Switch 2 Speculation

Nintendo Plans Switch Model With Bigger Samsung OLED Display
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/...switch-model-with-bigger-samsung-oled-display

 

Yeah, the rumors are back. Switch 2? Switch Pro? Super Switch? "2 teraflops" (hypothetically the limit of possibility this year, and I'm highly unsure Ampere can manage than even in 9 watts)? Or maybe it's just Mariko, and we get 900p Breath of the Wild on mobile and BotW2 ramps up to 1080p while docked.

Guess we're supposed to find out this year though.

 

720p OLED?

better battery life despite bigger screen?

or SOC will consume any energy savings?

 

720p makes more sense imo. If they use DLSS they can render at a crazy low resolution such as 300p and can get crazy battery life. 720p is sharp enough.

 

Switch XL ?

 

Seems a bit WiiU to me, can’t see this being popular outside hardcore...Switch (to me) is on the edge of the largest a handheld should be.

Gotta love an OLED though so will probably pick one up lol

 

With a 7" OLED they could probably stay at the same size. Plenty of bezel on the current Switch.

Also the Switch just needs to be a backpack appropriate size. There's room for it to be a little bigger.

 

The screen being 720p makes me think it's using the Mariko chip at the current clocks and there's no additional performance at all, not even running undocked at docked settings.

If they really had a new chip with hardware support for DLSS then there'd be no reason to get a 1080p screen to run 720p upscaled.
Power consumption difference between 720p and 1080p at 7" is probably negligible in this day and age, and considering it's a custom order with significant volume from Samsung even the price should be pretty similar.

The most valid reason I see for them to keep a 720p screen is because they want to keep the same 720p target render resolution which wouldn't look good on a 1080p panel.


If it's using the same SoC, the 4K output sounds like a red herring to get people to upgrade thinking they'll get an IQ upgrade.

 

Super Nintendo Switch?

Nintendo 64 4K Switch?

Tommy McClain

 

They can pull a microsoft. On the surface pro x and now the surface pro 7 + they went with a new thinner screen allowing them more space inside the device.

Also the modern screen can use less power than the old one. Finally if they do a bigger screen that doesn't fit the current device size they could simply fit more battery in the device

I mean this is what they do with their hand helds. You had the DS , then the DS Lite and then the DS xl.

You had the 3ds then the 3ds xl and then the new 3ds and new 3ds xl.

There are people that will buy it even if its just a screen replacement. If you have an original switch perhaps the battery life is going and you want better battery life and why not take a bigger screen ?

if you don't have a switch and all things are equal why not a bigger screen ?

I would rather this came with a performance uplift however.

 

Looks more like a "New" Switch rather than a true Switch 2. I'm a sucker, so I will buy one day one, but I am expecting a modest performance bump combined with the nicer screen and not much more. Best case scenario is a revised X1 with a 128bit memory bus and some tensor cores added on for DLSS. CPU clocks could easily be bumped to 1.4Ghz on the new Tegra X1 Mariko chip, and GPU clocks could easily go to 1Ghz. If they can implement DLSS, the need for a much more powerful chip to make a noticeable improvement is reduced significantly. Like Karamazov posted, the most likely scenario is this will be a Switch XL like the DS XL and the 3DS XL.

 

C’mon, "best case" is a lot better than that.
What’s realistic is a different matter. But if you’re going to integrate tensor cores, you might as well be more modern across the board as it will be a new design on a new process under all circumstances. Memory subsystem limitations will determine how far it makes sense to expand ALU capabilities. But there is a lot more smoke now, so while an updated Switch has been rumoured for a ridiculously long time, it may finally happen this year. Even if they come up with a completely new SoC, I would keep my expectations in check, as I assume they want to keep costs low and battery life long.

Apples transistor density improved a factor of 3.5 between 20nm (same as original X1) and TSMC 7nm. If we assume that Nintendo will use a somewhat less dense process (Samsung?), and would like to reduce die size a bit for cost reasons, I’d guess that a New SoC wouldn’t have much more than twice the transistors of the X1. Enough for a decent uptick in performance assuming somewhat improved clocks, but a far cry from the most optimistic "predictions". And if that has to include tensor cores for DLSS upscaling to 4k, well....

Worst case is a thinner screen allowing better cooling and higher clocks while docked. 4k!
(But really blurry. )

 

So if they don't use a much more performant processor, how would they deliver 4K docked, maybe just upscale 720p?

 

Well, they are bound to upscale, from some resolution using some method.
The specifics there obviously matter.
However, utilizing tensor cores to do upscaling to 4k is not without its cost. One, given a certain chip size, the die area of the tensor cores take away resources from the rest of the rendering resources. Secondly, DLSS upscaling to 4k, particularly in a small not very powerful chip, takes time, reducing the window available to the already weakened rest of the pipeline.
DLSS is not a panacea. It may well be that overall, other approaches are equally valid, given the necessary compromises involved.

 

I'm saying maybe they use some commodity upscaler silicon in the dock, kind of like the ones used on say $400 4K TVs.

At that point, they might as well just output 720p and let the TV upscale it.

 

Or give up on the docked mode ? At one point the need of displaying on a big tv is a problem vs only focusing on the mobile part. They've giving up a long time ago on power anyway, it's time to move full mobile imo.

 

I disagree. And so does Nintendos customers, who are legion.
First, Nintendo already have a cheaper, purely mobile offering, so having a hybrid Switch doesn’t prevent them from offering a pure mobile device.
But note that this more portable, lighter, sturdier, cheaper device sells much less than the original version.
The market has spoken.
So it’s clear that being able to play Ring Fit Adventure, local multiplayer Mario Kart and so on has a clear value to the majority of their customers. Plus, as a TV-connected gaming console it achieves its entertainment goals while remaining really petite, quiet and easily transportable. Many people value that, and of course use it as a hybrid, taking their big screen gaming to bed, or to the porch, to the train, or to their friends’ place.

Letting the Switch do its own upscaling has the benefit of offering better control of latency. Nintendo has a long history of being concerned with responsiveness of their games, as far as it goes on TV connected consoles.

 

Well of course the pure mobile is selling less right now, as it is a switch "less".

But for the next generation (maybe not the switch "plus" or whatever the leak was about) ? If they propose "ok, switch compatible, capable of running current gen game in a portable way, but the hassle of managing dock settings and undock settings is becoming to much, so no dock anymore", I'm not sure if the public would care ? Or what about a casting device instead ? I don't know... Nintendo does Nintendo anyway.

 

That's what I've always wondered from the beginning, how often people are playing docked vs. just handheld.

My guess was that it was going to be like 10% to 90%.

I guess we will see how important docked mode is by how Nintendo designs future Switch products.

 

This is from october 2017 (showed in a fiscal presentation)



Eight months later, Doug Bowser (in an interview with ArsTechnica) said the play time split between docked and undocked play on the Switch was (at the time) "about even—about 50 percent in the dock and 50 percent away from the dock."

He also said that the usage rates can vary by individual game. Titles like Just Dance are played mostly in docked mode, while games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are more equally balanced.


Personally, I think the hybrid nature is the strongest selling point of the Switch. Ditching the docked mode would be a huge mistake IMO.