Price and Other Official Information
A lot of little bits all over the place.
Since our last Nintendo Switch post, the company had their full reveal event, which confirmed the two most critical values: it will launch on March 3rd for $299.99 USD ($399.99 CDN). This is basically what the rumors have pointed to for a little while, and it makes sense. That was last week, but this week gave rise to a lot more information, mostly from either an interview with Nintendo of America’s President and COO, Reggie Fils-Aimé, or from footage that was recorded and analyzed by third parties, like Digital Foundry.
From the GameSpot interview, above, Reggie was asked about the launch bundle, and why it didn’t include any game, like 1 – 2 – Switch. His response was blunt and honest: they wanted to hit $299 USD and the game found itself below the cut-off point. While I can respect that, I cannot see enough people bothering with the title at full price for it to have been green-lit in the first place. If Nintendo wasn’t interested in just eating the cost of that game’s development to affect public (and developer) perceptions, although they might end up taking the loss if the game doesn’t sell anyway, then at least it wasn’t factored into the system.
Speaking of price, we are also seeing what the accessories sell at.
From the controller side of things, the more conventional one, the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, has an MSRP of $69.99 USD. If you look at its competitors, the DualShock 4 for the PlayStation 4 at $49 and the Xbox Wireless Controller for the Xbox One at the same price, this is notably higher. While it has a bunch of interesting features, like “HD rumble”, motion sensing, and some support for amiibos, its competitors are similar, but $20 cheaper.
The Switch-specific controllers, called “Joy-Con”, are $10 more expensive than the Pro Controller, at $79.99 USD for the pair, or just $49.99 USD for the left or right halves. (Some multiplayer titles only require a half, so Nintendo doesn’t force you to buy the whole pair at the expense of extra SKUs, which is also probably helpful if you lose one.) This seems high, and could be a significant problem going forward.
As for its availability? Nintendo has disclosed that they are pushing 2 million units into the channel, so they are not expecting shortages like the NES Classic had. They do state that demand is up-in-the-air a bit, though.
As For Their Online Component
They also mentioned a fair amount about their plans for online. At the event, they noted that Nintendo was going to, like Sony and Microsoft, implement a paid service. Their website elaborates on this by stating a few things. First, it will not affect the WiiU or 3DS systems; it will start with the Switch. Second, the account will be free until it officially launches in the fall. At this point, “most games will require a paid online service subscription from Nintendo in order to play online.”
This “most” has me curious, but I cannot really speculate what they mean. We’ll wait and see.
Third, you will be able to play an NES or an SNES game, with online multiplayer, for free for a month. The “for a month” strongly suggests that users will not be able to keep each title as they acquire them and grow a catalog, but that still leaves two possibilities. Nintendo might have a catalog of available titles, and users can decide which one they want for that month, potentially using their freebie on the same game multiple times. Alternatively, Nintendo might force the same game for all users, and swap it out on a monthly basis. The latter seems more likely, especially with the online multiplayer component, but I really don’t know.
The interview goes even further and announces a smartphone app component, too. This part rubbed people the wrong way, because the answer makes it sound like voice chat and matchmaking must be done on the app. If that’s the case, at this point, wouldn’t the Nintendo Switch just end up being an elaborate smartphone accessory? I seriously, seriously hope that it’s just an optional interface, but people in my Twitter timeline seem to be interpreting it like I just described. I’m hopeful, but some aren’t. If it is just a complementary interface, and the Switch is fully functional on its own, then that could be cool. If not? It’s not nearly as “elegant” as Nintendo claims it to be.
Oh Right, We’re a Hardware Site: PERFORMANCE!
So Nintendo held several events, and they did something unexpected: let journalists capture demo footage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Digital Foundry was one of the outlets that got two playthrough videos, so you can bet that they analyzed the hell out of it.
First, the resolution. Zelda will play at 720p in handheld mode, which makes sense given its screen, and 900p when docked into the TV. Both situations will run at a locked 30 FPS, apart from a few drops in certain situations. Nintendo did a pretty good job of making sure that the game performed consistently, though.
Second, it’s also coming out for the WiiU. This is interesting for a few reasons, but the one that I’m most curious about is shading precision. One of the big design trade-offs, going from the WiiU to the Switch, is that the GPU really only gets more powerful if you drop down to FP16 values. For typical TVs, which have (at most depending upon calibration) 256 levels (8 bits) between white and black per channel, 16-bit IEEE 754 decimal numbers, with their 11 bits of significand and 5 bits of exponent, is sufficient to represent the full range of color. (The 11th bit is calculated from the boolean OR operator between the 5 exponent bits and “00000”.) While there’s physically enough data to hit all possible colors of the display, there’s not a lot of room for rounding precision through one or more calculation(s), and there’s not a lot of dynamic range for proper tone mapping.
Note that it’s still possible that Nintendo used FP32 on the Switch version, too… but, as we’ll mention below, it looks like something changed. It might be the precision, or it might be a revised art style.
Is FP16 enough, though? Well, going by pre-release footage of the WiiU and Switch versions, the lighting seems to be significantly different. I didn’t say worse, just different. In fact, there are situations where I prefer Switch over WiiU and others where it’s vice-versa.
Image Credit: Cycu1
The Switch version is more colorful at times, albeit more flat, especially in the darker scenes. At the same time, some effects, like the shine on some objects is completely missing from the Switch video.
Image Credit: Cycu1
This scene, with the door to the temple opening, has more lighting detail in the WiiU. This is especially true when you look at the ground that it projects upon.
Image Credit: Cycu1
At the same token, if they did drop down to FP16 (and, again, we don’t know that they did) then they would immediately have twice the GPU performance. This puts it significantly ahead of the WiiU version, and could lead to a color versus smoothness trade-off. And again, the Nintendo Switch version doesn’t look bad… it even looks like it might be intentional.
We’ll end with a recap of what we know, including before today.
- $299 USD ($399 CDN) and launches on March 3rd
- SoC: NVIDIA Tegra X1 (Quad-Core A57 with 256 Maxwell CUDA cores)
- Rumored GPU clocks when docked: Up to 768 MHz (785 GFLOPS FP16)
- Rumored GPU clocks when mobile: 307.2 MHz (315 GFLOPs FP16)
- Rumored CPU clocks: 1020 MHz
- Screen resolution: 720p
- TV-Output resolution: 1080p
- Expected launch volume: 2 million units
- Online multiplayer will be a paid service in the fall (of 2017)
Heya just a heads up I
Heya just a heads up I believe the consensus is that the example video is misleading, as the Wii U version is using an earlier 2016 build in that footage and is not representative of the final product.
I enjoyed the article though and am anticipating more Switch coverage in the future!
Yeah. It could be an art
Yeah. It could be an art direction change, but it could be the limits of precision, or even the art style could have changed due to the limits of precision. It'll be interesting to see what happens when it comes out on both platforms, though.
Good luck. Here is what’s
Good luck. Here is what’s really happening.
“If that’s the case, at this point, wouldn’t the Nintendo Switch just end up being an elaborate smartphone accessory?”
It’s really a SMARTPHONE GAME NETWORK APP pressed into temporary service.
It’s crystal clear Nintendo is getting out of the hardware business and the Switch is intended as a transition device while they get that up and running. Of course they will trickle feed ONE NES/SNES online game per month, temporarily, to Switch owners. Want more? .. THEY’LL BE ON ANDROID AND IOS SUCKERS.
Why the Switch at all? – My guess is it’s a senior executive face saving move related to the Wii U. Notice they carefully emphasized the WISDOM of building the Wii U as it was NECESSARY to make the Switch possible. If you don’t think Ninendo wouldn’t fluch a couple billion down the bidet just so save face at the top of the organization, you don’t ‘get’ Japan.
So go buy a Switch and then bend over a padded sofa, it’s going to be long and not a whole lot of fun. For most.
Are you ok? If you need
Are you ok? If you need someone to talk to, just say so.
Nintendo is like a freight
Nintendo is like a freight train with infinite boxcars. Periodically, those box cars derail and explode in a wildly entertaining, yet very brief manner. We keep paying them just enough to embolden them to derail another.
I give the Switch and Grand Theft Mario 18 months before it is deemed a flop.
That’s what it looks like to
That’s what it looks like to me too.
And at those, Emm, meager performance values, it won’t have very long legs to keep it going beyond its core games by Nintendo.
yea no
wii, wii u, they all
yea no
wii, wii u, they all been garbage systems
few decent to great games not worth buying the system for
and now this no thank you
Good lord I had no idea that
Good lord I had no idea that these peak performance values were half precision. What a joke of a system
It’s pretty deceptive
It’s pretty deceptive marketing…wow…
Nintendo isn’t marketing the
Nintendo isn’t marketing the specs. Nvidia advertises Maxwell and Pascal using FP16 numbers.
but nvidia never talk about
but nvidia never talk about gaming when it comes to FP16 either. they push FP16 and INT8 purely for deep learning. in any presentation nvidia never tout the advantage of FP16 in gaming application. in fact outside tesla line up nvidia purposely limiting their FP16 performance with pascal. anandtech GTX1080 review mentioned that in one of their test that related to FP16 it is clear than maxwell FP16 performance is superior compared to pascal when it comes to geforce based card(i think it was GTX1080 vs GTX980). they even confirm about it with nvidia. so it is clear nvidia for one will not want to push FP16 for gaming application.
GP104 only has 1:64
GP104 only has 1:64 performance for FP16. Rather than wasting die space making each 32-bit CUDA core an a Pascal SM also have all of the instructions required to use them as 2×16-bit cores, NVIDIA only did that to a single one of the 128 32-bit CUDA cores (per SM).
The trade-off is that they can then make the die smaller, which means more 32-bit performance per square millimeter. This not only allows more chips per wafer, but those chips will also overlap with fewer manufacturing errors, further increasing the number of good chips from a batch.
From the Fermi generation onward, where AMD and NVIDIA agreed to standardize on IEEE 754, both of them decided to use 32-bit precision for a reason. Mobile dropped down to 16-bit for performance, but it's unclear at what trade-off in real applications.
Scott, looking at the trend
Scott, looking at the trend towards more hardware updates for the XBONE and PS4 do you see any possibility for an update to Nvidia’s Parker/Pascal IP at some time, or will Nintendo keep a slower hardware update cadence. Any News of the actual TSMC process node used, is it still 20nm or did they use TSMC’s 16nm node?
Nintendo isn’t talking about
Nintendo isn't talking about the details like process node, but I'm guessing still 20nm. Yields are probably nutso-good there, and it would have required NVIDIA to re-engineer their design a little bit, which they'd probably be reluctant to do unless there was a reason. I don't think the increase in chips per wafer, going from 20nm to 16nm, would be worth it? Maybe, though.
As for updates? Eh. It's Nintendo. They could end up just following the Tegra line as it evolves, but my money's on this being it for now.
I thought DX required the use
I thought DX required the use of FP32?
While I wasn’t really that
While I wasn't really that deep into GPU architectures at the time, apparently "full precision" back in Shader Model 2.0 days was 24-bit, and "partial precision" was 16-bit.
32-bit floats came in with Shader Model 3.0 (according to MSDN).
so what do you think on
so what do you think on Sony’s mark cerny comments about “double” PS4 raw power by utilizing FP16?
No idea. If the PS4 Pro GPU
No idea. If the PS4 Pro GPU used dies space on two-element vectorized FP16 instructions for each 32-bit register, then that's news to me.
$299.00, 2 games and 1
$299.00, 2 games and 1 MicroSD card plus tax and I’m at $400.00. That’s just flat out too much money for *meh* specs.
I bought the original
I bought the original PlayStation for $299 in 1996 with one controller, no games, and it wasn’t portable. That’s not accounting for inflation.
Nvidia markets a Shield Tablet with much the same specs, but without the detachable controllers. Nobody flips their lid over specs or updates. Nintendo comes out with their version and the trolls come out of the woodwork.
Is the performance higher
Is the performance higher than most cell phone GPUs? The joy-con controllers don’t look particularly ergonomic. You might as well just make controllers to clip onto a cell phone.
Performance looks to be quite
Performance looks to be quite a bit lower than flagship phones.
Nvidia’s SOC graphics have
Nvidia’s SOC graphics have always had support for the full desktop versions of the graphics APIs, not something that phone SOC graphics SKU makers can claim. So since the K1 Nvidia’s graphics API support is at the desktop level. X1’s graphics has more FP 16 support than even desktop Maxwell see Anandtech(1).
“Double Speed FP16
Last but certainly not least however, X1 will also be launching with a new mobile-centric GPU feature not found on desktop Maxwell. For X1 NVIDIA is implanting what they call “double speed FP16” support in their CUDA cores, which is to say that they are implementing support for higher performance FP16 operations in limited circumstances.
As with Kepler and Fermi before it, Maxwell only features dedicated FP32 and FP64 CUDA cores, and this is still the same for X1. However in recognition of how important FP16 performance is, NVIDIA is changing how they are handling FP16 operations for X1. On K1 FP16 operations were simply promoted to FP32 operations and run on the FP32 CUDA cores; but for X1, FP16 operations can in certain cases be packed together as a single Vec2 and issued over a single FP32 CUDA core.”(1)[See page 2 of the article]
—————————–K1 | X1
CUDA Cores——————192 | 256
Texture Units—————–8 | 16
ROPs————————–4 | 16
GPU Clock—————~950MHz | ~1000MHz
Memory Clock—-930MHz (LPDDR3) | 1600MHz (LPDDR4)
Memory Bus Width———64-bit | 64-bit
FP16 Peak————365 GFLOPS | 1024 GFLOPS
FP32 Peak————365 GFLOPS | 512 GFLOPS
Architecture————-Kepler | Maxwell
Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm | TSMC 20nm SoC
(1)
“NVIDIA Tegra X1 Preview & Architecture Analysis”
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview
From what I’ve heard unless
From what I’ve heard unless you have baby hands you can’t use them 2 player, IE one nunchuk thingy per person. At least as long as it’s a driving game where you hold the controller like Mario kart for the Wii. My hands are not large and I have a hard time playing Wii for very long.
performance will be better on
performance will be better on the switch because of low level API. but even if the switch really is based on nvidia x1 the gpu inside that soc is still one of the fastest for mobile soc class gpu.
Vulkan is supported by
Vulkan is supported by Google. Manufacturers of GPUs in mobile SoCs also support Vulkan. So, don΄t expect any advantage because of a low level API, or at least don΄t expect that advantage to hold for a long time. SoCs at 10nm will be much ahead of the SoC in the Switch by next year, even SoCs in more mainstream devices will be upgraded compared the ones used now.
The only advantage of Switch over mobile phones is that the Switch is a console, supporting multiplayer games and also supported by a company like Nintendo. But this could end up too little of an advantage, to keep Switch relevant for over 6-12 months. Switch will need all the luck in the world to succeed in the long run. On the other hand, looking at Nintendo’s decision to create something with low financial cost and risk, I don΄t think they believe or care to sell tens of millions. Just enough to keep them in the console market.
vulkan is low level API but
vulkan is low level API but it is not on the same level as the one use by true console hardware. and we still not talking about how good all this mobile gpu maker utilize this new API with their hardware. qualcomm adreno for example really shine when running benchmark numbers but when running real application the much slower competitor hardware (raw power wise) can still beat them.
also while our smartphone have the hardware how many games actually use that raw power? android has been supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 since jelly bean 4.3 but how many game actually try to push our smartphone hardware to their limit?
Ported game, not enough time
Ported game, not enough time for tweaking or optimizing. Wait for it, wait for it! And in a year or more there will be some games actually developed for the device, depending on how much revenues the sales of this device and the online subscriptions produce, sounds about like Nintendo’s MO.
Really more discussion needs to be focused on the graphics API that Nintendo is using, DF’s preview could have gone into more detail! Those demo Monitors and their setup are problematic! So it’s mostly wait for the release and the real testing to begin and it does look like maybe they have spent the good part of their time developing for the hand-held mode and need some more time to develop for the plugged in/console mode(per DF’s comments in the video).
Nintendo appears to be operating on their classic develop as you go along until enough cash flow can be produced to offer some more optimized titles. Nintendo can only afford a relatively few developers and the new hardware is as usual overpriced so Nintendo will have to rely on their game library and any customer loyalty.
Nvidia’s graphics is not the problem and maybe it’s going to take a GPU generation’s hardware update to get the hand-held mode battery life to the point where Nintendo can let the games developers really utilize the graphics. That standardized Type-C plug means that there will be plenty of options for some external battery/power options if Nintendo decides to white-list some third party products or simply adheres to the USB Type-C specifications fully. It’s some new hardware but it’s the same Nintendo, with all that being from Nintendo entails.
Can the cartridge based games be updated, will it be some form of patching on the fly held in user memory or will the cartridge have some amount of Flashable memory for patching/Updating. Man that Nintendo marketing video, IMMV, that guy’s using the Ballmer marketing speak playbook! The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation comes to mind after watching that Nintendo marketing drivel, I had to turn it off after about 3 seconds!
As Jim Sterling says,
As Jim Sterling says, Nintendo done Nintendoed it up again!
Hi Scott, the lighting is
Hi Scott, the lighting is definitely different and I personally prefer the Switch version which I find more precise and detailed but there are other notable difference between the WiiU and the Switch versions, the latter offers more detail and objects (trees, small stones…), better shadows, a quite better draw distance and (on that I’m not sure) the WiiU run the game at lower resolution compared to the Switch (while docked I suppose).
Also when comparing the WiiU and Switch theoretical performance we should keep in mind that the Switch in based on a modern architecture and that some architectures perform closer to their theoretical peak than others. The WiiU GPU is based on the TeraScale architecture which is not an example of efficiency, with 5 ALU inside a single SP you could end up using just 1/5 of it’s shading resources (if I remember correctly AMD said that the average occupancy in a best case scenario was 3.8 and that’s why they made an 4 ALU SP for Cayman).
For example the theoretical performance of a HD 4890 was 1.3 TFLOPS, the same as a Fermi based GTX 480 while the FP performance of the former wasn’t anywhere near it. I remember that running ShaderToyMark on HD 5870 vs GTX 580 resulted in Fermi 30% faster than Cypress which on paper should have been twice as fast as Fermi.
Nintendon’t Switch
Nintendon’t Switch
Right? I watched Angry Video
Right? I watched Angry Video Game nerd talking abt the old nintendont commercials the other day. I really want to see MS or Sony do something along those lines but my idea was Nintendo (Pause) Switch Platforms! haha
While there’s physically
I have to correct you there. Half-floats, while they don’t have greatest precision, have a lot of range (6e-5 to 6e5). Several orders of magnitude more than you’d ever need for proper tonemapping. That’s why vfx/movie industry (the field I work in) only use half-floats for storing renders. Nobody uses full precision floats – it’s waste of money (storage gets real expensive when you’re producing terabytes of data every day that needs to be transferred offsite). And it’s not just for final frames, but also for most of utility buffers which later gets used in compositing. They’re all combined and altered through a bunch of lighting and compositing operations which involve a lot of non-linear algebra and it’s all perfectly fine.
The limitations of half-floats tend to creep up with some of the more modern PBR shading models (which gets tricky with GPU that doesn’t use higher precision intermediaries and errors end to accumulate quicker than on CPU – but it isn’t impossible to work around) and storing/working with data that actually requires higher precision, such as depth map or 3d coordinates (ie all of vertex shader). But engineers and graphic programmers are not fools – they’ll pick the right data format for whatever the task requires. And it’s not like “game A is 32 bit shaders only” and “game B is 16 bit shaders only”. Modern hardware is not engineered that way.
The look difference in Zelda is most assuredly not due to precision issues. It’s likely due to change in art direction or capture hardware.
This is kind of misleading too – “GPU performance” is a very broad term. Using half-floats will only make certain shaders run faster (and in some circumstances help memory bandwidth and improve cache hit rate). But there are a thousand other bottlenecks.
Regardless of performance, as
Regardless of performance, as a home system it’s quite pitiful.
Maxwell is great for a handheld, but that’s it. It may have the same architecture as the desktop GPUs, but that’s where it ends.
The perf. difference between the switch and its competitors is by no means comparable. 3rd party support defines the lifespan of a system, this was evident with the Wii-U. As far as 3rd parties go in regards to a handheld, this system is best looked upon as a 3DS “2”, which means Triple-A titles will never reach it.
Nintendo may not see themselves as being in competition with the other two boxes, but rather being some kind of hybrid between the two, but the fact of the matter is – if you release a plastic box with a processor inside and it has the ability to plug in to a TV, then yes, you are in competition with them. Which is why performance matters. This is Deja Vu of the Wii-U launch except that actually had a better year for games.
Safe to say with the negative perception this company has received since the initial showing of the system, nostalgia will no longer be enough to make up for embarrassing performance for their systems. I give it one more generation of gimmicks and silly ideas before they realize that they’re going to have to find a new children’s home for their IPs.
Aside from the fact they’ve done absolutely nothing for PC gaming, their IPs would sell a great deal more if they were available somewhere else, notably, on the other two boxes – something which is becoming more of a possibility should they wish to remain relevant in the gaming space.
LOL
LOL
Nintendo is stuck in the 90s.
Nintendo is stuck in the 90s. Their system is incredibly outdated in terms of technology and it’s now all about gimmicks and their precious IP. This is nothing more than a gaming tablet with the same Nvidia gpu Tegra from years ago. Also, the battery life is a meager 2-3 hours. The only people who will buy this will be the hardcore Nintendo fans. There will not be a single multiplatform game on this system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is thinking ahead to the future with Scorpio and possibly biannual updates like mobile phones. Sony is stuck in the early 2000 with a slight improvement over the Playstation 4.
Yea, you mean games like
Yea, you mean games like skyrim or fifa…
MS definitely not like the
MS definitely not like the idea of having to update their console on much more regular basis. this has been reflected in many of their comment. scorpio is definitely MS answer to PS4 pro. but if sony did not made PS4 pro MS will not going to respond either.
The xbone S is in response to
The xbone S is in response to playstation 4 pro which is better since it has a 4K blu ray player. The Scorpio is their long term solution for upgrades. If they make deals with isp to provide a discount for 2 year contracts then that would be a game changer.
xbox one s is more like how
xbox one s is more like how sony make PS4 into PS4 slim. there is slight performance boost but it is nowhere as big as the gap between PS4 and PS4 pro. so no, xbox one s is not the answer to PS4 pro. to counter PS4 pro MS develop scorpio.
Scorpio is not a response to
Scorpio is not a response to PS4 pro no matter what you think or say. It’s a long term goal period. The Xbox one S has been planned just like the PS4 pro has been planned. Both MS and Sony always release a slimmer faster version of their console.
To me it looks very
To me it looks very underwhelming.
For handheld nintendo have the 3DS and 2DS which are both commercial successes. For that reason I dont think they need and should bring anything new handheld to the market as it only adds fragmentation to the market, e.g. imagine nintendo trying to persuade dev’s to make games for the switch it will be like.
Nintendo “Best handheld please bring some titles to it”
Dev “The DS platforms have a massive userbase and the hardware is good enough for our games no thanks.”
Nintendo “Ok what about full screen games”
Dev “Sony and Microsoft have the userbase already and much more powerful hardware, thanks but no thanks”
I think nintendo need to just concentrate on games and make no new consoles.
Also this zelda game looks aweful from a 2016 standpoint, bland colours, massive lack of detail in the field, lots of aliasing, gamrplay I can not comment on as I have never played it, but given it looks open world, I am not sures its a game for me as I prefer linear RPG’s to openworld RPG’s.