Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[Shifty Geezer]

Isn't this how leaks work? Second hand information? I mean even if you are told it from someone who did see it, you now have second hand info?...

People who followed the rumours of Nintendo's previous machines know how ridiculous some of the rumours get, and how much evidence there has been that such rumours aren't trustworthy. They invariably lead to bizarre post-launch discussions about Nintendo's hidden power thanks to the presently untapped "xyz" custom processor.

So the important point here is not to take anything at face value. Wait until there's a body of evidence. Because there are people who'll just post for shits and giggles. Expect some Pastebin rumours to emerge full of fanboy wish fulfilment with zero basis.

 

[turkey]

These are probably a super daft questions but

Is this still likely to be two devices, home console and portable

And following on, would some super tessellation tech in both allow for assets to be more easily scaled for the portable, also potentially allowing the portable to be of floating performance where the system can dial in its own sweet spot allowing it to be improved and have it automatically performing better with released titles?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The problem is more the concept of console generations, which is, IMO, plain stupid.

Plain stupid would be to insist on limiting the new hardware because of backwards compatibility.
Nintendo needed three generations to understand that (GC -> Wii -> Wii U).
Sony did that for the PS2 because the PS1's hardware was so much weaker that it could be used for I/O management, but having an entire EE+GSX chip inside the first batch of PS3 proved to be way too expensive for very little compensation.

These are probably a super daft questions but

Is this still likely to be two devices, home console and portable

The NX seems to be either two devices or a family of home+portable devices that may or may not release at the same time, so yes.

And following on, would some super tessellation tech in both allow for assets to be more easily scaled for the portable, also potentially allowing the portable to be of floating performance where the system can dial in its own sweet spot allowing it to be improved and have it automatically performing better with released titles?

Not sure I understand this, but it would be possible for the weaker handheld device to just run the same game/assets as the home console with lower tesselation levels (we have tesselation sliders in PC games and AMD drivers already), and since it can be done now with current hardware they wouldn't need any new "super tesselation tech".

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Importance of backwards compatibility discussion.

Feasibility of an upgradeable or forwards compatible console discussion.

 

[Rodéric]

Importance of backwards compatibility discussion.

Feasibility of an upgradeable or forwards compatible console discussion.

What he said.

 

[Syferz]

People who followed the rumours of Nintendo's previous machines know how ridiculous some of the rumours get, and how much evidence there has been that such rumours aren't trustworthy. They invariably lead to bizarre post-launch discussions about Nintendo's hidden power thanks to the presently untapped "xyz" custom processor.

So the important point here is not to take anything at face value. Wait until there's a body of evidence. Because there are people who'll just post for shits and giggles. Expect some Pastebin rumours to emerge full of fanboy wish fulfilment with zero basis.

I followed it pretty closely and was the original poster in neogaf who declared 176GFLOPs after seeing the picture of the die, even though I argued against the performance angle here weeks earlier (someone compared it to a 160ALU part with NFS most wanted Good job to him btw)

There is some drawbacks to being over hyped, and many internet places have taken this rumor at face value, that NX will be much more powerful than PS4, but I'm not one of them, I firmly believe Nintendo's sweet spot is 1TFLOP+ for the NX console with the handheld being 100% compatible at 128GFLOPs+ with a 540p resolution. There is a chance that Nintendo will go the easy route and grab PS4 performance (from all reports we have, Nintendo actually targeted the GPU to out perform 360 aka 360++ rumors, so this isn't unheard of) That might look like a 20CU GPU on the new 14nm/16nm node clocked at 1GHz for 2560GFLOPs (PS4 of course is a 20CU chip with 2CUs disabled and clocked at 800mhz for 1843GFLOPs)

My posts have been about how the NX console would possibly handle a polygon intensive demo better than a higher performing graphics card, showing how the Nintendo NX might not out perform PS4 but still have a demo like this, even a 1TFLOP GCN2 GPU might out perform a XB1 if the gains in architecture are substantial enough. Sorry for the tour through my thought process, but I tend to take real sources like the WSJ more seriously, and remember some rumors pan out, even with Nintendo, WSJ, Nekki and even some random users on neogaf who have been vetted by the mods there (Arkham) had it right.

 

[Grall]

Isn't this how leaks work? Second hand information? I mean even if you are told it from someone who did see it, you now have second hand info?

Assuming the someone who claims to have seen it actually saw what he claims, and assuming one did not just plain make up the someone who claims to have seen something. We've seen many examples of either case in the past, people plain just making shit up and passing it off as truth. "Oh hai I'm a dev and I saw such-and-such", and absolutely none of it was true.

For these 2 sources to collaborate, one of which coming from such a reliable source, it seems pretty silly to outright dismiss it.

Reliable sources have been fooled in the past, or willing to risk letting themselves be fooled in order to score a big scoop (and subsequently ending up being fooled with a scoopful of BS.) Also, one source could have tailored his BS to "confirm" the other source. We've seen this too many times.

 

[Syferz]

Assuming the someone who claims to have seen it actually saw what he claims, and assuming one did not just plain make up the someone who claims to have seen something. We've seen many examples of either case in the past, people plain just making shit up and passing it off as truth. "Oh hai I'm a dev and I saw such-and-such", and absolutely none of it was true.

Right, I'm assuming that the WSJ writer knew who he was talking to as his sources are usually legit, if he knew dev kits were in the wild, then he knew the developer had said dev kit.

Reliable sources have been fooled in the past, or willing to risk letting themselves be fooled in order to score a big scoop (and subsequently ending up being fooled with a scoopful of BS.) Also, one source could have tailored his BS to "confirm" the other source. We've seen this too many times.

The WSJ writer confirmed the NintendoForum source through an email, not exactly where you'd make a big scoop, IGN and other news sources have since collaborated the original dev kits existing. What exactly is the point of WSJ guy lying to confirm a NintendoForum source and not actually report it on his site? Your points just don't seem to fit this particular rumor if we assume the WSJ is a good source for information, though lets not take this out of context, he never says that the console is going to be more powerful than PCs (ridiculous) much less the PS4, he was simply told that the demo had pushed polygons as well or better than a near top of the line PC graphics card, that doesn't take an overall higher performing GPU.

 

[Pixel]

What kind of pricing is there at these lower fabrication nodes for TSMC who are fabricating chips AMD?

Anyone follow Digitimes or other industry oriented sites?

 

[Grall]

Right, I'm assuming that the WSJ writer knew who he was talking to as his sources are usually legit, if he knew dev kits were in the wild, then he knew the developer had said dev kit.

Continuously referring to the rumor monger as "WSJ writer" is appeal to authority fallacy. Are WSJ writers immune to people trying to scam them? Are WSJ writers typically familiar with the console industry and the flood of false rumors that always surround the run-up to a new console launch? No, of course not.

 

[DieH@rd]

It is interesting that the first news about NX coming into the wild are matching the report from DigiTimes that FoxConn should assemble first pilot units this October.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/report-nintendo-nx-release-planned-for-july-2016/0152073

But on the other hand, WSJ mentioned only SDK. Most likely devs are still developing on ordinary PCs for now.

 

[Syferz]

Grail: I touched on that with "his sources are usually legit" WSJ in general have a good track record and we are on the 42nd page, with this being the most solid piece of information yet, ignoring it because it doesn't fit your preconceived notion of what Nintendo's consoles should look like, is your choice. I think that the rumor should be addressed as the most solid piece of info since Square Enix "announcing" DQ11 for it.

It is interesting that the first news about NX coming into the wild are matching the report from DigiTimes that FoxConn should assemble first pilot units this October.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/report-nintendo-nx-release-planned-for-july-2016/0152073

But on the other hand, WSJ mentioned only SDK. Most likely devs are still developing on ordinary PCs for now.

Externally this is certainly true, but they might have initial hardware dev kits by now for internal use. At least they are probably getting them by the first week of next month if the Digitimes rumors are legit. (foxconn leaks a lot of info so I imagine the general leak is true but the finer details could be lost in translation, such as launching in summer 2016, it might be that foxconn will be manufacturing retail consoles in the summer for a fall release, which makes more sense to me.

 

[fehu]

What about some merlin falcon derivate? Is it cheap enought?

 

[AlNom]

http://files.linuxgizmos.com/congatec_congatr3.jpg I get about 245mm^2 give or take, based on the 37mm x 29mm package.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

What about some merlin falcon derivate? Is it cheap enought?

It should be cheap. Looking at AlNets' numbers I imagine the chip should be profitable at under $50 or so.
But its usability on a games console depends on how much of a derivative it would be.
Two Excavator modules plus 8 GCN CUs at 800MHz wouldn't exactly be the best balanced system for games. Both the PS4 and the XBone have completely different GPU -> CPU proportions and for good reason.
Not to mention that even when using 2400 MT/s DDR4 the graphics system would be fairly bandwidth limited.

 

[DieH@rd]

Merlin Falcon is small, but it would be a mistake to use it in its default configuration. It is too weak, weaker than Xbone. But if they double the CPU cores, double the GPU section and add a lot of fast ram [preferably faster than GDDR4].... you end up with big and expensive console that would just manage to match PS4 with performance.

 

[Grall]

ignoring it because it doesn't fit your preconceived notion of what Nintendo's consoles should look like, is your choice.

I'm ignoring it because it's of the category "rumor looks specifically designed to appeal to fans". I've seen exactly this kind of shit like this during both Wii and Wii U pre-unveil phases, and both times all such rumors turned out to be ridiculously false.

Nintendo using state-of-the-art anything in NX could of course be a possibility, but this time I'm not going to believe any such claims until I see the damn thing in the flesh, as shown and confirmed by Nintendo, and I'm especially going to disbelieve unnamed, unconfirmed sources.

 

[Syferz]

I'm ignoring it because it's of the category "rumor looks specifically designed to appeal to fans". I've seen exactly this kind of shit like this during both Wii and Wii U pre-unveil phases, and both times all such rumors turned out to be ridiculously false.

Nintendo using state-of-the-art anything in NX could of course be a possibility, but this time I'm not going to believe any such claims until I see the damn thing in the flesh, as shown and confirmed by Nintendo, and I'm especially going to disbelieve unnamed, unconfirmed sources.

I am not trying to convince you and I don't want to drag this on because I don't think it profits the thread any further beyond this insight: The original article where this rumor comes from is behind a $12 paywall to the Wall Street Journal, it was largely of importance to anyone thinking of putting stock in nintendo I guess? I only write this because it really doesn't sound like it was designed for Nintendo fans, that is just the information he got from whatever source he deemed reasonable to talk about. Industry leading chips doesn't mean PS4+ it just means modern architectures on current process nodes. It could very well be built with mobile GPUs, carry something similar to Nvidia's X1 GPU and 4 A57 chips with 4 A53 chips, just having a newer tessellator to extract more geometry or it could be that the APIs hinder the PC's GPU from calculating all the drawcalls as quickly as the slower card built with final APIs would be able to do.

 

[London Geezer]

I think the point people are trying to make is that no one actually knows what was meant, and people are trying to interpret and extrapolate something that the original poster didn't even know much about - this is simply inferred from the talk of 'polygons', which no one apart from clueless journalists or financial analysts would talk about in this day and age.
Just because it's a rumour 'for investors' doesn't make it true, in fact I'd argue that makes it even more suspicious, from experience.

 

[ArcticCircle]

it might be that foxconn will be manufacturing retail consoles in the summer for a fall release, which makes more sense to me.

It could also be that Nintendo opens less production lines (meaning something like 500k consoles per month, rather then million) because they got burned so badly with Wii U. They ended up with huge inventory and they still haven't sold 'em all (I think Pachter said something about 12-15 million units). I'd bet Wii U lifetime sales will end up within that range if NX lauches next year.