; similar to Nintendo's cultivation of evergreen titles). Their management seems to believe that by going hard on PC, they can achieve growth in all 3 areas (overseas, digital, and catalog titles).
In the Nikkei interview, Haruhiro Tsujimoto (President and COO) also argued that PC gaming are growing in the emerging markets (machine translated):
For the reasons above, Capcom is betting on being PC first (day-and-date or late port to consoles) to grow their PC sales significantly and reach parity with the console sales (50:50). They did not said that their console releases would decrease.
- "With people in emerging countries having smartphones, the game population is increasing at a stretch and the market is expanding. However, I'm looking beyond my smartphone."
- "In emerging countries, many people will first pick up a smartphone as a necessity in their daily lives. Consoles are also important, but I see PCs coming next."
While none of the above is a bad assumption, the objective of reaching PC-console sales parity in mere 1-2 years seems extremely optimistic. For Ubisoft for example:
And EA:
Not sure why Capcom thinks that they can do better than Ubisoft and EA in boosting the PC vs. console sales ratio. When an analyst asked how Capcom will grow its PC user base, here's their reply (official transcript):
"While producing high-quality content is a given, we believe that pursuing the Media business in parallel to game software sales will be effective in further raising brand awareness with users globally. We look to expand our PC user base by working to enhance brand value through the synergetic effects of games and movies."
To me, it wouldn't be surprising if Nintendo is doing or incentiving R&D on improving the circle pad, even if they ultimately don't like it enough and stick with sticks for all models.Remember that Alps Alpine patent for an electromagnetic thumbstick that seems to depict the Joy-Con analog stick? There is a new Alps Alpine patent for a clickable circle pad:
I'm not sure if the Steam Deck, GPD, or Aya Neo got enough volume for Alps Alpine to design a new circle pad. Therefore, unless MS, Sony, or Apple is secretly developing a gaming handheld, Nintendo might be the intended client. Could it be for an updated Lite model? That Japanese retail buyer did cryptically tweeted about raising the handheld mode resolution of Xenoblade titles. I shudder to think that instead of Drake, Nintendo would release another weird half-step upgrade (like the OLED Model) to slightly improves the graphic quality of Lite.
Or it may simply be an R&D prototype. Nothing to see here.
@RaccoonRemember that Alps Alpine patent for an electromagnetic thumbstick that seems to depict the Joy-Con analog stick? There is a new Alps Alpine patent for a clickable circle pad:
I don't see the benefit of them doing that and starting a months long shitstorm. For them anyway. I can see why it would be for our benefit though. I bet the leaks would be fast and furious once Nintendo actually acknowledges its existence.
y'know, I could totally see an OLED Lite happening if it were pocketable
Yeah, but I'm sure Nintendo is a lot more open and proactive to check alternatives.
