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Teeqoz on 08 April 2015
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sc94597 said:
Teeqoz said:


Of course it will help with stuff like they only have to develop Mario Kart 9, and they can downscale it and tweak it to work for handhelds. Just like they did with SSB 4, except it would require less resources. And there's the thing, you used the unified arch etc. as an explanation for more power in Ninty's next handheld, but when the Wii U is more than 60 times more powerful than the 3DS, yet they still managed to pull off dual development of SSB 3DS and SSB Wii U, the NX HH doesn't need to be all that close to the NX HC for it to support cross-development and porting etc. This is of course depending on what specs the NX Hc.

The difference here is that Nintendo intends to make far more games cross-titles. As explicated by. 

"However, we are hoping to change and correct the situation in which we develop games for different platforms individually and sometimes disappoint consumers with game shortages as we attempt to move from one platform to another, and we believe that we will be able to deliver tangible results in the future."

If their hardware is vastly different then you will have compounding problems because you are just developing so many more games for both platforms, rather than just one. It would make very little sense to have similar architecture, but then have the home console bottlenecked. 

We should at least expect the next HC hardware to be comparable to PS4/XBO, as Nintendo hasn't ever made hardware less than the previous generation. Wii was more capable in some ways than the Xbox, Wii U is more capable in most ways than the PS3/360. I can only think of the NES releasing with hardware less capable than its predecessors. 


The home console wouldn't be bottlenecked. If the NX HC is as powerful as the PS4, then it would have 1800 Gflops (the Wii U has ~350). If the NX HH is close in specs to the Vita, it would have ~50 Gflpos (the 3DS has 4.8). That would mean that the NX HC is 36 times more powerful than the NX HH. Now that does sound like a lot, but think about this:

The NX HC will probably run its games in 1080p. The NX HH might run its games in 540p (I seriously doubt Nintendo will go for a 720p display on their next handheld.) 1080p means it will render 2073600 pixels. 540p means it will render exactly one quarter of 1080p, it will render 518400 pixels.

So in reality, the power gap will only be 36/4=9. And that isn't really all that much, when you consider that the PS4 is 6 times more powerful than the Wii U. So unified architecture would work just fine even with the NX HH "only" having Vita specs will the NX HC has PS4 specs.