Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@TSR3 Yeah, the leak is exciting. (Sounds too good to be true to be honest.) But it's Nintendo. They said they have a new 'gimmick' for the next Mario Kart which to me suggests their next hardware isn't going to be just maximum powah! Probably just more. They left that party years ago. Mr Furukawa did mention they were looking at state of the art to remain competitive but he could be talking processes or gameplay or what have you. Yeah. Who the heck knows lol?

Entering year 2023, Nintendo Switch will be 6 years old as Wii on year 2012, compared with PS5 that has been released on year 2020 after PS4 is 7 years old. Technology is always vastly improved. It was like waiting for a proper age of kids to enroll in grade 1 class.

@BruceCM How often have Zelda games got delayed in the past? Obviously BoTW was held back for Switch launch and Twilight Princess for the Wii, but have the other launches being late as well?

Yeah, I think most of us expected it, @TSR3 ....

We’re in a drought for Switch Pro/2 rumors right now. 😢 I’m bored. 🤣 although I did hear somewhere, maybe during nvidia’s conference, that the Orin NX (not AGX) can push up to 2 TFLOPs. Not bad. But I see on their website that the memory is 102 gbs LPDDR5. Is that enough to run UE5 games? And for that matter, what is the difference between LPDDR4 vs LPDDR5?

@Cuzizkool
Yes to the UE5 comment, game engines aren't really going to care about the hardware they're on. The entire point of a game engine is that you're abstracting out all of those sort of details so that game developers don't have to think about it. Unreal Engine 5 has support for the Switch, we can assume it will also support whatever hardware Nintendo comes out with next

On the difference between different generations of memory? If you dig super deep into the technical docs you'll probably find some other difference. But generally, speed is the difference. Although there are also different speeds of memory WITHIN generations of memory. For example in the desktop RAM space the fastest DDR4 is faster than the slowest DDR5

@Cuzizkool I think the rumour drought is partly due to the leaks from the Lapsus$ hack of Nvidia last month. Because the info was stolen, no-one from the reverse engineering community can touch it, and industry insiders have to wait for their sources to corroborate any info before they can discuss it in depth.

But based on what info has come out from the leaks, it looks like the GPU in the next Nvidia model would be sitting somewhere between the Orin AGX and NX in performance. Where exactly depends on unknowns like clock speed and how many GPU cores are actually enabled. Tom at Moore's Law is Dead has stated a couple of times he expects the new Nvidia SoC for Nintendo to land around +/- 30% of the Xbox Series S performance. That'll be for docked mode.

Of course the floor for any new Switch model will be it's handheld performance. And also the full impact of DLSS is an unknown (tho' you can presume upscaling to 4K is a target). MLiD also said production of LPDDR4 will end before the end of this year. If true that would add credence to the rumours that Nintendo will have to release a new model before they run out of components for the original designs.

@skywake

I guess I’m asking about UE5 because I’m wondering if PS5/XSX games built with UE5 will be playable on that speed of ram, albeit with some downgrades. From what I’ve seen on rumor forums, this next Switch will be in a similar situation to the last switch. It will get old PS4/XBO ports with the occasional PS5/XSX “miracle” port. Much like the OG Switch which got PS3/360 ports with the occasional PS4/XBO “miracle” port. But the closer Switch 2 is to XSS in terms of specs, the more likely it is to get more “miracle” ports, since Microsoft conveniently set the bar lower with an entry level specced console this gen.

@TSR3 if I’m reading you right, and Switch 2 is within +/- 30% of series S, (4 TFLOPs), that would be a window between 2.8 and 5.2 tflops. 😳 Is that what you meant? I’m sure that factors in whatever DLSS can do. And I’m sure handheld would be lower. I’d imagine no DLSS would be needed for handheld mode to render a game at 720p (what I imagine the screen res will still be) or if it’s like the OG Switch, even sub 720p on demanding ports.

@Cuzizkool Yes, that's what I think MLID meant, potential native performance in that range, with DLSS on top. Personally I'm pretty sceptical of the plus (+) side of that estimate, but based on the Lapsus$ leaks and speculation about clock speeds, then 3.68 TFLOPS is reachable. So yeah, I agree, the closer it can get to XSS performance the more chance we have of new generation ports.

Whether that's a performance target for Nintendo is another question entirely, and a far more speculative debate. I'm pretty confident handheld (i.e. battery life) performance will be high on Nintendo's target list, and following the Lapsus$ leak, I'd expect that mode to run with fewer GPU cores as well as lower clocks than docked mode. However DLSS upscaling could still be an option in that mode, for instance run with high settings in 540p, then upscale to 720P. If the Steam Deck can run Elden Ring, then so could the next Switch model, as it's looking like it'll be at least 50% more powerful than the Steam Deck.

@TSR3

Yeah I was skeptical about the + side as well. As for what Nintendo would do, that’s another guess entirely. The X1 in Switch is, on paper, more powerful than what Nintendo has it running at, yes? They locked the clock speeds at a lower pace I think. So even the hypothetical performance of the Orin NX may not be what it actually is in the final product. Is the Switch even nerfed in docked mode? To keep temps down? Damn that’s something else I forgot to take into consideration. Well the good news is that future patches can be used to tweak clock speeds, like the “boost mode” Nintendo patched in a few years ago. So at least it can still be changed if need be. But odds are they won’t have Orin running at full capacity, at least not in handheld mode.

I feel like you have too high expectations for the next Switch. The CPU is most likely going to be a very limiting factor, I doubt it will be remotely close to the Series S, even docked. Stock ARM designs that NVidia is using are still quite behind in terms of raw power compared to what Series S is using.

In terms of the GPU, we will see what they can pull off with DLSS, but again I doubt that in raw performance it will be able to come close. Imo at best we should expect something similar to the Steam Deck in terms of handheld performance (so roughly a PS4 but with lower resolution) and PS4 Pro on TV.

UE5, while it most definitely will support the new Switch (I mean it does support the current one already), I would expect most new features to not really be useable. So in terms of 3rd party ports, it will depend on how deeply integrated those features will be in their games and if they will want to spend the extra cash to make alternative versions for the Switch. I expect that similar to now, it will mostly be port studios that will be hired to do the ports for those games. Games that won't rely on the new shiny features though will probably be much easier to downscale.

@Madao Good point generally re CPUs. However unlike the GPU, there's no leaks with any data about specs. I think our discussion is valid for the GPU as we now have some data points to speculate about following the Lapsus$ leak. Re UE5, it looks like the new features are a challenge for all but high end PCs at the moment with even PS5 struggling ...

@Cuzizkool Yes, the Switch runs slower even in docked mode than the maximum possible with the Tegra X1 SoC. Most speculation I've seen assumes Nintendo would run lower clock speeds than stock Orin. I've shared estimates earlier this month that suggested between 614 Gflops and 1.2 Tflops FP32 for portable performance. That lower figure is similar to the Tegra X1's published maximum (of course Ampere Gflops would be superior to Maxwell's in real world gaming). These are based on the Lapsus$ leaked data for a GPU codenamed Drake, which seems to fit between Orin NX and AGX in size.

I've had a theory brewing for a while now that I wanted to share somewhere.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of late 3DS games have had follow-ups on Switch. Metroid Dread was a followup to Metroid Fusion, but carried over a ton of ideas from Samus Returns. WarioWare: Get it Together! was a follow-up to WarioWare Gold. Miitopia was straight-up ported. And while it's not quite the same, the Luigi's Mansion remake included Gooigi, though he was conceptualized for 3 beforehand (and that's not to mention the rumored Fire Emblem remake, which could be a spiritual follow-up to Echoes).

What we have yet to see, though, is a follow-up to Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn.

It's Kirby's 30th Anniversary; as excellent as Forgotten Land is, it would be somewhat odd for it to be the only big commemoration of the anniversary. Yet HAL clearly had their hands full with it - they released a few side games after development of Forgotten Land got underway, but Part Time UFO was a simple port, BoxBoy and BoxGirl was also a smaller project, and Vanpool was brought on board to co-develop Super Kirby Clash and Kirby Fighters 2, despite both being based on the pre-established 2D engine and subgames from the 3DS era of Kirby. It's also been 3 years since Good-Feel released Yoshi's Crafted World, and while they've released Monkey Barrels and have been working on another project, they've been able to handle multiple projects simultaneously before, as Extra Epic Yarn and Crafted World prove. Good-Feel is listed under the Special Thanks section of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, too; this might just be because of the Past Adventures menu featuring Extra Epic Yarn, but it's interesting nonetheless. Epic Yarn remains the best-received Kirby game critically, tied with Canvas Curse, which already had its own follow-up with Rainbow Curse - greenlighting a sequel would make sense. Perhaps most interestingly, Shogo Sakai and Megumi Ohara, who have essentially become the designated composers for Kirby spinoffs, have not worked on anything since Part Time UFO; they did not contribute to Super Kirby Clash, Kirby Fighters 2, or Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and given how Epic Yarn's original composer, Tomoya Tomita, left Good-Feel, it's not a stretch to say that they would be brought in for a sequel or spiritual successor.

It's all pure conjecture, of course, but I haven't seen anyone else propose the idea of Epic Yarn getting a follow-up, and I'm really hoping that one is in the works. It would be a nice surprise if it pans out.

@PikaPhantom Makes sense to me, I love the look of those textile design games 👍🏻

"On Tuesday, the Nintendo president declined to comment when asked during a media briefing about when his company might unveil the next iteration of its marquee console."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-10/nintendo-u...

Is anyone still arguing for the next model to come out in 2024 or later?

That's a very vague quote. Without knowing exactly what was asked and how it was answered I really wouldn't bother reading anything into it.

@gcunit I’m jumping the gun a bit, as the English translation of the Q&A isn’t released yet. But it looks like Nintendo came out with a ‘no comment’ rather than saying ‘no plans’

I've already seen another Nvidia leak sighhhhhh the main thing that sounds super plausible to me, is the botw champion's ballad dlc getting adding to the n64 tier subscription, the rest is mostly stuff we've seen before except with streetpass, nintendo selects, and speakers in the joy-cons added.
I'm calling cap.

I wonder if Nintendo would do a new street pass BUT you'd have to pay for switch online to use it.

@FroZtedFlakerZz NSO Expansion Pack will probably be a situation where all 1st party DLC from Happy Home Paradise onwards are available day 1 meanwhile 1st party DLC prior to that gradually gets added over time. So essentially a "DLC Game Pass" in a sense.