The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[Soundwave]

Wyrdness said:

Soundwave said:

I don't think a lot of comments here take any of that into account to be honest. People still act like it's 1998 and you can turn around hardware when ever you feel like. 

That's not how modern chipsets and modern nodes (which Nintendo is basically forced to use because of the portable nature of the Switch ... you can't get good performance from a chip using an ancient design node anymore, this isn't the DS era any longer). 

There's a host of problems with "well just sit around and wait for your sales to decline and then and only then release a new console", there's a bunch of things that make that idea a lot more complex with today's hardware. 

The suggestion too that Nintendo can just wait and chose a different chip now ... like this is also head scratching ... from where? Nvidia doesn't make Tegra chips willy nilly, there's not many vendors for these chips, Nintendo is basically the only major company that uses the Tegra X1. The chip for the Nintendo successor is very likely the Tegra T239 based on the leaks (including leaks direct from Nvidia) we have. It's already been made, it exists now. 

If Nintendo wants to now say "well we'll just wait for an even betterer chip", firstly, they're probably on the hook paying for the Tegra 239 and then will have to pay for the "newer" chip ... like yeah you can say "well that's just common sense" after the fact, but lol, I don't think many people consider any of this stuff when posting here. 

If I paint your house blue and at the end of the process you say "well I'm not really into blue anymore, and I didn't even really need my house painted now, come back next week and paint it green" ... I mean OK, but you sure as fuck are going to pay me full price for the time/paint I already spent painting your house blue, and then on top of that you're paying full price again to have it painted green. Not my problem you can't make up your mind, there's no discount you get for that.

This is nothing like the Game Boy at all it's basically the exact opposite of the Game Boy because Nintendo is using chips now that are basically made mainly for them. The Tegra chips, which are relatively cutting edge, and at this point have to basically be made on demand for Nintendo mostly (because no other major vendor uses these chips) on a modern node in 2023/2024 is a completely different ball game. Nintendo's basically stuck using Tegra/Nvidia too because you can't have backwards compatibility without it, so Nvidia has a lot of leverage now. 

You seem to miss the point in the GB example as the Switch is exactly like that case because they have the leverage of a near monopoly, the whole portable side of he industry is under their control right now so they can afford to wait longer than expected even if sales decline because that whole market only really has one realistic place to go for their fill this is one reason Switch sales have been higher than expected because the are two markets on the platform. Modern chipsets and so on being more focused to implement doesn't impact this as much as it would other platform holders because unlike them the is no Xbox or PS equivalent competitor to force a move on meaning they already have the leverage to see good success even if the next platform doesn't do Switch numbers, their situation essentially has the added advantage of more time than usual and it would not be unlikely for them to have been cycling through modern tech in R&D throughout the past months with the goal of targeting a 2025 release.

Well first of all your Game Boy example is not even historically accurate, Nintendo was fed up with the Game Boy by about 1995 and was desperately trying to replace it, this is how the Virtual Boy got released in the first place, like it wasn't some random thing that Nintendo pulled out of their ass and just decided to release for no reason. Nintendo wanted some secondary product to sell alongside their consoles since the GB had flagging sales Yamauchi insisted Yokoi give him something new to sell and that's how the Virtual Boy was rushed out to market. 

There was a Game Boy successor already in development circa 1994 that they were planning to release in 1995/96 too (Codename Atlantis, which Nintendo finally showed proof of at GDC like 20 years later) but they couldn't release it because of hardware problems too, so they were actively trying to basically kill the OG Game Boy by '95 it was really just happenstance that they couldn't do it as the company making the chipset for Atlantis (Game Boy successor) fucked up. 

Secondly though you're operating under an assumption that Nintendo hasn't made chip deals ... the deal is already made likely has been for years. Shit the chip itself for the Switch successor we already know what it is (Tegra T239/Drake). 

Nintendo doesn't have the flexibility to just back out of this deal, this chip is probably made primarily for them because the Tegra line doesn't really have many vendors that use that tech (it's just too power hungry for smartphones and Android tablet makers don't want a chip that powerful because the only Android tablets that really sell are the dirt cheap ones otherwise people just buy an iPad and keep it for 10 years). 

So the bill on this chip is going to be due, one way or another and it's likely a very hefty bill as this type of tech is not cheap. 

The Game Boy was a completely different hardware story, it used generic off the shelf parts that weren't designed really for the Game Boy in particular. Nintendo can't do that with the Switch, they're stuck with Nvidia now (for better or worse) because of backwards compatibility issues.