Nintendo Switch is powered by NVIDIA

[Yakk]

Nvidia is involved with this thing? That's just great. This will be the first console in history to cost $1,500.00.

Possibly the NX FE version.

Otherwise with no customers besides themselves nvidia is probably quite in a hurry to unload their ARM chips to anyone that will take them.

 

[railven]

So the two of you are saying that we'll get NX games ported to the PC, or something to that effect :hmm:

If the joke is only Nintendo will publish for NX, it will be a cold day in hell we see any of those titles outside of NX's platform.

I believe the only time Nintendo licensed their IPs the results were horrendous.

Zelda/Mario for CD-i anybody?

EDIT:
This was a licensed Zelda game at one point.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[railven]

I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at, but my point regarding disks was meant to be related to the amount of space an optical disk reader requires in the device itself (not to mention the amount of battery it uses). The world obviously isn't ready for digital-only distribution, cartridges are the only option IMO.

Oh I got your point, specifically the size of the whole damn mechanical drive.

My point was more so to people who felt that the size of cartridges/removable memory/internal memory would some how be a limitation.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[Ancalagon44]

Who cares if the device is like 10mm thick? The last thing anyone wants is a 4mm tablet with a 1000mAh battery that lasts 2 minutes. Obviously nobody wants a 4kg brick, but slightly thicker is not necessary a bad thing.

 

[Keysplayr]

Gotcha. And yeah, it's kind of a bizarre concern. Flash media is dirt cheap these days, it's better than optical media in every meaningful way. I think it was Gizmodo who claimed it could make the device too thick, which was just like...what? It HAS to have some form of removable media, that's the thinnest one around.

People are rightfully pessimistic about Nintendo after the Wii U, where they seemingly went out of the way to ignore massively obvious market trends, but I hope they scale back some of the classic Nintendo idiosyncrasies. I'd like to see standard connectors (e.g. USB-C), hardware and software design that suggests a modern electronic device and not a 90s toy, etc. Basically I want to see them learn from their mistakes instead of assuming they did the Wii U just slightly wrong.

More like an invented concern.

 

[Keysplayr]

Who cares if the device is like 10mm thick? The last thing anyone wants is a 4mm tablet with a 1000mAh battery that lasts 2 minutes. Obviously nobody wants a 4kg brick, but slightly thicker is not necessary a bad thing.

Oh I agree here.

 

[R0H1T]

Who cares if the device is like 10mm thick? The last thing anyone wants is a 4mm tablet with a 1000mAh battery that lasts 2 minutes. Obviously nobody wants a 4kg brick, but slightly thicker is not necessary a bad thing.

If anything it should be thick, especially after seeing too many people drop their slick phones regularly. I think the form factor & design will also be crucial & how they handle connectivity/charging, likely via some form of USB, plus external memory support.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[moonbogg]

Hey if Maxwell/Pascal makes it into a major console, maybe developers will keep optimizing for it after NVidia's driver team moves into the Volta office

I pray for the safety of driver team members caught working on anything related to Maxwell. Pascal work is almost done and Volta coding has begun. Nvidia's heavy hand does not spare the rod.

 

[railven]

I agree, but have you ever taken apart a laptop or a tablet or any device with an SD card reader? It's thinner than a 3.5mm jack. Nintendo needs to make a reasonably powerful device with solid battery life, and for those two reasons they can't (and shouldn't) try to make some insanely thin device. As you say, no one cares. I'm sure there is at least ONE person who cares, but I've never spoken to anyone who wouldn't trade 2mm of thickness for added battery life.

All that said: this thing HAS to have some form of removable media, and cartridges are way thinner than an optical drive. It's just baffling to me that Gizmodo actually wrote (and then defended in the comments) such a stupid and wrongheaded complaint.

E: I've also just noticed that the Gizmodo author says the NX couldn't be "as sleek as a Surface" because it uses cartridges, even though the Surface has a microSD card slot. It really feels like she heard "cartridge" and couldn't get the picture of an NES cartridge out of her head. One of the dumbest things I've read in a while.

Depending on their age, since most "journalist" now are millennial bloggers, she probably instantly thought of N64 cartridges. Them things were THICK.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Why do you actually have kids if all you do is put them in front of a screen? How about actually doing something with them?

My daughter is 5 weeks old. She can't even hold her head up.

I know people that just put a tablet in their kids hands during long drives and when they need some time to get things done without distractions. Your post sounds like you don't have kids, but you think you have parenting figured out. I'll look forward to field reports from your successes in "just doing something with them."

 

[cytg111]

Why do you actually have kids if all you do is put them in front of a screen? How about actually doing something with them?

Have you actually met any kids? They're monsters! Evil little creatures of life sucking devices.. If it *only* takes a screen to pacify them then praise jesus, mohammed and that happy fat guy in the middle. Amen and Allahu Snackbar(that one should cover both the arab and the fat guy).
You know that psychological behavioral pattern that goes like this "If you are doing things different from me, then you're doing them wrong" - train of thought? Yea eff that .

 

[Silverforce11]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-07-27-nintendo-posts-biggest-q1-loss-in-five-years

"Nintendo posts biggest Q1 loss in five years"

"Last year's profit turns to $232 million loss in the face of collapsing Wii U sales and the absence of new revenue streams"

Looks like they haven't learnt anything at all from the gimmick approach of the Wii U with it's hand-held design.

They already have a great 3DS for hand-held. Why buy a console that's bulky for the hand-held experience? It's like they are trying to do it all and it'll fail hard because it doesn't do anything good.

A new Tegra powered DS would have been killer.

 

[R0H1T]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-07-27-nintendo-posts-biggest-q1-loss-in-five-years

"Nintendo posts biggest Q1 loss in five years"

"Last year's profit turns to $232 million loss in the face of collapsing Wii U sales and the absence of new revenue streams"

Looks like they haven't learnt anything at all from the gimmick approach of the Wii U with it's hand-held design.

They already have a great 3DS for hand-held. Why buy a console that's bulky for the hand-held experience? It's like they are trying to do it all and it'll fail hard because it doesn't do anything good.

A new Tegra powered DS would have been killer.

Well tbh we don't know if there will be a Tegra based DS in the future, I'm betting there will be otherwise goodbye Nintendo :|

 

[railven]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-07-27-nintendo-posts-biggest-q1-loss-in-five-years

"Nintendo posts biggest Q1 loss in five years"

"Last year's profit turns to $232 million loss in the face of collapsing Wii U sales and the absence of new revenue streams"

Looks like they haven't learnt anything at all from the gimmick approach of the Wii U with it's hand-held design.

They already have a great 3DS for hand-held. Why buy a console that's bulky for the hand-held experience? It's like they are trying to do it all and it'll fail hard because it doesn't do anything good.

A new Tegra powered DS would have been killer.

Could be worse. They can be MSFT going AMD APU and having their worst sales numbers to date.

Only room for one multi-plat console and seems PS4 is it.

Nintendo saw the writing on the wall and just avoiding that train wreck. Woof xbone sales are awful only 8 million ahead of Wii u? Scorpio being year late to Neo isn't going to help.

 

[Silverforce11]

Could be worse. They can be MSFT going AMD APU and having their worst sales numbers to date.

Only room for one multi-plat console and seems PS4 is it.

Nintendo saw the writing on the wall and just avoiding that train wreck. Woof xbone sales are awful only 8 million ahead of Wii u? Scorpio being year late to Neo isn't going to help.

You mean the fact that MS gimped the Xbone so badly in comparison the PS4 wasn't the major reason gamers avoided it? lol

I guess as a bonus to lure gamers, MS is now doing "play anywhere" feature for Xbone games. Buy it once, play on your console or PC! That means their titles will be Win 10 UWP DX12 moving forward.

 

[antihelten]

They already have a great 3DS for hand-held. Why buy a console that's bulky for the hand-held experience? It's like they are trying to do it all and it'll fail hard because it doesn't do anything good.

A new Tegra powered DS would have been killer.

Why are people assuming that the NX will be bulky?

The way I see it, Nintendo has pretty much taken the Nvidia Shield Portable and combined it with the Shield TV console.

Squeeze that into something the overall size of a PS Vita (the mockups/leaks look fairly close to that size), and you have a great handheld console.

You basically get a PS vita with hugely improved specs, Nintendo's first party game library and a relatively decent gimmick with the ability to detach the controllers and hook it up to a big screen.

 

[Silverforce11]

Why are people assuming that the NX will be bulky?

The "actively cooled" thing kinda gave it away.

 

[Zstream]

Why are people assuming that the NX will be bulky?

The way I see it, Nintendo has pretty much taken the Nvidia Shield Portable and combined it with the Shield TV console.

Squeeze that into something the overall size of a PS Vita (the mockups/leaks look fairly close to that size), and you have a great handheld console.

You basically get a PS vita with hugely improved specs, Nintendo's first party game library and a relatively decent gimmick with the ability to detach the controllers and hook it up to a big screen.

They need to make a portal that can double as a kids emergency phone to their parents. It solves many problems and will get another generation stuck on Nintendo. Right now, there is no reason for parents or even children to want Nintendo over an iPad.

 

[NTMBK]

The "actively cooled" thing kinda gave it away.

Could be that the prototype is actively cooled- if final chip is 16nm instead on 20nm, it may not need active cooling.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Could be that the prototype is actively cooled- if final chip is 16nm instead on 20nm, it may not need active cooling.

Indeed.

It's Nintendo we are talking about, so the final hardware might be less powerful than default X1 hardware even with Pascal and new CPU cores.
In terms of programmability and GPU features it should be great console for developers. (Vulkan + extensions are pretty much given at this point.)

 

[antihelten]

The "actively cooled" thing kinda gave it away.

No it didn't.

This case for an iPhone 5 contains not one but two fans, and yet the whole thing phone included is still significantly smaller than a PS Vita:

So it's perfectly possible to built a handheld the size of a PS Vita with active cooling.

btw. The Shield Portable also includes a tiny fan, and while the shield is bulkier than a PS Vita, that has more to do with the large battery (over three times as large as the Vita), full size analog sticks, and Nvidia sacrificing portabílity for the sake of ergonomics (it's basically shaped like your average gamepad).

They need to make a portal that can double as a kids emergency phone to their parents. It solves many problems and will get another generation stuck on Nintendo. Right now, there is no reason for parents or even children to want Nintendo over an iPad.

No they don't.

The 3DS has done just fine without phone capabilities, and the reason why people would want a portable from Nintendo instead of an iPad is partly due to the Nintendo handheld being significantly cheaper and partly due to the games being orders of magnitudes better.

 

[dogen1]

Indeed.

It's Nintendo we are talking about, so the final hardware might be less powerful than default X1 hardware even with Pascal and new CPU cores.
In terms of programmability and GPU features it should be great console for developers. (Vulkan + extensions are pretty much given at this point.)

At this point I'm expecting the thing to heavily downclock in handheld mode. And I'd rather it that way, nintendo handhelds have had pretty poor battery life in the last few years, and it's still gonna be be at least 50x the 3DS.

In docked mode, if they can clock it up to near 1TFlop(assuming it really is an X2) it should end up pretty close to the XB1. Yeah, it won't have as much brute compute power, but it'll have better geometry throughput and CPU power, so it should handle scenes with long draw distances or lots of on-screen geometry better.