How could Nintendo implement a Switch Pro?

[KBG29]

potato_hamster said:

I can play Metal Gear Solid 4 on anything other than a Playstation 3? Do tell. Play Anywhere allows Xbox gamers to play select games on PCs. This is yet again one of those things that you were *totally sure* was going to lead to hundreds if not thousands of games instantly being playable on multiple devices you own as soon as you bought one copy. As it turns out the program has led to some terrible ports, and it gained almost no traction outside of Microsoft's first party games. To this date there are less than 50 Play anywhere games, and the program appears to have gained less traction as time goes on, not more. Looks like you took a huge cut on that one, and never even made contact.

So now you're going to use multiplatform games as justification? Skylanders came out on pretty much every platform on the planet. Same thing with Just Dance. Publishers have been making cheap to develop multi-platform games for decades now. You can find a bunch of titles every single year that do this. The only difference now is that  instead of porting older platforms like the 3DS, developers are now targeting cell phones. How does this indiciate that soon Sony are going to start offering the ability to play "PS5" games that can be played on your phone or your tablet, or a PS5, or a PS5 Pro, or your PS5 "Fuck you I'm rich" ultra mega performance edition, and your PC? Ohh right. It doesn't. Ohh hey look, another strike.

Now streaming is indicative of your master plan that has Sony making phones and car stereos with a Playstation OS? Playstation Now has existed for a long time. Sony keeps offering new plans, cheaper rates, and more incentives. Eventually you're probably going to see it as a cheap add-on to PS+ at this rate. Even still, despite all of the time and investment, and multiple game streaming solutions, (remember "THE POWER OF THE CLOUD!"?) bandwidth still isn't there to offer a seamless experience over wired connections, and it degrades from there. Most people don't have gigabit wireless, and 4G/LTE is still a far ways off from offering enough bandwitch for players on cell phones to not have a severe disadvantage against a PC or console player. It's an adorable little niche at this time, but let's not pretend it's anywhere close to prime time. "The cloud" hasn't changed gaming in nearly the amount of ways you thought it would. Five years after the Xbox One came out the vast majority of gamers are still playing on game pads in front of TVs, playing games on discs, or downloaded onto their harddrives, as they have been doing since the original XBox. Strike three.

You claimed that with the progress Nintendo has made with the Switch platform? Weren't you just sure the Switch was not only going to come in multiple form factors (home/portable/tablet) but also that it was going to run an android-based OS and be compatible with Android apps, and be ridiciously easy to port to? Here we are over a year later, and you can't even watch Youtube or Twitch on your Switch. Yet somehow this indicates that Nintendo is soon going to offer its games on multiple devices? Because maybe they'll make a "Switch Pro" just like they made a "new 3DS" and a "DSi"? Even if they do a "Switch Pro" it STILL doesn't indicate that your dream is any closer to reality. Let's never mind how completely awful games like Wolfenstein have ended up running on the Switch, and how Capcom has come out and said that games like Monster Hunter World "isn't possible on the Switch"?

The Switch is nothing like you claimed it would be. Accept it. Strike four.

And now you think reducing chip fabrications from 12nm to 7nm is going to be the tipping point? Why? What if the PS5/XB2 uses a 7nm fabrication process and takes the low TDP to leverage even more performance out of their design? How are you going to use the same 7nm fabrication process to make a chip that has to have a TDP that's a fraction of what the PS5 uses and offer enough performance to make ports as easy as you would thought they would be on Switch? Your whole concept assumes the whole home console and PC space is going to stand still or not leverage the same technologies any kind of mobile device could use. It's completely foolish. Strike five.

Its so sweet that you think Sony, Nintendo and Microsot are just going to go the way of the Dodo if they don't take Apple and Google head-on. I mean it's total bullshit, but sweet. How's Microsoft doing in the cell phone space. Ohh right. 0.3%. That's Microsofr, with enough resources to actually take a huge swing. How many hundreds of millions have they lost so far? If only they spent that money trying to compete with Sony instead.... But lets be real. Google and Apple aren't going to get into the serious gaming spaces because frankly there's not enough money in it. Apple sold 200 million iPhones last year alone. Why would they start making devices that ideally would sell about 10-15% of that? You'll probably see a google branded Android box, and you already have the apple TV. Adding a controller to that isn't going to have people jumping ship from Nintendo to a Google console. If Google or Apple really want to get into the console space, they'll just buy Sony or Nintendo. They don't need to compete against them when they can just purchase the revenue stream. It's pretty much what these companies do everywhere else, why should the console space be any different? But this is what you do. You take a little rumor or nothing burger of a device and turn it into a sign Sony putting the playstation OS on a cell phone. While you're at it, perhaps you need to tell Atari they need to start making car stereos if they want to survive in the console space. I'm sure they'll hire you as an advisor right then and there. Or not. Strike six.

You're a big baseball fan, Kev. How many strikes do you need before you've struck out? I'm pretty sure it's less than six. How about you accept that you struck out, take your seat in the dugout, and admit that standing at the plate when you don't even know how to hold the bat properly isn't a very good idea.

Progress takes time, and we have marched closer and closer to each one of these things over the past decade. As I said, I have already been using Cross Buy/Play Anywhere for years now. I have had a subscription to PS Now since day one, except for a short while after they dropped support for PS Vita, PS TV, PS3, and Sony TV's/Blu-ray Players. I use Remote Play all the time, and I have used Xbox streaming a couple of times when I visited my sister.

I never stated Nintendo should run Android on Switch. If anything I said Nintendo would be extremely unwise to bring in Google to run their OS. I wanted Nintendo to offer apps on their own OS, and offer both a Wifi model, and a 4G model with Calling and Texting, but it didn't happen. 

Yes, I am pointing at multiplats, and how they have expanded to wider range of devices. This only helps to establish deeper that every game should be able to be played across multiple devices. If you can play Fortnite and PUBG on iPhone why can't you play COD, Battlefield, Madden, GTA, and such against your friends on PS/XB/PC?  That is a real question I get from casual gamers right now.

Why does 7nm make a difference?  Well for one, it it is not reducing fabrication from 12nm to 7nm. It is reducing fabrication from 20nm on the Switch and 16nm on PS4 Pro and XOX. We already know a 16nm Switch using Tegra X2 could either run at docked mode levels on the go, or double the battery life on the go running at the same performance as 20nm Switch. You can look at AMD's current tech and road maps, which I am pretty sure we have already linked to in the past, and see exactly where we are right now with 14nm Ryzen and Vega Mobile chips, and make a pretty solid prediction to where we will be with 7nm Ryzen and Navi chips. Then you have a target relsoution of 4K, which requires massive amounts of processing additional processing power, that is not neccessary for a Mobile device, because 720p is very acceptable on a 5" screen. When games were targeting 900p - 1080p on consoles, a mobile would have struggled to deliver 240p, and that would not be acceptable. In a case where we are aiming for 4K on a 7nm console, a 7nm mobile will be well capable of delivering that expereince at 720p. 

Why is this different than the past? In the past you had PS4, PS3, and PS Vita all running on massivley different architectures. Xbox 360 and Xbox One run on massivley different architectures. Scalability from software engines, and hardware where not in massive demand. Over the last 6 years Sony and Microsoft have worked to build scalability into every aspect of their ecosystem. Hell, the XOX is a vastly different layout than the XBO, and PC can have any number of variables, but Microsoft has developed their ecosystem to be massively scalable. Something they realized they had to do after a few failures in the mobile space. As they realized you can't have to seperate ecosystems, you have to have one unified and scalable ecosystem, where every device works towards the same goal. It doesn't stop there, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Intel, and everyone else in the chip industry has been working to make their chips more and more scalable. This has lead to ARM being better in home devices, and X86 becoming much more power efficient. 

We are constantly moving towards scalability and unification. If you can not see what has happened over the last decade I don't know what to tell you. I mean do you remember when people had compasses? Now they have Smartphones. Do you remember when people had Navagation systems? Now they have Smartphones. Do you remember when people had Handhelds? Now they have Smartphones. Do you rmember when people had DVD/Blu-ray Players. Now they have set top boxes. Do you rmember when everyone had PC's? Now many have Smartphones, Tablets, Consoles. With every year convergence continues. How much loner until we are asking, Do you remember when people had Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendos? 

So yes, think it is sweet how I am concerned about the future of decent gaming platforms. If you are fine with touch controls, and gaming as an, oh yeah, you can do that if you like type of product, then great. If you are fine with Apple, and Google taking over everything, then steady the course, because that is where we are heading. But, if you think PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo are just magically going to stick around, without adopting to the market, expanding their usefulness, and expanding their form factor, then I believe you will be very very dissappointed. We have basically lost handhelds completely in the last decade, will stagnent console platforms/ecosystems survive the next?