Nintendo 3DS hardware thread

[Exophase]

Do you mind if I ask what else he had to say about the GPU? How much RAM does developers have access too?

Sorry, I couldn't recover the log from the crashed harddrive image so everything I say is from memory and potentially faulty.

What I remember he said about the GPU is that it's kind of like Gamecube/Wii's in terms of programmability, but with less TEV-like stages. He said that the studio he was working with had no problem emulating the effects in GLSL shaders for development on PCs.

In both cases that was one of, what, 4 high performance cores? It's insane that in the 3DS, which already has terribly under-powered CPU cores, a full half of that potential power was locked away.

No. In PSP's case there were two MIPS CPUs, and you could use one of them. I don't know what system code was executed on the other one, but I imagine that it was kept off and/or low clocked as much as possible. The official PS1 emulator did use it, though (for audio processing). I imagine it's similar on the 3DS, although an ARM11 core under 300MHz shouldn't consume much power. I expect that most of the power consumption on the 3DS is from the screen, then the GPU. Its battery isn't very small relatively speaking, it's at least bigger than what was on any DS.

Regarding price, Nintendo will sell whatever they feel they can get away with, making as much profit as possible. They don't follow Sony's business model of selling at huge losses in order to increase the install rate and potentially sell more software licenses because they don't feel they need to; instead Nintendo sells at similar prices to the competition but much weaker (and thus cheaper) hardware.

Look at the Wii and you'll see exactly the same thing, only it looks more attractive because PS3 was so expensive at launch that $249 for Wii seemed like a bargain. But in reality, the profit margins must have been much higher than the they were for the $99 Gamecube. Just like with the 3DS, Nintendo was banking on the appeal of their first party software designed with some new gimmick in mind to sell the hardware. And Nintendo held on to that $249 price point as long as it could, even after the much more powerful XBox 360 dropped to $199 (for the more basic version anyway).

Since 3DS isn't selling that well Nintendo might lower the price, but it'll probably depend more on how Vita does. They probably don't mind much losing greatly to DS.

 

[darkblu]

In both cases that was one of, what, 4 high performance cores? It's insane that in the 3DS, which already has terribly under-powered CPU cores, a full half of that potential power was locked away.

PSP has two MIPS 4Ks, one of them designated as the 'Media Engine', and kept out of devs' reach. Also, for quite some time after the platform's launch the core's max clock was kept restricted to 266MHz due to battery concerns.

 

[Exophase]

PSP has two MIPS 4Ks, one of them designated as the 'Media Engine', and kept out of devs' reach. Also, for quite some time after the platform's launch the core's max clock was kept restricted to 266MHz due to battery concerns.

In fact, it started out limited to a paltry 222MHz, before being bumped to 266MHz (and finally 333MHz). This applied to absolutely everything too - the CPU, media engine, RAM, and GPU (both at half said clock speed).

 

[darkblu]

In fact, it started out limited to a paltry 222MHz, before being bumped to 266MHz (and finally 333MHz). This applied to absolutely everything too - the CPU, media engine, RAM, and GPU (both at half said clock speed).

Yeah, I had forgotten about the 222MHz 'stage'. Re the rest - I do recall it was some kind of master clock that was actually being restricted, so it affected pretty much everything - units, buses, etc. On the plus side, a few homebrews took full advantage of that and allowed the user to choose whatever minimal clocks sufficed for undemanding tasks like mod players, text readers, etc - those could last for 8h straight.

 

[Brad Grenz]

PSP has two MIPS 4Ks, one of them designated as the 'Media Engine', and kept out of devs' reach. Also, for quite some time after the platform's launch the core's max clock was kept restricted to 266MHz due to battery concerns.

The "Media Engine" housed the sound processor and video decoder, right? Were those not being used by early PSP games at all?

 

[darkblu]

The "Media Engine" housed the sound processor and video decoder, right? Were those not being used by early PSP games at all?

It's not about whether they were used 'at all' or not, it's about whether developers could use the second core as a CPU, which they could not. In every MP system all cores are used for something useful, but not all of them might be available as GP CPU cores to the developer. Otherwise 3DS's until-recently-locked core was also used for something, thus offloading workload from the 'accessible' core.

ps: there were no 'sound processor and video decoder' in the Media Engine - the second MIPS *was* the sound and video decoder, and for the purpose it was augmented with some extra instructions, IIRC.

 

[Exophase]

No extra instructions on the ME.. it's exactly like the main CPU but without the VFPU (does have FPU), and has a separate 2MB of eDRAM. There's definitely some dedicated hardware blocks for video and audio in addition to this. The ME CPU by itself could never handle h.264 at a decent bitrate, plus that wouldn't be very power efficient.

Not a lot of information is available on the media hardware, except that there's a block called "Virtual Mobile Engine" which has been used in other Sony products and is described as if it's some kind of an FPGA.

 

[ltcommander.data]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...in-august-early-adopters-given-free-games.ars

Has there been one of those component cost breakdowns for the 3DS yet? Nintendo is going to drop the price from $249.99 to $169.99. I wonder if that puts them on a break-even or even temporary lose-leading basis until maturity brings costs down?

And I wonder if this means the DS/DSi is going to be discontinued? That would consolidate customers on the 3DS and give them higher sales on that console which seems to be what Nintendo is really pushing for.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Has there been one of those component cost breakdowns for the 3DS yet? Nintendo is going to drop the price from $249.99 to $169.99. I wonder if that puts them on a break-even or even temporary lose-leading basis until maturity brings costs down?

The new price probably still gives them a large profit margin.
It's the launch price that was obscene.

I could see the DSi being discontinued, while moving the DS down for ~90€.

 

[Gitaroo]

its confirmed that they are taking a lost.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=29653937&postcount=105

 

[Deleted member 13524]

its confirmed that they are taking a lost.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=29653937&postcount=105

I honestly find that a bit hard to believe, but nonetheless:

(from neogaf)

 

[Brad Grenz]

its confirmed that they are taking a lost.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=29653937&postcount=105

Revising their forecasts down based on the new pricing is not the same as saying they are taking a loss on individual hardware sales. I think a lot of confusion is going around about this story and I have no idea where that particular quote claims to come from, or the veracity thereof. It does not appear to be from the Bloomberg story everyone else is pointing to.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Revising their forecasts down based on the new pricing is not the same as saying they are taking a loss on individual hardware sales. I think a lot of confusion is going around about this story and I have no idea where that particular quote claims to come from...

The GAF thread posts the original Japanese :
値下げ後の価格ではハードの販売 だけでは赤字になる

Anyone got any translation? You can search for that in Google, but good lucky making sense of any of the pages!

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That sentence says that after cutting the price, the cost of hardware will go into the red. Unless I'm translating it the wrong way but I'm pretty sure thats what it says.

 

[I.S.T.]

The GAF thread posts the original Japanese :
値下げ後の価格ではハードの販売 だけでは赤字になる

Anyone got any translation? You can search for that in Google, but good lucky making sense of any of the pages!

I asked a friend of mine who works as a Japanese to English translator, and she confirmed the translation.

The hardware will be sold at a loss from now on.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

And how trustful is the japanese source?

 

[Exophase]

I asked a friend of mine who works as a Japanese to English translator, and she confirmed the translation.

The hardware will be sold at a loss from now on.

Even if it really is sold at a loss initially I'm sure it won't take all that long to recover the fixed prices, although you probably knew/meant that. Just nit picking at the phrasing "from now on."

I doubt the recurring unit costs are anywhere close to $170, unless Nintendo made some really bad sourcing decisions or they're being severely brutalized on the cost of the display. But I think the iSuppli breakdown looks very reasonable and it's hard to imagine them being off by such a huge factor.

(I was also surprised to see that Sharp has likely been making the SoCs for Nintendo)

 

[RDGoodla]

The GAF thread posts the original Japanese :
値下げ後の価格ではハードの販売 だけでは赤字になる

Anyone got any translation? You can search for that in Google, but good lucky making sense of any of the pages!

I try to translate precisely:

"After the price drop, it will make a loss when selling the hardware solely."


Apperantly, the original JP article didn't confirm that the hardware is sold at a loss. The loss is caused by "selling the hardware solely". It only means that 3DS hardware itself cannot make enough profit for the company. It doesn't mean 3DS hardware necessarily make a loss.


However, most forums and websites just inteprete it as "hardware is sold at a loss" (which may be understood more easily?).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And how trustful is the japanese source?

That's an important question.

Apperantly, the original JP article didn't confirm that the hardware is sold at a loss. The loss is caused by "selling the hardware solely". It only means that 3DS hardware itself cannot make enough profit for the company. It doesn't mean 3DS hardware necessarily make a loss.

I don't understand the distinction. I don't understand what 'solely' means, other than 'hardware excluding software and peripherals' which would mean the 3DS hardware is selling at a loss.

 

[BRiT]

Not completely, or at least perhaps they mean the cost of the hardware plus the cost of their R&D and marketing and promotional materials outweigh the revenue it currently generates.