Nintendo Switch

[Sambob]

I dunno if they will nail the launch in unexpected ways, i think it is shaping up to be solid though. 

 

Overestimating Nintendo is the new underestimating Nintendo. 

[Manicm]

I slight leak on the amiibo Facebook page,  the official Nintendo one, they state that amiibo will work with the new Zelda on both wii u and switch, amiibo support continues!!

[Manicm]

Did they? I missed that..

[Jimboxy]

Heyyy-eyyyy (Heyyy-eyyy)

[DisturbedSwan]

More Switch leaks:

 

http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/12/report-nintendo-switch-dock-increases-performance-not-via-extra-hardware/

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Hey all, it has been a while.

 

We have recently learned through a source at Nintendo connected to the organisation of an upcoming hands on press event that the Nintendo Switch Dock does increase the performance of the handheld, but not due to any additional processing in the dock.

 

When the system is connected to the dock by USB-C, the system’s components will run at a higher clock speed to facilitate 1080p resolutions on the TV. Both video and power will be transfered over USB-C when docked. Plugging the system into the dock will also activate a small additional fan to help with cooling when run at that higher clock speed. This fan is in the rear of the dock, and there is a gap in the back of the dock to allow the system’s inbuilt fans to vent when docked.

 

The dock is incredibly light weight and, while it does play a part in increasing system performance on the TV, it is designed to be cheap to produce. The intention is that some time after launch additional docks will be sold to place in differing rooms if you have multiple TVs.

 

Nintendo’s January 13th 2017 reveal events will feature near retail level hardware. Each title will be locked to playing one game demo, but press will be free to take the systems to a separate area of the event to play on sofas rather than the TV. When returning to TVs, they will not be required to return the system to the same dock it started at.

 

The event will be held in a large number of small sessions, each with a minimal number of press in attendance to ensure hardware is kept track of. UK Press are required to RSVP for the event by 11:59PM December 8th 2016. The location of the reveal event has not been made known to press. Let’s Play Video Games were not amongst the outlets invited to this event. They did not respond to our request for an invite to the event when we learned invites had been sent out.

 

 

http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/12/report-dark-souls-3-running-on-switch-from-software-considering-trilogy-rerelease/

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Hey Switch news hounds, it’s time for MORE NEWS!!!

 

Many have been wondering since the reveal of third party Nintendo Switch development partners what From Software have in the works for the system. Well, we’ve got sources telling us a little of that info.

 

According to one of our sources, From Software has Dark Souls 3 running on the Nintendo Switch with a level of performance they are happy with. They have not committed to releasing it yet, but discussions internally at the company have discussed the financial viability of re releasing the main three Dark Souls titles on the Switch with their DLC bundled in.

 

Development on a Switch port has been underway for several months via a small team, with From Software waiting to see initial sales data before committing to producing ports. The plan would be for a Switch rerelease of Dark Souls 3 if greenlit to release the same day as PS4, Xbox One and PC receive versions with all DLC included.

So, how would you feel about handheld Dark Souls?

 

 

http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/12/report-koei-tecmo-pitched-nintendo-a-star-fox-warriors-title-it-was-rejected/

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Seeing as Nintendo already do not like me, I guess we’re in a situation now where I may as well just report what I know. Get ready folks.

 

According to sources at Nintendo, back in early 2016 Koei Tecmo pitched the company on creating a Star Fox themed Warriors title in the vain of Hyrule Warriors. The title, which would have very similarly featured largely melee combat between characters from the Star Fox universe alongside some space dogfighting gameplay, was turned down by Nintendo due to questions regarding the future of the brand. Koei Tecmo’s project would have avoided motion controls, focused on alternating missions between ground combat and a simplified space combat system designed to be simple to control and visually over the top.

 

It is unclear which system the project was pitched for development on.

 

While the project never left the design stage, we have been told that Tecmo Koei still wants to work on another Nintendo franchise Warriors title, and Nintendo are still open to working on such a project.

 

I do have to wonder how much of a role Star Fox Zero’s critical reception played in this set of choices.

 

 

[Hendo]

Portable Dark Souls would be amazing.

[Whiskey_chaser]

6 hours ago, Hendo said:

Portable Dark Souls would be amazing.

 

Now i can throw an entire console against the wall in frustration instead of just the controller!!!

[DisturbedSwan]

The leaks keep coming

 

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Nintendo Switch will be able to play GameCube games via its Virtual Console service, three separate sources have confirmed to Eurogamer.

 

GameCube support is already tested and working, we understand, and three Nintendo games have already been prepped for Switch.

 

Those games are Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

 

Wii, Wii U and 3DS have all offered a Virtual Console service for downloading games released on earlier Nintendo hardware. Switch will be no different.

 

And while the number of platforms to be offered on Switch's Virtual Console has yet to be nailed down, we've heard that there should be an upgrade programme similar to that available on Wii U, where earlier purchases of Virtual Console NES games can be 'upgraded' for a small fee rather than being bought again at full price.

 

We've also heard that Nintendo Switch's Virtual Console is being engineered by (Nintendo European Research and Development) NERD, the studio behind the recent NES Mini micro-console which sold out in many stores ahead of Christmas.

 

Up next on its slate? A version of the GameCube Animal Crossing is currently being tested for potential release.

 

Animal Crossing is a particularly interesting title as it included more than a dozen NES classics - such as Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda - to obtain and play within the game.

Impressively, we've heard that support for these games is currently in Animal Crossing's Virtual Console build and working. So, if all goes to plan, you would be able to be play an emulated NES game within an emulated GameCube game on your Switch on the bus.

 

Nintendo is also looking at Switch support for the Wii U's GameCube controller adaptor peripheral, although we understand that a final decision has not yet been made.

Fans have been asking for GameCube titles to be made available on Virtual Console for years - so, why now?

 

Switch's increased power from Wii U is certainly a factor. Digital Foundry actually ran tests to see how the GameCube's Dolphin emulator runs on Nvidia Tegra X1 mobile technology - the chipset which powers Switch.

 

The results were promising and suggested Switch should be able to run each game at least as well as its original state. How much better, of course, will depend on Switch's final hardware.

 

Another big push behind GameCube Virtual Console, we hear, is the desire within Nintendo to continue making Super Smash Bros. Melee easily playable. 15 years on from its initial release, Melee is still a hugely popular game in the esports scene, and a regular major draw at huge competitions such as Evo.

 

Melee's easy availability via Switch Virtual Console will help matters, rather than relying on aging hardware or third-party emulation.

 

Nintendo declined to comment when contacted for this article.

 

Switch is set to launch in March 2017, and be revealed in further detail at an event in early January.

 

Eurogamer recently reported that the Switch would have a 6.2" 720p multi-touch screen and next year host its own version of Pokémon Sun and Moon, code-named Pokémon Stars.

 

 

[retroed]

Reggie debuts the Switch on Jimmy Fallon show. 

 

 

[retroed]

Reggie debuts the Switch on Jimmy Fallon show. Plays Zelda on actual hardware, skip to sound half way. 

 

 

[Sambob]

Saw that earlier on. I was more impressed by the Mario Run stuff, thought that looked really cool and really felt like they put much more effort into demonstrating that than they did Zelda. Really felt like Jimmy was pushing Zelda for them.

[DisturbedSwan]

Mobile games don't really float my boat for the most part so I was cringing a bit when Jimmy was getting so excited about SMR, Zelda looked great though and it was a good showing for Nintendo, shown to just the audience they are looking for.

[DisturbedSwan]

Timings announced for the Jan 13th presser:

 

Nintendo announced that they’re hosting their Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017 on January 12 at 8:00pm PT/11:00pm ET, and in Europe on 5:00am CET and 1:00pm JST on January 13, 2017.

 

Gonna be a struggle staying up until 4am UK time but I'll manage.

[DisturbedSwan]

Signed up, doubt I'll get anywhere but give it a go.

[DisturbedSwan]

Clock speeds revealed:

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-switch-spec-analysis

 

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Spec reveals are never easy. Months - sometimes years - of anticipation build after initial teasers. Rumours circulate, patent applications are scoured for hints of what the platform holders might be planning, anonymous sources spring up telling us exactly what we want to hear - and then reality hits. Recently, Venturebeat essentially reconfirmed a Digital Foundry report from July, revealing that Nintendo Switch is based on Nvidia's Tegra X1, featuring a GPU based on second generation Maxwell technology. For those hoping for Xbox One power in a portable, it was a blow. Uncertainty remains on how Nintendo has customised the X1 processor, but we can go one step further today in revealing how the power of the console adjusts as Switch transitions from home console into a full portable.

 

But first, let's dissect the Venturebeat story a little and add our own flavour. In April this year, we first learned that Nvidia tech was 'inside' the Nintendo NX, as it was known then. Further sources came forward across the months to corroborate the story, then sometime in July, Nintendo of Europe held a large event at its Frankfurt HQ where the kit was demoed in action to a very large audience. Both Digital Foundry and Eurogamer now had all the confirmation required to run our stories. From our perspective, the next step was to push further and hammer down the final specification - but this was not easy.

 

In our story, we speculated that the March 2017 release would allow Nintendo to transition from the Tegra X1 to the more modern Tegra X2 utilising Pascal technology using a FinFET processor production technology, opening the door to better performance and/or longer battery life. Nvidia itself claimed that the custom processor in Switch is based on 'the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards' - seemingly a stone-wall indicator that Pascal was in Switch (all of the most powerful GPUs on the market when that statement was made were based on Pascal, after all).

 

Now, to be fair to Nvidia, Tegra X1's Maxwell was the final iteration of the architecture and does have technological aspects that are found in Pascal: specifically, double-rate FP16 support. We're also told that Switch has bespoke customisations that may involve pulling in other Pascal optimisations. And it's also worth noting that at the nuts and bolts level, Pascal and Maxwell are already very similar. So with that in mind, the main difference comes down to the process technology: 20nm in Maxwell, 16nm FinFET in Pascal. Regardless, behind the scenes, sources inform us that Nintendo continued to brief developers with a spec that is uncannily similar to this Twitter leak that actually surfaced before the official reveal - and in crucial areas, it's a match for a stock Tegra X1.

 

This leaked spec actually appeared on Twitter before Nintendo's official reveal. Thought by many to be out of date or fake, we can confirm that Nintendo has briefed developers recently with the same information. One source tells us that the 4K30 aspect of the spec was not part of the developer presentation, but everything else was. We can assume that the clock-speeds are theoretical maximums, and not the 768/307.2MHz combo we've confirmed as locked in retail hardware.

 

CPU: Four ARM Cortex A57 cores, max 2GHz

GPU: 256 CUDA cores, maximum 1GHz

Architecture: Nvidia second generation Maxwell

Texture: 16 pixels/cycle

Fill: 14.4 pixels/cycle

Memory: 4GB

Memory Bandwidth: 25.6GB/s

VRAM: shared

System memory: 32GB, max transfer rate: 400MB/s

USB: USB 2.0/3.0

Video output: 1080p60/4K30

Display: 6.2-inch IPS LCD, 1280x720 pixels, 10-point multi-touch support

 

There are some anomalies and inconsistencies there that raise alarm bells though. Tegra X1 is a fully-featured HDMI 2.0 capable processor, so why is video output hobbled to HDMI 1.4 specs? What's the point of a 4K, 30Hz output? The X1 also has 16 ROPs, so why is pixel fill-rate mysteriously running at only 90 per cent capacity - the 14.4 pixels/cycle should be 16 were this a standard Tegra X1. Nvidia's chip also has four ARM Cortex A53s in combination with the more powerful A57s - so why aren't they on the spec too? (In fairness, the A53s didn't actually see much utilisation based on Tegra X1 benchmarks). Other areas of the spec have since been corroborated by Eurogamer: specifically, the 6.2-inch IPS LCD panel with a 720p resolution and multi-touch support, but there is the sense that this is an old spec, that there's a crucial part of the puzzle still missing.

 

Rich and Tom sit down to discuss the recent Switch spec reveal, plus discussion on the system's clock speeds.

 

CUDA core count and memory bandwidth are certainly in line with a standard Tegra X1, but critically, the leaked spec is extremely vague about the actual speed of the CPU and GPU, referring only to the maximum speeds seen on Nvidia's Shield Android TV micro-console. Assuming that Switch uses the same 20nm process technology as Shield, those clocks were never going to be attainable for a relatively small, handheld, battery-powered console. The Venturebeat story suggests that Switch is still using 20nm technology, but right now, this remains unconfirmed.

 

Clock-speeds are a crucial piece of information required to get some idea of Switch's capabilities beyond the physical make-up of the Tegra processor. As many have speculated, the new Nintendo hardware does indeed feature two performance configurations - and the console is categorically not as capable in mobile form, compared to its prowess when docked and attached to an HDTV. And we can confirm that there is no second GPU or additional hardware in the dock itself regardless of the intriguing patents that Nintendo has filed suggesting that there might be. With battery life and power throughput no longer an issue, the docked Switch simply allows the GPU to run much faster. And to put it simply, there is a night and day difference here.

 

Where Switch remains consistent is in CPU power - the cores run at 1020MHz regardless of whether the machine is docked or undocked. This ensures that running game logic won't be compromised while gaming on the go: the game simulation itself will remain entirely consistent. The machine's embedded memory controller runs at 1600MHz while docked (on par with a standard Tegra X1), but the default power mode undocked sees this drop to 1331MHz. However, developers can opt to retain full memory bandwidth in their titles should they choose to do so.

 

As things stand, CPU clocks are halved compared to the standard Tegra X1, but it's the GPU aspect of the equation that will prove more controversial. Even while docked, Switch doesn't run at Tegra X1's full potential. Clock-speeds are locked here at 768MHz, considerably lower than the 1GHz found in Shield Android TV, but the big surprise from our perspective was the extent to which Nintendo has down-clocked the GPU to hit its thermal and battery life targets. That's not a typo: it really is 307.2MHz - meaning that in portable mode, Switch runs at exactly40 per cent of the clock-speed of the fully docked device. And yes, the table below does indeed confirm that developers can choose to hobble Switch performance when plugged into match the handheld profile should they so choose.

 

Available CPU SpeedsAvailable GPU SpeedsAvailable Memory Controller Speeds

Undocked1020MHz307.2MHz1331/1600MHz

Docked1020MHz307.2/768MHz1331/1600MHz

 

As things stand, a docked Switch features a GPU with 2.5x the power of the same unit running from battery. And while some questions surround the leaked specs above, any element of doubt surrounding these CPU and GPU clocks can be seemingly be discounted. Documentation supplied to developers along with the table above ends with this stark message: "The information in this table is the final specification for the combinations of performance configurations and performance modes that applications will be able to use at launch."

 

So how will this differential affect the games we play? The Switch handheld screen has a 720p resolution - so the gulf in GPU clocks means that in theory at least, there's overhead there to run a 720p mobile title at 1080p when docked. One developer source likens this to creating two different versions of the same game - almost like producing a PS4 game and a PS4 Pro variant. At the very least, QA will require titles to be tested thoroughly in both configurations, plus a lot of thought will be going into exactly how to utilise GPU power in each mode.

 

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this is that those hoping for Switch to bring Nintendo back into contention with Microsoft and Sony's hardware should temper expectations. While there will be multi-platform projects (a point Nintendo made in its reveal with the Skyrim footage), we should not expect to see Switch versions of cutting-edge blockbusters. That should be fairly obvious when we consider that Xbox One S uses 16nm FinFET technology with gaming power draw in the region of 75-80W. Nvidia's GPU technology is more power-efficient, but it stands to reason that a mobile device (which typically operate with a 5-10W power budget) won't be in the same league.

But from a different perspective, this makes what we have seen even more impressive. Nintendo's hardware is all about an all-in-one console you can take anywhere while continuing to play the same games. We fully expect to see the kinds of fare displayed in the reveal trailer fully realised: Nintendo doing what it does best, basically. Even a 307.2MHz GPU based on Maxwell technology should be capable of out-performing Wii U - and certainly the Zelda: Breath of the Wild demo seen recently on the Jimmy Fallon show revealed a level of performance significantly smoother than that seen in last year's E3 code running on Wii U hardware. We should also remember that Nvidia has produced a bespoke software layer that should allow developers to get much, much more from the processor compared to what we've seen Tegra achieve in the Android-powered Shield console.

 

Why virtual reality is the futureIt'll be the downfall of humanity, but it'll revolutionise Just Dance.

Although the picture on Switch's technological make-up is now coming into focus, our enquiries continue. We know how fast it runs, but what are the custom modifications that set apart the bespoke Tegra from the stock X1? While we're confident that our reporting on Switch's clock-speeds is accurate, all of the questions we have concerning the leaked spec remain unanswered. Those anomalies still seem odd, and details of the processor's customisations remain unknown at this time. Has Nintendo added a bunch of smaller tweaks or has it been a little more ambitious?

 

Quite possibly the most impressive technological achievement in the console space last year was Xbox One backward compatibility, a virtual machine that some…

Performance at lower clocks could be boosted by a larger GPU (ie more CUDA cores), but this seems unlikely - even if Switch is using newer 16nm technology, actual transistor density isn't that different to Tegra X1's 20nm process - it's the FinFET '3D' transistors that make the difference. A larger GPU would result in a more expensive chip too, with only limited performance gains. And if Switch is using a more modern 16nm Tegra chip, we would expect Nintendo to follow Nvidia's lead in how the new process is utilised. However, the Tegra X2 features the same CUDA core count and apparently boosts GPU clocks by 50 per cent, the opposite direction taken by Nintendo.

Specs are one thing but the games are quite another and what we've seen so far certainly looks impressive bearing in mind that Switch has to operate effectively as a handheld device with a tight power budget. We'll be looking forward to the Switch reveal next month for the full hands-on experience, but clearly with these specs in mind, the focus will be on the console's defining feature - the ability to run the same games on an HDTV or on the go. Resolutions aside, will we actually be able to tell the difference or is the experience as seamless as the reveal trailer suggests? We can't wait to find out. In the meantime, Nintendo has yet to respond to our request for comment.

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

Y'see this is what worries me about the Switch. I love the concept, and there's certain games I'd like to buy for it. @radiofloyd posted that Dragon Quest is coming to it. I'd like Dragon Quest to look as good as it can, I've got a 4k TV and a pro I'd love (but doubt) it to make use of. But, with the portability of the Switch I think that's probably a better way to play a jrpg 

 

Same with Persona 5, if that comes to the Switch, the portability is a huge draw. Unless the game looks significantly worse and runs worse. We know the console runs Zelda better than a WiiU, and it apparently runs Skyrim, so hopefully the thing is capable, but I think I'm going to need to see how individual ports run before I ever buy a multi platform game on it

[ThreeFour]

Am I the only one not really interested in the nitty gritty of this thing? As soon as I saw it I thought it was obvious it isn't aiming for parity with its competition in terms of *power. I'm not really interested in the portability of it either. I don't have opportunities to play on the move.

 

I'll buy it, like I have the last few Nintendo consoles, as a second console for the exclusives it has. Mainly Nintendo ones because they still produce such fun games. *Power be damned.

 

 

*Best said in a He-Man voice.

[Hendo]

Yep, and as was mentioned on a podcast recently, it's essentially a tablet. No-one should be expecting a powerhouse console.

[DANGERMAN]

I don't think any body is, but if it's getting the same games I'd want them to not be bad versions, I'm more than OK with them not being the best version 

[ThreeFour]

I'll not be getting any games that are on the other two. Unless they're different enough to warrant it.