Topic: Federal Trade Commission Case Reveals Proposed Power Level Of Switch Successor

[Shaymin]

...how the hell did this get cleared, anyway?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/64152/federal-trade-commission-case-reveals-proposed-power-level-of-switch-successor

The Activision/Blizzard/King buyout by Microsoft is currently before a US court, and a part of the deposition has revealed a proposed level of power for the next dedicated hardware from Nintendo.

In a deposition as part of an injunction hearing brought by the United States Federal Trade Commission, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was quoted in an email to Nintendo President Shunturo Furukawa that the successor platform to the Switch has "closer alignment to 8th generation hardware", specifically the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. The email was read in response to a question regarding whether or not Call of Duty could be ported to the Switch (or its successor).

"Given closer alignment of Gen 8 platforms and our previous offerings on PS4 and Xbox One, it's reasonable to assume we can make something compelling for NG (next generation) Switch as well." - Bobby Kotick

The FTC is currently before the courts attempting to obtain a restraining order/injunction to prevent Microsoft from closing the $68.7bn deal to acquire ABK: the deal would be required to close by July 31 or be renegotiated to prevent Microsoft from paying US$3bn to ABK for failing to complete the deal. A hearing with the full commission is scheduled for August.

[Mythtendo]

I really hope that it's not true that the next Nintendo system will be equivalent in power to LAST generation hardware. If the next Nintendo system is no more powerful than hardware that will be 11 years old by that point, then third party support will quickly dry up and will be like the Wii and how only a few publishers put any effort in. If the next Nintendo system isn't at least equal to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, then we might be looking at problems after the first year or so

[Lemonade]

I would hope for something the same as the Xbox One X, but I expect something the same as base Xbox One.

[stevey]

I read that as in between PS4 and PS5 but closer to the PS4 or PS4 Pro. The canned Switch Pro would have probably been around double the power as the Switch so double that again for the Switch 2 and we're in PS4 Pro territory.

[Ian Sane]

The Switch got lots of multiplatform releases with the PS4 despite having inferior hardware.  So I guess the specs just need to be at the point where ports are doable and third parties are willing to do them because the Switch 2 has enough of a userbase to make it worth their while.  Though I have noticed that Japanese third parties have really done a great job on the Switch while Western publishers have had like PS3 ports run like crap.  It's been doable but probably isn't easy, so quick 'n' dirty ports don't turn out that great.

Now there are a few factors that probably helped the Switch.  First of all the transition to new generations these days is slow.  Games would get released for both the PS4 and PS3 for years and we still see a lot of PS5 games get PS4 versions.  The game industry is less willing to just jump into a new generation full on with games that make such use of the new hardware power that they can't work on the older system.  The Switch did come out years after the PS4's release but that didn't seem to matter.

Second of all, Nintendo has to strongest presence in Japan which provides an incentive for Japanese third parties to release games on their system.  The Japanese market loves handhelds and Nintendo has the only handheld.  MS doesn't have much presence there and Sony has catered their systems more to the Western market.  So while someone like Activision might ignore the Switch 2, companies like Capcom, Sega or Square Enix probably won't.  They'll want to have games released for the Japanese handheld market.

My concern though is was the Switch's strong third party support a happy accident?  Did Nintendo put any thought into that when designing the hardware or did it just happen?  Is it something they consider important for the Switch 2?  Nintendo is a very weird company that fluctuates between being geniuses and morons.  My biggest fear is that the Switch successor will be some wacky gimmick system that completely misses the point of why the Switch was successful but the Wii U was not.  You never know with them.  What it should be is a backwards compatible Switch without the Joycon drift design flaw and as good of specs they can cram in there while still having an acceptable price point and battery life.  That's it and it's pretty simple but they don't tend to do obvious things so we'll see.

[Kairon]

I'm not exactly sure I've seen anything reported from that testimony that outright says Kotick actually KNOWS the Switch Successor's power levels. He could very well be making the same assumptions/forecasts/guess/estimates that we all are here.

Anyways, a lot of the speculation that I've seen up till now does Suggest the "Switch 2" can stretch to PS4 levels, if not in raw marketing numbers at least in what actually shows up on the screen. And the longer we go on without the Successor releasing, the longer technology has to get more inexpensive/more powerful/more efficient.

Because that's what I think is the true thing working against an extremely powerful Switch 2: cost and heat/efficiency of mobile chips.

Inflation and pandemic supply chain shocks definitely isn't helping with the price of electronics, so that's something that'll probably be a headwind for Nintendo reaching the highest target levels. We can only hope that as time goes by, these pressures ease and tech advances in such a way to make the powerful chips that Nintendo might be considering older and, one would hope, cheaper.

And let's not forget that everything a tv-box console has to do, the Switch 2 has to do backwards and in heels (I mean, in a mobile heat limit and off of battery power). So it's not as simple as Nintendo always choosing cheaper less powerful tech, it's also Nintendo has to choose cooler-running, energy-efficient and smaller tech, then perhaps even downclock it the same way they downclocked the Tegra X1 for the Switch.

I DO think the estimate is supportable that the Switch 2 will appear for lay consumers to be a sort of portable Nintendo version of PS4/XB1 power (though under the hood it'll be more nuanced: weaker in Hz and flops, but stronger in modern features?) We have to see how close all this speculation is to reality of course...

[Adrock]

My concern though is was the Switch's strong third party support a happy accident?  Did Nintendo put any thought into that when designing the hardware or did it just happen?  Is it something they consider important for the Switch 2?

Nintendo added more RAM to Switch because Capcom asked nicely.

Source

I couldn't find hard numbers as the article only mentions it was "raised considerably" though it's speculated the RAM was doubled from 2 GB to 4 GB. Unless Nintendo does a complete 180 with a Switch successor (which, to be fair, none of us would be shocked by), I imagine third party support and feedback is important to the Nintendo.

Anyways, a lot of the speculation that I've seen up till now does Suggest the "Switch 2" can stretch to PS4 levels, if not in raw marketing numbers at least in what actually shows up on the screen. And the longer we go on without the Successor releasing, the longer technology has to get more inexpensive/more powerful/more efficient.

Perhaps more importantly, a Switch successor would be using more modern technology as well as being compatible with the latest middleware etc.

Rumors suggest a Switch successor will support DLSS though not a ton of games currently support it particularly since it's exclusive to Nvidia GPUs and developers would have to go out of their way. Graphical fidelity can get close enough to PS5/Xbox Series X with DLSS. I suspect mostly Nintendo published games will make use of it. That said, from what I read (and I'm admittedly not an expert), the CPU is expected to be the bottleneck. There's simply nothing Nintendo/Nvidia can do about that due to the generated heat/lack of adequate cooling for a handheld.

[Mario500]

(suggestion: no vulgar (or profane) language in this article)

[BlackNMild2k1]

I see that FTC leaked revealed more than MS trying to buy Nintendo.
But we've been talking on this same topic in the rumor thread as well:
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=16688.msg986845#msg986845

anyway, the rumors are that the hardware may be close to PS4 Pro/XBOS level, but due to the modern Nvidia tech inside, the visuals are gonna be closer to PS5/XBSX visuals.

The biggest explanation for this is Nvidia's DLSS(?) tech that uses AI to upscale and not just raw processing power (simplest way for me to explain as I'm not a tech head).

But as usual, we will have to wait and see what the end result is.