Nintendo Switch 2 is already here. When a new generation of consoles arrives, beyond the new games and experiences that allows, there is a substantive issue that may not interest all users so much, but it is of vital importance for the technology industry: Who signs the processor.
We don’t know Switch 2’s heart beyond what the tests of their first games suggest. And, although it is evident that it is powerful, we will have to wait to see how the developers thoroughly squeeze their chip designed by Nvidia and manufactured by Samsung.
It is evident that the console is important for a Nintendo who saw that switch sales began to falter, but just as important for that NVIDIA that signs a processing unit with which, now, it comes back to the battle horse in the segment of the hybrid consoles.
Nvidia returns to load
When a company leads, what you want is to have even more part of the cake. Nvidia dominates the world of PC video games with an iron hand and, although AMD is doing things well with its last generations, the singing voice continues to take the company led by Jensen Huang.
That battle against AMD on the PC is very unequal, but In the field of consoles, history tells us something else. Both were linked decades ago to video games on platforms dedicated with ATI (before being part of AMD) designing the GPU of Game Cube, Wii and Xbox 360 and Nvidia in charge of the original Xbox GPU and PS3.
With the jump to the next generation, Nvidia got out of the equation and left the free ground for an AMD that did not succeed with her GPU, either with her CPU, but with her APU. It was his technology that convinced Sony and Microsoft for all their consoles from Xbox One and PS4 onwards.
Nvidia, however, returned in 2017 with its Tegra Chip and a new alliance with Nintendo for the launch of Switch. It was not the most advanced at the time, that Tegra showed that the technology was ready To be able to create platforms that offered such experience with desktop power, but in portable format.
And they have not gone wrong or Nintendo … neither Nvidia by extension. 152 million units and up. However, things have changed because Nvidia is no longer alone in this and AMD, along with Valve with Steam Deck, showed that its image reconstruction technology, photograms generation and their power/consumption relationship could overcome what Nvidia offered with Switch.
Thus, we have seen AMD heart in PC consolidated as impressive as the Lenovo Legion Go or the Asus Rog Ally, and it is a segment in which Intel, with a first failed proposal with the MSI Claw and a much more solid second with MSI Claw 8 AI+, demonstrates that it also has something to say.
Nvidia has remained away from those PC consolidated for a reason: They didn’t have a CPU. Now, earlier this year, and after months of rumors, Nvidia presented Project Digits. It is a desktop computer for AI whose CPU is designed by Nvidia: Grace, 20 cores, which although Arm remains and arrived a few years ago, is now consolidated with digits as a blow to the table to a market that was dominated by Intel and AMD.
Nvidia’s commitment is still far from the average user, and even further from the players, but although they are not possible to create processors that compete against Intel and the AMD Ryzen, on desktop PC, that renewed alliance with Nintendo to create Switch 2 can be, if sales accompany, the impulse that they lacked to finish deciding and being The third player in the battle of the PC consolidated.
Your proposal? Beyond gross power, artificial intelligence nuclei to push the hardware beyond the possible. But of course, they would have to develop an X86 processor. Or that or throw yourself to the pool and mark an adventure with a Valve that is already trying to compatible with ARM.
Although, of course, all this would be nothing if Nvidia, which money does not lack, would have signed an exclusive contract with Nintendo for this type of hardware.
Whatever happens, Jensen Huang seems committed to Nintendo’s vision, and they may not end up getting into mud with Intel and AMD as the third company in discord, precisely, because with Switch 2 and its technology based on AI they already have more than enough reasons to say an “EY, which in this segment we also have much to say at the power level”.
After all, no matter how veteran the first switch was very obsolete that his heart was, I kept selling like hot bread Although the rest of hybrid systems offer much more as far as gross power is concerned.
Images | WorldOfSoftware, Ifixit
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