Future of Nintendo (Split from Nintendo Game News and Releases)

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Nintendo Switch Game News and Releases..

Nintendo imo are under pressure to have some hardware in place that can at least allow for ports of some of the AAA games that are appearing on this generation of consoles and pc (which is currently not very feasible as current gen consoles are up to 20 times as powerful as an un-docked switch which is beyond the scaling possibilities for AAA game development)

Also 4k, at the minimum through upscaling is becoming more important as 4k tv's become ubiquitous

The current gen joycons are also shite (both from a precision control point of view and the drift issue) and need to be upgraded

BOTW2 will launch concurrently on the current Switch and on the Switch 2 / Pro / whatever it's called

Fysh

You say "under pressure", but I disagree - the Switch, almost comically underpowered though it is, is on track to beat their best selling console.

I think that measuring Nintendo's performance by comparing to Sony and Microsoft is a bit silly, because the strategies and target audiences are different (IMO, that is). I'm not sure how big the audience segment is that:

A) cares significantly about 4K and can tell the difference from 1080p

B) is interested enough in Nintendo to want a Switch or Switch 2, but only if it's 4K

C) mainly wants a Switch or Switch 2 to play AAA games that are ports from other more powerful systems.

Agree that the joycons are pish, and would love to see that improve.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118857183#Comment_118857183

Well I'll be fairly shocked if new hardware doesn't come out with BOTW2

The "Zelda coordination" worked well for

Wii (also Gamecube) -> Twilight Princess

Switch (also Wii U) -> BOTW

Also ties in with the lifetime timeframes for previous Nintendo Hardware

Backwards compatibility with Switch 1 games

May well be just a more powerful system with identical OS especially given that Nvidia most likely hardware platform provider

UberPrinny_Baal

I read "Nintendo under pressure" and laughed aloud and skipped the thread.

The only pressure they feel is their bulging wallets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118859675#Comment_118859675

sure yeah...

you must be right - Nintendo to keep going with an ancient power-inefficient chip design forever and ever, keep their own software within its limits and move to a pure "cloud version" release strategy for every non-Nintendo game from a big studio that isn't a relatively prehistoric rerelease from two generations back (like the only software going to switch now on native silicon)

that has been so popular so far lol in terms of the "cloud games" reception!

pure love for those "cloud games"

😍😍😍

that will be the true way forward -> a true edgelord paradise

UberPrinny_Baal

That's a lot of assumptions about my position.

I never said I endorse or support Nintendo's complete and total "Not giving a crap about anything you're talking about."

I don't have a position, and whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant.

The point is they don't care. Nintendo is going to Nintendo.

They're going to make huge bank on rereleases of old games regardless of their quality; while denying streaming rights to tournaments of their games, and sending Cease & Desist letters from Lawyers to their biggest fans.

To think they ever feel "under pressure" about anything, and especially about the things you care about is genuinely laughable.

Fysh

Has the Switch been selling gangbusters over its lifetime? Yes it has.

Is there any proof of "pressure" on them aside from randos asserting that it exists, like e.g. activist investors demanding change to increase value? Not that I've seen.

Is it getting long in the tooth in terms of console lifecycles? Yeah, kinda. But given that home consoles tend towards a 10 year-ish lifecycle, at best this means a new Switch. This idea that the key USP for the Switch is "recent AAA games ported from other more powerful systems" is nonsense when you consider that third party games are generally cheaper than 1st party games on the Switch and yet BotW, Odyssey and Mario Kart are all still regularly selling well at somewhere between £40 and £50.

If the goal was to primarily sell the Switch as a platform for 3rd party titles, then yes, Nintendo are under pressure. But that's not their primary focus, and it's silly at best (disingenuous at worst) to argue otherwise. Look at the endless "next switch will definitely be a Series X with 4K display, honest" articles.

Upping the screens to 4K and the chipset (and battery) to match, in the middle of an ongoing squeeze on chip production and availability, does not tally at all with Nintendo's "come up with a clever new way to use inexpensive components" strategy. And that's without accounting for the cost increases on development of first party titles that would be involved in having to now cater to resolutions from 4K through 720p...

CiDeRmAn

Nintendo have little reason to take on the PS4/5 level consoles right now, they can bide their time for another year and release a more powerful console when they like.

And they are making a fortune, from cheap last gen components and an audience for games that they, and 3rd parties, are producing.

AAA titles are all well and good, but the smaller niche titles are making plenty of money and maintaining eyes on Switches everywhere.

Anyway, this argument was done to death, if people feel a burning need to play the latest CoD or Battlefield title there's plenty of PS4 availability to do so, but there's only one way to play Mario Odyssey or BotW.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118860935#Comment_118860935

the switch can't even run Nintendo First-party games continuously at 1080p

Kirby is down to 810p at times docked which looks very poor on a TV as mentioned in some reviews

Also it can only manage 30 Fps

30 Fps is not the goal - it's only 30 Fps because it can't do better

Even docked Nintendo can't run it's own games as it wants now

New Nintendo first-party games are slim enough in terms of release output as everyone knows from the last couple / few of years of Switch releases

Even the Wii U back-catalogue of re-releases is running very bare at this point for milking potential

Nintendo are missing out on very significant potential revenue from big studio games, pretty much none of which come to switch

An installed base of consoles doesn't make you money, selling software does

Even now some lower-spec Indie games are not getting switch releases because of lack of grunt

The indie scene has been a very significant revenue driver on the switch

There is zero increase on studios having 720p assets as it will be producing 720p assets for the purposes of upscaling for both AMD FSR (on consoles and PC) and DLSS (PC) for both PC and the whole lifetime of the PS5 and Xbox X

e.g. 720p upscaled for the purposes of better FPS

10 Year Lifecyle? ->

N64 - 1996

Gamecube - 2001

Wii - 2006

Wii U - 2012

Switch - 2017

Ergo -> The Tegra X1 switch will not be the most powerful switch available when BOTW2 releases

Fysh

10 year lifecycle as in the Wii was on the market for 13 years and the PS3 and XBox 360 lasted 10 years each. 5 years is the current average for a new thing to launch, but that is more important if you are trying to sell MOAR PIXELS, MOAR FPS, etc.

It may very well be true that the Switch can't manage higher framerates or pixel density than 30FPS or sub-1080p. But the counterpoint to that is "they are selling ny the truckload anyway, which means the audience for Nintendo hardware does not care, at least not enough for it to make them stay away".

The big question that you haven't asked (because it may well indicate a hole in your logic) is whether there is going to be a new "true"handheld-only console to succeed the 3DS. Over the last 5 years there's been a fair few licenced Nintendo mobile games, and they're bringing in cash as well. Which means that where before there were "home" and "portable" systems, now we might have "consoles" and "mobile games". And if that is the route they're following, they may not be as worried about doing the "brand new system every 5 years" and instead continue iterating on the Switch with new hardware versions still backwards compatible.

Total speculation on my part, but I'd be interested to know what their thinking is on pure handhelds these days, Switch Lite aside...

UberPrinny_Baal

^I'm pretty sure pre-Switch launch they announced their portable-handheld and console teams were merging into just the switch team. They'll pulling out of the mobile market too, and announced more of those game closures.

The Dream of a "New New New New 3DS New plus Luigi" is dead I'm afraid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861544#Comment_118861544

So the 10 year total lifecycle point is obviously redundant when the real question at hand here from the start that is being discussed is about new hardware release timeframes

It's not about "brand new hardware" for the sake of it - it's about the fact that the current hardware is underpowered now even for running Nintendo games, never mind third-party ones

Everyone knows that Nintendo loves $$$ so to argue that they don't care about losing out on lots of potential revenue from other publishers is ludicrous, especially when their own first-party output is so sparse

And who is going to start getting that revenue now in the handheld aspect of the switch if Nintendo continues to not provide for it - Valve and the steam deck as they ramp up production.

The fact that steam deck owners can also pirate current Switch games through emulation and have them on handheld is another point to take into consideration and another incentive to bring out updated hardware that will have both updated copy protection and also no emulation (until one could be created but increasing the specs would push that out of bounds for the steam deck)

Is Nintendo likely to abandon it's hybrid strategy given that the Switch turned its fortunes around and that it has found a niche with no competition (as a hybrid)? - not very likely

So aside from the Switch Lite being there I think that's a question that's already answered

The mobile phone games accounted for a whole 2% of Nintendo's revenue in 2021 and with a declining revenue trend also

Fysh

Oh good, we're back to "But Nintendo clearly need that money from getting Cyberpunk/Elden Ring/Whatever on the Switch".

Gonna tap out now because we're going in circles and it wasn't really a particularly interesting subtopic to start with...

(I hadn't realised mobile revenue for the licenced games was declining. I suspect Nintendo might be quietly relieved at that, since it reinforces the importance of their hardware platform...)

UberPrinny_Baal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861680#Comment_118861680

They closed Miitomo, Dr Mario, Mario Runner, and announced closing Dragalia Lost

Mario Kart Tour, Animal Crossing Pocket camp and Fire Emblem Heroes are still going as far as I know

Pokemon Go and Pikmin Bloom probably don't count since that's Niantic using Nintendo IPs.

Anecdotally people say that Nintendo aren't comfortable with the gacha/microtransaction model, and were more comfortable with the drugdealer model that mobile games are that first hit that gets you addicted so you move to their console offerings. I have no source so take that with a gigantic grain of salt.

johnny_ultimate

The Steam Deck (an impressive piece of kit by all accounts) is a hardware generation ahead of the Switch and you won't be getting 1080p / 60 FPS modern games on that if you hook it up to a TV, let alone 4K. Indeed, the reason that machine works as well as it does is primarily because a 720p screen is a much 'easier' target and an in-built 30 FPS limiter that can help ease inconsistent performance.

Any hardware designed as a handheld will always be a generation or so behind dedicated home consoles. I would be expecting any Switch successor to be more akin to the Steam Deck / PS4 / Xbox One performance level as opposed to something that can compete fully with cutting-edge modern PC / PS5 / XBSX games. That said, integrating some kind of DLSS-type solution could make it a much more capable home experience if the GPU is up to it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861680#Comment_118861680

Tapped out indeed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861726#Comment_118861726

The significant advances and maturation in effective upscaling (e.g. DLSS 2.0+ and FSR) mean that it's certainly a given for the upgrade and a indeed a huge driver for it so that can be taken advantage of fully as it's a big boon for a device like the switch in terms of output performance.

Nobody is expecting a huge advance - especially given the power draw limitations of something running off a battery but a good bit more cpu and gpu power can be provided now with the same battery size given the reduction in chip nanometre production processes since the days of the original Tegra X1. That in conjunction with the upscaling and the current Switch showing its limitations even for less graphically-intensive Nintendo-style graphics games and more capable competitors already out there means the time is now right in the timeframe of the next year for some new hardware.

sligeach

The day before yesterday I seen 5 seconds of new footage from a sequel game releasing next year(fingers crossed) for Switch(maybe on a new system too, fingers crossed) that looks no better graphically than its predecessor did on Wii U, a system that released a decade ago. And the Wii U wasn't even remotely considered a next gen powerhouse technically back in 2012.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861848#Comment_118861848

Indeed, and who would think that 30 FPS is really optimal for a platformer game in 2022?

And running at times at 800p on the contemporary larger household TV's that have gotten bigger - so that you can actually see the pixel blocks?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118861424#Comment_118861424

I’ll buy you coffee using your signature link if you’re right. :)

I disagree though, and don’t think a new Switch (like New 3DS) or even Switch successor will release for BOTW2 or any time in 2023.

My feeling is that there’ll be no revision or successor until 2024 (after all the Mario Kart DLC has dropped).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118862451#Comment_118862451

well we'll see in the end either way!

I've laid out my reasoning.

I know that after all the "false alarms" from last year that people are sceptical.

But at that point there was no new Nvidia chip on the horizon to fit the bill and there was all that chip shortage stuff still going on (older chip production processes fabs for the older Tegra X1 less affected, even the 16mm version even though there was a shortage as you might remember with Switch hardware price-gouging going on in 2020)

I really feel that Nintendo will time this with BOTW 2 to drive demand for the new hardware.

With Nintendo's track record on BOTW 2 it's quite possible that they could delay that again if they so-wanted though!

The reasons to do an upgrade are accruing and the technology to do it is aligning.

It's faintly ridiculous that if you go to youtube you can see for example people running that new Kirby game at 4K resolution and at 60 fps on the PC through emulation when a docked switch itself can't get near that (800p to 1080p and 30 fps with not 100% locked at that)

AFAIK that's the first "current" console that sort of situation has happened with

CastorTroy

I can see a Pro or new console releasing at that time, but with the number of people complaining about Zelda shifting to Switch when it was meant for Wii U, they might want to avoid that this time. Of course when they do announce the new console, people will be wondering why they didn't save BotW2 for it. So damned if they do and damned if they don't.

It'll release on the Switch either way the same way BotW released on Wii U and Twilight Princess released on Wii and GameCube.

Mr E

Mod: Discussion split from Game News and Releases)

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118862768#Comment_118862768

Fair split off as the topic has come up quite a bit in waves, especially with BOTW 2 talk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118862739#Comment_118862739

Well it would be on both (current) and the upgraded version (whether same OS like the "New 3DS" or a new one) so can't see how that will piss off current owners too much as it's not like it would be a "forced upgrade" to play BOTW 2.

it will just run better and look better on the newer hardware.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118862739#Comment_118862739

I don’t think using TP and BOTW as weight towards the argument that they’ll do the same for BOTW2 is accurate because Gamecube and Wii U we’re both dead consoles that sold very few at that point. Whereas Switch is on track to be one of their best selling systems ever.

Similarly they didn’t push Skyward Sword to Wii U (even though it fully supports Wii remotes) because the Wii install base was already massive and was backwards compatible with Wii games anyways. So was GCN TP for Wii but they wanted to show off the motion controls.

Even making BOTW2 a cross-gen game like the first doesn’t make sense imo. It’s not going to look or run better on a new system. It’ll look and run for the lowest common denominator - the current Switch. So would it be a new system seller? I don’t think so. No where near what BOTW was for Switch.

Even someone like myself, who typically buys the new Nintendo console on day 1, would hesitate to drop €400+ to play BOTW2 on a new console when I could pay €60 and get the exact same experience.

I did it with BOTW and bought a Switch because the new console offered something Wii U couldn’t. Handheld play anywhere, and not a shaky few meters from the base console on a low res screen. Vast majority of BOTW owners got it on Switch because they didn’t own a Wii U.

Not that it probably means anything, but there has been a regular cadence of exclusive -> cross-gen -> repeat. Not counting remakes.

Wind Waker (exclusive)

Twilight Princess (cross gen)

Skyward Sword (exclusive)

Breath of the Wild (cross gen)

Breath of the Wild 2 (exclusive?)

I think if you consider the next system will (hopefully) be backwards compatible then that reduces the likelihood that BOTW2 is a cross-gen game further. Especially if the system makes Switch games perform better by default.

Anyways, always fun to speculate, none of us know what’s going on in the wacky brains at Nintendo. But it’s fun to try and guess :)

SuperBowserWorld

Nintendo can always thrive on it's mario/zelda/pokemon/animal crossing/... franchises. If they keep the quality up.

On that they can innovate with hardware, keeping it cheap for them to produce. And iterate and polish their software on top of that.

I would hope we'd get 60 FPS x 1080/1440p as standard on all their titles docked on future hardware. 4K is nice, but 60 FPS is so much nicer. It's why Mario Kart 8, Odyssey, Tropical Freeze, ... are lovely to play. Hopefully 60 FPS on new hardware for BOTW2.

CiDeRmAn

In fairness, this myth about Nintendo and their slow AAA release schedule is just that, a myth.

Especially in light of their most recent Ninty Direct and the frankly packed year of releases to come.

From the massive expansion of Mario Kart 8 Dx, Advance Wars and Switch Sports to Splatoon 3, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Bayonetta 3.

I'm playing more games on the Switch than I am on my Xbox Series X or PS5.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118864687#Comment_118864687

Don’t you know? When Nintendo isn’t putting out the games you specifically want, that means they’re not putting out games.

If I could see the total play time I’ve spent on Switch and other consoles and PC over my lifetime I’d easily expect Switch to #2 (only losing to PC and Civilization III and IV :) ).

The last two or three years wasn't a myth

"Jump rope challenge" was a stone cold classic though!

https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_games_by_year_(US)#2020