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

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Dark Siders is on the switch already

 

[Kevin]

As everyone knows, Nintendo has purchased Dynamo. A company that specializes in all sorts of stuff from CG, commercials, mocap, VR stuff and other higher end tech concepts. Full details here:

Nintendo acquires animation studio that’ll become ‘Nintendo Pictures’

The acquisition is expected to complete in October.

www.theverge.com

So I wanted everyone here's thoughts on whether this acquisition will be used more for their movie/tv production ambitions or perhaps to create higher fidelity games moving into their next console cycle eventually?

Another random thought I had. Nintendo wants to delve into high end CG movies such as the Mario movie but my thoughts are will this benefit or hurt their gaming efforts. On the plus side this gets their franchises even more in people's minds and helps further promotes their key franchises but one possible negative is the fact that the Switch is old tech and the games won't look nearly as good as these CG movies which I think will further show how much Nintendo could benefit from modern hardware and visuals.

Sony and Microsoft has reached CG quality with stuff like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart but Nintendo games look dated by comparison and I'm wondering if that will be even more noticeable when we all start watching CG Mario movies and such.

Of course Nintendo could in theory Nintendo could introduce new hardware next year which will help reduce this large gap. That is unless Kit and Krysta are to be believed as they said they have seen zero evidence of new hardware coming anytime soon before they had left Nintendo earlier this year. Of course some would argue that Nintendo is do vastly compartmentalized that no one at NOA would ever even get a rumor of new hardware being inbound. Still they sounded certain. That a Switch Pro is not coming. They have worked with lots of Nintendo's top developers but who knows. I can only speculate.

So thoughts? Is "Nintendo Pictures" going to be used more for studio ambitions or next gen gaming ambitions? Will CG Nintendo movies and shows make the Switch look even more dated? Is Kit and Krystal right or wrong about next gen thoughts? Sound off below, click "like" and "subscribe and have a sublime day.

Spoiler

Last part is just me being goofy lol.

 

[Spork4000]

On the third party talk, I think a bit of both perspectives are true. Nintendo absolutely will get better third party support with better hardware, but it wont get every game. I doubt it’ll get madden or call of duty, but the kingdom hearts collection absolutely would have been native if it was an easy port. If FF16 goes multiplat I’m sure Switch 2 will get it if the power’s there. GTA 6 or Elden Ring might not come right away though.

I think people underestimate the lead time from realizing the Switch was going to be a success and spinning up development. That initial shock won’t be there this time.

 

[ILikeFeet]

As everyone knows, Nintendo has purchased Dynamo. A company that specializes in all sorts of stuff from CG, commercials, mocap, VR stuff and other higher end tech concepts. Full details here:

Nintendo acquires animation studio that’ll become ‘Nintendo Pictures’

The acquisition is expected to complete in October.

www.theverge.com

So I wanted everyone here's thoughts on whether this acquisition will be used more for their movie/tv production ambitions or perhaps to create higher fidelity games moving into their next console cycle eventually?

Another random thought I had. Nintendo wants to delve into high end CG movies such as the Mario movie but my thoughts are will this benefit or hurt their gaming efforts. On the plus side this gets their franchises even more in people's minds and helps further promotes their key franchises but one possible negative is the fact that the Switch is old tech and the games won't look nearly as good as these CG movies which I think will further show how much Nintendo could benefit from modern hardware and visuals.

Sony and Microsoft has reached CG quality with stuff like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart but Nintendo games look dated by comparison and I'm wondering if that will be even more noticeable when we all start watching CG Mario movies and such.

Of course Nintendo could in theory Nintendo could introduce new hardware next year which will help reduce this large gap. That is unless Kit and Krysta are to be believed as they said they have seen zero evidence of new hardware coming anytime soon before they had left Nintendo earlier this year. Of course some would argue that Nintendo is do vastly compartmentalized that no one at NOA would ever even get a rumor of new hardware being inbound. Still they sounded certain. That a Switch Pro is not coming. They have worked with lots of Nintendo's top developers but who knows. I can only speculate.

So thoughts? Is "Nintendo Pictures" going to be used more for studio ambitions or next gen gaming ambitions? Will CG Nintendo movies and shows make the Switch look even more dated? Is Kit and Krystal right or wrong about next gen thoughts? Sound off below, click "like" and "subscribe and have a sublime day.

Spoiler

Last part is just me being goofy lol.

as far as gaming goes, Nintendo Pictures will be a workhorse for Nintendo's mocap needs. given their location, Monolith Soft might make heavy use of them

 

[Dekuman]

Long post ahead:

People are grossly over reacting on the third-party support and the Nintendo fan reaction as if there’s this “PTSD” or this “Hate”. The reason why people say “it’s not that simple” is that the issue with Nintendo and third-party support is that Nintendo is Nintendo.

In order for Nintendo to get the same level third-party support as the other platforms, they nerd stop being Nintendo and be something else that they are not. We’ve already had developers that would struggle to try to find a slot for their a third party game because Nintendo releases too many games.

You would have someone that would make the excuse that they are unsure if the platform even has the audience for that type of game.

You would have those that even if the system was of equal footing in power level and also was equipped with a competent online infrastructure they would start questioning if they could even fit it on a game card without over filling up the storage of the system.

The issue with Nintendo‘s platform is that Nintendo is the one is running the platform.

Mind you, even the Xbox doesn’t get every single third-party game, despite being of equal footing to the PlayStation platform. Power is not the only reason for this, and even then Xbox has a superior online infrastructure compared to PlayStation. Let’s not try to pretend and re-twist the narrative into the issue being that Nintendo doesn’t release a powerful home console here.

Because we know straight up it is not that whatsoever.

Hell, you should already be expecting some to say that it’s a different architecture and it’s gonna take a bit more time to work with so that’s why things don’t come day and date.

Power has a factor into this, but that’s not really Nintendo‘s problem here, I’m going to repeat again what the problem is: Nintendo.

Now this may rustle some feathers, but the issues are all pointing to Nintendo being Nintendo as the problem. And shoving the narrative of “if they had a powerful console and a good online this would be resolved” is not looking at the forest beyond the trees at all the angles and seeing that at the center of this forest is one word in an open field called “Nintendo”

And no, I do not want Nintendo to stop being Nintendo if all they’ll give me is carbon copy number 3 in this monotonous console space if we left it up to the other two.

Only for a few extra third parties they are not guaranteed.

chill, it's just a discussion. But a lot of your points does rely heavily on past instances and disappointments. That's where I reference PTSD.

Third party relations is, well a relationship. Sometimes devs will just want to put stuff on your device, other times they need to be convinced, sweet talked and their path paved to some extent. That comes down to development tools, engine support, visions /software aligning etc. I think Switch is one of the top places a lot of indies go right now with less effort. The traditional AAA western games have some barriers due to Sony or Microsoft throwing money for exclusivity, kickbacks from their online networks which doesn't yet have an analog on Switch so Nintendo can't divert sub revenues to pay off a publisher, technical limitations of porting and maybe at the bottom of the list, lame of excuses due to non business reasons/

The relationship part is also shephering devs and pubs along to your platform. Nintendo's been largely successful at showing a good business case and building those relationships, but their problem historically is follow through. The last time they had broad support was Wii/DS, it was squandered when 3DS/Wii U struggled. It has less to do with power gaps, lame excuses and more to do withconsistency and aligning visions with their partners. Sometimes a pub will just not align, like EA this gen. It's not out of malice.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

chill, it's just a discussion. But a lot of your points does rely heavily on past instances and disappointments. That's where I reference PTSD.

Third party relations is, well a relationship. Sometimes devs will just want to put stuff on your device, other times they need to be convinced, sweet talked and their path paved to some extent. That comes down to development tools, engine support, visions /software aligning etc. I think Switch is one of the top places a lot of indies go right now with less effort. The traditional AAA western games have some barriers due to Sony or Microsoft throwing money for exclusivity, kickbacks from their online networks which doesn't yet have an analog on Switch so Nintendo can't divert sub revenues to pay off a publisher, technical limitations of porting and maybe at the bottom of the list, lame of excuses due to non business reasons/

The relationship part is also shephering devs and pubs along to your platform. Nintendo's been largely successful at showing a good business case and building those relationships, but their problem historically is follow through. The last time they had broad support was Wii/DS, it was squandered when 3DS/Wii U struggled. It has less to do with power gaps, lame excuses and more to do withconsistency and aligning visions with their partners. Sometimes a pub will just not align, like EA this gen. It's not out of malice.

You’re misunderstanding my post. I never said anything out of malice, I’m pointing that the issue with the third party support is Nintendo being Nintendo.

Even the Wii and DS, their main focus was being a side support, they were not the main platforms for major thirds. They were the extra. I went as far as to highlight the power and a competent online infrastructure is not the only method of ensuring consistent support, the Xbox is a darling platform for the third parties yet it is at times third fiddle or it gets nothing despite being a stellar platform to release a game on. My whole argument is that resorting to the excuse is not looking at the forest beyond the trees, it’s way more complicated than that.



And finally, I’m going to address this only once, I am simply discussing this topic that was brought up and telling me to chill out or telling anyone to chill out is not gonna provoke a positive response. This will be the the last time I’m gonna address this and I don’t wanna hear it from anyone else.


Edit: and if anyone is curious yes I do foresee support getting better, but that’s sort of an expected minimum at this point? It’s supposed to be a noticeable upgrade right, so it would be easier. But this just makes the time (aka money) to port it to the switch 2/pro/whatever cheaper so the threshold should be lower this time around.


And you know what they say, Time is Money after all.

 

[Crusters]

I feel lost in the third party talk.

The vast majority of my switch library is 3rd party, and has been since the day I got it, with 2 third party games and 1 first party, it's been completely beyond any recent nintendo console I have ever owned, full of a third party library I absolutely adore.

I feel switches 3rd party support has been absolutely fantastic, and much better than any Nintendo home console in recent memory.

 

[chocolate_supra]

I feel lost in the third party talk.

The vast majority of my switch library is 3rd party, and has been since the day I got it, with 2 third party games and 1 first party, it's been completely beyond any recent nintendo console I have ever owned, full of a third party library I absolutely adore.

I feel switches 3rd party support has been absolutely fantastic, and much better than any Nintendo home console in recent memory.

Same here. I have more third party games for the Switch than I have Nintendo games, by far. Hell, I bought my Switch for a third-party game.

I think, if I may be so snarky, there's sort of a difference between "third party" in general and "what Geoff shows off at TGA/SGF." One of those has been very friendly to Switch, the other not so much.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

I feel lost in the third party talk.

The vast majority of my switch library is 3rd party, and has been since the day I got it, with 2 third party games and 1 first party, it's been completely beyond any recent nintendo console I have ever owned, full of a third party library I absolutely adore.

I feel switches 3rd party support has been absolutely fantastic, and much better than any Nintendo home console in recent memory.

Funnily enough, based on some things that have been done in private between third-parties and Nintendo, the reason for that is partially because Nintendo is actually reaching out to third parties. In essence place them in a sort of pedestal and center of focus(we call them Directs).

they’ll do it again.

My only “gripe”, if you wanna call it that, is that one size does not fit all, and that’s all I’m gonna say.

Same here. I have more third party games for the Switch than I have Nintendo games, by far.

I think, if I may be so snarky, there's sort of a difference between "third party" in general and "what Geoff shows off at TGA/SGF." One of those has been very friendly to Switch, the other not so much.

now I need to count how many I even have…


But like over 60 games. I know some here have close to 200 games though…




Edit: to bring this back to a more tech focused discussion, something I remember is that Drake has CUDA version 8.8.


Ampere is 8.6 and the Orin version of Ampere is 8.7. Lovelace is CUDA version 8.9. So these fall within the same generation of CUDA it seems.


This is only speculation, but I think that being right before Lovelace there’s probably some tweaking to the code path that makes the ray tracing more efficient than the Ampere version. And by efficient here, I mean a bit more, er, “forgiving” than what it would have been if on the 8.6 version of Ampere.


Again only speculation!

 

[Crusters]

Funnily enough, based on some things that have been done in private between third-parties and Nintendo, the reason for that is partially because Nintendo is actually reaching out to third parties.

I think they’ll do it again.

My only “gripe”, if you wanna call it that, is that one size does not fit all, and that’s all I’m gonna say.


now I need to count how many I even have…

Oh, this, this resonates with me, although for me, it was for first party games, where I felt Nintendo was spending time focusing on established demographics for the kinds of games Im just not into.

Although thats all been obliterated this year. Guess my kind of stuff is in the chute now.

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

Watch the metric ton of PS4/XBO ports arrive for Drake in its first two years despite having a tiny user base, Why? Because Drake will have the compute power to have those consoles ports without publishers having to spend millions of dollars and up to a year porting it to the platform because of the power disparity.

When Nintendo have sufficient hardware power they will get third party support. Hell the Wii U got the latest Assassin’s Creed, Batman, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, Mass Effect, Darksiders, Need for Speed and Call of Duty all in its first couple of years because hardware wise it was in some regards slightly more advanced than PS360.

Did I claim PS4/XBO ports were not going to come? Cause I know I didn’t. We are in agreement that PS4/XBO ports will appear in some form or fashion. However, 3rd parties still took a spin on excuse bingo. Sufficient power will only net them some support as hardware is not the sole reason 3rd parties continue to spin that wheel.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Asking for more money to take advantage of the more expensive hardware that was just purchased is always going to be a bad look, no matter how justified it may be. The best approach is just to treat patches for existing games as an advertising expense.

It’s not even that, it’s literally the value proposition. You buy a console to play games. The point of a “pro” is to play current gen games better - charging a monthly fee to get the value out of the hardware you already paid a premium price for, on games you already paid full price for is… I think actively worse than patching zero games.

We’ve talked about PlayStation’s boost mode - it’s not even a patch, it’s just a white list of games that run well with higher clocks. The only cost to the dev is QA time.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the third party situation of Switch will necessarily recreate itself with Drake. As I said, relative power is an important variable, but it's not the only one. The hardware games are actually being built for matters a lot, and I don't think it's obvious that that situation is going to play out quite the same way. Some thoughts on that in no particular order:

• Nintendo is starting from a much stronger position than they did with Switch. For certain categories of games, both Switch and Drake will be strong contenders for lead platform.
• PS4/X1 are taking their time fading away from relevance, and anything made for those will automatically be a good fit for
• Xbox Series S places some notable downward pressure on minimum requirements
• The storage upgrade is not as big a factor as it may initially seem. This is an area where Switch is already broadly superior to PS4/X1. I'm also somewhat skeptical that the storage hardware in XS and especially PS5 will ever be fully taxed, as it seems a bit overbuilt.
• As returns diminish, scalability will tend to increase

Cross gen is here to stay for the foreseeable future. If Nintendo keeps a device roughly within the power level and feature set of the loose “cross gen” set of consoles, then Switch is likely to get decent 3rd party ports.

Drake continues the Switch trend of easy to develop for architectures, one of the advantages of not trying to push the power envelope, but meet it, which will also help considerably.

The force on the other side is the install base. If the Pro’s install base remains small, and the chip-glut that is likely to come brings about a spike in PS5 adoption, that could slow 3rd party support. But even then, the existence of Series S helps considerably

 

[davec00ke]

The force on the other side is the install base. If the Pro’s install base remains small, and the chip-glut that is likely to come brings about a spike in PS5 adoption, that could slow 3rd party support. But even then, the existence of Series S helps considerably

The next Switch will be significantly behind the Series S.

 

[KeijiKG]

As everyone knows, Nintendo has purchased Dynamo. A company that specializes in all sorts of stuff from CG, commercials, mocap, VR stuff and other higher end tech concepts. Full details here:

Nintendo acquires animation studio that’ll become ‘Nintendo Pictures’

The acquisition is expected to complete in October.

www.theverge.com

So I wanted everyone here's thoughts on whether this acquisition will be used more for their movie/tv production ambitions or perhaps to create higher fidelity games moving into their next console cycle eventually?

Another random thought I had. Nintendo wants to delve into high end CG movies such as the Mario movie but my thoughts are will this benefit or hurt their gaming efforts. On the plus side this gets their franchises even more in people's minds and helps further promotes their key franchises but one possible negative is the fact that the Switch is old tech and the games won't look nearly as good as these CG movies which I think will further show how much Nintendo could benefit from modern hardware and visuals.

Sony and Microsoft has reached CG quality with stuff like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart but Nintendo games look dated by comparison and I'm wondering if that will be even more noticeable when we all start watching CG Mario movies and such.

Of course Nintendo could in theory Nintendo could introduce new hardware next year which will help reduce this large gap. That is unless Kit and Krysta are to be believed as they said they have seen zero evidence of new hardware coming anytime soon before they had left Nintendo earlier this year. Of course some would argue that Nintendo is do vastly compartmentalized that no one at NOA would ever even get a rumor of new hardware being inbound. Still they sounded certain. That a Switch Pro is not coming. They have worked with lots of Nintendo's top developers but who knows. I can only speculate.

So thoughts? Is "Nintendo Pictures" going to be used more for studio ambitions or next gen gaming ambitions? Will CG Nintendo movies and shows make the Switch look even more dated? Is Kit and Krystal right or wrong about next gen thoughts? Sound off below, click "like" and "subscribe and have a sublime day.

Spoiler

Last part is just me being goofy lol.

That's a whole different topic, go to that discussion for it.

 

[mariodk18]

What resident evil game do you think Capcom will port to Drake first?

 

[iNess]

The issue isn’t that they don’t have good scriptwriters/writers but more that they don’t feel it is necessary for certain games.

 

[Spork4000]

What resident evil game do you think Capcom will port to Drake first?

Imma say 8, that’s getting a native Mac version for crying out loud.

 

[Kevin]

That's a whole different topic, go to that discussion for it.

Care to elaborate?

That's a whole different topic, go to that discussion for it.

Not off topic at all. Deals with future technology and implementations for future Nintendo hardware and beyond.

 

[KeijiKG]

Care to elaborate?


Not off topic at all. Deals with future technology and implementations for future Nintendo hardware and beyond.

I said what I said.

This topic exists,

Nintendo acquires Dynamo Pictures, to focus on development of visual content utilizing Nintendo IP (UPDATE: Official Website Open!)

3.Change of Company Name (Planned) Upon closing of the Acquisition, the company name Dynamo Pictures is expected to be changed to "Nintendo Pictures Co., Ltd." to focus on development of visual content utilizing Nintendo IP.

famiboards.com

It would be best not to be redundant and I see little evidence of them serving Nintendo in terms of technology since they've been mostly a contractor cutscene, CG movie and mocap studio. I don't see any strong ties with them and Nintendo's console development, at least not one strong enough to say it's marginally significant to this topic. Don't mean to come off as cold but again there's a separate discussion if you just wanna speculate about the studio.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

I mean, if we are to speculate what Nintendo pictures can bring to the table for games, it would have to be going in the direction of more story driven titles. I’m not sure how much people expect this, personally I do not, but I do think they could probably do better off with advertising of these games in their own way.


Or for anime for the other avenues of Nintendo tbh.


Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Zelda(?), Kid Icarus(?), Metroid (?), things like that maybe getting TV adaptations.


And other Nintendo IPs. Granted I don’t see much use for games in that regard at least.

 

[Hidden04]

AD102 is lovelace right?

 

[ShadowFox08]

Months of disingenuous debating and authoritative takes on speculative topics did everybody in. We either need news or time travel at this point

You can absolutely bet we're getting Switch 2 XD

Chip giant TSMC warns of 'excessive inventory' at clients

Company's profit soared over 76% to record in April-to-June quarter

asia.nikkei.com

I thought some of the big companies like Apple, AMD and Nvidia are reducing their demand by like 10% or something? I was thinking this had more to do with TSMC hiking the prices of their chips...

more non-graphical usecases for RT. Digital Foundry talked about this earlier this week about how Psychonauts 2 could have used RT for their portals conundrum. that use case is shown in this demonstration

Portal 3 confirmed to be a

Spoiler

timed exclusive for Switch 2

 

[CypressFX]

AD102 is lovelace right?

Ada. Lovelace was never used by nVidia. Its named after Ada Lovelace, but still it will be just Ada.

 

[ShadowFox08]

It's pretty abnormal for ports of these big multiplatform games to be treated as such a distinct project. That tends to only happen for platforms like the Switch, which require large amounts of bespoke work because they are significantly weaker than what the game was designed around or other weird factors (like Wii U Gamepad support).

You mention PS3, but this isn't really a PS3 situation. The PS3 took a bunch of extra work to extract good performance on, but it could broadly handle anything that came to 360 with some fairly minor sacrifices. The Switch, on the other hand, is often significantly below the minimum requirements PS4/X1 games are built to work with. The downgrades required are much heavier, and tend to include areas where it often is quite difficult to scale games down. When you see a game release on everything except Switch, it's much more likely that power is the primary reason and not business concerns.

I also think Nintendo's lack of developed online infrastructure (for online multi compatible third party games) /features, size of the game, and cost of carts vs blueray capacity discs also plays a big factor for many games.

Western third party games especially on PS4/Xbone, take up a lot of space, and you can only compress so much while wasting time and money doing so. Carts are still way more expensive than ps4/xbone discs for developers/publishers.. Particularly 16GB and up. A good chunk of games are still bought via physical.. and maybe they don't want to rely on the average user that isn't a gamer already spending extra money to compensate for an abysmal storage of 32GB.

Many ps4/xbone games can work though. It takes more time to optimize it on Switch.. and if it isn't bottlenecked too heavily by RAM and CPU and can perform 720p 30fps for certain genres (that don' require fast reflexes), it can work.

I feel lost in the third party talk.

The vast majority of my switch library is 3rd party, and has been since the day I got it, with 2 third party games and 1 first party, it's been completely beyond any recent nintendo console I have ever owned, full of a third party library I absolutely adore.

I feel switches 3rd party support has been absolutely fantastic, and much better than any Nintendo home console in recent memory.

Nah, it could be improved. By a lot. We're getting a lot more mid budget Japanese developer support, but still lacking bigger and popular games like the most recent Cod, Battlefield, Assassins Creed, Resident Evil, Genhsin Impact, Final Fantasy Destiny 2, Borderlands 3, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy,, Kingdom of Hearts,

 

[karmitt]

You can absolutely bet we're getting Switch 2 XD

Lol at this point I don’t even care.

Just show it off already so we can all be somehow both pleasantly surprised but also baffled at some of the decision making.

 

[Deleted member 2551]

Imma say 8, that’s getting a native Mac version for crying out loud.

It doesn't really make sense to port 8 before porting 7 considering it's a direct sequel.

 

[ShaunSwitch]

It doesn't really make sense to port 8 before porting 7 considering it's a direct sequel.

I think they will drop RE2, RE3 and RE7 first alongside a DLSS patch for the PC versions whilst they work on a port of VIII for the switch.

 

[Hajeman]

AD102 is lovelace right?

I think many big games like Bayonetta 3 coming this October because a new Switch model will launch also in October

 

[Blue Monty]

Nintendo pictures will probably give all type of supports for Nintendo titles not only CG/Mo-Cap stuff, it will probably be explained better the plans in their next financial report or Q&A with investors. Until then we can only speculate

 

[Angel Whispers]

I could see Nintendo Pictures being used for animations - We've had the Pikmin stuff, and perhaps reveal trailers (see Smash charafter reveals, etc.). But I could also see them using it to create tech demos, showcasing in-house engines, or working closely with Nvidia and other partners. Think among the lines of the Wii U bird demo, or the Square-Enix/Visual Works FF: Agni's Philosophy and Prototype showcases. They weren't actual games, if I recall correctly, but they might give some insights into the capabilities of future hardware. At least, there are lots of possibilities.

 

[Deleted member 1324]

I think many big games like Bayonetta 3 coming this October because a new Switch model will launch also in October

Nintendo stockpiled a ton of Mariko both standard and OLED for this winter to avoid chip issues (which is also why their materials spend is so large for this quarter). They’re also not going to sell the new model with one of the most niche selling game series ever either*

*I love both Bayonetta games but it’s not a title to launch a new console off the back of imo.

Nintendo love to launch new hardware with a Zelda game and BotW 2 is next Spring. If for some reason the new Switch arrived this year then I’m betting they’d launch the Wind Waker + Twilight Princess ‘4k edition’ on the same day it released.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The big factor that led Nintendo to release the SNES was market saturation. NES had like 87% of the market. I'm wondering if Switch is getting to that point? Don't enough people have the console so that it might slow sales? Just wondering because it might highlight that a new system is on the horizon. Also, there was a chip shortage around the time of the SNES launch. Also, the USA was in a recession too when SNES hit shelves. Crazy how things are so similar.

Switch is to the point where it's hard to find historical counterparts to try to predict from. At this point it's basically PS2 and DS, and those two had VERY different patterns in late year sales, Switch and DS are the only ones to pass 100m while still selling 20+ million a year. DS started dropping pretty fast once it reached about 130 million, but that's also when they started talking about 3DS.

 

[FireTheMilkman]

It doesn't really make sense to port 8 before porting 7 considering it's a direct sequel.

7 already has a cloud version on the Switch, IIRC it's the first(?) Switch Cloud game. And you could play 8llage without prior knowledge, "kid abducted, dad find" plot.

I'm betting on REmake 2 and 3 to come too, IF they do.

 

[ILikeFeet]

7 already has a cloud version on the Switch, IIRC it's the first(?) Switch Cloud game. And you could play 8llage without prior knowledge, "kid abducted, dad find" plot.

I'm betting on REmake 2 and 3 to come too, IF they do.

Capcom's business model will make it certain that games will be available natively eventually

 

[Dakhil]

When AAA Western third party support (and some AAA Japanese third party support) for Nintendo's new hardware is concerned, I have to see to believe.

---

Edit: to bring this back to a more tech focused discussion, something I remember is that Drake has CUDA version 8.8.


Ampere is 8.6 and the Orin version of Ampere is 8.7. Lovelace is CUDA version 8.9. So these fall within the same generation of CUDA it seems.


This is only speculation, but I think that being right before Lovelace there’s probably some tweaking to the code path that makes the ray tracing more efficient than the Ampere version. And by efficient here, I mean a bit more, er, “forgiving” than what it would have been if on the 8.6 version of Ampere.


Again only speculation!

I do wonder if FP16 operations have been tweaked for Drake, especially if Nintendo Switch games do make heavy use of FP16 operations. (I don't know.)

 

[Blue Monty]

When AAA Western third party support (and some AAA Japanese third party support) for Nintendo's new hardware is concerned, I have to see to believe.

Any AAA JP support outside DQ and MH will be harder to get than Western one if the hardware is there to support AAA games, if the hardware isn't there JP support will always be better just because DQ/MH will always have new entries in Switch.

 

[Dekuman]

You’re misunderstanding my post. I never said anything out of malice, I’m pointing that the issue with the third party support is Nintendo being Nintendo.

I agree. Nintendo will do what's best for them and their games. Which means 3rd parties may not align or feel like their games is in competition.
Wii U is a prime example of this. It required Gamepad support which even Nintendo themselves didn't know how to use and was tied down by quirky legacy hardware decisions that made porting difficult. That said, I think there's a huge amount of room between Nintendo being Nintendo to the exclusion of most every publisher (Wii U) to Nintendo being Nintendo with an eye out for 'partner' support ofd the platform. I think that's where the middle ground is.

For the futurte looking discussion
assuming we get an iterative upgrade, Switch 2 would be the least Nintendo most Nintendo thing they've done since the Super NES. Transition of current support would be quite smooth, and while some pubs may well still not align with Nintendo in terms of vision or strategy, the vast majority, even those with minimal supoport on Switch currently would find the increased power palatable for support.

Which is what I wrote this:

All Nintendo needs is to capture enough of the support, and arguably more is better. Less bespoke work is better etc. But arguing in the margins over this franchise or that franchise not coming to Nintendo is tiring, and defeatist. I don't mind not having certain games, as I know Nintendo will make sure other platforms won't have certain other games either. Remember the Sega/Nintendo console wars when the consoles were highly differentiated? That wasn't such a bad thing.

e.g. The Parity paradigm is a useful rhetorical tool some people and trolls like to use when they want to highlight Nintendo's historical weak point, but it's ultimately a quixotic quest for Nintendo. They wouldn't be Nintendo if they ceded their hardware design to 3rd parties as just another generic PC in a box. They really just need to not do custom chipsets, archaic designs, and no middleware engine support to get good enough 'partner' support. Admittedly there will always be someone unhappy about this game or that game not making it. But that's marginal.

My message here is, based on what we know, support will only get better if Nintendo simply stays the course and hews to a modern SoC that can run widely accepted 3rd party middleware engines and continue the promotional/advertising support of 3rd party games they have been executing on Switch.

The declarative 'hur hur 3rd parties will ignore the next Switch' I see pop up from time to time (not from you) lacks so much nuance in its argumentation they are in my eyes not helpful discussion points, and really just negative nancy posts to gain attention.

 

[bodokoh]

I can't wait to see Monolith Soft get their hands on the next gen switch.

They're able to produce something like this on a system with 393.2 Gflops.

 

[Deleted member 2551]

From the gifs the game looks very fun to hypotethically traverse by flying, suspiciously so. There are quite a few X callbacks like the giant semi-arch over the plain and the interconnected structures in the sky.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I can't wait to see Monolith Soft get their hands on the next gen switch.

They're able to produce something like this on a system with 393.2 Gflops.

the most obvious areas of improvement is a compute/hardware geometry rendering and real time lighting

for compute/hardware geo, think UE5's Nanite and, more generally, mesh shaders. this would allow all that static geometry to have far more detail





and with lighting, you already know what I'm gonna say, ray tracing. shadows is nice, but with Xenoblade games, Monolith really focuses on outdoor environments. and because they really like their glowing elements, I think RT GI is the best solution. and what do you know, Nvidia already made an RTGI tool that Monolith can adapt into their engine




I think this is the worst we could expect from Drake in handheld mode, albeit at 30fps rather than 60. at its worse, the Series S is rendering RT at 256p. yes, you read that right, but it's actually worse since variable rate shading is employed. so the effective resolution is LOWER

 

[Crusters]

Nah, it could be improved. By a lot. We're getting a lot more mid budget Japanese developer support, but still lacking bigger and popular games like the most recent Cod, Battlefield, Assassins Creed, Resident Evil, Genhsin Impact, Final Fantasy Destiny 2, Borderlands 3, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy,, Kingdom of Hearts,

Room for improvement compared to other platforms isn't really an aspect of my statement, since it is a direct comparison to the 3rd party state of other Nintendo consoles, and as such, whether or not Nintendo is getting ALL the third party games other platforms has, has no effect or impact whatsoever on my statement of it is by far the best third party support of any recent Nintendo system, with recent being used very generously.

That being said, I certainly dont want it to stop there.

When AAA Western third party support (and some AAA Japanese third party support) for Nintendo's new hardware is concerned, I have to see to believe.

---

I do wonder if FP16 operations have been tweaked for Drake, especially if Nintendo Switch games do make heavy use of FP16 operations. (I don't know.)

Well, tensor cores?

But as for the half/mixed precision being used by cuda shaders, I think there is something similar to double precision going on, where there is only so much point where you benefit from having it, before having more of it just goes to waste, too much of the time.

IRRC there is a rough consensus on about 20-30% of average runtime game code which doesn't need full precision, and can use half precision, so if they are tweaking drake's fp16 config ratio compared to normal ampere, I'd think that would be a focal point.

 

[Dakhil]

Well, tensor cores?

But as for the half/mixed precision being used by cuda shaders, I think there is something similar to double precision going on, where there is only so much point where you benefit from having it, before having more of it just goes to waste, too much of the time.

IRRC there is a rough consensus on about 20-30% of average runtime game code which doesn't need full precision, and can use half precision, so if they are tweaking drake's fp16 config ratio compared to normal ampere, I'd think that would be a focal point.

I was talking primarily about FP16 operations on the CUDA cores. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.

---

 

[Crusters]

I was talking primarily about FP16 operations on the CUDA cores. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.

---

I suspected that, the second part of my post addresses that branch.

 

[ShadowFox08]

Nintendo stockpiled a ton of Mariko both standard and OLED for this winter to avoid chip issues (which is also why their materials spend is so large for this quarter). They’re also not going to sell the new model with one of the most niche selling game series ever either*

*I love both Bayonetta games but it’s not a title to launch a new console off the back of imo.

Nintendo love to launch new hardware with a Zelda game and BotW 2 is next Spring. If for some reason the new Swith arrived this year then I’m betting they’d launch the Wind Waker + Twilight Princess ‘4k edition’ on the same day it released.

You really think they would release those Zelda games only a few months before botw 2? Unless they came out in October and botw 2 came out in April.

Personally I think the ship may have sailed already for any Zelda ports for the rest of the year.

 

[ILikeFeet]

---

the most important takeaway from this video is how important tensor cores are for very low power devices looking to output at higher resolutions. even the Steam Deck doesn't have the overhead for upscaling while you're low on compute resources

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

It’s not even that, it’s literally the value proposition. You buy a console to play games. The point of a “pro” is to play current gen games better - charging a monthly fee to get the value out of the hardware you already paid a premium price for, on games you already paid full price for is… I think actively worse than patching zero games.

We’ve talked about PlayStation’s boost mode - it’s not even a patch, it’s just a white list of games that run well with higher clocks. The only cost to the dev is QA time.

Cross gen is here to stay for the foreseeable future. If Nintendo keeps a device roughly within the power level and feature set of the loose “cross gen” set of consoles, then Switch is likely to get decent 3rd party ports.

Drake continues the Switch trend of easy to develop for architectures, one of the advantages of not trying to push the power envelope, but meet it, which will also help considerably.

The force on the other side is the install base. If the Pro’s install base remains small, and the chip-glut that is likely to come brings about a spike in PS5 adoption, that could slow 3rd party support. But even then, the existence of Series S helps considerably

The patches would be for older games only. Anything that releases day and date with the new system will already come with the visual improvements included. Handheld mode should easily be able to get a free boost day 1 resolution wise at least by allowing the current docked settings to be run in handheld mode and the loading speed improvements could be a free bonus as well depending on how fast the data speeds are on the new system.

If devs want older games to take full advantage of the newer hardware I assume it won't be as simple, which can warrant a fee. Just call the section for the upgrades REMASTERD and include it in the expansion pak, base NSO and/or charge a $10-30 fee per game. This will make it more much more likely for older games to get a significant reconfiguring since there will be money to be made by doing so. I would expect Nintendo to launch the program with games like Zelda BOTW, and the Xenoblade games, and Yoshi.

I personally wouldn't rebuy full price remasters just to play my favorite switch games with much better Fidelty, but I wouldn't mind paying the price of one remaster to have access to upgrades for a bunch of my favorite switch games. Obviously, Nintendo going back and upgrading their entire back catalog of Switch releases to 1440p/4K and 60 fps with improved effects etc. for Free would be the best solution for consumers, but Nintendo is a business, and I don't think they like us that much lol.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

When AAA Western third party support (and some AAA Japanese third party support) for Nintendo's new hardware is concerned, I have to see to believe.

---

I do wonder if FP16 operations have been tweaked for Drake, especially if Nintendo Switch games do make heavy use of FP16 operations. (I don't know.)

Room for improvement compared to other platforms isn't really an aspect of my statement, since it is a direct comparison to the 3rd party state of other Nintendo consoles, and as such, whether or not Nintendo is getting ALL the third party games other platforms has, has no effect or impact whatsoever on my statement of it is by far the best third party support of any recent Nintendo system, with recent being used very generously.

That being said, I certainly dont want it to stop there.



Well, tensor cores?

But as for the half/mixed precision being used by cuda shaders, I think there is something similar to double precision going on, where there is only so much point where you benefit from having it, before having more of it just goes to waste, too much of the time.

IRRC there is a rough consensus on about 20-30% of average runtime game code which doesn't need full precision, and can use half precision, so if they are tweaking drake's fp16 config ratio compared to normal ampere, I'd think that would be a focal point.

I was talking primarily about FP16 operations on the CUDA cores. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.

---

Well it would be cool to have, I don’t really see the purpose in doing this. The tensor cores are much better at performing FP16 calculations than the shaders, they have a much higher throughput and FP16 can be offloaded to those cores if need be or use those if they need more FP16. If anything, the alteration the 8.8 has would probably fall on the ray tracing aspect not the tensor core aspect or the shader aspect. Or if it does have some minor modification to the shaders it is how it processes the ray tracing code path to be a bit more efficient/ less demanding and producing less heat overall here.


Based on the previous findings, it seems like the Drake Tensor cores follow the Desktop configuration if I’m not mistaken, and the FP32:16 is 1:1 rather than 1:2.


Rather than ORIN’s configuration that has it at double the throughput.

 

[Kevin]

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

It’s hard to give a straight answer, since the SD isn’t an actual console while the Switch 2 has the console environment.

 

[MP!]

Will the Switch 2/Pro's DLSS capabilities be able to get these kinds of more modern games up to 4K? 4K/60? They seem to be really struggling on the Steam Deck without DLSS capabilities so what can we expect on the next Switch hardware? Will we keep getting a lot of 720-900p games from Nintendo or will the DLSS finally give us a better picture quality? Should we expect PS4 quality visuals at 4K or 4K/60 from first party titles using DLSS or would that be wishful thinking? I don't have a DLSS capable graphics card so I don't know how much juice DLSS actually adds to the equation and what not. I'm just curious as to what are some rough estimations in terms of performance/resolution of the next hardware.

For example, if a game on Steam Deck runs at 1080p/30 in docked mode, what resolution/fps do we think the Drake chip (in theory) could run it at with DLSS?

With my 2060
I did some simple test comparisons on MH World back in the day ... DLSS 1.something
at 4k no DLSS was 25 FPS average
4K DLSS was 35 FPS average same image quality or better in some cases as native 4K... so a performance improvement of about 30%

Again it's not too scientific and it was DLSS 1.1 or something... and it was a cruddy old 2060 (not even a super)

Spoiler: Images if you want to see

Top Native--- Bottom DLSS

The thing I noticed is DLSS allowed for relief on the vram so it could actually bring in higher res textures... where as in native 4K my vram usage was maxed out and it seemed like the engine compressed a lot of stuff so it could render the pixels instead.

another thing to think about: in native 1080p I was getting ~70fps so if DLSS was building off 1080 it cost about 25 frames or 35% overhead to get it to 4K... (AGAIN... this is old data... newer DLSS implementation is more efficient and can scale from lower resolutions at, I think, less of a cost.)

I should do some newer tests... I just don't own any newer DLSS compatible games... any suggestions?