Next Nintendo Handheld To Be Powered By NVIDIA's Tegra Chipset [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

Vigile writes "When you sell over 100 million handheld gaming systems, everyone wants to be involved in your success; just ask Nintendo. As a company with many different obstacles in its path, NVIDIA could definitely use the boost in revenues that would come from partnering with a company like Nintendo on a handheld system, and it looks like the Tegra processor will make that happen. The NVIDIA Tegra processor is an SoC that runs a set of ARM cores, a GeForce-based graphics core and an HD video processor capable of 1080p output that would definitely give the current Nintendo DS/DSi systems a performance boost in line with the Sony PSP. The 'Nintendo TS,' as it has been dubbed, will apparently be ready for a late winter 2010 release and should put a spark in the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo's developers the power to bring higher quality games to the platform."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
</img>
</img>


More...

[Oobgarm]

1080p handheld gaming system lol

[kedawa]

That sounds promising, but I don't know if anything could get me to buy another Nintendo system.
I figured MS would be the one to release a Tegra handheld, since they already use the platform for the Zune HD.

[BetaWolf47]

Umm, let's wait for Nintendo to make a console that outputs over 480p first.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Nvidias becoming bullshit anymore in the Pc market for the AMD consumer. Intel is about to fight it out with them too over prior chipset manufacturing deals which is going to cause them some real problems, so I can see why they would want to land a deal with Nintendo and branch out more. They found out after disabling Geforce/Ageia Physx from working with ATI hardware that no ones willing to ditch their ATI hardware just to use it. Their spin over that situation has failed horribly with consumers too, but Nvidias always been a company that's too stubborn to really admit they screwed up (Geforce FX line anyone).To me they have not presented a really strong product since the 6800 line, so I'm just like whatever with them anymore. Still not a fan of what they did to 3DFX after that purchase either.... Id hate to see them go under though. Every 4 years or so they tend to release a really ground breaking product. Bitterly, heres to their health.

[chicnstu]

Wait, Winter 2010? That doesn't seem likely. Seems like if Nintendo was going to release a new handheld that soon, they would have already at least talked about it this year.

[Leo_A]

Word of the DS hit almost exactly a year before it's launch, and winter 2010 extends into early 2011 as well. So plenty of time for those 12 months even if we don't hear anything in the next few weeks or months.

Also, the statement "ready for release" doesn't mean it will be released at that time. It just means hardware development has concluded and the design is finalized, nothing more.

Plus, I don't see any reason why they'd announce anything during their busiest time of year for DS sales. Would make more sense to announce it next spring.

I personally can't wait, the DS is looking pretty aged at the moment and there isn't much exciting development occurring on it in recent months or in the pipeline. I'm ready for a replacement.

[joshnickerson]

I doubt we'll see much of anything until DS game and hardware sales slow down a bit... hell, they pushed back the GBA because the Gameboy Color was kicking so much ass, so it'll probably be a couple of years until we see a true successor to the DS.

[GuyinGA]

I think Nintendo will wait -- remember, Silicon Graphics were being bandied about when Nintendo 64/Ultra 64 was being talked about.

Nintendo TS will stick but it will be with someone else, I think it'll be Intel or another manufacturer.

[scooterb23]

And then I bet they'll release exclusive games for this system...pissing off at least one gamer >_> .

[Ryaan1234]

And then I bet they'll release exclusive games for this system...pissing off kupomogli >_> .

Lol. Fixed.
(This is completely unrelated, Scooter, but I also went and saw Plan 9 and got those avatars.)

[joedick]

Wait, Winter 2010? That doesn't seem likely. Seems like if Nintendo was going to release a new handheld that soon, they would have already at least talked about it this year.

I dunno about that. In the years since the DS released, Nintendo has been announcing new games fairly close to their release dates. I wouldn't be surprised to see that strategy to spill onto the hardware side of things.

[geezuzkhrist119]

Umm, let's wait for Nintendo to make a console that outputs over 480p first.

i agree. a console would be the best choice for a 1080p system.

what does TS stand for? triple screen?

[Cryomancer]

Oh boy, more 3D handhelds /sarcasm

[Icarus Moonsight]

If they are going for 1080p for a handheld, the only reason, I can think of, this early out is compatibility and output with HD sets... There are so many other LCD resolutions and screens for a handheld gaming system. Maybe Nintendo is going for a handheld/console, literally. Would be interesting at least.

Then again, this is 'Blue Oceans' Nintendo, so who the hell knows?

[Raedon]

Umm, let's wait for Nintendo to make a console that outputs over 480p first.

Baby steps ... Baby steps.

[chicnstu]

Another thing that confuses me, though I don't know much about this stuff. Nintendo's idea lately has been to make their hardware easy to develop for. Would this powerful Tegra change that? Nintendo may also have to put some work into getting an acceptable battery life.

[kedawa]

The Tegra platform was built from the ground up as a mobile platform, so I doubt battery life will be an issue. The Zune HD uses it and gets better battery life than an iPod Touch.

As far as development goes, I don't think there will be any lack of tools given that Tegra is already out there in the market and will be in everything from phones to GPS units by next year.

[NayusDante]

Does anybody know the specs of the Tegra chipset(s) offhand? They're designed for 1080p video playback, and rudimentary 3D. As far as I can tell, this system spec would be comparable to the PSP in terms of raw horsepower. Let me know if I'm way off here.

Portable games that have technically impressive graphics are a niche market at the moment. We still have a good decade of Flash-like games on handhelds before we can expect any moderate use of shaders and bumpmapping, let alone higher resolutions. That means that we can look forward to a better framerate in Cooking Mama, not a handheld port of Mario Galaxy.

[Icarus Moonsight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra

NVIDIA Tegra is a system-on-a-chip with an ARM processor developed by NVIDIA for mobile devices...

The Tegra is a "computer on a chip" which integrates the CPU, GPU, northbridge, southbridge and memory controller onto a single package.

This is not a mere graphics architecture (If you knew already, cool, but I just found out myself)... This is an ARM based micro-workhorse and recent iterations have been used in MIDs and microbook comps etc. Is the Intel Atom the same type of set-up as the Tegra?

Since the GBA/DS line has been an ARM platform all this time, this makes perfect sense to me now that I dug into it. BC seems possible as far as the guts go. This is pretty interesting. Could Nintendo be getting into portable computing through gaming? Wowzers.