The next Nintendo Switch: Switch Lite? SWITCHi? What do you think it will be improved upon?

[orangpelupa]

Nintendo loooves to upgrade their portables. Sure, switch is an anomaly that it's both portable and home console.

But let's say Nintendo will follow their habit with their portables. What do you think what will be improved in the future switch? What will it be called?

I don't have a switch but from what I read, currently switch doesn't really have hardware annoyance. It's comfortable enough it already supports external cards. Etc.

The only things I read as a problem are these:

* dock scratches screen
* small internal storage

 

[BRiT]

Depends upon what old tech Nvidia has laying around in warehouses that they need to do fire sales to dump.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Depends upon what old tech Nvidia has laying around in warehouses that they need to do fire sales to dump.

Not sure if they're gonna touch the soc.

A bigger screen would be the obvious improvement. Even in the current package they should be able to fit a bigger one.

Maybe a bigger battery. From teardowns it appears there is plenty of space.

Some other small improvements would be a better kickstand and glass screen but overall the switch is pretty solid in it's current form. Can't really complain about anything or think of obvious shortcomings.

Oh and a 90 degree USB c cable would be nice so you can actually charge and play on the road without having to hold the switch. But that is more of an aftermarket thing.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

A microphone.

 

[milk]

longer battery life.
functional voice chat and online infrastructiore without the need of your phone.

 

[Pressure]

Cameras would be the obvious improvement. Otherwise I see no reason why they couldn't upgrade the SoC to a newer generation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A newer SoC could well introduce compatibility issues. The handheld doesn't benefit - no-one is being put off by it. What would be cool (but won't happen) is a proper dock with proper cooling that'd allow the existing SoC to run full tilt. Faster RAM would do wonders for performance too, if possible.

 

[orangpelupa]

Couldn't they do faster SoC like what they did with "i" upgrade?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

A model with 7-8 inch screen would be great. For table top gaming the current screen is too small and I'd like it to be at least an inch bigger anyway...

 

[AlNom]

Been saying it forever, but just shove in Parker and call it a day. Allow a profile with increased clocks for devs @ expense of battery, but should otherwise have a Switch 1.0 mode for handheld. Faster clocks while docked.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Been saying it forever, but just shove in Parker and call it a day.

Otherwise I see no reason why they couldn't upgrade the SoC to a newer generation.

Because there's little to no incentive to put a higher performing SoC in the Switch right now, and Tegra X1 in 20nm is cheaper to make than Parker/Tegra X2 in FF16+, plus theTX2 is fairly larger.



Tegra X2:

Tegra X1:

If nvidia or Nintendo ever want to bother making a 16FF chip, probably the only way to make it worth the trouble is to strip down all the stuff that's disabled in TX1.
They would probably cut the SoC's power consumption in some 30% or so, and the difference in die area might make up for the more expensive manufacturing process.

Couldn't they do faster SoC like what they did with "i" upgrade?

Yes, but you ought to keep in mind how long it took Nintendo to launch these upgrades. The DSi released 4 years after the DS' original release, and the New 3DS released 3 years after the original 3DS.
In-between what you got were mostly cosmetic upgrades or bigger-screen versions.

Nintendo does have an easy upgrade path there, which is to make a console that performs like the current docked mode the whole time and that's what they might go for, but IMO not in 2018 and probably not in early 2019 either.

 

[AlNom]

16/12nmFF should be in reasonable supply by 2018. If they're going to bother with a revision, they might as well do it properly with a better process node for power if they don't care at all about performance.

R&D for Parker is effectively paid for by the automotive industry anyway, so it's just about producing the chips. I don't see the big fuss.

edit: I mean, if it's all about well "it's cheaper to use an existing design" then well, it doesn't get any cheaper than Nintendo just using the Switch design because it already exists, so what's the point of spending more money on a revision to outfit it with a larger, heavier battery & screen.

 

[Pixel]

Nintendo Switch is made at 20nm planar iirc. They could manufacture it at 14 or 16nm finFET. But I'd be even more interested in one built at 12 or 10nm finFET once those nodes becomes cheap enough for lower margin customers like console manufacturers.

Instead of splitting their 1st party devs between a next gen 3DS and Switch, they need to unify the platforms so they don't have a software glut like they have often had which drives away lots of customers. I'd hope the next 3DS uses Tegra X1 on one of the 12 or 10nm nodes. That might require keeping 3DS on a lifeline with new software until the foundry prices are low enough at those nodes.

 

[AlNom]

Nintendo Switch is made at 20nm planar iirc. They could manufacture it at 14 or 16nm finFET. But I'd be even more interested in one built at 12 or 10nm finFET once those nodes becomes cheap enough for lower margin customers like console manufacturers.

12FFN is just the node that nVidia paid TSMC a fuckton of money to brand as theirs & for early access for Volta, which is just a size optimized variant of 16nmFF+. It may or may not be necessary to use, but who knows.

Bulk of the design work is done for Parker though. It's is a 16nmFF design which sports the same quad core A57s and same sized GPU Pascal (which itself is architecturally similar enough to Maxwell to more-or-less be considered Maxwell @ 16nmFF), although it has 2 denver cores, an updated little.big fabric & other uncore bits + doubled memory bus. Just disable the junk that Nintendo doesn't need, same as all the other junk in Tegra X1.

 

[Pixel]

12FFN is just the node that nVidia paid TSMC a fuckton of money to brand as theirs & for early access for Volta, which is just a size optimized variant of 16nmFF+.

Parker is a 16nmFF design which sports the same quad core A57s and same sized GPU Pascal (which itself is architecturally similar enough to Maxwell to more-or-less be considered Maxwell @ 16nmFF), although it has 2 denver cores, an updated little.big fabric & other uncore bits + doubled memory bus. Just disable the junk that Nintendo doesn't need, same as all the other junk in Tegra X1.

I was thinking more along the lines of GF 12nm FF press release.
"The new 12LP technology provides as much as a 15 percent improvement in circuit density and more than a 10 percent improvement in performance over 16/14nm FinFET solutions on the market today."

https://www.globalfoundries.com/new...-technology-for-high-performance-applications

 

[AlNom]

Ah fair enough. I think Parker was designed for TSMC, IIRC, so if they did go with that, it'd be the natural place to get their supply. GF production seems to be kind of.... undesirable.

 

[BRiT]

What the next Switch Revision will/can improve upon all depends on when it releases. If it's out in 2018 you have more limited options than say a revision in 2020 or 2022.

 

[orangpelupa]

Wait... Switch screen size is only
6 inch? I thought it was something like 7-8 inches.

Yeah, a bigger screen Switch XL would be nice in 2018. Hopefully they also can slim down the border / frame.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The screen is 6.2 inches, but I feel like 7-8 inches would be the sweetspot.

 

[McHuj]

I think Nintendo will need something in the sub $200 price range to eventually replace the 3DS. I think a smaller switch with non-detachable joycons that only plays in portable mode makes more sense than introducing a new handheld only platform.

I’d like to see something like:
Switch Portable $179 5” screen, no tv play, no detachable joycons
Switch $249 same as currently
Switch XL $329 8” screen and longer battery life