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

Bofferbrauer on 17 October 2015
Tachikoma said:
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

I just think they shoud up the tech a bit, meaning instead of a 8-core Jaguar and GCN 1.0 they could use late 2016 tech from AMD, meaning Zen (quadcore at around 3 Ghz should suffice) and GCN 1.3 (24 CUs, meaning 1536 Streaming processors would amply suffice; for comparison PS4 has 18 and 1152). If build in a 14/16nm process, as both are expected to be anyway, it should be possible to reach these within a 100W TDP limit and without making the chip much more expensive than the ones used by PS4/Xbox ONE. HBM or HMC however should be an option for the RAM as else the chip will starve on it's bandwith; GDDR5 is clearly on it's way out so I'm not sure if reusing that tech would be a good idea on the long term.



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AZWification on 17 October 2015

That would be pretty sweet, but I think it'll probably be on par with the PS4.



                
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Bofferbrauer 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.

Here's the problem though: POWER3 (which is what the Gamecube/Wii/Wii U is based upon) uses a slightly different instruction set than later POWER processors, whose Instruction Set only got standardised with POWER5, which means they can't go and use a more modern version of the chip. POWER8 is the last one right now and not totally compatible with POWER3, neither does his predecessor, and probably also the reason why Nintendo had to reuse the Chip and extensively modify the age-old chip for the Wii U.

Thus for backwards compatibility, they would either need to reuse the chip in NX again just for that, or make NX strong enough to emulate the Wii U, which might very well need specs higher than a PS4 to do it as thorough as Nintendo usually does with the VC



Bofferbrauer on 17 October 2015
vivster said:

"NintendoForum makes the conclusion that Nintendo is working with an established chip giant to create a proprietary and specialized CPU and GPU to outperform what is currently on the market."

Well it's not really hard to have a chip that outperforms the PS4 APU.

Actually, it does, at least without breaking the TDP limitations of a console and thus opening another can of worms (RROD, anyone?). Intel most probably ain't interested, NVidia is doing it's own thing with the shield series and support of the Steam Machines, which leaves us with AMD. AMDs hardware hasn't evolved enough yet to make a console clearly outperforming current-gen consoles. The Puma+ cores could be cranked to a low 2.x Ghz and the GCN 1.2 to 20 CU compared to 18 in the PS4, but that's about it, really. Nothing which would look noticably better than on PS4, if any better at all.

Thus we really need to wait for ZEN CPUs (first infos seem to be quite positive) and GCN 1.3 (on which AMD already said would be a substantial improvement over previous GCN versions) and 14/16nm manufacturing processes to get a substantial leap in processing power in a console.



Dante9 on 17 October 2015

What really matters is whether they can convince third parties to get on board. Plus, they'd need to come up with some totally new first party titles that would appeal to me. None of their current own games are interesting to me.
If it's just going to be further iterations of Mario, Zelda, Metroid and the like, the NX is not going to be an option, no matter the power. And I dare say I'm not alone in this.



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JWeinCom on 17 October 2015
bowserthedog said:
JWeinCom said:
chakkra said:

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.

But when systems launch at the same time i think power matters a lot more. Of coarse the xbox 360 did well and the ps2 did well but they had the major advantage of launching before their counterparts.  In the case of Nintendo they need a powerfull system so porting 3rd party games to it is easy. Like porting games to steam even though steam doesn't have huge sales numbers. Dev's do it because it's cheap. Nintendo needs to make it cheap and easy or dev's won't bother just to get an extra 500k in sales.

But why would that require being more powerful than the PS4 or XBox One?  Assuming the NX uses more standard architecture, it should be fairly easy to port so long as it is near or equal to the PS4.  Making it significantly more powerful is adding cost to the product, for the sake of power that I don't think will be used. 



Porcupine_I on 17 October 2015

If he said it was more powerful than the PS4 but not as the Xbox One, we knew he would be lying.



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

bunchanumbers on 17 October 2015
PwerlvlAmy said:
people will still try to find reasons to hate on it even if it is true


QFT

NX could be the god box that gives all gamers what they want and they will still find an excuse to not like it. The only thing that NX will prove is the hypocrisy of these gamers. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it had 3rd party. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it was powerful. They claim that they would get a Nintendo system if it had the online features and achievements they crave etc. etc. etc.

All NX will really prove is that these people are hypocrites.



Qwark on 17 October 2015
bunchanumbers said:
PwerlvlAmy said:
people will still try to find reasons to hate on it even if it is true


QFT

NX could be the god box that gives all gamers what they want and they will still find an excuse to not like it. The only thing that NX will prove is the hypocrisy of these gamers. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it had 3rd party. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it was powerful. They claim that they would get a Nintendo system if it had the online features and achievements they crave etc. etc. etc.

All NX will really prove is that these people are hypocrites.


Why is everyone so sure that the NX is a godbox, history proved Nintendo didn't make a god system since the N64. After thst the PS2, Xbox 360, PS3 and now PS4 is the godbox for consolegamers. They would get a Nintendo system worth buying as a PRIMAIRY SYSTEM and Nintendo hasn't produced such hardware for gamers since the N64. For as far as I care Nintendo is still miles behind on third party support and online features, people who buy the NX as the Wii U (like me) blindly will prove that a few exclusives make blind. Nintendo has to prove that they can make a system which is compareable in both software diversity and hardware as the PS4, and honestly I don't see that happening.

Since I will not ever buy a Nintendo console on launch again, with playstation or an xbox however I know and I like what I get. A good performing piece of hardware which can play many games I like in the first way with practically no draughts after the first year and a giant library.



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

bunchanumbers on 17 October 2015
Qwark said:
bunchanumbers said:


QFT

NX could be the god box that gives all gamers what they want and they will still find an excuse to not like it. The only thing that NX will prove is the hypocrisy of these gamers. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it had 3rd party. They claim they would get a Nintendo system if it was powerful. They claim that they would get a Nintendo system if it had the online features and achievements they crave etc. etc. etc.

All NX will really prove is that these people are hypocrites.


Why is everyone so sure that the NX is a godbox, history proved Nintendo didn't make a god system since the N64. After thst the PS2, Xbox 360, PS3 and now PS4 is the godbox for consolegamers. They would get a Nintendo system worth buying as a PRIMAIRY SYSTEM and Nintendo hasn't produced such hardware for gamers since the N64. For as far as I care Nintendo is still miles behind on third party support and online features, people who buy the NX as the Wii U (like me) blindly will prove that a few exclusives make blind. Nintendo has to prove that they can make a system which is compareable in both software diversity and hardware as the PS4, and honestly I don't see that happening.

Since I will not ever buy a Nintendo console on launch again, with playstation or an xbox however I know and I like what I get. A good performing piece of hardware which can play many games I like in the first way with practically no draughts after the first year and a giant library.


PS2 wasn't the god box. I believe it was actually the weakest of its generation. Even Dreamcast stood tall in many other aspects compared to PS2. The only thing that PS2 really had as far as hardware goes was DVD playback, and that was its biggest selling point.