Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@GrailUK This is the same thing that happened with the Switch leading up to and soon after launch. Media sites were pretty damning on it. I think it’s easy to kick Nintendo for easy clicks rather than PlayStation. Also there’s a mentality from a number of people that Nintendo should go third party. Probably also the same people who want everything to be on every console without actually understanding how the industry or competition works.

Some juicy stuff coming from the Activision trial.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/18/23878412/nintendo-switch-2...

Activision was briefed about Switch 2 around December 2022. It pretty much confirms that we should expect performance similar to PS4.

Also sounds like great news for 3rd party support. Activision seems eager to jump on the ship as early as possible.

You can have a PS4 tier spec and have support for ray tracing. They're independent things. Saying it can't have ray tracing because its has PS4 tier raw compute is like saying the Vita couldn't have an OLED screen because it's less powerful than the Switch OLED

If it has Tensor cores, and if it has DLSS it will, it should support ray tracing. How well it performs depends on how much of the die they are willing dedicate to it. And what resolution/fidelity/framerate developers are happy with

@FragRed PS4 ish base level performance is what has been known about for 18 months (since the Lapsus$ hack of Nvidia). You then add DLSS on top, which should get you to at least PS4 Pro ish image quality.

Ray Tracing is a fascinating question - we know it will have RT cores (again, courtesy of last February's Lapsus$ hack), but how performant they will be in a mobile SoC is a subject of lively debate, with the current consensus centering around 'you're guess is as good as mine' Whatever, you shouldn't rule it out yet, and remember the PS5 and XBox series do not have any dedicated RT cores, so there is the potential for an NG Switch to be competitive in ray tracing

Do we really need our puddles and reflective surfaces to be that shiny anyhow?

@Magician Yes. It’ll help blind Microsoft next time they try buying Nintendo:P

@Magician I'm sure Nintendo will use it in a meaningful way. Like I said, something like Wave Race with raytracing and haptic feedback against the waves could be sublime!

@GrailUK True. But my main concern is power consumption. I see / hear ray tracing and I immediately wonder where that factors into the Switch's energy efficient, primarily portable agenda.

@Magician Well, we'll have to ask NVidia lol. It's on a chip that seems to be doing a lot of legwork without technically being 'horsepower,' We will see. I'm looking forward to hearing how proud Jenson is about the new console!

@Magician The way I see it is ray tracing won’t be enabled when in portable but it’s enabled when in dock.

I personally believe that the next Nintendo System will be just as powerful if not better than what the competition is doing. If it’s not it will not do well.

@Atomic77 It won't be in terms of raw power, that's simply impossible for a current hybrid device. But...it can trick people thinking it is, and that's the great thing about it.

That leak about Microsoft planning to buy Nintendo via share manipulation concerns me a lot, especially when you have the infamous gigantic success followed by much smaller success or commercial failure trend.

@Grumblevolcano
I'm not entirely sure, but I heard or read somewhere that Nintendo has safety measures against shenanigans like that.
Though, I'm a little concerned as well.

@Grumblevolcano

Meh.

The Master Trust Bank of Japan holds a majority of the 5.3m Nintendo shares out in the wild. Considering Nintendo are a cornerstone of Japan's economy and Japan's national pride is higher than most other countries, I highly doubt a sale of Nintendo would ever happen. Or at least in our lifetime. Things would have to be dire.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.html

@Stamina_Wheel
That video is..... reading a hell of a lot into a job posting. The ad is basically for a DevOps/Integration Testing role with a graphical development component. Given Nintendo's primary product is one that connects to a TV it makes sense that creating automated tests suites to see how the hardware/software behaves on various TVs is part of it

Of course HDR is basically a given with this new hardware so I'm sure it'd inevitably come up. It would be odd if they didn't have HDR support of some kind given HDR has been baked into the HDMI spec since 2015. But you could just as easily be testing how different reported VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) ranges are handled or QMS (Quick Media Switching)

But hey, I guess a video based on reading the tea-leaves on a job posting is better than the usual fare

@Magician That’s true. The fact the PM of Japan rose from a green pipe during the handing over to Japan ceremony at the 2016 Olympics shows just how important Nintendo are to the country. If the pandemic hadn’t happened and Nintendo hadn’t therefore pulled out the opening to the Japan 2020 Olympics, I imagine there would have been a big deal made again because of their importance to the country.

@Atomic77 @Stamina_Wheel If you count Steam Deck as the competition, then yeah, the NG Switch will probably be more powerful than that. And I wouldn't count Apple as competition in the hybrid sphere, unless they resurrect the iPod Touch at a decent price point.

@TSR3 I'm not sure NG Switch will be on par with the Deck. It'll probably have less ram. Probably have fewer TFlops. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see how Nvidia and Nintendo do the dance, finding a balance between performance while keeping thermals and battery consumption as low as they could be. Casual gamers are hoping for a portable PS5 or Xbox Series X in the NG Switch.

But would those people be okay with a battery life of one hour (maybe an hour and a half) on a full charge?

Just like how the current Switch is clocked low for the sake of battery life, the NG Switch will have a performance ceiling / battery life ratio Nintendo won't cross.

Edit: P.S. - I've also seen discussions online about the possibility of NG Switch being on par with an Xbox Series S. Which I think is wild out-of-pocket pie-in-the-sky degrees of hoping. The XSS is much more powerful than the Deck.