We won’t know for sure what’s actually going on under the hood until the console is cracked wide open or there’s a devkit leak, but my speculative guess is that some details of the GPU are ‘emulated’/recompiled. PC AAA games tend to include lengthy shader pre-compilation wait times, console games don’t have that wait time because the shaders are pre-compiled by the developers when building the game, specifically for one piece of hardware. The games themselves then fully rely on those pre-compiled shaders. They’re going to need shaders that work with the Switch 2’s GPU, which is going to involve some kind of imperfect translation process.
AMD was able to design better hardware that works with older compiled shaders, as done in the PS5/Xbox Series (and Pro consoles). That’s not a super common feature, but I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy. AMD’s graphics division might as well shut their doors if it wasn’t for the consoles, meanwhile Nvidia is raking in trillions from the AI boom and would rather forget about gaming.
I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy.
I don’t think it’s about making anyone happy, it’s about feasibility. From NVidia’s point of view, the first Switch was a throw-away project made up of already way outdated components. They literally just gave them the then currently in development NVidia Shield Tablet (meant for PC game streaming and Android apps) and let Nintendo stick the controllers to the side and port their 3DS operating system over. It was cobbled together to have a Wii U replacement relatively quickly.
Adding transistors for hardware-level backwards compatibility probably has more downsides on a portable console than benefits.
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We won’t know for sure what’s actually going on under the hood until the console is cracked wide open or there’s a devkit leak, but my speculative guess is that some details of the GPU are ‘emulated’/recompiled. PC AAA games tend to include lengthy shader pre-compilation wait times, console games don’t have that wait time because the shaders are pre-compiled by the developers when building the game, specifically for one piece of hardware. The games themselves then fully rely on those pre-compiled shaders. They’re going to need shaders that work with the Switch 2’s GPU, which is going to involve some kind of imperfect translation process.
AMD was able to design better hardware that works with older compiled shaders, as done in the PS5/Xbox Series (and Pro consoles). That’s not a super common feature, but I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy. AMD’s graphics division might as well shut their doors if it wasn’t for the consoles, meanwhile Nvidia is raking in trillions from the AI boom and would rather forget about gaming.
I don’t think it’s about making anyone happy, it’s about feasibility. From NVidia’s point of view, the first Switch was a throw-away project made up of already way outdated components. They literally just gave them the then currently in development NVidia Shield Tablet (meant for PC game streaming and Android apps) and let Nintendo stick the controllers to the side and port their 3DS operating system over. It was cobbled together to have a Wii U replacement relatively quickly.
Adding transistors for hardware-level backwards compatibility probably has more downsides on a portable console than benefits.