Nintendo Switch

[Alex W.]

1 hour ago, Protocol Penguin said:

Anyway, I hope the rumours about the NX design are fictitious, because it sounds just as flawed an idea as the Wii U, which I'll openly state as doomed from day one from its very concept.

 

I backed this horse all the way up to the WiiU unveiling. :/

[BruceBruce]

13 minutes ago, pulsemyne said:

Not really. Say it works at the Tegra X1's speed, well that's about three times the Gflops of the WiiU (which is thought to be about 192 Gflops although it is a much newer and more refined chip than that in the PS3). Couple that with Nintendos commitment to Mantle and a much better CPU then your looking at a much more capable machine than the WiiU graphics wise. Also Nvidia flops are calculated in a different manner to the way AMD do it. So say Nvidia says "Oh it does 512 Gflops!" that number calculate in AMD's way could equate to about 700 gflops for them (this is just an example of course but Nvidia's flops tend to be lower than AMD but work out better). 

Personally I think that maybe we could be looking at a handheld with roughly three times the GPU power over the WiiU and a much better CPU to match. So a nice step up in power and easily more powerful than any smartphone albeit using a lower res screen (540p would be bang on the money which is the same as the Vita res).

Imagine a machine, on the go, capable of playing a cut down Battlefield game. Frostbite worked reasonable on the PS3/X360 so, if EA were willing, I'm sure a spin off BF game could be done on the NX.

 

True they could achieve 1080p 30fps on the TV whilst lowering the res for a smoother gameplay experience on the handheld.

[gizmo1990]

Personally I'm hoping they've designed this for complete parity between the mobile and TV experience. That would be an unfussy way to sell this and easily understood by all. Once they go down the road of title's playing differently spec wise it's a dangerous path..

 

They really need a clear and concise way to market the vision. The simplest imo would be 'Here's a brand new more powerful Nintendo console, look Mario 128 finally!! Oh and you can also play it ANYWHERE because it's PORTABLE suckers! Exactly the same game, played with exactly the same controls, looking exactly the SAME.

[Guest]

54 minutes ago, pulsemyne said:

Not really. Say it works at the Tegra X1's speed, well that's about three times the Gflops of the WiiU (which is thought to be about 192 Gflops although it is a much newer and more refined chip than that in the PS3). Couple that with Nintendos commitment to Mantle and a much better CPU then your looking at a much more capable machine than the WiiU graphics wise. Also Nvidia flops are calculated in a different manner to the way AMD do it. So say Nvidia says "Oh it does 512 Gflops!" that number calculate in AMD's way could equate to about 700 gflops for them (this is just an example of course but Nvidia's flops tend to be lower than AMD but work out better). 

Personally I think that maybe we could be looking at a handheld with roughly three times the GPU power over the WiiU and a much better CPU to match. So a nice step up in power and easily more powerful than any smartphone albeit using a lower res screen (540p would be bang on the money which is the same as the Vita res).

Imagine a machine, on the go, capable of playing a cut down Battlefield game. Frostbite worked reasonable on the PS3/X360 so, if EA were willing, I'm sure a spin off BF game could be done on the NX.

Noise.

[El Spatula]

Battery life will be a massive issue if that's the case.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, gizmo1990 said:

Personally I'm hoping they've designed this for complete parity between the mobile and TV experience. That would be an unfussy way to sell this and easily understood by all. Once they go down the road of title's playing differently spec wise it's a dangerous path..

 

They really need a clear and concise way to market the vision. The simplest imo would be 'Here's a brand new more powerful Nintendo console, look Mario 128 finally!! Oh and you can also play it ANYWHERE because it's PORTABLE suckers! Exactly the same game, played with exactly the same controls, looking exactly the SAME.

It won't be different spec. It'll be different resolution. There's a difference.

[gizmo1990]

Aye I know. Resolution is fine.

[pulsemyne]

40 minutes ago, El Spatula said:

Battery life will be a massive issue if that's the case.

There is a cheapo Chinese baytrail CPU'd handheld with a highres screen and 6 hours of battery life that's for gaming with. That with a 5 inch screen I think. Anyway it all depends on if it's X2 or some custom job and just how efficient it is. But I do think that around the power of the X1 or maybe a bit more should be doable without active cooling if they are going Pascal (that would be 16nm or course). Oh and nintendo put a good battery in it for heavens sake. 4 hours of playtime would be nice.

[TehStu]

Wouldn't the nVidia Shield's battery life be indicative?

[Alex W.]

There's no portable version with an X1 in it. There's a tablet but that only has a K1, and the original handheld has your basic Tegra in it.

[monkeydog]

11 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

There's no portable version with an X1 in it. There's a tablet but that only has a K1, and the original handheld has your basic Tegra in it.

 

There's the Pixel C, but that's probably bigger than NX will be.  It consumes 15-25% of its battery gaming. It's X1 is clocked lower than the Shield TV. 

 

Doesn't really give a clue as to what NX would do if it had an X1 in it.

[Halo]

6 hours ago, mushashi said:

Game graphics will be ‘somewhere between a PS3 and PS4’, with Nintendo targeting an audience that sits between smartphone gamers and the more hardcore users of PS4 and Xbox One.

I think this puts the console in an awkward position that could be a major issue for 3rd parties. It's too weak for Xbone/PS4 ports, developers are going to be reluctant to make a console with no install base their lead platform, and the system is powerful enough to make developing system-pushing exclusives an expensive proposition.

 

I've long felt that sitting in an awkward middle ground is a major reason why the Vita failed. Too weak for ports and too small install base for developing increasingly expensive exclusives. In the end,  the system's library became niche low-to-mid-budget Japanese titles - and Nintendo surely has grander ambitions than being the future lead platform for the Neptunia series.

[Alex W.]

I think the performance gap might be smaller than you think. You're talking about a GPU that's at least one quarter as fast as a current generation console (0.5TFOPS for a Tegra X1 versus 2 TFLOPS for a PS4) but could only be drawing to one quarter the number of pixels (540p vs 1080p). And the current generation consoles have really weak CPUs. The maths could work out.

 

By comparison the Vita was only one quarter as powerful as the PS3, but for most of its life the development target was the PS4, a machine forty times as powerful. That's a far bigger performance gap.

[Stanley]

Nintendo will unlikely be chasing PS4 and Xbox One ports anyway. They'll want this console to succeed on its own terms and attract third party software more suited to it. Think Wii rather than Wii U.

[pulsemyne]

2 hours ago, TehStu said:

Wouldn't the nVidia Shield's battery life be indicative?

If it's Pascal based then no. The X1 was based on Maxwell and the X2 is supposedly based on Pascal. If that is true then it may also be a case of what we saw in desktop cards with the move from maxwell to Pascal. It seem's to be a nice jump in power efficiency. For example the 970Gtx is roughly half as fast as the new 1070Gtx despite them both drawing about the same wattage, this despite the fact that the pascal card is clocked much higher and has an extra 4 gigs of memory.

[robdood]

Man I'm surprised at how pleased I am with this concept..  Several times I've found myself eyeballing options for portable gaming; and I mean "proper" portable gaming, ie things that would allow me to play Dark Souls during my lunch break, basically.  Laptops,  mini hdmi monitors, those stupid case /screen things... 

 

Being able to play something the quality of new Zelda, Mario Kart 8, or Bayonetta 2, at home or while commuting / away, without having to faff with cloud save etc sounds very appealing to me. 

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Stanley said:

Nintendo will unlikely be chasing PS4 and Xbox One ports anyway. They'll want this console to succeed on its own terms and attract third party software more suited to it. Think Wii rather than Wii U.

Haha. You know it's already dead in the water. There will be no 3rd party support again, killing it before it gets going.

[Stanley]

4 hours ago, Jon said:

Haha. You know it's already dead in the water. There will be no 3rd party support again, killing it before it gets going.

Like Wii and DS then.

[Jarik]

I'd be more concerned with ease of development than specs anyway.  If developing games for the NX is (relatively) simple then it will be easier to build up a software base, & a bigger software base will attract more development, which is always the catch-22 that new consoles in general (and Nintendo in particular) face.

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Like Wii and DS then.

No. Like WiiU.

 

But yeah, they had great third party support. Shame it was all shovelware.

 

Look, I'd love another great Nintendo console, something along the lineage of the N64 and GameCube, but they've turned into a 'novelty' company it seems.

 

And please fellas, there's no need to get all neggy, just because my love for Nintendo has been beaten out of me, is there?

[Stanley]

How is it like Wii U? 

[MikeBeaver]

Hmmmmm, well, based on leaks and unsubstantiated rumours, you don't like the idea of what the new Nintendo console will be, that's fine, it of course isn't for everyone.

 

I'd also like another system that competed on power with the other systems, with an awesome launch line up and games that were great every other week, but it isn't going to happen, not now, not in the future either.

 

Nintendo are never going to try and release a system that plays to the core MS / Sony audience, they lost that with the Gamecube, ignored it with Wii and failed to bring them back with Wii U.

They are going in a different direction, and maybe some people will get left behind, but personally, I'm not going to write them off, not without actually hearing what the system is from Nintendo, as again, all we have is rumours ( even if they are starting to sound more and more like leaks than rumours ).

 

Portable gaming from Nintendo, with graphics matching the Wii U, games that fit on 3DS shaped carts, that I can play EXACTLY the same at home in front of the telly, in bed, on a bus, train or back of the car sounds great, OK, it's not cutting edge power, but what it will be is Nintendo, and they make some pretty good stuff.

 

[KriessG]

Mario Kart 8 still looks incredible. If this portable has 3 times the power of the Wii U then anyone worrying about graphics... Shouldn't.

[Stanley]

8 minutes ago, KriessG said:

Mario Kart 8 still looks incredible. If this portable has 3 times the power of the Wii U then anyone worrying about graphics... Shouldn't.

That's the thing. It may not be able to compete directly with PS4 and Xbox One, although it might not be far off, but in the handheld space it's going to be staggering. Imagine playing Zelda Breath of The Wild on a handheld. Then plugging it into your TV for pumped up 1080p visuals, perhaps even 4K upscaled.

 

It's pretty ambitious and if they pull it off, it's going to be amazing.

[Guest]

You're all right of course. I should just really wait to see how people react to it when it gets officially announced. I am a bit worried for it to be honest, but I'll lay off the doom and gloom.

[macosx]

you're right Jon, but just being a dick as usual

[kensei]

13 hours ago, Halo said:

I think this puts the console in an awkward position that could be a major issue for 3rd parties. It's too weak for Xbone/PS4 ports, developers are going to be reluctant to make a console with no install base their lead platform, and the system is powerful enough to make developing system-pushing exclusives an expensive proposition.

 

I've long felt that sitting in an awkward middle ground is a major reason why the Vita failed. Too weak for ports and too small install base for developing increasingly expensive exclusives. In the end,  the system's library became niche low-to-mid-budget Japanese titles - and Nintendo surely has grander ambitions than being the future lead platform for the Neptunia series.

 

With the advent of the Neo and Scorpio, developers are probably going to have to build titles that scale to the hardware in any case, so NX might slot in. It probably comes down to how much of a PS4 the NX is, and how much of a wrinkle the ARM architecture adds.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, macosx said:

you're right Jon, but just being a dick as usual

You wouldn't have me any other way!

[KriessG]

Oh I dunno about that   I'm always up for new things!

[BruceBruce]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nintendo-bolsters-nx-line-greater-third-party-support-game-freak-pokemon-title-1574263

 

According to this and many other articles on the net (albeit rumors), Gamefreak is making a Pokemon game for the NX.  This is very unusual considering they typically only make their Pokemon games for the handheld consoles.  This means they might be porting Sun/Moon to the NX or perhaps a third game tying into those... "Pokemon Earth"?

 

Whatever it means, the point is that we might be seeing a full Gamefreak Pokemon title coming to the home console for the first time.  Which makes sense considering the NX is also portable and will more than likely communicate with the 3DS.