Why would they be aiming for a "true tablet" when they were never aiming for a tablet to begin with? I thought it was stated and reinforced many times that the bases for the Wii U Gamepad was the DS which released before any of the popular tablets, and that they decided on going with the touchscreen controller for their next console in 2007 which was also before the tablet boom occurred. Miyamoto stated clearly that the Wii U having a touchscreen controller and the tablet boom occurring were pure coincidence. The focus of the Wii U as console is dual screen gameplay. If they made the console into a tablet then that would defeat the entire purpose of its existence. It would just be single screen DS.
I don't see Nintendo ever making a tablet. They are already have a touchscreen hardware design that has dominated the gaming market for 2 generations now. I also dont' buy into this handheld only business that people are insisting on with Nintendo. Did any of the Ipads or Androids ever break 150 million in sells?
They just came out of releasing the second best selling console in history as well. The console market has always been their primary focus even if their handhelds have overtaken it in sales number. I fail to see how more success in one market than another that you are still profitable in would lead to you dropping the latter. Dropping from the pure home console market would just be giving vantage to their competition.
Well, we don't really have to argue over whether Wii U was inspired by tablets or not in order to speculate that they might be considering a tablet designed gaming system in the future. For one, they are extremely popular in the market (and that trend doesn't look to be disappearing any time soon). Nintendo also seem to recognize the value in having a large screen for their games, as evidenced in both the Wii U and XL lines of DS/3DS.
Let's not compare sales for iphones/Androids to DS sales. For one, you can't just compare one iteration, as it's a continuous line with a large amount of compatible software. I find this to be the superior model over the classic hardware refresh cycle we're used to in gaming.
I'm not really suggesting dropping out of the home console market per say. What I am saying is that they should completely drop the facade that they are in the same market as Sony and MS. Instead of going after the type of 3rd party support that PS4/Xbone are getting, they should be looking at the type of support Android, iOS, and to a lesser extent, 3DS are getting. These bite-sized offerings are more in line with Nintendo's philosophy anyway, and they seem to already be testing this approach with their Web Framework. There was also that product (can't remember who made it) that could quickly recompile any iOS game to run on Wii U. Sure, we will still get our Zeldas, but the scale of game Nintendo has found more recent success in ranges from your Nintendogs/Brain Ages to your Luigi's Mansion/NSMBs. This is not a bad thing. They should stick to what they are good at and what they enjoy creating, even though it may not be in line with the desires of some on this board.
Nintendo's home consoles are already more than halfway to where I am suggesting they go. They are already making small, low TDP, less powerful devices. It can be argued that Wii U is failing in part because Nintendo could not commit to one direction. It tried to be all things to all people - a hardcore and casual box - and it's just not working.
As Z0m3Ie has pointed out, there are already indicators that Nintendo are pursuing a unified approach to handheld/console development. Honestly, with the way mobile technology is advancing, as gamers, we really would not stand to lose anything that we already have with this approach. Perhaps we won't be seeing a Zelda that eclipses the
next gen Elder Scrolls games for quite some time, but we should be able to get something at Skyrim's level if Nintendo chooses to develop it.
This new info from Shin'en is interesting as well. They're shading system in the launch Nano Assault Neo is already exceeding what I've seen in XBLA games and they state they can get 30%-40% more performance just by optimizing the pipelines. We aren't even getting into other optimizations. This means they were just wasting shading before and still beating the 360.
This throws more weight behind the probability that the console has more than 160 shaders for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the critical pointed for explaining the improved shading in some Wii U games over their 360 counterparts that the 360 wasn't using all 240 in said games, but that the Wii U was some how getting near full efficiency out of its 160? This Shin'en comment just blows that out of the water. Fromo what I'm garnering from not only them, but Miyamoto's recent comment as well, getting full efficiency out of the Wii U's shaders wasn't even possible at launch and still doesn't seem to be likely.
In fact, I think most of the Wii U's functionality isn't even usable. All of these performance increasing updates are making that seem more and more likely. They even announced that the next big update is going to add functionality.
On another note, aren't Xenos's 240 shaders stored in 5 ALU's?
I don't think those comments support either case for the number of ALUs in Latte. It's comparing apples to oranges. To make any fair comparison, we'd have to compare the same code running on Wii U and 360 and ensure that ALUs are the only thing affecting performance. Even in a case where you are comparing shader intensive operations, they obviously need access to memory in order to do their work, so it's just not something you can easily isolate.
Regardless, it's debatable whether Wii U is beating 360 in anything related to shading. Something that I discovered recently, however, is that Xenos only has a theoretical max of 216 GFLOPS/s. Not 240. Unlike the VLIW5 in Latte, Xenos uses a Vec4+scalar architecture, and that scalar unit can only perform one FLOP per cycle, not 2. This is straight from AMD's engineers. The 240 GFLOPs seems to be a popular misconception.
Besides that however, I've found some indications that Latte may be able to push the same amount of GPU threads as Xenos (4096) even taking for granted a lower ALU count. More threads = more for the GPU to work on in those wasted cycles from the typical high latency graphics tasks.
Anyway, the greatest evidence for 160 shaders is the die shot itself. We can see the register banks and I have no doubts on the identification of 8 TMUs, which also points to that number of shaders. Unless someone can come up with a really good alternate explanation for the similarities between the L1s/TMUs in Brazos/Llano and Latte's S/T blocks, I don't think there's much left to be argued.
Fourth Storm, Your idea is close to mine except for one big difference.
Just some quick facts:
1. Iwata already announced that they are making 1 architecture going forward and that their handheld and console hardware teams are now together.
2. Iwata stated that they are not making a hybrid device, but in fact possibly expanding their platforms to add a 3rd and possibly more devices once they are all under 1 architecture.
3. This team is already working on their next handheld and console as we speak.
4. Nintendo has their developers creating tools for Wii U's GPU and CPU architecture, building 3rd party engines to run on Wii U specifically (Unity for instance) and building tools to easily port games designed for mobile devices to Wii U.
Having said all of that, the difference between what you think and what I think is that they won't be abandoning Wii U's Architecture going forward. They will almost definitely use a more modern GPU again, with more power for their console. Almost certainly target sub 50watt device again, (which at 20nm or less is a significant upgrade from Wii U)
Now let me talk about what I think they will do with their next hardware cycle, they will likely start with
DS4:
The current handheld doesn't support important 3rd party engines like Unity and will likely be replaced ~2016 with the relatively simple to implement Wii U hardware though it will not be a 1:1 transition most likely. You might see them drop the clock speed back down to 1GHz tricore cpu with 400MHz GPU. System ram might be 3DS's F-RAM(?) for backwards compatibility as they will likely have the 3DS chip on board in an powered down state. (this was still enough to show off the bird demo at e3 2011 on the show room floor @ 720p and 30fps) I think they will go for 480p screen on the bottom and 540p 3D screen on the top, because they are both very standard resolutions and this device would be plenty powerful enough to handle it. (BTW it would be either 256gflops or 128gflops depending on if Wii U's GPU has 320 or 160 ALUs, not that this matters much)
Wii U's successor:
The Wii U would be replaced by a successor a year after DS4 comes onto the market, it is likely what the hardware team is focused on and is already securing the design. I personally think it will be roughly ~4x Wii U, since they are the same basic architecture (Though likely more modern "DX 11.2 or DX 12 or whatever AMD is currently working on for HD 9000 series+)
This might sound a bit too good for Nintendo, but being realistic lets look at the specs: 1280 ALUs (similar to PS4, though more here) or 640 ALUs (if 160ALUs is right for Wii U) this puts the console at 2.56 TFLOPs or 1.28TFLOPs in ~2017 with a more modern GPU, you'd also likely only see the CPU increase to 6 cores but the clock speed could be at 1.6GHz or more, I think this CPU would likely be very similar to Wii U's espresso, meaning 4MBs L2 cache, 1.5 for just the main core and .5 for all remaining cores. edram might not change on the GPU side as 32MB is still enough for 1080p and it is expensive. 8GB of DDR4 memory is also probably where they will end up.
I don't think they will change the controller much, it will still likely have a screen on it but they might add support for 4 of them, as well as possibly making them sleeker. It could have extra functionality like an outward facing camera to add AR elements, maybe built in vitality sensor or it might have a good enough camera to do this with the one pointing at your face. Hopefully a longer wireless range to encompass the house as well.
New hardware?:
This new hardware cycle may see Nintendo expand into new platforms, maybe we will see Virtual Boy 2 or whatever you'll want to call it, which could receive it's signal similarly to the gamepad, and allow you to play from a comfortable distance with the wiimote and nunchuk (which will hopefully also see improvement to refine their orientation sensors)
Another device that would be a new platform for Nintendo could be either some sort of eye wear instead of the VB2 or a phone like device. The way I imagine this device is a rectangle with 2 shoulder buttons on one side and a + where you'd find the little Samsung or Apple button at the bottom of a phone. This would obviously work as a d-pad and allow it to also function as the phone's recall button, which would basically be a 2 stage digital click, with the 2nd click on a rocker to indicate direction. It would also come with a stylus and hopefully NinjaGaiden DS sequel will come. This device would be similar to the DS4 and might actually have the same hardware inside of it, the problem here is obviously if Nintendo can partner with a phone manufacture or at least implement the proper antenna for such a device. I am just taking a wild shot in the dark, and obviously all specs are just what I figure they will need going forward for these devices.
Edit: Obvious benefit of using the Wii U architecture going forward, is that it is ready when they launch DS4, Wii U's successor and any other device they come up with, they could extend the Wii U's life through DS4. They could let 3rd parties target all Nintendo platforms with a single game / code / assets (which would be DS4's as the lowest point in their power envelope) Meanwhile Nintendo would still release handheld titles and console titles separately, but they would come much faster. Something like Mario Kart could be released as 1 title, same with the next smash but they could also release a game for the handheld as well as a game for the console 6 months to a year before or after it. Something as different as OoT to Majora's Mask, or the 2 yoshi's island games in development right now, the difference is Nintendo would only need to use 1 team and instead of creating DLC for the next 6 months to a year, they simply release a new game for the other platform. This staggered delivery would allow owners to avoid droughts far more often, not have a drought upfront and also give 3rd parties a massive user base in this cycle that could easily see anywhere from 100-250 million units of hardware.
Interesting take. I go back and forth myself on whether Nintendo will choose to continue the Wii U architecture into its handheld line or just reboot everything. Alot of people say it's obvious to shrink Wii U into a tablet, but they were saying that about the Gamecube back in the day too, and we never got it. Alot of it rests on 2 factors.
1)Will Iwata still be running the show a few years from now. He may not resign next year, but how long can he continue at this rate? They will likely return to profitability but their market share and value will remain low. A new regime would probably be more likely to shake things up and go with different hardware partners.
2)How well will the architecture really shrink down and is it worth it when ARM/Imagination/Nvidia are releasing great products tailored to that space already? I'm thinking of the PPC cores in particular. If it's possible to get them small/cool enough, will Nintendo be able to get AMD and IBM to play nice and develop a SoC? Is Renesas up to the task (they'd probably design it if they're still around in a few years and then outsource manufacturing to TSMC, but isn't IBM eDRAM SOI?) Of course, by that time, 3D stacking with TSVs will likely also be an option.
As for the hardware design itself, I am also a bit torn. They'll almost certainly nix the Gamepad as a focus, though. It's way too pricey, it's not catching on with consumers, and even Nintendo seem to be short on ideas for the thing. That's not to say that their home console, I'll call it the microconsole, won't be able to interact with your old Gamepad, however. They could also have it so that the next DS or the hypothetical tablet can be used as a substitute, but it's not going to be the distinguishing feature and it's not going to be in every box.
On the handheld front is where things get a bit more difficult to sort out. Do they continue the dual screen approach? Let's look at some pros and cons.
Pros:
- Having the second screen is convenient and a great place for maps and inventory. Allows for the occasional innovative experience not possible on a single touch screen.
- The DS has become damn near iconic in the handheld space over the last 9 years. They stand to lose a bit of their identity in a sea of mobile devices if they ditch the setup.
Cons:
- 2 screens are expensive and many core gamers would undoubtedly prefer one high quality screen.
- The gap between the screens makes certain dual screen games difficult.
- It would make compatibility of software between the new DS and a theoretical single screen console a bit hairier.
- There are relatively few games which really utilize both screens in a satisfying fashion.
Yeah, it's a tough call to make. Despite the cons, I can see them sticking with the trusty DS design. What will probably end up happening, though, is that they'll nix the 3D effect, expand the bottom screen to 16:9 and make that the primary gameplay screen once again.
If we are going to ponder how such software would be compatible with a console, there are a few options. Since most games use the second screen as a map or inventory, they could simply use a button like select in the console version to bring this screen up (maybe have a button with the dual rectangle DS icon on it). In the rare occasion that the second screen is truly vital, they'd just have to stick something on the box which says you need a Gamepad, tablet, DS, whatever to play it on the console. I think this would be very rare however, as they would probably just design their software so that this is not an issue. Rather, games could be "enhanced" by a second screen as we are seeing with Smart Glass - additional functionality but nothing truly essential to the game.
Obviously, there is a bit of optimization that goes along with this approach, but in the grand scheme of things, the work put in is probably much less. The old way is to simply have whole teams devoted to NSMB2/NSMBU, SM3DL/SM3DW, DKCRWii/DKCR3D, MK7/MK8, etc. In this approach, you'd have a common architecture, one team, and a bit more optimization for one game. You sell to a larger installed base, and have more time/manpower to pump out quality DLC and sequels that you can then also sell to that larger installed base.
Man, I wrote alot. Got inspired by that Nintendo 3rd party thread. haha. Unfortunately, I can't really think of anything to add that hasn't already been said by the many minds at work over there.
