Topic: Will there be a Nintendo switch PRO?

@Pokester99 any idea when that would happen? I am dieing to play BOTW2. Any idea with zelda breath of the wild 2 and the switch pro come out?

@Magician i don't think nvidia will end Tegra x1 chip it looks like a ruomer.

@Mountain_Man @Buizel I have mario and Luigi kart for mario cart live home circuits. Mario is on my good V2 switch and my Luigi kart is on my old switch. My brother uses the old switch in handheld and I use my good switch in handheld switch so my old switch battery is not good and I stripped the screws when tried to replace the battery

@Tasuki i heard people saying they have a family member that works for nintendo and they told me the switch pro be here in 2021 which was false info. So I don't think your uncle works for nintendo lol.

@Tasuki did your uncle say when will the switch pro come out?

Nintendo has never messed around with specs in a given generation in any substantial way. You want an appreciable and fully first party supported bump in games performance, you’ll be waiting for the proper Switch successor that will come with its own branding and marketing to mark that generational change. You want a higher resolution, history indicates you’re waiting for the next Nintendo hardware generation to see that.

yep its the oled version

If they weren't going to make a 4k/DLSS Switch one has to wonder why they told developers to make their games 4K ready. Nvidia is in the business of making newer GPU and a replacement Tegra is most likely already development phase or testing phase. As some Switch Kit Developer most likely got something in the line to test out already. It's in Nintendo and Nvidia interest to upgrade or replace the current chipset to boost performance and graphics to sell more Switches. Could be called the SuperSwitch for all we know. But since 2017 they aren't just waiting for someone else to do it for them if they want to keep the market share and selling Switches to everyone everywhere. Anyone saying they aren't trying to reinvent the Switch is sadly living in a Alice in Wonderland world. Tech moves on and so does console and games move on regardless of what people want to think they think for Nintendo. A OLED with v2 hardware and some tweaks only goes so far and you will have to produce a updated or new Switch hardware to keep Developers making and selling games on it. That's the gaming world and market if you don't keep going forward your going to fall flat on your face. They can still use the Tegra family line chipset with update software code and hardware this isn't like throwing away everything but keep inline with securing their market share. The Chipset is hardware the software can be Developed to get the most out of the Chipsets.

Just speaking generally, you would think a Switch Pro or just some sort of sequel to the Switch should surely be coming because it is just so far behind basically everything hardwarewise. But Nintendo seems to exist in a weird bubble in the videogaming space, over on the other consoles/PC performance is always the talking point but it seems like many people are just fine with Nintendo producing upscaled 720p games at 30fps. It doesn't feel like Nintendo are really competing at all, as they seem to have this strong, dedicated, audience that seems to almost exist outside of everything else. They are dedicated and loyal and the Switch continues to sell gangbusters all these years later. If this continues, I don't see why Nintendo would bother to invest all the necessary resources to try and catch up. Maybe in a couple of years time the conversation will be different as I do think you eventually hit a point of critical mass where your hardware is just so outdated by that point it can basically run nothing, but as of right now, for the intended audience, it seems Nintendo's hardware limitations haven't slowed them down a beat.

The Gameboy Color (2x clock, 4x RAM), Wii (3x VRAM, 1.5x GPU clock, 2.2x CPU clock), DSi (4x RAM, 2X CPU) and New 3DS (2X RAM, 2X CPU clock, 2X cores, 1.5X GPU clock) were all internally fundamentally identical to their immediate predecessors other than higher clocks, more cores and more RAM. Ironically of these it's probably the Wii that was the smallest upgrade, the only one people think of as a new generation of consoles

This is also why these consoles had very strong backwards compatibility. Outside of these consoles only the GBA, DS and 3DS had backwards compatibility and the way they did those was a bit unique. The GBA originally had a GBC CPU included purely for backwards compatibility, eventually it was dropped. The DS, like the 3DS after it, had big and little ARM cores which meant it could play GBA games while still being fundamentally different to the GBA. The 3DS was similar to the DS except that it added a GPU.

Could whatever comes after the Switch add something? I mean I think there's a high chance it will given newer Tegra SoCs and frankly everything new from Nvidia includes Tensor cores now. However the thing about Tensor cores is that what they've brought to the table can be turned off fairly easily. RayTracing and DLSS are nice but where they exist currently, on PC, they're dropdowns in settings you can change on the fly. There's no reason a release couldn't support DLSS on "Switch Pro" but still be "Original Switch" compatible

On the other side of the equation, could they pull the same thing they did when they released the Wii? Make the hardware just a minor spec bump and still draw a hard line across the previous generation? I mean sure, sure, they could. It could be new hardware with games that could have easily run on the Switch other than physically incompatible media and a different control scheme. It has been done before......

...... but I don't see what incentive there is to do this. The Switch isn't in the same position the Gamecube was in, it's closer to the position the Wii was in. And with the Wii U if you remember they made every effort to make the Wii U look like it was part of the Wii family of systems. They even maintained full controller compatibility which is something they didn't do with the transition to Switch (even though they could have). And they did this despite the Wii U being leagues ahead of the Wii internally

@skywake I anticipate that overall they’ll want to maintain being the console that is both a TV and handheld system. I’m sure form factors will be refined and change shape and size. Secondary will be their usual processor upgrades that stay within their typically and comparatively modest monetary and power draw budgets, allowing their games to look like they’re benefiting graphically from a new generation of hardware, which at least their handhelds have always shown to do.

@NinChocolate
I agree. And I think the only difference between "Switch 2" and "Switch Pro" is how Nintendo choose to package it. It'll be a corporate not a technical decision.

Really, if they maintain this form and price, the only tech advance in the medium term are Tensor cores. Likely at this spec that means DLSS not RayTracing. But both are things that don't require a generational reset. Everything else is just higher clocks and more RAM

It's not like moving to a new media or adding a dedicated GPU. Or going from 8 to 16 to 32 to 64 bit. DLSS doesn't require you to port, or recompile or put in a cartridge rather than a disc. DLSS is a feature you can choose to ignore, that's it

The longer the wait, the more substantial an update the next generation hardware will be, so I'm more than happy to hold out.

I see no point in a negligible mid-gen update that Nintendo themselves wouldn't bother utilising for the most part.

Even after the release of the New 3DS, most of Nintendo's own games did nothing (if not next to nothing) to take advantage of the hardware's improved capabilities.

@Silly_G Nintendo has no problem putting out a hardware revision late in the software lifecycle, and without complimenting it with their big titles. Although I have a feeling that software-wise the Switch may finish a bit stronger than previous consoles as the user base has been buying into a wider range of games beyond their core system-selling franchises

Not always. Again with me and the hard numbers a couple of posts above. 5 years after the Gamecube launched we got the Wii which was not that much more capable. Sure it had motion controls, bluetooth, WiFi, internal storage and a disc that was upto ~6x larger. But in terms of raw power? It was at a stretch ~2x faster. Less than the gap between the Switch docked and in portable mode. But it was also a new console so you had to buy it if you wanted to play Metroid Prime 3 or Super Mario Galaxy

If we're talking in terms of what can be done in the form factor and price of the Switch? Right now you could probably get to ~4 faster at a stretch, assuming you could get supply. That would possibly include a jump to include DLSS which pushes that a bit further in terms of "observable performance". Effectively in the same ballpark as the XBOne. Wait another 3 years from now? Maybe you get to just above the PS4 spec. And even if you did push it that far there's no technical reason why such a device wouldn't still be a Switch

I don't think we get something dramatically different from waiting or from Nintendo arbitrarily deciding that their next piece of hardware is a new console generation. Nintendo maybe gets some hype from a reset, maybe. They possibly also risk it all and fall into another Wii U scenario with no portable to back them up.

I think this form factors is going to be Nintendo Symbol going forward. They aren't going to be a WiiU although from reading all these chats people seem to already decided that already. WiiU isn't portable nor gotten the reviews or support as the Switch has from 1st, 3rd party developers and even Indie and KS are now support this more then every Digital or Physical. So we all need to remove this notice this is a WiiU system although it came from Nintendo and that is the end of that. Also WiiU was also Disc based and Switch is Cart based which makes this more relevant if one wants portable gaming on the go beyond the Digital download. But even this the WiiU isn't portable so people trying to compare something that isn't portable to something that is both Portable/Docked is misleading gamers.

Worth noting Bloomberg pushed another article re: Switch Pro. In it they claim to now know of 11 developers in posession of development kits capable of "4K output". And that they're not expecting a release of hardware is untill late next year

The naysayers are going to be annoyed, this "rumour" never dies. Just maybe because it's not as baseless as they claim. In before the surge of whine

Edit: Also making this call on my own back. We have already seen trailers running on this new Dev SKU. And separately, teardowns of the OLED dock may be very interesting indeed

Late next year is also roughly when Nvidia will be shipping Orin, the next generation of Tegra, so that's another data point. Nintendo would need a custom variant rather than the off-the-shelf one, because unlike the X1 it's built for the needs of a very different market in the automotive industry, but that's no big deal as they've been partnered up through the entire development cycle.

That said, the Bloomberg article makes the good point that Nintendo have canceled products in the past despite there being dev kits in the field for them, so it's not a given. If they decide for some reason - maybe it's too power hungry, the performance isn't quite where they need it, there are issues running existing games, or the price is too high - they could just can it and go through another cycle.

It's not like the Switch is going to lapse into utter irrelevance if they don't get it out next year, after all.

@skywake "And with the Wii U if you remember they made every effort to make the Wii U look like it was part of the Wii family of systems"

The problem with the Wii U was the branding and marketing. Mainly the name "Wii U" doesn't come across as a successor and sounds more like an add on. It didn't really help that Nintendo didn't specify that it was a new console and focused more on the controller in the beginning which led to even more confusion among consumers. Personally, I understand why Nintendo chose to go with the Wii brand since it was still recognizable and had some value at the time. But I think a lot of people and myself would agree that calling the console something like "Wii 2" instead of "Wii U" would've been a better and simpler way at indicating that the console was a successor and would at least help the console a bit more. It's why I think a simple numbering system is the way to go forward