Nintendo Switch 2

[see colon]

A more advanced node on a portable would give them both better performance (and they are trying to get third parties on board, so every MHz is important) and better battery, which means people playing your platform for longer, using your store more and using your services. Is saving like 10 dollars really worth it?

You have to balance every cost against your targeted retail price, though. Adding a few extra dollars per APU would increase the cost, and could be balanced out by trimming a few mah from the battery capacity, but I assume that nintendo found the sweet spot in their eyes. Also, cost per transistor is fairly flat. So you wouldn't be saving money by going smaller at all like you could in the past, it will only be more expensive.

The economics of scale play a big part here. Even if the system is a failure and only sells 10 million units, that would add $100 million in costs if making a change added $10 per unit. And if it's successful, and sells 100 million units, that's $1 billion in added costs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The problem with that reasoning is you can justify cutting back everything and end up producing such a minimal product that people don't actually want it. At some point, I think early on, you need to commit to a product vision and then execute to the best of your ability, investing the costs with an expectation to reap the rewards. If you start nickel-and-dimeing by calculating every cost times 100 million, you'll kill your product.

 

[LiveGamer]

Within reason, I'm not sure the extent to which using a very advanced node matters for Nintendo in terms of commercial success? Particularly when balanced against cost and other trades within the system (panel, RAM).

In relative terms, the N64 (1995-1996 production) was fabricated on 350nm; Gamecube (2000-2001 production) was, I think, on 180nm. Both were close to the leading nodes for their time insofar as I understand it. I don't think I had a 250nm CPU until Celeron 300A in late 1998.

And both were, compared to preceding Nintendo machines, generally regarded as less successful (N64 is probably tied for my favourite system, but the market held a different view in aggregate).

But there also has to be a balance and the RAM only has so much bandwidth. Perhaps more TFs without upgrading other components would be inefficient.

 

[orangpelupa]

I wonder if there's something lost in translation. They say they went to lcd because the oled doesn't have hdr and lcd have hdr..... Doesn't made a lick of sense.

Or they were saying that lcd became a viable option because nowadays LCD supports HDR? albeit at lower capabilities than OLED HDR.

Nintendo Decided to Go From the Switch OLED to an LCD Screen for Switch 2 ‘After a Lot of Consideration’ - IGN

Nintendo has responded to questions around its decision to go with an LCD screen for the Switch 2 rather than an OLED screen, as it used for the OLED version of the OG Switch. Is it a "downgrade?"

www.ign.com

 

[arandomguy]

I wonder if there's something lost in translation. They say they went to lcd because the oled doesn't have hdr and lcd have hdr..... Doesn't made a lick of sense.

Or they were saying that lcd became a viable option because nowadays LCD supports HDR? albeit at lower capabilities than OLED HDR.

Nintendo Decided to Go From the Switch OLED to an LCD Screen for Switch 2 ‘After a Lot of Consideration’ - IGN

Nintendo has responded to questions around its decision to go with an LCD screen for the Switch 2 rather than an OLED screen, as it used for the OLED version of the OG Switch. Is it a "downgrade?"

www.ign.com

I think you're misreading that. They didn't give a specific reason for why they went LCD.

The HDR comment was specifically that the Switch OLED does not support HDR and the Switch 2 does. This was made in the context of listing an advantage of the Switch 2 display over the Switch OLED as the original question stated that the display capabilities could be seen as a downgrade.

 

[Roly]

But there also has to be a balance and the RAM only has so much bandwidth. Perhaps more TFs without upgrading other components would be inefficient.

I think so as well - insofar as I understood the specifications (which are to a degree still speculated), it did seem quite balanced in terms of bandwidth?

 

[Roly]

The problem with that reasoning is you can justify cutting back everything and end up producing such a minimal product that people don't actually want it. At some point, I think early on, you need to commit to a product vision and then execute to the best of your ability, investing the costs with an expectation to reap the rewards. If you start nickel-and-dimeing by calculating every cost times 100 million, you'll kill your product.

Absolutely - I'm not sure of what the vision is other than 'Super Switch'. It does seem to me also that the market at the moment is quite price sensitive, and even 10USD or 10Euro might be 12.50 - 14 with taxes etc.? (I would buy it, and I'm not committed either way - I honestly don't know enough about what was available at what cost, how that mapped to what the ambitions were).

 

[LiveGamer]

I think so as well - insofar as I understood the specifications (which are to a degree still speculated), it did seem quite balanced in terms of bandwidth?

The Series S has twice the bandwidth and 4 TFs. The Switch 2 is already stretching it's 100GB/s bandwidth with 3 TFs.

 

[Roly]

The Series S has twice the bandwidth and 4 TFs. The Switch 2 is already stretching it's 100GB/s bandwidth with 3 TFs.

That makes sense - I was going on the figures for Ampere (memory per FLOP), where it seemed reasonable enough from what I had read calculated, and allowing a little for the CPU.