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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Switch dev talk – 50,000 yen for a kit, Capcom wants to make AAA games, much more

Switch dev talk – 50,000 yen for a kit, Capcom wants to make AAA games, much more

 

 

Earlier today, the Game Creators Conference was held in Japan. At the event, Nintendo’s Masaru Mitsuyoshi held a joint session with Capcom’s Masaru Ijuin about Switch.

One big thing to get out of the way: Switch development kits. These are planned for a cost of roughly 50,000 yen. If you’re doing a direct conversion, that’d be about $450 / $500.

Originally, the Joy-Con controllers were still in the research phase and weren’t included in the explanation document. Ijuin from Capcom said that there was only a touch panel form factor and nothing like the Joy-Con. Because of that, he wasn’t sure in what way the device would be portable. Then after the Joy-Con appeared, he thought “I got it!”.

 

Hardware specs for Switch focus on high performance and low power. It means you can achieve nVidia GeForce’s high performance capability in TV mode, and you also can use the same device running with a battery in tabletop mode and portable mode.

There was also some talk about how Nintendo achieved high performance and low power in portable mode and how it differs from smart devices. Nintendo is adopting an original operating system. You can use plenty of hardware resources for gaming apps and it can secure enough memory space for these apps as well.

Nintendo is putting a high priority on wireless. Even if you go from TV mode to portable mode with Switch, it transmits without a disconnection.

Next, the talk shifted to developing games while hardware is also in development. Capcom had been working on Ultra Street Fighter II for the new system. They are using their original engine MT Framework for the time being. The engine has plenty of actual results already and it had previously run on Nintendo hardware, so it made sense to use the technology. Lots of staff at Capcom are used to the engine as well.

To implement Switch compatibility with the MT Framework, Capcom begin to develop an environment to quickly examine the hardware right away. They initially excluded support of hardware-specific features and also excluded sound and network support. After this, Capcom began to develop a PC emulation environment in parallel. Nintendo provided a GPU emulator which is capable of recreating the same shader of the actual console on PC. The Switch version of the GPU emulator is enhanced, so it was easier for Capcom to create a PC emulator. It’s very easy to do iterations on PC, so the advantage of preparing a PC emulator is quite big.

One month was used to understand tools, development environment, and the SDK. Since they had been busy working on other titles, they only could secure two programmers. But with only one month with two people, they could port basic engine features.

The reason why it only took a couple of months was because the staff were accustomed to porting. Previously, they developed a Wii U version MT Framework. Also helping the situation was how the hardware structure was easy to understand, and they could use experience of creating conversion process from HLSL to GLSL.

The port process was overwhelmingly faster than 3DS or Wii U. On 3DS, it took four months with four people. On Wii U, it took three months with five people. The hardware structure was very easy to understand and it also had similarities to Wii U, so that they could achieve it in a month with two people.

About main memory space, Capcom had told Nintendo that the initially planned space wasn’t enough. If you are comparing to what’s inside other current-gen systems, it definitely wouldn’t be enough. In the end, Capcom’s request was accepted and the memory capacity became as per to their expectation.

There was some talk about whether they should go capacitive or pressure sensitive with the touchscreen. The situation was considered based on the associated costs. Of course, it’s difficult to build hardware while making the right balance between feature and costs. As we know, ultimately Nintendo decided to implement a capacitive touch screen.

To examine the situation with the CPU clock and power consumption, it is necessary to have a high-load application which is close to the product level. During the early development stage, there are not many environments which fit that need. But since Capcom was able to get a grasp on Switch in just a month, Nintendo offered Capcom to work on the task.

In order to polish up the hardware, Nintendo and Capcom collaborated using each other’s specialties. It wasn’t a one direction collaboration, but rather a two way interactive collaboration. Nintendo and Capcom built up a trusting relationship while going through a trial and error process.

Another part of the session was about issues to examine for the future. Since Switch’s SOC power consumption takes a bigger toll on the GPU than the CPU, Capcom asked Nintendo about implementing a feature to adjust the GPU clock corresponding on scenes (note: this is a development term), but Nintendo said that even if you lower the clock, the overall processing time will be longer and it won’t necessarily give an advantage in the end.

Finally, Capcom is looking into having the RE Engine, made specifically for Resident Evil 7 (and likely to be used in future titles) to be compatible with Switch. The company also wants to develop AAA titles for the platform.


http://nintendoeverything.com/switch-dev-talk-50000-yen-for-a-kit-capcom-wants-to-make-aaa-games-much-more/



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Ironically out of all the companies I think Capcom is the one I kinda want smaller games from...



KLXVER said:
Ironically out of all the companies I think Capcom is the one I kinda want smaller games from...

same here. they never knew how to handle big ass games.



Tsubasa Ozora

Keiner kann ihn bremsen, keiner macht ihm was vor. Immer der richtige Schuss, immer zur richtigen Zeit. Superfussball, Fairer Fussball. Er ist unser Torschützenkönig und Held.

kljesta64 said:
KLXVER said:
Ironically out of all the companies I think Capcom is the one I kinda want smaller games from...

same here. they never knew how to handle big ass games.

Capcom and Konami should release new 2d Mega Man, Ghosts`n Goblins, Castlevania and Contra. Would be amazing



Give us a new Mega Man game Capcom! Give us a game in the spirit of RE4 too!

I will hand over my wallet.



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The fact that they are moving the RE engine to Switch is rather interesting since the producer of REVII said there were no plans for a porthing or any other RE game on the system, maybe something changed or Capcom plans on re-using the RE engine for other IPs...

 

Edit: While writing this I realized something: what if Capcom were to make a 3D Metroid game for Nintendo ? We had a rumor before the Switch event about an unexpected team to be working on a new Metroid game and Capcom would definitely be a huge curve ball, plus Metroid needs a somewhat horror atmosphere which is what RE does best, especially in VII with its first person view, it'd definitely be interesting to see Capcom's take on Metroid...



So REVII and possibly VIII may make it to the Switch after all, neat. And we all know the other AAA game is Monster Hunter, it's the perfect game for this system.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they made a sequel to MonHun Generations rather than MonHun 5 specifically because MonHun 5 is a Switch project.



KLXVER said:
Ironically out of all the companies I think Capcom is the one I kinda want smaller games from...

Well said my friend



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Nintendo Switch FC - SW - 5152 - 6393 - 5140 Please feel free to add me :)

KLXVER said:
kljesta64 said:

same here. they never knew how to handle big ass games.

Capcom and Konami should release new 2d Mega Man, Ghosts`n Goblins, Castlevania and Contra. Would be amazing

I would buy a Switch without thinking if these games dropped. But, Capcom seems to be allergic to them for some reason.



I have a devkit back ordered to port a game to but Nintendo haven't finalized software support for ndev yet so I can't order a second unit just yet (he'll they don't even have switch listed on their developers center yet)