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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Switch Software

Soundwave on 12 December 2016

Nintendo is not an OS company, they're not very good at making OS'.

Microsoft has 114,000 employees, Nintendo has 5100, of that 5100 maybe 20-40 employees really worked on the Wii U OS.



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bdbdbd on 12 December 2016
NightDragon83 said:
bdbdbd said:

It's a proprietary Linux, the same OS that NES Mini uses. Mini is to monetise the R&D that went to Switch development (and to test it in a market).

I'm just pointing out, that Wii U was the first Nintendo console to have an operating system. The DS, Wii and 3DS have just firmware and a graphical shell to access individual software (that's running directly on the hardware). 

Interesting ,thanks for that.  I always assumed the Wii DS and 3DS all had some sort of basic OS that allowed the consoles to run different programs / apps like YouTube & Netflix as well as managing downloaded / saved content on the console.  Don't the 360 and PS3 have basic OS's instead of just firmware as well?

Yes they do. But this is also why everything on Wii had to be programmed into the game code (voice chat, online functions, etc) because there was no OS that could handle these things by standard, and also these would take away resuorces available for developers into other stuff.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

bdbdbd on 12 December 2016
Soundwave said:
Nintendo is not an OS company, they're not very good at making OS'.

Microsoft has 114,000 employees, Nintendo has 5100, of that 5100 maybe 20-40 employees really worked on the Wii U OS.

Which is why Nintendo is using custom Linux - unlike MS - so you don't need to invest billions into the OS.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

curl-6 on 12 December 2016
bdbdbd said:
curl-6 said:

Buggered if I know. One of the most confounding things about the system, that fully half of its RAM is taken up by an OS that doesn't seem to justify such a size at all. I sincerely hope Switch doesn't blow 1GB or more of its RAM on the OS.

It is not just the OS that takes the space, but the applications that are supposed to run in the background, and 1GB is the space reserved to, not taken by. My guess would that Miiverse might be the biggest resource hog. The OS, however, is most likely put into hibernate and to be saved in RAM (instead of internal storage) while you play a game, as this could save lots of resources to be used on games, as opposed to just running in the background, as the games do not run on top of the OS anyway.

But that's still way too much RAM to be locked away from games. 1 out of 2GB reserved of the OS is obscene.



Frogger on 12 December 2016

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AZWification on 12 December 2016
hershel_layton said:
Wii U had my favorite UI for the gen. Simple, fixed the awful friend code issue, fast, and never laggy

I agree with this, probably one of the few things I truly liked about the WiiU.



                
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Akeos on 12 December 2016
Soundwave said:
Nintendo is not an OS company, they're not very good at making OS'.

Microsoft has 114,000 employees, Nintendo has 5100, of that 5100 maybe 20-40 employees really worked on the Wii U OS.

Nico augusto (seasons of Heaven)  has said Nintendo has a special team for OS (for the first time) ... 

Steam OS was make by 200 personnes...  



Nautilus on 12 December 2016

"Well, it's a tablet. Period."

sigh...



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

Frogger on 12 December 2016

You mean firmware? Yeah, I think it'll be very good. This will be all DeNA's doing. Soundwave is right, Nintendo is not an OS company. DeNA will be filling that role. That's that "special team." That's what DeNA is here for.



teigaga on 12 December 2016

Their own OS.

I don't think they want the 1m apps that you find on android, they just want the cream of the crop.