By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 11 September 2015
Edit Thread
Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:

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. 

I am not sure that Nintendo will go for x86, better chances are for ARM, maybe quad-core Cortex-A53 for handheld and maybe Cortex-A57 or A72 for home console.

Like I said, Nintendo will certainly will not use same Vita chip, I was referring more to similar graphics.

If you look all previous Nintendo handhelds you will see that every man was very small upgrade to new handheld console, going from 3DS to Vita similar graphics would biggest leap for Nintendo handheld.


I think NX will throw a lot of pre-existing "rules" out the window, since many of them no longer serve any positive benefit to Nintendo. 

Handheld hardware was slow to evolve in the past because there was no massive push from vendors to have high powered mobile CPUs/GPUs ... smartphones and tablets changed everything. Now the rate of technological change is massive, and the cost of these components has become dirt cheap.  A8X is an ARM CPU by the way. 

In a way I think Wii U and 3DS represent the end of their hardware lines. NX is will take the company in a different direction and are part of a new lineage that isn't beholden to any of the past "rules". 

Also I think there is a danger is going too cheap ... now that Nintendo has smartphone apps to tap into the low budget/no budget gamer and entry level kids, I think you run the risk of those kids not really being interested in a dedicated Nintendo console if its honestly a cheap piece of junk. They can get enough of a fix of Pokemon or Mario for free on the iPhone and if the Nintendo dedicated hardware is underwhelming or even (sadly) less powerful than a lot of tablets/phones, You need to draw a bigger distinction between those low end games, so I think a higher end portable is probably the better play for Nintendo right now. 

"Cheap" is not helping Nintendo right now as the lower cost 2DS and regular 3DS models are not selling that great either. The people who are interested in 3DS choose the most expensive model. The problem becomes if you're asking for $40+ for a game ... you better damn well be bringing something really impressive to the table nowadays, or people will just stick to their phone/tablet and free games. 

That's what Nintendo needs to accept now. What the GBA or even DS were is irrelevant now, it's a completely different game with different rules. Nintendo did not have to justify the price of their games because they set all the rules in the past. They don't anymore. So if the arguement is, well you should want to play "real" games away from the house ... well ok ... but you undermine this arguement today if your hardware is (relatively) crap.