Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[AlNom]

Let's call it a USP rather than a marketing advantage. A games console is bought chiefly for its ability to play games and not it's size, with form factor being one of a number of lower priority consumer considerations.

something something Apple TV etc.

 

[London Geezer]

Bah! People buy consoles because Jesus loves us more when we do.

 

[Entropy]

Yeah, it was confirmed by official Nintendo dev documents, 32 VLIW5 right? no real doubt.

There wouldn't be any doubts if any documents actually leaked. If they did, I never saw them, and I would sure like to browse through them. Links to any kind of scans, copies, or excerpts have been notably absent. "Someone says", is rather unconvincing in regards to anything controversial.

Be that as it may, it seems that the key to wringing performance out of the WiiU is to design the game to make optimum use of its particular memory hierarchy, (and of course to avoid trying to port code that relies heavily on CPU SIMD capabilities.)

Ultimately, the proof of any pudding is in its eating.

 

[Goodtwin]

Yeah, it was confirmed by official Nintendo dev documents, 32 VLIW5 right? no real doubt.

Re Digitimes 10-12 mil in 2016...again all these launching soon reports to me, can only exist if the thing is really not so powerful. We should have leaks otherwise.

Huge quantities shipped in 2016 can only suggest to me Wii U-redux or mobile chipset. Anything more cutting edge suggests longer, more difficult development, lower launch quantities, and more leaks.

This doesn't mean I believe Digitimes though, they're unreliable.

Yea, it seemed to be pretty conclusive from the dye photo investigation, and the leaked document that the Wii U GPU has 160SPU's. Obviously that isn't an impressive number, but the Wii U does bring some pretty darn good results even though theoretical FLOP performance is less than the 360's GPU. I guess the efficiency benefits of the newer design were enough for it to surpass the 360, even if marginally so. Its hard to see a 176Gflop PC part match Wii U's performance, and that's not really true with the X1/PS4, where we see similar speced PC parts darn near mirroring those consoles.

As for Nintendo's extremely optimistic expectations with NX next year, it really makes you wonder what NX will look like. Is this going to be a subscription based product? Sign up for the NX service and get the hardware for free? Almost similar to paying for cable tv. Perhaps this subscription gives the player the access to the virtual console with no extra fees. Or maybe its just blind optimism.

 

[McHuj]

Yea, it seemed to be pretty conclusive from the dye photo investigation, and the leaked document that the Wii U GPU has 160SPU's. Obviously that isn't an impressive number, but the Wii U does bring some pretty darn good results even though theoretical FLOP performance is less than the 360's GPU.

That's part of the reason I'm not expecting Nintendo to put out a large chip with lots of shaders. Hopefully, they'll go with a newer version of GCN on a modern process that allows them to achieve at least Xbone level performance with fewer flops.

 

[Esrever]

Sounds like you did 1 flops/clock instead of 2 - 320 x 2 x 550MHz = 352gflops, 176 is half that.

there is only 160 shaders

 

[Fourth Storm]

That's part of the reason I'm not expecting Nintendo to put out a large chip with lots of shaders. Hopefully, they'll go with a newer version of GCN on a modern process that allows them to achieve at least Xbone level performance with fewer flops.

That's a good point. With Nintendo looking to ship those numbers, it's either a 28nm chip or a very modest finFET design.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Sounds like you did 1 flops/clock instead of 2 - 320 x 2 x 550MHz = 352gflops, 176 is half that.

For Wii U GPU it's 160 shaders x 2 x 550MHz = 176 Gflops.

For Xbox 360 GPU it's 240 shaders x 2 x 500MHz = 240 Gflops.

Nintendo would need about 10.5 times the Wii U GPU's performance to reach PS4's 1,843 Gflops (1.84 Tflops).

(PS4 GPU: 1152 shaders x 2 x 800MHz )

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I don't think Nintendo will target anywhere near the PS4's performance because I think the NX is a tablet.
Something like this:

Back in 2013 , the Razer Edge had a 20W GPU (GT640M LE) and a 17W CPU. Together with RAM and Southbridge the thing probably reached 40W easily. Nintendo would probably avoid going above 30W though, maybe not even above 20W.

I don't think Nintendo will put a 1080p screen in it. Maybe 720p or 900p tops. So then it'll only have to match the PS4 visuals at that resolution, or slightly lower if they use some smart upscaling.
And then they'll go with games in cartridges for retail (32 and 64GB NANDs are cheap as chips nowadays) plus micro-SD for downloads.

They might want to retain the 3DS's stereoscopic gimmick, meaning they could go with for example a screen with 1024*1152 (1024*576 per eye).

So with a 30W gaming-oriented mobile APU, what could we get?
I'd say take Carrizo, replace the Excavator cores for two 4-core modules of Cortex A53 or very low-clocked Puma+ cores (1.2GHz?), HBM or GDDR5x and use the rest on whatever GCN 2.0 Compute Units they can fit.

 

[liolio]

I don't think Nintendo will target anywhere near the PS4's performance because I think the NX is a tablet.
Something like this:

You meant something like this. I've a bad feeling about all this.

 

[London Geezer]

Looks horrendous. And it's such a shame, I'd pay good money to play Nintendo games but I'm so against their cheapskateism with their tech, I just won't buy their cheap hardware. There's no place in my home for needlessly cheap and tacky tech.

 

[liolio]

Looks horrendous. And it's such a shame, I'd pay good money to play Nintendo games but I'm so against their cheapskateism with their tech, I just won't buy their cheap hardware. There's no place in my home for needlessly cheap and tacky tech.

I am bashing Nintendo but I actually see potential greatness in the patent above. I've said multiple times that Nintendo needs to make a choice wrt to input, they can't go for ever without a decent do it all single controlling device. The device laid on the page linked above would actually grow nicely on the retro and simple approach that the Wiimote took.
I'm not fond of having many buttons for the sake of it I suspect those 2 scroll wheels can make up for a lot of buttons. Now I could think of something a little beefier than what the patent shows, when "clicked" they have to replace triggers so I would want something more consistent than what most mouse scroll wheel feels like. With a touch screen while "simple" such controller would offer lots of options as for the impact on the system BOM...
Looking at the patent I can't think of screenn bigger than say 4.5" otherwise the hands are huge.

 

[Grall]

They just can't not have four face buttons tho, and arguably, not four shoulder buttons either, as those things are expected standard features on controllers today and you'll gimp gameplay and portability to your platform by not having them. Are we then to assume they're again going to pick deliberately shit and obsolete hardware and not give a damn about third parties just like with the wuu? Because doing that's what got them into the situation they're in now, with a dead home console, years of consecutive losses where previously they hadn't had any for decades, and no future prospects.

Talk about not being able to learn from your mistakes - if this is indeed the case, that is!

 

[BRiT]

How the fuck is Nintendo going to sell more NX's in 1 year than Sony sold PS4s? There's no way.

 

[London Geezer]

I say it here, you can quote me, if they release something that is not ridiculously cheap, underpowered, gimmicky and badly positioned, and if they manage to get a few good remasters and great new games (that's a given), I will buy it.

That's it. I wrote it. I will hold to this. But they need to be GOOD to me.

 

[bunge]

How the fuck is Nintendo going to sell more NX's in 1 year than Sony sold PS4s? There's no way.

Could you watch your fucking language please?

 

[Globalisateur]

Only a tablet could sell that much. Or very similar to the usual tablet, their version of a tablet with gimmick controls while being Amiibo-ready.

A tablet is technically a hybrid between handheld and a home console while being smart with apps thanks to its generous screen.

It's not like they tried to hide what they had in mind from the start IMO:

 

[east of eastside]

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltech...on-the-origins-of-nintendos-famous-characters

Miyamoto NPR:

And the reason for that is that, No. 1, we like to do things that are unique and different from other companies, but we also don't want to just end up in a race to have the highest-tech specs in a competition to try to find how we get these expensive tech specs to the lowest price of the other systems. And so there's different ways that we can approach it, and sometimes we look at it just from the sense of offering a system that consumes less power and makes less noise and generates less heat, or sometimes we may look at the size of the media and the size of the system and where it fits within the home.

But really what's most important to us is, how do we create a system that is both unique and affordable so that everyone can afford it and everyone can enjoy it.

NX is..
1)Low power consuming
2)Small media (cartridge/digital)
3)Small system/form factor (for a Japanese child's playroom)
4)Unique (mobile/console/portable convergence system)
5)Affordabe ($299 base mode launch price)

NX console: 2017
NX handheld: 2016

 

[dobwal]

They just can't not have four face buttons tho, and arguably, not four shoulder buttons either, as those things are expected standard features on controllers today and you'll gimp gameplay and portability to your platform by not having them. Are we then to assume they're again going to pick deliberately shit and obsolete hardware and not give a damn about third parties just like with the wuu? Because doing that's what got them into the situation they're in now, with a dead home console, years of consecutive losses where previously they hadn't had any for decades, and no future prospects.

Talk about not being able to learn from your mistakes - if this is indeed the case, that is!

Actually, outside of gameplay that makes use of twitchy pushes of all four buttons (I'm thinking fighting games) the scrolling buttons can readily act as a substitute. Imagine a fps. The scrolling button on the left when pressed down brings up the iron sights and the right button controls firing when pressing down. However when you use the scroll to the left or right with the left button it changes the action of the right button when you press down. Scroll to right with the left button and the right button now controls grenades throws. Scroll to left with the left button and now the right button controls melee actions. Scrolling with the right button could be used to change weapons and acts as a zoom function when sniping. That's a bunch of functions with only two buttons because each button has three possible actions not one.

You could use the scrolling buttons to dictate the actions of the two face buttons when a game isn't dependent on the second analog stick.

 

[AlNom]

2)Small media (cartridge/digital)

Super Amiibo?

e.g. Start adding Gen 2 regular amiibos to your nintendo account for cross-game usage etc. Plug the super amiibo into the console that contains the actual game on flash chip like a cartridge. Have the game install fully while you play initial section.

OK OK enough about amiibos.