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[brainchild]

Does DMP even have something that can compete with modern PowerVR and Adreno GPUs, or even with something that AMD could cook for the handheld? And wouldn't such a different GPU architecture cause problems in cross development with the home?

Unless i'm missing some of their offers and the advancements in their architectures, i'd say DMP is the worst and most... "out of context" choice they could make for the handheld.

I'd say they're worth considering for their efficiency with low powered devices. They did have the PICA Extreme card on their roadmap, which was a high end, highly efficient programmable GPU, but I haven't heard about it in years. However, its design was scheduled to be finished sometime around 2011, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Hispanic! At the Disco]

I can see that going down badly lol.

That's true. I guess you could scratch that and I'd still be happy lol but would be nice to be able to use a piece of that purchase on both consoles!

 

[Josh5890]

I know I'm in the minority but half of me wants Nintendo to cut Backwards compatibility at least on the hardware level... It would really give them the freedom to do what they need to do chip-wise to achieve whatever their goal is. I feel in some ways BC is holding them back... (as much as I love my 3DS library)...

I don't plan on selling my consoles so I can certainly live without backwards compatibility.

 

[orioto]

Here's my guess on the NX, and to me is the best outcome that creates a large library without making the handheld way overpriced nor does it weaken the home console.

Mobile games -> Handheld games -> Console games.

All mobile games can be played on console and handheld, all handheld games can be played on console. IF the game supports it, console games can be playable on handheld.

Lets say Super Mario NX has beautiful visuals on console that you just cant do on the handheld, but if played on the NX Handheld you have a selection of minigames, or even a weaker version of the console mario. Or maybe it has the original Super Mario Bros and you can play that too on the handheld. All they need to do is put something like "Minor Hanheld Support" on the box.

That's not even needed when you think about it. The console NEEDS all the portable library. The portable won't really care if some console games are not playable on it. It'll sell way more anyway and will have the best sellers. I mean you can find 10 portable ips that are multi million sellers and will be super good for the home console. Now, find one console game that that the portable would need to success ??

 

[shrubsy_tree]

I don't plan on selling my consoles so I can certainly live without backwards compatibility.

yeah exACTly... between me and my kids I have 6 3DS's in my house ... surely one of them will last for years... considering that Nintendo's old games NEVER get upresed on BC emulation, the games tend to look better on the original system anyway...

 

[Theanine3D]

At this point most people who wanted to play a game on 3DS already own one by now. I doubt many people are waiting for NX just to play 3DS games. Backwards compatibility would do more harm than good at this point. I hope they go with a clean break.

 

[SuperLeviathan]

If Game Freak is really working on a Pokemon Z, a clean break would mean for the first time ever, a late-era Pokemon game wasn't playable on successor hardware.

That and other similar situations might inspire Nintendo to have BC, to help the legs of those last 3DS games.

 

[DrROBschiz]

NX Portable BC would not be the end of the world but could be tricky if its not a 2 screen device

I wouldnt mind a clean break too honestly

 

[Josh5890]

If Game Freak is really working on a Pokemon Z, a clean break would mean the first time ever a late-era Pokemon game wasn't playable on successor hardware.

That and other similar situations might inspire Nintendo to have BC, to help the legs of those last 3DS games.

I don't think Nintendo should hinge a long-term hardware system on Pokemon Z. The last few 3DS games in the pipeline probably wouldn't see much of a boost from NX b/c. I think Nintendo is better off going for the clean slate, especially if the next handheld isn't two screens.

 

[James Scott]

NX Portable BC would not be the end of the world but could be tricky if its not a 2 screen device

I wouldnt mind a clean break too honestly

Yeah, I think if anything they'll try and do emulation of some kind.
Not sure how it would work for the games that use both screens, but they'll try and manage it.

 

[EloquentM]

This probably isn't the thread to ask but does anyone know how long it's been since Nintendo offered refurbished Wii u's?

 

[Kssio_Aug]

Here's what I think Nintendo NX will be. A home console and a handheld with a shared game library.

The design of the systems will mean Nintendo will only make one Mario Kart. This singular version will play on both the home console and handheld.

You will be able to play online against people on both systems.

Your game data will be saved to your Nintendo profile so that you can switch between systems and immediately carry on where you left off.

If you buy Mario Kart then you will be able to play it on either system or at least have a discount on the version you didn't buy.

Nintendo will have less software droughts as they wont be providing different games for two different systems. Certain software will be exclusive though.

That would be awesome. However, wouldnt a handheld be too expensive to play games that a home console would? (Specially since it is not weaker than Wii U)

Except if every handheld game also got a home console release, but not the other way around.

 

[foltzie1]

Not sure what you mean. VC is in a bad state and DS games aren't exactly "VC".

The DS VC on Wii U. I'm assuming/hoping that VC will be relatively unified on the next system, but we'll see.

 

[web_slinger_62]

Here's my guess on the NX, and to me is the best outcome that creates a large library without making the handheld way overpriced nor does it weaken the home console.

Mobile games -> Handheld games -> Console games.

All mobile games can be played on console and handheld, all handheld games can be played on console. IF the game supports it, console games can be playable on handheld.

Lets say Super Mario NX has beautiful visuals on console that you just cant do on the handheld, but if played on the NX Handheld you have a selection of minigames, or even a weaker version of the console mario. Or maybe it has the original Super Mario Bros and you can play that too on the handheld. All they need to do is put something like "Minor Hanheld Support" on the box.

I think they said something about mobile games being very separate experiences designed to get customers to buy NX games, so I don't think you'll be playing mobile games on NX, but maybe second screen experiences that add to NX games

 

[Hero of Legend]

Yeah, I think if anything they'll try and do emulation of some kind.
Not sure how it would work for the games that use both screens, but they'll try and manage it.

As long as the screen is 480p at minimum (it obviously will be), they can put both 3DS screens on one. The 3D will likely be out, especially as I don't even know if you can make only select pixels on a screen 3D or whatever.

 

[10k]

For those of you who don't want to read the OP or joined late in the thread this article is a good summation of rumors from official sources and what Nintendo has said about NX.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/game...se-date-could-be-delayed-until-2017-due-to-vr

 

[Malus]

For those of you who don't want to read the OP or joined late in the thread this article is a good summation of rumors from official sources and what Nintendo has said about NX.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/game...se-date-could-be-delayed-until-2017-due-to-vr

Shhhh Hero of Legend is right above you!

...


ctrl+f 'hybrid'

5 mentions

 

[Josh5890]

The DS VC on Wii U. I'm assuming/hoping that VC will be relatively unified on the next system, but we'll see.

My dream is that Nintendo has been working on the nx virtual console for over a year and it will have a fantastic library on day 1

 

[Zoon]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

 

[mrklaw]

Whats the latest rumor on power? Are we talking parity with the ps4/xbone, less powerful than both, less powerful than ps4 more powerful than xbone, better than both?

Yes

 

[Peru]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

Very few 3D smart phone games, no matter how HD and sharp they are, look particularly polished, detailed or good. The power is there but it's not being used in sensible ways.

 

[Hermii]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

Wow on this graph, current gen consoles look pretty damn weak.

 

[brainchild]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

Bullshit. Where are these >1TFLOP mobile GPUs in 2016??!!!!

 

[Herb Alpert]

Yes

Lol, great answer!

 

[Kurt]

No.

Nothing about that is known. Everything about it is speculative.
For me this is a conformation

The thing we know is that they want to facilitate easy/painless/seamless sharing of assets between devices.

They have told multiple times to build an os so they can develop games from both units.

Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples.”

http://mynintendonews.com/2014/02/0...helds-will-no-longer-be-completely-different/

(this isn't the only thing that they refer to that kind of info)

 

[Luigiv]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

GFLOPS/sec (Giga FLoating-point Operations Per Second/Sec). Tells you everything you need to know.

Anyway, this chart is either measuring something completely irrelevant to gaming performance or a total ass pull, because we will be nowhere near Xbone performance any time soon. Hell we're barely at X360 performance levels now.

My Surface Pro 4 (with a 15W Intel core i5 chip) barely keeps ups with the PS3 when it comes to gaming performance. The only arm chip that's even in the same ballpark is the Apple A9X in the iPad pro (which is either slightly more powerful or slightly less powerful, depending on the benchmark) and at 4.5W that's still too power hunger for a handheld.

By the end of next year Arm chips will probably still be on 14nm so space to improve between now and then is pretty limited. Maybe if we're lucky we'll see a jump to 10nm but even then, we're not talking about giant leaps.


Edit: Also I'd like to point out that GFLOPS is more or less marketing bullshit. You can't directly compare the FLOPS performance between different micro architectures. Case in point my SP4 again, it's rated at 400+ GFLOPS whilst the X360 is only 240 GFLOPS.

Edit 2:

They have told multiple times to build an os so they can develop games from both units.

To be fair, another interpretation of this statement is that Nintendo's next devices will just share the same OS kernel, for easier cross platform development, but still be separate devices with separate libraries. This is what Sony has already been doing for sometime now, which is why every indie Japanese game they're getting lately is coming out on the Vita, PS3 and Ps4 simultaneously but you can't just buy the games once and play it on all devices (outside of crossbuy, which is a whole different beast).

Now I'm not saying that's what's going to happen but it's definitely a possibility that shouldn't be ignored (for the sake of your mental health, should things actually go that way).

 

[blu]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

An A9X might be at ps360 level in deliverable picture IQ per native res. As for the rest, the majority of the high-end mobile devices are in xbox - 2x xbox, AKA sub-ps360 territory. Why? Because they're trying to push too damn many pixels, and that takes both FLOPS *and* BW, and whereas the former is relatively easy, the latter is darn hard in a mobile chip. It's only this year that things will start changing with LPDDR4.

 

[Nightbird]

Might have missed it if already posted, but the ARM ecosystem director claimed that mobile devices will surpass PS4/Xbone in terms of graphics by the end of 2017.

If they could support the same power output probably, but since they don't....¯_(&#12484_/¯

 

[The_Lump]

If the NX sells those rumored 20 million units I'm a year then I don't see 3rd parties ignoring them. It's all about money for the most part.

It's all about money full stop. Publishers are in charge; emotionless, cold blooded* Publishers.

Spoiler

*as they should be

 

[TheMoon]

Not sure what you mean. VC is in a bad state and DS games aren't exactly "VC".

You're forgetting that DS VC on Wii U is a thing.

My dream is that Nintendo has been working on the nx virtual console for over a year and it will have a fantastic library on day 1

That has nothing to do with how long they've been "working on it," all that matters is if they decide to release a big batch right at launch or not.

 

[Peterc]

Whats the latest rumor on power? Are we talking parity with the ps4/xbone, less powerful than both, less powerful than ps4 more powerful than xbone, better than both?

I read allot of different comments on this question.

But looking at latest source, the nx will look better on screen (gfx wise). But is just below ps4 power.

With other words, better gfx but with lower res or frames I think.

 

[TheMoon]

I read allot of different comments on this question.

But looking at latest source, the nx will look better on screen (gfx wise). But is just below ps4 power.

With other words, better gfx but with lower res or frames I think.

Why did you waste time typing this

 

[Luigiv]

An A9X might be at ps360 level in deliverable picture IQ per native res. As for the rest, the majority of the high-end mobile devices are in xbox - 2x xbox, AKA sub-ps360 territory. Why? Because they're trying to push too damn many pixels, and that takes both FLOPS *and* BW, and whereas the former is relatively easy, the latter is darn hard in a mobile chip. It's only this year that things will start changing with LPDDR4.

What exactly do you mean by "per native res". If you mean at the same res on both devices (eg 720p), I agree. If you mean each device's native res (eg 720p vs 2732 x 2048), then no chance in hell.

 

[Peterc]

Why did you waste time typing this

Maybe we have just need to wait untill we get some good sources

I can't understand why they don't have bring VB games it to vrconsole of 3ds.

Like this: http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/virtualboyfinal.gif

I hope it will come to the nx handheld.

 

[TheMoon]

Maybe we have just need to wait untill we get some good sources

I can't understand why they don't have bring VB games it to vrconsole of 3ds.

Like this: http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/virtualboyfinal.gif

I hope it will come to the nx handheld.

It's pretty easy to understand why: it's not worth it. NX won't have VB VC either. The library is paper thin and you can count the worthwhile games on one hand that had a few fingers chopped off. Never happening. Best you could have hoped for was remakes of the Wario and Tennis games.

 

[Graphics Horse]

That's fanart, rite?

Have any 3DS kickstarters used 'virtual boy palette mode' as a stretch goal?

 

[Thraktor]

I can say with a fair degree of confidence what the solution to Nintendo's OS load time issues with the Wii U is, and it's not faster NAND, snappier processors or anything like that, it's LPDDR4.

It's occurred to me that the Wii U's "slow OS load times" compared to the PS4 and XBO have pretty much nothing at all to do with the hardware performance or software implementation, it's all to do with how Nintendo implements the Wii U's sleep state compared to the other two. Effectively, when you put the Wii U to sleep the system is almost completely powered off. Espresso probably keeps going to monitor the network, handle downloads, etc., but it presumably does so using purely the 32MB of eDRAM, as it would appear that the DDR3 is completely powered down.

By comparison, the sleep states on the PS4 and XBO keep a lot more functionality powered up, most notably the PS4's GDDR5 and the XBO's DDR3, which is what allows them to keep features like "suspend application" working, and what allows them to have near instant-on response when you press the on button; the OS was already loaded up and ready to go before you pressed the button.

You can see the effect of these two approaches by the standby power consumption of the three consoles:

PS4: 10W
XBO: 12.9W
Wii U: 0.4W

Obviously those PS4 and XBO power draws aren't purely RAM, but it does seem that Nintendo's drive to keep standby consumption low has prevented them from implementing an "instant-on" wake from standby; they're not willing to increase the power draw by keeping the DDR3 wired.

I actually did a bit of an experiment with this on my PS4 and Wii U (no XBO to test on, unfortunately). I fully shut down my PS4 (which requires navigating through a few menus) and then turned it on again and timed it from pressing the on button to getting to the main game select screen. I then did the same thing with my Wii U. The results are actually quite informative:

PS4: 31 seconds
Wii U: 18 seconds

The Wii U actually takes significantly less time to cold boot than the PS4, despite whatever technological advantages the PS4 has. The perceived notion of the PS4 (and, I assume, XBO)'s advantage over the Wii U in OS loading speed is down entirely to the different standby implementations.

While I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo pushed the envelope in power consumption for NX over Wii U, I would be very surprised if the console consumed anywhere near 10W in standby. However, if they want snappy OS loading, they're going to need to find a solution where they can keep the main system RAM wired during standby, and GDDR5 (or even DDR3/4) would simply consume far more energy in standby than I can imagine them being happy with.

Which brings us to LPDDR4. As we've discussed earlier in the thread, it does have a couple of advantages in that it provides very high bandwidth per module, and would allow them to use identical RAM modules between the home console and handheld. The big argument I'm thinking of, though, is that LPDDR is specifically designed for extremely low standby power, as the phones, tablets and laptops it's used in need to be able to be left on standby for days or weeks on end without the battery draining. Although I can't find any precise data on LPDDR4, Samsung claims that their LPDDR3 uses 87% less power in standby than DDR3, and I can imagine that a similar gap would exist between DDR4 and LPDDR4.

LPDDR4 (or LPDDR3) seems to be pretty much the only way for Nintendo to ensure NX has snappy loading times while sticking to their low standby power philosophy, and given how much Nintendo has apologised for the Wii U's loading times, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't something that was taken as a priority when designing the new console.

 

[Graphics Horse]

Handheld suspend mode has been standard for over 10 years so whatever they use needs to be power efficient enough to support that really, unless backing up system state to a flash chip is an option.

 

[TheMoon]

You can see the effect of these two approaches by the standby power consumption of the three consoles:

PS4: 10W
XBO: 12.9W
Wii U: 0.4W

Obviously those PS4 and XBO power draws aren't purely RAM, but it does seem that Nintendo's drive to keep standby consumption low has prevented them from implementing an "instant-on" wake from standby; they're not willing to increase the power draw by keeping the DDR3 wired.

Fuck instant on. Keep the power draw as low as possible in stand-by. #TeamPatience

Btw, I can't remember anyone ever complaining about the boot-up speed. Especially not in the age of the quick start menu that entirely nullifies this issue. The slow OS complaints were all directed at switching between applications and moving around various menus.

 

[Thraktor]

Handheld suspend mode has been standard for over 10 years so whatever they use needs to be power efficient enough to support that really, unless backing up system state to a flash chip is an option.

Well that's it. Desktop RAM like DDR4/GDDR5 just consumes too much power in standby mode to achieve the kind of power efficiency in standby that we've come to expect from handhelds, phones, tablets etc. Mobile RAM, however, is specifically designed for this kind of scenario, so the solution is to use mobile RAM (i.e. LPDDR) in the home console to achieve the same goal.

Backing up from flash isn't really feasible. Even at the upper end of eMMC (400MB/s) it would take 20+ seconds to restore 8GB of RAM, which is longer than the Wii U takes to cold-boot to begin with. In theory if you used PCIe flash and only restored a ~2GB OS partition then you could achieve acceptable standby resume times, but it would probably be a lot cheaper to just use LPDDR4 (which also enables suspend and resume for games).

Fuck instant on. Keep the power draw as low as possible in stand-by. #TeamPatience

Btw, I can't remember anyone ever complaining about the boot-up speed. Especially not in the age of the quick start menu that entirely nullifies this issue. The slow OS complaints were all directed at switching between applications and moving around various menus.

I can remember a lot of people complaining about the boot speed, and the quick start menu only works if they go with a controller screen again. Besides, my argument isn't that they should crank up the standby power to enable instant-on, it's that they can implement instant-on and keep standby power low at the same time by using LPDDR4.

 

[Turrican3]

It's occurred to me that the Wii U's "slow OS load times" compared to the PS4 and XBO have pretty much nothing at all to do with the hardware performance or software implementation, it's all to do with how Nintendo implements the Wii U's sleep state compared to the other two.

I'm not sure I get this.

WiiU has slow/horrible load times even when fully powered on.
The system is fine as long as you stay in the dash, but anything else is terrible.

Seems like a modular OS design issue or whatever, where they don't even cache anything in RAM or if they do, it's quite a minor part of the "app", with the configuration being a major offender. Which in itself is quite surprising coming from the snappy (albeit obviously far less complex/feature rich) UI of the Wii. :-\

 

[beril]

Are the complaints about the slow WiiU OS really about the bootup speed?
I always boot from the quick start menu and it's not an issue.
(I always turn off PS4 properly as well and never use sleep mode other than when I'm downloading something).

Switching games, going into system settings or into the eShop is slow as hell though and has nothing to do with standby power draw

 

[orioto]

I read allot of different comments on this question.

But looking at latest source, the nx will look better on screen (gfx wise). But is just below ps4 power.

With other words, better gfx but with lower res or frames I think.

Knowing Nintendo i would say if it was a case like that, it would rather be good fps or resolution but fewer polys on screens. Now about the better gfx i'm not sure cause.. I mean WiiU had beter lights etc.. than PS3 but it's cause PS3 was an old generation of GPU without modern shaders etc.. But the PS4 can do whatever you want, tech wise (regardless of its power)...


About the GFLOP mobile matter, didn't i read the snapdragon 820 is 588glops ? That's way above PS3 level, but the article is still bullshit.

 

[Rodin]

How much bandwidth would 8GB LPDDR4 provide on a 128/256bit bus on the home, and 3GB on a 128bit bus on the portable?

Switching games, going into system settings or into the eShop is slow as hell though and has nothing to do with standby power draw

Yes, the complaints are usually about these things, which i can live with on the WiiU considering the console is on its way out, but they need to disappear on the NX (those loading times would be just laughable on a 2016 machine) and most of all Nintendo needs to fix miiverse. I barely access it because of the insane loading times, i swear it takes minutes to access the damn thing.

Knowing Nintendo i would say if it was a case like that, it would rather be good fps or resolution but fewer polys on screens. Now about the better gfx i'm not sure cause.. I mean WiiU had beter lights etc.. than PS3 but it's cause PS3 was an old generation of GPU without modern shaders etc.. But the PS4 can do whatever you want, tech wise (regardless of its power)...

I want it to do full Raytracing in a super complex 3D environment, can it do that?

About the GFLOP mobile matter, didn't i read the snapdragon 820 is 588glops ? That's way above PS3 level, but the article is still bullshit.

It can't use those 588 gflops, because of thermal and battery requirements.

 

[Rösti]

Hopefully the media tour at Nintendo NY store today can bring something on NX. I assume Reggie will be there, maybe Scott Moffitt too. And press will be there, so someone asking a question about the system is more or less guaranteed. Or Reggie will Kimishima the media by stating right off the bat they do not plan on revealing any information today regarding NX. We'll see what happens.

 

[blu]

What exactly do you mean by "per native res". If you mean at the same res on both devices (eg 720p), I agree. If you mean each device's native res (eg 720p vs 2732 x 2048), then no chance in hell.

Yeah, on a second read that post did not come out right. It should have been 'for an established res', whether that's 720p or 1080p.

 

[BY2K]

Hopefully the media tour at Nintendo NY store today can bring something on NX. I assume Reggie will be there, maybe Scott Moffitt too. And press will be there, so someone asking a question about the system is more or less guaranteed. Or Reggie will Kimishima the media by stating right off the bat they do not plan on revealing any information today regarding NX. We'll see what happens.

It's the opening of a store.

The best we'll get is: "No comment on NX."

 

[TheMoon]

Hopefully the media tour at Nintendo NY store today can bring something on NX. I assume Reggie will be there, maybe Scott Moffitt too. And press will be there, so someone asking a question about the system is more or less guaranteed. Or Reggie will Kimishima the media by stating right off the bat they do not plan on revealing any information today regarding NX. We'll see what happens.

You don't really think either one of them will say anything other than "we're not talking about NX right now." Right? Because that is the only thing that will happen.

 

[brainchild]

Speaking of ray-tracing, I really feel that the focus on that needs to shift towards hardware-based solutions. Regardless of how powerful a chip is, using it up for ray-tracing is just ridiculously inefficient when they are other things that a GPU needs to do. If you specialize hardware for it, not only could you get more accurate results (and much more quickly), you would free up lots of resources on the GPU.

 

[Rodin]

Hopefully the media tour at Nintendo NY store today can bring something on NX. I assume Reggie will be there, maybe Scott Moffitt too. And press will be there, so someone asking a question about the system is more or less guaranteed. Or Reggie will Kimishima the media by stating right off the bat they do not plan on revealing any information today regarding NX. We'll see what happens.

Some journalist will ask him about the NX and he'll say "we will start talking about it next fiscal year"

Speaking of ray-tracing, I really feel that the focus on that needs to shift towards hardware-based solutions. Regardless of how powerful a chip is, using it up for ray-tracing is just ridiculously inefficient when they are other things that a GPU needs to do. If you specialize hardware for it, not only could you get more accurate results (and much more quickly), you would free up lots of resources on the GPU.

If i'm not mistaken, latest PowerVR GPUs have a chip dedicated to that.