Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#461

Post by flukus » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #213

mcgrath_sh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the Wii U is so many failed consoles now? The Wii was a raging success. The 3DS is a wonderful mobile gaming platform that I have poured hundreds of hours into. The Wii U wasn't great and was more of a half iteration than a full one. Yes, Nintendo made a mis-step there. But the Wii, DS, and 3DS were far from failures.

The Wii was a success the way the pet rock was. They sold a huge number of them but it didn't take long before they were mostly just used as paper weights. It was under powered, had almost no 3rd party support, and wasn't even HD. The OS design was crazy and the store was virtually unusable. The Wii was a huge opportunity for Nintendo but they couldn't adapt to modern game play or sales to take full advantage of it.…

Mine still gets regular use after more than a decade, at parties anyway.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#462

Post by rubber_duck » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:09 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #443

adrusi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unlikely that this has performance that competes with Sony and Microsoft. This is an integrated GPU on a battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The PS4 and Xbox One are always plugged in to AC and have plenty of space for a proper cooling system. That's OK, this time the console actually takes advantage of weaker performance to offer a better form-factor. Whether that tradeoff satisfies consumer…

> This is an integrated GPU You say that like it's supposed to imply it's worse for some reason. > battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The Xbox one and PS4 were both released about three years ago. Almost three and a half by the time the Switch is released. That's a long time for Moore's law to operate, and it's easier for GPUs to take advantage of that phenomenon, since they are extremely paralle…

>You say that like it's supposed to imply it's worse for some reason.

It does because of thermals.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#463

Post by btym » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:11 AM UTC

PrimHelios wrote: post #310

slantyyz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very intrigued by this console. I switched to Steam after the PS3 and thought I'd never get a TV based console again. I really love the slide-in controllers. A few things I hope for would be: * Open specs for the slide-in controllers so that third parties can satisfy various niches (like the fighting game community) * A standard USB-C or micro-USB charging port so that people can use their existing power banks/ch…

> Compatibility with Nintendo's older wireless controllers Well, it looks like it uses bluetooth. If it uses a standard bluetooth stack, they might let other BT controllers (such as the PS4, Wii U Pro and Xbone) work with the system. I really have a lot of high hopes for this, but I don't wanna get super excited without knowing any of the specs.

> other BT controllers (such as the PS4, Wii U Pro and Xbone)

The Xbone controllers use some proprietary Wi-Fi-based protocol, don't they? Not Bluetooth.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#464

Post by cdash » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:11 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #349

Xixi wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS4 doesn't run on a battery though, so if they can get roughly the same power with a much lower power consumption it's already really good.

That's a good point, hadn't thought of the battery. Apple is claiming that the iPhone 7 has console-level graphics capabilities. If that's true (and I have no idea what that actually means), then Nintendo should be able to come up with something even better since they have so much more room for battery and have lots of expertise in making consoles.

It is purely marketing.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#465

Post by andromeduck » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:15 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #443

adrusi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unlikely that this has performance that competes with Sony and Microsoft. This is an integrated GPU on a battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The PS4 and Xbox One are always plugged in to AC and have plenty of space for a proper cooling system. That's OK, this time the console actually takes advantage of weaker performance to offer a better form-factor. Whether that tradeoff satisfies consumer…

> This is an integrated GPU You say that like it's supposed to imply it's worse for some reason. > battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The Xbox one and PS4 were both released about three years ago. Almost three and a half by the time the Switch is released. That's a long time for Moore's law to operate, and it's easier for GPUs to take advantage of that phenomenon, since they are extremely paralle…

Moore's law has been dead for about a decade bro.

3 years is a long time but IMO not enough to being a 100+ watt SoC down to ~20-30 required for that form factor.

That being said, Nvidia is still much more energy efficient graphics wise vs AMD so I could see it getting fairly close - maybe 70-80%. CPU wise though I doubt they'll be as close just because of power.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#466

Post by xtracto » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:23 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #33

pimeys wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have fond memories when we gathered together after school with friends to play some Mario Kart or Smash Bros. It's still damn fun!

Mario Kart (after Warlords on the Atari 2600 or MULE on the Atari 8-bits with 4 players) is my favorite group game. It just has the fun feel, and hearing the various characters screaming or victory yells is hilarious.

> Warlords on the Atari 2600

Wow, now that is a great multiplayer game. One of the few video games that my whole family played together (the other being 'Where in Time is Carmen San Diego' for the NES).

Very nice to see it mentioned here! It is a huge classic.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#467

Post by emehrkay » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:23 AM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #11

6stringmerc wrote: post #5

Very clever. Anchor for home, and again trying for the mobile area where their creativity really worked (3DS). I'll be curious in the system specs and the decisions they made - such as having that apparent card slot. Hooray for the headphone jack. I'll never understand the marketing motivation to show a bunch of people getting together for a social gathering and togetherness, then cram together to watch / play on som…

We usually all bring our own. ;-D. But I'm glad Nintendo doesn't seem to be giving up local MP: It's the best part of having a console, and dropping it is a REALLY BAD IDEA.

I recently watched a long video for a Kirby game for DS and not only was it like 8 games in one, it was setup so that one person could have a physical copy, but four people could play on their own DS'. Amazing in the age of micro transactions.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#468

Post by vlunkr » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:30 AM UTC

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #404

vlunkr wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with that. But this solves a different problem. You can't (easily) bring your ps4 set up on the bus with you.

I wonder if, using a more powerful alternative to the raspberry pi, you can create a mobile gaming pc that can run PS now. It wouldn't be a PS4, but PS3 games would be a nice consolation :) EDIT: Interesting, this http://www.udoo.org/udoo-x86/ could definitely power a PC running PS Now. So, I can't lug a PS4 around, but I could lug a PS3 around :) And it would just so happen to have access to the entire library of ol…

Haha, glad I could help

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#469

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:50 AM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #466

protomyth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mario Kart (after Warlords on the Atari 2600 or MULE on the Atari 8-bits with 4 players) is my favorite group game. It just has the fun feel, and hearing the various characters screaming or victory yells is hilarious.

> Warlords on the Atari 2600 Wow, now that is a great multiplayer game. One of the few video games that my whole family played together (the other being 'Where in Time is Carmen San Diego' for the NES). Very nice to see it mentioned here! It is a huge classic.

Man, with reccomendations like that, I might just have to grab a copy and give it a go.

Re: Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]

#470

Post by banachtarski » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 12:53 AM UTC

dharma1 wrote: post #449

Narishma wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 1 TFLOPS on the Tegra is for 16-bit floats I believe while the TFLOPS on the Xbox One and PS4 are for 32-bit floats.

That is a good catch, double speed FP16, so FP32 perf should be half that on the X1. While useful for some things (like neural network inference and I guess some shaders) it's not directly comparable - NVidia style marketing

This was the same deal with how CPUs were (mis)marketed for years. Higher clockspeeds don't mean anything unless the pipelines are identical. A much smarter chip with larger cache sizes, branch prediction, SIMT, ultra-wide registers, better instruction caching, etc might have half the clockspeed of a dumber chip and outperform it by a huge margin. GPUs are no different in that texture caches, vertex buffer sizes, warp sizes, etc all play a big part and you really can't compare flops unless comparing two GPUs of the same product line.