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Soundwave on 26 May 2014
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Mr Khan said:
Soundwave said:

I just don't think the Fusion idea works if the gap between the handheld and console is too large. It would require games to really be retooled so extensively to run that developers would basically have to make two versions of the game and the experience would be jarring going from one to the other.

PS4 quality games on a handheld, even with scaled down resolution is likely not realistic. Not for $199.99, not even in 2016.

I think even Wii U level graphics at 960x540 for a $200 handheld device with a decent screen is probably pushing things pretty hard.

Most likely Nintendo will choose an ARM core + mobile GPU, then simply take two of those (2x the CPU cores + 2x the GPU cores overclocked) and make the home console variant from that.

Maybe something around the Snapdragon 805 + Adreno GPU + 2GB RAM in horse power for the mobile, and double that for the home version.

Perhaps something like 300 GFLOPS for the handheld variant and 600-800 GFLOPS for the home variant (should be able to run a game like Mario Kart 8 comfortably at 1080P + AA). 

Two versions of the same game is easy if its the same architecture, though. You build for the stronger platform and then port down further into development, cutting whatever world-featuers can't be done. It's like when Treyarch would make PS360 Call of Duty and then make the Wii Call of Duty, except that Wii and PS360 have the same architecture in this hypothetical scenario.

I just don't think Nintendo would accept this line of reasoning, it would also be strange to the consumer that the game they were playing on their TV suddenly looks like crap on their handheld. 

The Fusion idea needs to have relative parity, that's a large part of its novelty/appeal ... playing the same game at home and then being able to continue playing the same game on the road (I would think anyway). 

1.8 TFLOP-ish machine to a 300 GFLOP handheld is just too wide of a chasm. 

I think a 300 GFLOP handheld for $200, and a 750 GFLOP micro-console that can be sold for even less than $200 ($169?) might not be a bad idea. The LCD is the most expensive component of the handheld, the chips are actually relatively cheap. Go full on microconsole, cut out unneccessary components like a disc drive, the system could be as compact as an AppleTV and come with a full suite of entertainment functionality (Youtube, Netflix, Hulu) etc. that plays some pretty mean Nintendo games and a full back catalog of retro and 3DS/Wii U ports.