Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

A couple of things. Firstly storage is much cheaper than a lot of people seem to think. 512GB IMO seems very likely.

Secondly game size is mostly a function of two things, asset resolution and compression. "Switch 2" won't be doing 4K natively so there's less reason for the uber high resolution assets. And in any case there will be less RAM to play around with anyways even if they wanted to

Also it'll have hardware accelerated file compression so games can be compressed on disk and decompressed on the fly while loading into RAM. Reducing file size and boosting the effective disk speed. Both will result in smaller game sizes

Of course it's still up to developers, games over100GB could and probably will happen. But I think people going into this expecting sub 256GB storage and 300GB games are being a tad pessimistic

Rumors goes GS has had some info about the upcoming Switch and maybe we finally get to preorder the system?

RE: The Bloomberg published rumour on the front page. 8" LCD. If that's what we end up getting it would seem like they'd have to drop JoyCon and Dock compatibility. Something I'm not particularly keen on but, honestly, not entirely surprising. Presumably would come with a jump to 1080p also

No OLED, not ideal but certainly not a deal breaker

@skywake 1080p was my first thought seeing the 8" story. I am skeptical that they'd make it that much bigger though, unless they were going to make a smaller (Lite) SKU too, which I guess is entirely possible, and they want a greater differentiation than what we've had with the Switch & Lite.

I'm sure there's a few people who would like a bigger screen, but it's really not something that I've witnessed people showing much of an appetite over, so why would they go bigger? Makes it a heavier, more expensive, more battery-hungry (though obviously could carry a bigger battery) device.

So I'm not buying that particular rumour for now.

Huh??? Most likely a new Dock and Joy-Cons will match the New Switch Dimensions. I doubt there would be any change and probably allow v1, v2 Switch to dock in the Switch 2 Dock to match. If they didn't do that would hurt their image. So if you got other info we don't see please elaborate on the Dock sources.

If the screen is bigger means the new joy con are bigger then hopefully that means they are more robust.

I think the main point was potentially dropping joycon compatibility between Switch 1 and Switch 2. The joycons are only a smidge taller than the screen so if the screen got larger, clearly current joycons wouldn't fit.

As for the dock, I agree that even if new Switch didn't fit in old dock they could probably arrange it pretty easily so new dock worked with both Switch 2 and Switch 1. I hope they do that. That's 1-way compatibility, just not full 2-way compatibility.

It's not unreasonable to have to buy new controllers for a new console. It's hard to have sympathy for those couple of people that had to buy every colour variant of joycon lol.

I don't know about Joy-Cons, but I expect to have to buy a new Pro Controller for the new console.

I expect the current pro controller will still work on Switch 2 but I hope to buy a new pro controller because I hope they've improved the d-pad.

Even if the Switch 2 was similar to Switch but with a bigger screen, the Switch 1 joy-cons not being quite as tall does not mean they have to be incompatible.

Same goes for the dock. The screen can be bigger but still fit the current docks if Nintendo want it to.

@gcunit I mean... they could still work as controllers but could they attach to a larger Switch 2? Maybe, but it's a little hard to picture.

Could there be just less bezel and the thing looks very sleek?

@FishyS You don't need to picture anything, the rail just has to be the same fit as the existing rail. But if you need to picture anything, go look at a picture of a Switch in one of those TATE mode flip-grip things.

They obviously wouldn't sell them with mis-sized joy-cons, but that doesn't have to mean they can't still attach.

Not that I'm buying this 8" rumour though.

Calm your farm, re-read my post. I was talking about the rumoured 8" screen and what that'd mean

The current Switch main section is 101mm tall and sits flush with the height of the JoyCon. It is also 173mm wide and sits flush with the width of the dock. An 8" screen would be 100mm high and 177mm wide. See the problem? Unless they go entirely bezel-less (possible) this thing is going to be taller and no-matter what they do it'll be wider

Hell, 177mm wide even with no bezel would be very tricky to hit because they'd also need space to fit in the JoyCon rails. Between the larger screen and the JoyCon rails I can't see how they could be any less than ~185mm wide with a full 8" screen. Any new dock would want to match that width for aesthetics, so the new dock would be ~6mm over the JoyCon on a current Switch. 6mm is trigger/button land, compatibility broken

Also, if you're doing that you'd want space on the top/bottom to even out the look, and also protect the screen from knocks on the edge. Realistically if they wanted to be the same dimensions while maintaining JoyCon compatibility and Dock Aesthetics they can't really be any bigger than around 165mm wide. Which would give an a 7.5" display... 7.5" is not 8"...

Really, there are only four options here:
1. The Bloomberg Rumour is BS

2. Nintendo are going to really push for as large a screen as they can possibly get without breaking compatibility. The screen will go right to the edge on the top/bottom to maintain the height so the JoyCon still sit flush. They'll be slightly wider but width doesn't really matter. A new dock dock design that maintains compatibility for both sizes and still looks good is possible

3. Nintendo change the dimensions for Switch 2 to accommodate a larger screen, breaking compatibility

4. We be super generous to Bloomberg and say that 7.51" is 8". Or maybe it's something like 7.7" and they do some of point #2 alongside this

Point 1? Entirely possible. But for the sake of argument I'm assuming it isn't BS which is why, if you read my post, you'd see that I said IF this rumour is true. The entire post is a train of thought from that assumption, I'm not making a judgement on the rumour itself here. Point 4 I'd count as the same as point 1, 8" is 8". Point 2 is possible but it seems like a lot of hassle just to maintain compatibility with old hardware. I feel like if IF they are going for a full 8" screen they'd just.... change the dimensions and break compatibility

Frankly I would hope that they main accessory compatibility. But lets be realistic here, I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't be losing much sleep over the thought of people having to re-buy all of their accessories again. Second docks, new JoyCon colours etc

edit: Also, can you please just cut it with the "show us your sources" schtick? This is the rumours and speculation thread, says it right up the top. Rumours and speculation. If you don't like the idea of people talking about rumours and making speculations? Please, find some other thread. I hear the front page is a good spot to whine about this kind of thing

@Ulysses
A couple of bits here. Firstly in terms of the SoC, I don't think going from 7" to 8" is going to change what kind of SoC this thing can have. I am fairly confident that when DF is talking about "size" here they're talking about thermals, power consumption, price. 8" is bigger but it's not THAT much bigger that it'll allow entirely different classes of thermal solutions and significantly larger batteries

Also I think you've misunderstood that DF video, something was lost in translation on that one. Lacking a DLA does not exclude DLSS, it just means it won't have an additional AI accelerator alongside the AI acceleration that's built into the GPU. It doesn't mean no DLSS it just means it won't be quite as potent as it might have mean. Presumably Nintendo have decided that that die space was better used for something else, additional CPU cores, that file compression accelerator or just straight up reducing cost/power consumption

In terms of the accessory compatibility bit? Frankly, I agree. Only two realistic options here I feel are that this 8" rumour is total nonsense or Nintendo throw compatibility in the bin. And I agree, I'm not sure they'd lose much sleep over people having to buy more accessories

I just want better controllers, whether they're joycon again or a version of one. I've never had so many issues like I do with these things. Especially the left JC

Worth posting this one again:

Key points:
Enough bandwidth for HDMI 2.1
This would mean support for 4K, 120Hz with HDR and VRR, currently the Switch has HDMI 1.4 which is limited to 4K/30Hz or 1080/120Hz and technically lacks proper HDR support. This doesn't mean all games will use it, far from it, but the ability for some titles to use it will make a difference

Performance similar to a low end dedicated laptop GPU
You don't need to know what the SoC is to figure this one out. Steam Deck is around about the same ballpark, there are hard thermal/power limits at play here. DF lands with a spec somewhere around a mobile 3050 which feels about right. Enough to run demanding modern titles in the ~30fps/720p ballpark

Around 100GB/s of memory bandwidth
This is similar to the XBox One and Steam Deck but significantly less than the PS4. Notably though it's about 4X the current Switch and low memory bandwidth on Switch is one if its key technical weaknesses. A lot of the areas where framerate dipped in BotW for example were due to memory bandwidth limitations

Hardware accelerated file decompression
This doesn't mean much without also adding significantly faster storage. Given its there and there was also that rumour where a build of BotW had zero loading times? I think we can assume that there is. Hardware accelerated file decompression is also a key part of the storage architectures for XBox Series and PS5. Also, this is Nintendo, the same company who gave Sony the finger over CD based storage largely on the back of them thinking load times were unacceptable. This would be a very Nintendo upgrade

Some AI Upscaling but not to 4K
DLSS is going to be fairly important at this spec but we can rule out 4K DLSS. There will be games running at 4K native, 2D platformers, indie games, remasters of Wii/GC era titles etc. But 4K DLSS isn't really on the table and won't be how we get there. This will mostly be used for pushing super demanding titles from 720p and under to 1080p or 1440p

@Ulysses
Just to clarify, when we're talking about die size we're talking about the size of the actual chip not the main unit itself. If you look at a Switch teardown about half of the internal space is taken up by the battery. Of the remaining half there's maybe a third taken up by the fan. Another chunk by stuff like memory, cartridge slot, storage, memory card, WiFi etc, etc

But the actual SoC itself is only 118mm^2, 100mm^2 for the Lite, 2019 revision and OLED. Like the size of your thumbnail. This is what DF would have been talking about. The Eurogamer/DF article above talks about the T239 & T234. We don't know the die size, mostly because we don't know what process they'll be using, but the T239 is 455mm^2 which is kinda huge as far as dies go. But 455mm^2 is also physically just 2cm x 2cm. Even that would physically fit into the Switch's current size. But a die that size would be expensive, power hungry and difficult to cool. So again, thermals, price, power. These are the reasons why they talk about the Switch 2's SoC being smaller

Nothing to do with the physical space in the device as restricted by the screen-size and thickness