Skittzo0413
Member
Is that just the cost of parts, or is that taking into account the smaller box, the shipping costs, reduction of heat, smaller fan needed, and suchlike?
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RUMOR: NX more powerful than PS4, Splatoon/Mario Maker ports in development
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Is that just the cost of parts, or is that taking into account the smaller box, the shipping costs, reduction of heat, smaller fan needed, and suchlike?
netgrimoire
Member
Not sure, but isn't there a fee for them to license/use a blu ray drive?
It's not just the drive, it would also eliminate the need to include a hard disc for gameinstalls - and potentially there could be room for patches/dlc on the SD cartridge.
It would also shrink the form factor, giving additional savings in shipping/packaging/storage. Same with the game media, since it would be a lot smaller than discs. The disadvantage is the cost of the media itself, and possibly production time (not sure about that last one).
So saving about 70-80 dollar.
That's not considering those, but even with all of that I don't see it being more than around $40. Aluminum and plastic are cheap, and the shipping costs wouldn't change as much as you'd think due to the controller and other things.
Only if they actually use Blu-Ray discs.
The only way that it saves that much is if you assume no HDD at all and only a small amount of flash storage. If Nintendo were to go this route, digital downloads would be the main focus from a marketing standpoint; thus, a large HDD would become more important, not less. Also, game media would cost significantly more. (I'm taking dollars)
Snake Submerges...
Skittzo0413
Member
As far as I know Nintendo uses a knock-off blu ray drive to get around paying that license, so there wouldn't be any savings from that.
64-128 gb flash storage. Want more? buy the NXDrive250 or NXDrive1000
Yeah, it's a special format close to blu-ray, developed by panasonic. It has it's own file layout etc compared to normal blu ray, so it can't be read by normal blu ray drives/pc's etc without custom firmware.
Skittzo0413
Member
I still think that's the best way forward for them. A large HDD only adds to the cost of the console, and assuming physical media is still around (which I very much assume) only a portion of the market would actually use the HDD to its max. Allowing any external HDD like they did with the Wii U was actually one of the areas which they are ahead of the curve with the rest of the industry. Marketing their own HDDs would be an even clearer message, and would be a pretty cheap source of some additional revenue.
Edit: So let's assume that removing the optical drive saves them somewhere around $20-$40 on the BOM, and sticking with a smallish HDD should hopefully save another $20-$30. That right there is another $40-$70 that can be used on the GPU while keeping the price to a max of $350, or hopefully $299. If the gimmick this time is pretty cheap like I think it is (I'm betting they learned their lesson from banking on a very brand new streaming technology) this console could certainly be a bit of a powerhouse, if that's the direction Nintendo wants to go in. Or, alternatively, they could sell it at something like $250 or maybe even lower if the specs aren't terribly cutting edge.
I'm not sure which situation would give them the better position in today's market, but I think several big things are going to change with this console, including lack of optical drive, which overall gives them more options on power and pricing.
I wouldn't call that massive by any stretch of the imagination. It's barely enough to have 720p Wii U graphics in 1080p with similar frame rate performance. At that point, they might as well just rebrand Wii U without the controller and with an overclock. The only "good" reason to go this route would be if the console does nothing more than run handheld games in HD.
Either way, don't set you expectations that low or you'll be disappointed by the price.It's safe to say that on-par with XBone for $299 is the baseline. Cheaper or faster is gravy.
IMO, they need to be easy to develop for and either slightly faster than XBone or slightly faster than PS4. Why those two places specifically? It would mean that third-party devs could just port over like-for-like PS4 or XBone settings with minimal time spent optimizing. If it's slightly weaker than XBone, for example, a lot of games will skip it even if they can run it because devs won't want to optimize for a 5th or 6th platform. So, it ha to be as simple as possible.
I was being facetious. Realistically I expect around what you said. XBO (I expect a bit less if the price suits Nintendo more) for about $250. $299 if they try and upset with some sort of "hook"
N64 Expansion Pack
Agree.
I have a WiiU at home without any extra HD and it goes just fine. I have NSMB, Rayman Legends and some VC/indy games on it. All the others I play from disc.
That doesn't make sense from a strategy perspective. I could see a driveless basic model perhaps to make it cheaper for parents, but with a focus on digital distribution it would be counterproductive to not offer a version with a built-in HDD. It's like Apple releasing their next phone without NFC or Touch ID to save money while still pushing Apple Pay, or Google releasing a Nexus without WiFi calling while continuing to push Project Fi.
I think that $250 is a bit too optimistic on price.
Leaked photos of the NX controller. Entire thing is a touchscreen.
Oooooh! That'd be intense!
Speaking of cost breakdowns, I found the images from the "sources" NX thread a while back (from posts 4459 and 4515):
3DS and DSi
iPhone 6S Plus
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge
These were found trying to figure out handheld/controller-related things. I don't know if similar charts exist for consoles, but they are pretty interesting seeing what different things actually account for! (Sadly, no disk drive!)
KratosEnergyDrink
Member
...
Either way, don't set you expectations that low or you'll be disappointed by the price.
IMO, they need to be easy to develop for and either slightly faster than XBone or slightly faster than PS4. Why those two places specifically? It would mean that third-party devs could just port over like-for-like PS4 or XBone settings with minimal time spent optimizing. If it's slightly weaker than XBone, for example, a lot of games will skip it even if they can run it because devs won't want to optimize for a 5th or 6th platform. So, it ha to be as simple as possible.
Even the price of the XOne is about 299$. So if NX uses cartridges (like rumored) Nintendo could save money (no br-drive, no need for much internal hd memory, smaller case). So if Nintendo targets a 300$ dollar price it could have more power than PS4/XOne easily. But perhaps Nintendo targets a lower price or some other features of the console are costly.
I really hope Nintendo drops blu-ray disc as a medium. This tech is old and slow and today it is only a lame way to transport the gaming data to the buyer and games need a HD installation anyway. Even some of the high profile Wii U games need a kind of installation (and other games would had benefited from that).
UnemployedVillain
Member
The Wii U was 352GFLOPS
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
64 gigs wouldn't even be big enough for ONE of many of today's AAA games post install and patches.
Blops 3 needs like 55 gigs of space for example.
That's where the NXDrive1000 comes in. 99$ and you add 1TB
Or you can use any external USB3 disk you choose.
Like I said, on my 32GB WiiU I have 2 retail games installed, 5-6 indy games and 8 VC games + patches and DLC for smash, mario kart, bayo/bayo2, wind waker, captain toad and nintendoland.
A lot of people can, some people can't. Provide good cost-efficient scenario's for both.
That would be just a kick in the balls. People can't survive on 64-128GB. And fuck trying to palm off a console with no storage like they did with Wii U. That PoS was the price of a PS4 when you added some actual storage.
Dark Cloud
Member
Well well well Gamexplain put their video up of Emily Rodgers denying 10ks rumors. I knew it was coming.
Btw they said they're on TeamEmily! Lol
Btw they said they're on TeamEmily! Lol
This is what i speculated to be a possibillity maybe 10 pages back.
More like Fiji with added polaris features. Such as the improved tesselator and the Primitive Discard Accelerator... that could both result in a sizable performance boost.
10k can now change his name to 15m
inutes of fame
Skittzo0413
Member
Just a minor point- I don't think cartridges have been actually rumored at this point, only speculated upon. The patent application for the disc driveless console didn't mention anything about cartridges if I remember correctly, only a small bit about an SD card slot.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
No you literally wouldn't have space at all on the 64 gig model. It literally wouldn't be able to run some titles cause you have to install everything these days.
B
bomb
Unconfirmed Member
Honestly, How can she even know that much? She was basically a common employee.
Skittzo0413
Member
One of the major arguments for cartridges over optical is that you don't HAVE to install anything. It wouldn't make any sense to mandate installs using cartridges, since the cartridge being inserted is essentially the same thing as the game being installed.
To be clear: in my scenario Nintendo would use cartridges based on SD technology. So game installs and DLC/patches would all be on the cartridge.
No installing >> insert cartridge >> play. The only way you have to install if you buy the game digital, since SD provides way better speeds than blu ray (which actually sucks as a game media nowadays - like you said: you have to install everything anyways).
Honestly, why wouldn't you be Team Emily lol. She's proven herself since her mishaps 4-5 years ago.
There are people who like to have everything digital tho.
not me
Oh yeah, devs like to put out 10GB+ day-1 patches sometimes.
Rösti did some great research again: http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1208984&page=100000#footer
My mind is hazy but I can't recall it being 352. I know the WUSTS were not sure for some time, and I thought that when I looked in the developer docs it was 176.
Is that different from the Wii U?
Mithos
Member
These kinda specs (less then or barely/just hitting XBO/PS4 specs) would be borderline not acceptable to me though, unless of cause €150.
I am so fixated on this patent that anything less will be a bummer.
Skittzo0413
Member
Right but in this hypothetical Nintendo would be offering a basic plug and play console at a cheaper cost, while potentially using the HDD savings on better GPU/CPU/RAM, while people who want to go all digital can buy the NX 1TB drive for, maybe something like $99, I really have no clue.
But what this does is it gives the consumer the option to go physical and pay less or digital and pay a bit more, which doesn't place the cost burden of a large HDD on EVERY consumer as the other consoles are doing now.
Seems like a win for everyone if it allows the NX itself to be either cheaper or more powerful (or maybe even both!). Obviously Nintendo would need to be clear with their marketing but that's true about pretty much every aspect of the NX, and I don't have much faith in that.
Sure, if SKU 1 is a base NX with 128GB or 256GB storage for $200. Then The Elite is a base + SCD + 1TB drive for $350. That'd be OK.
Dark Cloud
Member
I would say she probably has good trustworthy insiders.
I definitely give her more benefit of the doubt. She said the system has good specs. That sounds great to me. She didn't deny Luigis Mansion 3 which is a good thing too.
I see what you mean, but it would still be benefitial to people who like to buy their games digital.
It would be more expensive for the digital guys to buy the NX, which maybe they don't want to pay a premium for.
Base NX console - 299,- (no hdd)
1TB drive - 99,-
= 399,-
I don't think it is a good idea to make the console more expensive for digital only people.
This all sounds nice, but unless the cards are pretty expensive they'll be slower than a SATA HDD and way slower than an SSD. The cards would also need to be huge if th're going to hold space for DLC as well, AND they have to be rewritable (on 3DS, DLC and patches are stored on the system/SD card, not the game card). We'd be looking at $70-80 games. Nintendo's primary source of income is software, not hardware. Cutting software revenue to boost hardware revenue doesn't make any sense at all. If they drop the optical drive, storage will see in increase in significance, not a reduction.
Pretty much every retail XB1 game installs on your HD and downloads huge patches. No option to run from the disc. I think PS4 is similar, but I don't own that console.
I would suspect third parties would want to do the same thing on the NX. You'd have to make the NX version of a third party game significantly different to get it to run off the disc drive.
A SD card or cart with decent speeds is going to be expensive.
- not every cart has to be 64gb
- 64gb costs 3$ in bulk. Nintendo could make sure the cost for this is included in the license fee
- cartridges actually lower the cost of stocking shipping. There's a great post about this over here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=192728798&postcount=557
That's just not true. Go and check on alibaba, I'm sure nintendo can get better quality/rates than me.
R
Rösti
Unconfirmed Member
Correct.
Well WiiU discs are 25GB so I think 32 is more reasonable.
Anyway you can buy 32GB carts as a CONSUMER for $6 a pop. A semi-custom solution (ie 3DS carts) to keep cost down coupled with bulk orders I wouldn't be surprised to see it be 1/2 or even 1/4 of that for Nintendo.
People need to remember that Nintendo 64's old "prohibitively expensive carts" (which were a completely different technology) were as high as $55 a cart for dev's. Mass producing carts for even $6 a pop is way way way underneath that level.
How much do 128GB cards cost? Some games are bigger than 64GB nowadays.
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