Nintendo GOing Forward.

[Rodéric]

yups, more studios to make "Story driven" games on nintendo platform will be awesome. Yeah zelda is story driven game but i keep feeling dejavu every time i play it.

I doubt most people consider it story driven, there's a story, but it feels secondary to having fun with the great gameplay you are provided.
(ie I would think most people don't play the game to see the story unfold, but because they have fun and want the next bit of fun, or challenge...)
[Contrarily to say, Mass Effect, in which players wanted the story and the gameplay sometimes got in the way.]
[Or maybe everything just goes well together in a Zelda game... ^^]

 

[Syferz]

So moving forward, how do you appeal to a bigger market. Copying Sony and Microsoft isn't likely to work.

Nintendo's market is split, first thing you do is combined that market. It does a multitude of things for you as this post on neogaf can explain:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=145423615&postcount=291

Thraktor: "Furthermore, this misses a number of important aspects of a "cross-buy" scenario for a company like Nintendo. Firstly, as I mentioned previously, it would free up their internal studios to release more games in new franchises, which increases the chances they'll create another "killer-app" a-la Wii Sports. Secondly, Nintendo could use cross-buy as a means to encourage people into purchasing digitally, by only offering it with digital purchases. While I don't have numbers in front of me, I'd be fairly confident in saying that Nintendo would make as much off a single digital purchase as they would off two physical purchases of games, which would make it worth their while even ignoring the above RoI calculations.

Fundamentally, it becomes more profitable for Nintendo to move to a cross-buy model the closer the home console and handheld hardware come to each other, even if a large proportion of customers would otherwise buy both games. With the coming generation, it's entirely feasible for Nintendo to use identical architectures for both CPU and GPU across both their devices, and although performance levels would still differ quite considerably between the two, with appropriate tools the cost of scaling assets down for the handheld version shouldn't be at all prohibitive. I can't really see any scenario where Nintendo wouldn't be more profitable by treating both of their hardware devices as a single platform when it comes to software development."

He is right of course and Iwata already outlined this, moving their platform into NNID rather than hardware. Iwata has also stated that this would allow them to produce more devices than just 2, of course your hardware performance could differ in all of them, so the question of how powerful is simply the wrong question to ask, they could release games with high and low settings put right in the cartridge itself (and I would expect them go with with a successor to the 3DS cart because they need retail space, though NFC keys could be a solution as well) What Nintendo is aiming to do would allow them to react more quickly to products, fight in more spaces directly and allow more game output because all of there games they produce yearly would come to every device under NNID, that is ~30 games a year and to top it off, they can free up entire teams that work on handheld versions of their games to produce more unique IPs like Splatoon.

The only thing they can't really do with this set up, is release products at the same price, meaning a mullins (ALUs) like handheld in 2016 might cost Nintendo $149 or a more powerful version could cost $199 but at that price, they would need to release the console at $249 with HD graphics. This set up would allow Nintendo to launch an "Ultra" version of the console 6 months to a year after PS5/XB4 that is the same price and more powerful than their competitors. This is simply copying the PC space or iOS space. It's steambox if Valve was the only one producing the hardware products.

 

[eastmen]

@Goodtwin , @Shifty Geezer
And then there is Nintendo's utter failure in the online experience that will completely dissuade any PS360/XB1/PS4 gamer to switch over to a Nintendo only experience. Hardware is less than a third of Nintendo's real problems.

I don't think that matters , gamers forgave sony for 2 generations of having a pretty poor but improving online experience. Gamers could also forgive Nintendo if they actually release a good online experience next generation.

As it is the actual playing games isn't bad on my wii u through online as I play Mario kart quite a lot with my little sister. I think the major problem is the store and that its not unified at all.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't think that matters , gamers forgave sony for 2 generations of having a pretty poor but improving online experience.

One generation didn't matter and there was no precedent or expectation. The second generation, online launched with a decent enough start (for people used to none at all). You had a unified log in for all games.

Gamers could also forgive Nintendo if they actually release a good online experience next generation.

Yes, but Brit's point is more the bolded part. The workings of Nintendo's mind are unfathomable, and they put in place restrictions based primarily on limiting social online apparently to protect the kiddies, which inhibits the adult's online experience. For Nintendo's online experience to change, I think their policies would need to. I can't see that happening.

 

[east of eastside]

These are my latest Nintendo musings..

Wii 3 will have a 4DS cartridge slot. (Console-portable synergy and for nostalgia marketing of cartridges.)

4DS will be the second screen controller for Wii 3 and Nintendo will market an SKU that sells both Wii 3 and 4DS together.

Wii 3 and 4DS will actually be called something else and share a common brand name.

ARM will power both consoles for a common code base.

Nintendo will sell 'classic' Amiibo's to correspond with classic VC titles.

China and emerging market upcoming Nintendo hardware will preview Wii 3 in a key way... perhaps by forgoing disc drive.

 

[Sonic]

I'm not sure what Nintendo will name its next system. But from here on out until there's an official name it shall be considered the Nintendo Thwii.

 

[east of eastside]

Question:

Will X1/PS4 level performance be possible in a sub-30 watts SoC in 2016?

 

[eastmen]

One generation didn't matter and there was no precedent or expectation. The second generation, online launched with a decent enough start (for people used to none at all). You had a unified log in for all games.

Yes, but Brit's point is more the bolded part. The workings of Nintendo's mind are unfathomable, and they put in place restrictions based primarily on limiting social online apparently to protect the kiddies, which inhibits the adult's online experience. For Nintendo's online experience to change, I think their policies would need to. I can't see that happening.

One generation ?

in terms of practical online you had the Saturn a full generation before. Then you had the dreamcast that was over a year before. Then you had the xbox 360.

The restrictions can be toggled so younger kids have them and adults don't.

Its not a hard change , sony was able to go from a god awful online system with the ps2 to the ps3 which while below what live was , was not bad.

I believe the online for the wii u is much better than what sony had with the ps two. So ps3 level and dfree wouldn't be bad at all.

 

[eastmen]

Question:

Will X1/PS4 level performance be possible in a sub-30 watts SoC in 2016?

I doubt it. Xbox one is a 112 watts and 137 for the ps4 the wii u 34watts http://www.tomsguide.com/us/xbox-one-ps4-power-consumption,news-18882.html

I think we'd only really have one die shrink by then at 16nm. So you could get xbox one /ps4 power in perhaps a 60 or 80 watt apu.

 

[east of eastside]

I doubt it. Xbox one is a 112 watts and 137 for the ps4 the wii u 34watts http://www.tomsguide.com/us/xbox-one-ps4-power-consumption,news-18882.html

I think we'd only really have one die shrink by then at 16nm. So you could get xbox one /ps4 power in perhaps a 60 or 80 watt apu.

Shouldn't newer AMD GPU architecture, more efficient CPU cores and memory allow Nintendo to achieve X1/PS4 level performance while retaining Wii U's 30 watt TDP?

 

[BRiT]

Shouldn't newer AMD GPU architecture, more efficient CPU cores and memory allow Nintendo to achieve X1/PS4 level performance while retaining Wii U's 30 watt TDP?

Absolutely not. Do you really expect them to magically come up with a 4x increase in perf-per-watt out of nowhere?

 

[eastmen]

of course things like stacked ram should help to give a new console an advantage over older ones in terms of power consumption. If Nintendo decides they don't need a hardrive and instead go with 128gigs of nand or similar that can also save power over what ms and sony have.

I can't see 30watts however , I think they would need at least one more die shrink .

NVidia pulled out a win with its newest tech the 9x0 series by changing a lot of the chip. They dropped cuda cores , texture units , bus width and fp 64 performance amongst other things to shave 2B tranistors to get their power usage under control.

 

[east of eastside]

Absolutely not. Do you really expect them to magically come up with a 4x increase in perf-per-watt out of nowhere?

Isn't Wii U half the watts of 360/PS3? Shifting to a 16nm node along with the architectural improvements I don't see 30 watts being an issue. Optical drive may also be left out oft package contributing to further power gains.

 

[BRiT]

Isn't Wii U half the watts of 360/PS3?.

After 8 years and 3 shrinks.

 

[Grall]

Isn't Wii U half the watts of 360/PS3?

Largely only because of that pathetic CPU the Wuu has, and the incredibly inefficient power-hogs of a CPU the PS360 have.

Wuu's PPC CPU cores are fifteen plus years old by now and almost unchanged, just minor tweaks really like adding support for triple core operation. It doesn't clock very high, it has no modern power-gobbling features, such as wide SIMD FPUs and so on. It's just old, and BAD. Cell phone chips today stomp the hell out of it for chrissakes...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

in terms of practical online you had the Saturn a full generation before. Then you had the dreamcast that was over a year before. Then you had the xbox 360.

No-one really cared about online until XBox. If they did, PS2 wouldn't have sold as many as it did. Come XB360 and PS3, online did matter and Sony released a working online which people grumbled mightily about and Sony improved it.

The restrictions can be toggled so younger kids have them and adults don't. Its not a hard change...

It's not, but it needs Nintendo to be willing to change. The fact they eventually dropped Friends Codes shows they can adapt, but they are soooo sloooooowwwww. Hence I wouldn't hold my breath until they've got an early XB360-level of online convenience. It's quite possible that their new machine will have an awkward, inconvenient online once again.

 

[Syferz]

I doubt it. Xbox one is a 112 watts and 137 for the ps4 the wii u 34watts http://www.tomsguide.com/us/xbox-one-ps4-power-consumption,news-18882.html

I think we'd only really have one die shrink by then at 16nm. So you could get xbox one /ps4 power in perhaps a 60 or 80 watt apu.

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...finfet-networking-chip-32-core-arm-cortex-a57
60% power reduction on 16nm @ the same speed.
Puma saves 20% at 28nm over Jaguar at 28nm. AMD will be using "Nolan" soon and considering Nintendo, they would possibly go ARM from AMD anyways. IIRC Jaguar eats 50watts, so minimum 10watts saved before the 60% here, but I'd venture to guess that ARM and newer ARM architecture would come in at a full 50% reduction before moving to 16nm.

GDDR5 would also be dropped for stacked memory, as Nintendo does spend on memory, so you'd save on power here.

GCN TDP has to evolve, recent leaked benchmarks of 390x shows a performance vs power consumption beyond Nvidia's new GPUs, so it's likely that AMD has already made some savings there that we will see shortly. I'd say even ignoring this, PS4 consumes 137 watts measured at the wall. lets place 25 watts on HDD, GDDR5 and GPU inefficiency compared to AMD's next GPU series. 25 watts on CPU efficiency improvements explained above (this is all just rough estimating for the best outcome) it's also ~85% efficiency for the PSU so lets go with 117 watts being drawn in for the system itself, -50 watts for architecture improvements from AMD, -60% for moving down to 16nm. Is it possible? ~30 watts before PSU efficiency, I'd put the actual number that above calculation gets at, but as most of those numbers are just guessed at, I don't think it's important.

Considering the specs of Nintendo's next console are pointless, I don't think this matters, the only specs we should be worried about is the handheld's, as that is the minimum and thus, baseline for graphics on Nintendo's next hardware cycle, which is why 480p-540p screens make sense, on a ~4inch device, it won't really matter much anyways.

 

[east of eastside]

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...finfet-networking-chip-32-core-arm-cortex-a57
60% power reduction on 16nm @ the same speed.
Puma saves 20% at 28nm over Jaguar at 28nm. AMD will be using "Nolan" soon and considering Nintendo, they would possibly go ARM from AMD anyways. IIRC Jaguar eats 50watts, so minimum 10watts saved before the 60% here, but I'd venture to guess that ARM and newer ARM architecture would come in at a full 50% reduction before moving to 16nm.

GDDR5 would also be dropped for stacked memory, as Nintendo does spend on memory, so you'd save on power here.

GCN TDP has to evolve, recent leaked benchmarks of 390x shows a performance vs power consumption beyond Nvidia's new GPUs, so it's likely that AMD has already made some savings there that we will see shortly. I'd say even ignoring this, PS4 consumes 137 watts measured at the wall. lets place 25 watts on HDD, GDDR5 and GPU inefficiency compared to AMD's next GPU series. 25 watts on CPU efficiency improvements explained above (this is all just rough estimating for the best outcome) it's also ~85% efficiency for the PSU so lets go with 117 watts being drawn in for the system itself, -50 watts for architecture improvements from AMD, -60% for moving down to 16nm. Is it possible? ~30 watts before PSU efficiency, I'd put the actual number that above calculation gets at, but as most of those numbers are just guessed at, I don't think it's important.

Considering the specs of Nintendo's next console are pointless, I don't think this matters, the only specs we should be worried about is the handheld's, as that is the minimum and thus, baseline for graphics on Nintendo's next hardware cycle, which is why 480p-540p screens make sense, on a ~4inch device, it won't really matter much anyways.

Thanks, I was trying to make a point with these specifics... 16nm Finfet, DDR4 or HMC stacked memory, ARM CPU cores, newer GCN architecture (perhaps with an emphasis on low power performance) and no optical drive are all key factors that will allow Nintendo to hit the key 30-40 watts tdp critical for the form factor it's shooting for.

This is a low cost/low power device that is part of a merged console-portable shared ecosystem strategy and not some full blown next-gen console. Price point and form factor are key over performance.

 

[BRiT]

This is a low cost/low power device that is part of a merged console-portable shared ecosystem strategy and not some full blown next-gen console. Price point and form factor are key over performance.

Wrong again. The latest and greatest process node will not be low cost. It will cost more. Nor will stacked memory or any of the other items you're adding into get those low power consumption numbers. Those will cost more.

 

[east of eastside]

Wrong again. The latest and greatest process node will not be low cost. It will cost more. Nor will stacked memory or any of the other items you're adding into get those low power consumption numbers. Those will cost more.

It's elementary that whatever yield or tech Nintendo goes with has to be mature enough to be low cost, if that's some kind of special insight your childishly to troll me with..

Whether DDR4, stacked memory tech, or 20nm vs 16nm is more cost effective design/ manufacturing solution by the expected earliest fall '16 launch of this console is a call that is too early to make. By '17 the newer tech would be expected to be mature and cost effective to be a viable solution.

In any case, Nintendo's Linkedin has already stated it's looking for a 'low power' SoC engineer, so that aspect is not in question. The small profile form factor that Nintendo is shooting for is not in reasonable question either. The question is what performance can Nintendo achieve at 30-40 watts tdp? How close to X1/PS4 can that be?