McGruber21
Member
So basically there is nothing to do on the Switch but play Zelda.
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Rumor: Switch developer information leaked. Reveals A TON incl. hardware specs
- Thread starter Dystify
- Start date
Inferno313
Banned
Both the browser and the eShop came about 3 months after launch.
Refreshment.01
Member
This seems to be the case? Could probably be off base here and please correct any inconsistencies. Did a quick reading of the documents:
- It lists 4 A57 Cores and seems to imply 3 of them are usable for games. This could imply that 1 of those A57 cores are reserved for system functions.
- The "traditional" X1 had 4 A57 cores and an extra 4 A53 cores that it "Switched" to for less demanding tasks to preserve energy.
- So maybe those A53 are removed, which would make the SOC a custom one.
- The rest of the Specs seems to be in order with a "traditional" X1, specially Cache size which would have been important to improve for bandwidth reasons.
- Other important absences i noticed was no support for certain video compression standards like H.265 even if the X1 supports it.
Thanks for the observation bash.
Herb Alpert
Banned
Yep. Nintendo just announced that Zelda would be the only game to ever release on switch. All other games have been moved to 3DS.
it's obviously "bluray" ^^".
I wish I had time to find a pic of Peter Parker and put it in a Switch boxart, to answer the what is "Parker retail"
The h265 decoding should be handled by the GPU, more likely it was removed either just for this older dev kit or due to licensing fees to MPEG.
stan423321
Member
Channel? Maybe. But the browser engine was a core part of Wii technology - the system menu uses it for basically everything but the channel grid itself, as evidenced by some early hacked Wii bricks displaying 404s instead of warning screens.
This reminds me of a certain device called iPad which is used by people mainly for web browsing and shares all these characteristics - well, video streaming works on some sites, but definitely less than expected. And PC browser vendors seem to be dreaming of making their own programs like that, with Firefox randomly switching plugin APIs and everyone waiting to throw Flash out.
Same could be said about many things. Console web browsers are still useful for avoiding helplessness when your regular web device breaks, for instance. Wii U's browser in particular is arguably more usable than one on my phone if you are going to spend a lot of time browsing.
mitchman
Gold Member
And the Wii, but it was downloadable.
Edit: I worked at Opera at the time and the team doing the Wii browser was in a separate part of the building with separate entry access control. It was so super secret, by Nintendo's insistence, most at Opera didn't even know what they were working on. It only leaked internally when someone connected the dots between the project management system (customer name Nintendo) and the bug tracking system. I know the team freely used code from other teams, eg. the thumbnail generation code I wrote for desktop was also used on the Wii for bookmarks afair. Interesting times
a games device that only plays polished, highly anticipated AAA titles?
sounds dope
TLZ
Banned
What highly anticipated AAA titles?
mario_O
Member
The Wii browser was free. They charged 5 just for a short while, but they made it free and returned the money to everyone who paid for it.
Not everybody has a smartphone, especially young kids who buy Nintendo systems. So browsers in consoles are useful. Not just browsers, also Youtube, Netflix etc. it is a shame that Nintendo is cutting off all these apps.
Not everybody has a smartphone, especially young kids who buy Nintendo systems. So browsers in consoles are useful. Not just browsers, also Youtube, Netflix etc. it is a shame that Nintendo is cutting off all these apps.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
This is a quite naive/backward implementation of access control actually... it should be tied to the account.
dl77
Member
As someone who skipped the Wii U generation I have to say that the nearer we get to launch the more impressive I think the hardware is.
A lot of people, myself included, were initially disappointed that the system wasn't comparable or near to the power of the PS4/XB1 but when I look back that was clearly a ridiculously optimistic thought.
To get a home console in that size form factor which, to me anyway, looks to be a pretty capable machine is impressive.
Hell, if Sony or MS came out with a portable PS3 or 360 that size I'd be impressed.
A lot of people, myself included, were initially disappointed that the system wasn't comparable or near to the power of the PS4/XB1 but when I look back that was clearly a ridiculously optimistic thought.
To get a home console in that size form factor which, to me anyway, looks to be a pretty capable machine is impressive.
Hell, if Sony or MS came out with a portable PS3 or 360 that size I'd be impressed.
That may be true, but there is a tendency for parents to give their kids tablets and smartphones pretty early in their development. So this is like not building in a BR-player or a DVD player - everyone has around 20 devices to do those things and the Switch is not going to compete in the Entertainment segment - it's going to be the Gaming segment and I think it's a good idea after the nosedive of the MeToo (WiiU).
Nevertheless, I think all of your features will be added later on, maybe even during the launch window.
I wonder what the haters are going to choose to shit all over Nintendo threads when the Browser is released.
I have NEVER used the browsers in any of my consoles, I mean, I just make 2 waves at my phone and there it is, browsing on consoles is the most inconvenient way to surf the web.
I have NEVER used the browsers in any of my consoles, I mean, I just make 2 waves at my phone and there it is, browsing on consoles is the most inconvenient way to surf the web.
Dont worry. There will always be "LOL cell phone app to chat?!" to fall back on for a few years.
It's the licensing/royalty fees. It's why the codec is used so little across several industries despite its status as the heir-apparent to h.264, the price you have to pay to make a device or piece of software that can play files encoded with h.265/HEVC is absolutely ludicrous. It makes the money-grubbing activities of video game publishers look trivial in comparison. John Carmack basically spat on the proposed royalty arrangements and Adobe told them to go piss up a tree.
It's why VP9 hardware acceleration still being present on the chipset is such a godsend. It's not seen on many chips due to a lack of widespread support from several industries (mostly due to Google's exclusive involvement in its creation), which means a VERY large CPU overhead to decode the video. The presence of decoding directly from the GPU makes it a much more palatable solution. This works to Nintendo's advantage, as it is can greatly reduce game sizes, as most FMV is encoded in h.264 currently, as it is my understanding that PS4 and Xbox One do not have VP9 or HEVC hardware acceleration (Nvidia was the only one of the chipset makers who got on-board with Google on VP9 and no one wants to pay the royalty for h.265).
Thankfully for all of us, several industries are rallying around AV1, the successor to VP9 developed by a large consortium of internet streaming companies and essentially every chipset manufacturer, to be a royalty-free successor to the widely-used h.264, and considering the players involved (even Netflix chose a side, and they're really the kingmaker for codecs right now), it will likely succeed.
TheDinoman
Member
"It's too slow, ugh."
TLZ
Banned
The big guys aren't bringing their big games to the switch.
ecosse_011172
Junior Member
Its a nice piece of tech with loads of different functions. I think its Nintendos best designed hardware ever.
It definitely is. And if battery tech improves in the upcoming years, a Switch 2 could be exciting especially since they're tied up with nVidia. It would be easy to role out upgrades while maintaining perfect BC.
Milly Osworth
Member
Indeed, hopefully it will do well. It doesnt deserve to fail like wiiu.
The vast majority of the "haters" were concerned about whether or not they could use Wifi Hotspots on a...portable device. You should know this if you were reading that browser thread.
frankie_baby
Member
Battery tech inproving??? Haha thats a good one
Honest question because i don't know, how do Nintendo heavy hitters compare budget wise to AC or COD or Halo?
No, they weren't. The thread was mostly "but what about the non-core gamer/tablet audience?" by the end.
But to indulge your point, it would seem that their Wi-Fi hotspot concerns were quite potentially unfounded.
frankie_baby
Member
Breath of the wild has been in development for like 5 years, there's no way its not up there in terms of budget
So games with higher budget are better, more AAAer than the rest. Gotcha.
mavericktopgun
Member
The Switch is a portable device that is between Wii U and Xbox One performance wise. If that isn't impressive I don't know what it is.
We get big console titles and we can play it on the TV and everywhere else. Playing Breath of the Wild on a cold snowy day in the bed sounds like fun.
Thanks Nintendo. And now lower the price to 249.
We get big console titles and we can play it on the TV and everywhere else. Playing Breath of the Wild on a cold snowy day in the bed sounds like fun.
Thanks Nintendo. And now lower the price to 249.
Do you even know what AAA means? AAA literally classifies as high dev/marketing budget.
Maybe read up on it before shitposting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)
Do we know how big the dev team is?
I've said earlier that I think $250 was the plan all along. But with certain political changes and a fear of a high tariff on imported goods Nintendo probably had no choice but to price it at $300 and see how things play out.
They'll come out with stuff like the quote below, or simply throw the same old stuff like Nintendo consoles are weak, have no third party support and whatever else hasn't changed the last 10 years. The classic part is they post as if they're surprised that the Switch wasn't a portable PS4 in terms of power, and are surprised that there isn't every AAA ever being planned for release. You would think they'd know that Nintendo don't operate like that, seeing as they constantly read threads about Nintendo hardware.
Now I'm not saying every thread on the internet should be a love in with no negative posts at all. People seeing no negatives and blindly posting their love is equally annoying.
But I've never understood people who choose to spend their time reading, and posting about products they have no interest in. I couldn't care less about Infinite warfare, but the last thing I'd want to do is go and read threads about it, and then post sarcastic comments about how shit I think Call of Duty is.
There's at least 5 people who are featured regularly in EVERY switch thread, they even admit they have no interest in the thing, yet seem to enjoy posting about it.
dl77
Member
I seem to recall last summer there being articles saying that BotW needed to sell 2m copies to break even so I imagine that probably stands somewhere between 2.5/3m now which isn't that bad to be honest. I think that generally Nintendo's 1st party titles aren't that expensive, certainly nowhere near the cost of Activision/Ubisoft/R* titles to develop.
If you look at the list of most expensive games to develop then - a dubious entry for Pokemon Red/Blue aside - Nintendo don't appear anywhere in the top 50.
We really don't have data for that, but just to give an idea, Nintendo said it only needs to sell 2 million copies of Breath of the Wild to break even with the project.
frankie_baby
Member
Well Zelda did just have what was presumably the most expensive single tv ad for a game ever
No idea we'll have to wait to see the credits
frankie_baby
Member
If we presume $40 per copy for Nintendo, 2 million copies is $80million
First party games get a higher portion of the revenue than third party games do
dl77
Member
Unfortunately that doesn't take into account manufacturing, shipping or tax costs. Then once you get to retail the shop takes around 20/25% of each sale.
This leak doesn't benefit Eurogamer's leaked clocks being final, the issue we have is that Eurogamer's clocks are not dated beyond "fall" and in the video reveal, Richard said he sat on this information for a few months, likely putting it before final hardware and definitely before the Foxconn leak, which is also obviously legit.
We have Matt in here who can't give us exact details, but did confirm that final hardware increased performance over the july devkits. Combined with the Foxconn clocks being tested for 8 days, leads me to believe that these are the final clocks.
While CPU is important and a large upgrade here, developers who are designing their games from well before this final update wouldn't be adding a ton of new CPU demand, but can easily see the modest 20% increase in graphical performance.
I'm fine with either spec, and I'll wait for the eventual hacker to get us clocks, but we can't explain the Foxconn clocks, while we can explain the Eurogamer clocks as being from the July Devkit, as we know these were rolled out to developers and not everyone even had the final devkits even in December of last year.
So while I believe Eurogamer's leak, I also acknowledge just like them, that clocks might have changed, and that we can't ignore the Foxconn leak as it is much like this leak, undeniable.
That's pretty much the advantage of being a first party. Still, that's what they estimated for BotW break even, which looks to be one of their most expensive games to date.
dl77
Member
Eiji Aonuma has said that over the four years of development there's been around 300 people working on it, though I imagine that the amount of people working on it concurrently would be quite a bit less.
This might surprise you... but you aren't everyone. You are just you.
Furthermore, this is a good quality touchscreen based tablet style console. A browser makes more sense on the Switch than any console before it.
Herb Alpert
Banned
You're totally right. And Shitposting here being quite tolerated doesn't help.
How much did it cost them to make it? I think they just need 2 million copies sold to make it profitable.
frankie_baby
Member
Manufacturing and shipping is probably just a couple of bucks per copy to nintendo, not sure on taxes (presumably there's an import tax or something) and also there are also going to be digital copies without any retailer cut, manufacturing and shipping
It is as tiring one thing as the other, the ones constantly dismissing potential issues with the hardware (from power to smaller things like dpad or battery life) or the reasonable doubts about the switch getting 3rd party support from western developers. Sure there are also haters, too, but, for example i like mariokart, and have 0 interest in other nintendo games (except for Advance wars) so spending +300 just to play one game and not knowing if i will be able to play other games that will be on PS4/XB, even a a lower fidelity, is annoying. SInce it seems to be basically a home console first and 'portable' second, it is a fair point as it shares the living room with XB and PS4.
Time will tell.
frankie_baby
Member
And I'm saying most companies need to sell more to break even because they get a smaller propotion of revenue and also often have to compensate retailers for price collapses (somethung that rarely happens wity nintendo games (
Jaded Alyx
Member
I wish there was a lil more discussion on the UI. I think when all the dummy text and placeholder images are replaced, it'll look pretty slick.
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