Rumor: Switch 2 Dev Kit Received by Spanish Studio - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 July 2023 / 9,265 Views
The Nintendo Switch is one of the most successful video game platforms of all-time, as only the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS have currently sold more units. The Switch released over six years ago in March 2017 and has sold over 126.51 million units lifetime, according to VGChartz estimates.
Leaker NWeedle, who previously provided accurate on Metroid Dead a year before it was announced, is claiming a developer in Spain has received a development kit for the Nintendo Switch successor. This was spotted by users on Reddit.
"The Switch 2 development kit has arrived in Spain," said the leaker via Twitter.
As always this should be treated as a rumor and with a grain of salt.
Leak Express:
— Nash Weedle “El Analista de Leaks” (@NWeedle) July 1, 2023
⚠️El kit de desarrollo de Switch 2 ha llegado a España.
Que un estudio español ya disponga del kit, frente a la política de secretismo de Nintendo, es un impulso en sus relaciones e indica que estamos en las últimas fases previas a la presentación de la consola. pic.twitter.com/E6JjUAAlEa
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick being quoted in an email to Nintendo President Shunturo Furukawa during today's Microsoft vs FTC hearing last week potentially revealed the power of the next-generation console from Nintendo.
The successor to the Nintendo Switch is said to have power that is "closer alignment to eighth generation hardware." The eighth generation includes the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Furukawa in a recently posted transcript of the Q&A section of Nintendo's latest shareholders meeting said the next-generation Nintendo console, the successor to the Switch, will use the same Nintendo Account system that is already in use on the Switch.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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"Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick being quoted in an email to Nintendo President Shunturo Furukawa during today's Microsoft vs FTC hearing last week potentially revealed the power of the next-generation console from Nintendo."
We had an artcile for this "rumor" and it's fair to explain that Kotick apparently said nothing regarding the suppposed power of the Next Nintendo Console. His saying seemed to me much more of a "if X... then Y" statement than an actual discussion of specs, projected or real.
I wonder what happened with those "Switch Pro" dev kits, which were sent to developers 2 years ago...
Rumor is because of Covid they were recalled
Multiple sources reported that Nintendo decided to cancel the Switch Pro in favor of quicker release for Switch 2, sometime around 2021 as I recall, because the semi-conductor shortages in 2021 and 2022 would have made the launch of new hardware problematic for them at the time. Assuming that Switch Pro dev kits actually went out to devs, they would have been recalled when the cancellation happened.
This is downvoted? At this point it is essentially a fact that a Pro was planned and then cancelled.
Never a Switch Pro was planned, the Switch was already a "Wii U Pro" in the 8th gen, nobody got this...Now my bet is "2 hours", for receiving enough red thumbs to see my comment hidden. I come back in 2 hours.
Why is the Switch a Wii U Pro, although it can't play Wii U discs? Why is Wii gen 7 and Gamecube gen 6, although Wii can play Gamecube discs and its specs are almost the same as Gamecube?
Because they are genius enough to have made you buy twice the same game. Switch is a "Wii U pro" which forces you to buy same game again.
I don't like the mindset of treating every rumor equally.
Where it comes from and their track record matters.
And I'm pretty sure Eurogamer, who were the first to break the story on the concept and specs of the original Switch, reported on Nintendo canelling the Switch pro due to semi conductor shortages.
If it's true, then I wouldn't surprised if sad Spanish studio was MercurySteam, since they already have a good relationship with Nintendo.
My understanding is that dev kits typically only go out to 3rd party devs 6-12 months before a console releases, to minimize the chances of leaks before the console maker is ready to announce the console. It would seem likely then that Switch 2 will release sometime between January and June 2024. Nintendo themselves have denied a Switch 2 release this fiscal year, which runs through March, so we can cross out January-March. That leaves the likely release window as between April and June 2024.
I think 6-12 months is undercutting it. Dev kits for the Switch were distributed sometime in 2015. Sony was sending out dev kits for PS5 sometime in 2018. I think it's more of a 18 month timeframe.
I believe you are thinking of those early, non-finalized dev kits that console makers send out, which are basically PC's with specs in the ballpark of what the console maker is considering for their final system. Finalized dev kits with locked down specs typically aren't sent out to 3rd party devs until 6-12 months before release afaik, to cut down on the chance of leaks. 1st party devs may get them sooner, as it's easier to prevent leaks from a 1st party studio, but MercurySteam, the spanish studio that made Metroid Dread and reportedly received their Switch 2 dev kit now, is 3rd party.
Finalized Xbox Series dev kits went out Summer 2020 as I recall, just 4-5 months before launch, before that devs were using non-finalized dev kits which were basically PC's with ball park specs. PS5's finalized dev kits went out a bit sooner, but as I recall it was still less than 1 year before launch, I want to say March 2020 is when I read that the finalized PS5 dev kits went out.
What makes you so sure that this dev kit is a finalized dev kit though? I don't see this saying anything about it being a finalized dev kit.
True, this could be one of the early kits that got sent out. But I don't think that is the case, an Nvidia dev almost 2 years ago leaked out details about the chip believed to be used in the Switch 2, the Tegra Orin subvariant known as T239. Multiple developers have hinted for quite some time that they have known Switch 2 is coming soon, which suggests they had already received the early dev kits. There was the pokemon leaker who leaked many accurate details about the Scarlet/Violet DLC before it was announced, who claimed he worked at a 3rd party studio that was both assisting Gamefreak on the DLC and working on a Switch 2 update for both the base game and the DLC, and implied the Switch 2 update would be a Spring 2024 release.
And not to forget the final devkit would be around time of prototype of retail models which wouldn't occur more than 12 months before launch. I don't even think they send devkits with ballpark, I think they more likely just give general specs to be spected and perhaps some devtools to debug and the like.
If true then we are about 6 months from announcement and 12 months (or less) for launch imho.
Supposedly the developer is MercuryStream, behind Metroid Dread, who is kind of a second-party developer but definitely not 1st-party. So, Nintendo themselves would definitely already be deep into development for their own titles. It makes a potential April 2024 launch seem at least still plausible.
They are not second party. Still 3rd party. Just similar to Platinum a close relationship. Nintendo never bought any stock in the company.
If a dev most likely do work for a single platform holder (and even more important, the IP belongs to the platform holder) then it is 2nd party.
Mercury Steam is partially owned by a different company and makes multi plat games. Rare was second party to Nintendo as they owned part of them but not a controlling interest.
Right, that is why I said "kind of" like a 2nd-party. I know Nintendo doesn't own any part of them, but at the same time, MercuryStream behaves and is treated for all intents and purposes as a second-party developer. They develop exclusively for the Big N, and on franchises owned by Nintendo. For this post, I was just saying that while they wouldn't be the FIRST in line to get development kits for Nintendo's next hardware, they also would be ahead of most third-party developers I gotta assume.
Nintendo, please release a videogame with a hardware better than PS4 at least.
I doubt that will happen, the PS4 will be pretty hard to make portable with acceptable battery life. Especially since Nintendo isn't known anymore for using cutting edge or even modern chips in their console.
Highly doubt that, the deck chip benefits from a way higher MAX TDP than the Switch. The switch APU draws between 4W(handheld) to 7W(docked), the Deck Apu lowest settings is the same 4W but can be configured up to 15W.
In Theory, the Steam deck max Tflops is 1.6tflops, The Orin chips with a similar TDP as the one found in the original switch offer about 1.25 to 1.5 teraflops fp32 max throughput, but the switch Apu was clocked way lower than the reference chip so we are probably looking at 1-1.25tflops of intended max throughput. Of course, tflops is only 1 of many properties and the Switch will feature better tech allowing it to make better use of its Apu but I don't think it's safe to assume the Switch 2 will be better unless Nintendo radically increases its designed TDP for it.
That's way oversimplyfying things. A flop is a flop wheter it's computed on amd or nvidia hardware does change change what it does.
The thing that vary is the level of utilisation realisticaly achieved on this theoritical maximum and the amount of various harware accelaration bypassing the the shader core entirely.
Yes Nvidia historicaly boasted way hihger utilization and more hardware accelerated feature but it's not so true today and even less so when speaking of low power gpu that are already designed to sacrifice power(theoritical maximum) for efficiency.
Anyway we will have to wait for final results but I would not expect the switch 2 to best the steam deck by a wide margin if at all. I'm sure DF will analyze crossplatform titles and compare both directly once it hit the markets.
Not all "flops" are the same.
FP4/FP8/FP16/FP32/FP64 are all "flops" but different levels of precision and thus speed.
Some pieces of hardware will also "combine" two lower precision flops into a single one to be executed by a core, which can double throughput.
The flop numbers that are often attributed to nVidia/AMD hardware is also theoretical, not real world.
Nintendo also needs a system they can sell for a mass-market price. Selling 2 million $600 systems per year isn't going to cut it for them.
$400 is the baseline Steam Deck at PS4 level power and 16GB of RAM. Only difference between that model and the $600 one is internal storage. With RAM down to what I'm assuming will be 8GB instead of 16GB like in Steam Deck, Nintendo should be able to reach that $300 price tag.
The PS4 tech is 10 years old and wasn't cutting edge when it was released. 1.84 TFLOPS should be possible for a portable device under 400 $ nowadays.
The PS4 is 10 years old at this point. It wasn't cutting edge even when it released. They absolutely can do a $400 device more powerful than the PS4 and release it next year.
I will be a bit surprised if it comes in below base PS4, even on paper. Steam Deck is between XB1 and PS4 in term of on-paper specs, and it was $400 on launch in February 2022. Switch 2 is releasing 2+ years later in it seems like the April-June 2024 quarter, so I don't see why Nintendo wouldn't be able to deliver on-paper specs that are at least a little bit above PS4 for probably $350 (I'll be shocked if they stay at $300 with inflation the way it has been).
On paper specs don't really matter though, even if this comes in below PS4's 1.8 tflops on paper, let's say 1.4 tflops for Switch 2, it should still be capable of smoking the PS4 due to being built on a much newer GPU architecture. Game devs on Switch 2 will also have access to machine learning unlike most PS4 games, as Switch 2 will support both Nvidia's DLSS 2.0 and AMD's open source FSR. This means that instead of targeting native 1080p like most game developers on PS4 did, game devs on Switch 2 can instead target a lower native resolution, let's say 720p when docked, 540p in handheld mode, and then use DLSS or FSR to upscale to 1080p. Doing so will free up GPU resources to be used to improve graphics in other areas as compared to PS4 games, things such as lighting, shadows, level of detail distances, etc.
Switch 2's CPU should also dominate the slow ass 1.6GHz mobile Jaguar CPU from 2013 used in PS4 (Switch 2 is rumored to be using an ARM Cortex A78 from 2020 clocked at around 2 GHz), and I would assume that whatever internal storage Switch 2 will use will be quite alot faster than the slow 5400 RPM laptop hard drive in PS4 (there may even be a small SSD inside, let's say 128 GB SSD, which would absolutely smoke PS4 in terms of loading times). The only real concern I have for Switch 2 is RAM amount, one reason why Xbox Series S has struggled on some games is because it only has 8GB of RAM available to devs, the other 2 GB being reserved for the operating system. Most modern games need more like 10-12 GB accessible to devs, not 8. Hopefully Nintendo at least gives devs access to 10 GB of RAM, or else porting current gen games to Switch 2 could be just as difficult as porting XB1/PS4 games to Switch 1 was.
Paper specs don't paint the entire picture.
Current Switch already supports AMD FSR.
Current Switch already has an SSD.
CPU is a tricky one, because if it only has moderate clockspeeds and IPC, but the SoC includes ray tracing, CPU performance for "other" tasks could potentially fall short of Jaguar when Ray Tracing is used.
Agreed about on-paper specs not being everything, which is why I said that Switch 2's GPU could outperform PS4's even with a lower tflop rating potentially.
Yes, Switch 1 does support FSR, but I believe very few devs have made use of it so far. I think alot more devs will be making use of machine learning resolution boost on Switch 2, especially since Switch 2 seemingly has an Orin based chipset, which means it supports DLSS 2.0, which is superior to FSR in quality currently.
Yes, Switch 1's eMMC storage is indeed an SSD, but its very rudimentary and slow by modern standards. What I meant is that if we're lucky we might just get an M.2 2242 form factor NVMe SSD, which would be faster that Switch 1's eMMC storage and PS4's 5400 RPM laptop hard drive by leaps and bounds. Hoping for at least a PCI express Gen 3 SSD, with read/writes of at least 3000 MB/s, way faster than the eMMC SSD in Switch 1 which is like 100 MB/s I believe. You can buy a 128 GB M.2 2242 PCIe gen 3 SSD for like $20 now, and that is at retail, buying in bulk straight from the manufacture should easily be within the price range for Switch 2. Definitely worth the increaded cost over using something slower like the eMMC in the base tier Steam Deck, which is 500 MB/s I believe. They might even be able to afford to put a 256 GB M.2 2242 PCIe Gen 3 in there, as those can be had at retail for like $30 now.
I hope we don't end up with an M.2 drive, I would rather something that is a little more propriety/integrated for simplicity/weight/cost/power sake.
The solid state drive in the Switch tops out at around 300MB/s, so it's definitely better than the Xbox One/Playstation 4 by several orders of magnitude.
But it's the latency that is the big benefit with solid state storage.
UFS 4.0 which is what Nintendo should be chasing can do 4.2GB read/2.8GB writes, which is found in phones these days.
But even UFS 3.0 which came out in 2018 can do 2.8GB read/1.4GB write.
UFS is the replacement for EMMC, so Nintendo won't need to reinvent the wheel here, plus it's using a mobile chip designed to support it so it's less work for nVidia.
Still, it's the expandable storage that will become the issue, your only option will become SD Express... Not sure how Nintendo's ROM technology sourced from Macronix will scale to keep pace either.
Yeah, I'd definitely be happy with UFS 3.0 or 4.0 instead of an M.2 2242. UFS 3.0 could potentially be limiting for ports of Series S/X and PS5 games if any of them take advantage of their SSD's for more than just load times (things like rapid asset streaming of off-screen items in order to save up GPU resources for things that are on-screen), but so far few games are taking advantage of SSD's for anything more than reducing load times, so maybe 3.0 wouldn't end up limiting current gen porting potential.
I agree that expandable storage will be an issue for them. It kind of already was, as Switch 1 accepted SD cards as slow as 60 MB/s, much slower than the internal storage which you said was 300 MB/s. I think at the very least they need to require UHS-III rated SD cards for game installs, but they really should go with SD Express 7.0 cards as the minimum, and go with PCIe 3.1 x2 for the Bus, allowing the use of SD Express 8.0 cards once they start releasing.
Not sure what they are going to do about the cartridge issue. If they don't want to handicap devs, they really need to either go with faster, more expensive carts, or go with cheap carts and require the games to be installed onto the internal memory to actually play them, making the carts a glorified key, much like game discs on Xbox and Playstation. The latter wouldn't be ideal, but may still be preferable to Nintendo compared to paying lots of money for carts that have SD Express equivalent speed.
With all the wishful thinking about performance, many forget what Nintendo did with the WII. Took the same chip and added a little more Mhz and a little more memory. Otherwise, it was the Gamecube hardware. It's very possible that Nintendo will do it again. Then Switch 1 games could run on Switch 2 without any problems. For Nintendo, the hardware changes that have nothing to do with performance are much more important.
