Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

I have only been half following this thread since E3, but I don't think it was acknowledged that the original "leak" was 50% right, we did get a metroid game!

@MarioBrickLayer not sure whom you mean by the original leak but the Metroid has been rumoured for more than an year at this point

@Balta666 All the industry commentators who were talking about this (Emily Rogers, Nate The Hate etc) talked about the Pro and Metroid both coming this year. So their sources are already half right.

@MarioBrickLayer to be fair Nate until pre E3 allways said coming next year and only after the E3 rumours changed to the holiday and I believe Emily allways said just it is coming soon but never said definitely this year

In a nutshell:
Tighter process -> more transistors in a given area -> less power draw per transistor
lower power draw -> less heat -> higher performance

~7nm is basically the smallest process ATM, it also happens to be what the PS5 is on. The original Switch was on 20nm, the 2019 refresh was on 16nm. Nvidia only goes down to 8nm currently AFAIK? So 8nm would be basically the smallest process you could get from Nvidia. Basically it just means it's a modern part rather than something that's been kicking around for a bit.

@skywake Oh. It sounds like quite an upgrade.

@skywake that sounds expensive aka not something Nintendo would go for... But I don't know that guy that is talking about it or its track record

@Balta666 but how isn’t that giving too much credit to Nate. I mean why didn’t he just stick to his original idea of 2022. It sure seemed like a rumour came out and Nate piggybacked it. And now it turns out wrong.

@skywake if it’s this much of an upgrade are we sure it’s not just a switch 2. I mean 2022 is five years since the switch came out.

I wish upgraded Nintendo Switch has stronger analog buttons like Wii U.
Current analog buttons for Nintendo Switch are not good for playing Street Fighter by inputting half or quarter circle commands.

@skywake Apple's A14 and M1 chips, in the latest iPhones and Macs, are produced on TSMCs 5nm process. Also while Nvidia's RTX 3000 series GPUs are produced by Samsung at 8nm, their equivalent Ampere based A100 series processors for HPC are also produced by TSMC at 7nm.
So the 8nm process is interesting as that's Samsung's, and they are already lined up to produce the 'Switch Pro' OLED screens.
I'm really sceptical about kopite7kimi rumours on Twitter. I've read through his posts and he's been referring to Lovelace, which is Nvidia's follow up to Ampere (i.e. their current gen of GPUs). I think it's really far-fetched to think Nintendo would be that bleeding edge. Unless @Slowdive has other rumours/references to support this.

@sixrings I am not giving him credit. I take all I hear as rumours and go with it. It is not gospel. Also I am not looking to debunk things as wrong as many times things change (others are just wrong). In the end it is just videogames we are talking about...

I agree with this. That chip revision looks like a new system to me (however in that case I do not see it being released earlier than 2023 to get the price to more competitive numbers)

@TSR3 The President of Nintendo said their next hardware will be looking at more state of the art to remain competitive. We will see. Maybe a new generation of Nintendo is not too far in the future...

@GrailUK Oh, that's cool. I must have missed that statement. If Nintendo are abandoning their withered technology philosophy, then maybe the latest and greatest SoC from Nvidia isn't so far-fetched after all.
Also, to answer your question about if 8nm was any good - it's what Nvidia use for their current RTX 30x0 GPUs. So it's pretty much 'current gen'. And while AMD have 7nm GPUs, I think Nvidia still has the PC performance crown?

@TSR3 Ah, good to know. From what I gleaned from Nintendo's president, repurposing technology for gameplay is best for introducing new gameplay because it's more affordable to the consumer and lowers risk. And I think now Switch has been phenominally well recieved, they need to look at more current tech to keep it relevent. Not saying they have abandoned their philosophy but they are certainly looking at what's appropriate for their ideas on an individual basis.

meh, kinda. I mean anything new is going to be on a tighter process so that in itself shouldn't surprise anyone. Especially if they're wanting to do large volumes over a long period of time. These chip manufacturers are already setup to work at particular processes so it makes sense they'd go with something like 8nm. This is also why the idea of Nintendo sticking with the existing 16nm SoC (which was already upgraded from 20nm) for another 5 years is impractical BTW.

I'm pretty damn confident it's not a Switch 2. Purely because assuming it's Tegra there's no practical reason why existing Switch code would be unable to run on it. I think the question is, why are you so confident that it is a Switch 2?

@skywake I never claimed it had to be a switch 2 but I’m saying it’s five years if it comes out in 2022 and the processor then it may make sense. Also just because I’m suggesting a switch 2 doesn’t mean I think switch 1 games wouldn’t play on it.

@sixrings
We've had this discussion before, you're arguing over semantics. Nintendo has made it pretty damn clear over the last 7 years or so that their intent is to avoid "console generations". That instead platforms would merge and every effort would be made to minimise the effort required for porting as a last resort. They started this when they built the APIs for the Switch with making ports from the Wii U easier in mind.

I don't see a company with this mindset going out of their way to make a change in platform if they don't need to. If they're going Tegra they don't need to. Therefore a successor in the traditional sense is very unlikely in my view. Feel free to call it a successor based on some arbitrary measure of performance improvement if you want some kind of semantic victory. But practically I don't see it being a successor in the way the Switch was to Wii U or 3DS.

With that said, you may end up being "right" in hindsight from a purely marketing point of view. In the same way that XBox Series X/S is viewed as the "XBox Two" even though it technically isn't really a successor in the traditional sense. But even then I would (and do) call that a hardware revision.

As a side note, you do realise that a hardware revision isn't "less" than successor right? You've just been conditioned to think it is. In the PC space pretty much everything since the 80s has been a "hardware revision". That doesn't mean in the PC space there are not generational leaps. Hell, GC -> Wii was a smaller jump than PS4 -> PS4 Pro so there are clear examples in console histories of "successors" being smaller jumps than "revisions"

@skywake I’m not against revisions or pro models. I bought a one s. Then upgraded to a one x. And now have a series s (that’s a generational leap mainly because of the ssd) anyways whatever do is fine by me as long as it’s backward compatible but I wish it was sooner than later.