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[Aztechnology]

Well, it would be a confirmation that Nintendo is done with further iterations of the GC's CPU. However, most people in here apparently believe that non-x86 implies low performance (and the converse), which isn't true.

Correct me if I'm wrong but while I do think people misunderstand the tradeoff between Risc and Cisc. I think the prevailing thought has been that third party support will be significantly higher on X86 due to Middleware. Less performance changes and more ease of "translation" for the lack of a better word.

 

[PapaEmeritus]

So backwards compatibility is there? That's nice at least.

is it though if its a different architecture- it said compatible with current gen- is that ps4/xbone or wii u if wii u might have to download them- guess we'll find out

 

[outunderthestars]

Remember when the WiiU was going to get all the 3rd party games as well?

No. I remember the Wii U launching with terrible middleware, no 1st party support for third party development teams, and hardware that was too underpowered to handle the engines that third parties developed for PS4/XB1.

 

[diaspora]

Many many people were shouting from the rooftops how WiiU was going to get (superior) ports of almost all the 3rd party games that were out at the time. I wasn't one of those people, but saying it was "clear at the time" didn't seem to matter to a lot of people.

And it did- but the Wii U's problem was being released at the end of the generation it was supposed to be getting ports from.

 

[Piers]

Rumours containing features and specs that answer specifically to what hardcore gamers on NeoGAF want always end up being true.

 

[Pokemaniac]

I've worked with unity in the past. It's easy to compile a game for a specific device. So I'm wonxering why it couldn't be don vor nx console/handheld

Unity can do that because they've already ported their core engine. Native code typically requires some modifications to run on other platforms, particularly in terms of OS interaction.

Okay.

Now can I get a list of things people verified by Bish said that turned out true?

I don't have a list available, but the more informative question would probably be which ones were fake.

 

[Netherscourge]

I don't know what's driving this current "console upgrade cycle", but if they all aren't mandating 4K resolutions and at least 75FPS framerates AT that resolution for their hardware specs, along with some form of VR support, then they've already failed.

If this current gen has taught us anything, it's that resolution and framerate are pretty much make or break for gaming.

x86 or not. The last thing you want to be is on the visibly low-end of the graphical comparisons again.

Hopefully Nintendo has done their homework this time around. Forget the gimmicky nonsense and put some raw horsepower into that NX.

 

[Roo]

If this is true, I wonder if Nintendo went x86 of their own initiative or third parties and the Wii U convinced them.

Probably a little of both tbh.
PPC is doing nothing but holding them back.
And the "hardware is good enough for us, play only Nintendo games on a Nintendo console" card is getting damn old so I wouldn't be surprised if they felt cornered from both sides.

 

[maxcriden]

some musings on reading through the Reddit info....

•Support for additional screen.

--> in reading the Reddit posts, I don't think this is by any means definitively smartglass functionality for Nintendo games. It could easily refer to a built-in screen on the controller. I still don't think Nintendo will allow or rely on others' devices for controlling their traditional games.

•Can handle ports of current-gen games.

--> makes sense. Unclear if this means Wii U or PS/X. But I expect at worst it can handle downgraded PS4 ports.

•Will be able to interact with smartdevice apps.

--> surely refers to Nintendo's apps, and *perhaps* 3P video apps like Hulu, Netflix etc smartglass functionality.

•Using NX software will unlock My Nintendo reward points.

--> seems like a predicted and awesome idea for achievements at this point. I just don't want them to interrupt gameplay a lot.

 

[Somnid]

I imagine Nintendo will explore a PPC emulation layer, the fruits of which would work for GCN, Wii and Wii U. So while I do think hardware BC will die, I think something like XB1's BC might work even though you'll probably be re-buying in most cases.

 

[Sheriff_Battlesnake]

There's another much more logical answer: support for their next handheld, which has a screen.
Why would Nintendo support a 3rd party device when they have their own portable they can use as a second screen?

Because they aren't assured enough that they will sell you two pricey items. unless they are packaged together I don't see people jumping on both.

 

[LordRaptor]

Correct me if I'm wrong but while I do think people misunderstand the tradeoff between Risc and Cisc. I think the prevailing thought has been that third party support will be significantly higher on X86 due to Middleware. Less performance changes and more ease of "translation" for the lack of a better word.

Most middleware supports ARM compilation by way of IOS, because the market realities of modern gaming is that IOS is the market leader for entertainment software consumption.

 

[KratosEnergyDrink]

I imagine Nintendo will explore a PPC emulation layer, the fruits of which would work for GCN, Wii and Wii U. So while I do think hardware BC will die, I think something like XB1's BC might work even though you'll probably be re-buying in most cases.

Do you now how bad many XB1 BC perform. Most definitely much worse than the original.

I highly doubt that Nintendo would be pleased with bc with sub-optimal framerates or other gameplay disadvantages. That would drag down the notion of their old games. And lower sales for remasters.

BC would be not a win but a lose lose situation

 

[mark-san]

EDIT. Yep. You are right.

From what the OP said. It doesn't sounds like NX is going to be a powerhouse. I doubt it will have the power to emulate WiiU.

Sorry, but I'll have to disagree. People using Cemu, which is being developed purely by reverse engineering the Wii U, are getting almost full speed emulation on some games (Mario Maker) with low-specced PCs. With all the documentation available, i'm quite sure Nintendo devs are able to code a competent enough emulator.

PPC is a well understood architecture and not that dificult to emulate (see Xbox One BC, or Dolphin. Heck, PearPC will turn 12 yrs old next month). And the Wii U GPU is not some unknown part using bizarre instructions.

Also, for the people concerned that by going the x86 route for the console and ARM for the handheld, the whole unified architecture idea goes to toilet, that is not the case. Almost nobody (except Middleware developers) code to the metal anymore. Just look at the Android, iOS / OS X or Windows ecosystems for good examples on how to handle multiple architectures without much trouble. For a pratical example, most of the apps on the Play Store (coded to the SDK) can run on ARM and x86 phones.

 

[ReyVGM]

I don't want another PS4 with Nintendo games. I'd rather Nintendo go for the unified platform route and have a ARM console so all games have cross play and cross buy with their next handheld.

That's not going to happen.

You won't see Zelda U/NX on the handheld. If you are expecting that., prepare to be disappointed.

You will see ports like the WiiU/3DS situation (Hyrule Warriors, Smash 3DS, etc). With the NX that's going to increase, but don't expect every single game to run on both devices.

 

[Lonely1]

Correct me if I'm wrong but while I do think people misunderstand the tradeoff between Risc and Cisc. I think the prevailing thought has been that third party support will be significantly higher on X86 due to Middleware. Less performance changes and more ease of "translation" for the lack of a better word.

I'm not a hardware CS, far from it (or software one ). From my understanding, the Risc-Cisc separation is very blurred on modern x86 chips and practically invisible to the coders.

 

[maxcriden]

People need to stop repeating this. It's similar to the nonsense about resistive touch screens being older than capacitive. They've different. The major differences are nonsense like which is older/new and more by which is more widely adopted and being iterated on. PPC isn't really used anymore, while x86 continues to be. THAT is the most significant and relevant difference

I edited my post and clarified when corrected earlier. Sorry about that, I misunderstood what I'd previously read.

x86 is older by at least a decade.

Thank you for the correction. I was completely mistaken about that and have amended my post.

 

[ec0ec0]

nah, #teamFake

ARM it is

 

[LCGeek]

Hopefully Nintendo has done their homework this time around. Forget the gimmicky nonsense and put some raw horsepower into that NX.

They never go for raw horsepower. At best N64 was and that like GC had to be gimped cause it was too ambitious for what they wanted vs cost. At best you can hope nintendo makes nes or gc when it comes to consoles or something better, which is highly unlikely.

 

[Naked Prime]

Every time someone says that the NX will be as powerful as current gen consoles gaf seems to forget that ps4k and xb1.5 are coming, if true NX will probably be behind again and without all the games that are already available on ps4 and xb1.

With ps4k & xb1.5, if true, I don't think its gonna be that huge if a jump you are going to see in many games. You are not gonna cut of 50 million users in potential sales in favor I f tge shiny new hw sku. We'll likely see improved framrates, lighting, marginally better physics, and cleaner IQ. But unless a title is built solely for the updated hw skus you still have to sell it to the other 50 million vanilla ps4 owners, for the same $60. And NX API being Vulkan may help bridge that gap (if any).

Wait & see is all we can do I suppose

 

[KratosEnergyDrink]

Source.

This proves the point that its not tiny.

It's delusional to hope for BC on NX.

 

[ReyVGM]

Well, there's nothing that Mario Maker requires that a regular tablet wouldn't. Things like buttons and a resistive screen aren't absolutely necessary, just nice for a game like that.
.

You forget you actually get to play those Mario levels, right? Touch screen is absolutely horrible for a Mario game that require pressing/holding multiple buttons and fast reflexes.

 

[Lonely1]

This proves the point that its not tiny.

It's delusional to hope for BC on NX.

Huh? Also, add a couple (or more) die shrinks.

 

[Dark Cloud]

I hope there's no BC at all. Let the NX be a fresh start of something new and connected moving forward. Just leave the Wii U be. Make some Wii U remasters and call it a day.

 

[StereoVsn]

I don't know what's driving this current "console upgrade cycle", but if they all aren't mandating 4K resolutions and at least 75FPS framerates AT that resolution for their hardware specs, along with some form of VR support, then they've already failed.

If this current gen has taught us anything, it's that resolution and framerate are pretty much make or break for gaming.

x86 or not. The last thing you want to be is on the visibly low-end of the graphical comparisons again.

Hopefully Nintendo has done their homework this time around. Forget the gimmicky nonsense and put some raw horsepower into that NX.

So... Dual 980TIs confirmed for NX (or rather AMD equivalent). You do realize that 4K at 75fps is very hard to do on very powerful PCs, right?

 

[Cleve]

So backwards compatibility is there? That's nice at least.

How did you take that from this information? A switch to x86 would almost entirely rule bc out, unless they og PS3'd it, which doesn't fit in with nintendo's profitable hardware designs. If this is true, the could do VC style re-releases/HD remasters essentially, but nintendo love making people re-buy shit. You won't get that for free.

 

[Nanashrew]

Not quite sure I believe the x86 Architecture when Iwata said they wanted to be on the same architecture to make porting and sharing between their systems much easier. I still believe it will be ARM and not x86 and ARM will be in all of their systems to share libraries, and much more because Apple.

 

[Father_Brain]

Rumors that talk about NX as though it's only a console confuse me. Oh well, in a couple months we'll actually know how the NX handheld fits into the picture.

 

[Somnid]

Do you now how bad many XB1 BC perform. Most definitely much worse than the original.

I highly doubt that Nintendo would be pleased with bc with sub-optimal framerates or other gameplay disadvantages. That would drag down the notion of their old games. And lower sales for remasters.

BC would be not a win but a lose lose situation

It's something that has to be solved either way, they have 3 generations of games that they'll want to make playable. They aren't going to remake all of them.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Someone else posted this 1hour ago on reddit :

All this sounds really bad if the NX is 2016.

 

[ec0ec0]

Not quite sure I believe the x86 Architecture when Iwata said they wanted to be on the same architecture to make porting and sharing between their systems much easier. I still believe it will be ARM and not x86 and ARM will be in all of their systems to share libraries, and much more because Apple.

.

 

[blu]

I really, really do not think so. That is an extra layer of complexity that seems wholy unworth it.

Boy, that complexity.. You are aware that the official iOS desktop emu has been x86 all this time, right?

What would ARM bring to a console exactly the x86 could not do?

Much greater IHV market? OS coherence across the hw ecosystem?

What would x86 bring?

 

[Optimusdouche]

NX doesn't need that much horsepower.

Enough such that modern third party can arrive will most likely help. But they are not going to aim for 4k and 75fps. They don't need to. They don't need VR, either.

As long as they have a good account system, they are going to be rolling in subscription money like Sony and MS are. And Nintendo margins are much smaller, so I'm guessing they will make more profit per subscription, in any case, they have millions of loyal fans who will happily become subscribers for as long as they have money.

 

[Hiltz]

Hopefully Nintendo has done their homework this time around. Forget the gimmicky nonsense and put some raw horsepower into that NX.

Shigeru Miyamoto said the following when asked in a 2015 interview why Nintendo doesn't make high-spec consoles compared to Sony & Microsoft:

What we are always striving to do is to find a way to take novel technology that we can take and offer it to people at a price that everybody can afford. And in addition to that, rather than going after the high-end tech spec race and trying to create the most powerful console, really what we want to do is try to find a console that has the best balance of features with the best interface that anyone can use. We like to do things that are unique and different from other companies, but we also don't want to just end up in a race to have the highest-tech specs in a competition to try to find how we get these expensive tech specs to the lowest price of the other systems.

At best, I think we can only realistically expect NX to be on par with Xbox One and/or PS4, not clearly superior to them. Nintendo will have to factor in the production cost of whatever gimmick they want to use, and in addition to that, I don't see Nintendo having a desire to need excess hardware power for the kind of software its company likes to make.

 

[Milly Osworth]

We went from no leaks to boring leaks.

That's great!

 

[UnemployedVillain]

For people who know emulation, how much of the difficulty comes from simply not knowing the internal workings of the architecture you're emulating and having to figure it out?

To put it more relevantly, does the fact that Nintendo knows the exact specs and instruction set of the Wii U make emulation less difficult to achieve at a reasonably performance than a random hobbyist who has to figure it out and assume things?

 

[ReyVGM]

So it can handle ports of current gen games, huh? I remember it being said that the Wii U could handle ports of Xbox 360 or PS3 multi-platform releases. A smattering of launch titles and a poor Watch Dogs port is all I can remember coming to the console. If Nintendo doesn't muster third party support again it doesn't matter what it can handle.

The WiiU could handle PS360 games and more, it's up to the devs to actually make the games run properly though.

 

[Mpl90]

Ok, I just noticed that nofusion (the guy with the second set of rumours, the pessimistic ones), said that WSJ , when they did that report back in October 2015, was "mistaken", and that he covered this multiple times.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaah.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

Ugh. I seriously doubt Nintendo's going to be taking third parties seriously anymore. Whatever major support they do have involves their direct collaboration and companies like EA, Activision and 2K have historically been apathetic towards Nintendo in general. Not only that but with Nintendo talking up their IP, the most valuable assets the company has, how they should leverage them while not abandoning dedicated hardware, this is the direction their heading in. Nintendo has pretty much embraced their hardware being strictly Nintendo machines and like it or not, That's probably not going to change with the NX.

 

[diaspora]

Shigeru Miyamoto said the following when asked in a 2015 interview why Nintendo doesn't make high-spec consoles compared to Sony & Microsoft:


What we are always striving to do is to find a way to take novel technology that we can take and offer it to people at a price that everybody can afford. And in addition to that, rather than going after the high-end tech spec race and trying to create the most powerful console, really what we want to do is try to find a console that has the best balance of features with the best interface that anyone can use. We like to do things that are unique and different from other companies, but we also don't want to just end up in a race to have the highest-tech specs in a competition to try to find how we get these expensive tech specs to the lowest price of the other systems.

Asinine. Best features and interface aren't mutually exclusive with competitive hardware. Parity isn't even necessary, just make something that 3rd party engines can run on.

 

[KratosEnergyDrink]

It's something that has to be solved either way, they have 3 generations of games that they'll want to make playable. They aren't going to remake all of them.

Nintendo wants 3 generations of games to be playable? Perhaps in a parallel universe?

Perhaps a far future hardware will include Wii U BC but NX will definitely not. The reasons for this had been explained here already.

 

[goomba]

theres a good reason nobodies phones have CISC CPU's

 

[mark-san]

Not quite sure I believe the x86 Architecture when Iwata said they wanted to be on the same architecture to make porting and sharing between their systems much easier. I still believe it will be ARM and not x86 and ARM will be in all of their systems to share libraries, and much more because Apple.

An unified architecture does not imply that the "family of systems" (quoting Iwata) have to use CPUs with the same instruction set. It's the SDK & tools that matters and can make the whole thing straight-forward to develop for.

For people who know emulation, how much of the difficulty comes from simply not knowing the internal workings of the architecture you're emulating and having to figure it out?

To put it more relevantly, does the fact that Nintendo knows the exact specs and instruction set of the Wii U make emulation less difficult to achieve at a reasonably performance than a random hobbyist who has to figure it out and assume things?

It makes things a LOT easier, trust me. I've been following the emulation scene since 1996, and good documentation is what makes the best emulators. For example, YOSHi was a well known guy back then and did a lot of reverse engineering work (NES / SNES, especially). His docs were essential to the emulators developed at that time (SNES96, ZSNES, Snes9X).

 

[Smellycat]

Someone else posted this 1hour ago on reddit :

That sounds ridiculous if true, and I highly doubt that it is

 

[qa_engineer]

I haven't owned a nintendo product since the NES and SNES so if they make a console that can match xbox or even PS4 then I will get one just because. Now I need to make more space in my tiny-ass new york city apartment for more gadgets.

 

[spyroflame0487]

Support for a second screen....couldn't that just means it uses the Wii U gamepad..or even a handheld device like the 3DS?

I mean, I really can't see them getting rid of the gamepad and making it not work, so that'd be cool to use it on NX

 

[Malus]

That sounds ridiculous if true, and I highly doubt that it is

He's saying the Wall Street Journal report is wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoNX..._need_to_be_stated_re_leaks/d1pkp51?context=3

Ehhhh I think I know which side I'm picking here.

 

[Dreamwriter]

yes and I am saying a hybrid could be one such SKU.

But it couldn't be, because Iwata said it wouldn't be a hybrid. Unless you are suggesting that Iwata was lying...

 

[Peltz]

I don't know what's driving this current "console upgrade cycle", but if they all aren't mandating 4K resolutions and at least 75FPS framerates AT that resolution for their hardware specs, along with some form of VR support, then they've already failed.

If this current gen has taught us anything, it's that resolution and framerate are pretty much make or break for gaming.

x86 or not. The last thing you want to be is on the visibly low-end of the graphical comparisons again.

Hopefully Nintendo has done their homework this time around. Forget the gimmicky nonsense and put some raw horsepower into that NX.

4K 75fps? So how expensive is that going to be?

 

[Lonely1]

What would x86 bring?

Unlimited Poweeeer! Blu, plz correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't the Wii U CPU tiny!?