• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Rumor says the Nintendo Switch will receive a major hardware upgrade this year.

dirthead

Banned
I'd not believe this because the switch is currently selling rather well. so there is no need for an updated system. maybe in a few years when sales start to slow down an updated "switch HD" or whatever will be released

Strong portable sales never stopped them before.
 

Maguro

Member
I call fake cause imagine how much the price would be. I live in Austria and switch is not popular here because of the price. Now a new version with a higher price would not sell.
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
I call fake cause imagine how much the price would be. I live in Austria and switch is not popular here because of the price. Now a new version with a higher price would not sell.

No offense but I don't think Nintendo bases their business decisions on Austria.
 

Lightsbane

Member
4K? lol fake

All it means is that the console itself will upscale to 4K, instead of the TV.
Which is basically meaningless to me, since my TV is absolutely outstanding at upscaling lower resolution content. *shrugs*

have you tried playing a Switch on a 4K tv? everything is stretched out and a blurry mess.

Depends entirely on the effectiveness of your set.
 
Last edited:

Maguro

Member
No offense but I don't think Nintendo bases their business decisions on Austria.
It was just an example. Most of my contacts online are german and everyone i asked told me the same, the switch is still too expensive for them. I bought mine used without games for around 280 dollars, which is a lot but the cheapest I could find.
 
Last edited:

ultrazilla

Gold Member
It was just an example. Most of my contacts online are german and everyone i asked told me the same, the switch is still too expensive for them. I bought mine used without games for around 280 dollars, which is a lot but the cheapest I could find.

I understand and didn't want to come across as an asshole to you. That wasn't my intent. Cheers!
 

epicnemesis

Member
It was just an example. Most of my contacts online are german and everyone i asked told me the same, the switch is still too expensive for them. I bought mine used without games for around 280 dollars, which is a lot but the cheapest I could find.
That's 200 USD. Gamestop sells used for $280 here.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Way too early for this from Nintendo. But they probably will release something like this in 2020.
 

Meccs

Member
Basically a more powerful console? When was the last time Nintendo fragmented their consumer base like this? Never. Never going to happen.
 

G-Bus

Banned
Yea I'm interested. I'll wait another year and see if this holds true. Would also like to see what Sony and MS next consoles are going to be like. I generally only buy 1 and Sony has had my money the last two generations.

Portability is slowly becoming more of an interest for me.
 

Cattlyst

Member
I'm interested in getting a Switch but the uncertainty of a more powerful revision around the corner is making me apprehensive right now. I think a lot of prospective buyers feel the same - these rumours are probably stopping more people buying a 'current' Switch.
 

shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
Basically a more powerful console? When was the last time Nintendo fragmented their consumer base like this? Never. Never going to happen.
Gameboy Color
N64 RAM upgrade
DSi
New 3DS


All of which had some games exclusive to the upgraded system.
 

SonGoku

Member
I'd not believe this because the switch is currently selling rather well. so there is no need for an updated system. maybe in a few years when sales start to slow down an updated "switch HD" or whatever will be released
I would like a switch that can run games at its display native resolution
Gameboy Color
N64 RAM upgrade
DSi
New 3DS


All of which had some games exclusive to the upgraded system.
Dont for get the GC wii revision which doubled performance and increase ram
 
Last edited:

Hudo

Member
Not sure about 4K. But I'm generally not a fan of those "mid-point refreshes". I also think that the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X were a mistake. But I know that I'm alone with this opinion. I'd rather have them do a slimmer/lighter version but not a version that differs in spec. Don't fragment the user base.
 

Petrae

Member
Not sure about 4K. But I'm generally not a fan of those "mid-point refreshes". I also think that the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X were a mistake. But I know that I'm alone with this opinion. I'd rather have them do a slimmer/lighter version but not a version that differs in spec. Don't fragment the user base.

That’s how it used to be. NES to top-loading NES. Different Genesis revisions. SNES to smaller SNES. PlayStation to PSOne. Fat PS2 to Slim PS2.

Upgraded consoles with better specs are different. They aren’t as optional, because, even though they play the same games as their decrepit parent consoles, the performance is better to much better. The “old” consoles often struggle with frame rate, resolution, and general performance. I don’t buy multiplatform games for PS4 anymore if they’re “PS4 Pro Enhanced”, because they run like dog shit on my old machine. I buy for Xbox One X instead. Buying a PS4 Pro, even if I wanted to, would be out of the question because a) I have 3+TB of game content that I’d have to re-download because I’m using an external HDD, and b) the PS5 is coming in 18 months, so dropping $400 now would be a waste of cash with a successor so close.
 

Hudo

Member
That’s how it used to be. NES to top-loading NES. Different Genesis revisions. SNES to smaller SNES. PlayStation to PSOne. Fat PS2 to Slim PS2.

Upgraded consoles with better specs are different. They aren’t as optional, because, even though they play the same games as their decrepit parent consoles, the performance is better to much better. The “old” consoles often struggle with frame rate, resolution, and general performance. I don’t buy multiplatform games for PS4 anymore if they’re “PS4 Pro Enhanced”, because they run like dog shit on my old machine. I buy for Xbox One X instead. Buying a PS4 Pro, even if I wanted to, would be out of the question because a) I have 3+TB of game content that I’d have to re-download because I’m using an external HDD, and b) the PS5 is coming in 18 months, so dropping $400 now would be a waste of cash with a successor so close.
I agree. I kinda feel burned (mostly by Sony) because of the whole "Better with Pro/X Enhancements" marketing scheme. I bought a PS4 at launch (yeah, I know, that was a mistake) and it feels like Sony are effectively saying "get fucked", haha. I have actually migrated to PC (back again) because of this. I do like my Switch a lot, though.

I understand why console manufacturers do it and it makes sense for them. But I'm not a fan.
 

PocoJoe

Banned
It was just an example. Most of my contacts online are german and everyone i asked told me the same, the switch is still too expensive for them. I bought mine used without games for around 280 dollars, which is a lot but the cheapest I could find.


Same here at Finland. Switch costs 330-350€(around 400usd).

It were never sold out, unlike ps4 which were not easily available for month or two, even wiiu were sold out for a while i think.

Only reason i got mine were trade deal with friend that owned only gaming store at Downtown when switch launched.

He sold 3 units, including mine, in first 6 months 😂 City is semi big in our scale, 100k residents.

Every xmas ps4 is sold out in most of our local stores/super markets, but switch isnt.

Switch market is really biased, sells epicly in US/japan and maybe some other places
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
I call fake cause imagine how much the price would be. I live in Austria and switch is not popular here because of the price. Now a new version with a higher price would not sell.
Servus

I don’t really agree here. Many of my contacts both from Austria and Germany love the Switch. I don’t know if they‘d buy a Switch Pro, but i see the Switch as very popular with whoever i talk generally.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
All it means is that the console itself will upscale to 4K, instead of the TV.
Which is basically meaningless to me, since my TV is absolutely outstanding at upscaling lower resolution content. *shrugs*



Depends entirely on the effectiveness of your set.
sure, but you're missing my point entirely. no matter how good your TV is at upscaling it is still essentially making shit up to fill pixels. it's not gonna look as good as native 4K output from the console.

i don't think we'll get a Switch that can do 4K. nintendo have never really cared about resolution. shit, it took them until 2017 to move to 1080p lmfao. the best we can hope for them rendering the OS at 4K and maybe using checkerboarding which would be far better than relying on shitty TV upscaling.
 

Xmengrey

Member
Mid-gen hardware upgrades suck. $300+ every 2-3 years makes it hard-impossible to keep up. The 5-6 year console cycle was far better, at least in terms of making your money stretch further.

I wouldn't have an Xbox One X if it wasn't for a crazy-good trade-in deal for the 360 towards one last year, where I paid less than $100 out of pocket for it. I still have the elderly PS4 that I got 5 years ago, because external HDD games and installs don't carry over to a new console and I don't feel like re-downloading 3TB of games, patches, and DLC... and I can't justify $400 for a Pro based on complaints about loud fan noise, inconsistent results with certain games, and so on. And I'm not dumping another $300 on a jazzed-up Switch two years after I just spent $300 on the now-elderly Switch.

I'm not buying any more modern consoles, refresh or now, anyway. The PS4, Switch, and Xbox One X are the last ones. It's become too expensive, too riddled with annoying crap like needing to buy additional storage options and sitting through endless patches and updates, and greedy DLC... it's too much to bear.
Personally I'm alright with mid-gen refreshes like the PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X bu I absolutely hate mid-gen refreshes like the Nintendo New 3DS or rumored Switch Pro because at least with the PS4 Pro and XBox One X if you have an OG Xbox One you can still play all those games you don't have to buy a new console you just need to buy the Xbox One X if you care about 4K gaming or 60FPS but 1080p is still an option for you.
 

zenspider

Member
Sounds like nonsense. I doubt Nintendo is forking the player base, and certainly not forking the accessories market.
 

shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
Sounds like nonsense. I doubt Nintendo is forking the player base, and certainly not forking the accessories market.
They’ve done this at least 4 times in the past already (see post 62). Don’t know why you think this is so unlikely.
 

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
wut.

have you tried playing a Switch on a 4K tv? everything is stretched out and a blurry mess. if a game runs at docked 1080p then the TV is having to make shit up for 3 out of 4 pixels displayed!! having the games in native 4K would be a huge improvement. the graphics of the game is irrelevant. nintendo has never been about amazing graphics.

Your TV has terrible upscailing then. My Samsung makes Switch games look glorious.
 

Dontero

Banned
You guys might be exaggerating a bit. With improved hardware, Nintendo's games can be done to output 4k. They're not saying it'll run RDR2 in 4k. Also, it also helps that the device have an internal 4k upscaler, instead of leaving it to the TV.

There is no SoC currently on market than can do that. They can't even use Tegra 2 because it is different architecture which would break compatibility with older games on system.

Only thing people can expect is slimmer version.

Gameboy Color
N64 RAM upgrade
DSi
New 3DS


All of which had some games exclusive to the upgraded system.

In all of those cases you had custom hardware
This time they are using literally of the shelf nvidia Tegra SOC.
 
Last edited:
4k is so last gen/this gen. Now, I d rather have a forldable Switch to play NDS and 3DS games in higher rez. i can't believe Nintendo has missed this boat.
 
Last edited:

Antoon

Banned
Would be great, since I still havent bough a Switch, this could be just in time for my purchase date.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Well looks like there are no major switch revisions on the horizon, as if I am correct Nintendo's president said there are no plans for any new models to come out....so looks like it will remain what is already there.
 

TLZ

Banned
There is no SoC currently on market than can do that. They can't even use Tegra 2 because it is different architecture which would break compatibility with older games on system.

Only thing people can expect is slimmer version.
What if they could now increase the clocks to Nvidia shield levels, therefore allowing 4k output?

Well looks like there are no major switch revisions on the horizon, as if I am correct Nintendo's president said there are no plans for any new models to come out....so looks like it will remain what is already there.

Don't believe what they say. They're not going to tell people they're releasing new hardware that would affect sales of current hardware.

Also, he said successor, which may mean Switch 2. So he's saying no plans releasing that now. That's obvious. Releasing new current Switch revisions however, is still a Switch. They're very sly with their words.
 
Last edited:

zenspider

Member
They’ve done this at least 4 times in the past already (see post 62). Don’t know why you think this is so unlikely.

I don't know about the Gameboy Color or N64 Expansion Pak...

Gameboy Color wasn't marketed as an incremental hardware revision but as a new machine with backwards compatibility, and the Expansion Pak was even more akin to an accessory, like a light gun, than a 1.5 hardware upgrade.

I honestly forgot about the DSi.

DSi is an interesting example because it's more of a side-grade: you trade a camera for the GBA slot, and the camera nets you a handful exclusive games.

Then you have access to the eShop, which is smaller, cheaper games - not exactly a 'Pro' model.

The DSi fits more with my speculation, I think you're looking at some basic QoL (bezel, kickstand, clamshell), but there's no analogy to the eShop or exclusive games.

The only thing I could possibly imagine is raising the performance ceiling in handheld, but again, unless some leap in battery tech happened in the last few years, I doubt it.

If they're juicing the docked mode, they could do it with a dock - then we're looking at the Famicom Disk System and 64DD as the precedence.

* * *

I think it's unlikely because it doesn't make sense from Nintendo's perspective. Switch is super successful, and you don't make it more successful by fundamentally moving away from it did so brilliantly: landing every hardware compromise right on the line of 'good enough'.

Even if you're taking a historical perspective, the present circumstances are dramatically different.

They have zero competition right in the hardware space. That's unprecedented. I don't see anything past a nifty QoL revision (a 4/5G console with a smaller bezel and decent kickstand is the the craziest thing I'd hedge my bet on) happening before Sony and Microsoft show their plays for portable screens.
 

Dontero

Banned
What if they could now increase the clocks to Nvidia shield levels, therefore allowing 4k output?
Don't believe what they say. They're not going to tell people they're releasing new hardware that would affect sales of current hardware.
Also, he said successor, which may mean Switch 2. So he's saying no plans releasing that now. That's obvious. Releasing new current Switch revisions however, is still a Switch. They're very sly with their words.

Nvidia shield does not allow for 4k gaming mate. Shield is streaming box from pc 1st and weak android gaming mashine later. None of which run at 4k.
You need solid GPU with a lot of ROPs to have 4k. Without that all talk is just pipedream.
 

TLZ

Banned
Nvidia shield does not allow for 4k gaming mate. Shield is streaming box from pc 1st and weak android gaming mashine later. None of which run at 4k.
You need solid GPU with a lot of ROPs to have 4k. Without that all talk is just pipedream.
It outputs 4k. See:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-au/shield/shield-tv/

Video Features
4K HDR ready
Up to 4K HDR playback at 60 FPS (H.265/HEVC)
Up to 4K playback at 60 FPS (VP8, VP9, H.264, MPEG1/2)

Whether games can do it or not is another matter. It just means the machine can output 4k. Also helps that the upscaler is internal and not external (TV).
 
Last edited:

TLZ

Banned
You guys are talking about different things...

It playback in 4k.
It didn’t render in 4k... ROPs are used to output when you render graphics.
I know. I'm only talking about 4k output. But people confuse that with rendering when they hear 4k and quickly say impossible.
 

nordique

Member
They totally said this like the day before the new Nintendo 3ds was announced didn’t they. Or some redesign. Nintendo was like nope. And they revealed it like a month later or something
 

V4skunk

Banned
Which Tegra nVidia can easily manufacture in 7nm when they have no product in 7nm?
What? Any chip can be manufactured on a smaller process with zero R&D. No redesign is needed.
It is logical for a Switch revision to go this route. Cheaper to manufacture and better performance for minimal work.
 

sublimit

Banned
I will be pretty salty if Nintendo upgrades it now since I just bought one. And if the new hardware has exclusive games tied to it I will be even more salty, cuz that is some customer bullfuckery. If you gonna do a hardware upgrade do like the Pro and XOX and don´t divide player bases.
They would be idiots if they exclude Switch's current install base.
 

jts

...hate me...
Same here at Finland. Switch costs 330-350€(around 400usd).

It were never sold out, unlike ps4 which were not easily available for month or two, even wiiu were sold out for a while i think.

Only reason i got mine were trade deal with friend that owned only gaming store at Downtown when switch launched.

He sold 3 units, including mine, in first 6 months 😂 City is semi big in our scale, 100k residents.

Every xmas ps4 is sold out in most of our local stores/super markets, but switch isnt.

Switch market is really biased, sells epicly in US/japan and maybe some other places
I live in a small town and in the early months I saw the Switch running out of stock in the local Prisma plenty of times only to get 3-4 more the following week and running out of them. It’s not much but it’s a constant flow. In the beginning also the red/blue version had limited availability at verkkokauppa.com. I know because I wanted to buy one. I also see plenty of kids wishing for a Switch nowadays, especially since Pokémon.

Sure, some countries in Europe (including Finland) are dominated by Sony no matter what but Switch is still a hot ticket item, popularity doesn’t exist in a vacuum anymore.
 

ethomaz

Banned
What? Any chip can be manufactured on a smaller process with zero R&D. No redesign is needed.
It is logical for a Switch revision to go this route. Cheaper to manufacture and better performance for minimal work.
That is false... there are products that can’t even be die shrink to lower process without huge design changes... Cell (40nm) could’t be lowered anymore for example... old GCN chips can’t die shrink so they needed new redesign.

Each die shrink is a redesign by itself.

Another classic example RSX (45nm) couldn’t receive more more die shrink without nVidia redesign a new version that Sony never paid for.

Your ideia of any chip can be manufactured to a lower process with zero R&D just shows how you have no ideia what are you talking about.
 
Last edited:

Breakage

Member
I bet Nintendo is saving black and white hardware colour options exclusively for the revision.
I personally can't stand the Red/Blue Switch.
 

Easlye

Neo Member
A Switch+ wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The Switch is already under-powered, and with next-gen announcements incoming they need to be competitive.
 

Vawn

Banned
A Switch+ wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The Switch is already under-powered, and with next-gen announcements incoming they need to be competitive.

Judging by the success of the Wii and Switch (and even DS/3DS compared to PSP/Vita), no they don't. Any upgrade won't be competitive technically to a PS5 anyways.
 

Easlye

Neo Member
Judging by the success of the Wii and Switch (and even DS/3DS compared to PSP/Vita), no they don't. Any upgrade won't be competitive technically to a PS5 anyways.

If they want more third-party ports they will want better hardware.
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
If Nintendo is aiming for that 20 million sales target, they're going to need produce a new Switch iteration that is more powerful that
will get the fence sitters to jump off and buy one.

A simple refresh of the current model with a bigger screen, better resolution and memory won't cut it IMO. The machine
is screaming for a performance increase. I'm sure third party developers are also communicating this to Nintendo as well.

I'm going to predict that the "Mariko" chip is a custom Tegra X2 that will both increase performance and not break compatibility
with older games.

Any "refresh" iteration that doesn't include a significant performance upgrade will be a huge let down for me.
 
Top Bottom