JustBeingReal said:
Also each company measures their Transistor's size differently. So yeah from those measurements it's basically a pointless comparison. Nintendo aren't going to use that chip, not going to happen, because they have a relationship with AMD, they've had a relationship with ATI since before AMD bought them, that isn't going to change and AMD can provide a single SOC, with all of their technology needs met as far their Processor requirements go.
Also matching PS4's specs actually does a lot, it's not just a matter of graphics, it's also a matter of what's possible from a gameplay perspective, physics in games like Horizon or Uncharted 4 are actually way more important and improve the experience overall, comparisons betweeen PS4 and some hypothetical NX console are useful, because we can see what PS4's level of tech can allow game creators to accomplish. A Zelda game with the kind of physics and massive world of Horizon, along with a tonne of dungeons and so on would be what fans of that series have been wanting for years and it would look crip with horizon's native resolution. Obviously to get something like that to hit 60FPS would be what most of the vocal community of fans would want, but that would require 2X the performance of PS4, which consequently is actually within reach, but to do that would make it more difficult for Nintendo to fit the same kind of experience into a handheld, so we can see that actual comparisons with PS4's level of tech are actually very useful. Nintendo offering a console and handheld that share the same library, with a very similar level of experience between the two is actually going to set Nintendo apart, that's something which I think the community could get on board with.
Right now no one is providing the kinds of games you can play on your TV at home on the move, with a native, latency free experience on the handheld. This could actually be Nintendo's opportunity to return to their former glory or at least lay the groundwork for a future where they can become competitive once again. With a family of systems that they can evolve to meet the capabilities of the competition, capable of running multiplats on the move, along with Nintendo's own great core experiences and potentially new IP that are more catered to the west it could really be the thing Nintendo needs to get them back in the race.
Nintendo never really lost, they just stopped competing. They stopped trying to appeal to fans of theirs which they created back in the day. Gamers who matured and still wanted to game, but Nintendo just wanted to carry on making games for the same age range, thinking that the only other kinds of games that would work for them, from a business perspective could be the other extreme of titles like horror games (partnering with Ubisoft on games like ZombiU or making things like Eternal Darkness or violent stuff).
If Nintendo comes out and says oh we have this new system that can play games just as well the competiton, gets all of the multiplats, but if you want you can also buy a handheld that will play all of that on the move too and if you want to own both, having a bigger experience on a big TV at home, but also take it with you and own a collection to works on both systems then that could be huge and it would be something unique to Nintendo. School kids could be playing COD on their NX Handheld, then carry on playing with their friends at home on the big screen.
As for the last part, the handheld would only need to be the size of a normal tablet. Cost wise I doubt it would even need to cost that much, the console would be comparable to PS4's price in late 2016, assuming NX has the same size HDD, Bluray and so on, the handheld would use a cut down version of the console's processor, so would cost a fraction of that price. Maybe $200 at launch for the handheld and $300 or $350 for the console. |
I never said they'd use that exact chip, I said they would want something from AMD that has similar type of performance at a similar power envelope.
35 watts for 800 GFLOPS give of take isn't even that great to be honest considering that it's probably less than 2.5x the Wii U and the Wii U is a 40nm chip from 2010/11 at 31-32 watts.
They should be able to study these new mobile chips, especially looking at their own Mullins/Beema tech and push the envelope further than that.
And yes, like I said I understand they utilize GFLOPS in different ways, but I still maintain I would not be surprised at all if an A9X allowed to operate and scaled up to a massive 35 watt power envelope would probably beat that Carizzo. I wouldn't be surprised if it was fairly equal to the XBox One.
Nintendo did lose badly with the GameCube. Not only did Sony kick their ass, they got beat by a newcomer that had no market presence in Japan and the XBox still sold more than the GCN even though the GCN had a full extra year on the market.
I'd go with $250 for the handheld. You can't just fart out a low cost handheld and cry "unified platform" if there's too much of a gap in form factors. What will end up happening is many devs will end up just optimizing for the handheld spec because it'll likely be the top selling version by far, and then the console people will be stuck with portable games on the TV. So in that case you want some real grunt power to the handheld.
$350 is too much for the console too, seeing as how PS4 will be $300 by next fall ($50 cut this year, $50 next year sounds about right).
