If Sony makes a "Playstation Switch" could it succeed?

[EricHiggin]

HoangNhatAnh said:

KBG29 said:

So you agree the X2 is already faster.

The X2 is built on a smaller fab, so it is cheaper to produce per chip. If Nintendo wanted to use it in a revision the cost would be slightly lower per chip at those rates. There is absolutely no issues with 16nm FinFET.

I don't  doubt Nintendo will skip the X2, but I also am not 100% sure they will use Xavier either. They may end up using X4 in 2019 as it should be more mobile focused than X3 (Xavier).

7nm is absolutely not something that only exsists in my theory. It is 100% on AMDs road map, and signs point to it coming as soon as late next year.

Chip costs are determined by the size and the yield rates. A mobile chip wiith PS4 level power will be smaller than the current PS4 Slim 14nm design. That only leaves yield rates, and that depends on how smoothly and quickly 7nm matures.

You do realize that smartphones will be more powerful than PS4 by 2020 right? Smartphones only cost about $200 - $300 to manufacture, the Smartphone companies are just taking massive advantage of everyone that buys into the hype. Non of the console manufactures have ever marked up their products, in fact it has generally been the exact opposite. Don't be mis-lead, Switch is not cutting edge, and phones don't actually cost $600 - $1,200. 

Cutting edge or not, can you show me a portable system that is stronger than Switch which cost $250 and play HD game like Doom which last at least 3 hours? You say smartphone cost only $200-$300 but how about buttons and analogs, they are free? Also,none smartphone play game at 720-1080p last 3 hours yet, 1,5-2 hours at best, let alone 4-5 hours or even more

It's right next to your imaginary custom X3. How did you miss it? I thought you said you would be able to tell the difference.

nemo37 said: 

"You do realize that smartphones will be more powerful than PS4 by 2020 right?"

As I mentioned above it is highly unlikely that we will get mobile SOCs that fit into smartphones that are as powerful or even more powerful than PS4 by 2020. The other issue with that statement is that even if an SOC was as powerful as a PS4, there is very little reason to believe such a chip would perform like a PS4 when placed in a smartphone. The big issue comes down partially to thermals and partially to smartphone software. Smartphones do not have fans and the software is designed so that they do activities as quickly as possible (so they run the CPU and/or GPU depending the task as fast as the thermal design allows) in order to finish a certain task as quickly as possible so the processors could return to an idle state and conserve powers. This works great when you are doing quick tasks (and ones where flactuations in performance do not greatly matter) such as web browsing, document editing/viewing, etc. However, it does not work well in games because when the CPU and GPU run that fast for a prolonged period of time at a continuous basis (which is what needs to happen when playing games) they start to throttle because the thermal envelopes in a smartphone do not allows the SOC to run at those speeds for a long period of time. Hence, you may start with a game running at 60 FPS but in less then a minute to a few minutes you will see the frame rate reduced because the SOC is throttling. Now this issue can be addressed in software and in hardware. For example, Nintendo added a fan and two heat pipes to Switch in order to desiccate the heat; PSV and 3DS were underclocked so that their thermals could keep up. I suspect most smartphone manufacturers will go with the fan-less underclocked route (in the unlike event that they actually took gaming seriously, which is another issue I will get into) which would mean that the hypothetical PS4-speced mobile SOC would not perform as fast as it needs to in order to provide PS4 like performance.

I think the point was that if a smartphone can house a PS4 level APU/SOC, then that same hardware in a tablet like format, or handheld/hybrid, should be able to get near to, if not the same level of performance as the PS4 by then. If Nin can do it, PS can do it. Who would do it better, and who would sell more, is the bigger question.