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

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For the Wii U I think the visual branding bizarrely failed on emphasizing the 'new' element of the name.

Look at how well these logos for consoles that reuse their predecessor's name emphasize the 'new' element - Super, Advance, 3[D], even the 'new' for what was just a revision.

Different colors, striking font, positioning, added effects. "Yeah, this is the hot new shit."

GBAlogo_1200x1200.png
2560px-SNES_logo.svg.png
2300px-New_Nintendo_3DS_logo.svg.png



Meanwhile this? The U is tucked off to the top right corner, smaller than the Wii font. It's like that on all the boxes. Some people could barely tell it's a U.
free-wiiu-3521808-2945225.png

It's not the worse idea to have the GamePad embodied in the logo, and the different color choice is good, technically a different font too - but if the GamePad is the focus, why not make it bigger? Pop more? The 'U' portion of the logo just doesn't stick in my mind like the above examples.

Now look at this silly mockup that someone made for "Wii X". Yes it's literally the Xenoblade X logo lmaoo, but doesn't that just look cool? It's so radical.

hh93yt052yk51.png


Nintendo learned their lesson. Regardless of if they use '2' or not, they'll make the new moniker 'pop' for the sake of clarity.
 
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Zedark said:
Can you explain why the 2x power differential is something that is likely to hold for Switch 2? One thing that is different from the get-go is that Switch 1 has a 2.25x resolution difference from handheld (720p) to docked (1080p), whereas Switch 2 has a 4x difference (1080p -> 4K) to potentially target
Click to expand...
Let's do a thought experiment that I think explains it pretty well.

If you have a 4K TV in your house right now, and you replaced it with an 8K television of the same size, and the same distance from your couch, would the majority of games you play suddenly look shitty on that TV?

Let's go further and say that you had a Magic Console plugged into that TV. The Magic Console is as powerful as a PS6 - 4x the PS5, powerful enough to upscale 4k games to 8k. The magic console has a dial on the front that jumps between "upscale" and "remake." If you play a PS4 game on the Magic Console, you can set the dial to "upscale" and the game will get a gorgeous, clean upscale to 8k, but no extra detail, no new visual features, no extra frame rates - just higher res.

Or you can set the dial to "remake." If you do, you get identical gameplay to your original game, but the Magic Console transforms it into a modern, ray traced, high frame rate, 4k textured version of that game, just running at 4k, or maybe even just 1440p.

Which setting do you think make the more beautiful game? Which setting do you think the average person would prefer? Now what setting do you think games developers for the Magic Console would set as the default?

The Switch basically is the Magic Console, with docked mode giving developers a "mid-gen" leap in power, and a chance to alter game settings. But Nintendo's whole pitch for the hardware is that TV and handheld players are both first class, and get the same experience, as much as possible. Play however you want to.

If Nintendo sets the system up that third parties are regularly tempted - or even encouraged financially by game sales - to pick "remake" over "upscale" then the platform will be failing to deliver on that core promise.

Nintendo's internal minimums aren't set by the maximum that your TV can deliver. Nintendo's resolution targets are really just a bullet point in "make an experience that looks as good on a 50 inch TV, 6 feet away, as a 7 inch screen, only a foot away." Really, I don't imagine that Nintendo sits down and sets a resolution target on day one, but builds and experiments with what developers need to deliver a good experience, while hardware tries to drive down costs and drive up battery life.

Looking at the big 9th gen consoles, 1440p seems to be the sweet spot where games are balancing boundary pushing features and "looks good on your TV." Looking at phones and complaints about the Switch, the pixel density is nice, but people want larger screens. Larger screens mean you see artifacts better, you need extra detail, that 1080p screen, with a real 1080p target is probably about right.

That just brings us right back to the 2x gap. Maybe Nintendo goes slightly off of that. Or maybe something like RAM creates a situation where handheld is slightly favored, and devs need a little extra GPU power in docked to compensate. But I think if you tossed out the idea of a resolution target, and simply experimented with what looked good in both modes, and tailored your power profiles around that, you'd naturally land in that 2x area anyway.
 
Z0m3le said:
There is no real jump after Switch 2, I mean it's all pointless. Games look great now and days, it takes so much more power to even really take it to the next level unless you are looking for faster frames... That is not for everyone. Switch 2 is already going to be far closer to PS5 than Switch was to PS4.
Click to expand...

That was what I was trying to say before. Tech feels like it's slowing down and we're in an era of diminishing returns. These days, it's less about hardware limitations and more about budget and the director's vision. To this day, the PS4 looks amazing!

Going from the PS4 to PS4 Pro, I can see the improvement. But going from the PS4 Pro/XSS to PS5/XSX is starting to get into splitting hairs. I'm not saying I don't see the differences, but they're tangibly getting smaller and smaller and we know the Switch 2 is more or less in the ball-park area of PS4 Pro/XSS.

This is basically the final frontier and I sometimes don't think there's quite enough hype that Nintendo is finally entering the 4k era.
 
oldpuck said:
Let's do a thought experiment that I think explains it pretty well.

If you have a 4K TV in your house right now, and you replaced it with an 8K television of the same size, and the same distance from your couch, would the majority of games you play suddenly look shitty on that TV?

Let's go further and say that you had a Magic Console plugged into that TV. The Magic Console is as powerful as a PS6 - 4x the PS5, powerful enough to upscale 4k games to 8k. The magic console has a dial on the front that jumps between "upscale" and "remake." If you play a PS4 game on the Magic Console, you can set the dial to "upscale" and the game will get a gorgeous, clean upscale to 8k, but no extra detail, no new visual features, no extra frame rates - just higher res.

Or you can set the dial to "remake." If you do, you get identical gameplay to your original game, but the Magic Console transforms it into a modern, ray traced, high frame rate, 4k textured version of that game, just running at 4k, or maybe even just 1440p.

Which setting do you think make the more beautiful game? Which setting do you think the average person would prefer? Now what setting do you think games developers for the Magic Console would set as the default?

The Switch basically is the Magic Console, with docked mode giving developers a "mid-gen" leap in power, and a chance to alter game settings. But Nintendo's whole pitch for the hardware is that TV and handheld players are both first class, and get the same experience, as much as possible. Play however you want to.

If Nintendo sets the system up that third parties are regularly tempted - or even encouraged financially by game sales - to pick "remake" over "upscale" then the platform will be failing to deliver on that core promise.

Nintendo's internal minimums aren't set by the maximum that your TV can deliver. Nintendo's resolution targets are really just a bullet point in "make an experience that looks as good on a 50 inch TV, 6 feet away, as a 7 inch screen, only a foot away." Really, I don't imagine that Nintendo sits down and sets a resolution target on day one, but builds and experiments with what developers need to deliver a good experience, while hardware tries to drive down costs and drive up battery life.

Looking at the big 9th gen consoles, 1440p seems to be the sweet spot where games are balancing boundary pushing features and "looks good on your TV." Looking at phones and complaints about the Switch, the pixel density is nice, but people want larger screens. Larger screens mean you see artifacts better, you need extra detail, that 1080p screen, with a real 1080p target is probably about right.

That just brings us right back to the 2x gap. Maybe Nintendo goes slightly off of that. Or maybe something like RAM creates a situation where handheld is slightly favored, and devs need a little extra GPU power in docked to compensate. But I think if you tossed out the idea of a resolution target, and simply experimented with what looked good in both modes, and tailored your power profiles around that, you'd naturally land in that 2x area anyway.
Click to expand...
Dear oldpuck I have a question, in the previous discussion about ray tracing in switch2 did we admit that portable mode does not enable ray tracing?
 
gabeplays said:
That was what I was trying to say before. Tech feels like it's slowing down and we're in an era of diminishing returns. These days, it's less about hardware limitations and more about budget and the director's vision. To this day, the PS4 looks amazing!

Going from the PS4 to PS4 Pro, I can see the improvement. But going from the PS4 Pro/XSS to PS5/XSX is starting to get into splitting hairs. I'm not saying I don't see the differences, but they're tangibly getting smaller and smaller and we know the Switch 2 is more or less in the ball-park area of PS4 Pro/XSS.

This is basically the final frontier and I sometimes don't think there's quite enough hype that Nintendo is finally entering the 4k era.
Click to expand...
In retrospective it seems like Nintendo have played the cards mostly right all those years. Not going "all in" on attempts to be at or close to cutting edge graphical rendering tech. As a result, they have a bigger warchest of cash now.

And now Nintendo is doing a soft landing into the land of diminishing returns, with pretty good timing.
 
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Z0m3le said:
There is no real jump after Switch 2, I mean it's all pointless. Games look great now and days, it takes so much more power to even really take it to the next level unless you are looking for faster frames... That is not for everyone. Switch 2 is already going to be far closer to PS5 than Switch was to PS4.
Click to expand...
There is one, it's called pathtracing and it's the final frontier for realtime graphics besides extensive machine learning/AI usage. Unfortunately won't be here until PS6 so four years plus away, but PC is already giving us an idea of what to expect.
 
Modern Ninyo said:
bit of a silly question but are 12gb ram + 256gb storage basically heavily backed up so far?
Click to expand...
We have shipment records of the parts, marked as being for consumer systems. So as locked as it is possible for something to be,
Raccoon said:
I'm shocked, though in an altruistic way happy, that opinions are as overwhelmingly positive in this thread as they are
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I think there is a limit to how good people are at picturing the physical size of a thing, but they are good at "numbers go brr." Also there are a large number of docked only players in here, who just have trouble thinking of handheld mode at all.

I'm a pure handheld player, and comfort matters to me a lot, but Covid eliminated any daily leaving the house I once had, so portability has come down a notch in priority for me personally. But I get where you're coming from.

Aufhebung RPG said:
Dear oldpuck I have a question, in the previous discussion about ray tracing in switch2 did we admit that portable mode does not enable ray tracing?
Click to expand...
No, not at all. In fact, I think the opposite, I think RT will be slightly better/easier in portable than docked.
 
darthdiablo said:
In retrospective it seems like Nintendo have played the cards mostly right all those years. Not going "all in" on attempts to be at or close to cutting edge graphical rendering tech. As a result, they have a bigger warchest of cash now.

And now Nintendo is doing a soft landing somewhere in the land of diminishing returns, with pretty good timing.
Click to expand...
Iwata's sharp brake on hardware development back in the day proved to be the right choice, but it looks like Nintendo, while the hardware level went through the brakes in the wii era, software/engine tech development seems to have been following suit.Iwata's hasty braking of hardware development back then proved to be the right choice, but in hindsight, it seems that while Nintendo braked sharply at the hardware level during the wii era, the development of software/engine technology never stopped, and what the ns generation Nintendo engine achieved was phenomenal.
 
oldpuck said:
We have shipment records of the parts, marked as being for consumer systems. So as locked as it is possible for something to be,

I think there is a limit to how good people are at picturing the physical size of a thing, but they are good at "numbers go brr." Also there are a large number of docked only players in here, who just have trouble thinking of handheld mode at all.

I'm a pure handheld player, and comfort matters to me a lot, but Covid eliminated any daily leaving the house I once had, so portability has come down a notch in priority for me personally. But I get where you're coming from.


No, not at all. In fact, I think the opposite, I think RT will be slightly better/easier in portable than docked.
Click to expand...
Am I to understand that your point remains that 1440p in docked mode pays more to implement ray tracing than portable 1080p?
 
oldpuck said:
We have shipment records of the parts, marked as being for consumer systems. So as locked as it is possible for something to be,

I think there is a limit to how good people are at picturing the physical size of a thing, but they are good at "numbers go brr." Also there are a large number of docked only players in here, who just have trouble thinking of handheld mode at all.

I'm a pure handheld player, and comfort matters to me a lot, but Covid eliminated any daily leaving the house I once had, so portability has come down a notch in priority for me personally. But I get where you're coming from.
Click to expand...
Actually im mostly a Switch lite user. Mostly because I live in a small apartment with one other person, and hogging the tv isn't super popular. I don't take it with me a ton of places. So size isn't a huge issue.
 
Modern Ninyo said:
bit of a silly question but are 12gb ram + 256gb storage basically heavily backed up so far?
Click to expand...
Yes unless you think someone managed to fake millions and millions of public customs data records in a database.

And by the way, those records can be cross-checked against other customs data websites.
 
The idea that bigger is a net negative for portability is not one I'm in full agreement with, it has a real impact on its literal portability i.e. the ability to be carried for sure, I empathize. But that is just one aspect of the ergonomics when using it in handheld mode.

My original 3DS is a lovely pocketable Pokemon device, but my eyes strain when viewing scenes in Ocarina 3D that have faraway detail. Even with games that compensate with their FoV, often small screens don't work well with high detail or high resolution content. I've noticed this on the Switch Lite as well.

An 8 inch 1080p screen would be a very pixel dense and very comfortable viewing experience, a screen size larger than the Steam Decks screen, with higher resolution, while the console is still smaller and thinner than the Deck - I consider that a win. I'd have different feelings if the screen were still 720p, or if the device were larger than the Deck. Nor do I think a hypothetical 1440p screen should have an even larger display in the future, I think there's a reasonable limit to how large the overall console can be.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
Yes, I mean will it be common for the dynamic probe GI that Starfield can render to be implemented on ns2.
Click to expand...
impossible to say. there are many different ways to achieve the intended effect.

Aufhebung RPG said:
Am I to understand that your point remains that 1440p in docked mode pays more to implement ray tracing than portable 1080p?
Click to expand...
not always. you can always render the RT at a lower resolution. UE5's lumen's high settings render RT at 1/16th resolution (so for 1440p, that's 360p RT)
 
darthdiablo said:
In retrospective it seems like Nintendo have played the cards mostly right all those years. Not going "all in" on attempts to be at or close to cutting edge graphical rendering tech. As a result, they have a bigger warchest of cash now.

And now Nintendo is doing a soft landing somewhere in the land of diminishing returns, with pretty good timing.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. The Switch is proof-positive that people just don't care that much about cutting edge graphics. They just want to play fun games and they're right too. It sometimes feels like the 9th generation has barely gotten on it's feet. There are still cross-gen games being made to this day, there are hardly any real exclusives on the PS5 and for good reason too -- it's just not profitable anymore. People just want to have fun and not wait a bajillion years for games to come out and companies shouldn't place themselves in a situation where they need a bajillion dollars to make the money back. Square-Enix has learned this lesson the hard way which is why they're (thankfully) changing their strategy.

By becoming a new haven for indie games and smaller titles, and focusing on titles that don't require anywhere near the cost or development times as big AAA titles, there's been a very healthy and steady stream of Switch titles over the course of it's lifespan. At the end of the day, that's what people want! yes, things have slowed down a lot this past year, but it's completely okay considering just how many games came out last year. My backlog is more than satisfied and I'm looking forward to the Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door remake in a few weeks. Sure, once in a while I want a big Tears of the Kingdom, but I don't just want games at that scale if it means there's only a bare handful of titles. I'd rather have a steady stream of smaller titles all year than just a bare number of big AAA.

Now we're getting a new console in the ballpark area of the PS4 Pro/XSS. Games will still be cheaper to make, faster to release, and undoubtedly just as much fun. It was talked about before but the XSS is going to be one of the best things to ever happen for Nintendo since it's been the affordable 9th-gen console to this point. Anything it can get, Nintendo will get. Without question the new Switch is going to get the lion's share of titles that's been released over the course of the 8th and 9th gen, all portably and on the go.

Can you imagine how good games are going to look with Nintendo's fantastic art direction over uber-realism now that they're in 4k?

I know I'm jumping around, but the obsession of more, more, more -- better graphics, bigger games -- has been the achilles heel of this past generation. Whether we're looking at the console wars or the AAA industry. It's a self-destructive place to be and I'm so happy Nintendo got themselves out of it. The crazy success of the Switch is proof people just don't care. They just want to play fun games that come out frequently and don't cost an arm and a leg.
 
ILikeFeet said:
impossible to say. there are many different ways to achieve the intended effect.


not always. you can always render the RT at a lower resolution. UE5's lumen's high settings render RT at 1/16th resolution (so for 1440p, that's 360p RT)
Click to expand...
I'm sorry I'm kind of missing the point, but what is the effect of high or low resolution rendering RT on the visuals?
 
Serif said:
The idea that bigger is a net negative for portability is not one I'm in full agreement with, it has a real impact on its literal portability i.e. the ability to be carried for sure, I empathize. But that is just one aspect of the ergonomics when using it in handheld mode.

My original 3DS is a lovely pocketable Pokemon device, but my eyes strain when viewing scenes in Ocarina 3D that have faraway detail. Even with games that compensate with their FoV, often small screens don't work well with high detail or high resolution content. I've noticed this on the Switch Lite as well.

An 8 inch 1080p screen would be a very pixel dense and very comfortable viewing experience, a screen size larger than the Steam Decks screen, with higher resolution, while the console is still smaller and thinner than the Deck - I consider that a win. I'd have different feelings if the screen were still 720p, or if the device were larger than the Deck. Nor do I think a hypothetical 1440p screen should have an even larger display in the future, I think there's a reasonable limit to how large the overall console can be.
Click to expand...
I'm already salivating at the thought of an 8-inch 1080p OLED display on the Switch 2 😆

I love OLED. Maybe a bit too much. I'm definitely going to sell off my launch day Switch 2 when the OLED model comes out.
 
chocolate_supra said:
Ah gotcha, thanks for the correction. Some of the fine details of these things are getting tough to keep up with. 😅


With the current Switch, not at all. There's currently 1.75in of space on either side (fully loaded with the joycons) and it's plenty of comfy space for me to reach in with both hands and pop it out. But if the 2witch measurements I mentioned are correct, then there'd be less than an inch on either side. I might be having to pick it out of the dock from the top, which.. might be doable, but it's tough to figure without having it here. And I don't wanna put undue pressure on the body or the joycons.

I know it's first world problems and all that, it's just wild to me that out of all the consoles I have set up in there all the way back to the NES, the one that's gonna be potentially too big is gonna be a handheld. 😅
Click to expand...

Raccoon said:
no because the switch is a size that actually makes sense for what it is

to that end, I wonder if the new dock will be at an angle or even sideways
Click to expand...
Interesting, chocolate, I never even thought of grabbing it from the sides and lifting it up (if I read you right). I always pictured reaching my hand from above like I do as a non-cubby man. So when I asked if it was awkward, what I had in mind was you being cramped vertically. I guess lifting it up from the sides helps avoid that.

Right now I have my dock behind my TV. But I plan to wall mount my TV soon. I don't want it too high, gonna try to keep at a good eye-level height...but I realized at the height I'd probably want the TV, the Switch inside the dock will be poking out in front of the bottom left corner of the TV! Probably just barely, so hopefully I'd never notice. In games it could get in the way though...

Anyway, just rambling. One thought I had, which is cursed except for the fact that Sakurai does it, is to lay the dock flat. Weird, scary, feel like it could fall out or one of my kids would yank it out, and doesn't look nearly as sleek...so I probably wouldn't.
 
I'm hoping Nintendo goes full exploration with the name:

Nintendo Scope
Nintendo Rive
Nintendo Element
Nintendo Ozone
Nintendo Connect
Nintendo Revolution Evolution
Nintendo Ultima
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
I'm sorry I'm kind of missing the point, but what is the effect of high or low resolution rendering RT on the visuals?
Click to expand...
ray tracing scales based on the rays per pixel (among other things). for 1440p, that's 3.6M rays to hit test and check against the bvh (casting rays by itself is cheap). if you cast 1 ray for every 16 pixels, that's only 0.23M rays to test and check, speeding up RT signficantly

that said, lowering your sample count does mean reducing the quality of the RT. for something like RTGI, that means you could get a splotchy effect. not so bad for GI since you can filter it, but with something like mirror reflections, imagine if you rendered our game at 360p and then blown it up to 1440p. doesn't look that great
 
As for the name, Nintendo would be silly imo to not have the "Switch" name in there somewhere. We can guess at the suffix -- Super Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, Switch Attach -- but we know it's a hybrid console, Furukawa calls is "the successor to the Nintendo Switch"; they would be silly to not have the Switch name in there somewhere.
 
oldpuck said:
Ray tracing loves RAM. Having the same amount of RAM in both modes, but lower resolution in portable will be an advantage to ray tracing on the handheld side.
Click to expand...
Does using the RT-cores or Ray Reconstruction in DLSS 3.5-3.7 use more power?

Nintendo cares a lot about battery life; I’m concerned all the fancy DLSS and RT features might not get used much in handheld mode of the Switch 2 in order to save battery.

Thoughts?
 
ILikeFeet said:
ray tracing scales based on the rays per pixel (among other things). for 1440p, that's 3.6M rays to hit test and check against the bvh (casting rays by itself is cheap). if you cast 1 ray for every 16 pixels, that's only 0.23M rays to test and check, speeding up RT signficantly

that said, lowering your sample count does mean reducing the quality of the RT. for something like RTGI, that means you could get a splotchy effect. not so bad for GI since you can filter it, but with something like mirror reflections, imagine if you rendered our game at 360p and then blown it up to 1440p. doesn't look that great
Click to expand...
So what I'm wondering is if we want to maintain RT quality in docking mode, does that mean we need to be faced with the option of RT on at 1080p/RT off at 1440p?
 
TheSentry said:
Does using the RT-cores or Ray Reconstruction in DLSS 3.5-3.7 use more power?

Nintendo cares a lot about battery life; I’m concerned all the fancy DLSS and RT features might not get used much in handheld mode of the Switch 2 in order to save battery.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
They can't stop third parties from using the hardware, short of turning it off, and Nintendo won't undermine their development teams to get a couple extra minutes of battery life, only on those games. In fact, with Switch they did the opposite, giving Breath of the Wild access to more power draining modes before third parties got access.

If the battery life is unacceptably low, Nintendo's hardware team will push the clocks lower. If the performance is unacceptably low, devs will push the hardware team to give them more clock. However much performance and battery life that push and pull results in is what we and devs will get. They won't restrain themselves.

Whether or not that push pull results in too little performance to really use these features is a separate question, but it will be because hardware and software compromised on the best visual bang for the battery buck.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
So what I'm wondering is if we want to maintain RT quality in docking mode, does that mean we need to be faced with the option of RT on at 1080p/RT off at 1440p?
Click to expand...
if the developer wills it, sure. however, if a game is designed around RT lighting, then they will have to take the technique into account from the start and design around it for both handheld and docked

essentially, don't choose a method and pray it works later. choose a method and make necessary cuts when too much deviation occurs
 
I like nuSwitch; I read it in this thread way back but I think it's since fallen out of popularity lol
Serif said:
Now look at this silly mockup that someone made for "Wii X". Yes it's literally the Xenoblade X logo lmaoo, but doesn't that just look cool? It's so radical.

hh93yt052yk51.png
Click to expand...
That logo change would have doubled Wii U X's lifetime sales right there.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
So what I'm wondering is if we want to maintain RT quality in docking mode, does that mean we need to be faced with the option of RT on at 1080p/RT off at 1440p?
Click to expand...
We could be "faced" with RT on at 4K. It depends on the developer's intentions and the scale of the game, we can't make sweeping statements.
 
Something is going on when it comes to Nintendo stock price recently:


Nintendo stock have jumped back after declining for a few months on the back of Switch 2 delay news. Is the stock market factoring in Switch 2 reveal soonish?
 
Danny said:
Something is going on when it comes to Nintendo stock price recently:


Nintendo stock have jumped back to the heights it had before shares tumbled on the back of Switch 2 delay news. Is the stock market factoring in Switch 2 reveal soonish?
Click to expand...
@Shareholder Chad
Bat-signal_1989_film.jpg
 
omniryu said:
No joke. I think we are going to get a super mario galaxy spiritual succcessor.
Click to expand...
Nah that's fine, the guy I replied to named Super Mario 128 as a successor to Super Mario 64

Gamecube was the 128-bit console after the N64

P.s. I'm not into the Mario games, full disclosure.
 
Danny said:
Something is going on when it comes to Nintendo stock price recently:


Nintendo stock have jumped back after declining for a few months on the back of Switch 2 delay news. Is the stock market factoring in Switch 2 reveal soonish?
Click to expand...
I feel like this is just optimistic movement from Furukawa's statement and confidence
 
oldpuck said:
They can't stop third parties from using the hardware, short of turning it off, and Nintendo won't undermine their development teams to get a couple extra minutes of battery life, only on those games. In fact, with Switch they did the opposite, giving Breath of the Wild access to more power draining modes before third parties got access.

If the battery life is unacceptably low, Nintendo's hardware team will push the clocks lower. If the performance is unacceptably low, devs will push the hardware team to give them more clock. However much performance and battery life that push and pull results in is what we and devs will get. They won't restrain themselves.

Whether or not that push pull results in too little performance to really use these features is a separate question, but it will be because hardware and software compromised on the best visual bang for the battery buck.
Click to expand...

That makes me think about the supposed leaked GPU clocks from the Nvidia leak. How the Standard clock is supposedly around 3.4TFLOPS and the boosted clock is around 4.2TFLOPS. I think it's going to be a case-by-case basis on which games get which.
 
Gerald said:
We aleardy know we have 12GB of LPDDR5X(devkits have 16GB of LPDDR5X), stop with dooming
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I wasn't the one dooming that this post was replying to, but since i'm a bit out of the loop my final fear of having a Wii U Speculation like letdown in the end was the possibility that the 12GB LPDDR5X being shipped out was for devkits, and I totally missed the confirmation of 16GB for devkits. Can anyone fill me in or possibility link to/explain where/when we got confirmation of the 16GB dev kit WAM to help me eliminate those fears for good? Would be much appreciated!
 
Danny said:
Something is going on when it comes to Nintendo stock price recently:


Nintendo stock have jumped back after declining for a few months on the back of Switch 2 delay news. Is the stock market factoring in Switch 2 reveal soonish?
Click to expand...

lol have we already forgotten the date we were so all eagerly awaiting and what finally happened on it? (and the higher than expected sales forecasts for the next FY)
 
Danny said:
Something is going on when it comes to Nintendo stock price recently:


Nintendo stock have jumped back after declining for a few months on the back of Switch 2 delay news. Is the stock market factoring in Switch 2 reveal soonish?
Click to expand...
Sales had been dry lately, hence the recent slump, but now that Switch 2 news is finally picking up people are expecting Nintendo stocks to skyrocket when Switch 2 drops
 
windyoshi said:
I wasn't the one dooming that this post was replying to, but since i'm a bit out of the loop my final fear of having a Wii U Speculation like letdown in the end was the possibility that the 12GB LPDDR5X being shipped out was for devkits, and I totally missed the confirmation of 16GB for devkits. Can anyone fill me in or possibility link to/explain where/when we got confirmation of the 16GB dev kit WAM to help me eliminate those fears for good? Would be much appreciated!
Click to expand...
famiboards.com

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

Switch Attach sounds even more like an add on peripheral than a “Wii U” does.
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gabeplays said:
That makes me think about the supposed leaked GPU clocks from the Nvidia leak. How the Standard clock is supposedly around 3.4TFLOPS and the boosted clock is around 4.2TFLOPS. I think it's going to be a case-by-case basis on which games get which.
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If those numbers turn out to be accurate, I would tend to agree with earlier speculation on the matter. Given the power consumption of the 4.2TF mode, that was probably a stress test, with 3.4 being the target for TV mode. Consoles don't really benefit from "boost clocks" unless it can hold it there indefinitely. While 12W for the GPU could be possible in an 18W package, it's starting to muscle in on the power available to the CPU, for charging the battery and the Joy-Con, for the radios and fan, etc. The performance uplift also isn't as gigantic as it looks, 9W GPU power consumption in TV mode targeting 3.45TF seems like a good position to be in, balancing power consumption with performance.
 
Serif said:
For the Wii U I think the visual branding bizarrely failed on emphasizing the 'new' element of the name.

Look at how well these logos for consoles that reuse their predecessor's name emphasize the 'new' element - Super, Advance, 3[D], even the 'new' for what was just a revision.

Different colors, striking font, positioning, added effects. "Yeah, this is the hot new shit."

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Meanwhile this? The U is tucked off to the top right corner, smaller than the Wii font. It's like that on all the boxes. Some people could barely tell it's a U.
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It's not the worse idea to have the GamePad embodied in the logo, and the different color choice is good, technically a different font too - but if the GamePad is the focus, why not make it bigger? Pop more? The 'U' portion of the logo just doesn't stick in my mind like the above examples.

Now look at this silly mockup that someone made for "Wii X". Yes it's literally the Xenoblade X logo lmaoo, but doesn't that just look cool? It's so radical.

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Nintendo learned their lesson. Regardless of if they use '2' or not, they'll make the new moniker 'pop' for the sake of clarity.
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i prefer this one
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gabeplays said:
As for the name, Nintendo would be silly imo to not have the "Switch" name in there somewhere. We can guess at the suffix -- Super Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, Switch Attach -- but we know it's a hybrid console, Furukawa calls is "the successor to the Nintendo Switch"; they would be silly to not have the Switch name in there somewhere.
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I suppose, but it depends how they choose to play it. They could easily name it otherwise, but they could also add a suffix and as long as they get the marketing right this time (I'm looking at you, Wii U) there shouldn't be a problem.

I've leaned towards a different name for a while, but I'd also be happy with Switch 'Something'. Just do it right.
 
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The Switch brand is very strong, but if Nintendo isn’t doing Switch 2 or Super Switch, I think I’d prefer dropping the Switch name entirely. For example, I don’t like Attach as a name (two voiceless consonants is too many), but “Nintendo Attach” is certainly a better name than “Nintendo Switch Attach,” which has too much consonance between the ch’s and feels like the name of a peripheral.
 
gabeplays said:
That makes me think about the supposed leaked GPU clocks from the Nvidia leak. How the Standard clock is supposedly around 3.4TFLOPS and the boosted clock is around 4.2TFLOPS. I think it's going to be a case-by-case basis on which games get which.
Click to expand...
I don't know where this "boosted clock" idea came from. How did that meme get started? I don't think any kind of "boost clock" is going to exist. But locking out third party devs from accessing certain clock speeds is probably illegal.

Not to mention a giant pain in the ass. Nintendo doesn't want to be in the position of deciding what games "deserve" to suck battery life. Mario and Zelda are going to get max clocks, and customers are going to judge the battery life of the console based on how many hours they can play those flagship Nintendo titles. If a battery sucking game looks like dog's ass, Nintendo doesn't need to artificially limit that game's clock speed, because no one will buy it.

And if a game has 20 minutes of extra battery life, because Nintendo forced it to look bad by not letting it have access to full clock speeds, I don't see how that makes Nintendo's console sell better, or leads to anything but customer backlash and a law suit.

Nintendo will not use game development as a way to control battery life. They'll use the hardware itself. Anything else is madness.
 
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