Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

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ARMv8, though Apple et al. haven't fitted more than 4GB yet to their devices.

For Apple, that'd be 64-bit since iPhone 5S.

Yeah, I dont track ARM much, but from what I recall, some of the first chips have 64bit instruction support but still without large memory address support. I don't know if they had moved to supporting more ram.
 
Wow that is some fanboy drivel. I mean apart from the obvious stuff, the fact he/she is saying they know the name of the console is a dead giveaway that this is trash. No way a 3rd party dev knows what this thing is called outside of a code name (that's why code names exist isn't it?). Plus the mention of "Missions" and earning coins is clearly from playing Miitomo over the last couple days and reading up on My Nintendo. "Lots of Red in the OS", so like the store revamps we've seen in recent months? Ooo imaginative.
 
I think you only looked at Figure 1 which seems to relate to online functionality like P2P connections and simply connecting to a server that hosts multiplayer games.
What I meant was described in Figure 2:
I get that. However, the patent is addtionally talking about using the external boxes in other people's homes. A local accelerator - fine (see thread on upgradeable hardwar). Using it for local distributed computing is never going to work. Heck MS can't even get cloud computing working as promised 3 years ago and they have Azure! The patent is just a bit wishy washy, like an idea secured just in case, rather than an actual plan. Like Sony's dual-GPU architecture patent.
 
Have to say I agree with that assessment of delocalized gaming calculations. As I mentioned the local networking does have the advantage of sidestepping the latency problem, but if you use several servers, you add subdivision and distribution of yor task snippets, and collecting and fusing the results. Latency suddenly looks tricky again. Plus of course bandwidth remains as a limiting factor. A locally connected supplementary box would be revolution enough in my book.
 
More than that, it adds absolutely nothing if no-one in your neighbourhood has a box for you to tap into! You could have a situation where people in the city have way more power to spend on AI etc. than someone living in the 'burbs or sticks. As a developer, how on earth do you design for that? I can envision some very niche uses, like each box handles an AI entity so you a virtual populace matching the real install base of devices, but it's so fringe you wouldn't design a system for it.
 
I think the implementation is supposed to be a lot simpler than what you guys are making it out to be.
 
In what way? For a local upgrade, as I said, it's fine. The moment you go trying to turn all these boxes into a cloud resource, you hit all the issues mentioned. the patent covers both uses.
 
The think I dislike with that portable streaming dock type of unit working along a handheld is that it is not has convenient as it sounds. the thing is going to burn some heat, for the thing to make you want it to burn power more like (tiny) laptop than a tablet or phone (otherwise why two units?) as it burns power it means that you can keep the streaming part of the apparatus in a closed place. At home it could make sense but they you are in the transportation the handheld out is out but you could not keep the dock side you your trousers or in satchbag because heat would not dissipate properly. If one thinks a little more about it it doesn't really makes sense.
 
In what way? For a local upgrade, as I said, it's fine. The moment you go trying to turn all these boxes into a cloud resource, you hit all the issues mentioned. the patent covers both uses.


Here's what the patent has to say about close and far away network resources:

in terms of network distance, a network computing device that is "close" has relatively low latency or hops, and one that is "far away" has relatively large latency or numbers of hops. Relatively close supplemental computing devices may be able to provide services at a nearly real-time speed (e.g. processing real-time graphics and sound effects), while relatively far away devices may only be able to provide asynchronous or supplementary support to the events occurring on the console (e.g. providing for weather effects in games, artificial intelligence (AI), etc.).


The way I see it, using the computing devices that are "close" means a friend bringing his own NX to my house with one TV and an existing NX connected to it. He simply connects his NX (home console, handheld, tablet, or whatever Nintendo wants to form up their NX family with) to my home network and it sends the audio/video stream of a local multiplayer game to my NX, which in turn composites the incoming stream with its own audio/video and sends it to the TV.
This would allow for much better IQ in local multiplayer games, specially if it's connecting to a 4K+ TV. Plus, if the "guest NX" is a handheld, my friend can use his own customized touchscreen button layout, customized characters, etc. without having to rely on a cloud service like PS Plus.
This feature has been rumored lots of times for the NX from numerous different sources AFAIK.
While it may not make a lot of sense for a person to carry his home console box to his friends, it would be a spectacular feature for e.g. a tablet-console.
Nintendo may be planning a handheld that has similar processing capabilities as the home console to be released later in the platform's life cycle.


As for the "far away" compute resources (the actual cloud features), it's just stuff that host servers already do in online games with Player-vs-Environment (e.g. Destiny): weather information, NPC behavior (AI processing..), map/landscape deformations, etc.
We've had that for years, to assure a coherent experience between gamers playing in the same map.
 
My general thoughts:

- I haven't seen anything from Nintendo regarding a push towards modernization. This means I do not expect a proper XBL or PSN competitor. More importantly, certainly not a service that can one up those offerings
- The above will limit their audience reach
- Nintendo will continue to focus on it's core franchises and a demographic they understand
- Their biggest challenge will come from trusting that demographic to be there in light of the competition. Not just from the other consoles but from tablets and smartphones
- Hopefully Nintendo doesn't fall back into the Wii trap in mainly focusing on a hook for the general audience. While it worked with the Wii, I consider that an anomaly. The WiiU hopefully reset those ambition to a degree
- I expect no focus on a multimedia device as usual
- Nintendo's focus will be margin management over mass expansion. I believe that to be the most sound strategy for them
 
TVii functionality was much more interesting than MS vision.
Too bad Nintendo was as shit at implementing it as they are with everything else that's not 100% game software related. TVii was shut down over a year ago IIRC, having never even been implemented in Europe at all. Fucking lame.
 
- I haven't seen anything from Nintendo regarding a push towards modernization. This means I do not expect a proper XBL or PSN competitor. More importantly, certainly not a service that can one up those offerings

You mean aside from partnering with and purchasing 10% of a corporation that creates and manages e-commerce, mobile social platforms and gaming social platforms (one of them with 30 million users)?
Yup, aside from that there's nothing to see.


I enjoy bashing Nintendo's decrepit choices on processing hardware just as much as the next guy, but let's not sing their demise too early on stuff they seem to be working on.
 
You mean aside from partnering with and purchasing 10% of a corporation that creates and manages e-commerce, mobile social platforms and gaming social platforms (one of them with 30 million users)?
Yup, aside from that there's nothing to see.


I enjoy bashing Nintendo's decrepit choices on processing hardware just as much as the next guy, but let's not sing their demise too early on stuff they seem to be working on.

Have you seen the "game" they came out with from that partnership? If so, you'd not think of the partnership as any sort of savior, but a further hindrance.
 
Have you seen the "game" they came out with from that partnership? If so, you'd not think of the partnership as any sort of savior, but a further hindrance.

Well I won't judge a book by its cover. Their Miitomo presentation last year dropped Nintendo's shares quite a bit, but their now-released app is actually fun, works well and has been downloaded 1 million times within 3 hours after launch.
 
Well I won't judge a book by its cover. Their Miitomo presentation last year dropped Nintendo's shares quite a bit, but their now-released app is actually fun, works well and has been downloaded 1 million times within 3 hours after launch.

Hrm, that's a revamp for the better then. Looks like release date was Thursday March 31st.

Have you seen any reports on how much profit it has generated? I imagine we won't get that until the next Nintendo quarterly report? Seems like its one of those free to play with micro-transactions to dress up your avatar.
 
Did a few hours of research on AMD apus and gpus.
My specs for NX in consideration of Nintendo's culture, what kind of tech is available for them.

28nm SOC 35W TDP.

2 x 4 core Puma 1.8ghz.
640:40:16 10 CPU GCN 1.2 part. 600mhz. ~800 gflops
64mb of Edram on 1024bit bus. 1024gb/s bandwidth.

8GB of DDR4 on 128bit bus. 50gb/s bandwidth.

Overall the system is between 5-7 times more powerful than Wii-U.

The specs allows them to emulate Wii-U titles. Handle Xbox One ports with downgraded resolution / effects.

Nintendo first party titles can run at 1080p 60fps will looking better than Wii U offerings.
 
28nm SOC 35W TDP.

2 x 4 core Puma 1.8ghz.

640:40:16 10 CPU GCN 1.2 part. 600mhz. ~800 gflops
64mb of Edram on 1024bit bus. 1024gb/s bandwidth.

8GB of DDR4 on 128bit bus. 50gb/s bandwidth.

Overall the system is between 5-7 times more powerful than Wii-U.

IMO those CPU cores already use almost all of your desired TDP.

If Nintendo wants to create competitive console that can run modern X86 multiplatform games, they need to face the reality and use latest AMD tech with ~ 4x TDP of WiiU [less with 14nm].
 
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