Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I jokingly said when they ''announced'' that Dragon Quest was coming to NX, that it might be the 3DS version, since the ''NX is a handheld'' was still open for debate. Look where we are now..

Something came to mind... how good could the battery be? The 3DS last 3 hours-ish. Phones last maybe 5-6 hours with constant light use, less while playing games.

HD 3ds Version I think. Do you think they would give up on the Clam shell design?

@DefHalan That's a good question and I think a big part of that is going to be about what price Nintendo wants to sell the system for? I'm not sure it's going to be anything significantly better than the 3DS to be honest. Not for a cheap price point and looking at the fact it maybe using the Tegra X1.

I wouldn't get too hung up over X1 vs X2 as far as costs go. I agree that Nintendo must keep the price aggressively low, since this NX must serve as a secondary console. But remember that the rumors also state Nintendo got a sweetheart deal from a desperate NVidia. They may well get a custom X2 product for super cheap.

On the other hand, I don't think Nintendo can afford the docking station to be anything more than a dumb HDMI/power passthrough. We all agree that they must price very low right now. However, this does not preclude a power-dock in the FUTURE with extra CPU/GPUs, storage, ports and whatever goodies you guys are already dreaming of. That could be a future enhancement that will bring the portable-NX up to parity with a full-powered home-NX console. Remember that supplemental computing device patent?

If it is tegra, it has about 100x the raw processing power of the 3ds.

And the shield tablet has an MSRP of 199. But Nintendo would have a bit more tech in it presumably, so a bit higher than that. My guess is 249-299. This time around it is a much, much bigger step from 3ds to NX, than it was from the DS to 3ds.

@cwong15 why would Nvidia be desperate?

@Therad I think $250-$300 is too high for a secondary console. I say under $200 or bust.

I want this now! If it turns out to be a red herring, I actually think I may be disappointed lol.

Because:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1218933

@cwong15 that really doesn't say anything. In fact, it is how the poster interprets the article.

Sony and ms would probably never enter negotiation to have tegra in their consoles, since they have continuous power, they probably would have opted for something that doesn't trade off power for energy efficiency.

I think it is the other way around. Amd is more desperate to keep ms and Sony, since they are in a much worse financial shape than Nvidia.

@Therad It's about Nvidia in general, not just Tegra. Sony/MS soured on negotiations with Nvidia, and sided with AMD. Had they partnered with Nvidia, they certainly wouldn't have used Tegra. After that, Nvidia was desperate for a deal at all, and then offered Nintendo said deal.

@IceClimbers I believe Nvidia were essentially told to make sure they got a deal with Nintendo or go home after losing out on Sony and Microsoft so I hope that what ever came of it really helps Nintendo.

Should the current EG rumour be accurate, I hope the docking station is available at launch in at least 2 variants: one bare bones version, and one that perhaps beefs up performance and offers backwards compatibility of physical media.

@gcunit If the rumour is true, and they want BC, then they might as well include a Wii U in the package, because this thing isn't going to be backwards compatible. Keep your Wii U if you want to play all your Wii U games in the future.

@Octane Also if the rumour is true, I'd imagine the dock is rather small so you can have your Wii U still setup as if the NX never existed.

@Therad Actually, it did. But because the article lived behind a subscription wall, we have to rely on a summary of this article. But the summary is pretty clear:

Nvidia team was told to get a console win or "go home."

It's not about the overall company's health. An otherwise healthy company would still kill a part of the business that is floundering. Considering Nvidia has missed out on all recent consoles (Wii U, PS4, XB1), and that the X1 is not in any wide-selling device on the market, the Tegra people would probably be shown the door if they did not get a win — any win — soon. Hence the "win or go home" ultimatum.

Well that's fine if you are, but I quoted this.

Which I'd argue was a better point. A different point entirely but still a better point and one that I agree with even. I was just pointing out that we don't know what the X2 is. We certainly don't know what specific SKU of the X2 Nintendo would be using.

It's kinda like when we found out that Microsoft's Project Scorpio was going to run on Polaris, an upgrade from GCN. Which is cool but it still could have meant a few things. It could have been a more power efficient part that's cheaper to produce and only has a slight power bump. Or it could have gone the other way and been a significant performance boost on a more power hungry chip. There was no way to know until it was confirmed.

Though just as an FYI. The X1 was a last generation Nvidia chip, it launched alongside the 900 series. If it's any indication of what we should expect the 1000 series has about a 60% performance boost over the previous generation. If they can do the same with the Tegra series? It'll go from ~40% of the XBOne's raw power to ~65%.

Thinking about it a bit. I know the rumour said that it's a kind of tablet with the two controllers being detachable from the sides. Which is kinda odd if you ask me. It's hard to see how that would work. But because that's what it supposedly is every other theory is likely entirely wrong. Even so, I can't shake this particular thinking of how the NX idea could work out of my head. So I'm writing it down.

Basically this thing would be a similar form to the 3DS when its in the portable form. Large screen and speakers on the top, smaller screen, controls and NFC on the bottom. The classic DS design. I would suspect we'd even get full 3DS backwards compatibility. In terms of this mode fundamentally the only difference is that unlike the 3DS the top section would house the cartridge slot, processor, memory etc. Both halves would have batteries but the bigger battery would be in the bottom half.

But then you can remove the top half from the hinge. At that point you can do two things. Either you can take the top half itself and use it as you would a small tablet. You can prop the top half up on a table and use it as a kind of mini-TV. Or you can put it in the TV dock and use your TV as the screen. In those last two modes the bottom half is basically a Wii U GamePad. Wouldn't cost much more to do given they're putting screens on the thing anyways.

Anyways, I think this idea makes more sense. Even if it's probably wrong. Now all we can do is wait for Nintendo to show what the NX actually is. Then the inevitable flood of cold water to be poured over all of this.

@BiasedSonyFan
I'll put it this way. Lets call the Wii U spec "1x" and work from there.

2011 3DS: 0.01x
2012 Vita: 0.15x
2012 Wii U: 1x
2013 Shield Portable: 0.4x
2013 XBOne: 3.7x
2013 PS4: 5.2x
2014 Shield Tablet: 0.9x
2015 Shield Console: 1.46x
2017 NX: ????
2017 Scropio: 17x

Now between 2013 and 2015? NVidia's mobile chip went from 40% of the Wii U's spec to almost 50% more than the Wii U's spec. With from what I can tell a fairly consistent price of ~$200US. Now if they'd picked any other mobile chip I'd be worried about the cost. Especially with the sort of performance they're talking about. But NVidia? Well, this could deliver a lot more for the price than people are expecting. Especially if it's using the X2.

Basically if the X2 does what it could do? We're looking at a $200-250US portable that's somewhere between 2x and 3x as powerful as the Wii U. Plug that into that list above. It's not a bad value at all.