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bonzobanana on 08 March 2017
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JEMC said:
vivster said:

It's certainly gonna be interesting the next months. With a bit of luck there are some weaknesses in the DRM and we will see the first start of an emulator within the first year. Switch games should be a lot more emulator friendly despite being a custom chip.

I wonder if those hackers could make Switch games to run on Nvidia's Shield.

I mean, yes, the Shield has 1 less GB of RAM, but it doesn't have Nintendo's OS on it, and the SOC is the same.

That was the wierd thing about the ifixit tear down of a retail Switch is the Nvidia chipset still has Nvidia branding on it even though the Nintendo branding  appears elsewhere unlike the earlier teardown in China.  Normally there is Nintendo branding on such chips.

So I wondered if Nintendo didn't get their customised Nvidia SOC's in time and early Switches have the full X1 fitted with the 'Little' ARM processors disabled. Then it made me think if those chips aren't final maybe early Switches are actually hardware identical to development kit Switch's with different firmware and some point they could be hacked into development kit Switches.

We have seen how Switch seems to be in a very beta state in software maybe the hardware is too.

Maybe proper retail Switch's will come later. Maybe even the 4GB isn't actually the true memory capacity and when the final retail design comes it will only be 2GB and we have all been fooled by the first retail units being dev units with a retail firmware.

Maybe that will be a hack in a few months time, a blob of solder here and there and hey presto a dev kit for early adopters.

Whatever its certainly strange no Nintendo branding or co-branding on the main SOC. It could indicate a different type of agreement they have with Nvidia compared to AMD. I hope Nintendo have been sensible as Nvidia are known for being very cut-throat with both Sony and Microsoft not happy with previous dealings with them. I remember  Nvidia wanting full royalties for the original xbox even at the end of the life of the console which forced Microsoft to launch the 360 too early that cost them 100's of millions due to RROD.