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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - How powerful will Nintendo's next-gen handheld/console be?

jonnybmk on 05 August 2014

Watching you guys speculate is hilarious.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. Watching you assume there's some sort of difference between these companies is pure comedy.

Just like the "governments" of earth have you swindled, so do these corporations.

Nintendo has been allowed to own handheld, Sony the console, and all Microsoft ever wanted to do was capture and monopolize the "Steam" market.

But, don't let me convince you of that, I think you should still believe that you "vote with your wallet" as these big corps and your own governments continue to shrink your wallet year after year after year.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. That's how I knew the Vita was designed to fail; to give Ninty the handheld market as decided by "them". Not you.

Wake up........



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Soundwave on 05 August 2014
VanceIX said:
Soundwave said:
VanceIX said:


Vita is absolutely no where near PS3 level.

The only thing the Vita has over the PS3 is RAM. It has less cores in the CPU (and each is much weaker than the PS3), and a considerably weaker GPU.

It's noticeable when devs try to port PS3 games like Borderlands 2. It's insanely hard to optimize, and the end product is usually a buggy mess.

It might be feasible in 2016, but only if Nintendo wants to charge $600+ for a handheld, which they absolutely won't.

Phones (particularily Apple's) have a massive mark up. 

Nvidia's Tegra tablet with a big 8 inch screen destroys the Vita and probably can come close to PS3/360 graphics and that costs $299.99 today (and is almost certainly sold at a decent profit margin). 

The Tegra Shield has in no way come close to the PS3 or 360 in real-life performance. The CPU is just a standard tablet CPU, meaning that it doesn't have the computational power of the PS3 or 360. The GPU is great, but when the CPU is the bottleneck, that doesn't really matter.

The Tegra Shield can't handle a game like TLOU or Halo 4.


Well lets take into account Nintendo is probably still 2 tech generations of CPU/GPU away from launching their device (spring/summer 2016?). 

There's no reason they couldn't have a much better CPU than what's in the Tegra tablet and even a better GPU than the current K1. 

And lets also lower the resolution demands down to 960x540 for games with PS3/Wii U level fidelity ... I think you start to get pretty damn close. 



Rafux on 05 August 2014
jonnybmk said:
Watching you guys speculate is hilarious.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. Watching you assume there's some sort of difference between these companies is pure comedy.

Just like the "governments" of earth have you swindled, so do these corporations.

Nintendo has been allowed to own handheld, Sony the console, and all Microsoft ever wanted to do was capture and monopolize the "Steam" market.

But, don't let me convince you of that, I think you should still believe that you "vote with your wallet" as these big corps and your own governments continue to shrink your wallet year after year after year.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. That's how I knew the Vita was designed to fail; to give Ninty the handheld market as decided by "them". Not you.

Wake up........


Nobody is listening to you Neo, stop posting the same thing over and over again it clutters the thread.



VanceIX on 05 August 2014
Soundwave said:
VanceIX said:

The Tegra Shield has in no way come close to the PS3 or 360 in real-life performance. The CPU is just a standard tablet CPU, meaning that it doesn't have the computational power of the PS3 or 360. The GPU is great, but when the CPU is the bottleneck, that doesn't really matter.

The Tegra Shield can't handle a game like TLOU or Halo 4.


Well lets take into account Nintendo is probably still 2 tech generations of CPU/GPU away from launching their device (spring/summer 2016?). 

And lets also lower the resolution demands down to 960x540 for games with PS3/Wii U level fidelity ... I think you start to get pretty damn close. 

If you are going to lower the resolution to qHD, what's the point of even comparing it to the PS3/360? qHD looks bland compared to 720p/1080p on mobile devices. 

And there's absolutely no chance in hell Nintendo uses a brand-new, modern chip for their game console. What you are seeing now is probably the most Nintendo will spend. They won't be using Kepler K3 GPUs or Snapdragon 1000 CPUs (or whatever is the 2016 chipset), unless they plan on selling the system at $299+ (at which point it will promptly crash and burn).



                                                                                                               You're Gonna Carry That Weight.

Xbox One - PS4 - Wii U - PC

Solid-Stark on 05 August 2014

I would hope the handheld is around the WiiU's power, or at the very least X360's.

Nintendo's handhelds seem to be around the power of two generations prior (GBA-SNES, DS-N64, 3DS-NGC). A handheld around the WiiU power would be a big jump.



e=mc^2

Gaming on: PS4 Pro, Switch, SNES Mini, Wii U, PC (i5-7400, GTX 1060)

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Soundwave on 05 August 2014
VanceIX said:
Soundwave said:
VanceIX said:

The Tegra Shield has in no way come close to the PS3 or 360 in real-life performance. The CPU is just a standard tablet CPU, meaning that it doesn't have the computational power of the PS3 or 360. The GPU is great, but when the CPU is the bottleneck, that doesn't really matter.

The Tegra Shield can't handle a game like TLOU or Halo 4.


Well lets take into account Nintendo is probably still 2 tech generations of CPU/GPU away from launching their device (spring/summer 2016?). 

And lets also lower the resolution demands down to 960x540 for games with PS3/Wii U level fidelity ... I think you start to get pretty damn close. 

If you are going to lower the resolution to qHD, what's the point of even comparing it to the PS3/360? qHD looks bland compared to 720p/1080p on mobile devices. 

And there's absolutely no chance in hell Nintendo uses a brand-new, modern chip for their game console. What you are seeing now is probably the most Nintendo will spend. They won't be using Kepler K3 GPUs or Snapdragon 1000 CPUs (or whatever is the 2016 chipset), unless they plan on selling the system at $299+ (at which point it will promptly crash and burn).

That resolution is perfectly playable on a 5.5-6 inch display though, so what's the problem? The consumer probably won't know any better. 

There are several PS Vita games that don't run in the native resolution of the screen like Uncharted, yet it's pretty much impossible to tell unless someone tells you which game is running at full screen resolution and which isn't. 

I don't think Nintendo really cares about winning a "comparision", just getting a decent level of performance that allows them to port some of their Wii U games/engines over and have playable games. 

The chips available today will be ancient by 2016, they'll probably pick a 2015-level chip. 

The most expensive component is really not the chipset, it's the screen + touch panel in all portable devices. Nintendo can save big dollars there by going with say a 5.7 inch display at a moderate resolution (say 1280x720). The chipset in these devices is only like $30 of the total manufacturing cost. 



jonnybmk on 05 August 2014
Rafux said:
jonnybmk said:
Watching you guys speculate is hilarious.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. Watching you assume there's some sort of difference between these companies is pure comedy.

Just like the "governments" of earth have you swindled, so do these corporations.

Nintendo has been allowed to own handheld, Sony the console, and all Microsoft ever wanted to do was capture and monopolize the "Steam" market.

But, don't let me convince you of that, I think you should still believe that you "vote with your wallet" as these big corps and your own governments continue to shrink your wallet year after year after year.

I'm on the inside, I know what's up. That's how I knew the Vita was designed to fail; to give Ninty the handheld market as decided by "them". Not you.

Wake up........


Nobody is listening to you Neo, stop posting the same thing over and over again it clutters the thread.

Awwwwww... Neo???

If you would have referred to me as Morphius, I may have stopped posting. (Notwithstanding the fact that your post has cluttered the thread more than any of mine.)

Great try though! Bravo. *eye roll*



Soundwave on 05 August 2014
shikamaru317 said:

Console will be roughly 1.3-1.5 times the power of PS4 for $300-350. Handheld will be somewhere between slightly above Vita and equivalent to 360/PS3 for $200-250. Both coming in 2016. Handheld will have the functionality of both a tablet and a DS, it will have traditional controls and 2 equal sized screens, but the area between the two screens will be very tiny so that when the device is fully unfolded you get what appears to be a single larger tablet-like screen. The handheld can be used as a Wii U gamepad-like controller for the console, and Wii U gamepads can be used as well,  but the console won't come with a new gamepad, Nintendo won't want to repeat the mistake of raising the cost of the SKU by bundling an expensive gamepad, it'll instead come with a traditional controller and the option of Gamepad functionality will be left up to consumers, they can either buy the handheld or an old Wii U gamepad if they don't already own one. 


I don't see that console selling any better than the Wii U to be honest. Nor do I see developers supporting it (make games for PS4 + X1 which will have a userbase north of 70 million by then ... or Nintendo's console which is a little more powerful but has a userbase of 0). 

You need to have something much more powerful than just 1.5x better than a PS4 to have any real tangiable difference on the screen too. 

EDIT: I missed the 2016 launch date ... that would be more interesting, but it seems to me that Nintendo is just now coming to grips with PS3/360 level HD development. I don't think they're in any shape, way, or form ready to move up another graphics generation in 2 years. 



NintendoSupporter<3 on 05 August 2014
vivster said:
Nintendo will never release a console that's on par with the competition. It will always just be slightly above the competition's last gen consoles.





Soundwave on 05 August 2014
shikamaru317 said:
Soundwave said:

I don't see that console selling any better than the Wii U to be honest. Nor do I see developers supporting it (make games for PS4 + X1 which will have a userbase north of 70 million by then ... or Nintendo's console which is a little more powerful but has a userbase of 0). 

You need to have something much more powerful than just 1.5x better than a PS4 to have any real tangiable difference on the screen too. 

Yeah, but the problem is that Nintendo can't afford to make a console that is more than about 1.5 times more powerful than PS4 by 2016 while keeping it in the price range that Nintendo fans are used to for consoles. At the very least a switch to x86 from PPC and 1.5x the power of the PS4 should get Nintendo some multiplats, at least until the PS5/XB4 release a year or two later. What will happen at that point depends on just how powerful PS5 and XB4 are, if they're only about 1.5 times more powerful than Nintendo's next console then Nintendo should still keep getting some multiplats, but if they're twice as powerful as Nintendo's next console Nintendo may end up in nearly the same position they're in now with the Wii U (though still a better situation since they'll likely still share the same architectures at least, and the gap between Wii U and PS4 is more like 3x). 


I don't think Nintendo would be ready to make a home console that soon (a console that's a generational leap forward) though. 

They'd have to support the new handheld too ... I don't think they wouldn't be able to pull it off. 

Personally I suspect too that games with PS3/360 level visuals are about the upper limit of what Nintendo deems acceptable for a game budget.