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Nintendo reportedly buying Samsung OLED panels for a larger Switch/Switch Pro

the Vita's OLED was atrocious. early OLED screens, especially low resolution ones like the Vita's, had way too much brightness variation in the pixels (there is a term for that but I can't remember... it's like clouding but for individual pixels) so if you looked at say a green texture or a green colour in general, it would not look evenly lit or shaded. the colour would look like it has some sort of visual noise
Mura Effect.

uIKS3.jpg


I'm not fond of OLED screens for gaming to be honest. Sure, they look good and some generations went by... But it is not the right solution for longevity.

PS Vita, should have never launched with an OLED Screen in the same way that Wii U shouldn't have shipped with a tablet controller and Xbox One shouldn't have shipped with Kinect, it was really expensive and really made the system more expensive than it should have been with no added benefit than "being ahead of it's time".

There are other problems with OLED, motion tends to be worse because there is less motion blur. Switch games in portable more are not particularly snappy at that.
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
it isn't. it's perfect for a 6-7" screen on a console that requires battery power.

people wanting 1080p screens would be the first to piss and moan about battery life. i'll take battery life over 1080p.
Do you have any factual data on the difference in power consumption between 720p and 1080p on a modern-day 7" OLED?


What I do know is Intel's project Athena made way for creating 13.3" 1080p 300nit displays that consume less than 1W.
A 7" screen is about 30% of the size of a 13.3" one, so let's be generous and assume it's consuming half of those 1W (although OLED panels can consume less but not substantially so).

So now we're at less than 500mW for a 1080p screen at 7". How much less do you think it consumes if the resolution is at 720p?
I doubt it's less than a 25% difference, but let's be generous again and assume it's half so now we're at 250mW for a 720p panel and 500mW for a 1080p panel.

Given how the Switch currently consumes between 7 and 9W undocked, at the best case scenario we're looking at a difference of 250mW in a 7W total power consumption.
This is a 3.5% difference in power consumption.
In e.g. a 3h battery life, we're looking at 3h versus 3h and 6 minutes.


So either Nintendo thinks these extra 6 minutes are worth their weight in gold (note: they don't, otherwise they'd just put larger batteries in there), or this is just Nintendo following their usual trend of buying the cheapest possible electronic components for their consoles. OLEDs aren't that much more expensive than LCDs either, considering the volume orders.


It's very likely to have upgraded internals as well, not just a new screen and DLSS.

Is there any mention to DLSS in the news reports?
For all I know this could have the exact same Mariko SoC in it.


Tegra TX1 only support 4K/30hz.

The Tegra TX1 supports 4K60Hz since its debut 6 years ago.

The Shield utilizes Nvidia's Tegra X1 system-on-chip, based the ARM Cortex-A57 CPU and Nvidia's Maxwell microarchitecture GPU, with 3 GB of RAM. The device supports 4K resolution output at 60 FPS over an HDMI 2.0 output, with support for HEVC-encoded video.
 
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Fbh

Member
720p seems fine, and hopefully the bigger screen just means smaller bezels and not actually a bigger system.

Whatever the Switch pro ends up being, I really hope all the games I've been waiting years for (BotW2, Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, SMTV) still run decently on the base model


Didn't Nintendo deny having any new Nintendo Switch model recently?

They'll deny it until they are ready to announce the new model.
They still want to sell regular Switches. Announcing a new model iteration too early would probably just make people more hesitant to buy.
 
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I'd much rather have a smaller more portable one that can still dock. Switch is kinda chonky to be lugging around as much as I do.
 

Orta

Banned
Gamers hardly thought about the Switch since X and PS5 now Nintendo is diving off the deep end to get attention, scrambling.
Chicken Mocking GIF by swerk

Nintendo

What the fucking hell are you banging on about? :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Globally the Switch has been the best selling console since the release of the PS5 and XBSX. It's continuously wiped the floor with them in fact.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Interested to learn about the tech. A lot of expectations already built on the prospect of the machine having tensor cores.
 

zedinen

Member
Nintendo never learns.

Short-term profit at the expense of long-term growth; make quick money, survive the next failure.

No wonder Sony is absolutely destroying Nintendo in sales and market cap (¥13.93T vs ¥8.04T) at Switch peak.

Sales - Nine months ended Dec, 2020
PS ¥1.996T
N ¥1.404T

16010d40a77148fc329002d8b7c2553d23c7844e.jpg
 

Mozza

Member
Nintendo never learns.

Short-term profit at the expense of long-term growth; make quick money, survive the next failure.

No wonder Sony is absolutely destroying Nintendo in sales and market cap (¥13.93T vs ¥8.04T) at Switch peak.

Sales - Nine months ended Dec, 2020
PS ¥1.996T
N ¥1.404T

16010d40a77148fc329002d8b7c2553d23c7844e.jpg

Big difference though, the hardcore market is pretty much the same each generation, make a new console more powerful than the last and fight for your share of 180 million units. The more casual audience Nintendo is going after is far more fickle, just look at the Wii to Wii U for an example, when the latter was released most of the market had moved on.

Get it right and you are onto a winner with great sales that could end up anywhere, get it wrong and you are moving on to the next idea, hopefully with the Switch Nintendo could have a more solid platform this time round,
 
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Woopah

Member
Is there any mention to DLSS in the news reports?
For all I know this could have the exact same Mariko SoC in it.

Not in this article, but this is the same reporter who talked about Nintendo asking third parties for games to be "4K ready".

From other things we're hearing from people it does seem likely that this will have upgraded internals. Though of course all of this is rumours until we get official confirmation from Nintendo.
 

Woopah

Member
Nintendo never learns.

Short-term profit at the expense of long-term growth; make quick money, survive the next failure.

No wonder Sony is absolutely destroying Nintendo in sales and market cap (¥13.93T vs ¥8.04T) at Switch peak.

Sales - Nine months ended Dec, 2020
PS ¥1.996T
N ¥1.404T

16010d40a77148fc329002d8b7c2553d23c7844e.jpg
What's your link here exactly? Yes PlayStation has stronger third party support than Nintendo, has higher priced hardware and makes more money from microtransactions. What do you think they should do differently with the screen of this revision to change these facts?
 

StormCell

Member
Nintendo never learns.

Short-term profit at the expense of long-term growth; make quick money, survive the next failure.

No wonder Sony is absolutely destroying Nintendo in sales and market cap (¥13.93T vs ¥8.04T) at Switch peak.

Sales - Nine months ended Dec, 2020
PS ¥1.996T
N ¥1.404T

16010d40a77148fc329002d8b7c2553d23c7844e.jpg

I wish to more fully understand your point. I think that your post like with any other set of numbers is just one of many ways to frame an argument. For instance, no one would dispute that Sony is much bigger than Nintendo, and for that matter the Playstation division is also going to be bigger than Nintendo and therefore their stock and total market cap are generally expected to be stronger. Nintendo isn't growing, and I think that's what you are stating. As for whether or not it makes sense for Nintendo to grow, I believe that's a totally different argument to be had. They aren't expanding their market, per se, and in fact they've consolidated it in order to reduce financial risk.

Now, there are some other numerical stories to tell here like how Nintendo Switch is on a trajectory to be far more profitable than PS4 and such. It used to be that the goal posts for Switch to be deemed a success meant selling 3DS + Wii U numbers combined, and now here we are approaching that. Are we sliding goal posts once more?

But I digress. I really don't care about Nintendo's success. I tend to agree with you that Nintendo usually disappoints, and it wouldn't even matter if they didn't have those darn magical moments of pure miraculous success with games like Zelda (BotW) and Mario (3D World). I'm really not sure that Nintendo should risk expansion because they are all that backs them. There is no parent company flush with billions of dollars to dig them out of a rut, you know? What could Nintendo do to grow? Should they buy more development studios and make more games? Should they attempt to make a cell phone brand? Cookware? Building blocks?
 

cireza

Member
Man let's be honest, that 720p screen is hella disappointing.
There are so many games where the text is almost unreadable because it is so tiny, let's not move to 1080p or more as there isn't a single developer putting the effort on Switch to adapt hud and text to the screen size when gaming in portable mode.
 
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Marvel14

Banned
Nintendo never learns.

Short-term profit at the expense of long-term growth; make quick money, survive the next failure.

No wonder Sony is absolutely destroying Nintendo in sales and market cap (¥13.93T vs ¥8.04T) at Switch peak.

Sales - Nine months ended Dec, 2020
PS ¥1.996T
N ¥1.404T

16010d40a77148fc329002d8b7c2553d23c7844e.jpg
Can't they both just be doing well financially? Is that option not available because its not "console warry" enough?

Sony revenue is definitely higher 'yay Sony!' but net profit and financial reserves matter as much if not more and you don't have that data but I am sure you know that.

Also worth putting in perspective that Sony makes movies and other electronics, charges more than double for its subscription service and is a much more diversified company than Nintendo..so it is unsurprising that it would be bigger/more valuable company by market cap with its gaming sales lead.

Finally it may surprise you to know that Sony hugely values Nintendo's role in the market, particularly its appeal to kids who later become Playstation gamers....the games industry would be poorer without both companies competing in it.
 

TriSuit666

Banned
Interested to learn about the tech. A lot of expectations already built on the prospect of the machine having tensor cores.
It won't. More likely an upgraded Mariko SoC based on the TX1 chipset marred to a better screen.

Strings referencing the AULA chipset have been in the firmware for a while now.
 
Do OLED still have burn in issues?
Sadly yes.

Mostly depends on the brightness being blasted through the LED's, but in the case of LG TV's they seem to be in overdrive - burn-in in this case is not long term retention that can be fixed with varied use but instead uneven aging of the pixels, it means these pixels are losing brightness and reaching half-life faster. (half life being when screen brightness, or individual pixel brightness reaches half of the original).

Normal lifespan for (white) LED's to reach half life is 30.000 hours, but in fact dimming on them is a matter of how much energy goes through them, if you undervolt them, as done with "dubai lamps" they'll last a lot longer and spend less energy, but you need a lot more diodes to make it happen and keep the same brightness. Current OLED's on the market still seem like they are being overdriven (and then limited via auto-brightness limitation (ABL) in order for them not to burn out really fast - worst case scenario still seems to be 15/20.000 hours and that's with mitigation systems enabled or it would be even worse. They're certainly not past the 30.000 hour mark.

It's important to say that LG OLED's mentioned above are not the same as Samsung AMOLED (SAMOLED), a few years back LG bought the patents from Kodak for CF-WOLED (Color Filter White OLED) which means their TV's are made of white LED/pixels with colour filters on top of the coloured pixels. Samsung OLED though, uses Red, Green and Blue diodes. This has image quality advantages, but when it comes to lifespan it becomes a drawback.

Red, Green and Blue diodes draw different amounts of energy and therefore have different lifespans to reach half life. Red is the most energy efficient LED, followed by Green, and only then, Blue. Blue LED took 3 extra decades to develop mind you, and the dudes that invented it even got the Nobel Prize a few years back.

All this to say, blue leds are a bitch, and last significantly less hours than their Red and Green siblings, which is why LG started doing TV's ahead of the rest of the market (and patents prevent everyone from doing the same), when all-white pixel clusters are not viable OLED screen manufacturers often have to make them blue bigger to offset the problem, but even then, screens don't last anywhere near as long as LCD.

Videogames are usually not a good fit for OLED's because the concept of "varied use" doesn't exist when HUD's and other elements are on-screen all the time.

I'll wager Nintendo will probably limit brightness on these screens quite a bit, negating some of the advantages outdoors and also to protect children's eyes, improving the lifespan in the process.
 
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Didn't Nintendo deny having any new Nintendo Switch model recently?

Yeah. In response to an investor question about whether they'll be a new model this year, they said they are "not planning to make an announcement any time soon as we have Mario [Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury limited edition] version in February, and a MH [Monster Hunter Rise limited edition] version in March".

Very weak denial - in Jan 2020 Nintendo told investors it would not be releasing one that year. Now it's 'we've got nothing to say yet'.

Nintendo also denied rumors of a DS redesign. Then 2 months later they released the DS Lite.
 
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StormCell

Member
It won't. More likely an upgraded Mariko SoC based on the TX1 chipset marred to a better screen.

Strings referencing the AULA chipset have been in the firmware for a while now.

Sadly, this is more in line with my expectations. There's so much chatter about DLSS and a 4K dock, but it would be totally like Nintendo to add another model to the current Switch with very minimal performance improvements and expect that a Switch XL will carry momentum for a couple more years...

Well, it won't. Not with me. I stopped paying attention to the Wii even with Skyward Sword in the works, and while I still bought the game, by that time, I was able to pick up the collector's edition with Wii motion plus controller for $40. I look forward to MP4/BotW2 on discounts by the time they arrive!
 

llien

Member
Do OLED still have burn in issues?
It depends. My anecdotal evidence:

No sign of it on my Samsung tab which is... ancient (and still rocking).
Nor on any phones I've owned (5+ y.o.).
Nor on my Vita.

TV though, is not showing even yellow anymore (still subtle, but if background is predominantly yellow, and shifting, you notice it). On the other hand, LG support promised to replace the screen (it.s 2.5 years old)

It must be said that of the listed devices, TV is the one used most intensively and the only of them, with HDR support (higher brightness = more likely to face burn in issues)
 

TheContact

Member
really surprised they went with OLED. seems not very nintendo-like, given that OLED is more costly to produce/source than LCD
 
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Termite

Member
Do you have any factual data on the difference in power consumption between 720p and 1080p on a modern-day 7" OLED?


What I do know is Intel's project Athena made way for creating 13.3" 1080p 300nit displays that consume less than 1W.
A 7" screen is about 30% of the size of a 13.3" one, so let's be generous and assume it's consuming half of those 1W (although OLED panels can consume less but not substantially so).

So now we're at less than 500mW for a 1080p screen at 7". How much less do you think it consumes if the resolution is at 720p?
I doubt it's less than a 25% difference, but let's be generous again and assume it's half so now we're at 250mW for a 720p panel and 500mW for a 1080p panel.

Given how the Switch currently consumes between 7 and 9W undocked, at the best case scenario we're looking at a difference of 250mW in a 7W total power consumption.
This is a 3.5% difference in power consumption.
In e.g. a 3h battery life, we're looking at 3h versus 3h and 6 minutes.


So either Nintendo thinks these extra 6 minutes are worth their weight in gold (note: they don't, otherwise they'd just put larger batteries in there), or this is just Nintendo following their usual trend of buying the cheapest possible electronic components for their consoles. OLEDs aren't that much more expensive than LCDs either, considering the volume orders.
It's not about the power that the screen consumes, it's about the power that the SoC would consume driving double the pixels to a 1080p screen.

And if you're going to keep the clocks low and thus not going to run the games at 1080p portable, then why bother with the 1080p screen?

720p makes perfect sense to me. It's still above 200 pixels per inch, which is more than enough for games. Text is where going higher than that shows benefits, imo, which is why phones are around 300ppi.
 
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baphomet

Member
what has the screen got to do with dlss? it just means the hardware is rendering to 720p. if the console is docked the screen is bypassed. if the hardware can render a game at 540p then it can upscale to 1080p. if games can render at 1080p then it will upscale to 4K. if any games can do 1440p then you could play your switch on an 8K screen!


it isn't. it's perfect for a 6-7" screen on a console that requires battery power.

people wanting 1080p screens would be the first to piss and moan about battery life. i'll take battery life over 1080p.
Because if it's capable of DLSS they would be using it in portable mode to upscale to 1080p at the very least. All while not having any negative effect on battery life.
 

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
So this Super Switch or Switch Pro will have:

- 7 inch 720p OLED
- dock with HDMI 2.0 out
- minor spec bump
- updated design
- similar battery life as current Switch
- same joy cons ?
- 720p handheld / 1080p docked gaming
- some up-res feature for 4K TVs

Probably same $300 price. Fall 2021 / Spring 2022 launch with next Zelda.

Yeah that’s a Nintendo style upgrade for sure.

I’m sure some people expected more but the above is more in line with the DS/3DS upgrade path. I kinda wish they went crazy and did 8” instead of 7” though.
 
It's not about the power that the screen consumes, it's about the power that the SoC would consume driving double the pixels to a 1080p screen.

Additionally, even when you take a phone with a higher res oled panel and set it to the same lower resolution as another phone's oled, it will still consume more battery power because the gpu still has to handle far more pixels.
 
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Rikkori

Member
What people don't get is that pentile OLED is GARBAGE, and in reality the perceptual resolution is closer to 540p LCD than 720p.

ucwKJx7.png


And no, pixel density won't save you because there's also the relation of pixel density to size which will affect the image further. Size matters guys, sorry to burst your bubbles! 4K on a 7 inch phone isn't the same as 4K on a TV, the experience is way better on the latter because you still need to actually see shit. Likewise for 720p etc. There's a reason we're not squinting looking at 4 inch 1000 dpi displays for when we want to game, and it's not because they don't exist.

 
It depends. My anecdotal evidence:

No sign of it on my Samsung tab which is... ancient (and still rocking).
Nor on any phones I've owned (5+ y.o.).
Nor on my Vita.

TV though, is not showing even yellow anymore (still subtle, but if background is predominantly yellow, and shifting, you notice it). On the other hand, LG support promised to replace the screen (it.s 2.5 years old)

It must be said that of the listed devices, TV is the one used most intensively and the only of them, with HDR support (higher brightness = more likely to face burn in issues)
Supposedly, your TV was less likely to have problems with normal use than the other products you listed, more complex circuitry and mitigations being in, also despite it having HDR it might not go as bright as some mobile OLED screens on the market, as LG has some pretty severe ABL going on on most TV's that I don't see on most OLED phones. That might just be a defect, as 2.5 years with normal use shouldn't amount to a dangerous amount of hours.

I've seen burn-in on samsung phone store units relatively recently, granted that's not a normal use scenario at all, brightness was cranked to the max and mostly always stuck on the same image. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy M31 I have at home exhibited no problems up to now, but I'll say I'm even afraid to look for them actively (testing full color backgrounds, taking photos and taking them to photoshop and the like) and turn off things like showing hours when screen is turned off.

I'm curious at how laptop OLED's are going to fare now that they are available, but I wouldn't buy one.
What people don't get is that pentile OLED is GARBAGE, and in reality the perceptual resolution is closer to 540p LCD than 720p.
Wait, is this screen supposed to be pentile?

Dear god, if so.
 
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Razvedka

Banned
I hope they somehow use the dock to house the tensor cores for DLSS. That'd be a clever way to really make the Switch 2/Pro reaaaally punch above its weight.

Is this a mid-gen refresh for the Switch or a proper 'Switch 2' situation?
 
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