theprof00 said:
JEMC said:
Oh, that one.
You do realize that industry leading chips doesn't necessarily mean powerful chips, right? It just means the newest available chips right now in an undisclosed class. The A9X mobile chip is an industry class chipset, but it doesn't have the power to run PS4/X1 games, at least not without dialing down several things.
And personally I don't really believe the WSJ article where that was mentioned because they also said that the NX would come with the home console and a mobile device in the box. That is the home and handheld consoles together which implies a comparatively expensive retail price, something that goes against what Nintendo have said this past year.
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By the time NX comes out, it will have been three years since ps4 came out. It really wouldn't be too much trouble to have a low cost console to rival them. Hell, MS is selling xb1 for like near 300$ prices, and you can already build a pc that rivals each for around 300$ or less if you already have things like case and peripherals.
Now, it takes a while to ramp up production. Generally about 6months before launch, you want production to be underway so you can have 3-5m units available...but we all know Nintendo likes to have shortages so maybe 5m. Everything should be finalized by about 7-8m left.
Granted that, and that AMD takes a cut in profit to secure a contract (factual info from nvidia), we could likely see a nintendo with specs to rival a ps4 and xb1 with a 250$ cost
Conversely, we could also simply see them make it slightly underpowered (but only ever so slightly) and see a production cost of maybe 200$, which they could retail for 250$ or 300$
EDIT: I also don't believe that the mobile and home versions will be bundled until maybe 2017 or 2018, and of course, for a higher price tag.
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Yes, by next year it will have been three years since the PS4/X1 launched, but nothing in the industry has changed much since then. The APU that powers the PS4 and X1 today are still made using the same 28nm process that was used three years ago and AMD hasn't launched a product that could replace the components used on those consoles that could also be cheaper.
In fact, since Nintendo can't use the designs of PS4/X1 (because, obviously), whatever comes from Nintendo will have to be based on either "of-the-shelf" parts without changes (something unlikely with Nintendo) or be a new custom design. It's those R&D costs that will make an NX similarly powered to a PS4 be more expensive (after all, Sony and MSoft are now cheaper not only because some components like the memory are now cheaper, but also because they have already got back most if not all the money spend on R&D and they no longer have to make up pay for it).
A great example of why assuming that "since it has been X years, Nintendo will be able to launch a powerful console" is a mistake happened just three years ago: Wii U. Despite the available tech that Nintendo had at hand and could have used to produce a powerful console, they chose to launch a console that was just enough more powerful than 360/PS3. And there were 6 years of difference!
And then there's also a problem with one of the NX theories: the one that says that the Handheld and Home Console (I'll leave the more complex hybrid console to one the side), will share the same hardware and play the same games, albeit at different settings. Given that PS4/X1 use more than 150W when gaming and knowing that 1-Nintendo will also rely on the same or similar AMD components; and 2-They won't be able to use a newer and more power efficient production process to reduce that power draw until at least the very end of 2016 but more likely 2017; the resulting console will have to use a similar amount of power. And now tell me, do you really think that they will launch a handheld that at best could use half of those 150W? How long do you think the handheld battery would last?
In summary, we don't know anything about NX and some of the rumors we've heard are actually sometimes opposed. Because of that, we can't take anything from granted: neither the price, the launch date or the shape or form of it (meaning handheld, home console, hybrid, all of that, ...)
Please excuse my bad English.
Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070
Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.