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[sphinx]

Law of physics what are those

you mean you have info regarding internal specs of the switch and can confirm it's impossible by law of physics?

I didn't know we had real, specific rumored specs (not just "my source says it will be in the ballpark of")

maybe Laura or Emily gave them and I missed them?

 

[EDarkness]

I think we all agree that this system will be powerful enough to guarantee awesome looking first party games and third party exclusives, like indeed we saw on the weak 3DS with games like Mario 3D Land, Zelda, Kid Icarus and RE Revelations. Problem is will EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc be willing to work in order to push Switch hardware to its limit? the answers is likely no, they'll just want to make ports as fast and as cheap as they can, and i don't know if it'll be possible on Switch hardware

They should be able to make ports of Xbox One and PS4 games on the NS with no problem. As has been stated many, many times in this thread. The only thing stopping them is whether or not the game will sell or some political reason they don't want to support Nintendo hardware. As I said before, Rise of the Tomb Raider is on the Xbox 360. The NS will be much more powerful than that, so there's no reason to believe games like Fallout 4, The Division, Assassin's Creed, etc. can't be ported over to the the NS. Whether those games sell or not is a totally different conversation.

 

[SpookyBlackFish]

I thought it was pretty clear that this was a concept video and not a game announcement video. Skyrim is easily understood, an RPG, and well recognized so it's a good way to show the "pick up and play" aspect of the system. What do they gain by showing Fallout or Dishonored in a concept video? Why announce games like that in something like this? Whatever you saw in that video is not representative of what the game will look like in real life. On top of that, even the specs in the OP in this thread make this thing more powerful than the Wii U.

It is absolutely clear to me that that it was concept video and no game announcement video. I did not state otherwise, did I? Again: even being nothing but a concept video why making an understatement with game scenes? Of course, they could do but that makes no sense to me. Why not giving a hint of what is possible? They would gain quite a lot, I say. The question which it seems to be all about in some Switch threads "Can it also run visuals close to Xbox One?" would not have occurred. Why keep things unclear? That's off putting.

On the bolded: as written above, yes, I think what was shown (even not being a game announcement video. If confirmed or not.) is inevitably representative of what games will look like.
And yes, the specs in the OP make Switch more powerful than WiiU. But as I presumed in my post, maybe this is necessary to ensure that very good WiiU level graphics, maybe with higher res and frames, can be achieved on a device that is really small, draws low wattage, does not run hot and is priced attractively.

Are my presumptions really that unreasonable?

 

[MuchoMalo]

you mean you have info regarding internal specs of the switch and can confirm it's impossible by law of physics?

I didn't know we had real, specific rumored specs (not just "my source says it will be in the ballpark of")

maybe Laura or Emily gave them and I missed them?

The most that's currently possible is for it to be on paper around half as powerful as Xbone. The Nico guy is definitely full of shit and saying something that's 100% impossible. And before you yell "custom chip," the architecture won't be custom and if it were possible to make a custom architecture that efficient, Nvidia would have strongarmed Nintendo into allowing them to use it.

Basically, anyone expecting PS4 power just needs to calm down before experiencing unprecedented disappointment. That said, they people expecting it to only match Wii U (and even more so calling something that could have easily been done at least two years ago "impressive") are just as incorrect. They wouldn't have gone with Nvidia and certainly wouldn't have had Tegra X1 dev kits if Wii U graphics were their target. Granted, even with Wii U power the modern architecture would allow graphics that exceed what Wii U is capable of visually.

 

[Herb Alpert]

you mean you have info regarding internal specs of the switch and can confirm it's impossible by law of physics?

I didn't know we had real, specific rumored specs (not just "my source says it will be in the ballpark of")

maybe Laura or Emily gave them and I missed them?

just look at the form factor. Look at the difference in size. Obviously a tablet sized system probably sold at around 250€ won't outperform PS4.

I think that the switch looks rather powerful for its size though. Nintendo definitely didn't went the low power route this time. But This is an hybrid, not a stationary home console.

There will perhaps be ports, but they will be downgraded ones.

 

[KAL2006]

Lol at people thinking this is going to be Xbox 1 level power.

Switch was shown running Wii U ports and a remaster of Skyrim.

Although Switch may have powerful hardware this is a portable after all. The Xbox One S is being sold at £240 here in the UK. No way its possible to sell a portable with that level power that haz more than an hours battery at the rumpured price point of £200.

This is going to be run on a custom NVidia chip which likely means its power efficient, doesnt get hot and etc. It doesnt mean its super powerful like people suggest here.

There will be multiple platform games such as occasional Ubisoft games, sports games, indies, fighting games and etc. Im not expecting The Witcher 3, Mass Effect or Final Fantasy XV.

 

[orioto]

I thought it was pretty clear that this was a concept video and not a game announcement video. Skyrim is easily understood, an RPG, and well recognized so it's a good way to show the "pick up and play" aspect of the system. What do they gain by showing Fallout or Dishonored in a concept video? Why announce games like that in something like this? Whatever you saw in that video is not representative of what the game will look like in real life. On top of that, even the specs in the OP in this thread make this thing more powerful than the Wii U.

SO we do agree this is the first time, ever in history that a game company reveals a console with software that under represent its capacities. But at least, even if we don't know, it has to tell us something, at least.

Nintendo thought it would be ok.

Nintendo thought it wouldn't be damaging to the console to show it with WiiU graphics.

So ... i mean.. They think WiiU graphics are good enough on it that they can use it to showcase the console for the first time to millions of viewers.

What does that tell you..

 

[MuchoMalo]

It is absolutely clear to me that that it was concept video and no game announcement video. I did not state otherwise, did I? Again: even being nothing but a concept video why making an understatement with game scenes? Of course, they could do but that makes no sense to me. Why not giving a hint of what is possible? They would gain quite a lot, I say. The question which it seems to be all about in some Switch threads "Can it also run visuals close to Xbox One?" would not have occurred. Why keep things unclear? That's off putting.

On the bolded: as written above, yes, I think what was shown (even not being a game announcement video. If confirmed or not.) is inevitably representative of what games will look like.
And yes, the specs in the OP make Switch more powerful than WiiU. But as I presumed in my post, maybe this is necessary to ensure that very good WiiU level graphics, maybe with higher res and frames, can be achieved on a device that is really small, draws low wattage, does not run hot and is priced attractively.

Are my presumptions really that unreasonable?

If Wii U graphics were the target, there would be no reason to go with Nvidia since there are cheaper options for that. Putting Wii U power in a handheld of this size, especially one with a fan, would have been possible in 2014, so it's not impressive and doesn't need a Tegra X1 to achieve, let alone something newer. It's not going to match Xbone, but it'll far exceed Wii U. It'll be more like the difference between Xbone and PS4 Pro, except even bigger due to the modern architecture allowing for the same graphical capabilities as current consoles and possibly more. This is very much a weak current-gen system, rather than a portable Wii U+. You can rest assured of that. I imagine that Nintendo would have stuck with DMP for the SoC otherwise for the sake of 3DS BC.

 

[N.Grim]

You forgot PS Vita that is way more powerfull than 3DS.

I believe that the new 3ds is at least on par with the Vita, or I remember wrong?

 

[Oregano]

I believe that the new 3ds is at least on par with the Vita, or I remember wrong?

CPU is better but that's about it. The RAM might be a lot faster too but there's less of it.

 

[EDarkness]

SO we do agree this is the first time, ever in history that a game company reveals a console with software that under represent its capacities. But at least, even if we don't know, it has to tell us something, at least.

Nintendo thought it would be ok.

Nintendo thought it wouldn't be damaging to the console to show it with WiiU graphics.

So ... i mean.. They think WiiU graphics are good enough on it that they can use it to showcase the console for the first time to millions of viewers.

What does that tell you..

Doesn't tell me anything. I'll wait for them to show actual games running on the system first. THEN make the claim that's it's weak or whatever. It shouldn't be based on what we know, and we haven't heard any developers talk about how weak it is, either. By this time in the Wii U's life there were signs that things weren't what we expected. We haven't heard anything yet and we haven't seen any games on it, either.

That trailer wasn't meant to talk about the hardware or how powerful (or not) it was. It was about the concept. Don't take those games as representative of anything. We'll know about the games in January.

 

[orioto]

Doesn't tell me anything. I'll wait for them to show actual games running on the system first. THEN make the claim that's it's weak or whatever. It shouldn't be based on what we know, and we haven't heard any developers talk about how weak it is, either. By this time in the Wii U's life there were signs that things weren't what we expected. We haven't heard anything yet and we haven't seen any games on it, either.

That trailer wasn't meant to talk about the hardware or how powerful (or not) it was. It was about the concept. Don't take those games as representative of anything. We'll know about the games in January.

I think the WiiU had disappointment rumors at that time, cause it was meant to be a "next gen" hardware to begin with. Third parties were probably expecting that to.

I think with the Switch, with its particular concept, and with time passing, devs never really hoped for that. I think.. i know it's harsh to say but i think we're not hearing about difficulties from big devs to port their AAA games on it cause.. they're not bothering lol.

But i'm from people thinking Nintendo doesn't need nor want all those games. I think it won't change anything. Having parity, and they will never have parity, wouldn't be enough. To replace Sony and Microsoft offers for gamers they would need to have a better offer, meaning better versions of those games. And that's not counting exclusives. You won't replace naughty dogs for PS guys, nor Halo for XB guys.

I've always said it. In the end it's all about Nintendo fans wanting all the games on their platform, which achieve nothing for Nintendo, to the contrary.

 

[MDave]

Are Nintendo known for doing bullshots of their games before? Because damn, does this look sharp, and better then the Wii U if it is indeed taken from the Switch:

http://puu.sh/sw3Ce/8afe79fb76.jpg

 

[Jonneh3003]

Are Nintendo known for doing bullshots of their games before? Because damn, does this look sharp, and better then the Wii U if it is indeed taken from the Switch:

http://puu.sh/sw3Ce/8afe79fb76.jpg

Yeah it is a bullshot, there's a few 4k screens:
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/come-see-13-4k-screenshots-from-breath-of-the-wild

 

[EDarkness]

I think the WiiU had disappointment rumors at that time, cause it was meant to be a "next gen" hardware to begin with. Third parties were probably expecting that to.

I think with the Switch, with its particular concept, and with time passing, devs never really hoped for that. I think.. i know it's harsh to say but i think we're not hearing about difficulties from big devs to port their AAA games on it cause.. they're not bothering lol.

I don't think there are a ton of developers making games since my understanding is that they're not giving dev kits to just anyone at the moment. This should change after it's released, then more companies can announce games (or not).

Still the stuff we've been hearing about the NS has been positive. Even the Take Two guy was happy with it. This isn't the Wii U situation. Not saying that all of their games are coming (or even some), but we know they have at least a couple of games for the platform being worked on. This is also true of EA, Activision, Warner Bros., etc. We know they have games coming, but they haven't announced anything yet.

There's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of cynicism, but try to keep things in perspective as well. At this point, there haven't been many games announced. There have been a few (Dragon Quest, LEGO City, Just Dance, etc.), though. I think Dragon Quest was announced because Hori can pretty much do what he wants, was excited and announce his game anyway. I'm sure Nintendo would have loved to hold that to chest and announce it later with the rest of the games they have coming. Not only that, but Nintendo hasn't announced any games for the system except Zelda. Unless you think the only game coming from them is Zelda? I think they're trying to save up some of the big games for one big blowout so people can be surprised. I don't think knowing whether or not Just Dance is coming will get people excited.

But i'm from people thinking Nintendo doesn't need nor want all those games. I think it won't change anything. Having parity, and they will never have parity, wouldn't be enough. To replace Sony and Microsoft offers for gamers they would need to have a better offer, meaning better versions of those games. And that's not counting exclusives. You won't replace naughty dogs for PS guys, nor Halo for XB guys.

I've always said it. In the end it's all about Nintendo fans wanting all the games on their platform, which achieve nothing for Nintendo, to the contrary.

I think Nintendo would LOVE to have those games. You think Nintendo wouldn't love to promote that Final Fantasy VII R is coming to the NS? Or that they're getting the next iteration of GTA? They want that mindshare, but I believe they feel constrained by how expensive hardware is and don't want to drop so much money into that box if they don't have to. They'd rather have something to separate them from the Xboxes and Playstations. You can bet that if they get Red Dead 2, they'll be happy as punch...and I think Nintendo gamers will be, too.

 

[Bulbasaur]

I'm hoping that the final build will have a glass or plastic window that you can see the display through so it can give notifications. Seems kinda like a wasted opportunity to have basically the whole screen covered up.

This. Definetly a wasted opportunity. I wonder their reasoning. Why not sell a less expensive version without a screen? but I guess it's not really a "Switch" then haha

 

[MuchoMalo]

SO we do agree this is the first time, ever in history that a game company reveals a console with software that under represent its capacities. But at least, even if we don't know, it has to tell us something, at least.

Nintendo thought it would be ok.

Nintendo thought it wouldn't be damaging to the console to show it with WiiU graphics.

So ... i mean.. They think WiiU graphics are good enough on it that they can use it to showcase the console for the first time to millions of viewers.

What does that tell you..

It tells me that it's all that they really had to show. They had to show something ported from the other consoles running on the thing and it's likely that few, if any, other games had accurate footage to show. Nintendo also likely didn't want to show off all of their own big games quite yet either, so they stuck to ports and already known games. Also, Skyrim was likely the only major game without significant downgrades on Switch, so even if there were accurate footage it could put Switch in a bad light. Remember that this is the same company that showed off Wii U using X360 footage.

 

[Orniletter]

This. Definetly a wasted opportunity. I wonder their reasoning. Why not sell a less expensive version without a screen? but I guess it's not really a "Switch" then haha

Nintendo wants to make it abundandly clear what Switch can do and what it is after they completely botched WiiU's messaging.

Making a seethrough Switch stand and offering different formfactors right out of the gate would go in the complete opposite direction.

It's not a missed opportunity, it would have been an outright mistake.

 

[Bulbasaur]

Nintendo wants to make it abundandly clear what Switch can do and what it is after they completely botched WiiU's messaging.

Making a seethrough Switch stand and offering different formfactors right out of the gate would go in the complete opposite direction.

It's not a missed opportunity, it would have been an outright mistake.

For those that will barely ever remove it from the dock it is a waste of a screen. Shame they couldn't take advantage of it while docked is all I'm saying.

 

[frankie_baby]

For those that will barely ever remove it from the dock it is a waste of a screen. Shame they couldn't take advantage of it while docked is all I'm saying.

It pokes out a bit doesnt it? Could have a little notification strip or something

 

[EDarkness]

It pokes out a bit doesnt it? Could have a little notification strip or something

I think the current rumor is that the top that sticks out is the sensor bar or something like that. Would be cool if they did something with it, though.

 

[Oregano]

The two third party games shown in the reveal video are games from the two big western publishers who support Nintendo the least. Them being in the video wasn't anything about tech specs at all.

 

[SpookyBlackFish]

If Wii U graphics were the target, there would be no reason to go with Nvidia since there are cheaper options for that. Putting Wii U power in a handheld of this size, especially one with a fan, would have been possible in 2014, so it's not impressive and doesn't need a Tegra X1 to achieve, let alone something newer. It's not going to match Xbone, but it'll far exceed Wii U. It'll be more like the difference between Xbone and PS4 Pro, except even bigger due to the modern architecture allowing for the same graphical capabilities as current consoles and possibly more. This is very much a weak current-gen system, rather than a portable Wii U+. You can rest assured of that. I imagine that Nintendo would have stuck with DMP for the SoC otherwise for the sake of 3DS BC.

Doesn't tell me anything. I'll wait for them to show actual games running on the system first. THEN make the claim that's it's weak or whatever. It shouldn't be based on what we know, and we haven't heard any developers talk about how weak it is, either. By this time in the Wii U's life there were signs that things weren't what we expected. We haven't heard anything yet and we haven't seen any games on it, either.

That trailer wasn't meant to talk about the hardware or how powerful (or not) it was. It was about the concept. Don't take those games as representative of anything. We'll know about the games in January.

I get that and I don't want to rule anything out of the things you say. It's just, tech talk does not help me to put a good picture together in my head. Especially because we don't know "how custom" the chips are.

Maybe I make things too simple by jumping to conclusions by looking at footage not being confirmed by devs themselves, not even running on the shown device in a video first and foremost meant to show the concept. Why do I do that, well, my only impressions I was able to get do not give me another choice at this point. I saw footage, it had a certain familiar look. I read from devs that they worked with Nintendo on the trailer. If the trailer was not put together in a very early stage, I would assume that those developers very well knew what the system can run in which fidelity. So why not show it? No need to comment on it, just let us see with our own eyes, that tells more than a thousand words and numbers that only the tech savvy could put together.

Sure, I admit that my arguments are not solid. The footage could also have given a glimpse of what is possible AT LEAST. That there really was no footage ready which was representative. That we will say "So THIS is what the games look like on Switch, who would've thought!" on January 12th. I really would like that. I have just seen to much fake stuff over all those many years and heard so much things interpreted out from vague statements that I'm more likely to believe that there is truth to be found in this trailer. It did not seem exaggerated, CGI, bullshots, it seemed calm and honest. Quite welcome in a time where more threads emerge that state how much of a downgrade the actual visuals are compared to the first showings than threads of how stunning a game looks in in comparison to the first trailers.

 

[wsippel]

I see a lot of "it's Nintendo we're talking about, we know their philosophy" around here. We don't. We knew Howard Cheng's and Genyo Takeda's philosophy, but they're no longer in charge of hardware development. Most of the old guys left. We don't know Sudha Sudharsanan's or Suresh Devalapalli's philosophy.

 

[EDarkness]

*snip*

Sure, I admit that my arguments are not solid. The footage could also have given a glimpse of what is possible AT LEAST. That there really was no footage ready which was representative. That we will say "So THIS is what the games look like on Switch, who would've thought!" on January 12th. I really would like that. I have just seen to much fake stuff over all those many years and heard so much things interpreted out from vague statements that I'm more likely to believe that there is truth to be found in this trailer. It did not seem exaggerated, CGI, bullshots, it seemed calm and honest. Quite welcome in a time where more threads emerge that state how much of a downgrade the actual visuals are compared to the first showings than threads of how stunning a game looks in in comparison to the first trailers.

I understand where you're coming from. However, basically we don't know anything about what games will look like running on the system. That's the angle you need to be coming from. I guess that's probably true for most of us, to be honest. We'll know for sure in January, unless something leaks before then (which is entirely possible).

It would be cool if they released a tech demo or something actually running on the hardware before then. I really liked the Wii U bird demo.

 

[lwilliams3]

I believe that the new 3ds is at least on par with the Vita, or I remember wrong?

The CPU in the N3DS can potentially run up to 3x faster the original 3DS, and it has more cores. It also runs a higher clock frequency than the PSVita's CPU. The CPUs are generations apart , though, so the CPU in the PSVita may still a little faster overall. CPU aside, there is still a large gap between the two systems in RAM for games and GPU power.

The overall difference between those portables is not that relatively large. The PSVita CPU, for example, is not remotely close to the Cell.

The two third party games shown in the reveal video are games from the two big western publishers who support Nintendo the least. Them being in the video wasn't anything about tech specs at all.

Good point.

 

[Skittzo0413]

I can guarantee if it was the other way around they would have closed it.... no way switch can be powerful... but yeah lets use these based specs off the shelf parts for a console that has already been confirmed custom. But hey NEOGAF

It has turned into the de facto Switch tech speculation thread for better or worse, which is why it's not closed (I assume).


Anyway, I'm pretty sure >PS4 power could theoretically be possible in the given form factor (with a pretty poor battery life and a very high price point) but everything reputable indicates that- in raw numbers anyway- it won't match PS4 specs.

In real world performance, we really don't know at this point because a lot of that will depend on development tools and software. But right now in real-world performance I personally am assuming the gap between Switch and XB1 will be a bit smaller than the gap between XB1 and PS4. It will be very hard to tell where it actually lands and will be different over various games (UE4 games should perform very well on Switch due to FP16 for instance).

 

[frankie_baby]

I think the current rumor is that the top that sticks out is the sensor bar or something like that. Would be cool if they did something with it, though.

Thats one rumour i honestly don't believe, will restrict too much where you can put the sytem

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I think it actually silly to believe the dock won't provide any extra benefits beyond power and connectivity.

Why would Nintendo make you buy an expensive add-on when the charge port and HMDI can be built into the screen?

Why assume it's expensive? The goal seems to be making going from TV and back simple. No dicking around with plugging and unplugging any HDMI cable, power cable, USB accessories each time. It can do all these things and still be a pretty dumb cheap bit of equipment.

If it were for the casual crowd and convenience, something like this would have been more than enough:

That just gets to design choices of the dock, not why a dock exists. It's not like a little more plastic is going to make it very expensive.

Why IN HELL would they aim at 1080p, when hey.. millions of people are buying and playing between 720p and 900p games on next gen consoles, everyday. WHy would the Switch output 1080p when the XBO can't most of the time. Why would Nintendo think "less than 1080p isn't enough by today's standard". This is Nintendo we're talking about. The 3ds has a resolution of 400x240.

Most of their Wii U games were 720p60 or 1080p30. Why wouldn't they achieve higher with a more powerful machine? Especially if, as you've said, they think Wii U visuals are acceptable, that leaves more room for the tech improvements to go right to things like resolution and frame rate.

 

[Branduil]

I fully expect Nintendo to target 1080p for their Switch games when docked. Other devs will probably target whatever they feel like they can get away with. I certainly wouldn't expect multiplat games to hit 1080p when they don't even do that on Xbone.

 

[Aostia]

Console will be well structured and balanced but not a high end miracle

 

[Cuningas de Häme]

Skyrim was on that reveal video because almost EVERYONE knows what game it is. It is a well known open world game that many regards as the best OW game ever.

Showing that kind of game on a handheld is huge, that is the reason Nintendo went with it. It tells people that Switch is a "hardcore" machine, or that's the way the vast majority of gaming population sees it. You know, those filthy casuals?

NBA had a clear reason to be on it too, it tells people that "hey, we got sports too!". It is a really big reason to buy a console, those sports games. This is just an example, people are surely going to think that does it have FIFA or your favorite sports.

They didn't want to show the technical prowess of the Switch, but sell you a new lifestyle where you game whatever wherever*. Like Sony does speaking about doing things for the gamers and then taking all their money. There's this image they want to show you, to make your imagination run wild. Time for details is later (January, in fact).

*(not everything everywhere, but close or at least in the same galaxy)

What this has to do with specs? Nothing, nothing in that trailer has anything to do with specifications of the Switch.

 

[KAL2006]

Skyrim was on that reveal video because almost EVERYONE knows what game it is. It is a well known open world game that many regards as the best OW game ever.

Showing that kind of game on a handheld is huge, that is the reason Nintendo went with it. It tells people that Switch is a "hardcore" machine, or that's the way the vast majority of gaming population sees it. You know, those filthy casuals?

NBA had a clear reason to be on it too, it tells people that "hey, we got sports too!". It is a really big reason to buy a console, those sports games. This is just an example, people are surely going to think that does it have FIFA or your favorite sports.

They didn't want to show the technical prowess of the Switch, but sell you a new lifestyle where you game whatever wherever*. Like Sony does speaking about doing things for the gamers and then taking all their money. There's this image they want to show you, to make your imagination run wild. Time for details is later (January, in fact).

*(not everything everywhere, but close or at least in the same galaxy)

What this has to do with specs? Nothing, nothing in that trailer has anything to do with specifications of the Switch.

The latest Battlefield and Call of Duty as well as The Witcher 3 can easily showcase what the system is about. Skyrim just says hey we got last gen games that are portable. What they should have done was showcase a popular current gen multiplatform game.

 

[frankie_baby]

The latest Battlefield and Call of Duty as well as The Witcher 3 can easily showcase what the system is about. Skyrim just says hey we got last gen games that are portable. What they should have done was showcase a popular current gen multiplatform game.

Presumably it wont be getting the latest battlefield or call of duty (the publishers would be dumb to do late ports of them) although i expect the next call of duty at least will probably appear
Skyrim however is more of an evergreen game so porting it to wii u a little late (from the 4/bone versions) makes more sense

 

[Skittzo0413]

The latest Battlefield and Call of Duty as well as The Witcher 3 can easily showcase what the system is about. Skyrim just says hey we got last gen games that are portable. What they should have done was showcase a popular current gen multiplatform game.

Battlefield and CoD aren't instantly recognizable though like Skyrim is, because there are so many installments. The general population would be saying, wait is this last year's CoD?

Whereas Skyrim is probably the most recognizable "core" open world game of the past 2 generations, MAYBE barring GTAV, though again with GTA you have previous games in the series which could look similar at a quick glance.

Skyrim has the added benefit of taking a publisher that has always been very averse to putting games on Nintendo hardware and putting them front and center as one of the premiere supporters of your new platform. Not to mention a remastered version just came out weeks ago, indicating that this is a very recent port. It was the perfect game to pick.

 

[Astral Dog]

I see while we wait for the real Switch reveal people are going delusional again

i'd like to believe those leaks and all but..

_I see people discussing what third party AAA games will look like on the Switch (like the witcher)... Come on guys, come on. You know it already. They won't look like anything at all.

_I love how every clues and realistic estimation based on Nintendo philosophy are ignored completly, regarding power. Nintendo always, always, always aims at the weakest they can to favor the usability. Alwyays! We KNOW this whole concept of the Switch IS a problem in term of battery life, we know that already and it's obvious.

We also know, from what we hear from them, and from what they showed, that they're basically rebooting the WIiU here, and that for them, having their last generation of games, in your hands, is a strong enough value. They thing it's amazing.

Basically what i'm saying, and i can be absolutely wrong, i hope, is that, IF Nintendo thinks WiiU power is a-ma-zing for a portable, and their primary objective was to run something like Zelda BotW on it (which is amazing for e portable game already), and they have to be the most economy efficient they can...

Why in hell, would they go further ? I mean i know we've been hearing better things but as we always did and it's always been the lowest they could in the end, for 3ds, for wiiu.. Cause Nintendo doesn't overkill. They do the lowest that will be good enough, impressive enough for their target. They always do that.

Same, about the tv dock. Let's try to be in their shoes, to think "what is the minimum we can do that is acceptable by people"; Why IN HELL would they aim at 1080p, when hey.. millions of people are buying and playing between 720p and 900p games on next gen consoles, everyday. WHy would the Switch output 1080p when the XBO can't most of the time. Why would Nintendo think "less than 1080p isn't enough by today's standard". This is Nintendo we're talking about. The 3ds has a resolution of 400x240.

I would add to the obvious concrete clues being ignored by everyone:

_They showed to us port of WIiU games that were not enhanced visually. I think that would be the first time, ever, in history of videogame that a company reveals its new console with a representation of games that is way below what the machine can achieve. I mean.. come on. Let's think about that.

_They said again and again that the dock is doing nothing. People thik "why then put a dock that is costly". But is it costly ? We don't know. There is a charging dock for the 3ds to. It's just the way they want to present it. Maybe it's nothing hardware wise and the whole thing is super cheap.

I agree with this, SWITCH will be quite an interesting piece of tech,but dont expect any miracles from a machine you can take anywhere,specially regarding 1080p in comprison to the Xbox ONE.

Still going to be a noticeable leap over Wii U though, and that should be exciting enough

 

[Candescence]

You forgot PS Vita that is way more powerfull than 3DS.

Uh... No? That's not even up for debate, why even bring that up?

 

[blu]

This might be a bit meta for this thread, but hopefully gaffers will find it interesting:
ARM Research's Greg Yeric talks Moore's Law from the perspective of an IC IP vendor

TM;DW: viable EUV is a prerequisite for 5nm, otherwise 7nm (10nm by intel's stick) is here to stay for some time (think 28nm, only longer), namely until we deplete all other non-pitch-scaling options (i.e. increasing the transistor density without changing nodes).

 

[Hermii]

I really cant wait until the official reveal... SO many WTF will be going on all over GAF. I'm going to have off from work that day anyway so. ITS going to be great a great day.

There won't be so many wtfs. Half of it has leaked already, we are lucky if there will be any surprises left at all.

 

[ShadowFox08]

I really cant wait until the official reveal... SO many WTF will be going on all over GAF. I'm going to have off from work that day anyway so. ITS going to be great a great day.

You're going to take the day off because of this event? Geesus, the info isn't going anywhere. Watch and discuss the reveal when you come home.

 

[Kurt]

So japan is 8/9h ahead from where i live. I'm still wondering which day i should take off for that reveal...

You're going to take the day off because of this event? Geesus, the info isn't going anywhere. Watch and discuss the reveal when you come home.

Why not, most watch football and other things live instead of prerecording. There is a reason for this.

 

[Herb Alpert]

You're going to take the day off because of this event? Geesus, the info isn't going anywhere. Watch and discuss the reveal when you come home.

I won't take a day off, but I hope I won't be offered work that day.
I like to watch these things live...

 

[Genio88]

So japan is 8/9h ahead from where i live. I'm still wondering which day i should take off for that reveal...




Why not, most watch football and other things live instead of prerecording. There is a reason for this.

If i got it right this reveal should be Thursday 12 evening in Japan, which should be like early morning/afternoon of Friday 13 in Europe/USA. If you guys know better let me know, but i guess Nintendo will tell us the exact time a few weeks in advance

 

[Daedardus]

If i got it right this reveal should be Thursday 12 evening in Japan, which should be like early morning/afternoon of Friday 13 in Europe/USA. If you guys know better let me know, but i guess Nintendo will tell us the exact time a few weeks in advance

You got the time zones wrong. It will be Friday morning/night in Japan, night in Europe and evening in America judging from the way the dates were announced which is 12 for America and 13 for EU/Japan.

 

[lwilliams3]

I made a table about that a while ago:

Ok cool. The ARM11s in the 3DS are ~1.3 DMIPS/MHz going by your numbers, which is much less compared to the newer ARMs which are 4.6-4.8.

Man, since the 3DS uses half the GPU power to use 3D, is it actually about a 200x difference?

Edit: While we're talking about the 3DS, I found this post from you about the GPU.

One of the most important technical fact about 3DS is that it doesn't support fragment programs. It's the only currently relevant platform for which this is the case. Even if some common effects could be replicated using the fixed function hardware, this still means that it requires an entirely separate software and content creation ecosystem. I think this decision will come back to haunt Nintendo.

Probably more so than the fact which annoys me most personally, which is that the GPU can't do any efficient AA. This is particularly enervating considering the low display resolution, and how good most other portable GPUs are at this.

 

[Donnie]

The leaked specs

256 CUDA cores, max 1 GHz, 1024 FLOPS/cycle
4GB RAM (25.6 GB/s, VRAM shared)

comparison

Ps4 = 176 GB/s
Pro = 218 GB/s
Xb1 = 68 with ESRAM at 109 Gb/s (or debatable 200 bi direction....)

The leaked specs suggest Switch is balanced around the 720p screen imo with 25.6 GB/s. The talk of CPU or GPU TFlops does not matter either way if constrained by 25.6 GB/s shared memory access unless their is a massive on die ESRAM / EDRAM or something that has not been mentioned yet..

Its been mentioned before, what you're missing is that those consoles don't render a frame in the same way as Tegra (which is tile based). Tegra draws its frame tile by tile, with each of those tiny tiles fitting inside a very fast cache inside the GPU. This minimises the effect of pixel processing on main memory bandwidth. Much in the same way as XBox One's eSRAM.

Comparing Switch/PS4/Xbx1 with those figures you've mentioned above is akin to comparing PS4 and XBox One by main memory bandwidth alone. Which I'm sure you'd agree would make XBox One look much more bandwidth constrained than it actually is.

Of course its also worth mentioning that there is no real evidence that 25.6GB/s is a genuine number for Switch.

 

[rekameohs]

I know the Switch is likely to already be quite a bit more powerful than the Wii U, but do we have any idea how much more power could've been squeezed out of the Wii U exactly as it was if it didn't have to render a dang second image and send it to the GamePad at all times?

 

[ShadowFox08]

So japan is 8/9h ahead from where i live. I'm still wondering which day i should take off for that reveal...




Why not, most watch football and other things live instead of prerecording. There is a reason for this.

If its a direct, then the console reveal will be be a prerecorded.The obvious commentary during and after won't(which I'm assuming you're talking about), but like I said, people will be talking about it for months. You're not missing out by not watching it as its revealed really. It's not like sports where people talk about it while its happening and then pretty much forget about it the day after/the next game.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I know the Switch is likely to already be quite a bit more powerful than the Wii U, but do we have any idea how much more power could've been squeezed out of the Wii U exactly as it was if it didn't have to render a dang second image and send it to the GamePad at all times?

Just look at any game that had off-TV play, or by default showed the same thing on both screens at all times. Even in most cases where they were displaying unique things, usually the off-screen view was something simple rather than a unique complex 3D view.

 

[BuggyMike]

You're going to take the day off because of this event? Geesus, the info isn't going anywhere. Watch and discuss the reveal when you come home.

This is the type of thing that, if no one asked, I'm sure no one wants your opinion. A grown ass man doesnt need you to tell him when's the right and wrong time to take off from his job. That's just rediculous.