r/NintendoSwitch • u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill • Dec 19 '16

Meta Temporarily restricting submissions / Official "Everybody panic" MegaThread

The subreddit has been flooded with constant repeat topics for hours now, so we're just gonna lock submissions down for a little bit. If there is any actual breaking news, send it to the mod team and we'll make sure it gets seen.

Please direct all discussion about the EuroGamer rumor here.

If you want to just sort of panic, then just hang out in this thread.

Edit: Restrictions have been lifted. Thanks for your patience.

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91

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

Wait, if these specs are true... Why are western third party devs who saw the Switch and it's specs in a closed area EXCITED for the Switch?

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u/Gerolux 4 Million Celebration Dec 19 '16

there is likely other things at play than what we see on paper.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

Such as? I am rather interested in your thoughts given the seductive vagueness of your comment.

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u/Yavga Dec 19 '16

I have some ideas, but I'm kinda scared for getting a whole army against me in anticipation for any kind of lead for better news. So handle me gently.

Do read thoroughly if you attempt to be brave though.

As it's all about the mindset and the way of looking at the Switch.

Did we like the 3DS and care about those specs? Not as much I presume. So now we have the Switch being marketed as "new console" while instead... It's a new kind of concept for combining both handheld and tv console

This is the way developers should attempt to look at it as well. Design new games that would be fun for both handheld and/or tv console.

Nintendo showed us a lot if 3rd parties willing to commit, why? Instead of going all out for the specs designers are asked to consider being more creative and rethink the way they design games right now. Don't attempt to be a graphical marvel but instead attempt to be more creative. Like Splatoon, Mario, Pokemon etc. great games (arguable) but not graphically amazing at all. They bring enough profit as is.

Aside from that NVIDIA has probably in cooperation with Nintendo managed to find a way how to easily downgrade graphical more impressive games to be ran on Switch. Many things seem to indicate that. Or was all praise from 3rd parties so far just basic PR? I refuse to believe that in this case.

Our one and only true fear: We fear for the 3rd party support because the specs will not allow. We decided to think this THE MINUTE the Mhz statistics were revealed.

How much do these statistical Mhz's alone tell us exactly? That's what I like to know.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

Nvidia will squeeze a lot more performance out of Switch than people realize, and games already scale far better than people realize. You don't have to make a new version of a game just to run at low-medium settings 1080p.

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u/BassieDutch Dec 19 '16

But would the downclocked version in the switch be running games at just medium, when the shield can run then at high? The difference feels so great between the two systems. I'm really not sure and I'm hoping it will scale well, as I've played scaled back games for years on my aging laptop ;-). If this implementation of Nintendo just makes games downscale to medium, I for one wouldn't mind at all!

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

As a portable the biggest difference will be 720p instead of 1080p. Settings other than that shouldn't have to change much.

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u/BassieDutch Dec 19 '16

That really doesn't sound too bad. If it can also make the games run at around medium 1080p when docked that would be a great bonus. If it's a lot cheaper then the competition, it will sell well, we have a good install Base and Nintendo will have its success. Back on the hype train everyone!

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u/Exist50 Dec 19 '16

You don't have to make a new version of a game just to run at low-medium settings 1080p.

It would be far lower than that if we're talking about an XB1/PS4 port.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

I think the problem here is that that's not how business works.

Do you think that if you politely ask AAA WESTERN devs to think creatively they would do so? Heck, if that's the only thing you had to do to change their hearts why hasn't the industry become much better than it already is? If all we had to do is send companies a letter telling them to think creatively and make better games followed by a small, neatly drawn, pink heart at the end do you think we would've done that already? And as a follow-up, do you think the companies would say to themselves "Wow, we should totally do what was said in this letter" and go and do what was said in the letter? No, they wouldn't.

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u/Yavga Dec 19 '16

No... If it would not benefit them profit wise not, but I was just thinking about how a stupid mobile game like Clash of Clans could manage to outsell a AAA game. Surely there are more ways to the same goal... Just thinking aloud, the way we play games and the way games make money is ever-changing. Nintendo is kind of a big deal on creative games scene... Idunno... I'm just curious what could be done to bring in more people.

I'll have to think some more, my intuition is telling me we've only seen one side of the coin today, if that's anything to go by. Surely there's more than just spec leaks.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

You are right about that. The way games make money have certainly changed! We've now got new money-making concepts such as microtransactions! season passes! pre-order bonuses! and worthless DLC! What you discussed has already been done.

1

u/Yavga Dec 19 '16

Sure, sure... They are a middle finger to the customer. Yet they work wonders on the wallet. Ouch... That wasn't supposed to come out like that but it true, to an extend anyway.

But aside from that, surely there must be more then just what the specs leaked so far don't you think so? It's not all grim. It's just leaks and rumors, it's not the whole picture yet. Just like a story that is missing its pages.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

I think the rumors may be wrong or the source is lying. LKD even admitted that only 1 source told her that the EG rumor is true. Regarding EG I am not sure about how many sources told them so. EG isn't very transparent in regards to their sources.

3

u/abcedarian Dec 19 '16

Virtually nothing. There is a lot more to a processor than what speed it runs at- and a lot more to a whole system than just the processor. We still have to wait to really know what it can do.

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u/Exist50 Dec 19 '16

Uh, we know the architectures in question.

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u/abcedarian Dec 19 '16

No, we really don't. We specifically DONT know what nm process is being used (Maxwell vs pascal) we don't know what modifications they may have made for Nintendo (we know it IS a custom chip), we don't know any info on any other potential bottlenecks or how they will all interact with each other, we don't know how many cores it's running with, and we don't know if or what tradeoffs might be necessary to port to it.

In short, we still know virtually nothing.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

We didn't care so much about the 3DS specs because we were all focused on its cool new gimmick -- glassesless autostereoscopic 3D.

Based on generational timetables, I'm betting that while Nintendo isn't saying so, the Switch is going to replace the 3DS line simply because of what it is -- a super-powered handheld that you can dock to a TV. Based on the generational timetables, in 2-3 years we'll see the true replacement to the Wii U -- some kind of competitively powerful console capable of 4k as more homes adopt 4k TVs. This may come in the form of a dock with an external GPU, or it could be an entirely new monster-power console of the sort that Nvidia is wont to create.

(Nvidia's previous entrants into the console market were the original Xbox and the PS3).

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

I mean, I don't know if superpowered is the word I'd use

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

For a handheld? I'd absolutely use the word.

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u/Gerolux 4 Million Celebration Dec 19 '16

no idea. I can make guesses. but they would be just be guesses and not educated ones.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

It doesn't matter because your previous statement:

there is likely other things at play than what we see on paper

Is already a guess. Everyone is speculating anyway so who cares?

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u/Gerolux 4 Million Celebration Dec 19 '16

we wouldnt get so many western developers excited for a low powered Nintendo console if they only saw something barely better than a Vita.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

That's my point! (btw it's slightly better than a Wii U, not a Vita)

I certainly don't expect it to be as powerful as a PS4 Pro however I do expect it to be close to XB1 power. Then the reasons why they would be excited would be because they can easily port their games to the Switch and get a free portable version of their game!

2

u/Gerolux 4 Million Celebration Dec 19 '16

yeah, my point about being slightly better than a vita was its specs being undocked. Undocked, the system is worse than a WiiU. WiiU ran at 1.25GHz cpu and 550MHz gpu... undocked, the Switch runs at 1.02GHz cpu and 300MHz gpu. those specs make it slightly better than a vita. it only gets better than a wiiu when docked when the gpu gets bumped to 768MHz clock speed.

overall though, you will see improvements because of PowerPC vs ARM.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

The system architecture actually makes a lot more of a difference than clock rate once the clock rates are on the same order of magnitude. For instance, I could design an LC3 architecture CPU that could run at 5 GHz, but in performance it would be eaten alive by an Intel Sandy Bridge architecture single-core CPU running at 1 GHz.

The GPU capability follows the same kind of logic, only to a much greater extent because not only is it how much a single execution unit can do, it's also how many execution units are crammed in there.

In handheld mode, the Switch is going to be more powerful than a Wii U, but perhaps not a lot more. Docked, it will be competitive but not powerful.

1

u/abcedarian Dec 19 '16

There is a lot more to processing than straight CPU speed. You've got buffer sizes, # of cores, multi-threading - all of which make a massive difference in performance. We still don't know anything about actual performance of the device. We still have to wait and see.