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What we know so far about the Nintendo NX with sources
- Thread starter Hero of Legend
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Hero of Legend
Member
Well a Nabbit made of pixels must have a square hole.
Gotcha. That deepest lore always trips me up. Thank you.
Serenitynow
Member
Wait so Rosti (or anyone who knows), can we still expect something? Was there a timeframe given that is still current?
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
A Half Life 3 update is more likely.
He said "his actions lead to something positive" or something like that. He also said he wouldn't be giving timeframes.
TLZ
Banned
Can't Sony/MS/Nintendo add a condition e.g. minimum 60fps target for all games on their machines? It's a genuine question.
KratosEnergyDrink
Member
This
AcademicSaucer
Member
I bet he was the one pretending Nintendo gives a shit while pitching Wii U to the likes of Bethesda.
It's tricky to speculate specifics like bus widths, capacities, etc, without mind reading or crystal balls, but I suppose 8GB just seems like the default just because it's the same capacity as the other consoles. Perhaps 6GB is more likely? The Wii U had a decent bit of RAM for its performance level, though.
That's the intended design, but as far as I know it can also use a 2.5D technique, like HBM or the Wii U's MCM. Not cheap, but FCRAM probably wasn't compared to the alternatives.
A57 is power hungry for a mobile part at 28nm, it wouldn't be a problem in an actively cooled environment like a home console.
I don't see Nintendo going as heavily low-power as they did with the Wii U. They've surely realised that it didn't earn them any sales, and simply limited their hardware design unnecessarily. (I think there was even a quote from Iwata/Miyamoto/Takeda to this extent?) I don't expect NX to be chugging down electricity, but something closer to 70-80W during gameplay might be realistic.
Bonaire seems like a reasonable base, it was already a relatively mature die when design work likely started at the end of 2014. (Keep in mind that 85W is the TDP, not typical power draw, and it's for the full card with GDDR5 and a core clock of 1GHz, so more reasonable clocks and a different memory architecture would see a real-world draw quite a bit south of that.) There are 14 CUs on the full die, so either you can disable 2 to improve yields (like on XBox One) or just use the full amount (as 28nm yields are far better than they were in 2013). With a core clock of 700MHz, you'd be looking at about 1.1Tflops for 12 CUs, or 1.25Tflops with all 14 CUs. More than enough to put them in the "ballpark" of XBO or PS4.
I suppose my logic would be that HBM1 won't be used at all on AMD and nVidia's new cards this year, and SK Hynix still has a factory or two all kitted out to produce 1GB 128GB/s HBM1 stacks, which they may be willing to let go relatively cheap to save them from having to re-tool for HBM2. Nintendo would start purchasing for the NX at pretty much exactly the same time as AMD start dialing down their orders for Fury.
Not that I necessarily believe that we'll see HBM in the NX, but if Nintendo does go the split memory route (which historically they have), then their only options seem to be SRAM or HBM, which means they're pretty much stuck between a rock and an expensive place.
We know how costly the 32MB SRAM is on Durango, but if they were "smart", they'd make it a part of the cache hierarchy not unlike Crystalwell to avoid mandatory buffer management. Hard to say if AMD can design it well.
That would be fascinating, but as you say implementing something like that isn't trivial, and if AMD had the expertise they'd probably already be using it in their APUs.
Unless, of course, they partnered with a long-time Nintendo collaborator with a particular expertise in big eDRAM caches (including off-die).
Good luck to Nintendo getting an AMD APU to interface with an IBM L3 cache and memory controller chip...
Apple competes with Intel in terms of the amount of R&D it pours into those chips (which tells when you look at Blu's LBSQ benchmarks earlier on in the thread). Not really something Nintendo could afford to compete with. There are third-party custom ARM cores they could theoretically use (Qualcomm's Kyro, AMD's K12), but none of them look to be ready for use in NX.
That's a more realistic option, taking an existing core and adapting it to their use-case, by altering the cache layout, or changing the configuration of ALUs (particularly FP or SIMD). A few relatively simple changes could improve performance significantly once you decide "let's make a processor specifically for games".
Well, this does indeed seem pretty significant.
Oh, no. Who's going to negotiate now all those legacy FIFA on Wii?
Prevolition
Member
Didn't Darksiders 2 have screen tearing? I don't think VSync is enforced on all games.
I don't know where this discussion has gone but I see people talking hardware specs and such.
I don't know what this would mean for actual architecture, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if the handheld NX ended up being the flagship of the whole platform, with the console as merely a box running on beefed-up handheld architecture. It makes perfect sense looking at where Nintendo's strengths and the strengths of Japanese developers lie today. Does anybody have ideas on what that would mean for speculating the actual chips Nintendo could possibly use?
I don't know what this would mean for actual architecture, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if the handheld NX ended up being the flagship of the whole platform, with the console as merely a box running on beefed-up handheld architecture. It makes perfect sense looking at where Nintendo's strengths and the strengths of Japanese developers lie today. Does anybody have ideas on what that would mean for speculating the actual chips Nintendo could possibly use?
Pokemaniac
Member
That game is the single exception. As far as I know, there are literally no other Wii U games with screen tearing.
Agent Unknown
Member
Seems like Mr. Okimoto was asleep at the wheel, good riddance. Hopefully Damon Baker or whoever replaces him does a much better job than he did over the last 15 years.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
The dude left because Nintendo is not bothering with third parties anymore
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
Whatever problems Nintendo is having with third parties is probably not his fault.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Agent Unknown
Member
While I'm not sure what Mr. Okimoto's situation was exactly and am not downplaying the complicated problems Nintendo has with third parties, it's a fair question to ask, what did he accomplish during those 15 years as someone who was being paid to apparently maintain relations with third parties in the west? We always default to discussing folks like Reggie but there are many other people working at NOA and until now Mr. Okimoto has flown under the radar. I've been told that NOA has more power in certain situations than a lot of people assume and are not just a simple drone for NCL as is often assumed, in some cases they even reject direction from NCL. All I'm going to say.
in my only correspondence with him, it was over an issue with technical support. i don't think the acquisitions guy is the one worrying about such things, but i could be wrong. it seemed like he was more in charge of managing existing accounts/relations than seeking new ones. i would assume that would be a different job.
Or with his hands tied behind his back, tied to a string that ends in Japan.
"Hey this Minecraft game looks good, lets..." "NO!"
"Hey, western gamers need more power..." "NO!"
"Hey they want a Metr" "NO!"
Prevolition
Member
Is this news to anyone and can it be confirmed as legitimate? Apparently this indie dev BplusGames is working on an NX game called Puzzle Box Setup and it's now also on Steam Greenlight. It's been posted by some sites.
This is what he has to say on the dev Facebook page about why the updated game it's not coming to the 3DS...
Cross-platform support? And is he referring to the supposed scrollwheels on the controller?
This is what he has to say on the dev Facebook page about why the updated game it's not coming to the 3DS...
Cross-platform support? And is he referring to the supposed scrollwheels on the controller?
Scroll back. its already been discussed to death.
Prevolition
Member
Dang, thank you. I searched using the specific keywords and nothing showed. I'm also clearly bad at sifting through these types of threads.
That's what most assume at the moment, as in : that is why we are assuming ARM as a CPU instead of X86 like PS4 and Xone. It's also what Iwata hinted at during the investors briefings.
But which one of those are inhouse developed flagship titles that can carry a console and generate sales?
Zelda U: EAD, Q4 2016 most likely
#FE: Atlus (already out in japan, bombed)
TP HD: port, done by Tantalus
Star fox zero: platinum
Pokken: Bandai Namco
Paper Mario: unannounced, port or not? Q4 2016? We don't know.
It's a decent line-up for a console in it's last year. Of these only Pokken and zelda (in the west) might sell consoles.
Sure, they could.
But it would be suicidal with some third parties. It just doesn't happen and for good reason. For example it's technically possible to run every XBox one game that has come out so far at 60fps, but if MS enforced a rule that they had to be at that framerate, then we'd be seeing sub HD resolutions from some games just to meet that standard.
Bitch Pudding
Member
Just curious, if Sony "f*cked up" with PS3 which sold ~85mn LTD, what does this mean for Nintendo consoles in general, with Wii being Nintendos best selling console ever (~100mn) and NES #2 with ~60mn LTD? Just sayin...
No matter what Nintendo does, NX home console derivate will struggle to get above 20mn LTD unless it really comes with a surprisingly good concept.
Sony fucked up... and recovered. The way they turned around the PS3 is quite an amazing achievement.
Sony fucked up in a way that was recoverable. They priced themselves out of being competitive. Prices drop over time and as they did they became competitive. They remained within the power ranges etc. of the 360 and as such didn't get punished. If they had been super expensive and required special handling to a significant degree the PS3 would have been dead to developers.
Nintendo needs to embrace the industry and play nice with it. That will go a long way to correcting long time issues. You cannot be a renegade and expect everyone to play nice if going renegade imposes a million complications.
TLZ
Banned
Hmm. A very good indication of inferior hardware then. I would've happily spent a $100-150 more for better hardware and gaming value instead of wasting it on kinect (Xbox case obviously). I wouldn't go spending a lot more for high end PC though for the best experience. I'm happy with the $500-600 range for a very capable console, especially considering inflation, these prices aren't much. Anyway enough of my rambling.
Thanks for answering
probably all of them will do well aside from #fe. the system is going to do a sharp nosedive this year and nintendo will discount remaining stock after nx launches to get rid of it. moving systems at this point means fuck all since the point of that is to move software. expanding a userbase is a goal in the first 2-3 years of a platform's life. i mean, it's always important, but at a certain point, you should have a solid base to sell things.
Bots are better than you
Banned
Going from PS2 dominating and breaking records to PS3 struggling with X360 is f*cking up in my opinion. Same as Nintendo going from Wii to Wii U is f*cking up.
Overpriced, more exotic hardware *ahem*Cell*ahem* and initially being a trojan horse for brute forcing BluRay is kinda f*cking up, no?
Not being underpowered and Sony taking massive financial hits made it recover. You know, devs were like "Dude, HD dev is expensive! Gotta get our stuff out on as much platforms as possible!", Wii kinda didn't fit that strategy. Same with Wii U, not powerful enough for demanding AAA games and having exotic hardware.
And Bitch, please (couldn't let that phrase pass with that Username):
If you are so damn certain about the sales potential of a system not even officially announced, please share some technical details, because you obviously have a way to see the future.
Some winning lottery numbers would be fine, too.
I agree, I meant generate new hardware sales.
These titles are definitly being made to please the current WiiU owners, instead of attracting new ones.
Bitch Pudding
Member
This is the development of Nintendo's home console sales, steadily declining, with Wii being what you might call an anomaly.
The Wii and its motion control concept was something special indeed. And all I say is that Nintendo needs to come with another "special" again to exseed Gamecube's LTD numbers.
What I am also pointing out is that we should keep our expectations in balance when it comes to NX' potential (only refering to the home console derivate of course.)
the anomaly argument is really poor since it acts like nintendo consoles are part of some sort of mathematical equation that isn't influenced by outside forces. am i to reason that the 3ds is some sort of anomaly as well, since it's not part of nintendo's ever-increasing handheld system sales from the game boy to the ds? or do we accept that there are other factors that lead to a result?
if you look at the 7th generation, you'll notice that no hardware manufacturer ever sold as much hardware as they did then. there was no other time when software moved more than it did then. transition to this gen, and everyone is doing worse. only one hardware manufacturer will have one platform that seems like it will be steady or exceed their previous platform, but they're still reaching fewer consumers worldwide overall. everyone's power diminished.
it's not enough to look at numbers. context is important. i also don't think iit was motion controls that attracted people to the wii i mean, yes, they did, but motion controls didn't attract people to the ps3 with the sixaxis or the move. what people saw was something that was accessible, relatively inexpensive, and had value outside of video games (as an exercise tool or a family bonding activity or what have you). those are the kinds of concepts nintendo and other hardware manufacturers need to consider in developing platforms.
Bots are better than you
Banned
Yeah, it's graph time. Now, what do you think did fellow analysts (and most of the gamers) predict how the PS3/X360/Wii gen was going to be?
Can a graph tell you the future about customer interest, what's going to be THE lightning in a bottle, or just simple coincidence, that could very well change any potential outcome? Does your graph factor the general growth, that the market has experienced since the NES?
And how does this graph tell you all that about something that we all know basically only one thing, that it exists? How does this graph handle the potential shake up in traditional console cycles, if that's what Nintendo is possibly trying to do, according to that patent.
If a graph shows decline with past hardware, but also the very exception to that, i'd say it's impossible to even say that it "will" anything.
Look, i'm not saying it's going to sell like hotcakes, but i'm also not typing that it will or won't.
Good writing and good points.
Personally I think the audience that people tend to dub "casual gamers" used to be part of every major platform, also giving rise to PS1 and PS2 relative to their precursors/opponents. Wii expanded it some more, but the audience was lost when the Wii was underserved after the initial years. No new platform took serious effort to recapture that audience, reducing the reach of the overall home console market to around 4th gen level.
Bitch Pudding
Member
We're actually on the same side,I think. Just trying to put things into perspective here. Given the market environment when the NX releases ($299 console competitors, trend to mobile gaming, maybe even VR) it will have a hard time without question. So, in order to surpass Gamecube sales-wise, Nintendo really needs to come up with some clever stuff, like they did with Wii. If they fail to deliver that (e.g. by still relying too much on the sales power of their very own IPs or weak value for money), NX will be in deep trouble.
Candescence
Member
Not to mention mobile devices stole away the casual audience through generally having a lot more use outside of just gaming and mobile gaming being both pick-up-and-play and simple to use due to pure touch and basic motion controls. But those same aspects are also what basically cripples mobile gaming in terms of being able to ascend beyond that incredibly cheap simplicity (due to the needs of mobile devices crippling their processing potential and crippling their control versatility), and mobile-compatible controllers are a niche that no mobile developer would ever risk catering to exclusively.
That being said, the problem with modern gaming consoles when it comes to a casual audience is that the current 'standard' of controller is incomprehensible to anyone who isn't familiar with a gaming controller, a problem the Wii tried to mitigate with quite a bit of success. Say what you will about motion controls, but well-designed motion controls are extremely intuitive to virtually anyone, and that's a big part of why the Wii caught on, and probably a big part of why casual gamers might find VR far more approachable than regular core gaming. Let's be frank, more games need to have extremely basic optional tutorials on hand to teach non-gamers control conventions in certain genres. Sure, core gamers will find them extremely patronizing, but for those who'd like to enjoy a core game but aren't really familiar with them, it goes a long way. But that won't fix the problem of the dualshock setup being extremely unintuitive to anyone who hasn't really picked one up before.
This is the development of Nintendo's home console sales, steadily declining, with Wii being what you might call an anomaly.
The Wii and its motion control concept was something special indeed. And all I say is that Nintendo needs to come with another "special" again to exseed Gamecube's LTD numbers.
What I am also pointing out is that we should keep our expectations in balance when it comes to NX' potential (only refering to the home console derivate of course.)
Have you a chart of their handheld sales? I think since they are hinting that the software libraries might overlap in some way then that would give good insight into their decision.
Stilton Disco
Member
The problem is, that 'casual' audience hasn't stopped gaming, if anything that market has exploded to far greater numbers than we saw in the 7th gen, it's just that they've gone to mobile gaming.
So unless the NX is easier to use than a buttonless touch screen, has cheaper games than 'free' that can be downloaded in seconds, have access to all other media that exists accessible with less hassle than downloading an app, can be a better way of communicating with the rest of the world than something that was primarily designed for that function, as well as being even more portable and socially acceptable for the average person's life than their phone is, then it's not getting that audience back.
The Wii didn't 'lose' the casual audience. It was simply taken by a better competing hardware manufacturer, just not a console making one.
Much as the Wii took the original 'casual' audience from the PS2 infact. And Nintendo aren't ever getting them back, anymore than Sony is, and I'm including even if VR does take off.
The new 'casual' audience that does exist, are the COD, FIFA/Madden, Minecraft and GTA players, and other than that, there's just the enthusiast market being perfectly served by the other consoles and PC. If they can't get them, then they can only really hope to not have too great a decline from their current audience, because they sure as hell wouldn't be generating new sales from anywhere else by out competing Apple and Samsung.
Eddie Nash
Neo Member
Whatever the NX ends up being, I just know myself well enough to say that I'll buy it at launch, unless:
1) It's digital only (I'm not saying it will be)
2) Its controller doesn't include physical face buttons, unless it's Tactus enabled (again, I'm not saying it won't include physical face buttons)
I say this because no matter what people say about the console or Nintendo's current lack of 3rd party support, I still want my fix of Nintendo's games, like Zelda, Smash, Mario, DK and even Metroid, hopefully.
That said, I still hope Nintendo recovers 3rd party support, at least to some extent. I also hope their inevitable new "gimmick" is fun to play with, like Wii's motion controls.
Bitch Pudding
Member
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