Nintendo Switch Price Speculation (Last Week Poll)

[wco81]

Well the Vita was a side business for Sony whereas the Switch is Nintendo's main bet for the next couple of years.

So they're going to focus all their first-party games on it and do whatever they can to get third-party support.

Maybe that means they'd be more open to making price adjustments if sales aren't up to snuff. The thing is, they never reduced the price of the WiiU, even though it was selling poorly? Maybe because that tablet controller was too costly for them to make price reductions?

Maybe the Switch design gives them more room for price reductions, since it's using what, a two-year old SOC?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well the Vita didn't sell well enough so the market decided it wasn't a great value. First price cut came fairly early I believe.

Let's see if Nintendo fares better.

Sony decided to axe the Vita by immediately ceasing support or even barely mentioning the console in major events.
Perhaps it was the best thing they could've done since the PS3 started out horribly and ended up rather well, mostly thanks to first party titles. But if the Vita had the same investment as the 3DS then I believe it would perform at least similarly in hardware sales.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So they're going to focus all their first-party games on it...

Yes.

...and do whatever they can to get third-party support.

No. I don't think they're going to do "whatever they can". I doubt they'll do anything different to usual, and certainly won't be bending over backwards to support third parties. Contrast Nintendo with MS and Sony - Sony gave away PS4 Devkits for the first year. MS talked about using an XB1 as a dev machine early on and made that happen. Nintendo haven't said anything about anything because they aren't doing anything - no devkit deals or homebrew options or anything - because they don't, because they're deluded about their value to the market still or are just plain unfriendly.

Maybe the Switch design gives them more room for price reductions, since it's using what, a two-year old SOC?

Quite the opposite. If the SOC is already 2 years old, there's even less chance for price reductions. Bot the reason for Switch's price is probably in part to the sheer number of components and that's not going to change. The MEMS prices aren't likely to reduce much, same with the screen which is already cheap as far as screens go. Heck, we even discussed the possibility of using a higher res screen just because long term it might be cheaper (who'll be making and using 720p screens 3 years from now?). Any margin Nintendo has to price cut will come from profit margins.

 

[eastmen]

wasn't vita $250 and $300 for the cellular edition ? I won mine at taco hell so I don't remember.

Still for the switch its the accessories that make it cost more than the vita . But at $300 I think its the more capable system of its time frame.

Vita had a few more launch games but I doubt any of them were as good as this Zelda Is lookcing. The uncharted game was pretty rough. Also thankfully in the long run the switch takes micro sd cards while the vita was limited to custom ones. In fact I think I can get a 128 gig micro sd card for less than half the cost of a 64 gig vita card. The vita 64 gig is $100 and a 128gig micro sd card is $30-40 , Infact a 200 gig micro sd card is only 70 bucks .

In the end though its going to come down to the library. Nintendo doesn't have much at launch but The first year has a new Zelda , new Mario a port of Mario kart and a rumored port of smash bros and Skyrim. Who knows what else comes out this year.

I guess we need to wait and see.


My real question on this system is how long until MS or SONY rework the xbox one and ps4 to work in this form factor or slightly bigget.

 

[Rodéric]

My real question on this system is how long until MS or SONY rework the xbox one and ps4 to work in this form factor or slightly bigget.

You're kidding right ?

 

[N00b]

You're kidding right ?

Do you mean that from a technical or a business point of view?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

But at $300 I think its the more capable system of its time frame.

The Switch in handheld mode seems to be in the range of a Snapdragon 805 for the GPU and a whole lot less in the CPU. The S805 is a 2 year-old SoC that wasn't even the fastest of its time.
The Vita came with PowerVR 543MP4, which matched the most powerful SoC at the time which was ipad 2's A5X which came out 3 months later. It also used 256MB of Wide I/O exclusive to the GPU to get a similar bandwidth to A5X's 4 * 32bit channels bandwidth (of which 2 channels were exclusive to the GPU IIRC).

Total CPU throughput was actually not that different between the ipad 2 and the Vita. The Vita had 4* Cortex A9 at 444MHz, whereas the ipad 2 used 2*A9 at 1GHz.

If the Switch was to be the more capable system of its time frame compared to the Vita, it would have to match whatever SoC the next ipad pro 9.7" will be bringing in 2017, at least in GPU performance.
Heck, even if the handheld-mode Switch was to match last year's ipad pro in performance , it would have to be as fast as the Pixel C which is ~2.5x faster than what a 2 SM @ 300MHz TX1 will be able to do.



The problem here is that Nintendo seems to be using outdated architectures again with an outdated manufacturing process again.
The TX1 is a 2 year-old chip. There's no magic around that.
NIntendo was a cheap bastard again and they will pay for that.

My real question on this system is how long until MS or SONY rework the xbox one and ps4 to work in this form factor or slightly bigget.

10nm might make that possible. 7nm for sure.
We'll see what the 4-10W Zen APUs can do. I could see AMD being able to do a SoC that runs XBone games within 10W or so.
The question is if Microsoft won't rather sell more expensive Surface devices with "Xbox One certification" rather than an actual console that has to be much cheaper.

I'm not sure I'd trust Sony with a handheld console ever again. The way they dropped the Vita to die in its infancy was pretty anti-consumer IMO.
They may not trust themselves with a handheld ever again either.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Do you mean that from a technical or a business point of view?

Look at how much power the consoles draw, how much heat they produce and their size. Take that technical problem, make it smaller and throw in a screen to power as well.

There, you've answered your own question Equally I'm not seeing a business case either. I'm sure there is a market for some people, but a mass market? Hmmm..

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Well the Vita was a side business for Sony whereas the Switch is Nintendo's main bet for the next couple of years.

I thought Amiibo was their primary business!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Friendly reminder that this will cost about as much as a Switch in Europe.

Pros:

- Much more powerful out-of-the-shelf SoC
- 4GB RAM (8GB in the $530 version)
- 64GB eMMC (128GB in the $530 version)
- 1080p IPS screen
- HDMI-out, USB Host
- Steam Controller's haptic touchpads, switchable by conventional 4-way buttons or analog sticks
- 5 hour battery life, + another 5 hours with a battery add-on
- SteamOS included but you can install Windows 10
- Thousands upon thousands of games available on day 1
- Can connect as many cheap bluetooth/USB gamepads as you want for local co-op
- Shipping to backers 1 month after the Switch gets released, full release in Q4 2017
- Upgradeable SoC (wait what?)


Cons:

- Can't feel ice cubes, I think
- Can't play 12 Switch
- Or Zelda

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Cons:

- Appears to share the dimensions of a house brick.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

- Appears to share the dimensions of a house brick.

The functional prototype they've been showing since late 2015 yes, but this is the shape for the production model:

 

[wco81]

No Nintendo games.

 

[MrFox]

Switch is $400 in Canada with no games. And most games are full AAA price at $80. Even Binding of Isaac is $54 (isn't this an existing $15 indie?)

Holy fucking satan's tits, this is too expensive.

 

[function]

Switch is $400 in Canada with no games. And most games are full AAA price at $80. Even Binding of Isaac is $54 (isn't this an existing $15 indie?)

Holy fucking satan's tits, this is too expensive.

But Nintendo.

 

[OlegSH]

Total CPU throughput was actually not that different between the ipad 2 and the Vita. The Vita had 4* Cortex A9 at 444MHz, whereas the ipad 2 used 2*A9 at 1GHz.

Does it matter that a single A57 core has about 2.5x IPC of A9 at the same frequency? Single A57 core @ 1 GHz is about ~5.74x faster on single thread in comparison with boost mode 444 MHz frequency of A9 in Vita and 7.66x faster per core in comparison with default 333 MHz frequency, this is still a huge step forward for hardware with 5 years difference, much more so than the step from PS360 gen consoles to current gen consoles that have even lost some CPU flops in transition.
Let's see GPU frequencies now - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1869512/
Opps, default frequency of Vita's GPU is 111 MHz, that's a whopping 16 SIMDs * 4 FP32 lanes * 2 multiply-add op per Hz * 111*10^6 Hz = 14.2 FP32 GFlops and 28.4 FP16 GFlops, Switch GPU has 157.2 FP32 and 314.37 FP16 GFlops in handheld mode, this is an order of magnitude difference. As for S805 GPU, it has less than 100 GFlops, it's far away even from TK1 in features, compute and graphics performance, even highly downclocked TX1 GPU would beat S805 easily, Krait CPU has the same IPC as A9, so despite of high clocks, it's about 2.5x slower per clock than A57, downclocked TX1 should still be much faster and consume less than 2 GHz S805, S810 was a disaster. Switch hardware is top notch for handheld, it would have been utterly stupid to expect iPad PRO level hardware with 2 memory channels and large chip with high TDP in such small form factor with tons of peripherals and small battery. TX1 should consume less than a couple of watts with memory in Switch and it should work for 3 hours with some puny phone battery, that's also why Vita frequencies were so misarable in the first place

 

[BRiT]

No Nintendo games.

Is that a Pro or a Con?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Does it matter that a single A57 core has about 2.5x IPC of A9 at the same frequency? Single A57 core @ 1 GHz is about ~5.74x faster on single thread in comparison with boost mode 444 MHz frequency of A9 in Vita and 7.66x faster per core in comparison with default 333 MHz frequency, this is still a huge step forward for hardware with 5 years difference, much more so than the step from PS360 gen consoles to current gen consoles that have even lost some CPU flops in transition.
Let's see GPU frequencies now - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1869512/
Opps, default frequency of Vita's GPU is 111 MHz, that's a whopping 16 SIMDs * 4 FP32 lanes * 2 multiply-add op per Hz * 111*10^6 Hz = 14.2 FP32 GFlops and 28.4 FP16 GFlops, Switch GPU has 157.2 FP32 and 314.37 FP16 GFlops in handheld mode, this is an order of magnitude difference. As for S805 GPU, it has less than 100 GFlops, it's far away even from TK1 in features, compute and graphics performance, even highly downclocked TX1 GPU would beat S805 easily, Krait CPU has the same IPC as A9, so despite of high clocks, it's about 2.5x slower per clock than A57, downclocked TX1 should still be much faster and consume less than 2 GHz S805, S810 was a disaster. Switch hardware is top notch for handheld, it would have been utterly stupid to expect iPad PRO level hardware with 2 memory channels and large chip with high TDP in such small form factor with tons of peripherals and small battery. TX1 should consume less than a couple of watts with memory in Switch and it should work for 3 hours with some puny phone battery, that's also why Vita frequencies were so misarable in the first place

I was comparing Vita vs. 2012 state-of-the art to Switch vs. 2017 state-of-the-art.
I wasn't comparing Vita vs. Switch. That would be stupid.

BTW the Vita's GPU clocks are 222MHz in demanding games. Where did you find S805's theoretical compute throughput?

Switch hardware is top notch for handheld

No. If it's aTX1 then it uses a 2 year-old chip with an outdated manufacturing process.

it would have been utterly stupid to expect iPad PRO level hardware with 2 memory channels and large chip with high TDP in such small form factor with tons of peripherals and small battery.

Yet the Vita did just that in 2012 compared to ipad 2 at the time, while launching for $250 on release. And has microphones and cameras for AR and voice chat. And brought an expensive RGB OLED screen.
Funny, isn't it?


And dude, please make use of shorter sentences and paragraphs. You post is like an undecipherable block if text.

 

[wco81]

Is that a Pro or a Con?

Nintendo games have more credibility than whatever games that other device is likely to be able to drum up.

 

[eastmen]

Look at how much power the consoles draw, how much heat they produce and their size. Take that technical problem, make it smaller and throw in a screen to power as well.

There, you've answered your own question Equally I'm not seeing a business case either. I'm sure there is a market for some people, but a mass market? Hmmm..

1.38tflops for an xbox one. Throw in 8 Puma + cores that were further optimized for lower power . Use a 1.38tflop vega set up . Ultra low voltage ddr 4 . No blu ray drive and no laptop hardrive and move to 10nm. You'd have to hit 15w or under. So in portable mode you can even go down to 1tflop or 800 gflops and run the games in 720p mode. You'd have a tablet capable of running all modern game engines at a pretty high fidelity.

We've seen companies do gaming handhelds using SOCs with that power drain so it is possible.