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

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ILikeFeet said:
they definitely aren't, but as open as their development tools are, they aren't just doing this to sell hardware, I think. I think Nvidia wants to be the definer of technology. remember it was Nvidia who coined "GPU" after all
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I hadn't considered Nvidia potentially releasing content on the Switch to show off DLSS and/or Raytracing. . . I'm cautiously optimistic at an upgrade of Portal to the RTX version.

Come on Nvidia, release Half-Life on Switch too. My Valve games have been stuck in Limbo since I moved to Apple Silicon.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
1. No
2. Nintendo's technical skill here is so far behind NVIDIA's to make the idea that they could without years and years and years of effort very dubious.

NVIDIA has worked with this hardware for a very long time, Nintendo has literally never.
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Yeah, I think this is pretty definitively incorrect. Nvidia has heavy investment in pushing AI technology, but their research in the video game arena has entirely extended to general purpose technology that pushes the visual capabilities of the cards. DLSS 2 and 3 are marketed as card features which push performance. Nvidia has no technological or market investment in pushing AI based gameplay mechanics. Nvidia's consumer division lives and breaths on "best performance on our hardware" not on elusive gameplay improvements that would either be exclusive to their hardware (bad sell for the game dev) or not readily sellable to enthusiasts (bad for Nvidia).

Nintendo has had access to tensor cores for as long as they've been on the market, and we know that Nintendo started working with DLSS 2 prior to it's public release. NERD has multiple patents related to offline AI for game remastery. AI may be challenging, but if I can pick up the basics and start applying to game dev, I'm betting there are a few folks at Nintendo who could too,

Matrix acceleration in mobile is heavily driven by image processing for AR and real time video manipulation. Nintendo has been playing with AR and shipping products with it forever.

The idea that Nintendo of all companies in the world would have trouble finding a novel use for a new technology which was becoming rapidly cheaper - and a technology that they were shipping in their console specifically - is an incredible hill to die on.
 
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Machine learning is going to change gaming forever by allowing much faster generation of textures and animations in productions.

It will have no real time usage whatsoever on the Switch 2 other than hopefully image reconstruction.

The thing you need to realize about neural networks is that they're a joke structure that only works via brute forcing a massive amount of data that could be fit into a regression.

Even if Nintendo somehow came up with a neural network idea to use in real time, they probably wouldn't have the vast amount of data actually needed to make the neural network work.
 
I wonder when will we have official news, or a hardware leak picture.
Also, where is the ZOLED?
This months seems weird. There's nothing big until Zelda, don't get me wrong I love Bayonetta, but origins aims to an even smaller crowd than the main series.
I hope we know something soon, anything...
 
Foltzie said:
I hadn't considered Nvidia potentially releasing content on the Switch to show off DLSS and/or Raytracing. . . I'm cautiously optimistic at an upgrade of Portal to the RTX version.

Come on Nvidia, release Half-Life on Switch too. My Valve games have been stuck in Limbo since I moved to Apple Silicon.
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at the very least, I do think Nvidia makes demos that run on Drake. they make their own build of UE5 after all, what better way to test it and their customer hardware than running their demos on it.

what if their upcoming amusement park demo is running on Drake 🤔

Boxle said:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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when in doubt, search the GDC session list under the ML/AI Summit tag

 
yohoopzcrazy said:
Speaking of AI applications, I was thinking... what about on-the-fly texture upscaling?

That way we could save on storage (only store lower-res textures) as well as reduce memory bandwidth stress (since we'll only be streaming those lower-res textures), and then at some point later down the pipeline, have an AI program upscale them. Pehraps not for all textures, but for select "background" textures"?

Idk. No clue if this even makes sense.
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God of War actually does this

 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Machine learning is going to change gaming forever by allowing much faster generation of textures and animations in productions.

It will have no real time usage whatsoever on the Switch 2 other than hopefully image reconstruction.

The thing you need to realize about neural networks is that they're a joke structure that only works via brute forcing a massive amount of data that could be fit into a regression.

Even if Nintendo somehow came up with a neural network idea to use in real time, they probably wouldn't have the vast amount of data actually needed to make the neural network work.
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I think a couple of us get the basics of how neural networks work.

I think you are deeply underestimating the power of hardware acceleration. I'm currently typing this response on a browser which uses my macbook's 3D hardware to do font rendering. 3D hardware is not an especially good fit for fonts (which are essentially mini-computer programs mixed with 2D vector art). The reason that my browser uses that 3D hardware is because there is just so much GPU silicon on chip. CPU power isn't growing as fast as GPU power is, and every job that can be moved to the GPU is free performance for the CPU, regardless of whether the GPU is actually faster at performing this operation.

You're about to put 48 matrix math acceleration units in every Nintendo REDACTED, which will be almost totally idle during the CPU bound sections of frame time. Developers are already desperate to interleave rendering and logic in order to eliminate idle time on existing silicon. The idea that Nintendo, who have been squeezing every pixel and frame of performance out of underpowered and unusually designed hardware for decades would leave 25% of their silicon idle for the majority of frame time is beyond belief.

Uses of neural networks may not be particularly interesting or brandable. They may not represent increases in objective throughput for accelerated operations, so much as subjective latency by increased parallelism. But I find the idea that Nintendo, who owns an entire R&D company that works on AI solutions, who is shipping AI hardware, who has been a market leader in real time imagine manipulation for game purposes, in a world where AR on mobile devices is becoming ubiquitous, and who has been finding ways to use mobile hardware in unusual ways since 1989 wouldn't try to or be able to use neural networks in games outside of DLSS beggers belief.
 
Wrong thread, I know, but there are a lot of technologies that will show their full potential in the next home console generation and I, personally, am quite excited for it.

The ps6 will most likely combine the already fast ps5 ssd + asset streaming apis with ddr5 ram, it will have a performance + efficiency cores cpu architecture and feature a mature npu to properly showcase deep learning upscaling + a much more capable ray tracing. If, hopefully, 4k@60fps remains the standard we are in for a bigger jump in image quality than ps4 to ps5.
 
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Turrican3 said:
Seems quite a bold statement honestly.

Companies do internal testing/evaluations all the time, why should it be different this time?

Especially when we're talking about a partnership that has been going on for almost a decade: I'm quite confident Nvidia has already given a few toys to Nintendo software developers for them to fiddle with.
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NERD has been patenting DLSS-related stuff for a few years.

We're not talking about ChatGPT-level competition, and the processing power available will be very constrained.
It shouldn't be that hard for a company like Nintendo to come up with a usable gimmick, specially when they're partnering with Nvidia.

ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Machine learning is going to change gaming forever by allowing much faster generation of textures and animations in productions.

It will have no real time usage whatsoever on the Switch 2 other than hopefully image reconstruction.

The thing you need to realize about neural networks is that they're a joke structure that only works via brute forcing a massive amount of data that could be fit into a regression.

Even if Nintendo somehow came up with a neural network idea to use in real time, they probably wouldn't have the vast amount of data actually needed to make the neural network work.
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I disagree.

I agree that AI will grow an order of magnitude in video game production in the coming years, but some if it can and will trickle down to real-time processing.

It's not that hard to come up with useful gimmicks, even with the limited power. It will always be a per-game scenario.

If the next Switch has a camera, those Tensor cores will certainly be used for AR and object detection.

There are interesting speech-generation tools that even run on mobile. I'm surprised those haven't made it yet into video games.
All the voice "acting" could be generated in production and all the sound files included in the game. It would save on development time and expenses with voice actors.
But considering how Nintendo likes to optimize install size, and how expensive mobile gaming storage is, Nintendo could use real-time speech generation.
If it's convincing enough for 95% of the voices, while still relying on voice-acting for main characters, it will be done.

Speech-recognition is another untapped area in gaming. People would probably try it once then never again. It would nonetheless make for a good marketable gimmick, better that IR sensors or whatnot.
In a real-time strategy game? -"Team 1 do this, team 2 do that."
In an action game with a companion? -"Protect me. Cast that spell. Attack the big one. Hold the little ones."
In a visual novel? Have unscripted conversations.
It may not be that useful in practice, at least the first iteration, but it would sell itself to casuals.

BotW has amazing enemy AI that reacts to a lot of possible conditions. Their code implementation is probably very complex and very difficult to evolve without an occasional full-rewrite.
Having an AI stack for this would dramatically simplify their codebase and allow for future possibilities never seen in gaming.

A game like Nintendogs would be the perfect test bed for behavioural AI. I'm pretty sure it would expand into enemies and NPCs of a lot of games.
 
Not very interesting for this thread but I don't think Koizumi is General Producer for this thing just like he was for the Switch.
 
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Cybergatuno said:
There are interesting speech-generation tools that even run on mobile. I'm surprised those haven't made it yet into video games.
All the voice "acting" could be generated in production and all the sound files included in the game. It would save on development time and expenses with voice actors.
But considering how Nintendo likes to optimize install size, and how expensive mobile gaming storage is, Nintendo could use real-time speech generation.
If it's convincing enough for 95% of the voices, while still relying on voice-acting for main characters, it will be done.
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Link will finally have a voice and it's your own.
 
I'm far too drunk to be posting here and I have just got my pass in my data science degree (told last week, woohooooo!) but I disagree on the comments regarding huge resources needed to implement neural networks into video games in interesting ways.

The heavy part of a neural network is training the network and there is an already existing process that could be used to do that offline before release, play testing.

Models for certain features could get their data from play testing or paying people specifically to play the game to train these networks. Collect the data, use the cloud to train the network, pay people to play again to test it, gather data, rinse and repeat.

This gives you a serviceable model, in the license agreement you put a clause in regarding data gathering and in the first month of release you gather more data and then train your network again on the cloud and release a patch to update the pre trained network.

The usage of the neural network, the inference part is far lighter on resources. The part that is hard to contextualise is how Nintendo would use this beyond the obvious image upscaling, AR, CHAT etc. The one thing I am confident on however is that with Nintendos history as a toy company above all else, whatever it is will likely be interesting if not compelling.
 
kimbo99 said:
I interpret this in 1 of 2 ways:

1) They are out of their minds and will push this device with no successor/revision until 2027 marking 10 years. Very unlikely.

2) Crossgen,, crossgen, crossgen. GB NSO was just announced, meaning the service is here to stay. Furthermore, that means Nintendo SWITCH Online will continue to be supported at the very least. And might I add MP4 still has no launch date?

I think they will continue to drop games for it and the successor.
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Its primarily PR speak, but it really was Bowser avoiding the actual question. This is typical in relation to unannounced products and of course they will maintain optimism in the platform they are currently selling. What is interesting is he is openly accepting that there is an end of the road in sight. Talking about Switch still selling well for 2-3 years will be a goal regardless when Switch Redacted releases. The fact that Bowser isn't talking like Switch is still in the middle of its life actually speaks to the idea that something new is coming. When Switch launched, Nintendo was still bullish on the idea that 3DS could sell well for a few more years, and for the first two years of Switch the 3DS did in fact sell some decent numbers for a console in its twilight years. When Switch Redacted releases this will accelerate the decline of OG Switch, but is it a good idea to have a system decline to the point of irrelevance before releasing the successor? We have investors that have become accustomed to Nintendo selling 20+ million units of hardware per year, how will they feel about Nintendo's stock value when they sell less than half that? 2023 is going to be a big drop in hardware sales for Nintendo and reaching even 15 million units would be impressive. Zelda TotK only has so much power to move consoles since most people interested in the game already have a Switch.

I still like a Switch Redacted reveal in August and a Nintendo Direct in September to lay out the launch lineup for the Switch Redacted release in November. With Switch Redacted being a straight forward successor to Switch, there isn't really a need to get a lot of people hands on with the device beforehand. People will easily understand that this is a new more powerful Switch. With Sony and Microsoft ignoring the portable market, its still Nintendo's for the taking. A new more powerful system back with the SNES, N64 and GC saw a continuous decline in sales because their was stiff competition, but with Switch that isn't the case so it shouldn't be a problem to continue selling the hybrid platform driven by a steady offering of first party exclusives. Nintendo is starting to hit the point of market saturation with over 120 million sold. The answer is a successor that will attract lots and lots of those Switch users to upgrade.
 
Truno said:
Doug Bowser was asked about new hardware by the Washington Post:




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It's interesting that he's again using the phrase "uncharted territory" to describe the Switch's seventh year on the market. Furukawa used the phrase a couple of times in the recent quarterly results call, and analysts have latched onto it in calls for Nintendo to start talking about new hardware, so it's noteworthy that Doug Bowser would talk about being in uncharted territory here.

I don't think it's worth reading too much into these non-answers about new hardware, but it's definitely curious that "uncharted territory" is the phrase they've chosen their current position in the market. It's not quite as reassuring as you'd want from a company facing declining sales.
 
Thraktor said:
It's interesting that he's again using the phrase "uncharted territory" to describe the Switch's seventh year on the market. Furukawa used the phrase a couple of times in the recent quarterly results call, and analysts have latched onto it in calls for Nintendo to start talking about new hardware, so it's noteworthy that Doug Bowser would talk about being in uncharted territory here.

I don't think it's worth reading too much into these non-answers about new hardware, but it's definitely curious that "uncharted territory" is the phrase they've chosen their current position in the market. It's not quite as reassuring as you'd want from a company facing declining sales.
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They've completely dropped any reference to a transition. I'm starting to believe in cancellation theory
 
My original opinion regarding Nintendo marketing DLSS from the AI angle was exactly that: just marketing. I do not expect them to come up with revolutionary uses of the tensor cores, and I don't think that they absolutely need it either. However, even with a console as boring as the Switch (it's your Gameboy and now it connects to the TV; I like being hyperbolic), they managed to squeeze in a few gimmicks like HD rumble and market it as an exclusive feature of the console.
Recently, Sony marketed their expensive SSD drives as the second coming of Jesus H. Christ; and honestly, besides one or two games and generally shorter load times, it's certainly not going to change how we play games.

I expect Nintendo to market AI, this blurry concept which everyone knows and few can actually define including in this topic, as the exclusive feature of their new machine. Allowing both to punch above the weight of an hybrid console, and to have fun applications which will look good on the trailer for the console. In effect, you'll be playing "1-2 Smart" on release as a sort of glorified tech demo, a few Nintendo developers may use it here and there in things like Labo AR, but in most cases it'll be good ol' DLSS because gamers only want one thing and it's absolutely disgusting.
 
Raccoon said:
They've completely dropped any reference to a transition. I'm starting to believe in cancellation theory
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Don't be silly. It's one interview. He can't even deny it. All he says is he has nothing to announce. May I remind you that in previous years the wording was outright denial.
 
Dekuman said:
Very interesting that he addresses it and is not a straight denial or even a 'we're always working on a successor'.

The emphasis on the strength of the current Switch is also not a lie, just a Nintendo routinely talks about the older hardware even as a new hardware is announced or released, as there is always a 1-2 year overlap where they wind down the prior console, so all he says about the Switch could be 100% true and they intend to milk it.
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Another note, he definitively says supply isn’t an issue anymore in the next question. We know Sony had already commented on that, but not sure if we’d seen Nintendo.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised if the announcement-to-release timeline is similar but a bit longer than OLED:
  • Announcement in late June/July as our “Summer” Direct with first-party and third-party announcements and next-gen patches
  • A decent stream of system info (relative power, battery life, OS features, cross-over with current NSO, etc.)
  • Release in October/November

Seems pretty realistic to me with the info we have
 
No announcement vs nothing to announce is the key turn of phrase for me. In business the latter suggests there is something but they have nothing to announce right now. Bowser used nothing to announce while dancing around the question with vague platitudes about Switch's software strength which they don't have a dated game past July.

Anyways the year end financial presentation and AGM will tell us a lot
 
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Concernt said:
Don't be silly. It's one interview. He can't even deny it. All he says is he has nothing to announce. May I remind you that in previous years the wording was outright denial.
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Hermii said:
You really can't glean anything from these executives comments, especially when they're not talking to investors.
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It's true that an interview like this means little, but the consistent narrative of uncharted waters, including to investors, could imply a risky strategy that does not include new hardware.
 
Raccoon said:
It's true that an interview like this means little, but the consistent narrative of uncharted waters, including to investors, could imply a risky strategy that does not include new hardware.
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With PS4 and Xbone those units were dropped to manufacture the PS5 and Series SX

I think the uncharted waters has more to do with Nintendo's stated intention to keep selling Switches into year 7 and 8 likely with crossgen releases. You could read it as "we've got nothing" and we're leaning on Switch, that's fair. I'm just reading it as we haven't had a console sell this well for this long and we intend to keep supporting it until sales drop off

Remember how Reggie was bragging about 3DS sales being up yoy in 2017 but when sales collapsed in 2018 despite late software support from Nintendo, it was dropping pretty quickly from thier makreting. That collapse took Alpha Dream from us.
 
Raccoon said:
It's true that an interview like this means little, but the consistent narrative of uncharted waters, including to investors, could imply a risky strategy that does not include new hardware.
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Those uncharted waters could last for a long time... But they could also last for months, or only weeks. Or could refer to said transitionary period being unlike anything they've done before, trying to keep the previous generation alive with continued support to serve the low end of the market. And as someone else pointed out: nothing to announce at this time is corporate weasel words.
 
TonyBaduy said:
So in the case there are no rumblings coming from the GDC, can we assume it won't launch this year or early next year?
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It would be surprising if Switch Redacted is launching later this year and we get no nuggets of info from GDC. Although I have honestly been skeptical on how many third parties are going to have access to development hardware prior to announcement. Nintendo may be strategically deciding what titles they want to have at launch and are going to avoid over saturation of software at early on. Even if development kits didn't go out until announcement, with the specs of Drake, third parties will be able to do PS4 ports in short order. They may not be ready for launch, but the following months could see a steady stream of ports. Unlike Switch where third parties were playing a wait and see game, with Redacted it will be a port everything we got scenario for a lot of these publishers. You think someone like Ubisoft who has been underperforming wont be a looking for some easy revenue? Next thing you know we have all Ubisofts big hitters from PS4 being ported in short order. Publishers wouldn't be thrilled with being left in the dark for so long, but at the same time aren't going to turn down easy money. Even if Nintendo started to run development kits loose in June, I think people would be surprised how many third parties could have games ready for a November launch if they really want to be there. Porting is a lot easier when the target hardware is more capable than the hardware the game originally targeted.
 
Raccoon said:
It's true that an interview like this means little, but the consistent narrative of uncharted waters, including to investors, could imply a risky strategy that does not include new hardware.
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There are many reasons why I believe that Nintendo hasn't cancelled anything, but I'm going to give you the most important one.
Keeping a secret is very hard. This is why conspiracy theories involving more than 20-30 people can often be discarded.
If Nintendo indeed had a console at an advanced stage of development, as the Nvidia hack suggests, I'm willing to believe that several development studios outside of Nintendo were preparing games for the said console, indirectly involving hundreds, if not thousands of people.
I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would do the dick move of cancelling the new hardware to stick with their current glorified low cost phone, and not one of those possibly thousand of people publicly calling them out for being such flukes; hell, I'm pretty sure that Jason Schreier would have already jumped on the occasion to make an article about those hordes of disgruntled developers whose work went to the shitter because Furukawa decided, between the cheese and the dessert, that Nintendo could ride the 2017 model until the advent of civil nuclear fusion. I'm happy he didn't because I dislike Jason Schreier, and also because I don't think that the Nintendo Switch Next is cancelled.
 
Raccoon said:
It's true that an interview like this means little, but the consistent narrative of uncharted waters, including to investors, could imply a risky strategy that does not include new hardware.
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This would assume that Nintendo's plan is to start selling less and less hardware every year. That's literally the plan if they canceled hardware with nothing else cooking. Its one thing to sell less hardware when something simply doesn't perform in the market the way you had hoped, but to be looking at the forecast, with everything pointing to year over year declines in hardware sales, and the plan is to just accept this? I don't see it. Nintendo is a sales company, and sales companies want growth every year. Having a two to three year year decline as the plan doesn't work. You get fired in sales if that is your plan. Lastly, when a consoles sales start to decline it often goes down hill rather quickly. Its likely that by 2024, Switch will be selling at half the rate it is now.
 
Bosintang said:
There are many reasons why I believe that Nintendo hasn't cancelled anything, but I'm going to give you the most important one.
Keeping a secret is very hard. This is why conspiracy theories involving more than 20-30 people can often be discarded.
If Nintendo indeed had a console at an advanced stage of development, as the Nvidia hack suggests, I'm willing to believe that several development studios outside of Nintendo were preparing games for the said console, indirectly involving hundreds, if not thousands of people.
I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would do the dick move of cancelling the new hardware to stick with their current glorified low cost phone, and not one of those possibly thousand of people publicly calling them out for being such flukes; hell, I'm pretty sure that Jason Schreier would have already jumped on the occasion to make an article about those hordes of disgruntled developers whose work went to the shitter because Furukawa decided, between the cheese and the dessert, that Nintendo could ride the 2017 model until the advent of civil nuclear fusion. I'm happy he didn't because I dislike Jason Schreier, and also because I don't think that the Nintendo Switch Next is cancelled.
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I agree but we have a piece of news about the cancelation of a pro model or mid gen upgrade by @NateDrake
that didn't see much follow up since

I happen to think that's just the Overclocked Mariko pro model that became a more modest Switch OLED. But given the reluctance by Nate to elaborate on what exactly was cancelled its reasonable to assume there is a possibility of a worst case where literally Nintendo has no successor ready in rhe next couple of years.
 
Raccoon said:
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
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Hidden content is only available for registered users. Sharing it outside of Famiboards is subject to moderation.



Edit: some of the words I originally put got corrected to something else, and I completely forgot what was supposed to be there.
 
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Thraktor said:
It's interesting that he's again using the phrase "uncharted territory" to describe the Switch's seventh year on the market. Furukawa used the phrase a couple of times in the recent quarterly results call, and analysts have latched onto it in calls for Nintendo to start talking about new hardware, so it's noteworthy that Doug Bowser would talk about being in uncharted territory here.

I don't think it's worth reading too much into these non-answers about new hardware, but it's definitely curious that "uncharted territory" is the phrase they've chosen their current position in the market. It's not quite as reassuring as you'd want from a company facing declining sales.
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It just means that the next Zelda Spin-off to launch with it is actually their own Uncharted starring Shiek and Impa.


Not what I want but I welcome more games that star Shiek and Impa.



Anyway, as for this conversation, I find it funny that Nintendo who has access to NVidia tools directly wouldn’t gain the ability or has the ability to create something that makes fine use of AI. It’s like Sony and Microsoft having access to AMD’s RT hardware but nothing on how to actually give guidance for how to use that hardware. What was the point of them even including it

They all have direct access to their partner’s hardware and research before the public has access to it, they know things ahead of time and gain from it. They’ll be fine.
 
TonyBaduy said:
So in the case there are no rumblings coming from the GDC, can we assume it won't launch this year or early next year?
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GDC will be the first venue of the year for industry folks to congregate and talk. A lot of the talk will be frie-nda'd but there will be talk -- be it talk of not knowing anything, talk of preliminary briefings, or something more substantial.
 
Goodtwin said:
It would be surprising if Switch Redacted is launching later this year and we get no nuggets of info from GDC. Although I have honestly been skeptical on how many third parties are going to have access to development hardware prior to announcement. Nintendo may be strategically deciding what titles they want to have at launch and are going to avoid over saturation of software at early on. Even if development kits didn't go out until announcement, with the specs of Drake, third parties will be able to do PS4 ports in short order. They may not be ready for launch, but the following months could see a steady stream of ports. Unlike Switch where third parties were playing a wait and see game, with Redacted it will be a port everything we got scenario for a lot of these publishers. You think someone like Ubisoft who has been underperforming wont be a looking for some easy revenue? Next thing you know we have all Ubisofts big hitters from PS4 being ported in short order. Publishers wouldn't be thrilled with being left in the dark for so long, but at the same time aren't going to turn down easy money. Even if Nintendo started to run development kits loose in June, I think people would be surprised how many third parties could have games ready for a November launch if they really want to be there. Porting is a lot easier when the target hardware is more capable than the hardware the game originally targeted.
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Nintendo were probably pissed at Bloomberg for their "11 devs with 4K devkits" report. Knowing Nintendo, it was probably enough to recall those devkits, specially Zynga's, reassess the whole situation and double down on secrecy.

I suspect the Switch 2 is gonna sell well no matter what, specially if it's backwards compatible. It's probably gonna have more demand in the first year than what they'll be able to produce. In which case, I think it's in Nintendo's interest to delay the third-party deluge of ports.

Nintendo really only needs 1-2 launch titles and 2-3 more titles within the first year (and maybe a few patches to current games). Those titles would have a high attach rate, sell well and have a long tail. It's a privilege to be in that lot. Look what it did to OG Switch first year titles. Nintendo may have only a handful of close trusted partners for the launch.

Distributing devkits and informing third-parties when the console is announced would give Nintendo and its friends at least 1 year of that window of privilege.

So if we don't hear anything from GDC or anywhere else, I don't think it means anything. It could just mean that devs with a big mouth are not in the inner circle.
 
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Dekuman said:
I agree but we have a piece of news about the cancelation of a pro model or mid gen upgrade by @NateDrake
that didn't see much follow up since

I happen to think that's just the Overclocked Mariko pro model that became a more modest Switch OLED. But given the reluctance by Nate to elaborate on what exactly was cancelled its reasonable to assume there is a possibility of a worst case where literally Nintendo has no successor ready in rhe next couple of years.
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I've said it several times so I won't elaborate further, but I do not believe that Nate Drake is a reliable source of information regarding anything hardware.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that they considered overclocking Mariko before releasing the red box, but that was what, 4 years ago?
 
Bosintang said:
I've said it several times so I won't elaborate further, but I do not believe that Nate Drake is a reliable source of information regarding anything hardware.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that they considered overclocking Mariko before releasing the red box, but that was what, 4 years ago?
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I would hazard a guess that if it was ever on the cards, it would have been one of the possible outcomes of OLED Model development, just how DSi started out as an ultra deluxe but not more powerful DS that morphed into a more powerful DS. X1+ in Lite and V2 were inevitable as a matter of production availability. The only TV mode capable console built around the Mariko is the OLED Model. I don't think it would have been very similar if they went that route, but I do believe that is what came of that project. We have a timeline of its development from the horse's mouth, and it only came about due to the X1+. They chose to exploit the efficiency gains to make a nearly passive console with a sleek design, a huge screen, and a huge metal kickstand. They could have instead chosen to go with a more modest external redesign and instead use the internal miniaturisation to beef up the cooling system and let the X1+ approach closer to 1TF of performance.

That market, I think, would have been stillborn if they had attempted it, and exclusives would have been sparse and underwhelming if they happened at all. 1TF Vs 0.72TF(Switch's peak compared to Xbox One, according to Microsoft) isn't big enough to justify a new model and new profiles. And they knew that.


Ultimately what happened is they chose efficiency and design improvements, and as the console designers they would have already been aware of T239 in 2019 when OLED Model began planning.
 
Cybergatuno said:
Nintendo were probably pissed at Bloomberg for their "11 devs with 4K devkits" report. Knowing Nintendo, it was probably enough to recall those devkits, specially Zynga's, reassess the whole situation and double down on secrecy.
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Given the timing, if the kits were recalled it was probably more because they were destined for being destroyed. Rough mock-ups thrown together to hot-test stuff from the closest partners.

Which Zynga probably isn't anymore 😜
 
TLZ said:
5 months from now is August, not October ;)
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I like the way you think. Where I come from, August to October is called Autumn!

And I happen to have reason to believe in an Autumn launch, be it August, September or October.
 
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