Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@COVIDberry
To be blunt, I think you're misreading what is happening if you think the discussion has been "changing slightly" every time it has been proven wrong. You talk about the pre-E3 reveal? That was just a belief about when a reveal might be, that's an easier secret to keep. It seemed probable but there wasn't ever much behind it and there couldn't really be. However new content is not an easy secret to keep, new hardware even less so. At this stage, on the hardware itself, nothing has been proven wrong. If anything we're starting to get bits and pieces that are kinda suggesting it is a thing.

Also it's worth noting that the original Bloomberg article talked about assembly starting in July this year and ramping up to a peak October-December but with a launch potentially as early as September. It's still June if you hadn't noticed. So if you want to gloat and are confident it is wrong? Wait a month because potentially you're going to very soon have egg on your face if you overcommit to dismissing the Switch Pro.

Lastly, I'm probably not the best person to point to as an example of someone "anxiously grasping" at rumours. If anything on my years on this forum I'm the person who shuts down rumours. I think the most I've ever been wrong on this forum was when I dismissed a rumour/leak that Breath of the Wild would be ported to NX. Which was partially because I didn't really want to think that the Wii U was a flop, partially because of what I thought NX could technically be.

I was of the mind that the NX would be a portable, maybe something like the Nvidia Shield Tablet at a stretch, but not quite capable enough to run something like "Zelda Wii U". In my mind while the Wii U was a flop I convinced myself that the 3DS was more in need of a successor. I thought we'd get the 3DS successor first and they'd then later they'd release a higher spec version of it you could play "NX" games on but on your TV at a higher resolution. And that gut feeling was wrong.... but also incredibly right....

Tbh, the moment AMD can get their version of DLSS up and running, SONY won't be able to wait to sell us 8K TVs and a console that can upscale to it. Of course there will be a PS5 Pro.

"Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will be available on 'Nintendo’s Next Generation Hardware'"

https://www.laptopmag.com/news/nintendo-switch-pros-first-gam...

@Pokemon_Trainer That's just them taking a punt at keeping Nintendo stakeholder's money. Remember Project Cars? They couldn't squeeze it on Switch and offered a next gen version without knowing what the next gen console was! As it turns out, they couldn't manage that and sheepishly cancelled the project. This isn't a red flag.

@skywake
Ah, the NX discussion thread days on this forum. Good times lol

Was curious so googled some context. The earliest semiconductor processes were around the 10 micrometer range, that was in the early 70s. We're currently sitting at around 10 nanometers which is about 1000x smaller. The hard limit for this is the atomic scale which is around the 100 picometer range, which is about 100x smaller than where they are currently at.

It took ~13 years from 1970 to go 10x smaller, ~18 years for the next 10x, ~14 years for the next 10x. If the current rate of around 15 years for every 10x shrinkage continues (it won't) it'll be another 30 years before we start brushing up against that atomic limit. Oh, and when I say 10x here I mean 10x as a measure of length, silicon is a 2D (ish) thing, 10x -> 10x ^ 2 -> 100x.

If the reports are true and its using some form of Orin there is a much greater possibility that a Switch revision/successor may approach PS4 Pro levels with base PS4 levels being a much more conservative and safer bet (docked of course).

@skywake You're assuming that quantum tunneling and leakage will not be a significant problem in the approaching die shrinks. Dealing with those problems will probably move your time table out by quite a bit due to the need to facilitate the use of new technologies and/or materials beyond silicon.

@ProPAIN
I'm not assuming that, I said it won't continue at that rate but that if it did it's ~30 years away.

@Slowdive Do you think Samsung will also win the manufacturing job for the Switch Pro SoC? Or have you seen any rumours for that? I thought it was highly possible after they got the OLED win, plus they make the RTX 3000 GPUs for Nvidia. But I was wondering if there's any substance to my hunch?

This may or may not be bad translation from the original Japanese answer and Twitter translation of the tweet. But… To respond to a question about why the Switch Pro was not revealed at E3 with “ We will refrain from commenting on products that are physically in development.” is certainly interesting.

My girlfriend is Japanese. She translated it this way:
"The company releases information at the right moment. I will not talk about specific information of the new Switch. But we will continue to experiment with games and, when the time is right, we will release it."

So basically the same.

@Slowdive it may be but you're comparing products sold for 1000$+ with 300$ (maybe up to 400 or 500 if they go all in)

I think people need to temper their expectations, because from the looks of it you are setting yourselves up for disappointment. Fact there is an Orin chip that is very powerful does not mean Nintendo is going to use anything near that. 8nm does give them more power per W and better thermals compared to the current chip, but remember that Nintendo already did a die shrink, but only used it to improve the battery life and thermals.

I do think the Switch Pro is going to be significantly more powerful than the current model, especially if it utilises DLSS it will be able to output a much higher resolution. Remember though that Furukawa has already said they want better battery life, so they will have to sacrifice power to reduce the Wattage the Pro console uses.

Asked about the reports during a shareholder Q&A this month, which it has published in Japanese, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa declined to comment.

“The Company will continue to focus on creating unique games, and in order to achieve this, we will continue to propose games using a dedicated game console with integrated hardware and software,” he said.
“We are constantly developing hardware, software, and dedicated peripherals, but we will refrain from commenting on specific products under development.”

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendos-president-...

@Slowdive I do agree it is most likely going to be Orin based, but that just means they can do a lot more compared to the current model for the same wattage, not that they will. They could choose 10 hours battery life for example over significantly more power. We have to wait and see how powerful it will actually end up being. I am seeing discussions about it possibly being close to a PS4 Pro when docked etc, which is not something we can derive from what we currently know about it.

So what are we thinking for timing of an announcement now? Surely in the next few weeks given the noise being made now. If it really is going to assembly this month they're really playing with fire in terms of more substantial leaks if they hold out much longer

@skywake I would expect them to announce it as late as they can, to minimise the number of people waiting for it to release before buying a Switch. If the rumoured September/October release is correct, it should be announced in the next 2 months. If production though is indeed starting this month, pictures of it will most likely leak in the upcoming weeks and I don't think Nintendo will act like nothing is happening for too long after that. So that could force them to announce it a bit earlier than when they would have liked.

@Slowdive I think the Lite being the cheaper, handheld only alternative made it different enough to not impact sales of the regular Switch significantly. The pro being basically a superior Switch in every way, it has much more potential to eat away on regular switch sales, so I would expect Nintendo to try to keep it unannounced for as long as they can.

@Slowdive There's apparently rumours of a Sony event on July 8th so if true, July 9th sounds like a reasonable guess for the new Switch revision reveal. There was a major Sony event on September 16th 2020 and Nintendo had the Partner Showcase which announced Switch exclusive Monster Hunter on September 17th 2020.