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Does Nintendo's next iteration have to be equally as powerful as the Steam Deck?
- Thread starter cormack12
- Start date
chorizosausage#3774
Member
I think it's more likely it'll no longer be on sale.
Fbh
Member
Not really, though if it comes in 2024 I would't expect it to be worse.
As much as people on gaming forums will argue that they should focus on power and that a $1500 non portable switch 2 with 4K 60fps+ would totally give them tremendous succes. The truth is Nintendo doesn't focus or depend on power and they've found their biggest success not focusing on power.
As long as the Switch 2 keeps a similar form factor, remains affordable and keeps the sequels to their popular franchises coming, I don't see how it wouldn't be successful and how it wouldn't destroy any other portable console (in sales).
The one thing that has me curious is how they will strengthen their first party linuep. With the Switch they could rely on WiiU re-releases to keep a steady stream coming. But unless their next console isn't backwards compatible with Switch they will need to find a new solution.
As much as people on gaming forums will argue that they should focus on power and that a $1500 non portable switch 2 with 4K 60fps+ would totally give them tremendous succes. The truth is Nintendo doesn't focus or depend on power and they've found their biggest success not focusing on power.
As long as the Switch 2 keeps a similar form factor, remains affordable and keeps the sequels to their popular franchises coming, I don't see how it wouldn't be successful and how it wouldn't destroy any other portable console (in sales).
The one thing that has me curious is how they will strengthen their first party linuep. With the Switch they could rely on WiiU re-releases to keep a steady stream coming. But unless their next console isn't backwards compatible with Switch they will need to find a new solution.
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In term of hardware pricing, the main difference between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft was always that Nintendo usually tends to sell their consoles without losing money.
As for cutting the price of consoles Nintendo is similar to Sony and Microsoft, in the sense that the price cuts are instruments which console manufacturer resort to when the console sales are slowing down and wants to keep/improve the sales pace (in return the expansion of the player base grant profits from the sales of software/digital services/pheriperals).
The reason why over four years in Switch never got a price cut, just the introduction of new models, is simply because the console never needed a price cut to keep/improve the sales momentum.
Look at this chart and notice how Switch is selling faster than PS4 in the same timeframe, no price cut required:
When the Switch demand slow down considerably, I'm sure Nintendo will slice the price of the console if they believe this action will bring profitability down the road (again through the sales of software/digital services/pheriperals).
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Schnozberry
Member
No, but it probably will be.
The advantage Nintendo has will remain on the software side. The Steamdeck is really slick hardware tech, but I have no idea how many Valve has to sell before developers will spend much time making sure new release games "just work" on a linux compatibility library.
The advantage Nintendo has will remain on the software side. The Steamdeck is really slick hardware tech, but I have no idea how many Valve has to sell before developers will spend much time making sure new release games "just work" on a linux compatibility library.
Kokoloko85
Member
I think by 2023/2024 the tech will be alot cheaper so it will be similar tech as SteamDeck
Kokoloko85
Member
I think the Switch 2 will probably be even more popular or as popular as it would probably be able to play games like the latest COD and Fifa etc
And Xbox is probably never selling more than 65-70 million units again so I doubt it
Captain Toad
Banned
I'm not expecting a new Nintendo console in two years. Not with the Switch still selling at its peak.
Dr.brain64
Member
It will be equal in price...
Dream-Knife
Banned
The switch will probably never get another COD, regardless of how powerful it is.
I'm expecting Xbox to have better exclusives in the second half.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
I don't know.
PC portables have been a thing for a long while, mostly hobbyists. Steam is a big name tho.
Marty-McFly
Banned
It's pretty damn weird, but understanding the mentality of forum posters who think their hardware specs somehow give them Dragon Ball Z like character progression, you can easily picture them slamming their fists into their keyboards or PS5's out of frustration and bewilderment when a weaker device on the block is so much more successful.
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Kokoloko85
Member
I think when the tech is a little more capable they might retry it on the Switch again, they did with Wii U and 3DS. Regardless the Switch 2 will be more capable to play current gen games like Resident Evil, Tekken, Assassins Creed etc.
Even at the height of the 360’s success they still sold just under PS3 at the end of the generation.
The 360 released a year before the PS3, which was a disaster and Sony’s worst selling console. The 360 had many advantages like better online capabilities, better 3rd party games, easier to develop for and having games like Final Fantasy, DMC, Resident Evil and Tekken for the first time which are mainly known as Playstation titles. Xbox doesn't have any of these advantages anymore and Playstation isnt havent the slow start it had with the PS3
Victor Omega
Member
No.
Once you understand Nintendo's hardware philosophy, you can kinda predict (minus how they will use it) how powerful their next console will be.
It will be has powerful as the cheapest and most understood tech in 2024.
I doubt 4k 60fps be a withered (cheap and understandable) tech by 2024, and that for all consoles and PC.
DLSS is where my bet
Once you understand Nintendo's hardware philosophy, you can kinda predict (minus how they will use it) how powerful their next console will be.
It will be has powerful as the cheapest and most understood tech in 2024.
I doubt 4k 60fps be a withered (cheap and understandable) tech by 2024, and that for all consoles and PC.
DLSS is where my bet
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StateofMajora
Banned
Should be more powerful except for maybe memory amount and cpu.
Dream-Knife
Banned
Even if let's say the switch 2 is as powerful as a steam deck, do you think EA and activision are going to make a second version of a game for FP16 instructions on an ARM chip, or a scaleable game in FP32 for x86-64 for PC/Xbox/PS?
360 beat PS3 when it mattered (during the gen). I'm predicting xbox will have better exclusives than ps5.
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Look, it would depend on the profit margins at the time of release. In one or two years, the Steam Deck may still be above what Nintendo would want to produce, based on their previous history. I suspect if the Steam Deck is at all popular or profitable, there will be many follow-ups of increased power based on current tech at the time. Nintendo will always be several steps (generations) behind.
Unless Nvidia pulls off an M1 soc style chip, who knows. I am not sure why anyone would expect anything less from Nintendo. As successful as their Software is, their hardware profits provide a significant chunk of their success, being frugal helps. Also if one is to believe, the Switch is as it is, Nintendo got great deals on old chips from Nvidia, who were desperate at the time. Maybe it's true, maybe times have changed and the Nvidia partnership is about to pay off. I still feel Nintendo is looking more at the mobile gaming space chip sets and not PC.
Unless Nvidia pulls off an M1 soc style chip, who knows. I am not sure why anyone would expect anything less from Nintendo. As successful as their Software is, their hardware profits provide a significant chunk of their success, being frugal helps. Also if one is to believe, the Switch is as it is, Nintendo got great deals on old chips from Nvidia, who were desperate at the time. Maybe it's true, maybe times have changed and the Nvidia partnership is about to pay off. I still feel Nintendo is looking more at the mobile gaming space chip sets and not PC.
Meesh
Member
I'm not saying at needs to be as powerful, buuu-uuuuuutttt...
*Now I'm playing with power, portable power lol.
*Access my library on the go and dock at home.
*Huge library of stuff I want down the pipe.
*Play all my emulators, all of them, and I have a lot expansive catalogue for Cemu/Dolphin/Retroarch, whatever I want. Fixes that VC problem...
*Netfilx and other streaming apps I have.
Steam Deck gon' do what Nintenwillnevergetaroundtodo-ing, #GetyerheadsoutyoassesNibtendo. Lol.
Only downside is Zelda for me... but we have ways. So if Nintendo wants to impress me, there's gotta be way more to offer, or at least be par for the new standard course. Doesn't have to be power, but we need options. We need value.
*Now I'm playing with power, portable power lol.
*Access my library on the go and dock at home.
*Huge library of stuff I want down the pipe.
*Play all my emulators, all of them, and I have a lot expansive catalogue for Cemu/Dolphin/Retroarch, whatever I want. Fixes that VC problem...
*Netfilx and other streaming apps I have.
Steam Deck gon' do what Nintenwillnevergetaroundtodo-ing, #GetyerheadsoutyoassesNibtendo. Lol.
Only downside is Zelda for me... but we have ways. So if Nintendo wants to impress me, there's gotta be way more to offer, or at least be par for the new standard course. Doesn't have to be power, but we need options. We need value.
cartman414
Member
Not unless Nintendo can and wants to get an SSD in there.
Nintendo handhelds have always been underpowered to the competition and it has yet to hurt them. Great software with good enough tech has done well for them.
Switch 2 will probably look weaker than Steam Deck on paper, at least in handheld mode. This will probably be due to using a smaller battery while still wanting to maintain ~5 hour battery life, so the SoC gets less power. I doubt Nvidia will have a chip efficient enough to overcome that. Real world results will probably be closer due to developer optimization.
Switch 2 will probably look weaker than Steam Deck on paper, at least in handheld mode. This will probably be due to using a smaller battery while still wanting to maintain ~5 hour battery life, so the SoC gets less power. I doubt Nvidia will have a chip efficient enough to overcome that. Real world results will probably be closer due to developer optimization.
that's where the biggest challenge for the switch 2 or whatever nintendo calls it, lies, but like I said earlier if they do use orin,200 gb/s, is possible
not for those glorious 5 months between the gameboy advance launch and the game park 32 the GBA was the best in portable game hardware
Cornbread78
Member
Ninty doesn't really care, so they will make it only run pixal art running 8/16/32 bits and their rabbit fanboys will swoon over it
93xfan
Banned
How did laziness pay off for Nintendo during the WiiU era? Did their most loyal fans keep them afloat?
They have to strike a balance and give reason for the upgrade.
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jigglet
Banned
Wii U is not an example of anything. It was flawed from the most fundamental concept / design level.
rnlval
Member
HBM 2E and HDM 3 are expensive.
From https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/fv/posts/taking-lpddr5-to-the-next-level
The LPDDR5 road map can scale up to 8533 MT/s which is LPDDR5-8533.
128 bit LPDDR5X-8533 (quad-channel 32 bit) implementation has 136 GB/s
128 bit LPDDR5X-6400 (quad-channel 32 bit) has 102 GB/s.
MrFunSocks
Banned
No, because power is irrelevant for nintendo consoles (and consoles in general really). People aren't buying Switches because of it's power, they're buying it because of the games. The Deck changes nothing.
Marty-McFly
Banned
No offence but Nintendo is not aiming to impress you. They view gamers that are core enough to play with emulator's as antisocial gamers and have expressed greater interest in the mass market, and embrace couch co op social play. This is why Mario Kart is such a killer IP and why Switch is selling to such a larger portion of the market.
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supernova8
Banned
There's no 100% guarantee that they will be with Nvidia for the next console though, right? They may well be already be in discussions with AMD to do something similar to what's in the Steam Deck but slightly trimmed down to maintain the form factor.
Especially if Nvidia wants to move them onto a newer chip (and charge them a lot more per chip), it might rub Nintendo the wrong way. It wouldn't surprise me if Nvidia misreads Nintendo's management and tries to force them down a road they don't want to go on. Plus, AMD has a lot more experience with semi-custom console SoC designs, and the Steam Deck proves that they can do handheld too.
Double plus, Nintendo used ATI/AMD graphics in the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U, so they're not exactly strangers to AMD. Now that AMD is in a position to offer them an all-in-one package, it might be perfect.
rnlval
Member
Samsung's upcoming Exynos 2200 SoC has Arm's Cortex X2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 6 CUs on 4 nm process node which is roughly equivalent to TSMC's 5 nm.
Mobile phones typically have 5 watts with sub-1 watt power idle.
Steam Deck's APU has 15 watts at 7nm. For 4 nm process tech, half of 15 watts is 7.5 watts, and reduced to 6 CUs would move it into a typical mobile phone 5 watts budget.
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DeepSpace5D
Member
Nah, Nintendo just needs their next iteration to be an upgrade over the Switch. The Nintendo first-party lineup will always be the most important factor.
THE DUCK
voted poster of the decade by bots
I dont think this is true, don't mistake having no other viable portable options for Nintendo fans not caring about graphics. Also they do need to keep hardware relevant and powerfull to an extent to keep 3rd party developers and make ports easier. I would say switch 2 if outbin next year or 2 needs to be close to steam deck.
Coolwhhip
Neophyte
Nintendo doesnt even know what dlss is.
GuinGuin
Banned
Look at history. Wii and Wii U were extremely graphically inferior to the competition and didn't have the mobile excuse. Nintendo isn't chasing the best graphics and focus more on delivering sequels to their core franchises with a new twist.
CuteFaceJay
Member
they wouldn't be willing to pay the price for that hardware while keeping the unit cost low.
Jaxcellent
Member
No, Nintendo doesn't do the more power game, their games sell the hardware, not the hardware specs.
BootsLoader
Banned
If it’s their next gen upgrade then yes.
Console manufacturers do have a habbit of dropping Nvidia and the market for their socs seems to be self driving cars now, so maybe they aren't interested , though I'd hope so for easy back compatibility
ToTTenTranz
Banned
The Switch 2 might be more powerful than the 2021 Steam Deck if it releases in 2023 or 2024, but handheld PCs will be a moving target until then, just as they've been until now.
AMD's Rembrant U in 2022 will already bring a substantial performance boost over the Deck's Van Gogh, due to 8x Zen3 cores with more L3, 50% more CU units (12 instead of 8), larger L2 caches and support for 6400MT/s LPDDR5/DDR5 (Deck uses 5500MT/s), and the same "CVML" block that may or may not be used for ML-based upscaled.
Thanks to Valve's efforts, I have little doubt we'll see premium handheld PCs using Rembrandt in 2022 that bring higher resolution screens, larger batteries and higher TDPs like the OneXPlayer.
There's also a small update to Van Gogh planned for 2022 called Dragon Crest which might bring higher clocks at same power consumption.
By the time we get to 2023 we're looking at Phoenix, which is a 5nm APU with Zen4 cores and might already bring stacked V-cache (Infinity Cache / L3 cache for CPU+GPU).
Good luck to Nintendo paying Nvidia rates for a SoC that can compete with that.
AMD's Rembrant U in 2022 will already bring a substantial performance boost over the Deck's Van Gogh, due to 8x Zen3 cores with more L3, 50% more CU units (12 instead of 8), larger L2 caches and support for 6400MT/s LPDDR5/DDR5 (Deck uses 5500MT/s), and the same "CVML" block that may or may not be used for ML-based upscaled.
Thanks to Valve's efforts, I have little doubt we'll see premium handheld PCs using Rembrandt in 2022 that bring higher resolution screens, larger batteries and higher TDPs like the OneXPlayer.
There's also a small update to Van Gogh planned for 2022 called Dragon Crest which might bring higher clocks at same power consumption.
By the time we get to 2023 we're looking at Phoenix, which is a 5nm APU with Zen4 cores and might already bring stacked V-cache (Infinity Cache / L3 cache for CPU+GPU).
Good luck to Nintendo paying Nvidia rates for a SoC that can compete with that.
HerjansEagleFeeder
Member
IF Nintendo has a new bullshit gimmick up their sleeve, they'll be convinced that they can get away with a "new" console that has exactly the same innards as the switch.
If they don't - for instance, because they want to continue with the successful hybrid-portable concept - they will have to up the oomph of the thing. Which is what I am expecting. My money is on a "new" hybrid portable, again with Nvidia graphics, but with more power. I can't see them doing a stationary console, and the success of the Switch will probably be a huge temptation not to change too much from the current design.
If they don't - for instance, because they want to continue with the successful hybrid-portable concept - they will have to up the oomph of the thing. Which is what I am expecting. My money is on a "new" hybrid portable, again with Nvidia graphics, but with more power. I can't see them doing a stationary console, and the success of the Switch will probably be a huge temptation not to change too much from the current design.