Topic: When do you think Nintendo's next console will be released?

@GrailUK I love your optimism, but forgive me if I don't share it.

Regardless, we'll see what happens a few years down the road.

@Magician Hehe. (see internet...you can disagree with someone without having to hate them!)

Or play them on the old hardware if we still own a functional one.

I think the Switch Lite OLED is the next change, followed by them ceasing production of the current Switch and Lite models. I don't think the Pro will be announced until production of the current LCD models has ended.

@ophone

Always an option, sure. But that was sort of the crux of the old Switch Pro discussion, that core gamers wanted to play their current Switch games with marginally better performance. But the release of the Switch OLED sort of squashes the possibility of that happening now. Its release is the equivalent of Nintendo drawing a line in the sand with its customers.

Probably a bit too much tinfoil hat for most to agree, but to me it screams, "this is as good as you'll get". "Want better performance for your Switch games? Well, you'll have to pay." Maybe Nintendo will go easy on us? i.e. - just ask $10 for a 4k in-tv-mode version of Zelda BotW if you bought it previously?

Worse case scenario would be for Nintendo to gank us for $70 to play BotW on the Switch successor.

@skywake Yes, the Steam Deck is considerably more power efficient than the original Switch. While it's hard to put an exact figure on it, because the power efficiency of the Switch's performance modes alone varies considerably, you'd be looking at around a twofold advantage.

Throw the 2019 revision into that mix though, and it's rather closer than that. It's not uncommon to get four hours out the same 16Wh battery with even the most demanding games, which - with the screen and the rest of the hardware being the same - means that the SoC must be getting close to twice as efficient too!

Obviously, we're not comparing like with like though and the 2019 Switch is operating far closer to the sweet spot in the performance-to-power curve, where the boost clocks of the Steam Deck will make forays into rather inefficient territory. There is still potential for a significant jump there, but the window to building that into a Switch successor only starts to open late next year.

As for Orin, it might seem an unlikely candidate for the Switch, but it's Hobson's choice for Nintendo because it's the only 7nm SoC on Nvidia's roadmap. However, it's pretty regular practice for console manufacturers to order custom variants rather than go with off-the-shelf chips and Orin has all the right ingredients for making a Switch successor out of, in much the same way that Sony and Microsoft's consoles have been leveraging AMD's APUs for the past couple of generations. It's also been designed entirely after Nvidia and Nintendo went into partnership to make the Switch, so it's not like they had to take what was on the shelf.

So, a custom model with less CPU and GPU cores, none of the AI/Image processing functionality, and lowered clocks to get it into the 5-10W range is entirely possible. It'd be very much worth their while if they think they can sell 80 million of them too.

That said, I still wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo just let the Switch run at its current spec level and just keep throwing all efficiency gains into extra battery life while waiting for a further leap to make a successor out of.

Base on nothing I see here. Love when people think they think for Nintendo they are in the busy of making Switch and new Switch to sell to us. A Performance Model is more or less in the works and to think otherwise is why people are spouting nonsense on here.

This is why people have no concept of the Switch success. Such comments only goes to show otherwise.

And to think Sony and Microsoft isn't doing this. Take FF series they have FF7 remake for Sony - so would you say the same thing to Sony on this? Probably not....