Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

[Shifty Geezer]

Impossible to tell.

Not really. The right product at the right price will sell. That's why NES and SNES did well. GC was out-manoeuvered after PS and N64 which is why it didn't sell. GBA was a handheld when there were no alternatives, and it got bucketloads of 3rd party titles.

Switch does have a chance to be more desirable than the 3DS. The unified Nintendo library is a huge plus.

There is no Unified Library. There's only one platform now, a handheld with TV out.

Speaking of BoTW, that game alone is going to move units early on. Even with the Wii, Zelda TP was a big reason core Nintendo fans were so excited to buy a Wii.

It's going to sell several million very quickly to the Nintendo fans. The same happened with Wii U. Back then I kept saying to Nintendo enthusiasts that these early record Wii U sales weren't indicative of any long-term future.

Your sales link isn't complete. Its missing half of fiscal 2016, which ends in March.

Yes, and it also misses the recent uptick from Pokemon Go fallout. However, it's indicative. 3DS is nowhere near 80 million units, so Switch will have to grow on 3DS's performance.

There is a reason Disney used their IP's when creating an amusement park. Yes, Nintendo's IP's are a valuable asset when creating a desirable product. If Nintendo made games exclusively for the PlayStation, would it help drive sales?

Yes. It's selling to the audience that cares about these things.

If so, then why cant you understand how those IP's will drive sales for Switch?

There you are being derogatory again. Is that intentional? Their IP's on other platforms will increase awareness. However, it won't change people's habits. Releasing a Mario book for Kindle won't see people buying Kindles. Releasing Mario golfclubs won't see golfers start to take up console gaming. There's a world of difference between the one-touch gaming on mobile and the coordinated two-thumbs gaming of a console, that a lot of mobile gamers can't get along with. The reason mobile gaming has 10x the audience of console gaming is precisely because it's simpler and more accessible. Only a small fraction of mobile gamers who aren't interested in console gaming now are likely to be convinced to buy into it. There's such a world of difference between one-button Mario on your iPhone-that-you-have-anyway and buying a $200+ discrete device for the purpose of a multi-button Mario game.

If accurate then that's less than I would have expected, but at the same time means there is less overhead involved in making the hardware.

It'd be nice to have the numbers. The fiscal damage of underperforming hardware comes from a smaller audience to sell your software to and costs in manufacture. If Nintendo had released on PS4 instead of making Wii U, they'd have maybe lost hardware revenues but gained 3x the software sales. Whether they'd be better off in net is up for debate - I don't think we have access to suitable number to calculate.

I only mention it because its important to keep in mind that as strongly as you believe in your opinion, the only resolution to the disagreements on the issue is the test of time. We could go back and forth endlessly with counter arguments, examples of successes and failures, but we aren't likely going to change our opinions.

One just chooses when one is no longer interested in the debate and agrees to disagree. I take ten minutes out from work to engage in a debate with a little research as an intellectual break. I'm not trying to change any opinion per se - just present an argument from a perspective. Time will show who's argument was correct.
(I'm betting it'll be me )

Its not that I don't understand skepticism with what Nintendo is doing, there are no guarantees for success.

Being able to make good, reasoned judgements by reading the market is Important Business Sense. These guys could probably have done with engaging us at B3D...Naively, many people within the company expected the Wii U to sell close to 100 million units.

Nintendo can sell a ton of software even to a smaller userbase.

Imagine how much they'd sell to a larger install base! There's a good argument against this, that the people who'll buy these games will buy a Nintendo console, and the number of extra people interested in these games not owning a N. console is insignificant. Only one way to test that...

 

[BRiT]

There is no One Platform for the Nintendo titles, as Nintendo themselves said the Switch is NOT replacing the 3DS.

 

[Goodtwin]

There is no One Platform for the Nintendo titles, as Nintendo themselves said the Switch is NOT replacing the 3DS.

They said this, but I think it was as too not canibalize the 3DS sales. I could see a portable only Switch SKU being possible, but the unified library will remain. Iwata and Reggie have both said that developing games for two seperate pieces of hardware created droughts.

@Shifty

So you agree that Pokemon Go did help boost 3DS sales?

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[Shifty Geezer]

So you agree that Pokemon Go did help boost 3DS sales?

Clearly there's correlation. However, I think the audience was former Nintendo handheld owners and Pokemon fans - I don't think numerous mobile gamers were converted to handheld gamers. I also don't think we're seeing a 3DS sales uptick after Mario released on mobile. The audience for Switch IMO is existing and former Nintendo handheld owners. Considering those former handheld owners have not been interested in getting 3DS, are they going to be interested in getting Switch? Will that change because of a few IP tie-ins on their phones?

 

[AlNom]

Capcom released Resident Evil 5 for Android TV which is essentially a Switch hardware but more powerful (you know this but for other readers: Fully clocked Tegra X1 (2ghz quad A57, 1ghz gpu, 25.6GB/s bw)), and they had to reduce texture quality on some objects compared to the 360/PS3.

DF video for the curious:

 

[Goodtwin]

Digital Foundry cited DirectX developed games as being the issue. OpenGL games performed a lot better.

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[AlNom]

You're suggesting they used a wrapper?

 

[Rootax]

Do you think a lot of devs will use the "docked clock speed" of the GPU when docked ? I'm afraid they will only use the undock speed, even when docked, so they don't have to test / adjust theirs games with 2 levels of performances. In my mind, people saying "well, 540p/720p undock, and 900p/1080p docked" are wrong, because it's not only about fillrate. It's about compute/shaders performances too... ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Do you think a lot of devs will use the "docked clock speed" of the GPU when docked ? I'm afraid they will only use the undock speed, even when docked, so they don't have to test / adjust theirs games with 2 levels of performances. In my mind, people saying "well, 540p/720p undock, and 900p/1080p docked" are wrong, because it's not only about fillrate. It's about compute/shaders performances too... ?

PS4 Pro enhancements suggests devs are willing (at gunpoint? ) to add improvements, so I don't think you should worry at this point.

 

[Rootax]

PS4 Pro enhancements suggests devs are willing (at gunpoint? ) to add improvements, so I don't think you should worry at this point.

Yeah but you can't run ps4 pro enhancements on the standard PS4. Here, we have the case of a gpu who will downclock on the fly when the console is undocked (if it was running at full speed before), and it suppose to be seamless for the player. No reloading, nothing. So the situation is not comparable IMO.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah but you can't run ps4 pro enhancements on the standard PS4. Here, we have the case of a gpu who will downclock on the fly when the console is undocked (if it was running at full speed before), and it suppose to be seamless for the player. No reloading, nothing. So the situation is not comparable IMO.

I disagree. PS4 is a poor comparison because it only has one performance profile. The PS4 Pro has the PS4 performance profile plus whatever else the devs chose to add for Pro. So the situation is similar to Switch where games have to support the lower profile.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah but you can't run ps4 pro enhancements on the standard PS4. Here, we have the case of a gpu who will downclock on the fly when the console is undocked (if it was running at full speed before), and it suppose to be seamless for the player. No reloading, nothing. So the situation is not comparable IMO.

Devs have the choice to add PS4Pro enhancements or not. The fact they are choosing to add them shows interest. If you argue that they need to for PS4 Pro to attract new Pro owners into buying their game over rivals, Switch games will have that too - devs who support Switch docked modes will attract more attention from Switch docked gamers. Assuming there are any. If the metrics reveal Switch owners barely play on TV than devs won't target it.

Even then I expect the docked == up-res to be fairly minimal to implement and you will get the docked clocks being used, just for nothing beyond higher resolution of the same game.

 

[Rootax]

Yeah I understand your point. I was wrong in my logic. Still, in my mind, ps4 users don't know what they're missing. On the Switch, imagine a game optimised for dock mode (not just a resolution boost), and then switching to undock mode, the user will see the downgrade immediately, and the "non tech guy" won't understand why ? It could have a bad feedback in the end. Zelda will be interesting in that regard, does Nintendo will add visual stuff in dock mode ? ...

 

[Rodéric]

Given what we have seen sofar I expect the game to be identical whether docked or not.
Small enhancements could be nice, but they should be subtle.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The specs are 40% more GPU clocks for 40% more pixels. Why even think there's scope for more improvements?

 

[Goodtwin]

I expect Zelda BoTW for example to be nearly identical to the Wii U version in portable mode, and up the resolution to 1080p docked. Very little beyond this. Possibly draw distance will change, maybe even slightly higher texture resolution, but this is really just to make sure the game looks as good on the TV as portable. The small screen is very kind to some of these limitations. I can tell you that most Wii U games look better on the 480p gamepad screen because things like low res shadows aren't nearly as obvious. Playing Killzone Mercenaries in the Vita looks near PS3 quality despite a massive chasm in performance. The small screen helps a ton. For developers really pushing it, I expect they could bake shadows and lighting to a greater extent in portable, similar to what they do in mobile games, and docked will still be 720p, but with the real-time lighting and shadows enabled. Developers seem to be free to use the extra clocks as they see fit.

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[Syferz]

The specs are 40% more GPU clocks for 40% more pixels. Why even think there's scope for more improvements?

It's 2.5times higher clock for 2.25 more pixels.

 

[Rootax]

The specs are 40% more GPU clocks for 40% more pixels. Why even think there's scope for more improvements?

It's 2.5times higher clock for 2.25 more pixels.

Because it's not all about pixel / fillrate ? The whole gpu is quicker, more shading power, etc. You can do more than just boost the resolution I guess (If you optimize it well) ?

 

[sebbbi]

Because it's not all about pixel / fillrate ? The whole gpu is quicker, more shading power, etc. You can do more than just boost the resolution I guess (If you optimize it well) ?

Each pixel needs to be shaded. If you have 2.25x more pixels, you need 2.25x more ALU instructions to shade those pixels and 2.25x more texture sampling instructions to sample texture of those pixels (2.25x more texels loaded from memory -> 2.25x more bandwidth), etc, etc.

In reality however, the memory bandwidth and pixel shading cost doesn't scale perfectly linearly as resolution increases, because triangles get "bigger" (higher resolution = more pixels per triangle on average). Memory access pattern gets slightly more local -> more cache hits -> slightly sub-linear bandwidth increase. Also pixel shader invocation count (includes: ALU cost for shading, ROP cost for output and sampling cost for textures) increases slightly sub-linearly, as GPUs are using quad (2x2 pixels) based shading. Quad efficiency increases when resolution increases. Unless of course the game developer decides to increase geometry density when resolution increases. If this is true, then pixel shading costs (and vertex shading costs) scale pretty much linearly as resolution increases.

 

[Rootax]

Thx for the explanations sebbbi.

The other case can be increase in details/effects, but same output resolution. Some PS4pro game do that. Anyway, I still believe most devs will stick to undock profil, even when docked. Simpler that way.