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Rumor: Switch developer information leaked. Reveals A TON incl. hardware specs
- Thread starter Dystify
- Start date
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Yeah. I'm hoping it's something like that--docked enhancements being worried about later in the process. I'm kinda worried it'll just end up the next "placeholder textures", though.
The thing about Breath of the Wild (sticking with it since its 900p docked is official and definitely not a matter of early development) is that with 250% the GPU speed it is only pushing 156% the pixels. It's hard to see how it's actually taking advantage of the full docked increase. Even moreso, it's hard to imagine a game that can't increase at all from 720p. If there's a bottleneck somewhere preventing these games from reaching 1080p, it makes me wonder if they could do something else with the increased GPU speed in an area unrelated to that bottleneck.
But all of this might be much easier to understand even one month from now.
Exactly.
Yeah I agree with you, Nintendo are certainly not free of blame. The way they deal with certain things, and their persistent stubbornness on doing things their own way is beginning to annoy me.
Certain things you mention like battery life, I don't really see much blame on Nintendo as there's only so much they can do, and it's not as though the quoted battery life is much worse than any other comparable device. Whether it's a gaming laptop, or a tablet, the battery will drain in a few hours if using an application that puts a massive load on the cpu and gpu.
I'm in agreement about not knowing things though, I'd have expected to know what U.I looks like from Nintendo themselves, with a demonstration of features. I know some people have mentioned a Nintendo direct but we shouldn't be having that a week before launch, or 3 weeks before launch relying on a "leak" to see pictures of it. Surely they should be showing that long before to get consumers excited and so they know what they're getting.
With regards to games, and what we should expect, well I'm quite pessimistic. All I'm expecting is another Nintendo box with indie support. We've been here before with the promise of third party support. I can't see it being much of an improvement over the Wii U in terms of getting your typical AAA multi-platform releases.
The best case scenario (and it's not a bad thing) is the switch will be a Nintendo box with a thriving indie community. Some of my fave games have been from indie developers, Alienation, Rocket League, Resogun, Inside, Transistor etc So if Nintendo manage to get games of that calibre (obviously won't get the PS4 exclusives) I'll be happy.
But that's kinda what I'm trying to say.I have seen no difference when games are docked compared to portable and I don't think they are ever going to take advantage of any free resources they might have. I think Nintendos goal is to ensure that games are EXACTLY the same experience regardless of how you play (minus the output resolution of course)
And it seems as though certain developers are reluctant to put the work in to port their games onto the switch in the first place, so I can't see them then putting more development time in docked only improvements.
But ultimately as you say:
Pretty amazing that there will be a whole new story for Zelda this year, 2 Zelda games (like oot and majora's mask (to some extent anyways)
Skittzo0413
Member
It also strikes me as very odd that the July devkits apparently had no clock speed restrictions (according to the chart in the OP) meaning 3x A57s at 2GHz and 256 CUDA cores at 1GHz, and then somehow the October devkits were stronger despite far lower clock speeds (according to Eurogamer).
Unless there were clock speed restrictions but for some reason they were not detailed in the chart like every other restriction was...
Oh holy crap I thought that was a joke before checking the gaming forum haha
It says TBD for the GPU, so I'd assume the clock speeds were not entirely known yet, if the foxconn leak didn't exist, I'd suggest that the 768mhz speed was given with final hardware, but that doesn't seem likely in light of the foxconn leak and the timing of Eurogamer's information being before the foxconn leak. I'd suggest that the developer they were talking to weeks after the devkit went live (so sometime in august) would have been updated by Nintendo on the clockspeeds and Eurogamer sat on the information for a few months and gave us the article and video on december 6th a day or two after Venture beat's article.
16nm IMO seems almost unavoidable given Foxconn's clocks running for 8 days, and that leads me to believe that this was the final configuration, but maybe for some completely unexplained reason, Nintendo ran only a single A57 core at 1.78ghz (about the same power consumption as the 1GHz 4 core A57 cpu) for 8 days... This doesn't line up with a stress test and 2 cores is nearly double the power consumption, so I don't see this being useful for Gamecube VC testing, especially a vulkan benchmark.
mitchman
Gold Member
Every UHD TV has had VP9 decoding in hardware from the 2015 models and up. It's a requirement to get youtube videos in UHD.
See above. Pretty much all embedded chipsets for video decoding also supports VP9 now.
Additionally, Xbox One S has HEVC support in hardware (needed for UHD Blu-ray) and likely also Netflix. Same with the PS4 Pro.
Polygonal_Sprite
Member
Shitting on new toy makes them feel justified about owning their old toy (a lot of people can't afford / aren't allowed more than one toy). You can even see it happening in PS4 Pro and Scorpio threads now with owners of the base hardware getting extremely snarky and defensive about why they won't be upgrading.
Memory bandwidth must be the bottleneck
That still doesn't explain Mario Kart 8 and Fast, or a PS4 port, running in 1080p when docked.
Yeah, we just don't know final hardware, specs wise, there is nothing new here about july devkits. There is a lot of other info here though.
What PS4 port? DQH?
Polygonal_Sprite
Member
In Fast Racing's case it's dynamic 720p/30fps to dynamic 1080p/60fps with better visuals in 4 player mode when docked. That alone indicates a significant leap over Wii U specs.
Obviously a few posters are just going to be trolls, but it's quite possible to be interested in the business side of the Switch even if you don't have any interest in buying one. After all, that's the entire reason why sales threads exist on this forum. The Switch is going to be a new product trying to operate in a new niche so rampant speculation was always going to be a part of the discussion.
frankie_baby
Member
Guessing he means Snake pass
Could be steep too, not sure the resolution, but if it is 720p undocked, it could be 1080p docked.
No i mean SnakePass, we don't currently know at what resolution the other suggested titles will run.
Yeah I've noticed that, not sure why it bothers them as it doesn't effect them at all. The fear before launch that the PS4 pro would result in a worse experience for original PS4 owners hasn't really transpired. If anything I'd say it's more that the PS4 Pro hasn't really been the revelation some thought it might have been in terms of benefits it offers in most games.
Absolutely, and I can understand those with an interest or curiosity in new hardware even if they're not necessarily planning on buying it.
But I guess my post was aimed at those that make it obvious what their agenda is. Anyway I won't take the thread off-topic anymore, it's not a new phenomenon and trolls have been around for a very long time and easily ignored I guess.
Buttonbasher
Member
Can't tell if you're serious or not.
Don't mind me, I'm a big zelda fan and until this announcement, I thought breath of the wild would be the last Zelda story I'll play for another couple years, now they are announcing an original story at the end of the year. $20 is fine for how big of a fan I am, but them hiding hard mode behind a pay wall is something I don't like. Though most hard modes are just extra damage or extra health for enemies.
The Futurist
Member
What exactly is being discussed here?
We know this thing isn't as powerful as a ps4 or xbox one.
You guys are trying to figure out exactly how much less powerful than the other consoles it is?
Some arguing that it doesn't come close and other arguing that it's close?
I really hope people don't expect this thing to stand up in terms of third parties. I don't see this thing getting most if any major third party games.
If this thing was launching with the current games being released like For Honor, Ghost Recon, Sniper Elite, or Mass Effect, we might have a reason to be optimistic about hardware power.
Sure you can argue that developers didn't have enough time to port those games, or give whatever reasons you want, but I don't see this situation changing. It didn't for the Wii and it didn't for the Wii U. This time will be no different.
We know this thing isn't as powerful as a ps4 or xbox one.
You guys are trying to figure out exactly how much less powerful than the other consoles it is?
Some arguing that it doesn't come close and other arguing that it's close?
I really hope people don't expect this thing to stand up in terms of third parties. I don't see this thing getting most if any major third party games.
If this thing was launching with the current games being released like For Honor, Ghost Recon, Sniper Elite, or Mass Effect, we might have a reason to be optimistic about hardware power.
Sure you can argue that developers didn't have enough time to port those games, or give whatever reasons you want, but I don't see this situation changing. It didn't for the Wii and it didn't for the Wii U. This time will be no different.
Skittzo0413
Member
The Wii U actually launched with pretty much all the big AAA games that came out that fall, so that's not the best comparison to make.
And the Switch -> PS4 gap is far, far, far lower than the Wii -> PS3 gap so I certainly expect AAA games if this takes off like the Wii did.
I don't think people should expect western third party developers to bring all their games over.
I do think most studios are doing a wait and see, this device is actually more powerful than most even dare to think, for instance it is much faster than the GPD Win handheld, but don't expect it to get Witcher 3 or 4. If it sells really well though, unlike Wii, games can be ported to it because it is using the same development pipelines any other modern console uses, and all major 3rd party engines support 64bit ARM processors. (frostbyte, UE4, Unity, ect)
The Futurist
Member
Well based on that first part being true, what is the excuse for the switch? There are plenty of third party games coming out right now.
Also not sure why you are comparing the Wii to the PS3 when the Wii U versions of the multiplatform games were almost always inferior to the 360/ps3 versions. The Wii U competed on power with the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
You're really optimistic about how close the Switch is to the PS4 in terms of power. Not sure where that optimism is coming from.
Exactly, and it made no difference at all.
We're talking big games too, Assassins Creed, Fifa, Mass Effect, Call of Duty. So I don't think the solution to massive success is having all the multi-platform games that are on other consoles.
Some would argue that the versions were worse, but that wasn't true for all of them, and honestly even if the Switch was as powerful as the other consoles, and had EXACTLY the same versions of multi-platform games it still wouldn't make much difference.
Nintendo have a reputation for gimmicks, and "kiddy games" to the average joe, that isn't going to change overnight. Joe blogs isn't going to buy a Nintendo console to play Ultimate team and camp in the corner trying to rack up crazy k/d ratios in Call of Duty. It's just not the cool thing to do, and besides all his friends own ps4 or Xbox. I know some people might shoot me down for overstating reputation, and image, but there's a reason a lot of people might want an Apple logo on their devices for example.
I think we're at the stage of "it is, what it is". The same way a brand Like Xbox will just never do well in certain countries, Nintendo will never be what some people want their hardware to be.
I would still love a traditional console that was home to equal versions of AAA multi-platform games as it would please my own desires, but I find where things become ridiculous is when people act disappointed that the Switch (a portable device) is not equal to a PS4 with extremely long battery life. The technology just isn't there at this point, and certainly wouldn't be cheap.
Graphics Horse
Member
They presumably have the power to do a 1080p direct port of the 720p version, but have instead decided to compromise with improved LOD. So things like billboard trees and shrines might have looked more obvious at 1080p so swap them with proper geometry earlier, maybe the same for regular terrain.
For Splatoon's case I doubt it'll stay that way.
7DollarHagane
Banned
So what does this mean for power wise? I have heard that docked it should be just shy of Xbox one? That sounds great to me. Drop some shaders and shadows and draw distance and we could see ports of big games.
Skittzo0413
Member
Third parties are A) understandably doing a wait-and-see and B) only got devkits 6 or so months ago, so understandably can't port games that close to completion.
As for the power gap, I never said the Switch was at all close to the PS4. All I said was it's much closer to the PS4 than the Wii was to the PS3, in that it's not 20-30x weaker. It's more like 3-4x weaker overall. And supports all of the same modern engines that the PS4 supports, while the Wii didn't even support HD output.
Because the PS3 and 360 were the Wii's competitors... Games released on PS3 and 360 couldn't easily be ported to the Wii because it was so vastly underpowered. This isn't the case with the Switch because it's far closer in power to its competitors than the Wii was.
Buttonbasher
Member
I just think expecting it to be like Majora's Mask, or like full game like in scale and scope, is setting yourself up for disappointment.
The Futurist
Member
My issue isn't really with third parties.
I don't need a Nintendo console to play multiplatform games. Those can be played on the other consoles and on PC. It's fine.
My issue is the same weak hardware approach that Nintendo is set on.
People were crying about the Xbox One playing games in 900p when it launched almost 4 years ago. Do you remember what Ryse looked like for a launch title? Despite being very narrow in scope.
Why is it acceptable for Nintendo in 2017 to launch a console that plays games in 900p when docked? 720p handheld is fine. No problem. Not being able to render at 1080p when 4K TVs are the standard now is ridiculous.
I don't like this argument about art style and meaningless debates about how visual style can make up for pure pixels. Sure they can, but those are independent of each other. Give me that Zelda art style running smoothly at 1080p60 or even 900p60 or even 1080p30 if we have to.
They should have put more power in that dock if it was meant to be plugged into a TV.
I don't need a Nintendo console to play multiplatform games. Those can be played on the other consoles and on PC. It's fine.
My issue is the same weak hardware approach that Nintendo is set on.
People were crying about the Xbox One playing games in 900p when it launched almost 4 years ago. Do you remember what Ryse looked like for a launch title? Despite being very narrow in scope.
Why is it acceptable for Nintendo in 2017 to launch a console that plays games in 900p when docked? 720p handheld is fine. No problem. Not being able to render at 1080p when 4K TVs are the standard now is ridiculous.
I don't like this argument about art style and meaningless debates about how visual style can make up for pure pixels. Sure they can, but those are independent of each other. Give me that Zelda art style running smoothly at 1080p60 or even 900p60 or even 1080p30 if we have to.
They should have put more power in that dock if it was meant to be plugged into a TV.
casey_contra
Member
What this leak made me realize is how quickly I've adapted to the name "Switch."
NX who?
NX who?
Graphics Horse
Member
I still get momentarily confused every time I see an 'nx gamer:' thread, tbh.
AnkhWeasel
Member
I'm really into this font.
casey_contra
Member
Ah, same actually. I guess NX is still a part of me. Forever and always - like Revolution.
in what fucking world is 4K "standard"???????????
If (when) the Switch doesn't get the majority of AAA games, power isn't going to be the main reason for it. The bigger problems are the audience mismatch and the difficulty in selling digital AAA games.
I don't think it's going to be so easy to say that any more. Back in the Wii days the AAA publishers didn't care whether a game sold on the Wii or another platform - the value to them was about the same either way. Nowadays though digital sales are more important than physical ones by a fair margin, and it's going to be hard to sell full sized games on the Switch. Couple that with the audience mismatch problem - that the main AAA customer bases would either not get a Switch or would rather buy their multiplaform games on a different platform, and the big publishers might not even want to sell thier big games on the Switch.
showmethereceipt.gif
Not in mine, for sure. Unless I've been sleeping for a couple of years and still haven't realized
Astral Dog
Member
What does ths have to with the Switch leak?
People freaking out about a littly shitty dlc
The Futurist
Member
Every major TV manufacturer is focused on 4k displays. It's been since the last year or two.
Everything is 4K aside from budget models.
Go to any electronics store, or even to the site for any major TV manufacturer. There are more 4K models than 1080p models.
jenniferlawrence.gif
just because they are trying to sell you the most expensive tv it doesnt make it a standard
TheCongressman1
Member
Even if that was true, where's the content to support it? Gaming is certainly not 4k standard.
BRocknRolla
Member
Come on now... 4k TVs are just hitting general consumer prices. I'd bet their overall adoption rate at this point is in the single digit percentile. We don't even have graphics cards on high end pcs that can reliably run all modern games in 4k/60.
Whatever standard you want to hold Nintendo to, 4k is not a reasonable one.
I'm with ya. I've criticised quite a bit about the Switch. But that UI looks very slick and straightforward. Not an easy thing to get right.
They really should be showing it off officially by now though.
The Futurist
Member
You realize this isn't some random thing that can't be proven with a two second search.
Trying to be clever on the internet is fine, but it doesn't get you far when someone is pointing out something so obvious and easily verified.
For example, Samsung currently has 4 TV lines. Three of them are 4K, and one, their lowest end models are 1080.
Sony currently has 25 TVs on their site. 20 are 4K, 5 are 1080.
I wasn't saying that everything should output at 4k native. That insanity.
I was saying that not hitting 1080p in 2017 is not acceptable when a new resolution is already here.
I'm a rare breed of poster, I can get excited about something, and not be angry about it not living up to my expectations, they call me a Nintendo fan.
I don't think I'll get Majoras mask, but the game does seem to have a lot of things that could be used in an original story, I mean with the 100 year past not having nearly as many ruins, there is a lot that could be done.
All I really want is another story, for $20 it doesn't have to be quite as epic as botw or mm, if it can give me a solid 8 hours of game play, I'd be ecstatic.
It's actually funny because the adoption rate is not even 20%. I think it was 15% said by Sony by the end of 2016 in US.
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