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Soundwave on 11 September 2015
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Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:

They need to put more effort/thought into the handheld than that. It's time to really start looking at the portable as the MAIN part of the NX equation, not some little add-on accessorie that can get by with 5 year old technology in today's market. 

Even kids are not falling for that anymore as evident by Nintendo hardware sales reaching new lows in both of the last two years. 

Yes I agree with the scalable tech part of the equation, but not with the Vita tech part of it. That thing will be badly outdated by launch day and by year 2/3 will be laughably far behind even $99 tablets in technology of 2017/18. 

At minimum they should be using a chip comparable to the Apple A8X (preferably at 14nm), which will be two years old by fall 2016. 


Of Course they will put more effort into handheld thant thet, Vita has incomparably better graphics than 3DS, and want be little addon accessory at any means.

We know what are main problems with sales this gen, and power of hardware is not one of them. Much more weaker 3DS is selling 5x better than Vita.

I didnt think Vita tech, but similar power of Vita. Who care if thech will be laughably far behind in 2017/18, if games still look good on NX handheld in that time.

I am not sure about 14nm, because next year 28nm will be still cheaper than 14nm, and Nintendo will aim affordable price, not last tech that will largle affect on price of consoles.

Honestly if that's what they want to do, they should just ask PowerVR for the old A8X chip which is 20nm (octa-core GXA6850). Going to 28nm might actually be more expensive and whatever chip they get won't be as power efficient. Or some other mobile processor like the Snapdragon 808 or something. 

They can likely get this entire SoC for about $30, probably less to be honest. Then a cheap, shitty screen for another $45. RAM is $20. Battery is $6. Cheap front/rear cameras $5. Sensors + NFC + WiFi is $20. This would easily be under $200 hardware cost. 

The Vita chip is actually 45nm I believe. So it's freaking ancient, it might actually cost Nintendo more or the same money to use a part that far out of order. 

This portable should be different, previous Nintendo handhelds were not designed to run the main Nintendo franchises. The Game Boy Advance was not made to run Super Mario Sunshine for example, the Vita was never designed to run the "real" Sony franchises either, just watered down spin-offs at best. 

So this portable should not fall in line with the previous portable upgrades, because far more is being asked of it. It will have to carry the company's traditional gaming brand as a whole. 

Console could then just be 2x-3x that, micro-console, maybe 600 GFLOPS, an OK-ish upgrade on the Wii U, cheap as dirt. That could be sold for as cheap as $169.99 or something.