Nintendo Hardware is underpowered! 8 more days until Nintendo spills the beans

So, old ass ports and a couple new games means Nintendo was primarily targeting the Playstation/Xbox crowd, come on now. Those games were just to "fill out" the overall lackluster Wii U library.

Any modern console that doesn't get GTA games can't be counted as a Red Ocean device.

Okay, so my next question to you, who is the target audience for those games if they're not aimed at PS and Xbox gamers or "Casuals?" You're right, GTA didn't come to the Wii U, but that's an entirely different point. I'm asking you about those already played ports coming to Wii U, who were they for?

For Nintendo fans who also happen to like those types of games as well. You do know Nintendo fanboys don't just have to like Nintendo games, right?

Playstation and Xbox fanboys had already played those games, or would have just bought them for the PS3/360, they weren't going to buy a Wii U just to play ports that weren't really any better than what they were already experiencing. Hence, why those gamers waited for the PS4 and XB1.

Surface 4 Pro can easily run Android 6/7 and Xbox 360 class games.

Both Switch and Surface 4 Pro doesn't have a dedicated graphics card and such argument is flawed.

Apple iPhone 7's Ice Storm Unlimited graphics score is 63,158 and at max graphics performance level, the battery life is also crap and price is also just as high.

@ronvalencia: Yeah, for like 20mins probably.

It's not expensive for certain group of tax payers.

Okay, so if they were targeted to Nintendo fans, that means the message was clear. The Wii U was for Nintendo fans, a shrinking fanbase since the Gamecube, that isn't blue ocean at all. That concludes my answer to why the Wii U isn't a Blue Ocean device when it was trying to cater a Gamecube fanbase that is very small.

No, it was trying to do a little bit of both. Cater to the hardcore Nintendo fanbase at first while also throwing in things like the tablet controller and Nintendo Land to try and bring back the casuals. They kinda failed at both given it sold even worse than the Gamecube which was a Nintendo fanboys wet dream of a console.

NES sound was generated by the Ricoh APU sound chip, not the 6502 core. They were separate processors on the same 2A03 die.

What makes the SMS closer to the 16-bit consoles is the fact that it displays 15 colours per sprite/tile, which is the same as the 16-bit consoles. In comparison, the NES only displays 3 colours per sprite/tile. And with scanline tricks, the SMS could theoretically display up to 64 colours on screen, almost as many as the Mega Drive.

The SMS beat the NES in Europe overall. It was fairly close, but the SMS won in the largest EU markets, such as the UK and France. In the UK in particular, the SMS beat the NES by a wide margin.

Again, North America only received a fraction of the SMS library. It was Europe and South America that got most of the SMS library. That's how the SMS beat the NES in these regions, because the SMS had a NES-killer library in these regions. If you lived in North America, then you missed out on most of the SMS library.

@xboxiphoneps3: Sure, but compared to consoles, the 3DS is ahead of all the current-gen consoles in terms of sales.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-7-review-battery-life-and-verdict-page-5

Make that more than 1 hour for gaming

http://www.lovemysurface.net/surface-pro-4-battery/

Surface 4 Pro with Core i5, it's battery life with games lasted 249 minutes (>4 hours).

Next year has Surface 5 Pro in Q1 2017. https://mspoweruser.com/suppliers-peg-surface-pro-5-release-date-first-quarter-2017/

And according to a report from Forbes, the Surface Pro 5 is likely to come equipped with the Intel "Kaby Lake".

@ronvalencia: What game? Its probably 15mins on a game that pushes it. That thing is junk for gaming. Apple blows it out the water.

Relative to Xbox 360/PS3/Andriod 6/7 class games, your "That thing is junk for gaming" is a false narrative.

Surface Pro 4 with Intel Core i5 can run XBO class games at minimum levels. My point, more than Xbox 360.

Like Nintendo Switch, MS Surface Pro 5 (Intel "Kaby Lake") has Q1 2017 release date.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-4-Core-i5-128-GB-Tablet-Review.154419.0.html

At max load, MS SP4 with Intel Core i5 has 111 minutes (1 hour, 51 minutes).

Apple mobile devices are rival to Nintendo Switch (NVIDIA Terga X1 SoC variant).

@ronvalencia: Whats that battery life while playing Xbox 360 games? 10 minutes? That thing is junk bro. Get you an Apple for some real mobile gaming.

The SNES is more powerful than the Genesis

The Nintendo 64 was more powerful than the ps1.

Gamecube was more powerful than ps2.

Etc etc

People started complaining about the power of nintendo systems when there were issues with the power of nintendo systems. (starting with the wii)

So that statement is stupid, and the wii only was popular out of merit of "filthy casuals" like your grandma buying it for wii tennis and that crowd is long gone.

Power is important since it needs to be able to run all the 3rd party games that the competition is playing or your console literally only has exclusives on it and it's silly for the masses to buy a 250-500 dollar (hopefully it's more like 250-350 for their sake) to only play exclusives. The same for xbox one, it's stupid to buy a console only to play 3rd party when there is competition that have both 3rd party and exclusives.

Regarding the "big company" thing, nintendo has a lot of money in the bank + the fact is that sony and microsoft won't drop money out of windows even if they have more money to do so, they spend money to make profit, there'd be no xbox if it wasn't profitable so your "oh it can't compete" statement is just wrong.

In Gen 3, since there was no competition for NES, it went against PC's with Gaming functions, also SMS was more powerful than NES

Neo Geo is more powerful than the SNES

OG Xbox is more powerful than GC

Xbox 360 is more powerful than Wii

Game Gear is more powerful than Gameboy, Pocket, and Color

GBA had no competition unless your counted the Nokia N-Gage

PSP is more powerful than DS

PSVita is more powerful than 3DS

Corrections for both of you:

NES was more powerful than any home systems from 1983 to 1985, up until the Master System released and surpassed it.

SNES was on par with Mega Drive, but weaker than the very expensive Neo Geo.

GC was on par with Xbox.

I wonder what people think Nintendo is going to tell us. I'll answer it, NOTHING.

You've literally corrected nothing I said.

Did at any point did I say that it was the strongest, also gaming pcs were irrelevant back then + consoles back then were kings of strength, for example it took years for the xbox to be surpassed.

But yes, nintendo has been competitive in the console market as far as hardware until the wii, mentioning the 3ds is fucking irrelevant considering that comes well after the wii. Also the xbox 360 thing is irrelevant as well since like I said (can you not read?), nintendo had competitive hardware....... UNTIL THE WII

The wii is when nintendo started to screw things over.

Also the ps3 was hard to develop for but it was vastly stronger than the 360 as far as hardware, it's why it could do the last of us.

Hey if you can play graphics of Xbox 360 and PS3 on a tablet that's fine with me they still look good today. I find the people who complain about graphics are the ones who make up a reason not to get a PC. I have my GTX 1070 for graphics.

The Wii may have been weak, but it helped Nintendo regain lost shares and put Nintendo back on the map. As for the PS3 and Xbox 360, LOL!

The Switch appeals to handheld gamers much more than anyone looking for a dedicated console.

I'm sure they'll sell a boatload in Japan, but most other places aren't going to give a flying rats asshole outside of the handful of Nintendo faithful.

Especially since the vast majority of gamers stick to one console per generation. And by the time this thing comes out, the PS4 and XBone will have made their way into the homes of 60+ million people.

This will be Nintendo's last "console" before they go 3rd party and start developing Mario and Zelda games for Playstation and PC.

@frank_castle: That will never happen. Sony and Microsoft fans only buy dudebro games. And they not even good at that with so many flops this gen.

A lot of people thought that the Wii was going to be Nintendo's last console

What's wrong with "Dude Bro" games? They still sell consoles, Nintendo's goal is to reach a bigger audience which was the prime example of the Nintendo Switch Trailer in October.

@FireEmblem_Man: I never said anything was wrong with them.

Stop begging, it's getting annoying and pathetic.

Begging? Is english your first language, son?

Nintendo is comprised of a bunch of fucking idiots with no business savvy whatsoever. Hell, they could've had a monster hit on their hands with the NES Classic and they fucked it up by hardly making any of them. That thing would've been the ultimate stocking stuffer for Christmas, but those dipshits are more interested in having the hard to get "hot commodity" instead of maximizing profit. Same silly bullshit they started doing with those Amiibo figurines.

They'll go 3rd party and drop out of console manufacturing within the next 4-5 years.

The console game has long passed them by.

@frank_castle: They dont like money mate. They be all like, fack yo money.

#

PS3 and Xbox 360 is similar in effective compute power.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?print=1

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

From https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1460125/

------------------------

"I could go on for pages listing the types of things the spu's are used for to make up for the machines aging gpu, which may be 7 series NVidia but that's basically a tweaked 6 series NVidia for the most part. But I'll just type a few off the top of my head:"

1) Two ppu/vmx units

There are three ppu/vmx units on the 360, and just one on the PS3. So any load on the 360's remaining two ppu/vmx units must be moved to spu.

2) Vertex culling

You can look back a few years at my first post talking about this, but it's common knowledge now that you need to move as much vertex load as possible to spu otherwise it won't keep pace with the 360.

3) Vertex texture sampling

You can texture sample in vertex shaders on 360 just fine, but it's unusably slow on PS3. Most multi platform games simply won't use this feature on 360 to make keeping parity easier, but if a dev does make use of it then you will have no choice but to move all such functionality to spu.

4) Shader patching

Changing variables in shader programs is cake on the 360. Not so on the PS3 because they are embedded into the shader programs. So you have to use spu's to patch your shader programs.

5) Branching

You never want a lot of branching in general, but when you do really need it the 360 handles it fine, PS3 does not. If you are stuck needing branching in shaders then you will want to move all such functionality to spu.

6) Shader inputs

You can pass plenty of inputs to shaders on 360, but do it on PS3 and your game will grind to a halt. You will want to move all such functionality to spu to minimize the amount of inputs needed on the shader programs.

7) MSAA alternatives

Msaa runs full speed on 360 gpu needing just cpu tiling calculations. Msaa on PS3 gpu is very slow. You will want to move msaa to spu as soon as you can.

Post processing

360 is unified architecture meaning post process steps can often be slotted into gpu idle time. This is not as easily doable on PS3, so you will want to move as much post process to spu as possible.

9) Load balancing

360 gpu load balances itself just fine since it's unified. If the load on a given frame shifts to heavy vertex or heavy pixel load then you don't care. Not so on PS3 where such load shifts will cause frame drops. You will want to shift as much load as possible to spu to minimize your peak load on the gpu.

10) Half floats

You can use full floats just fine on the 360 gpu. On the PS3 gpu they cause performance slowdowns. If you really need/have to use shaders with many full floats then you will want to move such functionality over to the spu's.

11) Shader array indexing

You can index into arrays in shaders on the 360 gpu no problem. You can't do that on PS3. If you absolutely need this functionality then you will have to either rework your shaders or move it all to spu.

Etc, etc, etc...

1 hour and 55 minutes for max load.

https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/how-is-a-surface-pro-for-gaming/78527/6

Keep in mind though that any relatively intensive games will kill the battery life of almost any laptop. So if a SP4 gets 8-10 hours watching movies and web browsing, you still may only get 2-4 hours playing depending on the game.

@ronvalencia: Show me the game and stats mate. Im guessing 15mins. That thing is junk for gaming. Get an Apple mate, they have better battery while playing same games. Surface Pro can barely run Youtube videos good, its garbage. I heard it can run Civ V for 5 mins.

You are asking for proof while making a wild guess? Your argument is hypocritical/double standard..

SP4's 38Whr battery provides 38 watts for 1 hour. SP4 i5 has max load of 19 watts. Your estimate is flawed.

@ronvalencia: The gist of the argument is not incorrect, though- the Switch will likely have optimized battery life, these gaming laptops and all are bulky as shit, and barely last three hours.

Your the copy paste stats guru. I was just asking. Shows us that crappy Surface Pro you love to compare Switch with. Whats that battery life running Xcom: Enemy Unknown and Civ 5?

SP4's 38Whr battery provides 38 watts for 1 hour. SP4 i5 has max load of 19 watts. Your estimate is flawed.

@ronvalencia: Show us its performance on the games. We dont care for theory's. Surely you have the stats. Just copy and paste from somewhere like you always do.

Gaming laptops with dGPUs is not my argument.

@ronvalencia: You have no argument, your comparing crappy gaming devices to an awesome gaming device not even released. Its a fools debate.

The only foolish debate is your wild guesses and hypocritical arguments. You have started personality debates which is not system wars.

There's nothing awesome with less than a 1/3 of Shield TV.

@ronvalencia:

But then there is no comparable device

Do you actually not understand what irony is?

@charizard1605: I was joking. He gets mad at my optimism. Awesome can mean many things.

Latest mobile phones has their own issues with running heavy 3D gaming relative to battery running time.

@iandizion713 said:

@ronvalencia:

Your estimate is shit

I corrected the part where you said the SNES was more powerful than the Genesis. They were on par.

iandizion713 how do you have the strength to damage control for this long? Sheep puzzles me.

@emgesp: Yes, that's right. The only thing I'd say is that the pudding isn't what's coming in January - the only pudding that really matters is the one you taste yourself (i.e. sitting down and playing the Switch yourself). That is the only genuine test of whether or not this thing will be a worthwhile product.

The Switch won't sell much as a home console. But they're plan could be to release a real home console in a few years, and still have a portable console on the market with the Switch. But I doubt it.