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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Unverified dev guesses: NX might more powerful than PS4/XBONE, based on a PC demo...

JWeinCom on 17 October 2015
midrange said:
JWeinCom said:
Honestly, I don't see the point of making something significantly more powerful than the PS4. It's not likely that third parties will scale up to it, unless the NX somehow captured the lead in market share, which would require it to sell at an absurd pace. They could use it to make Nintendo games look great, but they don't have the budgets for that, and graphics haven't been a selling point for Nintendo for well over a decade.

If the other NX rumors are true as well, Nintendo will crazy powerful chips and a portable console as a controller.. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Not likely.


If it's more powerful than the ps4, third parties will start there and work down to ps4/xbone, a plus for the NX. With Nintendo having full knowledge of their own hardware, they could probably whip up one or two blockbusters that can really take up marketshare from the ps4/xbox one, leading to more third party support. Finally, with proper marketing and a loss lead mentality, Nintendo can really make a come back for their image and regain people's fascination (this helps beyond gaming, like when trying to convince people to go to a Nintendo themed theme park, or buying Nintendo merchandise).

All of this assumes a heavy investment in power (not over the top pc setup, but noticeably better than the ps4/xbox one)


No, they won't.  Third parties are not going to start their work on an unproven system.  It's not worth putting in the extra effort unless they think the game will sell well on the NX.

Nintendo has not shown the ability to make blockbusters that will win over the types of gamers that the PS4 and XBox One sell to.  They're simply not great at creating shooters or cinematic action games. 

Nintendo regaining people's fascination doesn't require the system to be more powerful than the PS4.  The price will offset the benefit, unless they want to take a huge hit on their profits, and that probably wouldn't be a good idea.



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Tachikoma on 17 October 2015
craighopkins said:
I expect the nx to slightly out do the xboxone and PS4. 50% more powerful not likely. Just my guess though

IMO, it would be more beneficial to Nintendo to stick with the same specification APU as the Xbox One or PS4, with their own modifications just as Microsoft and Sony have done, as doing so would allow the console to have fairly good first party support with games that match the xbox one and ps4 out of the game, and since they would be using the same base off the shelf part as the competitors, the part price would drop for both nintendo and ms/sony, meaning a cheaper nx launch price and a profit margin from the start.

And lets be honest here, Nintendo games rarely need powerful hardware to look and play well anyway, so the extra power from a high priced console would frankly, be a bit of a waste, the positives would be outweighed by the negatives of the higher console cost and higher TDP



Samus Aran on 17 October 2015
JWeinCom said:
midrange said:


If it's more powerful than the ps4, third parties will start there and work down to ps4/xbone, a plus for the NX. With Nintendo having full knowledge of their own hardware, they could probably whip up one or two blockbusters that can really take up marketshare from the ps4/xbox one, leading to more third party support. Finally, with proper marketing and a loss lead mentality, Nintendo can really make a come back for their image and regain people's fascination (this helps beyond gaming, like when trying to convince people to go to a Nintendo themed theme park, or buying Nintendo merchandise).

All of this assumes a heavy investment in power (not over the top pc setup, but noticeably better than the ps4/xbox one)


No, they won't.  Third parties are not going to start their work on an unproven system.  It's not worth putting in the extra effort unless they think the game will sell well on the NX.

Nintendo has not shown the ability to make blockbusters that will win over the types of gamers that the PS4 and XBox One sell to.  They're simply not great at creating shooters or cinematic action games. 

Nintendo regaining people's fascination doesn't require the system to be more powerful than the PS4.  The price will offset the benefit, unless they want to take a huge hit on their profits, and that probably wouldn't be a good idea.

They just made a shooter that will sell 3 million + on the freaking Wii U lol.



Tachikoma on 17 October 2015
jlmurph2 said:


This is a 9th gen console though. Why would they go and make it weaker than 8th gen??

To be honest I think they should just make it backwards compatible with WiiU and scrub the WiiU, and make the new one its 8th gen replacement.
It's too early to go 9th gen spec for them, the unit prices would be sky high and the profit margins super low.

Each time they underspec/outspec they are giving third parties the middle finger and ensuring the consoles lifecycle is sparse for games.



greenmedic88 on 17 October 2015
Tachikoma said:

Two things i'm going to say.
1) SDK for NX has not yet been delivered to any companies, no hardware or NX-specific software, however some references to NX can be seen in the latest WiiU / 3DS SDK codebases.
2) Even if it had (it hasn't), the post this threads based on is clickbait.

Theres a very good reason why the PS4 and XBO are using the components that they are, and it's called profit.

If Nintendo used "top of the line" CPU/GPU you would be looking at a minimum $600 console, which would clearly not fly at retail so Nintendo would be eating a massive loss for every console sold, likely higher than any previous console in history in order to hit such spec at an inviting price, at the same time in the very post the user goes on to give himself multiple get-out clauses, such as "not yet finalized" and "and quite possibly faster than whatever Sony and Microsoft have in store." the latter one being rather silly given that it suggests that Sony and Microsofts consoles arent even out yet, when they are.

What this is, is someone taking the "chips" comment in the recent "SDK are being delivered" news and taking a stab in the dark guess for hits, masked as being legitimate, with enough get out clauses that he can backpedal and avoid the flames should it (and it will) turn out to be nonsense.

No matter how much of a Nintendo fan people are, I would advise them to consider this clickbait fantasy to avoid dissapointment/ridicule in the future.

Also OP, he doesn't claim NX has a Skylake i7, he claims one of the SDK demos "crunches so many numbers" that it cannot hit 60fps even on a Skylake i7 and "nearly top of the line" GPU. So he is essentially claiming that NX software requires hardware even MORE powerful than the latest CPU/GPU, which in itself should be setting off yours, and everyone elses red flags with ease.

Repeated for emphasis.

Even allowing for custom chipsets and economy of scale, you're not going to see comparable performance to a $1,000-1,500 gaming PC build today in a $399 or less console even two years from now. 

Nintendo's business model has reliably been based upon making profit on each unit sold from debut; they're not going to be making the equivalent of 2006's $823 BoM PS3 sold at a loss for an MSRP of $599 in 2017 or whenver the NX debuts. 



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greenmedic88 on 17 October 2015
Tachikoma said:
jlmurph2 said:


This is a 9th gen console though. Why would they go and make it weaker than 8th gen??

To be honest I think they should just make it backwards compatible with WiiU and scrub the WiiU, and make the new one its 8th gen replacement.
It's too early to go 9th gen spec for them, the unit prices would be sky high and the profit margins super low.

Each time they underspec/outspec they are giving third parties the middle finger and ensuring the consoles lifecycle is sparse for games.

It also keeps putting 3rd party developers in this uncomfortable position where they know the next Xbox and Playstation will be available within 2 years making it a high risk proposition to invest heavily into Nintendo's new platform. 



craighopkins on 17 October 2015

Hopefully we get some leaks before info is released at E3



ice on 17 October 2015

It would make sense if it was, Nintendo would be dumb to release a weaker console. I expect a sudden shift in opinions on certain topics in the future if true.



daredevil.shark on 17 October 2015

Dev kits are always powerful. PS4 had 12GB versions. Wii U had 3GB versions. But tagging myself to see the fun a year later. This thread will be a sight to see.



JWeinCom on 17 October 2015
chakkra said:
JWeinCom said:
Honestly, I don't see the point of making something significantly more powerful than the PS4. It's not likely that third parties will scale up to it, unless the NX somehow captured the lead in market share, which would require it to sell at an absurd pace. They could use it to make Nintendo games look great, but they don't have the budgets for that, and graphics haven't been a selling point for Nintendo for well over a decade.

If the other NX rumors are true as well, Nintendo will crazy powerful chips and a portable console as a controller.. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Not likely.

You gotta remember that Nintendo is gonna try to attract new consumers to buy its product. I mean, the 20 million people who will probably have bought the Wii U by then, will most certainly also buy a NX.  But I assume that Nintendo doesnt wan't just 20m buyers for their next console, so they're gonna go after the tens of millions that decided to opt for one of the other options in the market on this gen.  Now how they do that? well, it is really hard to say but reading the constant fights on forums about resolutions, frames per second, and which console is more powerfull..  I think it is safe to conclude that this generation of gamers have something in common. And that is that they want POWER.

 Let's imagine for a second a METROID game with better graphics (and with good multiplayer options) than Destiny and Halo 5. Now that's a game that could attract lots of FPS lovers from the other farms.  And what about an open world Zelda game as big as the Witcher 3?   man...

See, these are the kinds of "experiences" that apparently this generation of gamers want, so I think that's what they should give.  Unless they want to cater only to their current fanbase.  In which case, well..


It is not safe at all to assume that people want POWER.

Power has consistently been a non-factor in the mass market.  Weaker systems have consistently outsold more powerful ones.  This is the first generation in a while where the most powerful console is the best selling.  The kinds of gamers on these forums are not a random sample of gamers.  Is Call of Duty really that popular on VGChartz and sites like it?

We could imagine a Metroid game with better graphics than Destiny and Halo 5 with great multiplayer, but we're unlikely to see such a game.  Consider that Bungie has 500 people working on Destiny as of the middle of 2014.  Retro Studios, the most likely company to make such a Metroid game, has about 200 employees.  And that's not to mention the budget.  Just making a more powerful system isn't necessarily going to mean the game will look better.

There is nothing stopping Nintendo from making a Zelda game as big as the Witcher 3 with Wii U hardware if they really wanted.  Wouldn't look as smooth, but it's possible.

And if they could make these games, I don't think it would bring Nintendo to prominence.  They're not going to become successful by out PS4ing the PS4.  If they try to attack the same market three years behind, that's not going to be a winning strategy.