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You are wrong there. Nintendo instead been always pushing the tech. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in ha

You are wrong there. Nintendo instead been always pushing the tech. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. Mario 64 is credited along with Wing Commander for creating the AAA graphics race at all costs behavior in the industry. The Wii wasn't entirely a direction change, Nintendo felt competing on CPU power now was not interesting and went for motion controls, that later all other consoles imitated. Then we had the Wii U that tried to mix TV with handheld. Wii U kinda sucked so they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example). I am not a Nintendo fan (I was on Sega camp during console wars and currently I prefer the Playstation) but Nintendo hardware always is impressive. PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS.

mcphage 3y ago
> The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. The NES wasn't—it was an 8-bit machine in a time where 16-bit processors were available. I don't really know if the SNES pushed the envelope at all, but you're right that the N64 did.
- zeta0134 3y ago
  The impressive part of the NES was its picture processing unit, which among other things finally delivered on an arcade-like experience at home and gained mass appeal in the process. For the time it was considered quite an advanced chip in its price range. The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks. This helped to keep the NES competitive in the market for many years.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    > The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks. Can you imagine putting the video card in every copy of a game now? What a time that was.
    - michaelchisari 3y ago
      | Can you imagine putting the video card in every copy of a game now? I remember Star Fox (which included the SuperFX graphics chip on the cartridge) going for $90 on release in 1993. That's $188.95 in today's dollars.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Well the Famicom came out several years before the NES, so it was a bit more competitive at that time.
- DerekL 3y ago
  No console had a 16-bit processor when the NES was released.
Closi 3y ago
Neither the Wii, Wii U or Switch have anything powerful from a hardware perspective - the last time Nintendo released a product equally powered to the competition was the Game Cube but that was over 22 years ago now. This is the 'withered technologies' playbook in action - use underpowered/mature technology in new and fun ways rather than relying on cutting-edge graphics technologies. As an example when the switch was launched in 2017 the CPU on the SoC was from 2012. Nothing in the Wii was cutting edge in terms of the technology - it was just well implemented. The motion controls were 2 IR dots and a cheap camera, and that wasn't a new concept. Similarly nothing in the switch was actually cutting edge technologically, just assembled into a great product.
- turbo_fart 3y ago
  Tegra line started then but the Tegra x1 was a 2015 chip
  - Closi 3y ago
    It was launched in 2017 with a SoC from 2015, and the SoC contained a CPU that launched in 2012. Contrast this with the PS5, which launched in 2020 with an AMD Zen 2 CPU which launched in 2019.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      And the original DS launched with a pitiful 67 mhz ARM9 CPU and 2mb of RAM. It sold 150 million consoles. Because the games were good. If you care about tech specs, consoles are a losing battle. Even if they are a good price-performance when they release, the length of console cycles will inevitably cause them to be underpowered and outdated by the second half of their existence, and yet many great and generation defining games come out closer to the end of a console's life cycle.
    - tempoponet 3y ago
      Maybe I'm missing something, but the X1 CPU seems remarkably different from the 2012 Tegras like we saw in the Nexus 7 tablet. Here's a comparison I found https://gadgetversus.com/processor/nvidia-tegra-3-t30l-vs-nvidia-tegra-x1-t210/ https://gadgetversus.com/processor/nvidia-tegra-3-t30l-vs-nv... In what sense did the X1 cpu launch in 2012?
bena 3y ago
Eh. They don't push in the classic ways. I don't think Nintendo has ever put out a console that was on the cutting edge of technology. What they like doing is taking common components and milking them for all they're worth. Or optimizing for what's really important in a system. Like for the Game Boy line, they focused on energy consumption rather than raw horsepower. The NES used a modified 6502, which was used in the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, and others.
vlunkr 3y ago
I don't think we have to reduce it down to a boolean choice. Nintendo has altered their strategy over time, as all 100 year old companies have. It's definitely true that for quite a while now they have not attempted to complete on raw specs.
htag 3y ago
The Switch actually came out as an advanced handheld. The appeal was that it was a handheld advanced enough to play on a TV. It's just that (especially handheld) technology have advanced in the last 8 years. On the Switch, Nintendo is simply extending it's console's life. I think a Switch 2 is likely from Nintendo, but they are also likely to release some other idea. Nintendo console releases are highly variable. They have had a lot of major hits. They've had some flops. They are just making hay while the sun shines, and delaying a console release that might change the weather. I do wonder how many bad console releases Nintendo can get away with. I also am beginning to worry they don't have a great console concept prepared for the next generation.
- turbo_fart 3y ago
  We just need a much more powerful switch that is 100% backwards compatible
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    This'd be a day-one purchase for us. Emphasis on the backwards compatibility. I'll wait 2-3 years if that's not there.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I'm expecting Virtual Boy 2. Nintendo is not willing to lead the charge this time around (leave that to fools like Zuck) so they'll just wait to see which parts work and expand that.
- etempleton 3y ago
  The next console will be a follow up to the Switch. It probably has some kind of added gimmick, but I think the form factor will largely stay the same. When Nintendo has a hit console they try to extend and expand on the idea for their next console and even the naming is typically very similar: NES -> SNES GB -> GBC DS -> 3DS Wii -> WiiU When they have a flop they usually pivot hard, which is how we got the Wii. Hopefully they can avoid the terrible naming of the WiiU. I remember at the time a lot of confusion regarding if it was just an a tablet accessory for the Wii.
mrguyorama 3y ago
You are proving their point. Nintendo switched to the "don't care about tech" strategy because they had been pushing tech for 2 generations and only doing worse as a business. People preferred the Playstation 2 over the Gamecube because it had more and better games, and Nintendo spent the n64 and Gamecube console generations losing their third party support. That's also why the doubled down on their first party games.
- henryfjordan 3y ago
  They did care about tech, just not the tech everyone else cared about. They built pretty much the only successful docking computer, something I've been dying for phone manufacturers to try for a decade. That was revolutionary and a huge part of their success.
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    This is how I feel. Nintendo carries about tech, but in a different way. For them, its not about ultra graphics, but about changing the way you interact with a console and game. Like the Wii, sure, it wasn't bleeding edge hardware or even good hardware compute wise. But it challenged the way we normally thought about how a player could play a game. The switch another example of a console that is both portable, but easily dockable. The only thing I wish they did different was make it so it was a little more performant when docked.
- jquery 3y ago
  The Gamecube and N64 were both nerfed by Nintendo's insistence on using proprietary storage formats. The N64 cartridge size ranged from 4mb to 64mb (64mb being the maximum at the end of the console's lifespan). The GameCube used minidvds that had only 30% of the storage space of standard dvds. The result was a generational game like FF7 was only possible on the PlayStation.
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    FF7 was a PS1 game and didn't use DVDs.
agumonkey 3y ago
There's pushing and pushing. Nintendo vs Sega in the early 90s showed this. The Genesis had way more CPU power and MHz but it wasn't balanced (less colors, worse sound compared to SNES chipsets). The N64 was a bit like that too, they waited quite a long time to release it to get special SGI capabilities.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I remember Genesis games being way more vibrant than SNES games. Were they just oversaturated?
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    Too me they were always darker and limited in shades. You could see that on SF2 ports.
cptcobalt 3y ago
I do not believe calling Steam Deck a clone of the switch is a truly charitable argument or characterization of the product. The Steam Deck is an infinitely moddable PC that play your steam library on the go. It's been long needed, but exists with a different consumer persona than steam deck.
morelisp 3y ago
Nintendo's credo of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" was originally framed by Gunpei Yokoi in regards to the Game Boy. The N64 is the only real stand-out exception.
schaefer 3y ago
>they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example) Calling the steamdeck a switch clone feels really weird to me. I had a sega game gear as a kid, and it was effectively the same form factor...
birracerveza 3y ago
The 4 is boring, yes. The 5 though? Now that's interesting hardware, the thing is so fast, smooth and silent, I am always impressed everytime I turn it on. Feels like an Apple product, if only it wasn't so damn big...
ymolodtsov 3y ago
> PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS. Well, PS3 wasn't boring and where did it get them? Boring is good.

mcphage 3y ago

> The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. The NES wasn't—it was an 8-bit machine in a time where 16-bit processors were available. I don't really know if the SNES pushed the envelope at all, but you're right that the N64 did.

zeta0134 3y ago
The impressive part of the NES was its picture processing unit, which among other things finally delivered on an arcade-like experience at home and gained mass appeal in the process. For the time it was considered quite an advanced chip in its price range. The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks. This helped to keep the NES competitive in the market for many years.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  > The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks. Can you imagine putting the video card in every copy of a game now? What a time that was.
  - michaelchisari 3y ago
    | Can you imagine putting the video card in every copy of a game now? I remember Star Fox (which included the SuperFX graphics chip on the cartridge) going for $90 on release in 1993. That's $188.95 in today's dollars.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Well the Famicom came out several years before the NES, so it was a bit more competitive at that time.
DerekL 3y ago
No console had a 16-bit processor when the NES was released.

Closi 3y ago

Neither the Wii, Wii U or Switch have anything powerful from a hardware perspective - the last time Nintendo released a product equally powered to the competition was the Game Cube but that was over 22 years ago now. This is the 'withered technologies' playbook in action - use underpowered/mature technology in new and fun ways rather than relying on cutting-edge graphics technologies. As an example when the switch was launched in 2017 the CPU on the SoC was from 2012. Nothing in the Wii was cutting edge in terms of the technology - it was just well implemented. The motion controls were 2 IR dots and a cheap camera, and that wasn't a new concept. Similarly nothing in the switch was actually cutting edge technologically, just assembled into a great product.

turbo_fart 3y ago
Tegra line started then but the Tegra x1 was a 2015 chip
- Closi 3y ago
  It was launched in 2017 with a SoC from 2015, and the SoC contained a CPU that launched in 2012. Contrast this with the PS5, which launched in 2020 with an AMD Zen 2 CPU which launched in 2019.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    And the original DS launched with a pitiful 67 mhz ARM9 CPU and 2mb of RAM. It sold 150 million consoles. Because the games were good. If you care about tech specs, consoles are a losing battle. Even if they are a good price-performance when they release, the length of console cycles will inevitably cause them to be underpowered and outdated by the second half of their existence, and yet many great and generation defining games come out closer to the end of a console's life cycle.
  - tempoponet 3y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something, but the X1 CPU seems remarkably different from the 2012 Tegras like we saw in the Nexus 7 tablet. Here's a comparison I found https://gadgetversus.com/processor/nvidia-tegra-3-t30l-vs-nvidia-tegra-x1-t210/ https://gadgetversus.com/processor/nvidia-tegra-3-t30l-vs-nv... In what sense did the X1 cpu launch in 2012?

bena 3y ago

Eh. They don't push in the classic ways. I don't think Nintendo has ever put out a console that was on the cutting edge of technology. What they like doing is taking common components and milking them for all they're worth. Or optimizing for what's really important in a system. Like for the Game Boy line, they focused on energy consumption rather than raw horsepower. The NES used a modified 6502, which was used in the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, and others.

vlunkr 3y ago

I don't think we have to reduce it down to a boolean choice. Nintendo has altered their strategy over time, as all 100 year old companies have. It's definitely true that for quite a while now they have not attempted to complete on raw specs.

htag 3y ago

The Switch actually came out as an advanced handheld. The appeal was that it was a handheld advanced enough to play on a TV. It's just that (especially handheld) technology have advanced in the last 8 years. On the Switch, Nintendo is simply extending it's console's life. I think a Switch 2 is likely from Nintendo, but they are also likely to release some other idea. Nintendo console releases are highly variable. They have had a lot of major hits. They've had some flops. They are just making hay while the sun shines, and delaying a console release that might change the weather. I do wonder how many bad console releases Nintendo can get away with. I also am beginning to worry they don't have a great console concept prepared for the next generation.

turbo_fart 3y ago
We just need a much more powerful switch that is 100% backwards compatible
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  This'd be a day-one purchase for us. Emphasis on the backwards compatibility. I'll wait 2-3 years if that's not there.
jstarfish 3y ago
I'm expecting Virtual Boy 2. Nintendo is not willing to lead the charge this time around (leave that to fools like Zuck) so they'll just wait to see which parts work and expand that.
etempleton 3y ago
The next console will be a follow up to the Switch. It probably has some kind of added gimmick, but I think the form factor will largely stay the same. When Nintendo has a hit console they try to extend and expand on the idea for their next console and even the naming is typically very similar: NES -> SNES GB -> GBC DS -> 3DS Wii -> WiiU When they have a flop they usually pivot hard, which is how we got the Wii. Hopefully they can avoid the terrible naming of the WiiU. I remember at the time a lot of confusion regarding if it was just an a tablet accessory for the Wii.

mrguyorama 3y ago

You are proving their point. Nintendo switched to the "don't care about tech" strategy because they had been pushing tech for 2 generations and only doing worse as a business. People preferred the Playstation 2 over the Gamecube because it had more and better games, and Nintendo spent the n64 and Gamecube console generations losing their third party support. That's also why the doubled down on their first party games.

henryfjordan 3y ago
They did care about tech, just not the tech everyone else cared about. They built pretty much the only successful docking computer, something I've been dying for phone manufacturers to try for a decade. That was revolutionary and a huge part of their success.
- tcmart14 3y ago
  This is how I feel. Nintendo carries about tech, but in a different way. For them, its not about ultra graphics, but about changing the way you interact with a console and game. Like the Wii, sure, it wasn't bleeding edge hardware or even good hardware compute wise. But it challenged the way we normally thought about how a player could play a game. The switch another example of a console that is both portable, but easily dockable. The only thing I wish they did different was make it so it was a little more performant when docked.
jquery 3y ago
The Gamecube and N64 were both nerfed by Nintendo's insistence on using proprietary storage formats. The N64 cartridge size ranged from 4mb to 64mb (64mb being the maximum at the end of the console's lifespan). The GameCube used minidvds that had only 30% of the storage space of standard dvds. The result was a generational game like FF7 was only possible on the PlayStation.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  FF7 was a PS1 game and didn't use DVDs.

agumonkey 3y ago

There's pushing and pushing. Nintendo vs Sega in the early 90s showed this. The Genesis had way more CPU power and MHz but it wasn't balanced (less colors, worse sound compared to SNES chipsets). The N64 was a bit like that too, they waited quite a long time to release it to get special SGI capabilities.

jstarfish 3y ago
I remember Genesis games being way more vibrant than SNES games. Were they just oversaturated?
- agumonkey 3y ago
  Too me they were always darker and limited in shades. You could see that on SF2 ports.

cptcobalt 3y ago

I do not believe calling Steam Deck a clone of the switch is a truly charitable argument or characterization of the product. The Steam Deck is an infinitely moddable PC that play your steam library on the go. It's been long needed, but exists with a different consumer persona than steam deck.

morelisp 3y ago

Nintendo's credo of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" was originally framed by Gunpei Yokoi in regards to the Game Boy. The N64 is the only real stand-out exception.

schaefer 3y ago

>they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example) Calling the steamdeck a switch clone feels really weird to me. I had a sega game gear as a kid, and it was effectively the same form factor...

birracerveza 3y ago

The 4 is boring, yes. The 5 though? Now that's interesting hardware, the thing is so fast, smooth and silent, I am always impressed everytime I turn it on. Feels like an Apple product, if only it wasn't so damn big...

ymolodtsov 3y ago

> PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS. Well, PS3 wasn't boring and where did it get them? Boring is good.