Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[Deleted member 13524]

If we glue all the hint and rumors together, we have that :
- In 2014, Amd signed two semi-custom design, one based on Arm and the other on X86, with one beyond gaming.
- Rumor point Nx to be one of them.
- Its rumored that Facebook is behind the Arm semi-custom. From here, we can suspect X86 apu is for the Nx home.
But:
- Amd profits for 2016 is based on the release of this design win.
- Last rumor point for the release of the 3ds successor first, in November, coinciding with the Amd quarter profits.

Three conclusions:
- The Nx handheld is based on a X86 Apu from Amd.
- Nintendo isnt working with Amd at all for the 3ds successor.
- All rumor is bullshit lol.

You're assuming the Facebook deal is:
1 - Real
2 - Coming in fiscal 2016


Also, the semi-custom design wins were mentioned in late 2014, where the Facebook rumors only started appearing in mid-2015.

 

[ShyGuy]

There is no way that Nintendo will wait until late 2017 for their new console imo. Although 3DS isn't selling great it puts WiiU's sales to shame (Japan helps a lot obviously) so it's in a far better position to survive until sometime in 2017 if people don't think both new devices launch together.

If you look at the release schedules 3DS also fairs far better for 2016 -

2016 release schedule -

WiiU -

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD - March.
Pokken Tournament - March.
Starfox Zero - April.
Paper Mario (rumoured) - May.
The Legend of Zelda WiiU - Q4.

3DS -

Bravely Second - February.
Hyrule Warriors Legends - March.
Fire Emblem Fates - 2016.
Metroid Prime Federation Force - 2016.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice - 2016.
Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games - 2016.
Lego Marvels Avengers - 2016.
Yo-Kai Watch EU - 2016.
Shin Megami Tensei IV: Final - 2016.

I personally think both the NX home and handheld will launch on the same day because I believe the main hook of the devices will be the same games played on which ever device you prefer. I think likely first party launch games will be the next 3D Mario, Pikmin 4 and whatever Retro have been working on. All three studios will have had close to three years of development time by late 2016.

 

[Goodtwin]

@ShyGuy

I totally agree. I'm still uncertain if NX Console and Portable will actually be two separate items, but assuming they, the fact that games cross play is definitely going to be a key selling point. I actually believe they will sell NX based on the idea that all games going forward will be playable on whatever Nintendo device you purchase. Nintendo has spoken of avoiding software droughts, and it seems like they are taking it upon themselves to avoid this problem with NX. I just don't see Nintendo looking to the big Publishers to flesh out the lineup, but instead looking inwards. This was impossible before, splitting development resources between two platforms, but is very feasible with focus shifted to one platform. Im expecting some cross gen games with Wii U and NX early on. Games like Zelda U and Pikmin 4 come to mind.

Because NX will most certainly have a portable device, I see Nintendo going with 3DS style cartridges regardless if your playing on the console or portable. They are basically SD cards, and those are getting far cheaper. Nintendo has gotten very good at keeping their file sizes smaller, with the majority of their games easily fitting on an 8GB card. Even 32GB SD cards can be bought on Amazon for under $10, so I have to believe Nintendo could have cards in that size manufactures for a few dollars each, and the price continues to drop. They are certainly going to cost more than a disk, but I can imagine Nintendo wants to have games in two different forms sold at retail. There is no way they will use an optical drive on a portable, so I think even the console will go with SD style cartridges.

 

[Rodéric]

Interesting idea about cartridges, I was thinking maybe download only with only pay cards in shops, but that might not be enough for a fair share of customers.

Amibo based games ? That'd be interesting too. Buy an Amibo to unlock a game...

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

@ShyGuy

I totally agree. I'm still uncertain if NX Console and Portable will actually be two separate items, but assuming they, the fact that games cross play is definitely going to be a key selling point. I actually believe they will sell NX based on the idea that all games going forward will be playable on whatever Nintendo device you purchase. Nintendo has spoken of avoiding software droughts, and it seems like they are taking it upon themselves to avoid this problem with NX. I just don't see Nintendo looking to the big Publishers to flesh out the lineup, but instead looking inwards. This was impossible before, splitting development resources between two platforms, but is very feasible with focus shifted to one platform. Im expecting some cross gen games with Wii U and NX early on. Games like Zelda U and Pikmin 4 come to mind.

Because NX will most certainly have a portable device, I see Nintendo going with 3DS style cartridges regardless if your playing on the console or portable. They are basically SD cards, and those are getting far cheaper. Nintendo has gotten very good at keeping their file sizes smaller, with the majority of their games easily fitting on an 8GB card. Even 32GB SD cards can be bought on Amazon for under $10, so I have to believe Nintendo could have cards in that size manufactures for a few dollars each, and the price continues to drop. They are certainly going to cost more than a disk, but I can imagine Nintendo wants to have games in two different forms sold at retail. There is no way they will use an optical drive on a portable, so I think even the console will go with SD style cartridges.

Even 3 or 4 dollars is still very expensive compared to a disk. Probably makes more sense to sell games on disk and offer downloadable versions that can be installed on internal memory. Maybe even allow games to be installed to SD/USB HDD to avoid having to spend too much on internal storage.

Interesting idea about cartridges, I was thinking maybe download only with only pay cards in shops, but that might not be enough for a fair share of customers.

The Amiboo idea sounds fun from a consumer point of view but probably not for Nintendo. Disk plus case are much cheaper to produce and store. They charge 10 bucks or more for one figure while the content that is unlocked with them probably took next to nothing to produce so unless they'd increase the price of games they would only be losing money on it.

Might work for something like demo's or for the 1 ~ 2 dollar type of games.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Maybe the cartridge would contain the game for the portable NX, then if you insert the cartridge in the NX home console, it loads higher res graphics from servers to show on big screen. MOst of the game code would come from the cartridge and installed to the home NX unit.
So the cartridge would basically be the same for home and portable NX., the cartridge basically just unlocks the "HD" version of the game. Without internet access the home console would play just the basic portable version.

 

[DieH@rd]

Looks like this year we are only getting successor of 3DS
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-seen-likely-to-launch-hand-held-device-this-year-1453982632

 

[function]

Can anyone find prices for mask rom of the quantities used by Nintendo? I can't find anything.

Would love to know how much these NX carts will cost and what kind of BW / latency you can expect from them. In the MD/SNES days carts could be addressed directly, with very low latency meaning the consoles themselves needed very little working ram. By the time of the N64 that was no longer really the case.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Would love to know how much these NX carts will cost and what kind of BW / latency you can expect from them. In the MD/SNES days carts could be addressed directly, with very low latency meaning the consoles themselves needed very little working ram. By the time of the N64 that was no longer really the case.

Some cartidges are treated like dumb storage media, others are memory mapped (flat or banked) into the address range somewhere. The former would typically be slower (for cost reasons) the latter would typically be faster (for performance reasons).

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Looks like this year we are only getting successor of 3DS
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-seen-likely-to-launch-hand-held-device-this-year-1453982632

Well the fact that it has a screen doesn't mean it's a handheld. The Wii U has a screen and isn't a 3DS successor.
However, they did specify they were talking about screens between 3.5 and 5".
The Wii U tablet controller is 6", and I don't think they would make it smaller than the previous console.. Unless this time they're aiming at every player's controller having a screen, and then it would make sense to have a smaller screen to make each controller cheaper.

 

[liolio]

Well the fact that it has a screen doesn't mean it's a handheld. The Wii U has a screen and isn't a 3DS successor.
However, they did specify they were talking about screens between 3.5 and 5".
The Wii U tablet controller is 6", and I don't think they would make it smaller than the previous console.. Unless this time they're aiming at every player's controller having a screen, and then it would make sense to have a smaller screen to make each controller cheaper.

Crap... damned I want a decent handheld, 3.5-5 is depressing when most phones are 4.5" and more...

 

[function]

Hopefully it's still going to be 3D.

I've been itching to dip my toes back into handheld gaming land. Phones suck for gaming. Gimme a d-pad and physical buttons!

 

[east of eastside]

AMD Polaris 10-based APU is obvious:

AMD is working on two versions of its upcoming Polaris graphics architecture: Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. In an interview with VentureBeat, graphics chief Raja Koduri explained that one of those GPUs is aimed at thin-and-light laptops and entry-level desktops, while the the other is a larger, high-performance GPU designed to take back the premium graphics card market currently dominated by rival Nvidia. However, the overall target for Polaris is still "console-class gaming on a thin-and-light notebook."

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/15/a...graphics-immersion-with-16k-screens/view-all/

The target we set was to do console-class gaming on a thin and light notebook. What does that take for the GPU in terms of power and configuration? I’m proud to say we’ve accomplished that goal with this GPU.

The handheld could be a smaller/fewer cores version of the console APU.

Cartridges shared across platforms.

HBM/HBM2

A72 for the CPU cores

 

[BRiT]

So many are setup for such disappointment.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

AMD Polaris 10-based APU is obvious:

Why? How do you read, "The target we set was to do console-class gaming on a thin and light notebook." and interpret that to mean Nintendo are using a Polaris 10 based APU? There's nothing connecting the two ideas. AMD's target is to get XB1/PS4/'console' gaming in an ultralight PC. Nintendo's goals can be completely independent of that, such as to produce a handheld with very low cost using tried-and-tested parts, coinciding with their move to develop mobile titles and thus wanting a smart-phone class processor.

 

[tuna]

Hopefully it's still going to be 3D.

I've been itching to dip my toes back into handheld gaming land. Phones suck for gaming. Gimme a d-pad and physical buttons!

Buy a Vita or 3ds. Is there anything stopping you?

 

[function]

Buy a Vita or 3ds. Is there anything stopping you?

Yeah, I was on the fence about an X1 until recently, and now I'm waiting to see what the NX is like. :s

 

[tuna]

You are waiting for the presentation of NX before you decide if you want a portable console?

 

[function]

I want a new graphics card but I'm waiting to see what 14 nm offers.

I want a 3D handheld with some decent games on it, but I'M waiting for NX to decide if I go for that.

Generally, you want a thing of a certain type before deciding which particular item/object/type of that particular thing you'll be getting.

This is not an unusual or unique phenomenon.

 

[Rikimaru]

You are waiting for the presentation of NX before you decide if you want a portable console?

New Nintendo portable coming this year or beginning of next one.