Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

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Pokun
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Pokun »

tepples wrote:Nintendo drastically opening up its developer approval process in July 2016.
Yeah Nintendo has always been very hard on third-party developers since the days of Famicom, but I guess they learned a bit since the Wii U.

I guess this successful launch will draw more third-party attention to it though. I do think the Switch will turn out to be a success.
3gengames
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

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Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:This is why console makers have until very recently been unkind to micro-ISVs, because console makers thought they could get a better ROI out of AAA developers.
Your comment seems to imply that they're changing their minds. I wonder why; everyone just seems so happy now with all the major game developers... :lol:

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That is only because its not Battlefield. Which will never be on the switch. Just furthers the point. Nintendo will not lose money on the switch, especially with hos crappy the hardware is. But it won't make more than any other available system companies. And they need to open it up to indies more, like stradew valley, because if they don't, they have no games! Switch will make money, but it will fail at being a good system. Wii 2, WiiU 2, shitty system which is dead. 3DS will hold it down, though, still.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

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3gengames wrote:But it won't make more than any other available system companies.
You're assuming they would if they made a "regular" console? The market is already crowded enough with the two virtually-identical systems. While I think it's disappointing the Nintendo Switch's specs are not on par with the Xbox One's or PS4's, (and that it's $300 and not $250...) being about half as powerful, (I think?) anybody smart enough to make a full-fledged video game can figure out how to lower 60fps to 30fps or 1080p (about 2M pixels) to 720p (about 1M pixel).
3gengames wrote:3DS will hold it down, though, still.
Talk about weak hardware! The original 3DS is on par with the GameCube, which had been around for 10 years when it was released. That's a continuation of what happened with the DS, but with how much mobile chipsets had improved at that point, it was inexcusable. (Remember the $250 price point too? I got it when it first came out...)

The Switch is off to a good start. I'm a bit concerned about how it will do latter though; I think developers are still waiting to see how it does, but this could create a sort of self fulfilling prophesy, because if they wait and see if it is doing good before working on anything, people will see that no games are coming out and sales will drop, which will reaffirm their doubts.
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

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What? Everyone said that the 3DS was very powerful for a portable console when it came out. It sat a new record in bad battery life for a Nintendo portable. I bought it after the price drop though.
3gengames wrote:especially with hos crappy the hardware is.
Given how expensive the Switch already is and how bad the battery life on the main system is, I can't see how they could make it much less "crappy" though.
3gengames wrote:...Wii 2, WiiU 2, shitty system which is dead.
I'm not sure what you mean. The Wii U was a commercial failure, but the Wii was a great system that's currently only outsold by GB/GBC (combined total), PS1, PS2 and DS.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Pokun wrote:What? Everyone said that the 3DS was very powerful for a portable console when it came out.
And then the PS Vita came out less than a year later and destroyed that illusion. Look how they turned out though... :lol:
Pokun wrote:Given how expensive the Switch already is and how bad the battery life on the main system is, I can't see how they could make it much less "crappy" though.
Well, here's the inside of system:

Image

Powerful or not, it's pretty damn cool how tight everything is in there; it reminds me a lot of the GameCube. While people were bitching about how it doesn't have the Tegra X2, looking at it, I don't see what difference it would have made. The memory bandwidth is twice as much and the bus width is too, but there are still "only" 256 cores and the Switch doesn't even go full speed as it is. I know RAM can be doubled, as it is in the dev kits, but I think any major improvements would have to increase the size of the case. I could easily see a large battery running the width of the whole thing on top of the board, with a larger fan put in the place of the battery and a discrete GPU put in the place of the old fan.
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Dwedit
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

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Who's obnɘƚniИ? That image may be backwards.
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Pokun
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Pokun »

Yeah that photo is mirror-reversed (is that a real word?).
Espozo wrote:
Pokun wrote:What? Everyone said that the 3DS was very powerful for a portable console when it came out.
And then the PS Vita came out less than a year later and destroyed that illusion. Look how they turned out though... :lol:
Yeah Sony made it too powerful. Both 3DS and Vita were sold for a price that was lower than the manufacturing cost though.
Powerful or not, it's pretty damn cool how tight everything is in there; it reminds me a lot of the GameCube. While people were bitching about how it doesn't have the Tegra X2, looking at it, I don't see what difference it would have made. The memory bandwidth is twice as much and the bus width is too, but there are still "only" 256 cores and the Switch doesn't even go full speed as it is. I know RAM can be doubled, as it is in the dev kits, but I think any major improvements would have to increase the size of the case. I could easily see a large battery running the width of the whole thing on top of the board, with a larger fan put in the place of the battery and a discrete GPU put in the place of the old fan.
Ah yeah, maybe they could have made it more powerful without increasing cost by making it thicker.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Pokun wrote:Yeah that photo is mirror-reversed (is that a real word?).
It's reversed. All the other photos I found were not that good, as it had been taken apart completely.
Pokun wrote:Ah yeah, maybe they could have made it more powerful without increasing cost by making it thicker.
I was thinking they would have had to increase the cost. I'm not sure they could have made it much more powerful without increasing the size period. I really don't understand one thing though; I look at an APU in a laptop, and it says there are 8 GPU cores, but then you look up the number of GPU cores in the Xbox One and you're given 768 wherever you go. I don't see how this is possible, unless I'm missing something; graphics performance often looks close. (Certainly not a 96x difference...)
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Pokun »

If they'd increase the cost any more than this it might've been bad for it though. Before it released economics said it was already too expensive to sell, though now it looks like they were wrong about that.

Regarding number of cores, it largely depends on the GPU chipset I heard. I think Nvidia focuses on quality instead of quantity of their cores, while for example ATI does the oposite, therefore one GPU may have several hundreds of cores.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Pokun wrote:If they'd increase the cost any more than this it might've been bad for it though.
Well, I imagine they're making a good profit with each Switch sold; I think $250 would have been breaking even, but really, what the heck do I know. The dock is 90% plastic and could be swapped out with a simple adapter, but I figure that even that much unnecessary plastic still costs next to nothing.
lidnariq
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by lidnariq »

Cost of plastic parts are almost entirely in the cost of the mold. Larger part, larger more expensive mold.

It's true that the per-unit cost is very low, but you still have a significant up-front cost.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Drew Sebastino »

The cost to create that particular mold still can't even be a tenth of the cost of all the other plastic molds and whatever equipment is needed to make the circuit boards and proprietary microchips and whatever else, can it?
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by lidnariq »

I'm not altogether sure.

Given that the dock appears to be four pieces of plastic, three of which are basically the same size as the Switch itself? It's probably the same cost as the cost of the mold for the rest of the large plastic parts in the Switch.

Are the costs of the molds expensive compared to the various silicon bits? Probably not; economies of scale are more in favor of injection-molded things. At 1.5M units claimed shipped, they might still even be on their first injection mold.

On the other hand, changes to molds range from "well, ok" (if you want to add plastic, i.e. remove metal from the mold) to "that's a problem" (removing plastic, adding metal from the mold) to "time to scrap it and start over" (more than a few changes). At ≈10k USD for a relatively simple mold, it's not something you want to do lightly. Especially if you had multiples made to speed up production.

The other point is that most of the other parts' cost isn't front-loaded. Someone else owns the PCB lithography machine, someone else makes the silicon, someone else sells you whole display modules. As volume goes up, the cost of your custom parts goes down more than for things where the up-front costs are amortized across multiple buyers.
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Dwedit
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Dwedit »

The dock is plastic, plus a small printed circuit board with chips.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo switch gets hacked with webkit exploit

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Dwedit wrote:plus a small printed circuit board with chips.
Well, I mean, that's unavoidable. However, the actual circuit board is only about the size of the fan in the system itself and doesn't have much more functionality than existing USB C to HDMI converters. They could have avoided making a special one entirely, but it probably wouldn't matter and might hurt sales, as even though the dock comes with the system, nobody would buy extra ones (assuming anyone will at all) because they could get them elsewhere. Nintendo could avoid having to make their own custom circuit board, but would probably just pay someone else per unit sold, which would end up being worse.

One thing I wonder is if to someone who's not a hardware person, did the dock sort of have a psychological aspect? I mean, plugging something in versus placing it doesn't require much less effort at all, but it looks nicer, and if you were like me, you'd assume the dock would increase the performance in one way or another outside of just telling the Switch to go faster.
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