By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo - What If There Are More Than 2 NX Hardware Variants?

se7en7thre3 on 15 April 2015

@theprof00

NX Fusion's HW get labeled "variants" b/c its under the assumption Nintendo will have one, unified library.  Why do some people speculate this?  Because of Nintendo's very own statements, and obvious necessity in terms of work load development moving forward.  The next HH will be HD, and if they are  having a rough time developing for Wii U, it will only get worse with another home console. 

Add in the fact that 3rd party support is weaker than ever, the logical conclusion is to offer ONE Nintendo experience (unified SW), with the consumer's choice in HOW they want their experience (multiple variant HW).

Then the bonus of all this: even though NX Fusion is mainly about Nintendo circling the wagons and supporting itself, with the unified install base and scalable HW, suddenly 3rd parties will have incentive to make their games available on Nintendo's platform.  Both main excuses of install base and console power get erased in one swoop. So then it all comes down to online (assuming its still weak) and type-of-audience excuses for 3rd parties to fall back on, if they decide those are big enough reasons to still not bring games to Ninty HW.



Around the Network
Hynad on 15 April 2015
shikamaru317 said:
Hynad said:
shikamaru317 said:
That would be interesting, but scaling the same library of games so they can run on all 3 systems would be challenging. there's a big power difference between 500 gflops and 2.4-3.6 tflops.


Wait... You think the new console will be between 2.4 and 3.6 TFLOPS?

Read the OP. Soundwave listed 3 hardware variants, an NX tablet with 500 gflops, an NX family console with 1-1.2 tflops, and an NX Pro console with 2.4-3.6 tflops.


I skimmed through the OP. I feel all the speculation going around the NX, with what little we have (nearly nothing) is ludicrous. But that's just me. I think it is even more ludicrous to think Nintendo will release a console more capable than the PS4 and XBO. I wish to be wrong. Because if they give the power and kind of architecture that third parties want, then we could enjoy their better games on a Nintendo platform. But after a few generation where Nintendo takes the underpowered approach, I'll believe they can release a console more powerful than their competition when they make one.



Materia-Blade on 15 April 2015
se7en7thre3 said:

@theprof00

NX Fusion's HW get labeled "variants" b/c its under the assumption Nintendo will have one, unified library.  Why do some people speculate this?  Because of Nintendo's very own statements, and obvious necessity in terms of work load development moving forward.  The next HH will be HD, and if they are  having a rough time developing for Wii U, it will only get worse with another home console. 

Add in the fact that 3rd party support is weaker than ever, the logical conclusion is to offer ONE Nintendo experience (unified SW), with the consumer's choice in HOW they want their experience (multiple variant HW).

Then the bonus of all this: even though NX Fusion is mainly about Nintendo circling the wagons and supporting itself, with the unified install base and scalable HW, suddenly 3rd parties will have incentive to make their games available on Nintendo's platform.  Both main excuses of install base and console power get erased in one swoop. So then it all comes down to online (assuming its still weak) and type-of-audience excuses for 3rd parties to fall back on, if they decide those are big enough reasons to still not bring games to Ninty HW.

"NX Fusion's HW get labeled "variants" b/c its under the assumption Nintendo will have one, unified library.  Why do some people speculate this?  Because of Nintendo's very own statements, and obvious necessity in terms of work load development moving forward. "

Unified architeture, yes. unified library, absolutely no necessity and no signs of that.

"The next HH will be HD, and if they are  having a rough time developing for Wii U, it will only get worse with another home console."

How exactly is it gonna get worse? Now they know about HD development, things will go faster.

"with the unified install base and scalable HW, suddenly 3rd parties will have incentive to make their games available on Nintendo's platform.  Both main excuses of install base and console power get erased in one swoop"

there won't be any unified installed base and third parties already have the incentives they need but ignore it.



theprof00 on 15 April 2015
se7en7thre3 said:

@theprof00

NX Fusion's HW get labeled "variants" b/c its under the assumption Nintendo will have one, unified library.  Why do some people speculate this?  Because of Nintendo's very own statements, and obvious necessity in terms of work load development moving forward.  The next HH will be HD, and if they are  having a rough time developing for Wii U, it will only get worse with another home console. 

Add in the fact that 3rd party support is weaker than ever, the logical conclusion is to offer ONE Nintendo experience (unified SW), with the consumer's choice in HOW they want their experience (multiple variant HW).

Then the bonus of all this: even though NX Fusion is mainly about Nintendo circling the wagons and supporting itself, with the unified install base and scalable HW, suddenly 3rd parties will have incentive to make their games available on Nintendo's platform.  Both main excuses of install base and console power get erased in one swoop. So then it all comes down to online (assuming its still weak) and type-of-audience excuses for 3rd parties to fall back on, if they decide those are big enough reasons to still not bring games to Ninty HW.

It's not speculation if I have a snadwich in my hand and I question if there is a sandwich in my hand.



zorg1000 on 15 April 2015
theprof00 said:
se7en7thre3 said:

@theprof00

NX Fusion's HW get labeled "variants" b/c its under the assumption Nintendo will have one, unified library.  Why do some people speculate this?  Because of Nintendo's very own statements, and obvious necessity in terms of work load development moving forward.  The next HH will be HD, and if they are  having a rough time developing for Wii U, it will only get worse with another home console. 

Add in the fact that 3rd party support is weaker than ever, the logical conclusion is to offer ONE Nintendo experience (unified SW), with the consumer's choice in HOW they want their experience (multiple variant HW).

Then the bonus of all this: even though NX Fusion is mainly about Nintendo circling the wagons and supporting itself, with the unified install base and scalable HW, suddenly 3rd parties will have incentive to make their games available on Nintendo's platform.  Both main excuses of install base and console power get erased in one swoop. So then it all comes down to online (assuming its still weak) and type-of-audience excuses for 3rd parties to fall back on, if they decide those are big enough reasons to still not bring games to Ninty HW.

It's not speculation if I have a snadwich in my hand and I question if there is a sandwich in my hand.

What are u talking about? How is that a response to what he said?



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

Around the Network
zorg1000 on 15 April 2015
theprof00 said:
zorg1000 said:


Iwata himself, he said that currently they have a hard time supporting two seperate platforms due to difference in architecture but going forward they plan to have a unified architecture and it's possible that they might increase the number of form factors available.

No they really arent, they are two completely different devices that have completely different software libraries.

Apologies, you're right. It's just software emulation.

Let me rephrase

I'm not sure why people are taking NX and running with it towards 3 new platform "speculations". Don't be mistaken, it's not that they're wrong, it's that the question doesn't make sense. 

Iwata SAID that moving forward they are going to try and integrate all their platforms to share architecture, additionally something more in line with the market (not powerPC). We already know that. What kind of hypothesis is it to question the existence of things that are already announced???

We KNOW that the next systems they release are going to be inline. When the next DS successor comes out, it will have shared architecture with the new "NX" system, and so will the next home console.

I just don't understand the point of saying things like "what if there are more than 2 NX hardware variants". Why call them variants? Why is this even a question?

They are not "variants". They are just consoles with shared architecture. Would you call PC an Xbox variant? No. They share architecture and ecosystem and it ends there.

There's so much analysis here with conclusions about things we already know.

We KNOW they want to create a platform like Apple Store
We KNOW they will be releasing hardware with inline architecture
We KNOW all of this already.

Basically what the OP is asking is will Nintendo continue to just have 1 handheld & 1 console or will they increase the number of hardware options now that they are all unified. For example

NX Portable-300 GFLOP, 2gb RAM, $199.99

NX Tablet-600 GFLOP, 4gb RAM, $299.99

NX Console-1.2 TFLOP, 8gb RAM, $199.99

NX Console Pro-1.8 TFLOP, 12gb RAM, $299.99

All these devices share the same games, just at different resolutions/graphics settings, basically the difference between Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 on 15 April 2015

I think those release dates are too close and Nintendo would be better off spacing them out a bit.

NX Portable-300 gflop, 2gb RAM, Spring 2017

NX Console-1.2 tflop, 8gb RAM, Holiday 2017

NX Tablet-600 gflop, 4gb RAM, Summer 2018

Each device can have an upgrade every 2-3 years or so.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

Zappykins on 15 April 2015

I think if they were going to do that, they would license something that makes it easy and common for developers to work on. Such as DirectX 12 or Steam OS. So developers could write scalable games in a common that would run on their system with little modifications (controllers, extra features, etc.)

They would also insure a built in dev team of all the latest 3rd party games. What if it ran the best AC: Unity?

The drawback is you might confuse and alienate consumers. Which is really something to be aware of.



 

Really not sure I see any point of Consol over PC's since Kinect, Wii and other alternative ways to play have been abandoned. 

Top 50 'most fun' game list coming soon!

 

Tell me a funny joke!
Volterra_90 on 15 April 2015

Why not? It doesn't seem strange to me. They can upgrade these devices every 3-4 years and that's it. I don't know about the technical dificulties of this, but, in PC we have low-medium-high settings, so, I don't see why this isn't possible. This plus mobile mini-games to promote their main hardware. And Nintendo could manage to support these hardwares, in case 3rd parties forget about Nintendo, like this gen.



freebs2 on 15 April 2015

What about this:
NX Handeld - AMD chipset with custom made ARM CPU + "standard" AMD GPU architecture - 200/250Gflop.

NX console - Same AMD chipset with more shader units and higher clock rate - 500/600Gflop.

NX Pro (Virtual NX) - A partnership with AMD to produce NX branded graphics cards emebedded with the NX CPU architecture. You'll get to play Nintendo games on PC on a Steam-like platform.