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This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Nintendo has had a trend for the past couple decades of releasing "sequel" consoles that are essentially a modernized version of the old one with extra features, compatible with everything that released on the predecessor.

With all three major console manufacturers prioritizing backwards compatibility, and the rise in PC gaming (universally backwards compatible), people are starting to catch on to the fact that old games don't "expire" after 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised if backwards compatibility just becomes the standard for all gaming consoles going forward.

Tangential, but I'm also interested in seeing how games that released on old consoles and are continued to be played, like Fortnite, will support aging hardware. I don't like that Epic can one day announce the game just no longer works on that console, rendering your purchases null and void until you upgrade your hardware, but I can't expect them to update that version of the game forever.

Games don't have the generational differences they used to. They're mature now. Tech is rarely the blocker anymore. The Switch was "underpowered" at release and is even more underpowered now but the space of "games that would run well on the Switch" is still fairly unexplored, not because anybody is bad but because the space is so big now.

That hardware can no longer compete with platforms that don't throw away their entire library on every release is probably one of the first impacts of games finally maturing. My "next console" was a Steam Deck for partially this very reason, the fact that it came preloaded with years of previous acquisitions.

We're also just seeing the leading edge of the game industry having to deal with the fact that it now has to compete against itself. There's been a number of articles about how $NEW_GAME never even reached a peak player count of something like Skyrim. I think that's currently being written as a sort of a "ha ha, that's sorta funny", but it represents a real problem. It is not unsolvable; Hollywood has always faced this issue and it has historically managed to make money anyhow. But I think AAA gaming is only just beginning to reckon with the fact that they aren't going to get a "free reset" on every console generation. $NEW_GAME really is is competition with Skyrim now, along with a lot of other things. It's not a joke, it's an emerging reality the industry is going to have to grapple with.

>not because anybody is bad but because the space is so big now.

I completely agree but I would actually extend this principle even more aggressively. Even if, for whatever reason, we were hard capped technologically at Windows 98, even that space could be fruitfully explored practically without end, creating new genres, new stories, new games.

Fiction writing carries on just fine in books, and music has certainly benefited from new tech and new methods but there would always be music even if that weren't the case, and same with cinema. I would put tabletop games in this category too. Its continued future viability, independent of future tech advancements may be an important factor in settling whether its art.

Full credit to Nintendo for recognizing they had plenty of unused creative space to play in, and choosing to play by different rules.

Factorio on a Pentium pro sounds very tricky to do effectively. Half Life still is great but the graphics in HL2 make it more immersive. That's slowed but I wouldn't cite 98 for that.

It's an emerging reality, but it will be sustained by the market of kids and adult-kids who need "new thing" to play, and have a group of friends in the same boat.

I've said before that I've got a list of games going back 20-odd years that I'd like to play through in retirement, so I'm not the target market, but for online multiplayer games there needs to be a player base that makes it worthwhile, and the swarms are fickle and fast-moving. Helldivers 2 being a recent example to where a large community swarmed.

Having said that, and as someone else pointed out, enduring games like Fortnite will have to cut off certain aging hardware at some point if it's to remain a viable magnet to the swarms.

Aside: I used to go to LANs back in the Quake2 days, and was annoyed with Counterstrike because it essentially halved the player pool of Q2 FFA fragfests. The fragmentation of the market has only continued since then, but the market has also greatly increased in size. I did very much enjoy the unchained chaos of large scale Q2/Q3 FFA and Rocket Arena. Good times.

Either that, or you've gotten older. The young always want to play that one specific NEW game. Currently that usually means PS5, either Fortnite or Call Of Duty (and yes that one specific version). PS5 only has PS4 backward compatibility, and it isn't going to be emulated any time soon.

Fortnite and Call of Duty are not great examples given they both still run on the PS4. Even the latest Call of Duty iteration that launched barely two weeks ago still runs on last generation consoles, because there's still so many players who haven't felt the need to upgrade to the successor generation after four years.

I don't think there's ever been a console generation before where the last generation was still getting big new releases this deep into the next one. The PS5 Pro is out now and the PS4 is still getting new games.

From what I've heard only about 4% of CoD: BO6 buyers were on PS4. It might finally be getting to the point where it just no longer makes sense to craft an entirely different version for the older consoles. Perhaps Switch 2 getting CoD will keep the PS4 version on life support however.

I wonder how much effort it really takes to release a game for both PS4 and PS5, especially if you're already building it for Xbox and PC. PC requires you to support a wide array of performance capabilities, at least in theory making it easy to scale back performance to a previous-gen console; and they're probably still using an evolution of the same engine they were using for PS4, so at least to my mind it's a checkbox, some performance tuning and a bunch of QA. (at least in theory). maybe some different servers to support multiplayer - but since CoD supports cross play maybe not even that.

Agreed, and 4 years into PS5, the onus on making the PS4 a "quality" experience is lower, vs. just giving PS4 owners "something" to play e.g. in developing markets where people mightn't have upgraded yet.

An analogy I might draw is the FIFA games, where FIFA 14 came out on the PS4 and PS3, but also the PS2 and Wii, which were just roster updates of previous years (no new gameplay features whatsoever), and clearly that was acceptable to enough people to give EA the trouble of developing, printing and distributing.

Yeah but the only discernible difference to most gamers from last gen to this gen is load times… the ps5 pro side by side to a ps5 screenshot of an enhanced game vs the unenhanced version is crazy.

"The young always want to play that one specific NEW game."

And people want to see that specific one NEW movie, too, not even just "the young". Even now, after all that has happened, Hollywood can still put butts in theater seats for a new movie, even though the attendees probably average several dozen movies at home and probably still have literally hundreds of movies they would enjoy as much or more than the one they are watching in the theater. A lengthy essay could be written on why, which I'll let someone else write.

But I can promise you from personal experience that a 2024 gamer has an easier time picking up and enjoying a 2014 game than a 2004 gamer would have picking up a 1994 game, to the point that it is not even close.

Checking a list of games from 2014... heck, I've got personal proof, my young teen recently started Shadows of Mordor. While it didn't "stick" (we got Skyrim somewhat after that and that has stuck, however, while initial release is 2011 on that the history is complicated and I won't complain if someone wants to forward-date that at least a bit), he wasn't like "oh my gosh this looks so bad and the QoL is so terrible I can't play this anymore". Others from 2014 include Super Smash Bros Wii U, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and The Last Of Us: Left Behind. Really not that dissimilar from what is being put out today.

Whereas 2004 to 1994 is the delta between Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas and Sonic 3 and Knuckles. That's huge. Yes, I'm old enough to have been there and I can you from personal experience that in 2004 "Sonic 3 and Knuckles" was very definitely legacy in a way that The Last Of Us: Left Behind is not. If you tell someone today that you just started the latter, they might wonder why you're late to the party but they're not going to think anything more of it.

Case in point: I just bought Diablo 3 (released in 2012) on Switch the other day.

I'm sure D4 is more modern, but the difference from D3 is nowhere near D2->D3 for the same time span (12 years).

League of Legends and Minecraft came out ~15 years ago and never left the top 10 most played PC games.

It's hard to release new live-service games too. Many people will just be happy to play LoL for the rest of their lives.

Uh no you're wrong. They'll play LOL for the rest of their lives indeed, but not happily. /s

> PS5 only has PS4 backward compatibility, and it isn't going to be emulated any time soon.

But that compatibility is not achieved with emulation, right?

The PS6 can hopefully keep compatibility with PS5 and PS4 in a similar way. Unless we are nearing some sort of ARM horizon for consoles, that is.

RISC-V makes the most sense. It means they wouldn't be locked into one CPU supplier. Requiring a GPU based on RISC-V (or a separate open GPU ISA) could further insulate them from the current AMD lock-in.

> Unless we are nearing some sort of ARM horizon for consoles, that is.

The documents accidentally leaked from the FTC vs. Microsoft trial revealed that Microsoft was at least considering switching to an ARM CPU with the next Xbox generation, but they hadn't decided yet at the time those documents were written. Either way they would still use an AMD GPU, so it would be AMD+AMD or ARM+AMD.

Microsoft has been working on perfecting x86 emulation on ATM so it's not far fetched to think they could still keep backwards compatibility.

Most folks now play one, or a couple, of live service games and that is about it.

A platform inside the platform.

That is why console sales are so bad, in comparison with previous generations growth sales.

You must have some very old young.

The young I know play free mobile games they downloaded from clickbait ads.

or roblox

fortnite battle royale came out in 2017... hardly new at this point i think

> the space of "games that would run well on the Switch" is still fairly unexplored

That's not true at all, many games don't bother with the Switch at all because of dev costs, and Fortnite, one of the most popular games in the world, is struggling on the Switch. I know because I play FN on Switch occasionally, and you can quite literally see all the pain that went into making all that complexity work at approx 25fps.

Even Nintendo can't make the latest Zeldas run at >30fps, and they're relatively low fidelity.

You're absolutely spot-on!

I've been organizing LAN parties with my friends for 26 years now and around 2010 to 2016 was the time when games became so good that stopped making sense to upgrade in-between LAN parties.

- Left 4 Dead 2

- Killing Floor 2

- CS:GO

- Grid 2

- GTA V

- StarCraft II

plus nowadays there's stiff free competition, e.g.

- Rocket League

- Brawlhalla

- Dota 2

- LoL

but also from OpenRA, which modernizes Red Alert.

Plus, it's challenging to tell based on screenshots if you're looking at Assassin's Creed III (from 2012) or Assassin's Creed Mirage (from 2023) and there's been 7 !!! other Assassin's Creed games in between.

And looking at the Switch, I'd say the situation for new games is brutal. There's lots of evergreen games with great replay-ability and thanks to the cartridges you can easily borrow them among a group of friends. It's been a while since I last bought a new one because there just wasn't anything different enough from what I already have and like.

My biggest wish for the Switch has been that it'll one day drive my screen at 144Hz to make movement smooth. And it looks like Nintendo is going to deliver exactly that: More powerful hardware for the same old games.

I wonder if Nintendo will also eventually be forced to implement a subscription model and/or if they will start to aggressively push older games without updates out of their store (like what Apple does) because otherwise I just don't see many openings for developers to build a new Switch game and make the financials work. Currently, you're competing with a back catalogue of 4,747 games, so good luck finding anything where you can stand out by being better.

Backlog doesn't seem to intimidate people off of Steam, so it's not a huge concern for smaller publishers. It's the big publishers trying to break into multiplayer that have hurdles to jump through. Just look at Concord: an "okay" game with few glitches and high quality graphics that probably would've done well had it not come out after a half dozen games did it better.

> I've been organizing LAN parties with my friends for 26 years now

> - StarCraft II

I thought Starcraft II didn't allow LAN play?

It's true that the progress in games is much slower now, but I believe in the console world the main factor is hardware.

Consoles used to have very bespoke architectures, but now are switching to customized versions of relatively off-the-shelf components. Both the PS5 and the last XBox use x86 AMD CPU+GPU combos, probably a variation of their regular G product line.

This results in better games with more content, and every game releasing on every platform.

The games on the Wii might have been super novel, and innovative, but most of them were kind of junk that wouldn't pass today. Now most new games seem to come with 100+ hours of content and extremely polished gameplay. Rather than building 4 games for 4 platforms, you can spend 4x more to develop one game.

I stopped playing games in 2020 and when I started again late 2024 it was as if nothing has changed since say 2017. The most popular games are still very popular today. I think the reason for this is that I don't play games alone anymore. I always spend time playing with a friend I already know. All those single player games that come and go don't interest me.

> That hardware can no longer compete with platforms that don't throw away their entire library on every release is probably one of the first impacts of games finally maturing. My "next console" was a Steam Deck for partially this very reason, the fact that it came preloaded with years of previous acquisitions.

This was something that confused me about the concept of consoles in the 90s. The nonexistent value proposition of a console hasn't changed since then.

I assume they serve two purposes:

(1) They're marketed as toys you might buy for someone as a gift.

(2) You might own a console if you don't want to own a computer.

Purpose (2) seems to have withered and died.

> There's been a number of articles about how $NEW_GAME never even reached a peak player count of something like Skyrim. I think that's currently being written as a sort of a "ha ha, that's sorta funny", but it represents a real problem. It is not unsolvable; Hollywood has always faced this issue and it has historically managed to make money anyhow.

One major aspect of copyright law is making it difficult for people to consume media from the past.

(3) Play console-exclusive games (or they want to play online with their friends who do)

(4) Don't have money for computer (there is a lot of overlap here, a PC may or may not be cheaper in cases for a given perf level)

(5) Gift bought by non tech-savvy family member

(6) Do own a computer, but just want a different and more plug and play device to relax with after staring at said computer for 10 hours a day

I don't think (1) and (5) are different ideas?

> I don't like that Epic can one day announce the game just no longer works on that console, rendering your purchases null and void until you upgrade your hardware, but I can't expect them to update that version of the game forever.

Traditionally for these "Live Service"-type games, they announce cutting support for a console, but let you carry your purchases in that specific game (subscription, add-on items, etc), forward to the same game on the next gen of that console.

For example, how Final Fantasy 14 ended PS3 support - https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/-i-final-fantas... and how Grand Theft Auto 5 ended PS3 support - https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-online-support-ending-xbox-...

It's not a guarantee, but I'd expect something similar for Fortnite.

It's definitely the case for Fortnite, but it still doesn't sit well with me that a service bought on specific hardware can just be taken away with no recourse. I'm not sure what if anything can or should be done about it, but it's weird knowing that many of the most popular PS4 games will be straight up unplayable in a few years

It's like how mobile games can stop supporting old phones. e.g. Hearthstone

> prioritizing backwards compatibility

Backwards compatibility is very "cheap" these days though? With no arcane architectures and chip designs. PS5 and Xbox are basically just generic PCs running a restricted OS and Switch is just a phone/tablet.

Depends on the level of hardware access.

If the GPU access is through a relatively "thick" API like DX/Vulkan and shaders stored in an intermediate representation like DXIL or SPIR-V, sure, swapping out the hardware implementation is relatively easy.

But if they're shipping GPU ISA binaries as the shaders, you'll have a much harder time ensuring compatibility.

Same with things like synchronization, on both the CPU and GPU (and any other offload devices like DSPs or future NPUs). If they use API-provided mechanisms, and those are used /correctly/, then the implementation can likely be changed. But if they cycle-count and rely on specific device timing, again all bets are off.

Things like DX12 and Vulkan have a large number of sync points and state transition metadata to allow different implementations to be "correct" in things like cache or format conversions (like compression). Not all those transitions are required for every vendor's hardware, and we regularly see issues caused by apps not "correctly" using them when the spec says it's required, as the vendor's hardware they happened to test on didn't require that one specific transition that another implementation might, or they happened across some timing that didn't happen to hit issues.

I guess my point is Compatibility is hard even if the APIs are intentionally designed to allow it. I have no idea how much the idea of such compatibility has been baked into console APIs in the first place. One of the primary advantages of consoles is to allow simplifications allowed by targeting limited hardware, so I can only assume they're less compatibility focused than the PC APIs we already have Big Problems with.

It is cheap only if you don't change CPU or GPU architectures. This is why the PS4 doesn't have PS3 compatibility.

When apple switched to ARM even with x64->ARMv8 translation layer (NOT emulating) it was still noticeably slow in a lot of software. Even though some x64 games worked on ARM macs they still lost A LOT of performance.

The backwards compatibility of the PS2 was due to the PS2 literally including an extra PS1 CPU (technically PS1-like CPU underclocked to match the original PS1 CPU when running PS1 games). On PS2 games this PS1 CPU handled only I/O so it wasn't completely wasted when running PS2 games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_technical_specif...

The PS2 CPU is a MIPS III while the PS1 CPU is a MIPS I. I am not an expert but I think but I think MIPS III is only backwards compatible to MIPS II, not MIPS I

The Mac is a weird counter example here, the move to 64 bits resulted in many games with official Mac ports (e.g. most of Valve's: Half Life, Portal, etc) no longer being able to run on modern versions of OSX

"Nintendo has had a trend for the past couple decades of releasing "sequel" consoles that are essentially a modernized version of the old one with extra features, compatible with everything that released on the predecessor."

Isnt it pretty much just the Wii and Wii U? I guess you could play GameCube disks on a Wii but calling the Wii a modernized version of the GameCube is a real stretch.

GB/GBc/GBa, DS/3DS (we don't talk about DSi) come to mind if you count them as consoles. You can even play GBa in the original DS, but not in the 3DS as far as I know.

The 3DS actually has a GBA CPU that was used when Nintendo gave some free GBA games away to early 3DS buyers after they lowered the price, as a sort of refund for the difference in prices. You can access it now buy jailbreaking your 3DS, but if you have a New 3DS, emulation on the main CPU is more convenient.

Similar situation with the Wii U. It was technically capable of natively running GameCube games, but Nintendo locked out the functionality. It can enabled with homebrew.

DSi XL (LL) is actually my favorite way to play DS games because the screen is huge (and IPS!) but is in the native DS resolution of 256×192 pixels. DS games on 3DS-derivatives look like blurry garbage because they get scaled up to 320×240px for display on the 3DS's 800×240px (400×240px per eye) panel.

If you hold down the start button while booting a DS game then the 3DS will render it with 1:1 pixels instead of ugly scaling, but then you're not using the whole display so a DSi XL is still better.

I'm surprised there isn't a 3DS mod to bodge in a fancy modern panel with enough DPI to hit the lowest common multiple of those screens' resolutions, such that it can pull off a full-coverage integer-scaled mode for both DS and 3DS games. (There certainly exist enough mods that do this for GB/GBC!)

>(we don't talk about DSi)

New 3DS crying in the corner because it didn't even get a side mention, which about matches the number of exclusives it had.

In addition to supporting GameCube discs, the Wii had physical ports for plugging in GameCube controllers and memory cards. So, not much of a stretch.

They even released a version of the wii without the gamecube ports or compatability (before the wii mini) which immediately supports gamecube games again if you solder the ports back on.

The Wii Hardware was also basically a beefed up GameCube. Plus the Wiimote.

yeah and the DS had a GBA cartridge slot.

Wii, Wii U, GBC, GBA, DS, 3DS all had backwards compatibility.

Technically, so did the SNES with the NES, it was just never really exposed. SMB all-stars started as SMB3 running directly on SNES. And you had the Super GameBoy, but that was little more than a GameBoy in a cartridge.

> Technically, so did the SNES with the NES, it was just never really exposed.

I've always wondered how true this is — I feel like if it was literally true, we'd see a lot of NES ROMhacks that involve editing the ROM's layout and metadata bits just enough that it's now a SNES ROM, and then taking advantage of SNES capabilities in the mod. But I don't believe I've ever seen something like that.

I do understand that the SNES CPU is basically a "very extended" 6502; and that the SNES PPU's default-on-boot graphics mode is compatible with drawing NES-PPU-formatted CHR-ROM data; and that there's a "legacy compatibility" joypad input MMIO in the right place in address space to allow a game that was programmed for the NES to read the "NES subset" of a SNES controller's buttons.

But is the SNES's (variant) 65C816 ISA a strict superset of the NES's (variant) 6502 ISA? Or would they have had to effectively go through the assembly code of SMB3 with a fine-toothed comb, fixing up little compatibilities in the available instructions here and there, to get it to run on the SNES?

(Though actually, even if they did have to do that, I imagine it would be still be possible to automate that process — i.e. it would be theoretically possible to write a NES-to-SNES static transpiler. In fact, it's so seemingly-tenable, that I'm a bit surprised to have never heard of such a project!)

There's at least one such effort, Project Nested: https://github.com/Myself086/Project-Nested

The Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) had backwards compatibility with the Master System. Unlike the Super Game Boy, the Power Base Converter was barely more than a cartridge pass-through adapter. The Mega Drive’s 68000 is idled and its Z80 sound co-processor takes control as the main CPU.

https://segaretro.org/Power_Base_Converter

That's exactly what they called it when its internals became known: an enhanced Gamecube with waggle controls.

The graphics chip was even fixed-function, like the Gamecube's, not shader-based like the Xbox 360 or PS3.

> The graphics chip

The graphics architecture was even the same between Wii and GameCube - ATI's Flipper, just with 50% higher clocks on the Wii.

And in fact bug for bug compatible.

Incorrect. The Wii is far more similar to the Gamecube than the WiiU.

I always find interesting the issue regarding PC gaming on the rise, because in the Iberian Penisula game consoles never were that big.

We grew from the 8 bit home computers, lived through 16 bit home computers and settled in PC gaming.

Nintendo was mostly about those game & watch handhelds, naturally SEGA and PlayStation became relevant, replaced by XBox and PlayStation, but always on the shadow of PC gaming.

Although the handhelds have been backwards compatible, only the Wii and the Wii U had backwards compatibility. The SNES, N64, Gamecube and Switch did not have backwards compatibility.

The SNES and the Gamecube did have the Super Game Boy and Game Boy Player respectively though, but I'd probably count that as sideward compatibility rather than backward compatibility.

I said "past couple decades" for a reason. The N64 is pushing 30

Shoot, they don't need a hardware generation to do that. ActiBlizz told everyone who spent $40 on Overwatch "Fuck you, go play a different game".

Lucky for you Fortnite is and always has been a free game. If you were foolish enough to pay to dress up your characters well then thank you for supporting that business model so I can let my kids play for free. Power to you if you can afford to drop money on digital clothing for a game you spend on what ever you like. But I just see it as bad a smoking. Kids are like junkies wanting to buy clothing for a game mean while them and their parents are living in rags. It’s an addiction and kids are put up against their peers or will be on the outside if they can’t get the latest skin. So stupid it went that way and any game that has kids playing it should not allow in game purchases like that.

babe. there were so many stupid toys and collectibles for kids until the 2000s. chill out lol

And this reveals the real reason Nintendo came after Switch emulators - to buy some extra time before Switch 2 gets properly emulated.

The hard part of emulating the Switch 2 probably isn't going to be the actual emulation, but breaking the security so that the games and firmware can be extracted and decrypted. Nintendo pretty much nailed their software security with the Switch 1 but were undone by catastrophic hardware bugs, so we'll have to see how well they learned their lesson on the hardware front next time.

Microsoft and Sony have demonstrated that hardware security can be more or less perfected, neither of their systems have been compromised via hardware attacks for several generations now.

The main hardware security bugs[0] were very low hanging fruit associated with taking over the boot chain at ring 0- it's more likely that Nintendo themselves were in a rush to get the product on the market after the perceived failure of the Wii U. Even with a secure software stack, people found a way to defeat the Xbox 360 hardware[1] by physically drilling into a chip that enforced a software lock, and George Hotz became known for his work in finding ECDSA flaws in the PS3. Companies can design these locks to last for a few years of a console's lifespan, but I think people now are determined enough to dive into these difficult problems that they're unlikely to be secured forever.

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unpatchable-hardware-exploit-l...

[1] https://gbatemp.net/threads/scanned-drilling-template-16d4s-...

There's a reason why you have to go back to the 360 and PS3 for those examples, Sony and Microsoft stepped up their hardware security dramatically after that generation. Neither the PS4, PS5, Xbox One or Xbox Series systems have ever been compromised via hardware attacks, and those earlier ones are over a decade old now.

The Xboxes have held up extremely well on the software front as well, and although the Playstation software isn't so robust (they use FreeBSD and routinely get owned by upstream CVEs) their secure boot has never been broken, which limits how much you can do with a software jailbreak. PS3 jailbreaks had continuity where you could upgrade an exploitable firmware to a non-exploitable one while retaining a backdoor, but the PS4s secure boot put an end to that.

Also a note that the XBox security CPU, Pluton is a requirement for more recent PC hardware architecture designs.

And for Rust fans, its firmware has been rewriten.

That's not the only reason, Microsoft and Sony did improve their security a lot but their console are also much less juicy targets than in the past as well. The Xbox and the Playstation have way less exclusive games than in the past and the difference with the PC is much smaller nowadays

> it's more likely that Nintendo themselves were in a rush to get the product on the market after the perceived failure of the Wii U

Perceived failure of the Wii U and the total reboot of the Switch project itself: https://mynintendonews.com/2020/12/22/nintendo-leak-shows-sw...

I mean, it is a classic example. If you have access to the hardware and the dedication to do so, you could break almost any security. That's a hilarious example to physically drill into a chip, though

This could be “famous last words”, but as someone who has worked with chip security I’d be very surprised if anyone breaks this generation of hardware at the chip level.

A decade ago the engineers designing these chips knew there were several angles of attack but there just wasn’t enough resources put into closing these holes.

Now every know angle of attack is closed. Even if you delid the chip and reverse engineer every single gate and can probe individual metal wires on the chip, it’ll still be nearly impossible to break the hardware security. Power supply and EM glitching is also protected against (can’t speak for Switch 2 but I’m speaking in general about chips going forward)

Could be bugs and mistakes that allows someone to bypass security, of course. Both in hardware and software. But I don’t think there will be general purpose angles of attack that can be used to bypass security going forward.

> Power supply and EM glitching is also protected against (can’t speak for Switch 2 but I’m speaking in general about chips going forward)

Microsoft talked openly about implementing those safeguards in the Xbox One, and they've held up for a decade or so now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo

I think it is less that such a thing isn't possible and more that it isn't possible on "guy alone in his basement" resource and expertise constraints. And because of awful laws like DMCA 1201 if you get beyond that, or if your work becomes widely known, you will become Nintendo's new lifetime indentured servant courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Microsoft and Sony have successfully prevented their systems from being jtaged or mod-chipped. Not sure you can prevent dumping the actual game binary on the internet. That has lots of software and hardware attack vectors and only needs to be done once by a professional enthusiast.

The game binaries are encrypted, sure you can image the Blurays and put them online but they won't do anyone much good without access to the keys buried in the firmware, which are also a moving target since they can be rotated via mandatory firmware updates if they get compromised. In the case of the Switch, you also have to contend with the proprietary carts requiring a crypto handshake before they'll let you even read the encrypted game data.

What on earth do you mean? How does a physical blu-ray’s encryption keys get rotated?

Do you mean that the protection on the firmware gets refreshed with updates, but the secret it protects always stays the same?

I mean the keys can be rotated for future game releases, so extracting the keys from firmware X doesn't allow you to decrypt all new physical games in perpetuity, because past a certain point they'll start using a key that only exists in firmware Y onwards. Key rotation was moot in the case of the Switch 1 since the early models were so thoroughly broken that Nintendo couldn't do anything to stop the new keys from being extracted every time, but it worked for Sony and Microsoft whose systems generally only get one-off software exploits that can be closed forever via firmware updates.

MSFT largely did this by building the xbox platform basically on a local hyper-v system that they can control and not have to worry about hardware.

The modern versions of the switch with those catastrophic bugs patched are still hackable though through mod chips. It's too hard for the casual user to install, but it's plenty accessible for a hacker who just wants to dump ROMs and reverse engineer the OS.

Even if the software is absolutely bulletproof, you can hack almost everything by modifying the hardware. Cutting the power of the CPU for a tiny amount of time for example can cause it to glitch in a way that bypasses the security checks. This is accessible enough for at least one person to get in and dump games.

> can be more or less perfected

When it comes to video games. That's not much of a demonstration in the grand scheme of things.

There's also the fact that their games keep leaking a week or 2 head of release, so people can play them earlier and with better performance by downloading the leaked game and playing on an emulator.

I think Nintendo has a case to make that Switch emulation is costing them real money.

Mig Switch should work then.

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Emulation is legal, per established case law. Sony v Bleem, Sony v Connectix, Sega v Accolade.

There are legal issues around how to legally obtain emulatable copies of the games you own, but emulation is absolutely legal.

(This is not a commentary on whether the emulators in question were careful in every other way.)

I know some instances of emulation have been resolved to be fair use.

Still, Nintendo's motive is to defend their IP.

Even if the lawsuits go nowhere, it still works for them.

See, https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/switch-emulator-ryuj....

If Nintendo's IP wasn't involved they wouldn't give a rat ass about the emulation scene.

They worked for Sony, too, by driving emulators out of business. But that doesn't make it illegal; it just means the infliction of massive legal defense costs are an effective tactic.

If only anyone been able to establish this as a credible defense in court.

"This is my IP" is an absolutely valid defense in court. There have been tens of thousands of trials with IP infringement at its core.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_case_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_patent_case_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trademark_case_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_patent_l...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_...

Did you not know this?

Are you aware of a case where the practice of emulation has ever been found, in court, to be a case of IP infringement? Because that's actually the pertinent claim here, not that IP infringement is a real thing that exists.

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I think they meant about emulation.

I believe emulation is legal in the US.

They're being purposely coy though on what this actually means. Backwards compatibility with digital/e-games, or backwards compatible with the physical carts?

I'd be shocked if it doesn't support physical carts, given Nintendo's history with backwards compatibility. And given the rough equivalence of digital games and carts on the Switch, I'm hoping that means digital purchases transfer too - but that would be a first for Nintendo, I think. Fingers crossed!

From what I understand, people are much more into physical media in Japan. Nintendo also actually finishes their games and gets a working build ready before release so the carts actually have a game on them that don't require a patch, which is unfortunately not standard across the industry.

You could transfer your digital games from the Wii to the Wii U, but it wasn't done for you.

There isn't a technical reason to change the cartridge format. I don't see why they wouldn't just use the same carts if backwards compatibility is the goal.

Because they can get more money by selling the same game twice. But they can still claim backwards compatibility with download-only games.

There are now cart dumpers that can copy and store multiple Switch games on an SD card. If the same form factor is used its likely these will still work for original Switch games.

I would be unsurprised if the cartridge has the same form factor but has internal differences for Switch2-only games. If they want to try to lock Switch2 cartridges down more, there's plenty of ways to do that while maintaining a similar enough form factor for Switch1 compatibility.

I suspect the cartridge will be similar but have a notch on it that prevents it being inserted into a Switch console.

This is how Game Boy Color, DSi and 3DS systems handled being able to accept games from older models worked.

there always is:

- smaller

- energy efficient

- cost saving

and they are all valid reasons, it's a handheld, the form factor will evolve until perfected

The carts are already plenty small. Yes, they could be smaller, but any smaller (without being downloads only) and they'd be difficult to handle.

For cost, they could likely reduce the pincount for new cartridges, by changing the number of data pins, but that doesn't preclude using the same slot. Reducing cost of cartridges is more effective than reducing the cost of the console. Reducing pin count would probably save more money than shrinking the small amount of plastic case.

For energy efficiency, maybe they can eliminate 3.3v and only keep 1.8v for new carts, maybe redesign the insertion detection pins to detect old and new.

they could have made them smaller the first time around, but I have to imagine they intentionally chose not to — we have to remember that they're also optimizing these things for children... so smaller isn't always better for things like swallowing (which is why they add a bitterant to the current cards)

Even at the size they are, I wish they were closer to GBA—cart sized.

You wouldn't vacuum a cartridge.

I don't game nearly as much anymore but my understanding is that Nintendo may be the last console maker to regularly produce physical games. Newest Xbox doesn't even have an optical disk drive, I believe?

Nintendo also seems to be the least price gouge-y, in terms of lootboxes and microtransactions and other bullshit. Now I wish that didn't come with the tradeoff of them being completely anal when it comes to people posting OSTs online but I guess I'll take it.

The newest Xbox model doesn't have any new features; they stripped the drive so they could offer a lower-cost model. And while the newest PlayStation model doesn't have a drive, they sell one separately. So physical games are still alive and well for all three competitors.

It would really be surprising if it wasn't backwards compatible. The Switch breaking backwards compatibility was exceptional, apart from that every Nintendo console since the Wii on the stationary side and the GameBoy Color on the handheld side had at least one generation of backwards compatibility.

That's an oddly cherry-picked version of a pattern. There was no compatibility between the NES, SNES, N64, or GameCube. Wii and Wii U each supported their predecessor's games, but the Switch did not. Those 2 out of 7 were outliers

You are forgetting the handheld line

Gameboy Color supported OG Gameboy games

GBA supported GBC games

DS supported GBA and(?) GBC games - Could be wrong about that

3DS supported DS games.

The GBA (original and SP) also supported OG Gameboy games, but the Gameboy Micro only supported GBA games

The 3DS also had games from other consoles for sale in the eShop, but they were emulated (GB, GBC, Game Gear, NES, SNES). If you bought a 3DS before the price drop, you could also play some GBA games. These are also running natively, not emulation https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

Game Boy Micro can still enter GBC mode, it just can't read any cartridges. It's missing the switch which is normally triggered by the cartridge shape, and also missing the voltage conversion circuitry.

DS did not support GBC games.

The important part is that backwards compatibility became a focus after the Gamecube and it has been ever since. Like, this is just a fact. The Wii supported Gamecube games and controllers. Even the WiiU had the internal capability to run GC games, it just lacked the disc drive for it, and it ran Wii games just fine. The same goes for every single of their portable consoles (GB games work on the GBC, GB and GBC games work on the GBA, GBA games work on the Nintendo DS, etc).

CPU and GPU architectures used to wildly change from one generation to the next. Backwards compatibility wasn't always practical or feasible.

Now we've arrived at a fairly locked in set of architectures.

"Every console since the wii" and "except the switch" is two consoles. The other 4/6 were not backwards compatible.

The DS and 3DS were.

A lot of people call those handhelds to distinguish between them and traditional consoles which attach to a TV.

I really love when backwards compatibility is incorporated in new products. I’m pleasantly surprised because Nintendo has been bit so many times. For example GameCube compatibility on Wii is why we had hacked Wii so quickly.

Lego City Undercover with a higher framerate/resolution would be fantastic - even if only AI upscaled.

Bonus if they invent an AI that can fix the crash bugs in the binary.

Unfortunately it looks like they will again use a very outdated SoC, likely one that doesn't even match a several years old Steam Deck. Probably an 8nm chip, based on Nvidia's outdated Ampere architecture. See e.g. here https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1fjy...

Which would mean the SoC is even more outdated than the Switch 1 SoC was at launch. Reason is probably that Nintendo originally wanted to release the new hardware significantly earlier.

I really don't understand why they are planning those chips apparently many years in advance, when some other manufacturer (AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, MediaTek) could have supplied a more modern SoC without many modifications in a relatively short timeframe at a better price than Nvidia.

This would have made backwards compatibility more difficult, but I don't think this is that big of an issue anyway. Nintendo often didn't have it in the past, and few people complained. After all, old games can still be played on the old hardware.

Huh, I'd been assuming the Switch 2 would be AMD Z2 based. I guess they've managed to convince nVidia to make them another SoC. A little surprised, would have thought nVidia would want to use any spare fab time for AI chips, though maybe they have some older process capacity?

Rumour mill has been an NVidia SoC (derived from their automotive line) and manufactured by Samsung on a non-bleeding edge process.

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-inside-nvidias...

The basis for the rumour is basically Linux kernel code and other leaks/hacks for a "T239" SoC that seemingly has all the streamlining and features you'd want for a mobile gaming processor (as opposed to a automotive SoC like the T234 it's supposedly derived from).

The Samsung fab is based on T234 being fabbed by Samsung using a ~5 year old process, and Korean industry rumours (https://m-mk-co-kr.translate.goog/news/business/10999380?_x_...).

I imagine something like the Switch is a great revenue stream for nvidia. It's relatively easy work and they'll be minting Switch 2s, thus paying licensing fees, well into the 2030s.

Even if they don't need that money, it's still good to deny the competition of such a lucrative contract.

There are some hints that Nvidia wants to seriously enter the ARM CPU market (again)? Switch guarantees high demand/volume regardless of anything else. Not clear how lucrative the contract is on its own, though.

Presumably it will reduce their current gross margins (which won't necessarily look great in their quarterly report. Nvidia's total revenue is only ~20% higher than Intel's was back in 2021 despite the insane valuations (in large part due to their obscene margins).

> There are some hints that Nvidia wants to seriously enter the ARM CPU market (again)?

Fourth time lucky?

(Poor ol' Nvidia has had an unfortunate history with this, arguably largely through no fault of their own. The Zune, the Kin with Tegra 1, the Motorola Xoom with Tegra 2, a variety of less-beloved tablets and weird phones with Tegra 3. I think the only successful use-case besides Nintendo and car infotainment stuff was Nvidia's own Shield.)

Nintendo optimizes for cost, not maximum performance and almost always selects older technology. AMD Z2 chips go into $600+ bulky low margin PC gaming handhelds whereas Nintendo likely will want to hit $300-350 while keeping a healthy margin.

This also means that the Switch SoC doesn't use an expensive cutting edge manufacturing process. And it probably won't be made in TSMC factories at all. Leaks pretty clearly indicate an Nvidia Ampere based SoC built on Samsung's 8nm process, so it's the same tech as Nvidia's consumer line circa 2020.

As usual with Nintendo products, they will not use the best / fastest chips available, but older ones where the production capacity is not that constrained.

I’ve got to assume that fab capacity for SoC ships verses H100s are two different things. With the automotive industry down there could be spare capacity ?

The Switch SoC is now built on a 16nm process, so there's no need to go for the cutting edge to achieve a sizable improvement. The Samsung fabs Nvidia relied on until very recently could do the job.

Why wouldn't they just use an emulation layer? There have already been several Switch emulators that run on x86 in the wild.

Because it is a mobile console, therefore battery life is a limitation and adding an extra layer of indirection (and therefore, work) will drain that battery faster.

I hate to break it to you, but battery life will be at the bottom of the list of Nintendo's concerns when giving you backwards compatibility. If Yuzu was able to get 2.5-3 hours of battery life on the Steam Deck (which isn't that far off from what it gets playing a lot of "native" games) essentially flying blind, Nintendo should be able to do at least that.

4.5 to 9 on the actual Switch with a 4310mAh vs 2 to 3 on the Steam Deck with 5100mAh doesn't seem to prove your point.

The Steam Deck also has a significantly larger battery.

I would be more excited if they released it in console form instead of an iPad with a docking station; N64 was basically the perfect form factor -- load games manually (tactilely) and no fussing with bluetooth or controller charging; and prioritize local co-op games instead of online play.

Good news for you :)

- Almost every first-party multiplayer Nintendo game on the Switch that I know of has offline local multiplayer. The only exception which comes to mind is Splatoon.

- The Switch has a cartridge slot, and leaks suggest the Switch 2 will too.

- And you can connect two (possibly more with a hub) Pro controllers with a true wired connection: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

Fingers crossed that the Switch 2 maintains this pattern.

> The only exception which comes to mind is Splatoon.

It does, but it's hidden behind an unlisted button combination (Zl + Zr + L3 for Splat 3) and every player needs their own console and copy of the game: https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/The_Shoal#LAN_Play

As well as local multiplayer, there's a feature to sync game updates without an internet connection. So even if people start off with different versions of a game and have no internet connection they can still play together.

I am a little disappointed they don't have anything like the DS's download play feature though.

- No cords is really nice.

- Battery life isn’t really a problem on full-sized controllers (and the failure modes are “walk the dog around the block while it charges enough for a couple-hour session” or “it becomes a wired controller for a few minutes”) including the Nintendo ones, just the damn joy-cons. Those do suck, but the basic idea of wireless controllers has proven to be really good, not like the old Wave Bird days.

- The Switch is easily the best local multiplayer modern console AFAIK, including lots and lots of co-op options.

The N64 was significantly limited by its form factor.

Many games were not ported to it because it used a cartridge that couldn't hold near the data of a CD ROM like its peers.

The controller was amazing though.

The controller was amazing though

...

What?

The thumbstick was super shoddy and was prone to mechanical failures, the ridiculously tiny d-pad was literally made for ants. The N64 was a lot of things, but I don't know anyone who's giving out accolades for the controller design.

The GC controller (outside of the HUGE shoulder bumpers that were used as analog in a grand total of like 4 racing games) was a vast improvement on it, and I would say that the Switch Pro Controller ranks up there as one of Nintendo's best though the cost of $60/$70 kind of stung.

Pro: We won’t have to repurchase games.

Con: Assuming native compatibility, this likely won’t be a very exciting console.

A beefier Switch is what everyone wants. The number 1 complaint I hear about it is how game X looks worse on it than the Xbox/PS version.

Hopefully Nintendo learned its lessons from the Wii U.

Agreed, a lot of people were expecting a bump in processing power in the OLED refresh, but it's pretty clear now that they were saving that for the Switch 2.

A beefier iteration is the Xbox PlayStation way. To many people what makes Nintendo special is that they often avoid that. Wii, Switch, snd DS being successful examples.

>Hopefully Nintendo learned its lessons from the Wii U.

That’s my concern, Nintendo doesn’t like incremental titles like “Switch 2”. They’d rather call it something weird like “Switch Me” which only confuses non informed customers.

If they were on their game it would just be "Big Switch".

Yeah playing emulated Switch games is a much better experience on a Steam Deck than it is on the Switch. Nintendo is in a weird spot now because the competitive landscape is much different.

Consoles have had architecturally unexciting hardware for a while now, what kind of thing were you expecting?

I was / (am still sort of) expecting Nintendo will make a product that’s exciting. Not a Switch 2 we can look back on and say “man this company hasn’t made a significant console since 2016”.

To be fair, I predict a Netflix of gaming in the future so maybe this is a safe move, idk.

The Nintendo DS was "interesting" relative to the GBA (if you ask me), but still had native back-compat.

I agree that the Switch 2 will likely be "more of the same", but I don't really see how that relates to back-compat?

I forgot about how drastic the Wii was regardless of native compatibility with GameCube.

I guess I was under the assumption that because on the joy cons unique format, it would be hard to escape with fully compatible support. But I didn’t own a Switch for very long so idk if that’s true.

Most if not all games also support the Pro Controller. The Joycons' uniqueness is more about the form factor than anything functional.

How practical to include some emulator once you shut down all the other emulators

Who said anything about emulation?

Well yeah, I damn hope so. It literally has switch in it’s name

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You'd hope so, but this is likely a move to placate detractors so the army of Nintendo fans buy whatever insanely underpowered and overpriced device they eventually release.

Nintendo has fans because the software is good. Sure, the Switch was "underpowered", but if it plays the games I want to play, then who cares?

Also, I think the $700 PS5 Pro wants a word with you.

Cool cool.

So another six years of fractured marketing, where you need a spreadsheet to know if the game you want to buy will run on your device. Is it for the Switch, the Switch 2, the Switch 2 Advanced, or the Switch 2 Advanced S AI Cloud VR?

Unless they choose some stupid name other than "Switch 2".

People understand Playstation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 just fine so that simply isn't true.

Also consumer confusion is not a good excuse to ignore having backwards compatibility.

I can just see them snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by calling this thing something stupid like "Switch U" or "SwIItch" confusing the hell out of consumers again.

For all the things Nintendo does wrong, I feel like this isn't one of them.

The Switch thankfully avoided this, but there when the "New 3DS" came out, there were a handful of games that only worked on that hardware revision.

I think Microsoft suffer worse for this, not only with the bizarre console names, but also their cloud gaming packages.

There wasn't a Switch Advanced/Pro or anything like that though. There's the Switch and Switch Lite, the Lite can't attach to a TV and the controllers are fused to the system.

But, you can still pair most types of extra controllers to it (including a set of Joycons), and the eShop is aware of games the few games that can only be played on a tv and warns of incompatibility.

Plus the Switch OLED, which was the Switch but switchier.