Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I don't care about the venture beats rumour. I am looking at those numbers we know.
Wii U = 350 gflops
Tegra X1 = 512 gflops
Tegra P1 = 750 gflops
Xbox one = 1310 tflops

This would mean it would be nearer Wii U than Xbox one in power regardless if it is X1 or P1 (called x2 before). Also, it isn't entirely out of the question that nintendo would underclock a P1, to meet a certain battery time. I have also seen higher flops for X1/P1 in fp16 mode, but I don't think you can use that for games.

Double power seems like it would be really powerful, right? The problem is that this means you can bump 720p to 1080p or 30fps to 60 fps or more details on screen. But only one of them really. The "normal" powergap is 5-6 times as much as the previous gen. If you want a noticeable more powerful Wii U, you might be disappointed.

Now, I think the argument "power = 3rd party" is . For one, not every game utilizes the entire GPU or even half. And even if they did, they can always scale it down. And it seems like Nintendo have closer ties with engine makers now, which would smooth the transition further.

@DanteSolablood The more I set myself up that these rumours end up not being true, of which they all seem to point in the 'underpowered' direction in recent times, the easier it is for me to not feel disappointed when Nintendo shows off the Switch in January.

What you choose to believe is entirely up to you!

@BLP_Software To be fair I run a moderately decent PC I built 2 years ago for under £1000 and still runs most new games at good settings... and a 3DS. My PS3 bored me so I gifted it to my mum. Power has never equated to fun.

Yup, that "Breath of the Wild" news story that was being reported as fact was interesting, people are ready to jump on any story or rumour and claim it as true as long as it falls inline with their own beliefs. That's why I never try to claim I'm right with regards to things like spec rumours. The Eurogamer report is a pile of poop though.

@Peek-a-boo That's not a bad way of looking at it. my only issue is with the Venture Beat & Eurogamer report. They don't even make logical sense, so calling them "news" is a little much.

@Therad I query underclocking the P1/X2. The X2 is designed to be MORE power efficient than an X1, so why would the X2 get underclocked despite Dev Kits rumoured to be getting 5-8hrs? Plus in the dock with an additional cooling solution & mains power why would it need to be?

@Therad no profanity, thanks.

@DanteSolablood Do you have a particular reason to think the new rumor is false? Not that I think you're wrong, I'm just trying not to become one of the dreaded Nintendoomers, which is getting increasingly difficult. I can see that the X1 vs X2 thing isn't as concrete as people think, but what about the whole "Undocked Switch runs like garbage compared to docked Switch" thing?

@Peek-a-boo if I were to speculate, if the Wii U was x86 and still have the same specs that we know today, I think it would have gotten slightly better support from third parties. Sure the games would look worse but at least the system would get more games and run better. Even on the original Wii there were some 3rd party games that took advantage of the Wii's hardware like Call of Duty 4 and Black Ops. Also, I think Nintendo is trying to do their best to work with 3rd parties to have a common ground, so even if 3rd parties won't port their big games, they could probably make exclusive games for the Switch

@KirbyTheVampire There are a few reasons I don't believe the new rumour & this based on a few people that have worked in the games industry.

1) The Venture Beat rumour claims the X1 is being used instead of the X2 as the X2 is not ready to be produced. This ignores that the X2 was indevelopement BEFORE the X1 and has been used.
2) The Venture Beat rumour claims the X1 is also cheaper than the X2 to produce, this is factually wrong.
3) The Venture Beat rumour claims the X1 is being used due to the X2's heat profile... X2 has a better heat profile.
4) The Venture Beat claims the X1 is being used for battery life, the X2 is more energy efficient.
5) Eurogamer has stated that the Venture Beat rumour fits with the DIgital Foundry leak. The Digital Foundry leak however is over 5 months old & we KNOW the Dev Kits have improved performance & battery life compared to 5 months ago... even according to Laura Dale.

The rumour doesn't make sense & seems to be written by people who build PCs but don't know what architecture is or how mobile chips work. While they may be correct in the end... the reasons they've given make no logical sense. Making a 16nm X1 is just as expensive if not MORE expensive than making an already 16nm X2.

Incremental upgrade path incoming!

@DanteSolablood Hmm, I see. Makes sense. I wonder if they'll reveal whether it's X1 or X2 on January 12th? I hadn't kept up with anything Nintendo for years until I heard about the Switch, but I hear they don't like revealing specs most of the time.

well its custom chip regardless. we will just have to see what happens. plus directfeedgames also said similar things.

great even i am ignoring my previous post.

@DanteSolablood My PC cost....uh...£1300 XD GTX970, i7-6700 @3.4-4GHz (8CPUs, yay for hhyperthreading), 16GB RAM (Support for up to 64GB, which I'm tempted to go to 32GB), 256GB SSD, 2TB HDD, room for 2 more drives, loads of USB ports, all the trimmings...and its not for gaming. I'm evil.

I expect people don't catch that the raw power, the numbers, is arbitrary. It's how it's used. How the middleware will use it, how developers choose to use it. More juice just means you can get away with less optimisation (Lord knows we've seen that). I think slowing down the arms race is good, for a few reasons.

1 - Stops game development budgets skyrocketing at this rapid pace that has been set in recent years. Consumers want prettier, faster, gonna cost more and more risk. More risk leads to less new IP and ideas because less guarantee of real success and return on high investments.

2 - Shuts consumers up. The consumer wants the prettiest now. But what happens when it peaks? What then? Where does the consumer go? Portability? Maybe. Once we hit 8K resolution, there is no reason to go further unless enough people are going to have TVs that fill an entire wall, corner to corner. We are at the point where how good a game looks is being equated to the technology and not how the game looks. People swear something off if it isn't 1080p 60fps, but that could be a PS1 game, and within the game itself, graphically, that's not amazing, but the "graphics", i.e. resolution and frame rate, ARE good. The industry is getting caught on it's own paradigms and the consumer just pushes it further now we have the teraflop waggling contest that has been the past 5 years. At this point it's an arms race to see who can change technical definitions the fastest and the consumer is all for it.

• @KirbyTheVampire With regards to your statement regarding why the Eurogamer Switch is trash Nintendoomed unless docked docked thing, I'll refer to a previous post.

That very fake Zelda rumour gained incredible speed incredibly fast. Why? People clicked it. Fake news spreads faster than truth (Sadly), but this is where my observation comes in. That rumour was reported because either:
A) Fake news = clicks = money,
B) Humans are idiots (I quite like this one the more I think about it)
C) People want Nintendo out, and anti-Nintendo sells, and with how well THATS been doing on the interwebs lately...I'm inclined to see.

Personally it could be a mix of all 3. They need clicks, they need more money, what sells? Well the internet sure hates Nintendo, cha ching. As stated, that stuff blows up so fast, either because there are only 13 million hardcore fans, if that, and that's easy pickings to tear apart and reduce down, see Zelda canned for instance on how people swore off Nintendo for that one, or because the rest of the industry feels big.

Either way money XD

@BLP_Software That's true. It's a shame how quickly bad and/or fake news spreads, especially with all the gaming news websites acting like it's factual. If you just Google "Nintendo Switch", the first thing people will see is "Nintendo CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed", and then they click it and get the bad news, which the people practically say was officially confirmed by Nintendo.

I can't wait for March so that they can tear that little tablet apart and confirm what's inside the system. Until then, we have to live through this mess of rumours. There's one thing we know for sure; it's more powerful than a Wii U, and less than a PS4. However, I'm more interested in why they would potentially underclock the system in docked mode, that doesn't really make sense to me. I've questioned Eurogamer before, and people told me I was wrong, I think I was in the end, so who knows how much of this can be applied to the actual Switch version that will hit the shelves. Does make me wonder if the Switch will continue the IPS vs TN BS...

Anyway, January should reveal the support the system will get, and I can wait for a bit to see what happens after launch, and what the holiday line-up looks like. Maybe I'll even wait for a potential mid-gen upgrade, they've done that with all their handhelds after all.

Part of me agrees that gaming isn't about power, but about fun. Problem is that it can mean the difference between an amazing and varied library and a complete lack of third party games, and that's a big deal in my opinion.

Have watched the Digital Foundry videocast & they are still using the leaked specs from July. Most of their conclusions ARE based on that 5 month old information but they do raise the point that it "may" be the specs developers are working towards. But they don't know. My point stands that there is no good reason not to use an X2... but we are talking Nintendo here.

I guess the real test will be in January.

@KirbyTheVampire Well Eurogamer is a UK heavy site and we all know how Nintendo is treated here (Ooohhh boy do we). The industry is full of bias, and money, and clicks. If Eurogamer doesn't want to report on Nintendo anymore, or sees no value, they'll stop the support. Hell, wouldn't be new to see an active dismissal of a product long before launch by the media. They'll paint whatever sells and sadly Nintendo does not sell, so how do they make the cash? Doom.

@Octane I question them routinely. Not as much as other sites with the clear bias of a nuclear explosion through binoculars, but enough to smell the BS soaked roses. I think what paints EG in a less fun light is how frequent the negative stories about Nintendo get out. Where's the PSVR stock horror stories? Anyone? Thought not.

@DanteSolablood They do good comparison breakdowns, but that just fuels the flippyfloppywigglewaggler war in insane ways so....cant respect that as much. But basing things off old information as current factual evidence? No sirree that does not work that way. If it did my game would still be coming to Wii U. Spoiler warning its not.

@BLP_Software I don't blame them or anyone else for being cautious when it comes to the Switch. Nintendo has made plenty of questionable choices in the past. The system in concept is neat, I love it. The big question is the execution; how will it work, what is the system capable of, how will they market this, etc. Too many questions, and the system is launching in just three months! I know they're revealing more in January, but I completely understand why everyone is hungry for more Switch info. They completely dropped the Wii U support, and the only upcoming thing from Nintendo in the home console space is the Switch. I'm not surprised that Switch discussions get so much traction, apart from Zelda, what's left to talk about regarding the Wii U? Nothing. I think it's natural that people can't wait for the Switch to come, or at least for Switch info to come.

5-8 hours, do you have a link? The latest rumour I heard was slightly under 3h. We still don't know what Nintendo is targeting, how big battery it has etc. Underclocking is a valid option to be able to get more out of the battery.

Still, all I am saying is people should keep their expectations in check. Nintendo is not targeting the same crowd as the power twins. My guess is tthey are targeting secondary console/parents.

I didn't say anything about the power-loving crowd aside from saying that they would have been salty. In the same way that they're not going to be impressed by the Switch. And I'm talking about a hypothetical because it removes all of the noise from the equation. It's just a simple thought experiment.

Essentially what Nintendo is doing is making a portable system. The difference is that this time it's in the same ballpark as what we expect from a home console for this console generation. It's not pushing any boundaries but it's not last-gen either. So consider what that would have meant in generations prior. If in March 2011 Nintendo had released a HDS instead of a 3DS. What the Switch concept is but with the same graphical capabilities of the Wii U. Would that or would that have not been a compelling product?

I think it's fair to say that such a device would have been far more impressive than the Vita was. It would have been a much easier sell than the Wii U was. But it would have also been seen as Nintendo's new portable. I don't think any of those things are outlandish things to say. Is it all entirely hypothetical? For sure. But it's easy to see that such a product would have had a market.

@Therad I've been hearing 5-8 hours from a lot of people. I'm not sure what the exact source is, though.

@Therad The 3hr leak is VERY old.

http://thisgengaming.com/2016/12/08/rumor-nintendo-switch-fin...

This is from a NeoGaf insider "NateDrake" and has been leaked by some other people too.