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Discussion NVIDIA employee confirms existence of rumoured Switch 2 SoC

That’s cool but I want to still know the timeline of when this thing is suppose to come out.
It's been rumored for close to 2 years now to be launching some time between late 2022 and early 2023. So my guess would be between March and May next year, very possibly on the same day as TotK.
 
There's a lot of debate on the potential price point but no solid evidence either way. Between $399 and $499 seems like a safe bet unless they realign pricing on the whole Switch lineup somehow.
399.99 sounds insane to me due to the amount of extra power we are getting.

But then again powerfully portables like the steamdeck have prove differently.
 
They are also ignoring the comments from Nintendo themselves from their inventor update in 2020 that they are no longer following the "squeeze old hardware in interesting ways" mantra of the last 20 years and now looking to use "cutting-edge tech" in their R&D

Here is the quote from David Gibson
I wouldn't trust David Gibson's live tweets as direct quotes from Nintendo. All their official answers are translated in English on their investor site within a week of the Q&A if you need them.
Q6 here:
 
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399.99 sounds insane to me due to the amount of extra power we are getting.

But then again powerfully portables like the steamdeck have prove differently.
Nintendo and NVidia have economies of scale that Valve and Aya can't even hope to approach.
 
Well, its not unnatural, since the way it was handled was pretty stupid.
It was not account based, so you hade to manually move it from your wii to the wii menu on the Wii U.
And you could not use it from the Wii U menu, you hade to boot up the Wii menu every time.

They DID had the option to move some VC games to be native to the Wii U.... but you had to pay an extra upgrade fee...

it was the most stupid way to handle all of that.

In hindsight, it was impressive they had anything resembling a store and account system on the Wii of all things. I’m surprised it even had a console level OS that robust given the specs. Their mistake was having a console based account system rather than a user based account system Sony and Microsoft rolled out during that time.

When WiiU came out they did pivot to a user based account system but they couldn’t naturally link your Wii info to your WiiU, hence the convoluted transfer process. All that transfer did was just designate your WiiU as the original “Wii.” It then flagged your old VC purchases to your Nintendo account for those WiiU eshop “upgrades.”

Anyway, Nintendo has a pretty robust account system that even goes as far to interact with WiiU and 3DS. So personally, I think any dooming about losing your purchases in the future is overblown. I also feel like Nintendo has invested so much into NSO, Nintendo accounts, etc, that they’ll want to have some type of BC for this future hardware. Generally, they’ve been pretty good about BC and even the WiiU went above and beyond to ensure full Wii BC, to the point it arguably ended up hurting the overall architecture of the WiiU when it came to game development.

People will point out WiiU to Switch but historically, Nintendo has never offered BC when they make a “clean break” with hardware. And they’ve actively ported or remastered older software on newer hardware. I don’t think this new hardware is a “clean break” from Switch so I’m expecting BC.
 
It absolutely will need to launch with a title to showcase the hardware and that has mass appeal, especially if this is a successor and not a revision.
Yes. And Tears of the Kingdom is the best candidate to release alongside Switch 2.

Nintendo learned how important is a strong launch for a console, and Twilight Princess for the Wii or BotW for tue Switch is proof enough for them.

The delay for TotK was most likely for this reason. Now I wonder how big or small will be the differences between versions.
 
It's Nintendo, though. They do some off the wall shit sometimes.

Nintendo is a business. It benefits them to have BC for a successful mobile device by encouraging multiple device purchases in a household that could share games. It lets them continue selling their already popular games at near full price if those games continue to function on new hardware. It fosters trust in their eShop ecosystem so folks will continue to buy into it. It boosts the value of the Switch brand as this device that can play a massive amount of titles like the Game Boy. BC is also more feasible from a development perspective because of their partnership with Nvidia, and they save on development costs by not needing to immediately develop exclusives, individual remasters or emulation down the line. Not to mention their history of BC with their mobile devices.

Nintendo does wacky shit, sometimes with poor justification. But their decisions with the Switch are them reversing course from the Wii U days. They've committed to a single platform with a unified account system. BC is key to maintaining this.
 
So based on this rumor, Nintendo will be at a $500 price? Looking at the starting price of the Deck I think this is where it will end...
Not commenting on any specific price point, but the economics of handheld PCs are quite different from a proper console. They don't have the same economies of scale and (Steam Deck excluded, somewhat) aren't making any money on the games purchased for them.
 
It's been rumored for close to 2 years now to be launching some time between late 2022 and early 2023. So my guess would be between March and May next year, very possibly on the same day as TotK.

Yes. I always find it funny when people say that this thing has been rumored since the Switch was released. We've indeed only heard substantial info regarding this machine since...2019?
 
If this device releases in the next 12 months we are gonna see many salty people, folks that are invested in Nintendo being so far behind and always releasing worse hardware - just because.

There are still people that think a Switch 2 would be weaker/worse than a SteamDeck - just because its Nintendo - while ignoring circumstances like release dates and production capabilities.

Fun times ahead either way.
I mean, I have friends that think the next switch is going to be weaker than a ps4 and that the switch is a 2006 console made portable. So yeah fun time ahead indeed
 
Yes. I always find it funny when people say that this thing has been rumored since the Switch was released. We've indeed only heard substantial info regarding this machine since...2019?
IIRC we didn't hear anything about this particular one until late 2020 when devkits capable of DLSS and 4k were mentioned.

I think all we heard in 2019 was a vague article from Nikkei about how Nintendo's "next gen" device didn't have a lead designer or something weird.
 
Not commenting on any specific price point, but the economics of handheld PCs are quite different from a proper console. They don't have the same economies of scale and (Steam Deck excluded, somewhat) aren't making any money on the games purchased for them.
Yes, I see what you are saying, but historically speaking Nintendo doesn't sell at a loss...
 
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IIRC we didn't hear anything about this particular one until late 2020 when devkits capable of DLSS and 4k were mentioned.

I think all we heard in 2019 was a vague article from Nikkei about how Nintendo's "next gen" device didn't have a lead designer or something weird.

Ah yes, that's it. You're right!
 
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Yes. And Tears of the Kingdom is the best candidate to release alongside Switch 2.

Nintendo learned how important is a strong launch for a console, and Twilight Princess for the Wii or BotW for tue Switch is proof enough for them.

The delay for TotK was most likely for this reason. Now I wonder how big or small will be the differences between versions.
I think people are setting themselves up for disappointment if they are expecting that Nintendo spent a lot of time on Drake specific features. It will look a lot better on Drake because they can bruteforce higher res, higher settings and possibly 60fps (much like emulators). Even BOTW 1 helps up really well in 4k.
 
I mean, I have friends that think the next switch is going to be weaker than a ps4 and that the switch is a 2006 console made portable. So yeah fun time ahead indeed

There are people to this day that think the PS2 was stronger than the GameCube and Xbox. They completely bought into the emotion engine nonsense marketing from Sony lol.
 
I dunno mate, I lived through the PS3 debacle. It's best to not make assumptions. XD

Anyway, I'm hoping it's no more than $399.99. Even less if possible. The era of game machines being a half a grand is depressing to be honest.
It is, and I think it will catch up to companies eventually. The hardcore gamers, which is a bigger crowd than it used to be, will buy at almost any price. I do wonder if down the line something like the PS5's sales might be capped a bit by how expensive it is, though. It would also be a huge shift for Nintendo in making their consoles less accessible to the casual market.
 
I don’t know. Take the PS1’s shockingly low $299 price in 1995 dollars and adjust it for inflation and that’s…pretty much exactly where the $499 PS5 was when it launched in 2020, in 2020 dollars. And there’s a digital version for 20% less than that.

Gaming has been getting steadily cheaper, for the most part. High-end PC GPU prices have gone bananapants, but that’s not most of the market. I remember cartridge games being $59.99 as a kid in the nineties, which is obviously more than $59.99 today – and a lot of the big cartridges cost more than that. That $199.99 NES in 1985 is $550 in today’s money. Consoles have been, essentially, getting cheaper and cheaper. 2020’s $299 Xbox Series S would have been $125 in 1985 dollars or $158 in 1991 dollars, meaning it would have undercut the SNES by 20%. And of course its games are dramatically cheaper.

A larger issue is that wages for many have failed to keep up with inflation.
 
Listen to Miyamoto before it is too late.

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But the screen on the device itself will not be 4K (Not even close) and propably lose alot of those fine details.... I doubt they'd be blocking handheld play xD (Not saying it ain't happening, just something about the Switch that needs to be kept in mind about 4k details)
 
I've been thinking about this quote recently, and it seems to me that rather than zooming out and leveraging 4K they've zoomed in for immersion. It almost seems like Pikmin 4 is a direct subversion of this quote
Well it's going to be playbale on mostly not 4k screens, like the one in the Switch for example. But the detail is there to be seen on a 4k TV in the traditional view I guess.
He said you'll be able to play from ground level but I don't take that as being the only way, overhead view being kind of useful in RTS games after all.
 
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But the screen on the device itself will not be 4K (Not even close) and propably lose alot of those fine details.... I doubt they'd be blocking handheld play xD (Not saying it ain't happening, just something about the Switch that needs to be kept in mind about 4k details)
that's why they changed cameras! it's all coming together
 
Fretting about a potential lack of BC at this point may as well be concern trolling.
Okay, let's not stoop to suggesting that people in this thread are disingenuously undermining conversation with pretend concern just because you don't worry about it as much as some others may.
 
If this device releases in the next 12 months we are gonna see many salty people, folks that are invested in Nintendo being so far behind and always releasing worse hardware - just because.

Some thought Nintendo would cheap out on the OLED, with a pentile matrix screen (i.e. less subpixels, reduced image quality) and no other changes.

Instead, Nintendo sourced pretty sexy RGB OLED displays and redesigned the housing of the Switch with a more premium finish and better kickstand.

There's this pervasive notion that Nintendo has worse hardware for cost-cutting (or sometimes "just because"). But there are plenty of instances where, when Nintendo wasn't hamstrung by BC (Wii U), supporting a specific technology (stereoscopic 3D) or using an off-the-shelf chip (Tegra X1), they moved towards improvements on either power, battery life, or form factor.

If Nintendo sticks with the Switch then inevitably the laws of physics and reasonable pricing will prevent them from being 1:1 with the desktop chips in current-gen consoles. But with a custom-designed chip from Nvidia, architectural improvements, diminishing returns and upscaling techniques means we're in for a pretty good time imo.
 
Listen to Miyamoto before it is too late.

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This comment is a big reason why I wondered if Pikmin 4 was being prepared as a launch title for a 4K Switch system. We saw like 2 seconds of footage with no release date or details. Just that it's coming next year. My personal opinion was that the footage shown, the texture work looked higher quality then what you usually see on Switch hardware. If the game runs at 4K/60 and they downscaled the footage to 1080p for the trailer, I imagine that footage is about what it would look like. Pikmin 3 runs at 720p on Switch and doesn't look anywhere near as good as those 2 seconds of footage from this trailer. While it could be nothing or get downgraded upon release or something, I personally felt that looked really good if it is indeed a regular Switch game and is about what I would have expected from a 4K Switch launch title or crossgen title where maybe it's not pushing the hardware but is a step up from regular Switch games. I guess we shall see next year.
 
This comment is a big reason why I wondered if Pikmin 4 was being prepared as a launch title for a 4K Switch system. We saw like 2 seconds of footage with no release date or details. Just that it's coming next year. My personal opinion was that the footage shown, the texture work looked higher quality then what you usually see on Switch hardware. If the game runs at 4K/60 and they downscaled the footage to 1080p for the trailer, I imagine that footage is about what it would look like. Pikmin 3 runs at 720p on Switch and doesn't look anywhere near as good as those 2 seconds of footage from this trailer. While it could be nothing or get downgraded upon release or something, I personally felt that looked really good if it is indeed a regular Switch game and is about what I would have expected from a 4K Switch launch title or crossgen title where maybe it's not pushing the hardware but is a step up from regular Switch games. I guess we shall see next year.
It is interesting that the Pikmin 4 trailer has zero aliasing.
If it releases in Switch 4K I’m thinking it will be cross gen though.
 
Re: backwards compatibility; if we trust what’s been said about it being a ‘Switch’, since mid 2021 (?), it’s reasonable to assume they’ll have sorted backwards compatibility. For once I’m not really worried.
 
For the record, do not always equate performance with cost.

Equate new-ness with cost.


Because you can have something that’s super weak and cost more.
 


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