Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[Anarchist4000]

What if the base unit is a primarily software solution? Say an app running on PC/XB/PS4 and streaming in a format the handheld can utilize? Wouldn't be that expensive to roll their own equivalent of a Steam Box. AMD in theory has another console win floating somewhere too. One everyone assumed was NX. Maybe Tegra is the handheld and an AMD part the base? From a developer standpoint that could be an appealing target. Ample modern processing power, limited dev costs, yet still a handheld device where it makes sense and is unique. Not too different from the Steam Links or Nvidia's Shield.

 

[BRiT]

Xbox One S was likely AMDs third win to go with PS4 Neo and Xbox Scorpio.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What if the base unit is a primarily software solution?...Maybe Tegra is the handheld and an AMD part the base?

That's not how the base unit is described, as a dock. If it's a standalone gaming device, it should be a console in its own right. Basically PS4 and Vita. It'd be mind-numbingly stupid to have a game system that can stream to a smart handheld but can't play games on the TV!

 

[Anarchist4000]

That's not how the base unit is described, as a dock. If it's a standalone gaming device, it should be a console in its own right. Basically PS4 and Vita. It'd be mind-numbingly stupid to have a game system that can stream to a smart handheld but can't play games on the TV!

What's to say it couldn't do both? Big screen showing highlights and handhelds driving the mario karts or not being utilized for battery life instead of splitting what in most cases is a 1080P screen. I know the patent describes it a bit differently, but I just can't imagine the battery life or processing power of Tegra being that stellar for a lot of games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's to say it couldn't do both?

The rumour. You're suggesting EG's sources either have no idea what they're talking about, or EG are getting the info all flavours of wrong, or something. If we take this at face value - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-07-26-nx-is-a-portable-console-with-detachable-controllers - then NX is a handheld gaming device with a dock and detachable controllers. What you are suggesting is a completely different design which would warrant discounting the EG story.

 

[Anarchist4000]

It may be accurate, but only part of the story. For 2 players, each with a remote, the mobile would probably work. Once you started dealing with multiple devices I'd think it would get tricky. 4, 8, or even 16 people trying to play mario kart together with a decentrailzed server I would think is a nightmare. Random batteries dying all the time etc. Maybe even restricting some games to certain environments. Out and about you retain the mobile features. At home with a dock to augment processing you get more players or expansive games. I'm just not seeing anything revolutionary in what they're doing if it's a simple handheld.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It may be accurate, but only part of the story. For 2 players, each with a remote, the mobile would probably work. Once you started dealing with multiple devices I'd think it would get tricky. 4, 8, or even 16 people trying to play mario kart together with a decentrailzed server I would think is a nightmare. Random batteries dying all the time etc.

Not really. Play with a console with 8 people and controllers have batteries dying. Get 8 people together to play Mario Kart on 3DS and you have the same issues. LAN network play with devices is easy enough to do - have one device play 4 players on the TV and another three devices playing locally as handhelds - that's very possible.

At home with a dock to augment processing you get more players or expansive games. I'm just not seeing anything revolutionary in what they're doing if it's a simple handheld.

It's the first handheld that functions as a console attached to a TV thanks to removable controllers. Your suggestion is the unrevolutionary option because it's what Sony already provides.

The only thing really missing is the power to drive a decent experience. That's where an enhancing dock would be beneficial, such as a fan system and more power to the handheld, maybe. Maybe a device that has ample console power should be a console, not a dock. And a software stack on another platform is never going to fly.

 

[Rodéric]

When the Wii U got released people asked Nintendo to use their DS/3DS as additionnal gamepads, seeing they were similar to the Wii U mablet, Nintendo seemed surprised then, but it now appears they started working on the concept. Nintendo has also been working on releasing titles on Home & Handheld at once and for a single price. (ie buy one get the other free).
We have been discussing Nintendo going that way since then, and nothing sofar has proven otherwise.
I would expect the home console unit pads to be nothing else than handhelds, however Nintendo might not follow that path and have an equivalent to the handheld w/o computing power as base pads for the home console...

I still prefer my original idea of server/client with Home being server & HDMI output and handhelds being clients/pads, would allow to do LAN parties pretty much
(And also mean you pay once to play on the go or at home, with save synchronised and so on...)
[Though in theory you could have a slightly different gameplay experience between both, and team based local games...]

 

[Anarchist4000]

Not really. Play with a console with 8 people and controllers have batteries dying. Get 8 people together to play Mario Kart on 3DS and you have the same issues.

But what happens when the controllers are the servers and the battery dies? Even docked just how many players will a single device manage? 4-16 different cameras on a single device even with a fan and unlimited processing may be asking too much. If a single handheld (2 controllers) enables 2 players, where do you dock the additional handhelds that are in theory also doing some of the work?

Dolphin (Wii/Gamecube emulator) has pretty good performance. Droids already run sandboxed in a virtual machine. What's to say the concept can't be adapted for a NX? IHVs have been spending a lot of time getting linux drivers working which ideally is a SteamBox. What's to say something similar couldn't virtualize a console? No reason a small box with a cheap APU wouldn't outperform a bunch of Tegra chips. I'd be interested in seeing a dock that could receive 2-8 handhelds and composite a video stream from all of them together. I definitely get your argument, I just can't help but think the gameplay would be far superior with a full console driving a bunch of handhelds.

Handheld you can use on the go along with a good controller for LAN parties along the lines of what Roderic said. Controllers with local displays would likely be far too expensive for an average console.

Likely unrelated, but there were rumors of a Steam handheld in another thread. I could see that being a similar concept as a lot of Steam games won't work well on a handheld.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But what happens when the controllers are the servers and the battery dies? Even docked just how many players will a single device manage? 4-16 different cameras on a single device even with a fan and unlimited processing may be asking too much.

I presume multiplayer requires multiple NX handhelds. Is there any reason to think 16 local players is even a design target?? PS3 supported 7, and that was dropped to 4 for PS4 simply because it's not used enough, I guess.

What's to say the concept can't be adapted for a NX?

The rumours. What evidence is there to think Nintendo are building a large, powerful dock that can server streamed games to handhelds? We've neither evidence of a powerful box, nor a cheap dumb-client handheld.

No reason a small box with a cheap APU wouldn't outperform a bunch of Tegra chips.

Really? At 256 GFlops in a handheld, supporting 8 streams would require 2 TF excluding overhead, which would be substantial running 8 virtual machines on the same APU.

I'd be interested in seeing a dock that could receive 2-8 handhelds and composite a video stream from all of them together. I definitely get your argument, I just can't help but think the gameplay would be far superior with a full console driving a bunch of handhelds.

I'm not seeing anything 2 TF of server could do that 8x 256 GF of handheld can't do just as well. Only with the handheld, it's completely scalable for number of players. With a decent LAN, you could get 32 NX gamers to meet up and all play together. A solo player can just spend on NX and not have to worry about an expensive box that'll serve players they'll never have.

 

[RDGoodla]

Imo any "secret sauce" causing the whole system above $249 will not be adopted by Nintendo.

It's not too surprising if they even target a $199 set of handheld console AND the dock.

At that price the best spec Nintendo can offer is Tegra@16 nm and 5" HD OLED, with a relative simple dock.

 

[cheapchips]

One thing is find curious at the moment is that when you dock the NX to play on your TV you can't use the touchscreen. They might as well offer a non-portable mini console at a cheap price.

I find the idea really uninteresting for some reason, yet I'm fairly enthused about the 'play anywhere' concept.

Maybe the mini console will happen down the line, once the NX has hopefully established itself.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's actually a problem with game design. You have to support touch screen controls in handheld mode and not in docked mode.

 

[liolio]

I just read Anandtech writing on ARM A73 "Artemis" again. ARM claims that an octa core SOC consisting of little (A53) cores is the same size as an exacore SOC consisting of 2 big cores and 4 little ones (x2 A73 + x4 A53). They claim huge benefit from going with the later setup (+30% in multi cores performances, +90% in single thread performance.

For a handheld system a cluster of 4 little cores makes sense, a 1 SOC consisting of 1 A73 and 2 A35 would be a pretty ideal one for Nintendo on many accounts resembling what they wanted to do with the Wii U processor.The footprint would be the same and performances much higher, higher single thread performances is great for emulation of Nintendo older systems.

The dock amplification makes no sense to me. Why? If Nintendo is after performances Nvidia can deliver XB1/PS4 level of performances easily why linked s graphical accelerator to a device bounds to the heavy bottleneck and constraints handhelds already deal with?

I would love to see relatively cheap and elegant system spit in the face of MSFT and SONY entry level system but that for not what the NX seems to be about (a handheld offering local dual player gameplay on the go).

 

[Rangers]

Imo any "secret sauce" causing the whole system above $249 will not be adopted by Nintendo.

It's not too surprising if they even target a $199 set of handheld console AND the dock.

At that price the best spec Nintendo can offer is Tegra@16 nm and 5" HD OLED, with a relative simple dock.

I'll eat my nonexistent hat if NX comes in under 299. You cant sneeze for 299 any more.

If the over/under on NX is lets say, $249, I'll continue to take the over.

Lets look at a smartphone, there are decent phones with 5" screen for 199, but, it's pretty dicey and you'll sacrifice in many areas. One Plus 3 has top of the line specs for 399, but you're also gambling with Chinese bugginess, probably cutthroat margins that Nintendo is unlikely to stomach, and 399 is obviously high compared to what we're talking about.

 

[cheapchips]

I think it's more likely that the NX will be small tablet/phablet sized. They seem to come in cheaper than phones. There are plenty of branded sub 200* 7/8 inch tablets with decent screens and specs.

Fully expect Nintendo to stretch the price as high as they dare though.



*Pound/dollar sign left off because of bloody brexit

 

[liolio]

I'll eat my nonexistent hat if NX comes in under 299. You cant sneeze for 299 any more.

If the over/under on NX is lets say, $249, I'll continue to take the over.

Lets look at a smartphone, there are decent phones with 5" screen for 199, but, it's pretty dicey and you'll sacrifice in many areas. One Plus 3 has top of the line specs for 399, but you're also gambling with Chinese bugginess, probably cutthroat margins that Nintendo is unlikely to stomach, and 399 is obviously high compared to what we're talking about.

That is simply not true the Moto G is a great all around product, most people have no idea what their phones can do or not and how a given specs relates to their usage cases: industry sell them features, DPI, mega pixel, etc.
I'm posting from my 35$ Fire tablet, I wish it were either 6" or at least 8" but other than that it does great for my recreational use.
You can sneeze under 199$, now I'm clueless wrt to the Nx, will Nintendo price it like a DS or like a home console? I'm not sure about the market reaction about a foremost handheld product at a home console price.
To some extend I wonder if Nintendo get a like scare of competing in the handheld realm too. Competition is still not there but I wonder about the perception about GPD late products in the eastern region of the world. Their last products are no longer toys the GPD XD 1&2 and the GPD Win makes Nintendo handheld look extremely dated. Actually I can not see Nintendo make any better, though I would to see such hardware running their software... And that is the issue, Nintendo seems bent on avoiding any path that could lead their products to a position where a direct comparison with an existing product can be made (may it be the product they need to push their software...).

 

[Entropy]

Price is indeed the big question mark. Nintendos Supplementary Computing Device patent and nVidias solution in the drive PX2 seem very close to each other, but the statements from Nintendo higher-ups seem to indicate that they target a very family friendly price tag, and that they don't want to sell the device as a loss leader.

Low cost suggests that the docking device won't supply additional computational resources, or that a version that does will be sold seperately (or be bundled at a higher than base price). In less price sensitive markets, such a configuration might be dominant. It doesn't really present more difficulties than the hypothesis that the docked device will clock higher, less actually in the respect that the handheld SoC cooling doesn't have to accomodate more than portable power draws.

It seems difficult to reconcile a low base price with an external stationary GPU in the base price. It would in effect be supplying both a PS4/XB1 and a standalone handheld. Ergo - passive dock likely.

 

[liolio]

It seems difficult to reconcile a low base price with an external stationary GPU in the base price. It would in effect be supplying both a PS4/XB1 and a standalone handheld. Ergo - passive dock likely.

Tv connectivity can makes sense if the NX double down as a Wii emulator with the tablet+dock acting like the sensor bar; in that case extra power while connected to the tv is unnecessary. I would also bet on a passive dock, a passive dock that Nintendo can sell extra with profitable margins

 

[Technewsreader]

Doesn't sound like something special or new to me. This concept of displaying 'mobile' games on your TV screen has been present since the Iphone.The quality games and a solid controller will differentiate itself from smarthphones I guess.

But at this point I wonder if they have enough power to do anything impressive not just visually speaking but from an A.I,Multiplayer,physics ect perspective. Less powerful than XB1 and PS4 is a bit weak 3 years in lol