-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
What we know so far about the Nintendo NX with sources
- Thread starter Hero of Legend
- Start date
- Status
Hype cometh.
He is definitely a cut above some of the 'drive-by' rumor people we see here on Gaf every so often who have 1 rumor to share with no backing, never to be heard from again.
Yeah early on I was expecting it to be more powerful than PS4, or at least what Wii U is to PS360. Gaf is pulling me down to earth though with all this 'could be less powerful than Xbone' stuff.
Just show me 3D Mario Nintendo, and all this power speculation stuff will melt away.
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
It still doesn't matter.
The key is to get gamers/consumers to BUY these third party games on a Nintendo console.
That's Nintendo's biggest hurdle.
Hero of Legend
Member
Question Trev, you say your Final Fantasy NX ports source had been right about rumors before. Can you mention which ones and link to them?
Obliterator
Member
Very true. If Nintendo are really set on staying in the hardware industry they need robust online, good account management, etc. Its a big hurdle especially with how they've designed systems in the past and their stubbornness to stick to their ways.
Its a major uphill battle and I hope the best for them
Übermatik;195684323 said:
Well the one who made the retort has a credible history, and has hinted in the past that the NX was going the cheaper route (catering to indies, mobile games and Nintendo first party games) with a $199-250 price tag.
I'll put it this way.
The veteran insiders from past Nintendo threads have leaned more towards the side of the NX being weaker than the laptop twins but with a better hook than the gamepad, and a better price point, aiming to have a consistent flow of games that can be supported by Nintendo and indies alone.
The newer insiders who don't have as large of a track record or have a smaller audience somehow get these big scoops, and all lean towards the NX being more powerful than the laptop twins and getting third party support. Nintendo fan pipe dreams being realized basically.
As much as I want and ask for Nintendo to go back to the gamecube days of competing in the spec wars and being powerful enough to run the latest engines and AAA games, I have come to accept the fact that Nintendo just isn't doing that anymore.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
The E3 third party developer testimonials montage is going to be even sweeter this time.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
Nintendo would be stupid if they talked substantially about third parties like they did last time. They made themselves look like complete dummies in hindsight.
Obliterator
Member
So, let me get this straight:
Rumor: Nintendo NX probably maybe perhaps not as powerful as Xbox One, says someone somewhere.
Gaf: "I knew it, Nintendo never learns, worst console ever, Nintendo doomed!"
Rumor: Nintendo NX maybe more powerful than PS4, says guy with some previous good sources.
Gaf: "Hahahahahaha, yeah, right, get out fanboy!"
All we are missing is "Gaming website": Nintendo NX is probably a console and may play games from optical and/or internal medium
Gaf: "MEGATON REVELATION!"
Rumor: Nintendo NX probably maybe perhaps not as powerful as Xbox One, says someone somewhere.
Gaf: "I knew it, Nintendo never learns, worst console ever, Nintendo doomed!"
Rumor: Nintendo NX maybe more powerful than PS4, says guy with some previous good sources.
Gaf: "Hahahahahaha, yeah, right, get out fanboy!"
All we are missing is "Gaming website": Nintendo NX is probably a console and may play games from optical and/or internal medium
Gaf: "MEGATON REVELATION!"
Bethesda, EA, 2k, Take-Two!!!!!
*seven months later*
GTA V Armored Edition
Fallout 4 Gold Edition
NBA 2k16 with 2k15 engine
Borderlands Handsome collection (ported from Vita code)
Nintendo has made themselves look like fools the entire E3 era from E3 2011 to now.
See, Nintendo doesn't think they are in the same industry as the laptop twins and isn't competing with them. They're not trying to win, they're trying to be profitable and make money. Even when the gamecube came last place it was profitable from day one and made more money for them than the Xbox did for Microsoft.
Of course I'm sure with the NX they're aiming for a lot more units to be sold (80+ million of the handheld and console combined at minimum).
Either way it's time for Nintendo to shit or get off the pot.
Don't do this. Please.
Fourth Storm
Member
Obliterator
Member
Yeah I get that, its just they will not move many home console units at all with that strategy. Xbox, Playstation, and PC all have indies and GameCube and Wii U show how small Nintendo's "core market" actually is. Which if they plan on going super streamlined and cheap it likely doesn't matter too much how many they sell.
NX will probably have a differentiating factor (gimmick) and be cheaper than XB1/PS4. I agree that simply offering a less powerful console would be a losing strategy (unless it's really, really cheap).
Colonel Mustard
Banned
Uh, Wii U is in the same ballpark (and not barely, lmao, but in the highest end of it) as PS360 because of many reasons that were discussed so many times that i really didn't think we had to go through that again in 2016.
1) the Wii U gamepad was very expensive, probably way more than anything they can come up with this time (even free form display, which we don't even know IF they'll really use, what kind of display it would be or how expensive its "variants" can be).
2) they chose to have a lag-free controller with a screen on it, Wii native BC, the lowest power consumption possible AND the smallest box possible, and designed the entire hardware around these 4 (dumb) guidelines. That means they had to go with extremely customized hardware, produced by 4 different manufacturers, and i don't have to tell you how much these things (PLUS the gamepad itself) raised costs, but i'll do it anyway: the Wii U was sold for 350$ AT LOSS. None of these things are going to return this time, except maybe for a screen in the controller (except this time would probably be smaller, and they don't have to develop the streaming tech again). Did they talk about low power consumption again? Yes. But even 50-70W fits that description, it doesn't need to be a laughable 33W again (and the console you're proposing would probably be close to half that anyway).
3) even if they used semi-custom hardware and ditched the gamepad idea, do you HONESTLY believe that they had the teams to go from GC-Wii development to almost-ps4-xbone-current PCs? Have you already forgotten how software droughts plagued the entire Wii U generation? The countless statements about them underestimating the kind of manpower HD development required? Or that the Wii U's GPU was the first time they used programmable shaders, because they used TEV UNITS before that? They still went for a massive jump compared to their previous console. They started getting used to HD development, expanded their teams etc, but they got there gradually. Yes, they made a lot of stupid mistakes in the process, but thinking they could just make a 100x jump in horsepower compared to the previous gen and call it a day is just asinine.
This time we have very good reasons to believe they went with a semi-custom AMD APU, they unified their development teams and are used to HD development (and modern GPUs in general). Again, i don't have to tell you how different this is from the start of the Wii U era, right?
And like i said countless times, i still expect the NX to be slower than the Xbox One, and i explained why, but you're just making baseless assumptions "because Nintendo". I just think you got burned way too much by the Wii U speculation and how the console turned out to be, and now you're shooting for lower than the lowest specs possible to prevent that from happening again.
And who knows, maybe at the end of the day they'll really go with the laughably shitty hardware you're proposing, and that not even Kimishima would buy for his grankids, but we don't have anything at the moment that gives credit to that line of thinking, in fact i find it just as delusional as people who think that the NX will be way more powerful than PS4 and Xbox One combined.
I'm tempted to go watch that again.
wild wild rice
Member
Agreed.
I recall Tamaki walking that back and saying he was just told that Nintendo doesn't set out only to compete with the other consoles on power and that they weren't making the NX intentionally weak.
The first part of that is something Iwata said for years.
nckillthegrimace
Member
If I'm remembering correctly, it's not exactly the best of the best. And remember Ken Levine? Will he just say whatever anyone wants if it's during a press conference?
Terrified to see who they scrape together this time.
Cheap is going to be for the handheld (low barrier, more approachable for many of the casual audience, etc). I can't see them actually launching a cheap console, that basically gives it zero differentiation from ANYTHING on the market, including their own handheld.
Not even Nintendo would launch their console at a price match (or even within 50$) with their own alternative hardware. This is not only stupid, its illogical.
The DS launched at 150$USD, the Wii (a pair of gamecubes) launched at 250$.
Well we know some western pubs, one of two major ones, didn't have dev kits up until US thanksgiving.
We know Square has some since they "announced" all those DQ games.
We know about "industry leading chips".
We know they blatantly aren't gimping it.
But it's too vague to put a label on how powerful it is or if third parties are in this time.
I think their plan is to be so cheap that it becomes an impulse buy with a unique hook and people will scoop it up as a secondary console for those Nintendo exclusives (see Wii or $99 Gamecube)
My comment was more in reference too sitting there while the Wii U was burning to the ground and not releasing games for it. Being tone deaf (metroid federation force when they were teasing Metroid for so long). Or not having an account system day 1 on the Wii U. Not reacting fast enough and price cutting when necessary. They've been reactive instead of proactive. It wasn't in reference to E3's or directs.
Obliterator
Member
Yeah I still stand by at least 1TF at $299 at launch. Maybe I'm totally wrong on that but I just dont see how anything less is viable.
The change in architecture and chipset production (and possibly even going down to low finFET, though I still find it unlikely) is going to make that TF measurement completely meaningless as it is a non-normalized metric. As I said, expect something that is numerically inferior to potentially even both X1 and PS4 but (potentially much) more efficient and without some of the problems plaguing the twins (CPU bottlenecks, bad RAM allocations/pools in the X1, etc).
The real big question that Nintendo has to answer (and Vulkan to some degree is doing that already in a highly good light) is what their software solutions for internal and external development and tools is going to look like. The WiiU was a trainwreck out of the gate with undecipherable garbage dev tools and guides/documentation. This has obviously improved tremendously since then but the initial outing was a disaster.
The WiiU was too hard to make work and to work with for it to be worth supporting, especially with its lagging adoption and narrow audience. No amount of power was going to save it.
Obliterator
Member
True true. Even if they dont get to 1TF they can have other improvements like CPU and better RAM set ups. I just can't get behind the idea of an ultra cheap, ultra weak console. I just don't see any demand in the market for that.
Fourth Storm
Member
Well, I kind of combined quotes from two different sources myself, but they seem to agree. Liam Tamaki Robertson actually went into further detail on a podcast and made it pretty clear not to expect the hardware to match or exceed PS4.
Now, how strong does a console need to be in order to "compete"? That's open to interpretation.
I really couldn't care less about resolution tbh. Maybe if I had a gigantic tv I could tell the difference but for now eh.
This is what I expect them to bring to market. A middle of the road "numerical" console but one that has advantages of its own from the benefits of newer production and not being straddled with a Jaguar APU (a lot will also ride on how they structure their RAM as Nintendo loves having small, fast-access RAM pools, and what they do with the GPU). Nintendo's first party solutions will likely all run 1080p/30 or 60FPS. There's nary a reason for them not to if they can do what they do with the WiiU at 720p.
That can be the differentiator for "strength" if it comes to it. Of course, it would be funny if Nintendo did make a powerful machine and resurrected the "now you're playing with power" line but I don't expect it, at all.
I'll take 900p third party ports. It's better then 0p and no ports lol. The XB1 is great and having that level of power without needing to dedicate so much to Kinect and the OS would leave more room for the NX to work with.
I'm done with 720p though. It looks like ass on my 1080p 47" tv lol.
Tamaki doesn't really know anything, but even if he had a credible source for this he probably got a vague statement that could be about the handheld. Aside from that, we already knew that Nintendo wouldn't want to compete with the other two, but that hasn't necessarily anything to do with hardware.
Don't expect miracles from efficiency going from Cape Verde to Tonga. A 1tflop Tonga GPU in the NX would be within spitting distance from Xbox One, better RAM configuration (and slightly more CPU performances) would definitely help, but more powerful GPU wise? Nah. Not the same situation as WiiU's heavily customized RV7*0 (with something borrowed from VLIW4) vs AMD X1000 (with something borrowed from HD2000) and Nvidia gimped series 7000.
Same API (Vulkan), SDK, tools etc. and similar RAM configuration is all they need i think. Same CPU architecture will be a nice surplus if they go with ARM for both consoles.
Obliterator
Member
Oh I dont expect major strength but even my given 1TF option isn't even powerful. Thats low end in modern GPU tech.
If they cant achieve at least parity with what's already out there they have failed miserably and will get shit all for support. Nintendo magic here and there to supposedly address deficiencies etc are not going to cut it.
The age of Developers and Publishers going out of their way is over.
The age of Developers and Publishers going out of their way is over.
I'm not, haha. Which is why I said it depends a lot on what they choose and I honestly have no idea what they will choose (for RAM or GPU or a lot of things really). Just musing over what potential advantages they will bring to the table outside of "not a pile of shit" for their CPU.
Can't Wii U probably play most XB1 games at 720? Or am I way off there?
James Scott
Banned
With a big enough installbase, I imagine SE, and a lot of major 3rd parties would attempt to make something for the platform. I'd like to discuss downgrading or porting to the handheld for a bit. I'm not sure if anyone could provide an example of the same game running on the same engine looking considerably better on one platform than another but it's interesting to think about.
If the porting of assets and engines is easy enough, even if the Wii U is weaker than the X1 maybe developers would put more work into NX in order to get the portable ports up and running. And no, I'm not suggesting that the devs be forced to make a portable port, but how easy/hard would it be.
I know Treyarch recreated a lot of CoD games for the Wii since it sold so well, maybe they could do the same for the NX or port the multiplatfrom version to the console and downgrade the assets to run at a decent clip on the portable.
They never ported anything to the 3DS despite its large installbase (it's around the size of PS4+X1+WiiU, or at least was at one point last year) but if this shared ecosystems could facilitate that it could provide a big incentive to. Maybe that's why SE is more positive about NX than they were with NX where the only ported one game (a wii game) and didn't even consider Tomb Raider.
Kingdom Hearts a very sizable audience on Nintendo platforms, handhelds specifically. I imagine downporting it to there would be somewhat doable and would be a big benefit. Dragon Quest XI HD on the portable would be great as well, would give the massive portable audience a reason to double dip when they get the NX.
Tecmo likely wants to bring more titles to a 3DS like installbase in japan but there isn't one that can run their titles properly if Hyrule Warriors Legends is any indication.
So am I off in thinking that being able to port assets easily would facilitate in creating these portable versions?
What games do you guys think would benefit (sales-wise) from a port while being realistically doable?
If the porting of assets and engines is easy enough, even if the Wii U is weaker than the X1 maybe developers would put more work into NX in order to get the portable ports up and running. And no, I'm not suggesting that the devs be forced to make a portable port, but how easy/hard would it be.
I know Treyarch recreated a lot of CoD games for the Wii since it sold so well, maybe they could do the same for the NX or port the multiplatfrom version to the console and downgrade the assets to run at a decent clip on the portable.
They never ported anything to the 3DS despite its large installbase (it's around the size of PS4+X1+WiiU, or at least was at one point last year) but if this shared ecosystems could facilitate that it could provide a big incentive to. Maybe that's why SE is more positive about NX than they were with NX where the only ported one game (a wii game) and didn't even consider Tomb Raider.
Kingdom Hearts a very sizable audience on Nintendo platforms, handhelds specifically. I imagine downporting it to there would be somewhat doable and would be a big benefit. Dragon Quest XI HD on the portable would be great as well, would give the massive portable audience a reason to double dip when they get the NX.
Tecmo likely wants to bring more titles to a 3DS like installbase in japan but there isn't one that can run their titles properly if Hyrule Warriors Legends is any indication.
So am I off in thinking that being able to port assets easily would facilitate in creating these portable versions?
What games do you guys think would benefit (sales-wise) from a port while being realistically doable?
with enough work you can downgrade most games to run on almost anything, sure.
Yoshi outfit or no buy.
Square Enix: "But we've put in tons of effort to create the most ambitious FF title yet and bring it to Ninten-"
NO BUY
Yeah but it'd be more than a resolution downgrade.
lwilliams3
Member
If I recall correctly, Alberto's source said the same thing about Nintendo not making an intentionally weak system.
Which means they'll make a weak system by mistake D:
The thing about a comment like that is it means little really. if Nintendo has a goal of say keeping it X Amount of heat and power usage. Then when they reach X they achieve what they can achieve. They didn't set out to make it weak they set out to reach X. Its just an unfortunate side effect X limits them to such a degree.
We didn't plan to be XYZ its just our plan for W meant we could only achieve XYZ.
If Nintendo half asses it again it will be Wii U all over again.
This isn't an attack against SA. For what's it worth I trust him, but the tone and delivery of his (on occasions) and other's replies to these 'external' rumours often reeks of petty arrogance, for want of a better phrase.
Put it this way, I'd rather take "hmh" or whatever it was, and that's saying something.
- Status