This is right up Nintendo's alley. They would customize to be weaker. They did that with Wii U. If memory serves they downclocked it so that it would run cool.

For me, the biggest piece of rumor regarding Switch's power remains the notion that it can run Dark Souls 3. I don't think there should have been any doubt that the system would be weaker than a PS4. I find the notion that it can be 100% on par with th Xbox One to be kind of dubious, especially since the power difference between a One and a 4 really isn't THAT stark. The only concern I have is whether or not it is two weak to run low end versions of technologically advanced current gen games, something that neither the Wii or Wii U could do. The Dark Souls 3 rumor would seem to indicate that it can. January 12 really cannot come soon enough, though.

Whole Wii U CPU is heavily customized CPU, that doesn't have anything with downclock, custom CPU and downclock are two different things.

Yes rumour saying that Nintendo download Wii U CPU before Wii U launch, and Wii U CPU actually ended being Wii U bottleneck, I dont think after Wii U they making machine that has some bottleneck.

Maxwell and Pascal are very similar in design - the main difference is the production process of 28nm vs 16nm, the later being much more energy efficient. I hope that Nvidia was pushing for something better than 6 year old fabrication technology.

So John from Digital Foundry was right

He was also saying that SoC is gonna be Tegra X1

That brings up another questions... will there be a retail console using the X2 - Nvidia shield Tablet 2? Maybe even coming before the Switch to the market?

Also a video introducing the newest Switch hardware!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz8R9iAk4Ls

Tegra Maxwell is 20nm not 28nm, and Tegra Maxwell technology is from last year technology.

Last infos we had is that Nvidia canceld Shield Tablet 2, and Nvidia Switch deal with Nintendo apparently had something with that decision.

Why the f...... h... should that thing be able to play games in 4k?????????

That f....... ps4 pro cant even do that.

if this rumour turns out to be true then brace for disappointment in many fronts, processing power, energy efficiency and even cost.

older chips in bigger sizes don't go down in price as time goes by so much as using current tech.

bigger sized chip means higher TDP which is killer for a handheld, so expect the battery not lasting as long as it would under Pascal.

the amount of crow that should be eaten will be monumental considering the claims some diehard fans had this past summer. I will be shocked if Nintendo actually is serious about going Maxwell, that's way too dumb even for their usual hardware standards

It's not, they are wrong. The Pascal variant wouldn't reach X1, the Maxwell one will be closer to half X1's power. I don't like to use flops as argument, but Pascal Tegra is 750 Gflops and Maxwell Tegra is 512 Gflops. When translating this to X1 equivalent performance, it's probably even weaker.

I don't think this will have a lot of influence in how it succeds. The 3rd party support would be limited anyway, better to go with the cheaper SoC than try to make publishers happy. Just go for an aggressive 175 bucks price point. It's feasible.