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Soundwave on 24 October 2022
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DonFerrari said:
Pemalite said:

Actually the Nintendo 64 had very expensive hardware.

Where Nintendo actually managed to save money was ironically by not having an optical disk drive, I think people forget that optical disks drives fetched a premium even on PC back in the 90's.
And having everything as an accessory, even an increase in Ram helped alleviate cost pressures.

The Gamecube also had a cost advantage over Microsoft as well by not including a hard drive and relying more heavily on accessories... Plus due to the lack of DVD playback, they saved money by not having to pay DVD royalties. The IBM+ATI/AMD/ArtX combo definitely commanded less of a premium over Intel+nVidia.

So Nintendo did have expensive hardware, it's just they managed to "cut costs" on other corners rather intelligently.

And if I recall, Nintendo actually lost money on the Gamecube for a fair while, but don't quote me on that as I didn't take the time to double check..

The Switch or any handheld for that matter however has different cost pressures these days that Nintendo can't really work around compared to other home consoles like a battery and display... Internal storage and the dock are potential places for cuts to save a buck or beef up the SoC, we saw that with the Switch Lite.

I believe Ninty lost money when they cut the price aggressively to compete with PS1 not long after launch.

But there is no magic, performance cost money.

This is overstated. Nintendo never lost money on the N64. They lost a small amount of money on the GameCube for short period of time, but even that was put into profit as soon as a person purchased 1 game, so effectively that's not really a loss as what are you going to do with a GameCube but play games? Play DVD movies? Good luck. 

If anything, Nintendo made a large mistake with the N64 in not compromising and including a CD-drive when CD costs where plummeting by 1996. They should have maintained the originally announced $249.99 price but reworked the hardware with a CD drive in (cart port stays too) instead of cutting to $199.99 for no real reason before launch even. The N64 was completely sold out during holiday 1996, it was like the original "can't find it anywhere this holiday!" console launch.

The GameCube and N64 and SNES had great performance for their time for very reasonable cost (SNES came with a free game when games used to cost $60+ and two controllers to boot). 

A Nvidia chip that's EIGHT YEARS newer than the Tegra X1 is going be far, far more powerful, anyone who thinks that's magic is just dumb, frankly. 

The Tegra X1 itself which was cutting edge in 2015 launched in a $199.99 Nvidia Shield. In spring 2015. In 2015, the Apple A9 chip that was going into $800+ iPhones was not as powerful as the Tegra X1, probably not even close. Is $199.99 expensive? 

Frankly if they're not doing the VR thing, Nintendo probably should just re-use the same OLED 720p display they use for the current Switch OLED for Switch 2. It's a very nice display that completely shits on any previous Nintendo portable and is more than good enough for mobile gaming. Probably is dirt cheap at this point given the rate they've been mass produced for a while now. You don't a hybrid machine to push higher than 720p resolution on the go, even the Steam Deck doesn't, it's just a waste of portable performance. 

All of Nintendo's full generational leaps in portables have also been basically a full serving upgrade in hardware

Game Boy/GBC - Sub NES tier to NES tier hardware

GBA - SNES tier hardware

DS - Playstation 1 tier hardware

3DS - Dreamcast/PS2 tier hardware

Switch - Better than PS3/360/Wii U, so more like a 1.5 generation leap here

Last edited by Soundwave - on 24 October 2022