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Pie and Beans · May 14, 2016

Why even bother making hardware anymore. Third party devs be like making crosses with their fingers already.

No x86, no support. Get out.

ozfunghi · May 14, 2016

Schnozberry said:
Modern doesn't mean more powerful as much as it means efficient. cool and quiet. If Nintendo is going with Nvidia, you can't do an Apples to Apples comparison in terms of FLOPS, so it's possible the Nintendo console looks closer to the XB1 on paper and "punches above its weight" so to speak.

Yes... that's exactly what i meant? Modern, meaning modern feature set, modern architecture... at the same "raw numbers" of XBO could still mean it "might" outperform PS4.

bomblord1 · May 14, 2016

What more do you expect from a stationary handheld? Also, why is anyone here expecting Nvidia?

CronoShot · May 14, 2016

LiquidSolid said:
As if there was any real chance anyway. Nintendo somehow managing to attract the same kind of third party support as Microsoft and Sony has always been a pipe dream.

This news is what I was expecting and hoping to hear. Instead of trying to re-enter a market Nintendo abandoned a long time ago, they need to play it smart and focus on what they're good at.

Which is what exactly?

Schnozberry · May 14, 2016

Pie and Beans said:
Why even bother making hardware anymore. Third party devs be like making crosses with their fingers already.

No x86, no support. Get out.

Do you guys all subscribe to the same newsletter or something? This post has been in this thread like a dozen times already.

Neoxon · May 14, 2016

Pie and Beans said:
Why even bother making hardware anymore. Third party devs be like making crosses with their fingers already.

No x86, no support. Get out.

Again, pretty much every major engine supports ARM, so it's not really a problem. If anything, Nintendo's typical audience may be what scares off western publishers,

shark sandwich · May 14, 2016

Anybody else glad that we aren't getting yet another x86 console? It's so much more interesting when they use different architectures.

Eolz · May 14, 2016

CronoShot said:
Well this basically shatters any hope of third party support again. Not that we had any evidence that Nintendo was learning from their mistakes in that sector anyway.

jett said:
"special, custom-made chips"

Uh-huh. As "custom" as the APUs in the PS4 and Xbox One. It's going to be Power PC again plus something from AMD.

Mediking said:
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! D: YOU HAD ONE JOB, NINTENDO!!!! Dang it!!!!!!! :/ I know hardware specs aren't everything but dang it!!! At least make it more powerful than a freaking PS4!!!!!!!!

How the hell do people go to posts like this from what was posted?

Eliseo · May 14, 2016

Rodin said:
She needs to learn how to phrase, but people should learn how to read. Raw power and real world performances are two different things.

This article is basically a truckload of nothing, except for the part about not being x86. Which, considering it likely means ARM, is a good news in case anyone is still wondering. And for a variety of reasons (better performances than jaguar, better perf/watts, same architecture and OS as the portable makes cross development easier, a larger number of vendors for the architecture vs intel and amd only, etc).

For the love of God, someone make a thread about just because it uses ARM does not mean its weaker or it wont get 3rd party support sigh.

-Horizon- · May 14, 2016

I didn't realize x86 was the new hotness.

tuxfool · May 14, 2016

If they are going with a Tegra for their handheld device, it could explain their interest in Vulkan. The api is supported by both Nvidia and AMD, thus providing a level of compatibility between the home console and the handheld.

This is speculation but AMD almost certainly has to be involved somewhere unless there is a another console manufacturer that we haven't heard about

Oblivion · May 14, 2016

Nanashrew said:
Wii U used Power PC. It's no longer even viable to go that route as it's become more and more antiquated. x86 and ARM is currently the only direction to go. Nintendo is going ARM which is littlest possible effort to port to as every engine supports it.

ARM also scales up and down better than x86 so it makes sense. And Handhelds have been using ARM CPUs for decades.

Ridley327 said:
IIRC, Nintendo has a development environment that's very different from what most developers are used to, and I want to say that someone on here mentioned once that it's actually more comparable to non-gaming business sectors like medical equipment.

It's really been more of an issue with the tools and support that Nintendo provides, rather than the architecture being the root cause.

Thanks.

I always wondered about this stuff but never got a chance to act. How important is it really to have an architecture that allows ease of porting for third parties? I mean, I figure their number 1 interest is making sure the thing they're porting is profitable, moreso than how difficult it is to port. But would an easier system make any real difference on that end?

Nirolak · May 14, 2016

Neoxon said:
Not really. ARM is supported by pretty much every major engine (except maybe Frostbite).

The full Frostbite engine can run on mobile these days: http://www.frostbite.com/2015/08/frostbite-on-mobile/

Raw hardware processing power is the main stopping block there though, which is a separate type of issue to featureset.

Schnozberry · May 14, 2016

ozfunghi said:
Yes... that's exactly what i meant? Modern, meaning modern feature set, modern architecture... at the same "raw numbers" of XBO could still mean it "might" outperform PS4.

We'll have to see which architecture they go with and what the numbers are. My guess is if (IF) it's above the Xbox One in raw FLOPS it will be competitive with the PS4, especially if they are on a flavor of Vulkan with an ARM CPU that has better single threaded performance than Jaguar at the same clock.

WiiredShawn · May 14, 2016

-Horizon- said:
I didn't realize x86 was the new hotness.

New consoles use x86.

New consoles have better mind- and marketshare.

x86 is the new hotness.

Syllogisms and the Human Mind(TM)

Really, Nintendo just needs to get around to showing this thing, if they want some control over the narrative.

Y2Kev · May 14, 2016

Nirolak said:
I'm leaning back toward my initial reaction that the home console might be a set top version of the handheld's hardware, and thus both are ARM or NVIDIA mobile setups.

We did just get a Chinese console announced that runs on a Tegra K1 and is getting 360/PS3 games ported to it.

You can make one for that if you want too.

We've been on the same page for so long!

MuchoMalo · May 14, 2016

thefro said:
Well, Frostbite Go supports ARM

I'm sure they could get it running NX if they wanted, and the rumor is they've had dev kits for a while.

Frostbite Go can't be used for EA's console games. EA support definitely isn't happening if this is true. No a chance.

If this thing is more than $200, it's not going to outsell Wii U.

Trago · May 14, 2016

If both the handheld and console are ARM, then first party droughts should not be a problem. Shared platform.

Dark Cloud · May 14, 2016

Schnozberry said:
Do you guys all subscribe to the same newsletter or something? This post has been in this thread like a dozen times already.

If I were you I wouldn't even try anymore. Just wait a couple of days and by that point those who want to have a discussion and understand how it all adds up will still be here. Lol

SatoAilDarko · May 14, 2016

The same games will be on both handheld and console.

It's best for Nintendo. And there'll be a lot of games.

Yado · May 14, 2016

CronoShot said:
Which is what exactly?

Affordable consoles people can play their games on as opposed to building hardware that puts them in a position where they have to price them at a point the market rejected?

Thraktor · May 14, 2016

QaaQer said:
Source? Not trying to be combative, just would like more than pronouncements from anon posters because it seems like alot of work goes into optimising and bug fixing each version of AAA multiplayer games.

That's fair enough. I suppose my source would be that almost all modern game engines have ARM versions. Unity and UE4 being the obvious ones, but even internal, performance optimised engines like Frostbite can run on ARM. The challenge of optimising has a lot more to do with performance than it does with the instruction set.

Neoxon said:
Not really. ARM is supported by pretty much every major engine (except maybe Frostbite).

See above.

Nirolak said:
The Tegra X1 is supposed to scale up to 1 TFLOP, which would be a bit below the XB1: http://www.gsmarena.com/nvidia_announces_tegra_x1_with_1_teraflop_performance-news-10643.php

Mind it's also NVIDIA FLOPs instead of AMD's.

It's also a very modern chipset: https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/tegra-x1-processor-and-shield

I think it would fit, especially if the home console version is plugged into a wall socket and doesn't have to worry about power consumption. You could put fans on it if you needed to.

The 1 Tflop is FP16 (i.e. "let's calculate at half the precision so we can claim double the performance"). Real performance at 1GHz is 512 Gflops, which is still impressive enough from a ~10W chip.

Schnozberry · May 14, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
Frostbite Go can't be used for EA's console games. EA support definitely isn't happening if this is true. No a chance.

If this thing is more than $200, it's not going to outsell Wii U.

Full Frostbite can run on 64 bit ARM.

-Horizon- · May 14, 2016

WiiredShawn said:
New consoles use x86.

New consoles have better mind- and marketshare.

x86 is the new hotness.

Syllogisms and the Human Mind(TM)

Do I trust the x86 folks then or the ARM ones?

Numb · May 14, 2016

Not shocked in the slightest

BoboBrazil · May 14, 2016

It was developed under Iwata. Of course it will be underpowered with some sort of gimmick.

bomblord1 · May 14, 2016

Thraktor said:
That's fair enough. I suppose my source would be that almost all modern game engines have ARM versions. Unity and UE4 being the obvious ones, but even internal, performance optimised engines like Frostbite can run on ARM. The challenge of optimising has a lot more to do with performance than it does with the instruction set.

See above.

The 1 Tflop is FP16 (i.e. "let's calculate at half the precision so we can claim double the performance"). Real performance at 1GHz is 512 Gflops, which is still impressive enough from a ~10W chip.

Let's not forget that chip's consumer release was nearly 1 year ago. With typical mobile chip power jumps the next one should easily go toe to toe with the x1.

Neoxon · May 14, 2016

Nirolak said:
The full Frostbite engine can run on mobile these days: http://www.frostbite.com/2015/08/frostbite-on-mobile/

Raw hardware processing power is the main stopping block there though, which is a separate type of issue to featureset.

Thraktor said:
That's fair enough. I suppose my source would be that almost all modern game engines have ARM versions. Unity and UE4 being the obvious ones, but even internal, performance optimised engines like Frostbite can run on ARM. The challenge of optimising has a lot more to do with performance than it does with the instruction set.

See above.

The 1 Tflop is FP16 (i.e. "let's calculate at half the precision so we can claim double the performance"). Real performance at 1GHz is 512 Gflops, which is still impressive enough from a ~10W chip.

Schnozberry said:
Full Frostbite can run on 64 bit ARM.

That definitely removes my doubt. Thanks, guys.

GaussTek · May 14, 2016

Nirolak said:
The Tegra X1 is supposed to scale up to 1 TFLOP, which would be a bit below the XB1: http://www.gsmarena.com/nvidia_announces_tegra_x1_with_1_teraflop_performance-news-10643.php

Mind it's also NVIDIA FLOPs instead of AMD's.

It's also a very modern chipset: https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/tegra-x1-processor-and-shield

I think it would fit, especially if the home console version is plugged into a wall socket and doesn't have to worry about power consumption. You could put fans on it if you needed to.

It looks powerful, but still I don't get it, why would they go for an ARM chip when they would probably find an equivalent x86 one that could perform better (yeah, bigger but also probably cheaper)... and, of course, it would be the same architecture as PS4 and XB1.

Oh well, I guess size and power consumption is pretty important to Nintendo.

antonz · May 14, 2016

Chill out people.

PS4/XBO use Bargain Bin chips. ARM has no issue meeting them or exceeding their performance. Nintendo going ARM does not hinder development

udivision · May 14, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
Frostbite Go can't be used for EA's console games. EA support definitely isn't happening if this is true. No a chance.

If this thing is more than $200, it's not going to outsell Wii U.

How many Nintendo home consoles outsell their predecessors anyway, heh.

Just the one.

GustyGardens · May 14, 2016

eh.

At this point, I can't take most of these rumors seriously. They all have sources and they all contradict one another. On top of that, there's a new one every week.

I think I'll just wait until Nintendo talks about it.

NateDrake · May 14, 2016

antonz said:
Jesus people.

ARM CPUs can be just as good or even far superior to current console CPUs. Going ARM does not cause issues.

Sorry, but GAF has spoken. ARM = doom.

Neoxon · May 14, 2016

BoboBrazil said:
It was developed under Iwata. Of course it will be underpowered with some sort of gimmick.

The gimmick in this case seems to be the shared library across the console & handheld based on Iwata's comments about unifying the console & handheld to be "like brothers", likely meant to minimize software droughts (which would line up with Emily Rogers' comments about the NX Platform's software output putting the Wii U's to absolute shame).

Schnozberry · May 14, 2016

bomblord1 said:
Let's not forget that chip is almost a year old now with typical mobile power jumps in mind the next one should be on par with the X1 easily.

If Nintendo went with the 16nm FinFET design from Nvidia, it will likely be very competitive in a set top box that doesn't have low power requirements. It'll also likely be using Pascal GPU Cores, since Maxwell didn't make the shrink.

MrCunningham · May 14, 2016

-Horizon- said:
I didn't realize x86 was the new hotness.

Not really. It's just not old and busted like PowerPC. PowerPC this late in its life is just a bad idea overall, not only is it losing so much software support year over year but it is also getting harder to find programmers that know how to work with the instruction set . If they keep this around for the sake of backwards compatibility, then it is a really bad idea.

But who knows? Maybe they will go with some high end ARM solution?

Hilarion · May 14, 2016

I'm pretty satisfied with this, it means that the NX should be pretty cheap on launch.

garyizraw · May 14, 2016

Well i guess ill just be purchasing a 2DS for Pokemon Sun

cartographer · May 14, 2016

Vena was right.

tim.mbp · May 14, 2016

All I really want is a Nintendo version of the Nvidia Shield line. If I can get Nintendo + Indie games, I'm good.

ozfunghi · May 14, 2016

I'm guessing the Tegra X1 has to be below what they should be aiming for in the home console though? Where's Blu when you need him!

Mediking · May 14, 2016

Neoxon said:
The gimmick in this case seems to be the shared library across the console & handheld based on Iwata's comments about unifying the console & handheld to be "like brothers", likely meant to minimize software droughts (which would line up with Emily Rogers' comments about the NX Platform's software output putting the Wii U's to absolute shame).

Wait, what...? Gimme an example of how a game would benefit from this? I can play Zelda NX on the go then get home and play it on my tv???? Isn't this what the Vita try to boast in its early life?

Elfstruck · May 14, 2016

Last_colossi said:

LOL this gif

Dark Cloud · May 14, 2016

Neoxon said:
The gimmick in this case seems to be the shared library across the console & handheld based on Iwata's comments about unifying the console & handheld to be "like brothers", likely meant to minimize software droughts (which would line up with Emily Rogers' comments about the NX Platform's software output putting the Wii U's to absolute shame).

That may not be the only thing though. We don't know for sure when it comes to Nintendo. They're too unpredictable.

jroc74 · May 14, 2016

Nirolak said:
I'm leaning back toward my initial reaction that the home console might be a set top version of the handheld's hardware, and thus both are ARM or NVIDIA mobile setups.

We did just get a Chinese console announced that runs on a Tegra K1 and is getting 360/PS3 games ported to it.

You can make one for that if you want too.

Same here. It makes alot of sense when you factor in handheld gaming.

IIRC for mobile phones Tegra wasnt too good but for tablets, handheld gaming its a beast.

KingBroly · May 14, 2016

Mediking said:
Wait, what...? Gimme an example of how a game would benefit from this? I can play Zelda NX on the go then get home and play it on my tv???? Isn't this what the Vita try to boast in its early life?

Think more 'you got Plants vs Zombies on your iPhone and you can play it on your iPad as well.'

Schnozberry · May 14, 2016

ozfunghi said:
I'm guessing the Tegra X1 has to be below what they should be aiming for in the home console though? Where's Blu when you need him!

X1 is technically 3x as powerful as the Wii U. I would think they would shoot for that power envelope in the handheld and aim a bit higher for the console.

Hiltz · May 14, 2016

Waylon Drums said:
This isn't even almost surprising. Oh well...

Indeed. Some people will need to adjust their expectations because Nintendo's been quite clear and consistently adamant about what it wants to do and what it doesn't want to do even after Nintendo acknowledged the failure of Wii U.

It's anyone's guess as to what gimmick Nintendo may come up with next, but one thing is certain: Nintendo doesn't want to be more like Sony and Microsoft, so it isn't going to try to beat them at their own game by making something more powerful.

-Horizon- · May 14, 2016

MrCunningham said:
Not really. It's just not old and busted like PowerPC. PowerPC this late in its life is just a bad idea overall, not only is it losing so much software support year over year but it is also getting harder to find programmers that know how to work with the instruction set . If they keep this around for the sake of backwards compatibility, then it is a really bad idea.

But who knows? Maybe they will go with some high end ARM solution?

I just don't know who to believe at this point. Some say x86 is the only way. Some say ARM will be fine.

BobLoblaw · May 14, 2016

This should be a pretty good weekend thread. I had my doubts that Nintendo would've changed their architecture or design philosophy in spite of the late half of the Wii's/all of the Wii U's life. If they don't bring out something in line with other consoles, then they're just wasting a lot of none-Nintendo fans time.

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