Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

With the reports of the Switch successor having a built-in microphone...anyone think Nintendogs is on the table for a return? Nintendogs + Cats did not stick the landing as a 3DS launch title and sold far worse than the original game did on DS (counting all versions for both), but it still sold over 4 million copies, and I get the feeling Nintendo isn't done with the series yet.

@skywake I could see them using it possibly for a weird second screen attachment, if they ever end up making one. Mainly for DS and 3DS titles as well as experimental games that could use two screens.

@PikaPhantom
Nintendogs is surely on the cards. The only tricky thing about it is that the Switch 2, initially, will be a higher end device. Nintendogs would surely be better placed as a game that can run on the cheaper, more casual friendly, more portable Lite

@VoidofLight
It's certainly a potential use case. The thing that makes me doubt it though is the lack of any kind of physical mechanisms to attach something to the top of the shell. At least in the shell design as leaked. Which would mean that whatever you attach to it would have to be SUPER light otherwise you'd risk breaking the connector

Cables and 1cm cubed or less dongles? Sure. But anything bigger than that though I have strong doubts

Also for DS and 3DS there's so much screen real-estate already on an 8" screen I'm not sure what the point would be

@skywake Ehh. The thing about having one screen that's split in two is that it tends to feel wonky to me. At least going off DS emulation on the Wii U. Usually both screens get kinda shrunk down to fit and it just doesn't look the best at all. I also don't really like the idea of touch-screen games without a stylist and utilizing the singular screen.

As for the lack of connective joints, it could be that the second screen could come with hooks that help it latch upon the console and secure it.

styluses are dirt cheap and already work with Switch so that part isn't really an issue; if Nintendo stuck a DS game on one screen you could still use a stylus.

@FishyS Ehh the Ipad ones feel weird to use, and the Nintendo branded ones are only sold in the UK I believe.

@VoidofLight I have two styluses with my Switch - one that I got with smm2 and one that came with my Switch carrying case; they both work fine. They technically aren't Nintendo branded but they are essentially identical to Nintendo branded ones and are not ipad ones.

@VoidofLight
I'd suggest you get out some paper and measure out a 7.9" screen. Then measure out the DS screens. The size downgrade isn't a thing. You stack two 4:3 boxes on-top of each other in a 7.9" screen and what you end up with is actually bigger than DS

Also a stylus is a stylus. It doesn't require you to attach a second screen, obviously

I've always had the thought that if it saved money Nintendo could have done away with a touchscreen in the Switch 2 simply because of how little it is used in games (most likely because you have to be able to play games in docked mode as well)

Highly doubt there is any saving as all lcd and oled panels are touchscreens so a non touchscreen panel would probably cost more to develop.

@Coversnail
The touch component of a touchscreen is SUPER cheap. And sure, small amounts would've added up over 140mill+ unit sales. It would've cost them something. But I would argue that given Clubhouse Games and Super Mario Maker both used it? And that combined just those two games sold ~13mill units? There was a net profit in its inclusion

And I would think that between talk of DS on NSO and Nintendogs..... they'll almost surely get something out of it on Switch 2 also

I doubt stylus-based gaming is on the cards because of the switch to capacitive touchscreens. The old, cheaper resistive touchscreens that we had up through the Wii U were much more precise. There's a reason why most drug store cellphone "stylus" accessories are about as blunt as a crayon: you might as well use your finger. Also, today's screens are much bigger so you don't need the precision. To have stylus precision so you can play Wii U's Art Academy you'd probably need special purpose hardware like the Apple Pencil. That's a nontrivial cost on top of the console cost.

I've enjoyed Moore's Law is Dead's channel for some background noise.

Time stamp 7:17.

@Magician Sorry, but with regards to anything about Switch 2, I wouldn't trust MLID even with confirmed information.

@cwong15 Ehhh I just don't like touching the screen. Don't wanna get fingerprints on the thing I have to look at.

@cwong15
You can get fairly a decent capacitive stylus for a few dollars. Some of them have finer tips, some have interchangeable tips. Sure it's not as cheap or easy as the resistive stylus was but it's not an unsolved problem. And you definitely don't need a full on Apple Pen like solution

As for the why? Well, if they're doing DS on NSO it's a requirement IMO. Playing Phantom Hourglass with a finger is far from ideal

@skywake Yes, you can get a capacitive stylus for a few bucks. I have a few of those. But it's going to be a silly blunt thing. And that's because capacitive touchscreens simply don't have much precision. Actual pen-based drawing apps need special hardware support like you see with the iPad Pro. I agree Phantom Hourglass is not ideal with a finger, but a blunt stylus isn't going to be much better, IMHO. Maybe that's why we still don't have DS on NSO, whereas they play fine on the Wii U's resistive touchscreen.

@cwong15
Capacitive touch has plenty of precision. But they work by measuring the conductivity of something sitting on-top of the screen rather than just the centre of force. So the tip needs to be conductive in some way

Yes, a lot of the ones that do exist have this big, flabby but of rubber on the end and are garbage. But they don't need to be like that. And you can get ones with relatively fine tips for not much money at all

The main reason they're generally crap is that they can be crap and still work. Also fingers work far better on capacitive screens than they did on resistive screens so there's less need for them. Which means they can be even more crap

@Ulysses I don't fully recall, but I believe a "contact" of his says it was Samsung 8N, but I don't think they themselves were quite sure, and given everything we know about the system so far, it's just not feasible. Nintendo had to deal with Switch's poor battery life because they had no options after contracting out for the Tegra X1 other than dropping clocks. They immediately moved to TSMC 16nm when it became available, and it's very possible that they were the ones that requested it in the first place.

Now with Switch 2 and them being a part of the T239's custom design from the start, at what point would it be logical for Nintendo to throw themselves into an even worse situation than what they had with the Tegra X1? To save a couple of bucks? People have this notion that Nintendo is cheap, but if they were, then what reason would they have to be using LPDDR5X? Besides, being on Samsung 8N would result in high thermals and high power consumption. One might say to just drop the clocks, but there are various points where power consumption changes. There is one which is considered the peak-efficiency mark, where it grants the most performance per watt, but there's another where dropping any further is basically useless in terms of power consumption. This later point I believe was calculated to be around 420 Mhz. That would grant roughly 1.3 TFlops with the T239's 12 SMs (1536 CUDA cores), but on Samsun 8N, that was estimated to be in the 6w range. WAAAAYYY to high for portable mode, especially if that battery is not going to be that much bigger based on those images we saw. I think 6-7W is the range for Switch's v2/Lite/OLED mode for "everything", not just the SoC or one component, and quite a bit more than Switch v1's GPU. Dropping below 420 Mhz would do so little for power consumption to the point where they could have gone with few SMs and clocked it higher to get lower power consumption.

Simply put, Samsung 8N doesn't make sense.

@cwong15 You ever use the stylus they made for Colors Plus? Third party company managed a pressure sensitive, very accurate stylus for the Switch. I wouldn't rule Nintendo looking at that for their own use off the cards.

@Ulysses
Just putting it out there that Moore's Law is Dead is full of it. I wouldn't put much weight into what he says much at all. I remember a while ago people were going nuts over one of his videos where he said that the Switch 2 SoC had been ready for "years" and that they were obviously delaying Switch 2 to clear Switch inventory.....

What a load of nonsense. Don't waste your time watching his stuff. Not worth the effort