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

[Skittzo]

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[MrEevee98]

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[DEsteves]

The majority of phones and tablets with 1080p+ screens also run on batteries.

They do, but play a game on them the entire time and check how long the batteries last (and how much they heat up, before the CPU/GPU starts throttling)

 

[D36]

This thread is really picking up steam.

 

[Concernt]

Thanks for sharing this, but that looks like the Resetera translation, not an official one. For instance, the official transcript specifically uses the fluffy "unique gameplay" language, instead of a more definite "unique games" translated by that Era
user. Here's Miyamoto's actual quote, released by Nintendo Investor Relations:

IMHO this Miyamoto quote reveals very little, and doesn't deserve much parsing. If one goes over the past few year's investor Q&A transcripts and press interviews, Furukawa and Miyamoto repeated the same unique gameplay/experience talking point whenever a new hardware question was raised. It obviously is a boilerplate approved by their legal department to convey a non-binding philosophical thought—a talking point that is vague enough for legal defensibility. The fact that we had pages of debates about its meaning reflects how effective the deliberate ambiguity is.

A depressingly clear breakdown of the situation.

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[LiC]

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[Kise Ryota]

The context of my statement there was that Nintendo does drift correction in software. Those software corrections don't work for everyone's hands and everyone's living room setups. I'm not saying it was broken for everyone, I'm saying there is a huge variability in how well Nintendo's assumptions work.

Now I'm genuinely curious to understand what do you believe the differences are (talking about hands or room setups)

I talked about the correction Nintendo does in another post, it feels like it's in the OS level, because even 3rd party games do the same, but using the same controllers on steam there's no such thing.

It really stresses me out when I want to make slow and small movements/corrections and the software interprets it as unintentional inputs... And the crosshair just moves back some millimeters... Which can become some centimeters pretty fast.

For someone playing in VR with great tracking for years now... It's really hard to go back to a bad tracking.

 

[Serif]

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[andychen]

DF droped a video talking about performance of 4tf consoles today and I find it interesting because 4tf is the romored performance of T239 in docked mode.
This video provides a good reference as what we can expect for the next switch.

 

[Concernt]

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[Concernt]

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[MrEevee98]

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[LiC]

 

[Concernt]

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[chocolate_supra]

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[Skittzo]

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Also why are we hiding all this

EDIT:

 

[Serif]

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[Awesomegames23]

 

[Dakhil]

Viviane Ximenes on LinkedIn: Senior SOC Design Engineer - Build

NVIDIA is #hiring an SOC Engineer to join our headquarters in Santa Clara, California and work with IP integrations for GPU and SoC solutions! You will define…

www.linkedin.com

NVIDIA is #hiring an SOC Engineer to join our headquarters in Santa Clara, California and work with IP integrations for GPU and SoC solutions! You will define and develop system-level methodologies and tools to build SOCs in an efficient and scalable manner to improve build, release, and integrate tools and procedures. You will support IP teams with chip build related issues and identify pain points and inefficiencies in the front-end chip implementation process and propose ideas to solve them. Any RTL designer that has experience in the front end, flow and methodologies would be a great fit for our Build team! Please share your CV to [email protected] or apply directly at the link below. #engineer #designer #frontend #work #rtldesign #systemverilog #flow #flows #methodology #scripting #python #perl #gpu #soc #ip #integration #santaclara #bayarea #sanfranciscobayarea #innovation #hiring #bestcompaniestoworkfor2022 #bestcompanytoworkfor #jobopening #jobopportunity2023

Senior SOC Design Engineer - Build

We are looking for Senior SOC Design Engineer! The complexity of the chip has increased manifold over the years. We are now packing tens of billions of transistors in a chip to meet the growing computing demand in a footprint that is responsible to our environment. The NVIDIA System-On-Chip...

nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com

 

[LiC]

Also why are we hiding all this

 

[Dragoncaine]

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[Deleted member 887]

Unrelated:

I thought I'd have a go at quantifying RT performance across arches in a way that would be useful for comparing, say, Drake to Series S. Often the idea that Drake can keep up with Series S in one realm or another comes up, and I want some more data for that. I had mixed results

Methodology:
Basically, my goal was to quantify the frame time cost for RT effects by running a game at fixed settings under a bench mark, then the same benchmark with only the RT settings changed. So for example:

RTX 3060, Control, High Settings, 1440p: 159fps, 6.3ms/frame
RTX 3060, Control, High Settings+RT, 1440p: 28fps, 35.7ms/frame

That's a cost of 29.4ms to generate the RT effects. There are a few problems here

• "RT effects" are a bunch of different things. Comparing multiple games with wildly different implementations (shadows? reflections? GI?) will give wildly different results.
• RT isn't just augmenting, it's replacing rendering features. So the cost is actually higher than this number. If some aspect of the rasterized lighting path performed very poorly, then these numbers might make the RT cores seem unusually good. Conversely, excellent raster perf might penalize the RT numbers here.
• I don't have a benchmarking rig, so this requires pulling data from places that compare multiple cards under identical conditions, and have separate raster and RT benchmarks which otherwise match settings. That's basically Digital Foundry.
• You want to find a way to compare cards across arches fairly. The way I have done this in the past is to match for CU/SM, and then do some slight corrections for Clock speed. Essentially, this gives us comparing RT performance flop-per-flop across cards, with as little futzing with the numbers as possible
• These two things mean we have very few data points

The results
When comparing across cards directly, the Ampere advantage is pretty consistent - 1.9-2.2x performance. When accounting for clocks, however, it starts to get wonkier. AMD keeps pushing the clocks further and further as it gets up the stack, but the RT performance doesn't improve as much, leaving a wider 2.2-2.7x perf range.

Series S vs Drake
Obviously, we can't compare Series S to Drake when not only do we not have the same games to test on both, one of the two pieces of hardware doesn't exist.

Secondly, these tests are running identical CPU/RAM/Mobo configs. We've isolated the performance of the GPU, but on console, the whole hardware has to be taken as a package. RT can be CPU intensive, and no one is debating Series S will have a tremendous CPU advantage. In that sense, this raw comparison heavily favors Drake

Third, we don't know Drake's clocks yet, which is a remaining piece of this whole dang puzzle.

Nor the target resolutions! RT+DLSS interact in non-obvious ways when it comes to reflections especially...

Spit it out man!
Drake's raw RT performance is ~2/3rds of Series S, depending on where the clocks are. Drake's target resolution is likely beneath Series S, which will help with what effects it will be reasonable to use RT on.

The idea that Drake will kick Series S's pants because of DLSS + RT seems unfounded, but this is one place where the meme of a "handheld series S" might actually be kinda true.

 

[chocolate_supra]

 

[Concernt]

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[Sol]

Tom Henderson gave an update today on the new PS5 revision. Says it's going into production in April with a September 2023 release date.

We're about to cross the threshold for when a spring release is just not happening. If there's not an official announcement or any major kind of report within the next few weeks I think a launch in the first half of 2023 is out the window.

In the last 4 months we've gotten more concrete information about a simple revision to the PS5 than we have about Nintendo's supposedly next-generation system.

 

[karmitt]

 

[DecoReturns]

Now that I think about it. Lots of Switch Special editions have been ugly.

Never really thought about it until now.

 

[karmitt]

Tom Henderson gave an update today on the new PS5 revision. Says it's going into production in April with a September 2023 release date.

We're about to cross the threshold for when a spring release is just not happening. If there's not an official announcement or any major kind of report within the next few weeks I think a launch in the first half of 2023 is out the window.

In the last 4 months we've gotten more concrete information about a simple revision to the PS5 than we have about Nintendo's supposedly next-generation system.

It’s precisely because it’s a simple revision that they aren’t as precious or secretive about it I’d guess? We got wind of the V2 / Redbox several months ahead did we not?

 

[chocolate_supra]

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[stodesign12]

I want to believe that the TotK OLED leak is fake too. It's ugly, and that would give us hope for a Switch 2 + Zelda release

 

[ILikeFeet]

This thread is really picking up steam.

That's because we reject the false prophet Drake, and worship the one true gos, the Steam dick

DF droped a video talking about performance of 4tf consoles today and I find it interesting because 4tf is the romored performance of T239 in docked mode.
This video provides a good reference as what we can expect for the next switch.

Really goes to show how important a good cpu and a modern arch is. And I think 4TFLOPs is out of the range for drake in docked mode unless we get lucky with the node

Unrelated:

I thought I'd have a go at quantifying RT performance across arches in a way that would be useful for comparing, say, Drake to Series S. Often the idea that Drake can keep up with Series S in one realm or another comes up, and I want some more data for that. I had mixed results

Methodology:
Basically, my goal was to quantify the frame time cost for RT effects by running a game at fixed settings under a bench mark, then the same benchmark with only the RT settings changed. So for example:

RTX 3060, Control, High Settings, 1440p: 159fps, 6.3ms/frame
RTX 3060, Control, High Settings+RT, 1440p: 28fps, 35.7ms/frame

That's a cost of 29.4ms to generate the RT effects. There are a few problems here

• "RT effects" are a bunch of different things. Comparing multiple games with wildly different implementations (shadows? reflections? GI?) will give wildly different results.
• RT isn't just augmenting, it's replacing rendering features. So the cost is actually higher than this number. If some aspect of the rasterized lighting path performed very poorly, then these numbers might make the RT cores seem unusually good. Conversely, excellent raster perf might penalize the RT numbers here.
• I don't have a benchmarking rig, so this requires pulling data from places that compare multiple cards under identical conditions, and have separate raster and RT benchmarks which otherwise match settings. That's basically Digital Foundry.
• You want to find a way to compare cards across arches fairly. The way I have done this in the past is to match for CU/SM, and then do some slight corrections for Clock speed. Essentially, this gives us comparing RT performance flop-per-flop across cards, with as little futzing with the numbers as possible
• These two things mean we have very few data points

The results
When comparing across cards directly, the Ampere advantage is pretty consistent - 1.9-2.2x performance. When accounting for clocks, however, it starts to get wonkier. AMD keeps pushing the clocks further and further as it gets up the stack, but the RT performance doesn't improve as much, leaving a wider 2.2-2.7x perf range.

Series S vs Drake
Obviously, we can't compare Series S to Drake when not only do we not have the same games to test on both, one of the two pieces of hardware doesn't exist.

Secondly, these tests are running identical CPU/RAM/Mobo configs. We've isolated the performance of the GPU, but on console, the whole hardware has to be taken as a package. RT can be CPU intensive, and no one is debating Series S will have a tremendous CPU advantage. In that sense, this raw comparison heavily favors Drake

Third, we don't know Drake's clocks yet, which is a remaining piece of this whole dang puzzle.

Nor the target resolutions! RT+DLSS interact in non-obvious ways when it comes to reflections especially...

Spit it out man!
Drake's raw RT performance is ~2/3rds of Series S, depending on where the clocks are. Drake's target resolution is likely beneath Series S, which will help with what effects it will be reasonable to use RT on.

The idea that Drake will kick Series S's pants because of DLSS + RT seems unfounded, but this is one place where the meme of a "handheld series S" might actually be kinda true.

Really good raster performance, though, sometimes come with limitations. If breaking those limits are worth it, then the tradeoff can be good. The Calisto Protocol shows how shadows can be limited with just shadow maps. Same with games with GI and dynamic ToD.

 

[Mango]

I don't know how to hide text, but I just want to say, the two snake logo is a circle with a open middle. You would need to, design wise, fill that circle with something other wise you'd have a really plain large swath of negative space. Using a generic Zelda symbol is probably the best choice they could have gone for, fake or real, as using the generic zen garden patterns of ToTK would probably not look good being cropped like that. Moreover the use of said symbol probably also explains why the two snakes are rotated slightly given you'd have to much "visual bleed" into the base of the Hylian bird crest with the dragon horn overlapping it, were they orientated how they are in the games logo. Also it probably helps with the text on the dragon.

Sorry for the intrusion of Zelda talk lol.

 

[Discostew]

Tom Henderson gave an update today on the new PS5 revision. Says it's going into production in April with a September 2023 release date.

We're about to cross the threshold for when a spring release is just not happening. If there's not an official announcement or any major kind of report within the next few weeks I think a launch in the first half of 2023 is out the window.

In the last 4 months we've gotten more concrete information about a simple revision to the PS5 than we have about Nintendo's supposedly next-generation system.

Let's be honest though. A revision of a platform that has been sold in stores for 2 years is most likely going to be more open for information than a platform that has yet to be revealed for even its first release.

 

[D36]

That's because we reject the false prophet Drake, and worship the one true gos, the Steam dick


Really goes to show how important a good cpu and a modern arch is. And I think 4TFLOPs is out of the range for drake in docked mode unless we get lucky with the node


Really good raster performance, though, sometimes come with limitations. If breaking those limits are worth it, then the tradeoff can be good. The Calisto Protocol shows how shadows can be limited with just shadow maps. Same with games with GI and dynamic ToD.

Did you misspell deck, orrrrrr

 

[Serif]

Did you misspell deck, orrrrrr

There are no mistakes.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Did you misspell deck, orrrrrr

 

[mariodk18]

Also I can’t remember an entire console and box leaked like this. Usually it’s just a backplate or a description of the model. Did someone really manage to walk out with the full retail box?

If this ends up being fake, that basically guarantees we’re getting a special Drake TOTK edition console, like the Smash 4 new 3DS LL in Japan and the MM3D new 3DS XL in the west.

 

[LiC]

I don't know how to hide text, but I just want to say, the two snake logo is a circle with a open middle. You would need to, design wise, fill that circle with something other wise you'd have a really plain large swath of negative space. Using a generic Zelda symbol is probably the best choice they could have gone for, fake or real, as using the generic zen garden patterns of ToTK would probably not look good being cropped like that. Moreover the use of said symbol probably also explains why the two snakes are rotated slightly given you'd have to much "visual bleed" into the base of the Hylian bird crest with the dragon horn overlapping it, were they orientated how they are in the games logo. Also it probably helps with the text on the dragon.

Sorry for the intrusion of Zelda talk lol.

The way the heads are rotated still overlaps with the crest and doesn't look great. I think a good design would have used a circle with the same pattern as the two dragons, but without the heads. And I'm sure there are TotK-related things that could have been in the center instead of filling in an unrelated and previously used Zelda image. Even the Master Sword from the logo could have worked.

Again, not saying it's fake. Just kind of bad.

 

[Dekuman]

Also I can’t remember an entire console and box leaked like this. Usually it’s just a backplate or a description of the model. Did someone really manage to walk out with the full retail box?

If this ends up being fake, that basically guarantees we’re getting a special Drake TOTK edition console, like the Smash 4 new 3DS LL in Japan and the MM3D new 3DS XL in the west.

Surprisingly thing is the box leaked from the factory (i assume) my understanding is at least for the Americans NoA has a local 'factory' and they usually get materials printed in country, and take the finished goods and box them in the USA.

I would assume it's the same for Japan. Much cheaper to shipp finished goods from China or Vietnam without the packaging/boxes.

The only explanation is it's the Tencent domestic Chinese box.

 

[Raccoon]

If this ends up being fake, that basically guarantees we’re getting a special Drake TOTK edition console,

I feel like this isn't true

 

[Concernt]

I don't know how to hide text, but I just want to say, the two snake logo is a circle with a open middle. You would need to, design wise, fill that circle with something other wise you'd have a really plain large swath of negative space. Using a generic Zelda symbol is probably the best choice they could have gone for, fake or real, as using the generic zen garden patterns of ToTK would probably not look good being cropped like that. Moreover the use of said symbol probably also explains why the two snakes are rotated slightly given you'd have to much "visual bleed" into the base of the Hylian bird crest with the dragon horn overlapping it, were they orientated how they are in the games logo. Also it probably helps with the text on the dragon.

Sorry for the intrusion of Zelda talk lol.

If only some sort of logo could have filled that negative space, maybe one with the name of the console and a symbol representing the Joy-Con controllers?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Also I can’t remember an entire console and box leaked like this.

ps4 slim, I think?

 

[Mango]

The way the heads are rotated still overlaps with the crest and doesn't look great. I think a good design would have used a circle with the same pattern as the two dragons, but without the heads. And I'm sure there are TotK-related things that could have been in the center instead of filling in an unrelated and previously used Zelda image. Even the Master Sword from the logo could have worked.

Again, not saying it's fake. Just kind of bad.

They'd have to reveal more ToTK related things to fill it with said things.

If only some sort of logo could have filled that negative space, maybe one with the name of the console and a symbol representing the Joy-Con controllers?

A white indent in a white field is still negative space. Unless you mean they color the Joycon logo, but even then that wouldn't provide a contrast to the white dragon logo, making it even harder to see.

 

[LiC]

They'd have to reveal more ToTK related things to fill it with said things.

Can't really agree with this justification, that they needed to dredge up this old, unrelated asset. (a) There are other things they've already shown in trailers, like the hand or the Master Sword, (b) there are seemingly new symbols elsewhere already in the leaked photos, (c) even if they had to use something new, I'm sure they could come up with something that isn't a spoiler, and (d) it's entirely likely that this is only getting announced after another trailer reveals new stuff anyway.

 

[Dolce]

Thanks for sharing this, but that looks like the Resetera translation, not an official one. For instance, the official transcript specifically uses the fluffy "unique gameplay" language, instead of a more definite "unique games" translated by that Era
user. Here's Miyamoto's actual quote, released by Nintendo Investor Relations:

I agree that it is pretty much nothing, I was going to say earlier that anything we think of it is meaningless.

I can only imagine them doing in that direction due to some drastic incompatibility, like carts to discs.

More generally, I'm skeptical of some radical new direction.

Here you go. A5 on page 3.

Thanks, now I can take time going through it. When discussions hit these kind of points, it makes me uncomfortable to enter certain discussions without being able to re-check everything.

Also I can’t remember an entire console and box leaked like this. Usually it’s just a backplate or a description of the model. Did someone really manage to walk out with the full retail box?

If this ends up being fake, that basically guarantees we’re getting a special Drake TOTK edition console, like the Smash 4 new 3DS LL in Japan and the MM3D new 3DS XL in the west.

video game speculation is akin to the quantum universe; everything is probabilistic, nothing can be said for sure, and we all have existential nightmares about it.

 

[Serif]

It's a metaphor. The classic Kingdom of Hyrule, embodied in that Crest, encircled by two Zonai dragons. The ancient civilization encroaching on Hyrule with its heavenly embrace, Hyrule itself trapped in a cycle of reincarnation and calamity.

 

[Deleted member 887]

Really goes to show how important a good cpu and a modern arch is. And I think 4TFLOPs is out of the range for drake in docked mode unless we get lucky with the node

This is really true. My takeaway on the video was that Drake's FDE is going to be doing some heavy lifting to free up CPU perf.

Really good raster performance, though, sometimes come with limitations. If breaking those limits are worth it, then the tradeoff can be good. The Calisto Protocol shows how shadows can be limited with just shadow maps. Same with games with GI and dynamic ToD.

Absolutely. My only point there was just that the benchmarks are confused by the raster perf situation. If Drake can keep up as a 1080p machine to the Series S's (allegedy) 1440p machine, and add DLSS on top, that is an excellent package

 

[LinkURL]

Some folks, eh? Is that what I am?


Joking aside, I think if they wanted to go harder on Joy-Con motion controls, inside-out controller tracking would be the way to go. However there isn't much room on the Joy-Con that isn't covered by the user's hand while in use. There is, I think, enough, however. The ToF/camera sensors would fit beside the L/R button next to the rail and at the bottom next to the rail without being blocked by the hand of the user, and two of these would be adequate for inside-out tracking of such a small device.

While I genuinely don't expect new controllers for the new device, my HOPES would be:

Hall effect or optical sticks. (Present in Dreamcast and N64 respectively.)
Pressure and touch sensitive ZL/ZR (as opposed to analogue, since this provides the same input or near enough without using substantially more internal space.)
Magnetometer to increase gyro accuracy, and
Inside-out tracking as described above, assisted by improved gyro and magnetometer.

Pro Controller should also adopt all of these, of course, though maybe it could use full travel triggers rather than just pressure sensitivity, with an analogue click when it bottoms out.

I don't understand why they really think that analog triggers are superior, only real use is in racing games, but on the other hand travel distance is an issue in shooters and fighting games.
I believe that digital triggers but with pressure sensors would be the best of both worlds.

 

[karmitt]

Well, honestly he has a good point and it's debatable, whether you agree or not.

They can decide no to BC and focus on eShop and ports, or patches for X$ (although they can also do this while being BC).

What point is he making that’s all that good or worth debating? The merits of ensuring backwards compatibility?

Not something I really care to debate. Not having backwards compatibility is bad for consumers, and kills any confidence in investing in Nintendo as an ecosystem. It’s the literal opposite of a smooth transition and Furukawa’s goals:

To help alleviate this risk, we’re focusing on building long-term relationships with our customers. While we will continue launching new software on the Nintendo Switch, we will also provide services that also use Nintendo Accounts and other IP outside of gaming software. We intend for this to help build a lasting impact with our customers.

Pray tell what lasting relationship has Nintendo built if they tell us that the successor system is a clean break from the Switch? My NSO icon collection?

 

[King_Dodongo]

Fire Emblem next week!
Finally. I get excited whenever a new FE or Zelda drops.