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Miyamotoo on 13 March 2016
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Bofferbrauer said:
Miyamotoo said:

Nvidia Shield was released in July 31, 2013. with price of $199, basically 2.5 years ago, end of 2016 would be 3.5 year after Nvidia Shield, that means that Nintendo at end of 2016 can easily have noticeable stronger hardware for similar price. Also you said Nvidia Shield have GPU around 1/4 X1 power, thats similar power of Wii U GPU power, and Nintendo 3.5 years definitely can have noticeably stronger GPU.

Some of ARM CPU-s are definitely stronger than Wii U CPU. Also you talking like if Nintendo choose ARM CPU they need to use ARM GPU as well, that's not true, AMD can easily make APU that combines ARM CPU and custom AMD GPU.

Be aware that by X1 I meant Tegra X1, not Xbox One. And the Tegra X1, while being more powerful than a Wii U both in CPU and GPU, doesn't nearly do 4 times so, not even double the power of a Wii U (320GFlops for Wii U vs 512GFlops on Tegra X1). So the Tegra 4 definitly doesn't even come close to Wii U in terms of Power.

I agree that some ARM CPUs are stronger than the Wii U CPU. But guess what? None of them has a graphics part that is stronger than the one in the Wii U. That's why I took the Snapdragon 820 to compare with the Wii U Chip - it has the strongest GPU part right now. And since graphics are way more important than CPU power in a gaming console (one can also see this on Xbox ONE and PS4 - their CPUs are puny compared to their GPUs), none of the ARM Chips will suffice to replace a Wii U in terms of Power.

Of course, one could always combine a stronger AMD or NVidia GPU with an ARM CPU for a console. But these graphics parts quickly will outgrow the limitations of an handheld console. Like some pointed out, the Tegra X1 is used in the Shield Android TV. But that one is always connected to a 40W power supply unit and thus has not to worry about draining batteries in an instant. 40W, even as rare peak consumption, is way above what a handheld console can stomach.

You can turn it any way you want, a mobile console, "hybrid" or not, will not suffice to replace the Wii U unless the stationary console part of an hybrid console takes over substantial parts of the calculations. Anything mobile has to make to many compromises and sacrifices to bandwith, battery, price and size to allow them to take over stationary consoles. This may change sometime in the future, but not in the near future.

spurgeonryan said:
So after skimming through, do we know why it's sold out yet?

Better than expected holyday sales which drained the limited stocks and problems with relaunching the production (which also happened too late) after having been shut down 2 years ago.

But again, 3.5 years later handheld device can have much stronger hardware than Nvidia Shield had in 2013.

Also when I said hybrid device I dont think form factor of Vita or 3DS, such a device would definitely be more bigger, form factor similar to Wii U gamepad. IMO at end of 2016. Nintendo can release such a device that have similar or stronger power of Wii U (Wii U even in 2012. had already very old tech).