Nintendo NX will be handheld with detachable controllers and Nvidia soc
The upcoming Nintendo NX is a handheld console that has detachable controllers and can be docked to play on a TV. The device uses an Nvidia soc, possibly the same Tegra X1 found in the Nvidia Shield Android TV console.
The news about Nintendo’s upcoming console has not yet been officially released, but multiple sources have told Eurogamer. The Nintendo NX will have its own screen and will therefore work independently like a handheld console. There are controllers on both sides of the screen; which can be disconnected and then used separately. The portion of the NX that remains can be slid into a dock connected to a TV. Eurogamer also shows a sketch of the device, presumably made from descriptions the website has received.
According to the anonymous sources, the Nintendo NX uses cartridges for games. They may be up to 32GB in size and therefore the games would also be limited to that size. It is most likely also possible to purchase and download the games digitally, but it is not known how much storage space the device will have.
The sources tell Eurogamer that the Nintendo NX will use an Nvidia Tegra soc and that current devkits use the Tegra X1. That soc is also in the Nvidia Shield Android TV console and in the Google Pixel C tablet. The Tegra X1 has four 64-bit ARM Cortex A57 cores and a GPU based on the Maxwell architecture with 256 cudacores. That’s one third of the number of computing cores on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 video card. It is currently one of the fastest GPUs for mobile devices, and it is also more powerful than the GPUs in the Xbox 360 and the PS3. In terms of computing power, however, the soc has to recognize its superior in the consoles of the current generations. However, with this hardware, the NX must be able to display better images than the Wii U.
Digital Foundry takes a closer look at the use of the Nvidia Tegra X1 soc and reports to a source that the Nintendo NX dev kit has an active fan to keep the chip cool. That could indicate that the final version will get a new soc that is more economical, possibly the Tegra X2. That chip could also potentially be faster, but because developers currently use the X1 to develop their games, it’s not expected that there will be major performance differences.
Nintendo does not want to comment on the rumors to Eurogamer. The company says it can provide no further information than that the Nintendo NX will be released in March 2017. This was announced earlier this year during the discussion of the annual figures. At the time, Nintendo called the NX a “completely new concept” and avoided the word “console”. Zelda: Breath of the Wild is likely to be a launch game that will be released at the same time as the NX. That new Zelda game is also coming to Wii U and was extensively demonstrated at last E3.
Nvidia Tegra X1 soc