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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Emily Rogers: NX not gonna use X86 architecture, raw power close to XBO

Frogger on 14 May 2016
Soundwave said:
spemanig said:

Doesn't need a gimmick. Polaris was a fantasy. And what did I say? People thinking x86 was a guarantee were dreaming.

I also have said from day one that the NX doesn't need to be more powerful than the PS4. It could be weaker than the XBO and sell phenominally. All it needs is parity with the other who, which it will have. Anyone who thinks that the PS4's success has anything what-so-ever to do with it's power in comparison to the XBO has absolutely no idea what they are talking about and anyone who thinks that the NX needs to be more powerful than the PS4 to have a chance of succeeding also has no idea what they're talking about.

What's fantastical about a Polaris 11? It's a cheap laptop chip, Nintendo fans have become so used to underpowered hardware that they think Polaris is something special. Even the Polaris 10 (the desktop) is a mid-range GPU for 2017. Asking for a Polaris 11 wasn't asking for a whole lot.

Personally I don't think it will do very well if its the weakest console on the market behind PS4 Neo, PS4, and even the XBox One and coming last. It would need some kind of incredible gimmick or it has to be a portable for that to gain any traction. Consumers today just don't give enough of a shit about Nintendo to put up with all that and third parties are not even going to try.

This is assuming what Emily is saying is spot on and the console is basically just a traditional console. Almost 4 years late to the market and still under powered is just ... kinda sad if true.

What's fantastical is that thinking it was a possibility it was based on nothing.

You not thinking a console behind the PS4 could sell is a symptom of your lack of understanding of how and why consoles sell, not a telling sign of any sort of inevitable reality. Doesn't need a controller/display gimmick to sell better than the PS4 once it launches and it definitely doesn't need to be portable. Thinking it does, once again, shows a severe lack of understanding for why the PS4 succeeded and why other consoles have failed. PS4 would be selling exactly what it is now if it were weaker than the XBO. Exactly. Power didn't help it one iota against the XBO or Wii U. Nobody cares about the PS4's power. They only say they do because it just so happens to be more powerful. If the PS4 was significantly weaker than the XBO but still on par enough to get every port, it would still get all the exclusive japanese games, it would still get the exclusive marketing deals, it would still be the world leader in console sales, and PS4 owners would be saying "graphics don't matter." Because they don't matter.

The consumer will give plenty of shits about Nintendo once they have a good platform out with the NX, and third parties are definitely going to be there. March 2017 is not "almost 4 years," it's "barely 3 years" which is nothing to systems that will last at least 8 years each.



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Soundwave on 14 May 2016
spemanig said:
Soundwave said:

What's fantastical about a Polaris 11? It's a cheap laptop chip, Nintendo fans have become so used to underpowered hardware that they think Polaris is something special. Even the Polaris 10 (the desktop) is a mid-range GPU for 2017. Asking for a Polaris 11 wasn't asking for a whole lot.

Personally I don't think it will do very well if its the weakest console on the market behind PS4 Neo, PS4, and even the XBox One and coming last. It would need some kind of incredible gimmick or it has to be a portable for that to gain any traction. Consumers today just don't give enough of a shit about Nintendo to put up with all that and third parties are not even going to try.

This is assuming what Emily is saying is spot on and the console is basically just a traditional console. Almost 4 years late to the market and still under powered is just ... kinda sad if true.

What's fantastical is that thinking it was a possibility it was based on nothing.

You not thinking a console behind the PS4 could sell is a symptom of your lack of understanding of how and why consoles sell, not a telling sign of any sort of inevitable reality. Doesn't need a controller/display gimmick to sell better than the PS4 once it launches and it definitely doesn't need to be portable. Thinking it does, once again, shows a severe lack of understanding for why the PS4 succeeded and why other consoles have failed. PS4 would be selling exactly what it is now if it were weaker than the XBO. Exactly. Power didn't help it one iota against the XBO or Wii U. Nobody cares about the PS4's power. They only say they do because it just so happens to be more powerful. If the PS4 was significantly weaker than the XBO but still on par enough to get every port, it would still get all the exclusive japanese games, it would still get the exclusive marketing deals, it would still be the world leader in console sales, and PS4 owners would be saying "graphics don't matter." Because they don't matter.

The consumer will give plenty of shits about Nintendo once they have a good platform out with the NX, and third parties are definitely going to be there. March 2017 is not "almost 4 years," it's "barely 3 years" which is nothing to systems that will last at least 8 years each.

I don't think so, having the "better" versions of all the major third party multiplats has certainly helped Sony this gen so did MS pricing the XBox One at $499.

But Nintendo doesn't have any of that to capitalize on .... PS4 will be $299.99 with thousands of games, millions of players (and people want to play where their friends already are), and have superior multiplats to what this NX is going to get. XBOne might be even lower than that by next March ($250 perhaps).

Honestly I don't think a lot of major developers are even going to bother with this thing, EA sounds very non-commital and if they're not in, Rockstar is almost definitely in that case not in.

This is not going to have equal third party support at all, and what it does get are going to be shittier versions. Who the hell is supposed to be excited by this?

This has to be a portable or its Wii U all over again (too late console with underwhelming specs). I wouldn't be all that surprised if XBox 2 is ready for fall 2017, thus making all the attention about PS4 Neo Vs. XB2. No one is going to give a shit about some rinky dink little 1 TFLOP or less Nintendo console, just like the Wii U.



Normchacho on 14 May 2016
spemanig said:
Captain_Yuri said:

What the tits is a "SideKick"?

Hmm, interesting. Saying that it's iphone's level of a revolution is quite a high expectation. I hope you are right cause Nintendo certainly needs that kind of a revolution!

Sidekick was... Hell I'll just show you.

 

My point is clear. Blackberry and Sidekick where the top-of-the-line phones of the time, but at that time no one was expecting something like the iphone to come in and literally redefine what a cellphone was. The PS4 and XBO are in a similar position right now with those two phones. They are the perfected encarnations of an antiquated hardware model. You can see tha creaking with stuff like Neo.

NX, from what I've been putting together, is going to completely redefine what a console is. It's going to be a firmware, UI, OS, and platform revolution, though. That's what's going to make this thing click with consumers. That may sound boring to you, but it's literally going to change the way home gaming. Part of making that work is going to be making it digital only for numerous reason I've reiterated in this forums for years now, which a lot of forum dwellers cringe at. It's going to be an integral factor in making this platform shine though, as well as backwards compatability.

I've said this before, but the importance of BC for NX has literally nothing to do with letting people play their old games and has everything to do with launching the NX with a robust market place of legacy. In other words, Wii U BC isn't important for Wii U games. It's important for NES, SNES, GBC, DS, N64, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, AND NX games, all available under one marketplace on day one. People have a very, understandably, warped view of what BC means because they are used to how it used to function on the old way, but this new way turns virtual console into just console, because everything is virtual. I've yet to see a single person understand what I'm talking about here because they can't get their heads away from how BC used to work. BC for the NX isn't about letting your old games run on new hardware - it's about giving NX the tools to offer Nintendo's legacy of platforms from the get go and building on from there.

All that, and more, is indeed a revolution, which is what DeNA were hired for, and the real reason behind My Nintendo and Nintendo Accounts. My Nintendo rewards are pretty worthless until you apply it to a digital only marketplace. Then it literally makes that marketplace Steam-like in its discounts, which is exactly what I said it would do. Imagine Nintendo adding 3rd party/indie games to the reward list as a way to promote them the same way PS+ does with "free" games. Imagine getting platinum points for achievements in games, again, also being accessable to 3rd parties. Imagine not needing to go on your phone or laptop to access your My Nintendo account because its integrally integrated into the UI of the NX. Imagine playing AssCreed 46 at home on your NX console, turning it off, getting on the train, and then continuing where you left off on your NX handheld because cross save/buy are a seemless and automatic thing.

Now stop imagining, because that's probably exactly what NX is. Next level shit, yo.

What you're describing is not an Iphone moment for consoles. At best it's a step ahead of a future that we already see is coming. 

Every next generation console is going to be fully compatible with games from this gen, and both Sony and MS have alredy started getting older games onto the newer platforms to that they'll be there in the future. This is clear as day and has been pretty much since they revealed that the PS4 and Xbox One use X86.

The home console market is also not ready for digital only. It's simply not, and certainly not from a Nintendo console. Partially because a majority of gamers still buy their games physically, partially because retailers make all of their money on games and they need them to sell their consoles, and partially the two other players in the console market haven't even really begun to push it yet. Nintendo going fully digital would be like MS trying to do always online in 2013. Gamers and major retailers would reject it, and they'd have options to go to when they did.

You talk about remote play and cross buy like they are this utopian thing that nobody has ever seen before while at the same time ignoring their limitations. Having the same game on a mobile and home patform is great. But it needs to be able to work on both platforms. Is Assassins creed whatever going to be able to work on the PS5, Xbox 2, NX home console, and NX handheld? How limited is the handheld version going to have to be for that to work? Is Ubisoft going to be okay with only selling their game once instead of twice? Is EA going to be okay with cross buy? Is Activision? They are going to have to put in the work to make two different versions after all. Since nobody in their right mind would sell and handheld and a home console close enough in power for one version to work on both. Since you'd either have a pathetically weak console, or a $1000 handheld.

None of this even takes into account this rumor either. If this doesn't use X86 and is around an Xbox One in terms of raw power...None of this matters. Because unless sales explode right out of the game, third parties won't make games for a sytems that's more limited and harder to develop for. Especially one that wants them to sell two versions of a game for the price of one and won't let them sell physical games.



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Pemalite on 14 May 2016
Soundwave said:

They have very poor odds of third party support now I'd say. No x86 and a weaker chip than the PS4 ... third parties are not going to even bother. At least the Western ones.

In no fucking way is XBox One performance modern unless this a portable device either.

Just because it's not x86 doesn't mean it won't garner 3rd party support and it doesn't make it weaker, a decent ARM and PowerPC chip can beat a low-end cheap chip like Jaguar without much hassle.

Games these days aren't typically built to the metal anyway, anymore.

maxleresistant said:

There is a tons of differences between a wii u and a Xbox one . Those are checkboxes Nintendo needs to tick so that it can be in the race. It s not just about power

-X86 instead of power pc (power pc is over and done)

-8GB of RAM vs 2GB on WiiU

-at least 500GB of HDD

-better OS and online service with more functionalities

 

These are the requirements. Now, problem is things have changed since 2013, the NEO and one.5 could change a lot of things

PowerPC is fine. But Nintendo would more than likely go with ARM, AMD is an ARM licensee and has done the R&D.

I would hope for more than 8Gb of Ram, but 8Gb would be sufficient in a cost sensitive device, hopefully they keep the OS footprint small unlike Sony and Microsoft.

sc94597 said:

If it is not x86 and it is a modern architecture, then the only thing I can think of is ARM. She better be right about her sources, because otherwise all of this can come crashing down ruining her reputation. Sorry, I am always skeptical about "second-hand" information. Remember that telephone game we all used to play in school?

IBM constantly works on PowerPC, improving it's performance, thus it also has a "modern architecture". - It's a pretty vague stament anyway and really could mean anything.

cesarmgc said:

Well a nintendo console with the Xone power will be nice... this gen still has 4 years maybe 5 of life....

I was hoping the Neo marked the half way point. So 3 years with some luck!

Fei-Hung said:
Price point will play a huge factor in how successful the NX is if these rumours are true.

It sounds like it will be less powerful than the X1 and since it isn't X86 like the other two, porting games may not be as easy. In other words, if they release another underpowered console 3 years into the current generation, at a similar or higher price to the current consoles, it will not only be a hard sell to consumers, but to developers too.

Nintendo's targeted Audience (Younger, Casual etc'.) typically are more price sensative than the market demographic that Microsoft and Sony target.
If that is the case, performance isn't likely to be a massive factor if Nintendo markets itself right, Nintendo had great success with the Wii despite the power disadvantage.

Slimebeast said:

I really hope Nintendo decides not to use ARM as the CPU instead of x86, because that would mean that AMD wouldn't be allowed to make it. With an x86 AMD CPU the Nintendo NX would get just the computation power it needs.

I want both components of the NX, the CPU as well as the GPU to be provided by AMD. I love AMD.


AMD is an ARM licensee. AMD can make ARM processors. AMD has done the R&D to make ARM processors. AMD has made ARM processors.
ARM processors can also be more powerfull than x86 processors.

ARM processors would give Nintendo a massive advantage with support from Android and iOS software ecosystems, if they open themselves up to it, the point is, it's just as easy to develop and port to ARM as it is to x86.

Soundwave said:

So now the rumor is they're not even using AMD at all but Nvidia, lol.

What?

lmaobox said:
I predicted something like this months ago on another board and the losers there all laughed at me.

Cerny did a remarkable job designing the PS4 SoC. It was revolutionary and incredibly efficient in terms of both power and manufacturing costs. Nintendo and Microsoft weren't able to reverse-engineer the PS4 SoC in time, so they have to settle for weaker consoles. I don't think the Xbone 1.5 will be as strong as the base PS4.

Then there's the issue of economies of scale. AMD is probably giving SONY a kick-ass deal on their SoCs while charging and arm and a leg to both MS and Nintendo. Higher volume customers are more valued than low volume customers.

Cerny didn't design the PS4 SoC. AMD designed it. Cerny just asked AMD for a set of hardware specifications and AMD did all the hard work.

And the reason why Cerny and Sony cannot design an x86 SoC is simple. They don't hold an x86 license, thus by LAW they aren't allowed to.

Guitarguy said:
Teeqoz said:
Good for Nintendo. Launching a console at 400$ to compete with PS4K/Neo just wouldn't have been a good move at all.

I agree actually. Nintendo should do their own thing. It is pretty evident that trying to mimick the path of the PS4/Xbox One will be an instant death for the NX, so I think Nintendo need to do something different. However, by not using X86 architecture it will make 3rd party ports much harder and developers less open to it. Who really knows until the official specs and console are revealed. So many 'verified' rumors on Reddit and NeoGaf have been debunked(remember the COD: Bloodlines rumor for 2016 coming to NX?).

ARM is just as easy to work with as x86, porting shouldn't be to much of an issue.

Normchacho said:
With that out of the way...Holy shit this had better not be true...There's no fucking way they're that dumb. NO. FUCKING. WAY.

Releasing a console less powerful than the base PS4 that doesn't even use X86 in 2017? It had better give out hand jobs if they want to sell these things. Word of mouth is going to crush this thing.

The only way this realistically works if it's like $200 when it launches.

More power is always better, the Playstation 4 released underpowered, so something better than that so the device can stay in the market for the long yards would be fantastic.

ARM wouldn't hold that back though, ARM can be just as fast as x86 and would enable Nintendo to tap into the mobile markets software ecosystem fairly easily.



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vivster on 14 May 2016

If it's not ARM and instead PowerPC again I'm going to laugh my ass off.



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Frogger on 14 May 2016
Soundwave said:

I don't think so, having the "better" versions of all the major third party multiplats has certainly helped Sony this gen so did MS pricing the XBox One at $499.

But Nintendo doesn't have any of that to capitalize on .... PS4 will be $299.99 with thousands of games, millions of players (and people want to play where their friends already are), and have superior multiplats to what this NX is going to get. XBOne might be even lower than that by next March ($250 perhaps).

Honestly I don't think a lot of major developers are even going to bother with this thing, EA sounds very non-commital and if they're not in, Rockstar is almost definitely in that case not in.

This is not going to have equal third party support at all, and what it does get are going to be shittier versions. Who the hell is supposed to be excited by this?

This has to be a portable or its Wii U all over again (too late console with underwhelming specs). I wouldn't be all that surprised if XBox 2 is ready for fall 2017, thus making all the attention about PS4 Neo Vs. XB2. No one is going to give a shit about some rinky dink little 1 TFLOP or less Nintendo console, just like the Wii U.

No, it has not. Not recovering from a massive PR disaster 5 months before launch is what helped Sony this gen. NX will easily outsell PS4 at $300 and XBO at $250, even if it costs more.

I think you're absolutely false about devs. Bethesda has a reason to stay clear of NX in the beginning. That's it. Everyone else will jump in, because it would be a bad business move not to, and once it proves its success, the effort will grow even more prominent. It's definitely going to have on par 3rd party support, because it will have an on par system. Having a weaker version literally won't matter, just like it didn't for PS2.

It's not and it won't. It's not too late as it's not releasing at the end of a console cycle, but at what is the relative beginning. PS4 and XBO are barely 2.5 years old. You're eggadurating because of your lack of understanding. Neo and XB2 won't matter in the slightest to the success of NX. All those do are help keep momentum from falling off for the platforms they are succeeding. It's like saying people won't by the iPhone 5S because of the Blackberry L2Y or whatever. Nobody gives a shit. Apple is Apple. This year PS4 is PS4. Next year, NX will be NX, and no incremental hardware upgrade by comparatively obsolete hardware designs are going to stop that success.

Blackberry can be 50% more powerful, but it will still never be an iPhone.



setsunatenshi on 14 May 2016
spemanig said:
Soundwave said:

What's fantastical about a Polaris 11? It's a cheap laptop chip, Nintendo fans have become so used to underpowered hardware that they think Polaris is something special. Even the Polaris 10 (the desktop) is a mid-range GPU for 2017. Asking for a Polaris 11 wasn't asking for a whole lot.

Personally I don't think it will do very well if its the weakest console on the market behind PS4 Neo, PS4, and even the XBox One and coming last. It would need some kind of incredible gimmick or it has to be a portable for that to gain any traction. Consumers today just don't give enough of a shit about Nintendo to put up with all that and third parties are not even going to try.

This is assuming what Emily is saying is spot on and the console is basically just a traditional console. Almost 4 years late to the market and still under powered is just ... kinda sad if true.

What's fantastical is that thinking it was a possibility it was based on nothing.

You not thinking a console behind the PS4 could sell is a symptom of your lack of understanding of how and why consoles sell, not a telling sign of any sort of inevitable reality. Doesn't need a controller/display gimmick to sell better than the PS4 once it launches and it definitely doesn't need to be portable. Thinking it does, once again, shows a severe lack of understanding for why the PS4 succeeded and why other consoles have failed. PS4 would be selling exactly what it is now if it were weaker than the XBO. Exactly. Power didn't help it one iota against the XBO or Wii U. Nobody cares about the PS4's power. They only say they do because it just so happens to be more powerful. If the PS4 was significantly weaker than the XBO but still on par enough to get every port, it would still get all the exclusive japanese games, it would still get the exclusive marketing deals, it would still be the world leader in console sales, and PS4 owners would be saying "graphics don't matter." Because they don't matter.

The consumer will give plenty of shits about Nintendo once they have a good platform out with the NX, and third parties are definitely going to be there. March 2017 is not "almost 4 years," it's "barely 3 years" which is nothing to systems that will last at least 8 years each.

Based on which precedent are you saying this? Which Nintendo console since the SNES had any 3rd party support? And the SNES was the most powerful console at the time when compared with the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

I'm not disagreeing that the PS4 would still outsell the X1 even if it was moderatly less powerful btw, but they have plenty of things going for them that Nintendo does not have for many generations.



Normchacho on 14 May 2016
Pemalite said:
Normchacho said:
With that out of the way...Holy shit this had better not be true...There's no fucking way they're that dumb. NO. FUCKING. WAY.

Releasing a console less powerful than the base PS4 that doesn't even use X86 in 2017? It had better give out hand jobs if they want to sell these things. Word of mouth is going to crush this thing.

The only way this realistically works if it's like $200 when it launches.

More power is always better, the Playstation 4 released underpowered, so something better than that so the device can stay in the market for the long yards would be fantastic.

ARM wouldn't hold that back though, ARM can be just as fast as x86 and would enable Nintendo to tap into the mobile markets software ecosystem fairly easily.

You are correct that ARM would be fine. But I still think releasing a console weaker than the PS4 is suicide unless Nintendo plans to market the NX as a cheap secondary console. Mostly because I agree with you that I think Neo marks the halfway point to the PS5. What is Nintendo going to do when the next Playstation and Xbox launch in 2019 and suck all the third parties up with them?



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Soundwave on 14 May 2016

I personally don't think the PS4 would be no.1 if it didn't have a decided horsepower advantage. By having this advantage it means it gets the best versions of the big multiplats.

When the PS4/XB1 are so close together people do look for what the difference is, and the PS4 had better performance. Unless you're going to die without Halo, what was the incentive to choose an XB1 over a PS4?

Their main utility as game devices is to play 3rd party titles and the PS4 does that better than the XB1 does. Once people started choosing the PS4 it creates a snowball effect where now your friend has a PS4, so I mean you're going to buy a PS4 too to be able to play online with them (South Park parodied this very well).



zorg1000 on 14 May 2016
Soundwave said:

PS4 will be $299.99 with thousands of games, millions of players (and people want to play where their friends already are), and have superior multiplats to what this NX is going to get. XBOne might be even lower than that by next March ($250 perhaps).

Ok so let me get this straight, people wont buy a $299 XBO/PS4 level console from Nintendo because those devices will have thousands of games and millions of players who want to play with friends?

If PS4/XBO having thousands of games and millions of players are going to stop people from buying a $299 NX than why would they buy a $399 NX that is moderately more powerful?



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