Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[CSI PC]

Tegra looks like the best choice for portable gaming, I don't see AMD with something similar in this TDP range. Okay NX is not as great as some gaming news journalists were saying, now that all their "credible sources" have been discredited for saying it's more powerful than a PS4.... they moved on to comparing Tegra X1's FP16 performance to FP32 of consoles. And they assume the short term peak on one chip can be compared to the continuous power of the other. They also forgot to talk about the 64bits LPDDR4 bandwidth.
.

Worth remembering Emily Rogers back in April-May said it was weaker than the PS4 and a little behind Xbox-One, while also not x86 nor AMD.
And interestingtly yesterday she re-tweeted it is a little behind the Xbox-One, and sounds expensive but she hopes it is not.
She may be wrong about the performance, but that should be weighted against the fact it was the same sources back then that told her about it not x86/AMD.
Cheers

 

[Sigfried1977]

Don't get all the naysayers. I think a powerful handheld you can also plug into the telly is the smartest thing Nintendo could've possibly come up with. Handhelds is where the company rules afterall, and I really don't need a third box under the tv that does the same thing as the other two, except with Mario stuff in it. Remember all the lamenting that was going on after it became clear that Sony's failure to sell the Vita basically spelled doom for dedicated and capable portable gaming systems in future? Now they'll (including me) will get their next generation Vita afterall.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Wow, I'm surprised to see news about a new Nintendo, and that it uses a Tegra.
In hindsight, it almost only could be a Tegra : AMD cancelled all their ARM APU designs, be they "Sky Bridge" and whatever the other one might have been.

Hum, no... I don't know what to say. The dual controllers thing really bothers as it implies different inputs than in "full" handheld mode. That calls for completely tailored experience with disparities between single and multi players mode (or games that do not use the full scope of the system inputs when "whole").
2-1 designs or selling the system by pairs both ideas sound better to me. That design choice implies many things, like two or three batteries ( one per controller and possibly one for the central unit).
It sounds really complicated (read costly) for a system meant to reach kids. I suspect one selling point will be it can keep busy two kids for the price of a single device but I'm iffy about the reach of such an argument in a world of cheap tablets.

I wonder how it's done, will the handheld be huge, heavy and weird as with that of the Wii U? I don't like that.

Does it still have that autistic concept of the Wii U where you used the huge handheld and the TV together, which is ridiculous and can only be done by Player 1? Or it's back to a more normal single screen (TV or handheld, or cloned output at most)

Can you play as 3 or 4 players?

As for the hardware Nvidia is welcome. Tegra X1 are used in the dev kits but that says nothing about the clock speed of those parts. Tegra X1 CPU set-up sounds too high end and power hungry for a Nintendo design. X2 A73 + x4 A35 sounds like a best case scenario to me, x4 A35 would not surprise me.
I don't think N will have gone for a high resolution screen so two SM at low clock speed should do the trick.
I suspect then target is to match or exceed the WiiU experience, the screen resolution being the factor that will set the requirements for the GPU.

As a side note I think it will sell as portable Wii, the two controllers allowing to do what the Wii did.

Whatever is done I think a Wii U is easily matched or beaten.

Even PS4 / Xbox One are not *that* hard to match either : it'll be lacking a lot in raw power but GPU features are similar, RAM may be 4x smaller : bummer, but could be worse ; if this get fast ARM CPUs, they'll be not that behind the slow x86 CPUs in consoles.
But in the first place : I think this will be able to run same engines, middleware as on PC and current consoles. No wheels to reinvent, they might provide OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan. If so, the hardware and software would make this NX arguably closer to a PC than to smartphones/tablets.


-------------------

How the F do you put two controllers on a Game Boy anyway?
Anyone thought of the Famicom, with two attached and wired simple controllers?
Or does Nintendo have a rule that each new product must bring back some unusual or weird aspect of a previous and sometimes obscure design.

Nintendo made DS-shaped games in the 80s, and they also made this :

 

[rapso]

Something to keep in mind is the resolution. Even the WiiU gamepad has a ridiculously low 854x480. Let's say the NX handheld goes for something like the Vita, it would be still just 960×544, that would be roughly 4x less pixel to push than PS4/XB1 do. (Assuming you want to use it on the go, you won't want a device as big as the wii u gamepad, hence dpi should be still fine).

Makes me wonder, why would you need more than an slimport cable to output something on your TV. Thinking of NVidia, one crazy idea: They could use some kind of SLI tech. Every player attaches his handheld to the dock, and every GPU on it contributes to rendering. Hence the basic setup for a single player game would be two X1 (dock X1 + gamepad X1).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Something to keep in mind is the resolution. Even the WiiU gamepad has a ridiculously low 854x480. Let's say the NX handheld goes for something like the Vita, it would be still just 960×544, that would be roughly 4x less pixel to push than PS4/XB1 do. (Assuming you want to use it on the go, you won't want a device as big as the wii u gamepad, hence dpi should be still fine).

Will you be playing 960x544 on your 1080p TV? That'll look like ass. If this thing is supposed to function as a proper home console, it needs to be at the absolute, laughable minimum 720p. It should really be 1080p (same as Shield X1). So unless devs target two rendering pathways, one for TV at lower quality and one for quarter res handheld screen at higher quality, visuals will be capped to whatever is possible with the Tegra at 1080p, just with supersampled AA probably on handheld screen.

 

[rapso]

960x544 was clearly meant for the handheld (and yes, that's fine for me on the vita, especially if AA is in place, it's enough).
For TV, I've offered a crazy solution in the 2nd part of my post which you've skipped

 

[Grall]

The memory controller is going to eat a huge power budget if it goes above 128bit, which puts it at 60GB/s max.

Not necessarily. Vita uses die-stacked DRAM with a 1kbit wide bus for example.

 

[Globalisateur]

From Dualpixels, earlier this year.

 

[TheLump]

Will you be playing 960x544 on your 1080p TV? That'll look like ass. If this thing is supposed to function as a proper home console, it needs to be at the absolute, laughable minimum 720p. It should really be 1080p (same as Shield X1). So unless devs target two rendering pathways, one for TV at lower quality and one for quarter res handheld screen at higher quality, visuals will be capped to whatever is possible with the Tegra at 1080p, just with supersampled AA probably on handheld screen.

Yeah I think it makes more sense if you look at it as 'downscaling the TV experience for mobile rather than upscaling the mobile experience for TV, imo.

I've been working under the assumption that when it's in "home" mode (ie plugged into a TV, mains power), the full 'power' will be available (ie clocks speeds increased etc to enable decent resolution at 1080p, highest IQ, highest framerate etc possible for whatever the hardware is). That will be the developers target at all times. That's the NX default mode. They then move down the scale to create the "mobile" version (ie handheld) of their game. The clocks are reduced, power consumption reduced etc as it only needs to render the game at 540p or whatever, plus varios visual components can be dialled back.

Now obviosuly that top end spec is still the issue, and although we know the dev kits have some form of X1 in them now, we have also heard they may have active cooling, which implies either that is not a bog standard X1 or that it is not intended to be a bog standard X1 going forward. A lot still wide open!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Will you be playing 960x544 on your 1080p TV? That'll look like ass.

Well, the Vita TV is a thing...

From Dualpixels, earlier this year.

Those rumors were put aside because:

The closest in terms of “power” it gets to is the Xbox One, but an app idea is Wii U x50 and Playstation Vita x100. The key is that all the tech is exactly the same hardware layout as the PS4 and Xbox One which then combine it with the OS’s strong emulation functions and compiler means that any game that can run of a Playstation 4 or Xbox One can easily run on the NX with near-zero modification to the original source code, especially if it runs in Android OS or Unreal Engine 4. This is allegedly why Nintendo has given out the dev kits so late, as one 3rd Party dev put it “It’s the easiest device we’ve ever developed for. You just take your code, compile it and it works.”

Wii U x 50 would be 8 TFLOPs (Fury X and GTX 1080 levels). Vita x 100 would be 5 TFLOPs, which is at the level of a GTX 1060 and RX470/480.
Unless there's an additional zero in there, putting the portable console between 500 and 800 GFLOPs (actually realistic values), this piece of info can't be true.


A 3*SM Pascal part at 1GHz (768 GFLOPs FP32 / 1536 FP16) could make the portable console within reach of the XBone and do at 720/768/800p what the PS4 does at 1080p.

 

[Michellstar]

Well, the Vita TV is a thing...


A 3*SM Pascal part at 1GHz (768 GFLOPs FP32 / 1536 FP16) could make the portable console within reach of the XBone and do at 720/768/800p what the PS4 does at 1080p.

XO at 1.3 TF it´s already more or less 900p to the 1080p PS4 games, even some of them going to 720p (frostbite)
Getting ps4 fidelity at 800p in a portable at 768 gflops it´s stretching a bit.

Maybe with the docking station at higher clocks, will see

 

[rapso]

running FP16 could be quite feasible if you design from the beginning for it, then it's 1536GFlops with ToTTenTranz's projected specs. and it's also NV vs ATI GFlops, which is a bit apples vs pears. all the Maxwell cards have like 1/4 less flops comparing to the direct competition cards, and I'd say in average the performance result matches.

I'd worry way more about memory bandwidth and CPU performance if it's really X1. (quad core ARM + 25GB/s)

 

[RDGoodla]

XO at 1.3 TF it´s already more or less 900p to the 1080p PS4 games, even some of them going to 720p (frostbite)
Getting ps4 fidelity at 800p in a portable at 768 gflops it´s stretching a bit.

Maybe with the docking station at higher clocks, will see

The main restriction of NX is cooling solution (even with a dock). Its main part should be smaller than a 7-inch tablet. So far we don't see any 7" tablet with GPU better than A9X of apple.

More reasonable prediction is 720p~1080p WiiU level graphic with the dock, 540p for handheld.

 

[YahooSerious]

I'm just throwing out ideas here, but what if the NX portable is a separate product from the home console, but can be plugged in to the home console to function as a screen for VR with a headset accessory. Kind of like how Gear VR functions for Samsung mobile phones.

The detachable controllers make more sense this way too, as they can function in 3D space like the HTC Vive controllers, and the 3D hardware in the handheld might somehow assist the rendering to make VR possible at all.

Though, if the resolution is correct that might be a bit on the low side for a comfortable VR experience.

 

[CSI PC]

Well, the Vita TV is a thing...



Those rumors were put aside because:



Wii U x 50 would be 8 TFLOPs (Fury X and GTX 1080 levels). Vita x 100 would be 5 TFLOPs, which is at the level of a GTX 1060 and RX470/480.
Unless there's an additional zero in there, putting the portable console between 500 and 800 GFLOPs (actually realistic values), this piece of info can't be true.


A 3*SM Pascal part at 1GHz (768 GFLOPs FP32 / 1536 FP16) could make the portable console within reach of the XBone and do at 720/768/800p what the PS4 does at 1080p.

Isnt the Xbox-One 1.2Tflops.
I think we will have to wait and see what Pascal structure they go with in Tegra X2/Parker, both from SoC and also MXM integration capabilities (more so potentially with the docking station, possible option Nintendo could consider as this is something Tegra X2/Parker supports over Tegra X1 it seems).
As before probably 1GPC-1Polymorph Engine-X SM with 128 mixed precision FP32 Cuda cores per SM, and if they also use MXM whatever auxiliary Pascal GPUs are supported.

Cheers

 

[Cyan]

The smartest thing Nintendo could do is target existing Tablets or Phones for games. Not create their own "me too" mobile platform.

What would be your solution to that if you were Nintendo and had been making hardware from the very beginning? Personally, I think that's a pretty neat idea. Many of my cool friends are going to want one, imo. Especially when mobile gaming isn't as gaming nor as mobile as it seems these days, when you battery goes down in a jiffy.

Capabilities aside -if they went with a powerful console, Nintendo would have to convince 3rd parties once again to develop for them-, the worst part of NX could be what @cheapchips has mentioned. How complicated is going to be porting x86 code to ARM? Will companies port PlayStation games to the NX, for instance?

Maybe if NX is successful they are going to create a home console like a SNES, for instance. With a true ecosystem... :smile2: One of the reasons I keep my Xbox One even if I am gaming on PC a bit more these days, is 'cos Xbox was my 1st console but also because I spent quite a few bucks on it, and now with BC and future compatibility guaranteed, it starts to pay off.

 

[BRiT]

I'm just throwing out ideas here, but what if the NX portable is a separate product from the home console, but can be plugged in to the home console to function as a screen for VR with a headset accessory. Kind of like how Gear VR functions for Samsung mobile phones.

The detachable controllers make more sense this way too, as they can function in 3D space like the HTC Vive controllers, and the 3D hardware in the handheld might somehow assist the rendering to make VR possible at all.

Though, if the resolution is correct that might be a bit on the low side for a comfortable VR experience.

They are not doing VR.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For TV, I've offered a crazy solution in the 2nd part of my post which you've skipped

Hmmm...so the suggestion is people buy four of these things to play solo on their home TV in HD?

Well, the Vita TV is a thing...

And sales are...? AFAIK the main purpose/value for Vita TV is streaming PS4 to another room.

 

[McHuj]

I think anyone expecting more than 200 gigaflops for the NX in handheld is setting themselves up for disappointment. It's Nintendo. Remember the WiiU.

Saw this one gaf:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/nintendo-nx-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-transforming-portable/0170297

• Price

Early online speculation about pricing for the NX expects it to be cheaper than current consoles, but from what we’ve heard it’s going to be cheaper than even the vast majority expect. This is a machine that is targeting the mass market, and Nintendo certainly plans for it to have a mass market price. Price is one Wii U mistake Nintendo is determined not to repeat. This could be NX's single biggest win.

 

[CSI PC]

I am not sure even Nintendo know what they are doing tbh
I had to look back to see what Nintendo's North America president Reggie said over a year ago, June 2015:

WSJ: Sony’s and Microsoft’s consoles have far outsold the Wii U. What’s your strategy to come out ahead?

Fils-Aime: The time frame that these systems are sold is quite long, and right now we’re still at the very early stages of the current generation. The other piece I would highlight is this is a global business. Don’t just look at what’s happening here in the U.S. Look at what’s happening globally.

From a Nintendo perspective, we clearly have strength here in the Americas, we have strength in Europe and we have strength in Japan. That isn’t necessarily true of some of our more direct competitors. We’ve also said publicly that we are already hard at work on our next home console and that’s another element we’ll be talking about much later.

I also love how he thinks they are stronger outside of Americas than some of their direct competitors
I think he is being rather selective there.
On the plus side for AMD, generally Nintendo executives seem to be even worst with their business-product strategy.

So either there is another 'console' product, more to the NX than most think, or Nintendo are screwed as I am not sure they can generate enough sales for a 'weak' hybrid console.
Cheers