This is absolutely the future... the problem is that Windows phone is already there, and Android will be there in another year or two (and iOS is lost in the woods, but they might get there eventually). What need is there for a $3-400 console when everyone is socially required to buy a $4-700 cell phone that does this exact same thing? And more... and better...
One thing is certain and that is that a cell phone can't do the exact same thing. How is a cell phone going to be able to do this? It doesn't have the input devices and it doesn't have the processing power. The screen is probably also too small. Is it going to easily hook up to a television and power a game of Skyrim? Of course cell phone gaming will be a big thing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for more involved mobile gaming. I think we'll have to wait and see what they achieve. You're predicting they get lost between mobile gaming and home gaming. They obviously are trying to bridge the gap between them. Gaming is about interaction. Cell phones, in terms of games, allow for very limited forms of interaction.
Smartphones also don't have the same tools and support for game developers... Nor can you realistically sell a full $60/£50 experience on the app store.
Yeah. I'm buying new 3DS games probably every month or two that offer real experiences worth the $40 or whatever dollars, that just blow away most of the trash available on iOS/Android, even if 3DS is about like an iPhone 1.
How so? The prospect of bringing Breath of the Wild on the airplane or a road trip, or sticking Pokemon on the big screen, are pretty clear, and big, draws for me and plenty of others around the internet.
>The prospect of bringing Breath of the Wild on the airplane or road trip. This is the new Nintendo console gimmick of this generation. The majority of game console owners use their devices to play games on their home TV, and they want a turnkey solution to getting "good" graphical fidelity and gameplay from the comfort of their home. Consider the overwhelming popularity and success of the PS4 compared to the Xbox One and Wii U this generation; It doesn't have the tablet mode that the Wii U had. It didn't have the fancy Cortana/Kinect features that Xbox One had. It was just a refined system, the bread and butter and nothing else of what the majority of console buyers want in their system.
I only play PC games and I only own a Wii U from this generation. But I've been getting pretty disillusioned with Nintendo's choice in new gimmicks starting with the Wii. I truly think the GameCube was the last good Nintendo console.
This is the Wii U's tablet, untethered from a 15 foot radius. Tell me, how often do people play from the tablet screen, rather than the TV display? Do you think people would be suddenly more inclined to leave the TV after this, too? Don't gaming laptops already fill a niche in playing high-fidelity PC games, untethered from your home, for years? What exactly does this achieve that other form factors haven't already?
>Or sticking Pokemon on the big screen. You can blame GameFreak for refusing to develop a Pokemon game for home consoles, for that. Besides, this has been available since the Super Nintendo, with the Gameboy Player cartridge. Then again in the Gamecube, with the Gameboy Advance Player base. Also available with the many ways you can screen capture or emulate DS/3DS consoles and then feed that to a TV.
"This is the Wii U's tablet, untethered from a 15 foot radius. Tell me, how often do people play from the tablet screen, rather than the TV display? Do you think people would be suddenly more inclined to leave the TV after this, too?"
I don't really see the conflict. I don't get the impression they're trying to compete with or threaten the set top console experience. If you're at home or a setting with comfortable access to a large display, of course you'll use it over the tablet. From what I've seen the intent is simply to give users who want 'that' experience more options and flexibility, while compromising on performance as little as possible.
Laptop gaming is to handheld gaming as PC gaming has been to home console gaming. It is a less convenient experience. More cumbersome. More confusing. Whilst home consoles are eroding their benefits vs. PCs by making things more and more complex and similar to PCs, handhelds still have benefits, especially compared to laptops.
I don't understand why you are comparing this to the Wii U gamepad. It is vaguely similar in appearance to somebody without much understanding of gaming.
Hang on. Have you watched the trailer? I am not convinced you have... because you keep talking about playing on the TV, but the trailer clearly shows people playing it on the TV. Either you blocked that part out of your mind, or you were not paying attention, or you're a moron.
Wii U tablet was the best innovation of this generation. You have kids? My 3 years old plays mario like there's no tommorow. They were born knowing how to put netflix on. It didn't catch on with mainstream gamers, i.e. GenX gamers that still play 1st person shooters like its the 90s, for the underpowered console and lack of games. But what are the xBox or PS4 if not underpowered PCs?
Switch will still be underpowered on the TV screen, people will complain. But with enough 3rd party games, a true console controler + all the extras, they have a winner.
Many products can answer demand - but good product can also create demand.
I'm PC and PS4 gamer (previously PS3). Also had PSP. Was considering Vita and 3Ds, eventually gave up on them.
I'm still curious about this one. Yes I prefer playing on big screen... but meeting casually with friends in flesh and gaming together without dragging desktop parts and monitors, I see value there. Online gaming is great and time saver, but I still like to spend time in others' presence, too.
Additionally... I was not exposed to Nintendo franchises much, so there's that, too. Even if I find portable mode too restricted and, eventually, not interesting for me long term, this still can be used as home console. Nintendo was always capable to execute good looking games from their exclusive genres on very modest hardware, I'm expecting Marios, Warios, Zeldas, Pokemons... to run well here. And for 3rd party games I already have other hardware.
Re portable mode - well at least, I can take it with me when traveling, even if I don't see value in everyday use. I usually travel with very light ultrabook/Surface Pro these days, so PC gaming is out of picture. I'm not interested in smartphone games. This could be my savior for rainy days.
If there's a video player that allows playing videos off a memory card, and/or a way to play Netflix on wireless, then this will be a hit with families that travel. Multiplayer games and video watching in the back seat, using a wireless controller? Hell yeah!
Sure, we have a tablet that we use for car trips, mounting for viewing in the back, but the kids can't play games on it while it's mounted. And when it's not mounted, it's a single player device that leads to many arguments in the back seat.
Being able to watch TV while the kids use the portable screen (or being able to use the portable while The Wiggles in on the TV) is great. Especially the multi-player aspects of it.
We have NES, SuperNES, and Wii at home, along with an Android tablet, a Windows 10 tablet, and a couple laptops. None of the consoles are plugged in due to only having a single TV and not wanting to deal with the fights. The Android tablet is dying and will need to be replaced soon. The Windows 10 tablet is no good for anything.
This sounds like the perfect replacement for everything above. Especially when it comes to the car!
Uh there's this thing called the ipad that families already use. Parents are buying gaming machines in fewer numbers and just using the family tablet or their smartphone to keep their kid occupied.
The portable gaming machine is redundant. It will be extinct in the next few years.
I don't buy it considering the 3DS is doing fine. iOS (and even more so Android) are TERRIBLE OSes for games. They can't come close to replacing a 3DS even with way more power, so they're not going to be able to replace a modern portable either. People who don't really care about games will continue not caring about games, but those who want good portable games will continue with the dedicated portables and portable PCs, and those that want Nintendo's games will continue buying Nintendo systems, only now there will only be one to buy instead of two.
Dedicated portables are doing fine, but the market for it isn't what it was. 3DS and Vita barely hit 50% of what their old counterparts were at (3DS and PSP). Mobile phone gaming has taken a big chunk of the market share.
That's not to say there still isn't a place for them. There will be people that want more than what a phone can give, but I don't see any mobile console/portable moving into the smartphone gaming space. Kind of why both Sony and Nintendo are catering to that field too. Sony seems to not want to make another portable, but who knows. Maybe they'll still put one out.
Nintendo of course has this half baked solution. I feel it'll segregate out again. I wouldn't want to carry around something as big as the Switch for portable gaming. If I'm going that big, I might as well carry my tablet and a wireless controller.
I don't think that gaming will ever degrade to a level where smart devices can replace consoles, desk or portable ones. With all the power being made available to smart devices, quality of games on average is still quite... disappointing, to say at least.
No, this solves their biggest problem which is splitting development resources between mobile and handheld game development while giving a future path for both platforms at once.
Their mobile business is still MASSIVE, bigger than Playstation 4 and XBox One combined. People totally forget about this.
All Nintendo development will be on one platform instead of split between two. Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, all on one platform. It perfectly leverages Nintendo's strengths while giving them a competitive moat against the other platforms.
I'm very interested to learn more about the hardware specs. I kind of figured it would be a custom SOC, as Parker's TDP is too high, its CPU block seemingly too complex, and it integrates a lot of unnecessary automotive oriented features. Alternatively the X1 would be approaching 2 years old by the time Switch launches.
NVidia said in their blog post that it's "the same architecture found in the highest performing graphics cards." To me that means it's definitely Pascal.
I'm thinking it's a custom version of the Tegra X2.
Given the notoriously bad battery life of the Tegra K1 based Shield Tablet (which this really seems to just be a rewrapped and updated version of), a full X2 may suck too much juice to be considered here, even with its die shrink compared to K1. A cut down X2 may be what we are talking about here.
There is no X2. That's just what people chose to call a Pascal-based spiritual successor to the X1. So talking about a full or cut-down X2 doesn't really make sense. But my opinion is that the Tegra used in the Switch probably has more CUDA cores than the Drive PX 2 SOC. Judging by NVIDIA's lineup of Pascal GPUs, TSMC's 16FF+ process seems to allow for high clock rates if one is willing to pay the price in terms of power, and low power if one scales back the clocks. I think the SOC probably draws significantly more power when in the dock than when operating as a mobile device.The dock may also have some sort of cooling system built into it.
Well most people are calling Parker "X2", since its very much an iterative variation of X1. Same 256 CUDA core count, same 4 A57 cores, etc. And Parker is what is in the Drive PX 2.
I personally think there is no chance a chip the size and needs of Parker/X2 lands in a handheld. K1 is a much smaller chip and has terrible battery life in the Shield tablet. Even with the gains from the dieshrink and a big clock hit, thats asking a fairly huge leap in energy efficiency. Like I talked about before, a cut-down version of Parker (with, say, 192 CUDA cores, similar to K1) seems more likely to me if they have any hopes of offering reasonable gaming life.
Ignoring cost, die size isn't the biggest consideration, but rather power. Power efficiency is exactly the advantage TSMC's 16FF+ has over their 20SoC. I'm guessing the X1 is smaller than the K1, but the X1 uses more power with the extra cores because 20SoC's main advantage over their 28nm processes is areal density.
From TSMC's website: "TSMC's 20nm process technology can provide 30 percent higher speed, 1.9 times the density, or 25 percent less power than its 28nm technology."
and
"TSMC's 16FF+ (FinFET Plus) technology can provide above 65 percent higher speed, around 2 times the density, or 70 percent less power than its 28HPM technology. Comparing with 20SoC technology, 16FF+ provides extra 40% higher speed and 60% power saving."
Now the English isn't easy to interpret and those numbers don't completely jibe. Maybe things changed over time. But the overall picture is surely accurate. 16FF+ barely provides any density improvement over 20SoC. But 16FF+ provides large power savings over 20SoC whereas 20SoC provides small power savings over 28nm.
Now for the Shield Tablet. The Shield Tablet has an 8 inch 1920x1200 display. The Switch will most likely have a display with significantly fewer pixels. In addition, displays today should be more efficient than when the Shield Tablet came out. The Switch display should be consuming much less power than the Shield Tablet display, and the Tegra inside the Switch will be driving far fewer pixels than the one inside the Shield Tablet.
When calling the Shield Tablet inefficient you are comparing its SoC to other SoCs driving high density displays, but at much lower performances. Look at the following chart: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8329/66084... It shows that limiting the Shield Tablet to 30 FPS gives it good battery life in GFXBench 3.0 compared to other phablets and tablets. Now look as its relative onscreen and offscreen performance numbers: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8296/65868... http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8296/65867... The Shield Tablet has better GPU-intensive battery life than those other devices even when it's running constantly at a frame rate that's significantly higher than the average frame rate any of those other devices can achieve. The Shield Tablet has a 6% larger battery and a lower resolution screen than the Tab S 8.4, but I don't think that explain a 29% longer battery life when maintaining a frame rate the Tab S 8.4 can't maintain even in an offscreen test.
The Tegra SoCs get a bogus rap for battery life. We can't easily apply the Shield Tablet's numbers to the Switch because of the display differences, but its performance/Watt compared to other SoCs seems to be good. Comparing the NVIDIA desktop chips, the Pascal-based 1070 has a 50% higher clock, 25% more cores, and a 33% lower TDP than the Kepler-based 770. Kepler is of course the GPU architecture in the Tegra K1. I wouldn't venture to guess a number of hours, but I think there is a very good chance a Pascal GPU on TSMC's 16FF+ with more than 256 CUDA cores (384?) can clock down to run a game at 720p for mobile gaming with a decent battery life and clock up to run a game at 1080p when docked. Of course, battery life is dependent on Nintendo's willingness to invest in a large battery. Note that 384 CUDA cores clocked at 1.3 GHz would give 1 TFLOPS of peak performance. Clocked down to 800 Mhz like the Tesla P4 it may be able to run at 8 W or less and run games on a 720p display. The Xbox One has 1.3 TFLOPS of peak performance, and Pascal is known to achieve higher efficiency in its architecture than GCN. Of course the Xbox One tends to render in native resolutions less than 1080p and then upscale. The tricky issue for the Tegra might be the memory bandwidth required for 1080p. Could they possibly include some eDRAM that is only switched on when docked?
Compare the specs of the P4 and the P40, both passively cooled Pascal-based cards, and you'll see the inspiration for what I am talking about. The P4 is clocked much lower and much more efficient. Certainly the DRAM is part of the story, but so is the GPU. Then compare the P4 with the M4. The M4 uses a 28nm GPU and already includes the Maxwell achitectural efficiency improvements that the K1 presumably doesn't have, being Kepler based. The M4's DRAM bandwidth is much lower than the P4's. If allowed to use more die space, within the same TDP range the P4 has over twice the theoretical peak performance of the M4. Who knows, maybe the P4 is TDP bound in lots of applications the M4 and the P40 are not, but the difference seems impressive.
Thanks for your post - it enumerates my feelings too. Note that Pascal in Tegra will have double-rate FP16 which can be used for many shaders, which will boost effective performance past XB1 when docked, even if the FP32 figures are only around 1 TFLOPS (384 cores, 1.3GHz).
However, it's Nintendo, so I'm really expecting 750 GFLOPS docked from the Switch, likely from 256 cores.
Yes, the possibility of using FP16 is a very good point. NVIDIA's blog does say "The newest API, NVN, was built specifically to bring lightweight, fast gaming to the masses." I wondered what "lightweight" is supposed to mean. Perhaps it means the use of FP16.
The spec sheet for Drive PX2 mentions the Tegra X2 by name. It's listed as "Four Cortex A57 Denver cores, 256 Pascal Graphics cores, 10 watt TDP". If you want to look it's in the announcement video for Drive PX2 on NVidia's website.
"Notoriously bad battery life of the Tegra K1 Tablet"
I own a Shield K1 tablet, and get a solid 12 hours or so out of it. I generally only have to plug it in every couple of days, though I plug in it every night next to my bed because it's my alarm clock.
Portable game consoles get far less battery life. The PSP 1000 was in the 5 hour range; the Vita is more in the 8 hour range. So if the Switch gets 12 hours like the Shield K1, that's competitive with the landscape of portable gaming consoles.
The thing is the switch looks relatively chunky, so they should be able to fit a pretty decent sized battery in there.
Also, I'm guessing that it won't have Android draining the battery with a hundred background processes.
On the flip side, it will be primarily a gaming device so the screen will be on and the GPU heavily utilized most of the time. I think it could realistically hit the 8 hours of the Vita, and maybe beat it slightly.
X2 with 2 power profiles, desktop and portable? Reduced res, reduced clock for portable... maybe some other measures... and games with 2 profiles, too. Basically low and high settings, with auto-switch depending on console mode.
There is a 10W Parker configuration. If we assume the screen and such takes another 2W and a 23WHr battery then it will last 2 hours. If they can underclock it to 6W then it will last 3 hours. If it's 4W then 4 hours.
The idea of underclocking parts of it when undocked, and hitting 720p instead of aiming for 1080p sounds kinda plausible-ish?
Honestly I'm surprised by how good the Wii U's gamepad screen looks, so I think 720p will be fine, if that's what it is. And anyway it's coming from like Sega Genesis resolution 3DS LOL
It does seem to be Pascal based. The NVIDIA blog implies as much: "an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards."
Tegra X1 is a 15W TDP (10W actual) 500 GFLOPS design, built on 20nm. It is therefore reasonable to assume that X2, built on 16nm, likely doesn't increase TDP massively. Allegedly the dev kits are actively cooled X1s, so likely overclocked.
Indeed a 20W TDP for ~750 GFLOPS appears inline with the 1050 Ti's 75W TDP for 2.1 TFLOPS, once you factor in LPDDR4 instead of GDDR5.
And we're talking about a 6" fat (compared to iPad, etc) tablet with vents for cooling on top, and thus at least passive cooling, with plenty of room for battery.
My speculation is that the Switch uses something closer to X2 than X1. Nvidia say it's using the latest architecture themselves, strongly indicating Pascal. We just don't know the configuration that Nintendo have chosen, but it seems likely it's between 600 and 800 GFLOPS.
It's too bad that mainline Pokemon games persist to be poor rehashes built on formulaic tropes, and that GameFreak refuses to really innovate the IP.
As an RPG series, the storyline is poor and is always built on poor tropes. You just moved into the region, and even though you're 12 years old in the game (and are twice as old outside the game) you're somehow assumed to know nothing about Pokemon and are introduced into how to capture them. There's a new professor this region named after a type of tree. There's an "evil" association trying break the bonds between trainers and Pokemon (often by theft). You have a rival. You have childhood friend. There's meaningless drivel (which GameFreak calls a plot) that goes on between the starting town and by the time you defeat the region's champion.
The gameplay has been mostly the same since Ruby/Sapphire and the truly last major competitive addition was abilities being attached to Pokemon, and before that was allowing held items by Pokemon in Gold/Silver.
Whenever they do add new elements, like Pokemon Contests, Battle Frontier, Sinnoh Underground, Mega Evolution, and now Z-moves, they literally drop support for adding more of the same thing in the following generation. (And it's pretty disappointing that they're dropping support for new Mega Evolutions, as this really helped give older Pokemon (with lower total base stats) better viability to the power creep in total base stats from new Pokemon in newer generations. For example, Pokemon like Pidgeot and Beedrill and Slowbro were outclassed, but Mega Evolution really benefitted them, and there's plenty of other worse Pokemon out there, like Corsola, Dunsparce, etc.
Each new Pokemon generation is more disappointing than the last. Mechanically, the game is slightly refreshed, but ultimately 90% of the core gameplay is the exact same as before.
Most of that is due to the fact that every Nintento mobile console after the Game Boy were pure trash.
With a boost up to a console that has faster CPU cores than the PS4 Pro (and likely Scorpio), The possibility of a more capable GPU than PS4, along with probably a 1080p screen, one would hope they will make a mainline Pokemon game that actually advances upon the original Red and Blue.
Com, this is going to be in line with an Xbox 360/Wii U/PS3, certainly not an Xbox One let alone Scorpio. It'll quite likely actually best the last gen systems (maybe even by a nice margin) but it's not competing with an Xbox One.
And the DS/3DS had lots of good games-my main complaints were the focus on gimmicks (touch and "3D"), but still a new Nintendo portable with a bunch more power is always a nice thing.
I haven't played a Pokemon game since the originals, but from everything I've read, they've made tons of changes and improvements to them. If I didn't have such a huge backlog I'd have tried any of the last few for sure.
Wolfpup is spot on, there is a 0% chance of your statement being accurate. There is not a single chance in all of heaven or hell that this mobile SOC exceeds 2 Tflops. None. Nada. Zilch.
your kidding right? It is still a console with under-powered hardware compared to xbox one and PS4, and developers will have to heavily modify their Xbone and PS4 builds so it to run on a device that runs off batteries.
Nintendo should have made the best console they could make, and the best Nintendo DS they can make with budget in mind. instead they are trying to make a hybrid that makes compromises for the form factor.
In the trailer you can even see it dip below 30FPS on zelda and mario.
Firstly GTX 750ti had 1.3 Teraflop and it cleaned PS4's clock even though if it was at 1.84 Tflops.
Secondly nvidia's most efficient GPU right now is 16nm Finfet Nvidia P4 which gives out 5.5 Teraflops for 50 watts (this includes power consumed by PCIE bus and GDDR5 192GB/s) that comes out at 1.65 Tflops for 15 watts (dock mode) faster the GTX 750ti.
the memory bus is the problem on these small chips, not the Theoretical max compute. the NX will be well below 175 Gbps which is what the PS4 can stream in textures/data.
This means new Call of duty's, new battlefields, new assassin creeds, will all have to be downgraded so it can run off of a battery. Or most likely, they won't be released at all on Nintendo's new console, which is what happened with the Wii U.
Pascal's memory compression is likely to be around 50%, maybe 60% more efficient than the zero memory compression on the PS4 GPU. PS4Pro has 40-50% efficient memory compression, btw.
However Switch, at best, is going to use LPDDR4 128-bit, which is around 50GB/s (say 80GB/s effective).
But ... with tiled rendering (http://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterizat... on-die using a large SRAM (look how small the 4MB L3 is on the A10 Fusion) a lot of the bandwidth issues go away. However, that's if that is how this custom Tegra is architected.
LPDDR4 3200 32 bit x 2 is 50 gBps, x4 is 100 gBps.
LPDDR4 3200 32 bit is the standard rate for LPDDR4.
Nvidia Pascal has 3x memory bandwidth efficiency of PS4, meaning 50 gBps = 150 gBps of PS4 GPU. Nvidia Denver and A57 also has much higher memory bandwidth efficiency than AMD Jaguar, which loses in memory bandwidth efficiency to even Intel Atom at the time it was released, let alone now. I'd say over 2x memory bandwidth efficiency for Nvidia Denver vs AMD Jaguar.
This means that Nvidia would reach parity with PS4 in terms of memory bandwidth with about 50-55 gBps nominal.
If Nvidia has a 2x Denver, 4x A57 or a 4x Denver CPU configuration, the Nvidia SoC will be over 3x+ as performant in single threaded as well as 2x+ as performant in multi-threaded as the 4x Jaguar + 2x Jaguar taped together by a horrifically slow interconnect (As accessible for games) configuration of the PS4, PS4 pro, Xbone, and probably Scorpio.
They're all worth a damn in terms of games, just the last two of been underpowered at launch...the 3DS especially. Still, lots of good games.
A Nintendo portable with MUCH higher end hardware, only having to buy a single Nintendo console instead of two-both sound nice to me! Not my ideal scenario from what I'd want from Nintendo, but makes more sense than Wii and Wii U did.
Sounds interesting. I see a grill for a heatsink on top...Dare I wonder, maybe even actively cooled? Maybe the dock could blow a stream of air in, if it's not in the tablet. To me it indicates a push past where a Tegra would be in a standard tablet form factor with its TDP limits.
Yeah, I saw that and speculated active-cooling in the dock that pushes a stream of air up through the tablet. This could probably effectively cool 20W, maybe 30W easily, depending on the heatsink inside the device.
and about $150 more to the price tag.. LTE is very expensive to integrate, else you would see it on all kinds of laptops. even the M.2 LTE cards are $250+, nevermind making sure it supports your carriers bands.
I've seen someone else say the cell phone modem too, and I don't get it. There's less need for that than ever, since most plans have tethering, there's more free wifi around than ever, and you don't need it at all for most things anyway. If it was such a great thing, why does it always get dropped from every console that's ever had it?
I have a PS4 but maybe I'm an oddball in that I've come to realize that I really dislike playing on a couch at a TV but I do love playing at a computer desk or laying down on a couch cradling some handheld in my hand. Plus I also like keeping backpack, one of those single strap bags, or a briefcase everywhere I go. This will be nice. It will nice when I use public transportation or an Uber. My last Nintendo device was the DS and the Gamecube. I'm excited. Pokemon with a properly 3D modelled world, which with their art style, won't be reaching hard for very high polys or higher res textures. It won't need some highly complex lighting and shading algorithms. It already had the latest Dragon Quest announced for it, I'm betting Kingdom Hearts 3 is announced eventually even if it's late. Even if it looks worse than the PS4, I'd still buy it for a portable device over it.
It has vents and it's thicker than a phone. The device may actually be quite powerful without the throttling problems high end phones have. PS Vita is clocked ridiculously low compared to comparable phones of the time to deal with throttling. This thing is surely stronger than the Wii U in particular the CPU. They showed a lot of games so it can have some good momentum out of the gate. Zelda, Skyrim, 3D Mario, Mario Kart, Splatoon were shown. Probably won't have to wait long for a Smash Bros. Probably more Wii U ports. A rumor was out to expect Pokemon within 6 months of launch. This thing can be a solid console with the handheld and home console Nintendo teams all merging to one platform plus all the third party Japanese devs that were there for the 3DS and the Vita. I'm a believer. Sign me up. Tell me the price.
I hope it's a hit. I hope that NVN API Nvidia talked about the the Switch means something like, Nintendo Vulkan Nvidia, some extension to Vulkan for the console. If it's close enough to Vulkan maybe this will bring some cross development to Android and prop up the market there for higher quality, higher priced games.
The problem is if the Switch only has Nintendo games again, that's it for Nintendo. I hope they've accounted for Microsoft's revised Xbox. If Nintendo aren't right smack in the middle of both Sony and Microsoft in order to get ports, they'll fail again and the shareholders are going to want blood.
"The problem is if the Switch only has Nintendo games again, that's it for Nintendo."
People that say things like this are, in general, very mathematically challenged.
Nintendo has a nest egg, between cash and investments, somewhere in the range of 11 Billion dollars. That's 11,000 million dollars.
Generally speaking, Nintendo makes money in their good years, and in their bad years they've lost maybe 100 million. There's actually only been a couple of those years. Even the the Wii U failing and the 3DS selling less than DS, they made money on Amiibo last year and probably on their share of Pokemon Go this year.
If they had a lot of bad years because of a failed console, and lost 100 million a year consistently, they would run out of money in 110 years. So before you say "if this console fails, that's it for Nintendo", do the math first. They could actually survive a few more generations of failed hardware and still be fine.
no, they run out of money when their stock value plummets to pennies, which can happen overnight if the circumstances are bad enough.
Look, Nintendo is run by a bunch of idiots who do no have the ability to adapt to market demands. Instead they try to re-invent them self everytime they release a console. The hit gold with the original Wii, and are chasing that high.
their first party catalog is amazing, but those releases are few and far between. Their hardware is so outside of everyone else's, that it makes 3rd party dev's re-write whole game engines just to get it to work on Nintendo. (not many do, they just refuse to release on nintendo). If porting these games takes more work than it's worth, then it simply wont come out on Nintendo.
"no, they run out of money when their stock value plummets to pennies, which can happen overnight if the circumstances are bad enough".
When a company has billions of dollars in actual bank accounts, that isn't actually possible. The value of that money isn't affected by their share price. If their stock went below their cash reserves they could do a buy back and go private.
Not to mention that Nintendo happens to be a Japanese company, which means the Japanese central bank is already buying up vast quantities of their stock due to how the Japanese do their quantitative easing. And any bond that Nintendo would have to issue at any time would be instantly purchased by the Japanese central bank since the Japanese central bank buys almost all bonds in Japan.
AKA, Nintendo has as much chance going bankrupt as Goldman Sachs has of going bankrupt.
"their first party catalog is amazing, but those releases are few and far between"
And this solves that problem. All Nintendo development will be on one platform instead of split between two. Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, ONE PLATFORM to rule them all.
This. They could still have multiple devices, but it at the very least seems they are going to cartridges.
Other than for great longevity, flash-based memory has now soundly passed optical media as a better format to distribute games (yes, it may still be more expensive, but it's cheap enough). This means that Nintendo could still have a very portable console, a hybrid like this, and even a home console that all use the same cartridges.
Nintendo's portables have pretty solid development. This'll probably have at least as much as 3DS has.
It can't run the same games that the current gen consoles run, but it'll still probably end up with a strong library, AND it'll have Nintendo able to put all their development on a single console instead of splitting it, which will help too.
I wonder how long this has been in the works between NVIDIA and Nintendo. It almost seems like the Shield devices were partially beta devices testing various aspects and allowing for a cost-effective method of developing the software stack. It also makes me wonder if a GeForce Now-type service will be available for the Switch at some point.
Also, the Razer Edge device must have helped Nintendo in its realization of the Switch. Nintendo's system seems to add some vital flexibility to allow it to address a much larger market.
Maybe that's the idea... an insurance policy, if the Switch flops they can quickly bring in NVIDIA and/or Razer to make their own devices with exclusive Nintendo games. Then while everyone is pre-occupied with that they can create a new successful handheld while porting their games to PC or another console.
That zelda video graphics are pretty dated. Skyrim looks great though. I hope this thing could do something like GeforceNow when plugged into the console and than local processing for 720p handheld gaming. Will see...
They do but keep in mind the new Zelda game seems to imploy a lot more physics than we're used to from a Nintendo game and it could be that they're focusing more of the horsepower in that regards than the typical polygons/textures. Also keep in mind that 1st party Nintendo games have traditionally always targeted 60 FPS.
This is the Wii U's full potential realized. I found that we most often use the Wii U gamepad to take out of the room somewhere in the house. I'm always wishing I could take my Wii U gamepad with me outside of my home. We do not appreciate the 2nd screen for games. Nintendo seems to have figured this out too. The partnership with Nvidia is both a huge boost and worrisome. I'd take their hardware, but I'd want full rights to the source of their middleware. Next-gen Nintendo might want to look at other options and if wanting backwards compatibility, have all their old games locked to the Switch. Not a huge problem, backwards compatibility is broken often enough and perhaps NV won't try to screw them over next-gen so bad that Nintendo bails on them.
The Tegra hardware is perfect for a home/mobile device. More than enough power. No one seems to realize that good gaming has zero relation to graphics. I'd trade GTX1080 graphics power for the mobility and 2 player functionality of the Switch anyday. Can't wait to take this on my next flight.
I'll be buying one on launch and all first party Nintendo games.
<<<No one seems to realize that good gaming has zero relation to graphics>>>
*sigh* Not this nonsense again. That's 1) completely false, and 2) more power isn't used only for better graphics.
There's plenty to like about this new system without making up ridiculous claims like that, or resorting to lame, obviously bogus Wii/Wii U apologetics.
Sigh Wolfpup: stating your opinion as fact doesn't it make it fact. I'm guessing you've not reached the age where you can even envision such a thing, but rest assured, your dumb brain is not the sole arbiter of such things. Sorry, young pup ;-)
If there was a discrete GPU in the dock, it would kinda be interesting. Who knows,maybe a bulky tab with removable controllers sells well with children but hard to imagine that anyone else will care about this.
I don't think the dock has a GPU in there. Rather, the GPU in the SOC can run at a higher clockspeed when docked since there is more power. This way, it can run at a better resolution on TV when it is docked and go into a low power mode when gaming at a lower resolution on the mobile device screen.
I think this is a pretty neat design from Nintendo. I am not expecting vastly superior graphics since this was never what Nintendo is all about. From my opinion, Nintendo mainly about simple fun games that family and friends can have all get engaged. Looking forward to this in Mar next year. Hope we can get a glimpse of the capability before the end of the month.
<<<From my opinion, Nintendo mainly about simple fun games that family and friends can have all get engaged>>>
IMO that's never really what Nintendo was about, but at any rate this'll have all of Nintendo's output on a single system instead of splitting it. I sure don't mind getting a new Nintendo portable, and a high-end one to boot!
I would assume it is Pascal based given this line from NVIDIA's blog post: "an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards."
The world's top performing GeForce gaming graphics cards are Pascal, after all.
Why? 3DS has done very well, and this is higher end for when it's being released, AND can be played on a TV, AND will have all Nintendo development consolidated on a single system.
Frankly, if the Shield devices can sell reasonably, yet have next to no decent games and be running Android of all things; then a device with Nintendo and well regarded third-party studio games certainly will be able to. No Android bloat to boot as well.
Denver isn't actually ARM is it? It's ARM compatible through software, and was going to support x86 too, only they couldn't get a license? (Which stinks, as they'd be great for some mid-range Windows tablets that could even play games!)
Obviously I want a "Gamecube 2" that competes with Scorpio (SP?) in specs, but given Nintendo gave up on "big" consoles a decade ago, this is probably the next best thing. They get to consolidate their development on a single system, making even just their 1st party games go a lot further. 3DS managed to do quite well against iOS and Android devices, and it was underpowered at launch, while this should be basically state of the art for a mobile device.
AND the ability to hook it up to a TV is cool...I wanted that for Vita and 3DS!
If, like me, you like a good chunk of Nintendo's output, having to buy just a single console, and having it be a high-end portable doesn't sound too bad at all.
Denver is 64-bit ARM, though internally it's a micro-op core. Much like modern x86 processors it has a decoder layer at the front end which decodes to micro-ops in the execution units.
NVidia isn't allowed to make x86 processors, AFAIK. They settled a lawsuit against Intel regarding x86 chipsets in 2011, and they agreed not to make x86 chipsets or processors.
I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to comment.
I could see getting excited about this. But it will suffer the same issue that the previous generation Nintendo consoles have suffered. A giant lack of content. We will see the same refresh of Zelda, Mario cart, Smash Bro's, pokemon, and a handful of Nintendo only titles. That alone will kill this for me.
I think Nintendo is on the right track, but they need to expand their content... a lot. Until I see a game list and future titles, it looks like this consumer might be passing on yet another Nintendo gimmick,
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briand095 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
well wonder how long they will stand behind N like they do the tab makersJoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
A solution looking for a problem.Ironchef3500 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
totally agreedCaedenV - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
This is absolutely the future... the problem is that Windows phone is already there, and Android will be there in another year or two (and iOS is lost in the woods, but they might get there eventually). What need is there for a $3-400 console when everyone is socially required to buy a $4-700 cell phone that does this exact same thing? And more... and better...Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
One thing is certain and that is that a cell phone can't do the exact same thing. How is a cell phone going to be able to do this? It doesn't have the input devices and it doesn't have the processing power. The screen is probably also too small. Is it going to easily hook up to a television and power a game of Skyrim? Of course cell phone gaming will be a big thing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for more involved mobile gaming. I think we'll have to wait and see what they achieve. You're predicting they get lost between mobile gaming and home gaming. They obviously are trying to bridge the gap between them. Gaming is about interaction. Cell phones, in terms of games, allow for very limited forms of interaction.LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Smartphones also don't have the same tools and support for game developers... Nor can you realistically sell a full $60/£50 experience on the app store.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Yeah. I'm buying new 3DS games probably every month or two that offer real experiences worth the $40 or whatever dollars, that just blow away most of the trash available on iOS/Android, even if 3DS is about like an iPhone 1.Drumsticks - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
How so? The prospect of bringing Breath of the Wild on the airplane or a road trip, or sticking Pokemon on the big screen, are pretty clear, and big, draws for me and plenty of others around the internet.JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
>The prospect of bringing Breath of the Wild on the airplane or road trip.This is the new Nintendo console gimmick of this generation. The majority of game console owners use their devices to play games on their home TV, and they want a turnkey solution to getting "good" graphical fidelity and gameplay from the comfort of their home. Consider the overwhelming popularity and success of the PS4 compared to the Xbox One and Wii U this generation; It doesn't have the tablet mode that the Wii U had. It didn't have the fancy Cortana/Kinect features that Xbox One had. It was just a refined system, the bread and butter and nothing else of what the majority of console buyers want in their system.
I only play PC games and I only own a Wii U from this generation. But I've been getting pretty disillusioned with Nintendo's choice in new gimmicks starting with the Wii. I truly think the GameCube was the last good Nintendo console.
This is the Wii U's tablet, untethered from a 15 foot radius. Tell me, how often do people play from the tablet screen, rather than the TV display? Do you think people would be suddenly more inclined to leave the TV after this, too? Don't gaming laptops already fill a niche in playing high-fidelity PC games, untethered from your home, for years? What exactly does this achieve that other form factors haven't already?
>Or sticking Pokemon on the big screen.
You can blame GameFreak for refusing to develop a Pokemon game for home consoles, for that. Besides, this has been available since the Super Nintendo, with the Gameboy Player cartridge. Then again in the Gamecube, with the Gameboy Advance Player base. Also available with the many ways you can screen capture or emulate DS/3DS consoles and then feed that to a TV.
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
"This is the Wii U's tablet, untethered from a 15 foot radius. Tell me, how often do people play from the tablet screen, rather than the TV display? Do you think people would be suddenly more inclined to leave the TV after this, too?"I don't really see the conflict. I don't get the impression they're trying to compete with or threaten the set top console experience. If you're at home or a setting with comfortable access to a large display, of course you'll use it over the tablet. From what I've seen the intent is simply to give users who want 'that' experience more options and flexibility, while compromising on performance as little as possible.
LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Laptop gaming is to handheld gaming as PC gaming has been to home console gaming. It is a less convenient experience. More cumbersome. More confusing. Whilst home consoles are eroding their benefits vs. PCs by making things more and more complex and similar to PCs, handhelds still have benefits, especially compared to laptops.I don't understand why you are comparing this to the Wii U gamepad. It is vaguely similar in appearance to somebody without much understanding of gaming.
Hang on. Have you watched the trailer? I am not convinced you have... because you keep talking about playing on the TV, but the trailer clearly shows people playing it on the TV. Either you blocked that part out of your mind, or you were not paying attention, or you're a moron.
Da W - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Wii U tablet was the best innovation of this generation. You have kids? My 3 years old plays mario like there's no tommorow. They were born knowing how to put netflix on. It didn't catch on with mainstream gamers, i.e. GenX gamers that still play 1st person shooters like its the 90s, for the underpowered console and lack of games. But what are the xBox or PS4 if not underpowered PCs?Switch will still be underpowered on the TV screen, people will complain. But with enough 3rd party games, a true console controler + all the extras, they have a winner.
khanikun - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
PS Vita + PS TV = SwitchRemember when the PS Vita and PS TV did amazing? I don't.
nikon133 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Many products can answer demand - but good product can also create demand.I'm PC and PS4 gamer (previously PS3). Also had PSP. Was considering Vita and 3Ds, eventually gave up on them.
I'm still curious about this one. Yes I prefer playing on big screen... but meeting casually with friends in flesh and gaming together without dragging desktop parts and monitors, I see value there. Online gaming is great and time saver, but I still like to spend time in others' presence, too.
Additionally... I was not exposed to Nintendo franchises much, so there's that, too. Even if I find portable mode too restricted and, eventually, not interesting for me long term, this still can be used as home console. Nintendo was always capable to execute good looking games from their exclusive genres on very modest hardware, I'm expecting Marios, Warios, Zeldas, Pokemons... to run well here. And for 3rd party games I already have other hardware.
Re portable mode - well at least, I can take it with me when traveling, even if I don't see value in everyday use. I usually travel with very light ultrabook/Surface Pro these days, so PC gaming is out of picture. I'm not interested in smartphone games. This could be my savior for rainy days.
Yeah, I'm quite interested in Switch.
phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
If there's a video player that allows playing videos off a memory card, and/or a way to play Netflix on wireless, then this will be a hit with families that travel. Multiplayer games and video watching in the back seat, using a wireless controller? Hell yeah!Sure, we have a tablet that we use for car trips, mounting for viewing in the back, but the kids can't play games on it while it's mounted. And when it's not mounted, it's a single player device that leads to many arguments in the back seat.
Being able to watch TV while the kids use the portable screen (or being able to use the portable while The Wiggles in on the TV) is great. Especially the multi-player aspects of it.
We have NES, SuperNES, and Wii at home, along with an Android tablet, a Windows 10 tablet, and a couple laptops. None of the consoles are plugged in due to only having a single TV and not wanting to deal with the fights. The Android tablet is dying and will need to be replaced soon. The Windows 10 tablet is no good for anything.
This sounds like the perfect replacement for everything above. Especially when it comes to the car!
Jumangi - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Uh there's this thing called the ipad that families already use. Parents are buying gaming machines in fewer numbers and just using the family tablet or their smartphone to keep their kid occupied.The portable gaming machine is redundant. It will be extinct in the next few years.
Meteor2 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Read his post again, carefully.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I don't buy it considering the 3DS is doing fine. iOS (and even more so Android) are TERRIBLE OSes for games. They can't come close to replacing a 3DS even with way more power, so they're not going to be able to replace a modern portable either. People who don't really care about games will continue not caring about games, but those who want good portable games will continue with the dedicated portables and portable PCs, and those that want Nintendo's games will continue buying Nintendo systems, only now there will only be one to buy instead of two.khanikun - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Dedicated portables are doing fine, but the market for it isn't what it was. 3DS and Vita barely hit 50% of what their old counterparts were at (3DS and PSP). Mobile phone gaming has taken a big chunk of the market share.That's not to say there still isn't a place for them. There will be people that want more than what a phone can give, but I don't see any mobile console/portable moving into the smartphone gaming space. Kind of why both Sony and Nintendo are catering to that field too. Sony seems to not want to make another portable, but who knows. Maybe they'll still put one out.
Nintendo of course has this half baked solution. I feel it'll segregate out again. I wouldn't want to carry around something as big as the Switch for portable gaming. If I'm going that big, I might as well carry my tablet and a wireless controller.
nikon133 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
I don't think that gaming will ever degrade to a level where smart devices can replace consoles, desk or portable ones. With all the power being made available to smart devices, quality of games on average is still quite... disappointing, to say at least.khanikun - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Someone's never heard of wireless controllers for PC or Android tablets.KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link
No, this solves their biggest problem which is splitting development resources between mobile and handheld game development while giving a future path for both platforms at once.Their mobile business is still MASSIVE, bigger than Playstation 4 and XBox One combined. People totally forget about this.
All Nintendo development will be on one platform instead of split between two. Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, all on one platform. It perfectly leverages Nintendo's strengths while giving them a competitive moat against the other platforms.
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I'm very interested to learn more about the hardware specs. I kind of figured it would be a custom SOC, as Parker's TDP is too high, its CPU block seemingly too complex, and it integrates a lot of unnecessary automotive oriented features. Alternatively the X1 would be approaching 2 years old by the time Switch launches.Hopefully it's Pascal based.
barleyguy - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
NVidia said in their blog post that it's "the same architecture found in the highest performing graphics cards." To me that means it's definitely Pascal.I'm thinking it's a custom version of the Tegra X2.
Cygni - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Given the notoriously bad battery life of the Tegra K1 based Shield Tablet (which this really seems to just be a rewrapped and updated version of), a full X2 may suck too much juice to be considered here, even with its die shrink compared to K1. A cut down X2 may be what we are talking about here.Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
There is no X2. That's just what people chose to call a Pascal-based spiritual successor to the X1. So talking about a full or cut-down X2 doesn't really make sense. But my opinion is that the Tegra used in the Switch probably has more CUDA cores than the Drive PX 2 SOC. Judging by NVIDIA's lineup of Pascal GPUs, TSMC's 16FF+ process seems to allow for high clock rates if one is willing to pay the price in terms of power, and low power if one scales back the clocks. I think the SOC probably draws significantly more power when in the dock than when operating as a mobile device.The dock may also have some sort of cooling system built into it.Cygni - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Well most people are calling Parker "X2", since its very much an iterative variation of X1. Same 256 CUDA core count, same 4 A57 cores, etc. And Parker is what is in the Drive PX 2.I personally think there is no chance a chip the size and needs of Parker/X2 lands in a handheld. K1 is a much smaller chip and has terrible battery life in the Shield tablet. Even with the gains from the dieshrink and a big clock hit, thats asking a fairly huge leap in energy efficiency. Like I talked about before, a cut-down version of Parker (with, say, 192 CUDA cores, similar to K1) seems more likely to me if they have any hopes of offering reasonable gaming life.
Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Ignoring cost, die size isn't the biggest consideration, but rather power. Power efficiency is exactly the advantage TSMC's 16FF+ has over their 20SoC. I'm guessing the X1 is smaller than the K1, but the X1 uses more power with the extra cores because 20SoC's main advantage over their 28nm processes is areal density.From TSMC's website:
"TSMC's 20nm process technology can provide 30 percent higher speed, 1.9 times the density, or 25 percent less power than its 28nm technology."
and
"TSMC's 16FF+ (FinFET Plus) technology can provide above 65 percent higher speed, around 2 times the density, or 70 percent less power than its 28HPM technology. Comparing with 20SoC technology, 16FF+ provides extra 40% higher speed and 60% power saving."
Now the English isn't easy to interpret and those numbers don't completely jibe. Maybe things changed over time. But the overall picture is surely accurate. 16FF+ barely provides any density improvement over 20SoC. But 16FF+ provides large power savings over 20SoC whereas 20SoC provides small power savings over 28nm.
Now for the Shield Tablet. The Shield Tablet has an 8 inch 1920x1200 display. The Switch will most likely have a display with significantly fewer pixels. In addition, displays today should be more efficient than when the Shield Tablet came out. The Switch display should be consuming much less power than the Shield Tablet display, and the Tegra inside the Switch will be driving far fewer pixels than the one inside the Shield Tablet.
When calling the Shield Tablet inefficient you are comparing its SoC to other SoCs driving high density displays, but at much lower performances. Look at the following chart:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8329/66084...
It shows that limiting the Shield Tablet to 30 FPS gives it good battery life in GFXBench 3.0 compared to other phablets and tablets. Now look as its relative onscreen and offscreen performance numbers:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8296/65868...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8296/65867...
The Shield Tablet has better GPU-intensive battery life than those other devices even when it's running constantly at a frame rate that's significantly higher than the average frame rate any of those other devices can achieve. The Shield Tablet has a 6% larger battery and a lower resolution screen than the Tab S 8.4, but I don't think that explain a 29% longer battery life when maintaining a frame rate the Tab S 8.4 can't maintain even in an offscreen test.
The Tegra SoCs get a bogus rap for battery life. We can't easily apply the Shield Tablet's numbers to the Switch because of the display differences, but its performance/Watt compared to other SoCs seems to be good. Comparing the NVIDIA desktop chips, the Pascal-based 1070 has a 50% higher clock, 25% more cores, and a 33% lower TDP than the Kepler-based 770. Kepler is of course the GPU architecture in the Tegra K1. I wouldn't venture to guess a number of hours, but I think there is a very good chance a Pascal GPU on TSMC's 16FF+ with more than 256 CUDA cores (384?) can clock down to run a game at 720p for mobile gaming with a decent battery life and clock up to run a game at 1080p when docked. Of course, battery life is dependent on Nintendo's willingness to invest in a large battery. Note that 384 CUDA cores clocked at 1.3 GHz would give 1 TFLOPS of peak performance. Clocked down to 800 Mhz like the Tesla P4 it may be able to run at 8 W or less and run games on a 720p display. The Xbox One has 1.3 TFLOPS of peak performance, and Pascal is known to achieve higher efficiency in its architecture than GCN. Of course the Xbox One tends to render in native resolutions less than 1080p and then upscale. The tricky issue for the Tegra might be the memory bandwidth required for 1080p. Could they possibly include some eDRAM that is only switched on when docked?
Compare the specs of the P4 and the P40, both passively cooled Pascal-based cards, and you'll see the inspiration for what I am talking about. The P4 is clocked much lower and much more efficient. Certainly the DRAM is part of the story, but so is the GPU. Then compare the P4 with the M4. The M4 uses a 28nm GPU and already includes the Maxwell achitectural efficiency improvements that the K1 presumably doesn't have, being Kepler based. The M4's DRAM bandwidth is much lower than the P4's. If allowed to use more die space, within the same TDP range the P4 has over twice the theoretical peak performance of the M4. Who knows, maybe the P4 is TDP bound in lots of applications the M4 and the P40 are not, but the difference seems impressive.
psychobriggsy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Thanks for your post - it enumerates my feelings too. Note that Pascal in Tegra will have double-rate FP16 which can be used for many shaders, which will boost effective performance past XB1 when docked, even if the FP32 figures are only around 1 TFLOPS (384 cores, 1.3GHz).However, it's Nintendo, so I'm really expecting 750 GFLOPS docked from the Switch, likely from 256 cores.
Yojimbo - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Yes, the possibility of using FP16 is a very good point. NVIDIA's blog does say "The newest API, NVN, was built specifically to bring lightweight, fast gaming to the masses." I wondered what "lightweight" is supposed to mean. Perhaps it means the use of FP16.Morawka - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Tegra will have fixed function blocks for 1080p and 4k Decode, just like Shield TV, no need to waste cycles on video.Yojimbo - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link
My entire discussion was about rendering, not about decoding.Zingam - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Why are you talking about K1?X1 in Pixel C seems to have good battery life and good performance.
BTW. I have Pixel C and SHIELD TV. X1 seems to be 3x more powerful in SHIELD TV than in Pixel C.
IMO this console's true name is NINTENDO SHIELD.
barleyguy - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
The spec sheet for Drive PX2 mentions the Tegra X2 by name. It's listed as "Four Cortex A57 Denver cores, 256 Pascal Graphics cores, 10 watt TDP". If you want to look it's in the announcement video for Drive PX2 on NVidia's website.barleyguy - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
"Notoriously bad battery life of the Tegra K1 Tablet"I own a Shield K1 tablet, and get a solid 12 hours or so out of it. I generally only have to plug it in every couple of days, though I plug in it every night next to my bed because it's my alarm clock.
Portable game consoles get far less battery life. The PSP 1000 was in the 5 hour range; the Vita is more in the 8 hour range. So if the Switch gets 12 hours like the Shield K1, that's competitive with the landscape of portable gaming consoles.
LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The thing is the switch looks relatively chunky, so they should be able to fit a pretty decent sized battery in there.Also, I'm guessing that it won't have Android draining the battery with a hundred background processes.
On the flip side, it will be primarily a gaming device so the screen will be on and the GPU heavily utilized most of the time. I think it could realistically hit the 8 hours of the Vita, and maybe beat it slightly.
Jumangi - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
your not getting 12 hours playing a 3D game. No portable device does that. A device like the Vita or even 3DS gets 3-5 hours when gaming.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Plug it in any time you can anyway, as that's better on the battery. But anyway good info about the battery life :-)Morawka - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
i plug my ipad in maybe once a month lol... the battery life is insane on ipad air 2 or newer.nikon133 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
But try using it. ;)nikon133 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
X2 with 2 power profiles, desktop and portable? Reduced res, reduced clock for portable... maybe some other measures... and games with 2 profiles, too. Basically low and high settings, with auto-switch depending on console mode.michael2k - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
There is a 10W Parker configuration. If we assume the screen and such takes another 2W and a 23WHr battery then it will last 2 hours. If they can underclock it to 6W then it will last 3 hours. If it's 4W then 4 hours.LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Maybe they can underclock to 4W when the device is undocked, since it only needs to drive 720p, and then when docked it clocks up to the full 10W?Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The idea of underclocking parts of it when undocked, and hitting 720p instead of aiming for 1080p sounds kinda plausible-ish?Honestly I'm surprised by how good the Wii U's gamepad screen looks, so I think 720p will be fine, if that's what it is. And anyway it's coming from like Sega Genesis resolution 3DS LOL
LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Also, it's not going to be running at full capacity 100% of the time, so those times are worst case.LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
It does seem to be Pascal based. The NVIDIA blog implies as much: "an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards."psychobriggsy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
What is the Tegra X2's TDP?Tegra X1 is a 15W TDP (10W actual) 500 GFLOPS design, built on 20nm. It is therefore reasonable to assume that X2, built on 16nm, likely doesn't increase TDP massively. Allegedly the dev kits are actively cooled X1s, so likely overclocked.
Indeed a 20W TDP for ~750 GFLOPS appears inline with the 1050 Ti's 75W TDP for 2.1 TFLOPS, once you factor in LPDDR4 instead of GDDR5.
And we're talking about a 6" fat (compared to iPad, etc) tablet with vents for cooling on top, and thus at least passive cooling, with plenty of room for battery.
My speculation is that the Switch uses something closer to X2 than X1. Nvidia say it's using the latest architecture themselves, strongly indicating Pascal. We just don't know the configuration that Nintendo have chosen, but it seems likely it's between 600 and 800 GFLOPS.
Communism - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Finally, a Nintendo mobile console that is actually worth a damn.Looking forward to the next mainline Pokemon game for the console.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
It's too bad that mainline Pokemon games persist to be poor rehashes built on formulaic tropes, and that GameFreak refuses to really innovate the IP.As an RPG series, the storyline is poor and is always built on poor tropes. You just moved into the region, and even though you're 12 years old in the game (and are twice as old outside the game) you're somehow assumed to know nothing about Pokemon and are introduced into how to capture them. There's a new professor this region named after a type of tree. There's an "evil" association trying break the bonds between trainers and Pokemon (often by theft). You have a rival. You have childhood friend. There's meaningless drivel (which GameFreak calls a plot) that goes on between the starting town and by the time you defeat the region's champion.
The gameplay has been mostly the same since Ruby/Sapphire and the truly last major competitive addition was abilities being attached to Pokemon, and before that was allowing held items by Pokemon in Gold/Silver.
Whenever they do add new elements, like Pokemon Contests, Battle Frontier, Sinnoh Underground, Mega Evolution, and now Z-moves, they literally drop support for adding more of the same thing in the following generation. (And it's pretty disappointing that they're dropping support for new Mega Evolutions, as this really helped give older Pokemon (with lower total base stats) better viability to the power creep in total base stats from new Pokemon in newer generations. For example, Pokemon like Pidgeot and Beedrill and Slowbro were outclassed, but Mega Evolution really benefitted them, and there's plenty of other worse Pokemon out there, like Corsola, Dunsparce, etc.
Each new Pokemon generation is more disappointing than the last. Mechanically, the game is slightly refreshed, but ultimately 90% of the core gameplay is the exact same as before.
Communism - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Most of that is due to the fact that every Nintento mobile console after the Game Boy were pure trash.With a boost up to a console that has faster CPU cores than the PS4 Pro (and likely Scorpio), The possibility of a more capable GPU than PS4, along with probably a 1080p screen, one would hope they will make a mainline Pokemon game that actually advances upon the original Red and Blue.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Com, this is going to be in line with an Xbox 360/Wii U/PS3, certainly not an Xbox One let alone Scorpio. It'll quite likely actually best the last gen systems (maybe even by a nice margin) but it's not competing with an Xbox One.And the DS/3DS had lots of good games-my main complaints were the focus on gimmicks (touch and "3D"), but still a new Nintendo portable with a bunch more power is always a nice thing.
I haven't played a Pokemon game since the originals, but from everything I've read, they've made tons of changes and improvements to them. If I didn't have such a huge backlog I'd have tried any of the last few for sure.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Don't comment on things you don't understand.Read my comments further down for my analysis of the console.
fanofanand - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Wolfpup is spot on, there is a 0% chance of your statement being accurate. There is not a single chance in all of heaven or hell that this mobile SOC exceeds 2 Tflops. None. Nada. Zilch.Morawka - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
your kidding right? It is still a console with under-powered hardware compared to xbox one and PS4, and developers will have to heavily modify their Xbone and PS4 builds so it to run on a device that runs off batteries.Nintendo should have made the best console they could make, and the best Nintendo DS they can make with budget in mind. instead they are trying to make a hybrid that makes compromises for the form factor.
In the trailer you can even see it dip below 30FPS on zelda and mario.
Morawka - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Also is this the end of Shield Portable? will nvidia risk stepping on Nintendo's toes with a similar design?Communism - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Why would you buy a nintendo handheld to play anything other than a mainline Pokemon?Why would you buy an xbox to play anything other than halo?
Why would you buy a playstation at all?
hahmed330 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Nope not even close!!Firstly GTX 750ti had 1.3 Teraflop and it cleaned PS4's clock even though if it was at 1.84 Tflops.
Secondly nvidia's most efficient GPU right now is 16nm Finfet Nvidia P4 which gives out 5.5 Teraflops for 50 watts (this includes power consumed by PCIE bus and GDDR5 192GB/s) that comes out at 1.65 Tflops for 15 watts (dock mode) faster the GTX 750ti.
Morawka - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
the memory bus is the problem on these small chips, not the Theoretical max compute. the NX will be well below 175 Gbps which is what the PS4 can stream in textures/data.This means new Call of duty's, new battlefields, new assassin creeds, will all have to be downgraded so it can run off of a battery. Or most likely, they won't be released at all on Nintendo's new console, which is what happened with the Wii U.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Pascal has over 2.5x the memory bandwidth efficiency of the PS4 , probably closer to 3x.This is why the Geforce GTX 1060 is triple as fast as the 7870, despite having similar memory bandwidth.
But why waste my time arguing with AMD Red Team Plus.
psychobriggsy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Pascal's memory compression is likely to be around 50%, maybe 60% more efficient than the zero memory compression on the PS4 GPU. PS4Pro has 40-50% efficient memory compression, btw.However Switch, at best, is going to use LPDDR4 128-bit, which is around 50GB/s (say 80GB/s effective).
But ... with tiled rendering (http://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterizat... on-die using a large SRAM (look how small the 4MB L3 is on the A10 Fusion) a lot of the bandwidth issues go away. However, that's if that is how this custom Tegra is architected.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Hi alternate account AMD Red Team Plus member.AMD Radeon 7850 = 1.76128 AMD Teraflops with 153.6 gBps memory bandwidth
Nvidia GTX 1080 = 8.228 Nvidia Teraflops at base clock, 8873 Nvidia Teraflops at boost clock with 320 gBps memory bandwidth
In actual games, GTX 1080 has ~6.2x the performance of the Radeon 7850 with merely ~2.08x the memory bandwidth.
That's ~3x the memory bandwidth efficiency.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
LPDDR4 3200 32 bit x 2 is 50 gBps, x4 is 100 gBps.LPDDR4 3200 32 bit is the standard rate for LPDDR4.
Nvidia Pascal has 3x memory bandwidth efficiency of PS4, meaning 50 gBps = 150 gBps of PS4 GPU.
Nvidia Denver and A57 also has much higher memory bandwidth efficiency than AMD Jaguar, which loses in memory bandwidth efficiency to even Intel Atom at the time it was released, let alone now. I'd say over 2x memory bandwidth efficiency for Nvidia Denver vs AMD Jaguar.
This means that Nvidia would reach parity with PS4 in terms of memory bandwidth with about 50-55 gBps nominal.
If Nvidia has a 2x Denver, 4x A57 or a 4x Denver CPU configuration, the Nvidia SoC will be over 3x+ as performant in single threaded as well as 2x+ as performant in multi-threaded as the 4x Jaguar + 2x Jaguar taped together by a horrifically slow interconnect (As accessible for games) configuration of the PS4, PS4 pro, Xbone, and probably Scorpio.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Whoops messed up on the LPDDR4 memory bandwidth calculations, you were right about the 2x LPDDR4 = 25.6 gBps, 4x = 51.2 gBps.Brainfart.
SGTPan - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
Wrong again. https://www.google.com.kw/search?q=call+of+duty+bl...Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
They're all worth a damn in terms of games, just the last two of been underpowered at launch...the 3DS especially. Still, lots of good games.A Nintendo portable with MUCH higher end hardware, only having to buy a single Nintendo console instead of two-both sound nice to me! Not my ideal scenario from what I'd want from Nintendo, but makes more sense than Wii and Wii U did.
GiantPandaMan - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Depending on the price, this could be a good replacement for media consumption tablets as well as being a gaming system.The problem is that the bottom fell out of the media consumption tablet market awhile ago.
tipoo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Sounds interesting. I see a grill for a heatsink on top...Dare I wonder, maybe even actively cooled? Maybe the dock could blow a stream of air in, if it's not in the tablet. To me it indicates a push past where a Tegra would be in a standard tablet form factor with its TDP limits.psychobriggsy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Yeah, I saw that and speculated active-cooling in the dock that pushes a stream of air up through the tablet. This could probably effectively cool 20W, maybe 30W easily, depending on the heatsink inside the device.HomeworldFound - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I'm buying one, I love the Wii U. You get full console gaming technology while consuming other media such as Netflix or TV.sonofgodfrey - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
All Nintendo needs to do is add 4G LTE. Of course, who says they haven't already?Pissedoffyouth - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
uh, why?tipoo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
To add to the mobility aspect?Morawka - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
and about $150 more to the price tag.. LTE is very expensive to integrate, else you would see it on all kinds of laptops. even the M.2 LTE cards are $250+, nevermind making sure it supports your carriers bands.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I've seen someone else say the cell phone modem too, and I don't get it. There's less need for that than ever, since most plans have tethering, there's more free wifi around than ever, and you don't need it at all for most things anyway. If it was such a great thing, why does it always get dropped from every console that's ever had it?TheFlyingSquirrel - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I have a PS4 but maybe I'm an oddball in that I've come to realize that I really dislike playing on a couch at a TV but I do love playing at a computer desk or laying down on a couch cradling some handheld in my hand. Plus I also like keeping backpack, one of those single strap bags, or a briefcase everywhere I go. This will be nice. It will nice when I use public transportation or an Uber. My last Nintendo device was the DS and the Gamecube. I'm excited. Pokemon with a properly 3D modelled world, which with their art style, won't be reaching hard for very high polys or higher res textures. It won't need some highly complex lighting and shading algorithms. It already had the latest Dragon Quest announced for it, I'm betting Kingdom Hearts 3 is announced eventually even if it's late. Even if it looks worse than the PS4, I'd still buy it for a portable device over it.It has vents and it's thicker than a phone. The device may actually be quite powerful without the throttling problems high end phones have. PS Vita is clocked ridiculously low compared to comparable phones of the time to deal with throttling. This thing is surely stronger than the Wii U in particular the CPU. They showed a lot of games so it can have some good momentum out of the gate. Zelda, Skyrim, 3D Mario, Mario Kart, Splatoon were shown. Probably won't have to wait long for a Smash Bros. Probably more Wii U ports. A rumor was out to expect Pokemon within 6 months of launch. This thing can be a solid console with the handheld and home console Nintendo teams all merging to one platform plus all the third party Japanese devs that were there for the 3DS and the Vita. I'm a believer. Sign me up. Tell me the price.
TheFlyingSquirrel - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I hope it's a hit. I hope that NVN API Nvidia talked about the the Switch means something like, Nintendo Vulkan Nvidia, some extension to Vulkan for the console. If it's close enough to Vulkan maybe this will bring some cross development to Android and prop up the market there for higher quality, higher priced games.HomeworldFound - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
The problem is if the Switch only has Nintendo games again, that's it for Nintendo. I hope they've accounted for Microsoft's revised Xbox. If Nintendo aren't right smack in the middle of both Sony and Microsoft in order to get ports, they'll fail again and the shareholders are going to want blood.barleyguy - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
"The problem is if the Switch only has Nintendo games again, that's it for Nintendo."People that say things like this are, in general, very mathematically challenged.
Nintendo has a nest egg, between cash and investments, somewhere in the range of 11 Billion dollars. That's 11,000 million dollars.
Generally speaking, Nintendo makes money in their good years, and in their bad years they've lost maybe 100 million. There's actually only been a couple of those years. Even the the Wii U failing and the 3DS selling less than DS, they made money on Amiibo last year and probably on their share of Pokemon Go this year.
If they had a lot of bad years because of a failed console, and lost 100 million a year consistently, they would run out of money in 110 years. So before you say "if this console fails, that's it for Nintendo", do the math first. They could actually survive a few more generations of failed hardware and still be fine.
Morawka - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
no, they run out of money when their stock value plummets to pennies, which can happen overnight if the circumstances are bad enough.Look, Nintendo is run by a bunch of idiots who do no have the ability to adapt to market demands. Instead they try to re-invent them self everytime they release a console. The hit gold with the original Wii, and are chasing that high.
their first party catalog is amazing, but those releases are few and far between. Their hardware is so outside of everyone else's, that it makes 3rd party dev's re-write whole game engines just to get it to work on Nintendo. (not many do, they just refuse to release on nintendo). If porting these games takes more work than it's worth, then it simply wont come out on Nintendo.
barleyguy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
"no, they run out of money when their stock value plummets to pennies, which can happen overnight if the circumstances are bad enough".When a company has billions of dollars in actual bank accounts, that isn't actually possible. The value of that money isn't affected by their share price. If their stock went below their cash reserves they could do a buy back and go private.
Communism - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Not to mention that Nintendo happens to be a Japanese company, which means the Japanese central bank is already buying up vast quantities of their stock due to how the Japanese do their quantitative easing. And any bond that Nintendo would have to issue at any time would be instantly purchased by the Japanese central bank since the Japanese central bank buys almost all bonds in Japan.AKA, Nintendo has as much chance going bankrupt as Goldman Sachs has of going bankrupt.
KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link
"their first party catalog is amazing, but those releases are few and far between"And this solves that problem. All Nintendo development will be on one platform instead of split between two. Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, ONE PLATFORM to rule them all.
Its brilliant.
Tams80 - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
This. They could still have multiple devices, but it at the very least seems they are going to cartridges.Other than for great longevity, flash-based memory has now soundly passed optical media as a better format to distribute games (yes, it may still be more expensive, but it's cheap enough). This means that Nintendo could still have a very portable console, a hybrid like this, and even a home console that all use the same cartridges.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Nintendo's portables have pretty solid development. This'll probably have at least as much as 3DS has.It can't run the same games that the current gen consoles run, but it'll still probably end up with a strong library, AND it'll have Nintendo able to put all their development on a single console instead of splitting it, which will help too.
Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I wonder how long this has been in the works between NVIDIA and Nintendo. It almost seems like the Shield devices were partially beta devices testing various aspects and allowing for a cost-effective method of developing the software stack. It also makes me wonder if a GeForce Now-type service will be available for the Switch at some point.Also, the Razer Edge device must have helped Nintendo in its realization of the Switch. Nintendo's system seems to add some vital flexibility to allow it to address a much larger market.
HomeworldFound - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Maybe that's the idea... an insurance policy, if the Switch flops they can quickly bring in NVIDIA and/or Razer to make their own devices with exclusive Nintendo games. Then while everyone is pre-occupied with that they can create a new successful handheld while porting their games to PC or another console.webdoctors - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
That zelda video graphics are pretty dated. Skyrim looks great though. I hope this thing could do something like GeforceNow when plugged into the console and than local processing for 720p handheld gaming. Will see...blzd - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
They do but keep in mind the new Zelda game seems to imploy a lot more physics than we're used to from a Nintendo game and it could be that they're focusing more of the horsepower in that regards than the typical polygons/textures. Also keep in mind that 1st party Nintendo games have traditionally always targeted 60 FPS.Flying Aardvark - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
This is the Wii U's full potential realized. I found that we most often use the Wii U gamepad to take out of the room somewhere in the house. I'm always wishing I could take my Wii U gamepad with me outside of my home. We do not appreciate the 2nd screen for games. Nintendo seems to have figured this out too.The partnership with Nvidia is both a huge boost and worrisome. I'd take their hardware, but I'd want full rights to the source of their middleware. Next-gen Nintendo might want to look at other options and if wanting backwards compatibility, have all their old games locked to the Switch. Not a huge problem, backwards compatibility is broken often enough and perhaps NV won't try to screw them over next-gen so bad that Nintendo bails on them.
The Tegra hardware is perfect for a home/mobile device. More than enough power. No one seems to realize that good gaming has zero relation to graphics. I'd trade GTX1080 graphics power for the mobility and 2 player functionality of the Switch anyday. Can't wait to take this on my next flight.
I'll be buying one on launch and all first party Nintendo games.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
<<<No one seems to realize that good gaming has zero relation to graphics>>>*sigh* Not this nonsense again. That's 1) completely false, and 2) more power isn't used only for better graphics.
There's plenty to like about this new system without making up ridiculous claims like that, or resorting to lame, obviously bogus Wii/Wii U apologetics.
TesseractOrion - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Sigh Wolfpup: stating your opinion as fact doesn't it make it fact. I'm guessing you've not reached the age where you can even envision such a thing, but rest assured, your dumb brain is not the sole arbiter of such things. Sorry, young pup ;-)jjj - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
If there was a discrete GPU in the dock, it would kinda be interesting.Who knows,maybe a bulky tab with removable controllers sells well with children but hard to imagine that anyone else will care about this.
watzupken - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I don't think the dock has a GPU in there. Rather, the GPU in the SOC can run at a higher clockspeed when docked since there is more power. This way, it can run at a better resolution on TV when it is docked and go into a low power mode when gaming at a lower resolution on the mobile device screen.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
That makes a lot more sense to me. Would be cheaper, easier to code for, etc.watzupken - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I think this is a pretty neat design from Nintendo. I am not expecting vastly superior graphics since this was never what Nintendo is all about. From my opinion, Nintendo mainly about simple fun games that family and friends can have all get engaged. Looking forward to this in Mar next year. Hope we can get a glimpse of the capability before the end of the month.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
<<<From my opinion, Nintendo mainly about simple fun games that family and friends can have all get engaged>>>IMO that's never really what Nintendo was about, but at any rate this'll have all of Nintendo's output on a single system instead of splitting it. I sure don't mind getting a new Nintendo portable, and a high-end one to boot!
LukeTim - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I would assume it is Pascal based given this line from NVIDIA's blog post: "an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards."The world's top performing GeForce gaming graphics cards are Pascal, after all.
Jumangi - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
DOA...Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Why? 3DS has done very well, and this is higher end for when it's being released, AND can be played on a TV, AND will have all Nintendo development consolidated on a single system.IMO it seems better than 3DS, Wii, and Wii U.
Tams80 - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
Frankly, if the Shield devices can sell reasonably, yet have next to no decent games and be running Android of all things; then a device with Nintendo and well regarded third-party studio games certainly will be able to. No Android bloat to boot as well.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Denver isn't actually ARM is it? It's ARM compatible through software, and was going to support x86 too, only they couldn't get a license? (Which stinks, as they'd be great for some mid-range Windows tablets that could even play games!)Obviously I want a "Gamecube 2" that competes with Scorpio (SP?) in specs, but given Nintendo gave up on "big" consoles a decade ago, this is probably the next best thing. They get to consolidate their development on a single system, making even just their 1st party games go a lot further. 3DS managed to do quite well against iOS and Android devices, and it was underpowered at launch, while this should be basically state of the art for a mobile device.
AND the ability to hook it up to a TV is cool...I wanted that for Vita and 3DS!
If, like me, you like a good chunk of Nintendo's output, having to buy just a single console, and having it be a high-end portable doesn't sound too bad at all.
barleyguy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Denver is 64-bit ARM, though internally it's a micro-op core. Much like modern x86 processors it has a decoder layer at the front end which decodes to micro-ops in the execution units.NVidia isn't allowed to make x86 processors, AFAIK. They settled a lawsuit against Intel regarding x86 chipsets in 2011, and they agreed not to make x86 chipsets or processors.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4122/intel-settles-w...
CannedTurkey - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The only thing I haven't seen is them dropping the switch into some goggles and turning it into VR.barleyguy - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
That would actually be really cool. It would be like Samsung Gear except dedicated gaming hardware.Though VR gaming at less than 90 fps has been known to make people ill, and I doubt that the screen does 90 fps.
wolfemane - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to comment.I could see getting excited about this. But it will suffer the same issue that the previous generation Nintendo consoles have suffered. A giant lack of content. We will see the same refresh of Zelda, Mario cart, Smash Bro's, pokemon, and a handful of Nintendo only titles. That alone will kill this for me.
I think Nintendo is on the right track, but they need to expand their content... a lot. Until I see a game list and future titles, it looks like this consumer might be passing on yet another Nintendo gimmick,
zodiacfml - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Nvidia Shield to me.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
"tease the console ahead of its full launch in March of 2017."Wow cool I can then play this on Chris.... Oh it's March 2017. Oh well. Oopss :/
damianrobertjones - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
P.s. Will still buy it in two years time when the console is around £140 new along with all the games being £6.Einy0 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Great concept but MAR 2017 for an underpowered hybrid console, FAIL!!!