It's all speculation, of course, but my money is on the following:
-Home and handheld consoles powered by Nvidia Pascal-based GPU's (with the handheld using the mobile 'Tegra' variant)
-All games sold digitally and on flash-based storage cards and run on either console
-Games played on the handheld will run at half the resolution of the home console to account for the performance gap (i.e. 4K/60fps-->1080p/60fps or 1080p/60fps-->720p/60fps), with some titles seeing a scale-back in graphics fidelity (losing things like ambient occlusion and more advanced anti-aliasing)
-Home and handheld console sold in separate and bundled SKU's
Streaming gaming... it's not good, for obvious reasons. We've seen numerous streaming gaming services and technologies (OnLive, Sony Remote Play, etc) fall by the wayside because there just isn't enough wireless bandwidth to support the data demands of modern console gaming. I highly doubt Nintendo would be stupid enough to try and launch a product that relies on the integrity of a mobile wireless connection (and your monthly mobile wireless data cap) in order to provide its free-roam gaming experience. That would be a huge fail, plain and simple.
That being said, I only see one way Nintendo can make a hybrid system work, and that's by employing the same PC gaming-like graphics adjustments that Sony and Microsoft are going to use when the new Playstation Neo and Xbox Scorpio are released.
On those consoles, new titles will run at higher resolutions with higher frame rates and better graphic fidelity. Newer titles will still run on the older Xbox One and Playstation 4, but simply at a lower resolution with lower graphic fidelity (and perhaps a lower minimum frame rate).
If Nintendo is using an Nvidia Pascal-based GPU to power its NX home console as some reports suggest, it could easily use the mobile 'Tegra' version of that GPU to power the handheld component. Anyone who's seen the Nvidia Shield TV in action knows that its Maxwell-based Tegra GPU is capable of playing fairly recent and graphically demanding PC games at decent resolutions and frame rates (Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance being one of them).
In the case of a hybrid system using Pascal-based GPU's, the loss in graphic fidelity from home console to handheld might not even need be that great since simply halving the resolution on the handheld unit would make up for most if not all of the difference in performance (depending on the thermal characteristics of the handheld unit).
In this scenario, one could easily envision a next-gen AAA console title running on the NX home console at 1080p/60fps (or higher) and 720p/60fps on the handheld unit with little to no perceived loss in graphic fidelity, thanks in large part to the higher pixel density of the handheld's display.
I haven't purchased a Nintendo console for myself since the Nintendo Gamecube. If the NX offers what I speculated above, I imagine that's going to change soon.
Comments 2
Re: Editorial: Nintendo NX in Multiple Form Factors Could Shake Up the Video Game Industry
It's all speculation, of course, but my money is on the following:
-Home and handheld consoles powered by Nvidia Pascal-based GPU's (with the handheld using the mobile 'Tegra' variant)
-All games sold digitally and on flash-based storage cards and run on either console
-Games played on the handheld will run at half the resolution of the home console to account for the performance gap (i.e. 4K/60fps-->1080p/60fps or 1080p/60fps-->720p/60fps), with some titles seeing a scale-back in graphics fidelity (losing things like ambient occlusion and more advanced anti-aliasing)
-Home and handheld console sold in separate and bundled SKU's
I hope I'm right.
Re: Patent Reinforces the Prospect of Nintendo NX Having a Portable Handset
Streaming gaming... it's not good, for obvious reasons. We've seen numerous streaming gaming services and technologies (OnLive, Sony Remote Play, etc) fall by the wayside because there just isn't enough wireless bandwidth to support the data demands of modern console gaming. I highly doubt Nintendo would be stupid enough to try and launch a product that relies on the integrity of a mobile wireless connection (and your monthly mobile wireless data cap) in order to provide its free-roam gaming experience. That would be a huge fail, plain and simple.
That being said, I only see one way Nintendo can make a hybrid system work, and that's by employing the same PC gaming-like graphics adjustments that Sony and Microsoft are going to use when the new Playstation Neo and Xbox Scorpio are released.
On those consoles, new titles will run at higher resolutions with higher frame rates and better graphic fidelity. Newer titles will still run on the older Xbox One and Playstation 4, but simply at a lower resolution with lower graphic fidelity (and perhaps a lower minimum frame rate).
If Nintendo is using an Nvidia Pascal-based GPU to power its NX home console as some reports suggest, it could easily use the mobile 'Tegra' version of that GPU to power the handheld component. Anyone who's seen the Nvidia Shield TV in action knows that its Maxwell-based Tegra GPU is capable of playing fairly recent and graphically demanding PC games at decent resolutions and frame rates (Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance being one of them).
In the case of a hybrid system using Pascal-based GPU's, the loss in graphic fidelity from home console to handheld might not even need be that great since simply halving the resolution on the handheld unit would make up for most if not all of the difference in performance (depending on the thermal characteristics of the handheld unit).
In this scenario, one could easily envision a next-gen AAA console title running on the NX home console at 1080p/60fps (or higher) and 720p/60fps on the handheld unit with little to no perceived loss in graphic fidelity, thanks in large part to the higher pixel density of the handheld's display.
I haven't purchased a Nintendo console for myself since the Nintendo Gamecube. If the NX offers what I speculated above, I imagine that's going to change soon.