Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang recently discussed the Nintendo Switch some more.
“The quality of games has grown significantly,” said Huang. “And one of the factors of production value of games that has been possible is because the PC and the two game consoles, Xbox and PlayStation, and — in the near-future — the Nintendo Switch, all of these architectures are common in the sense that they all use modern GPUs, they all use programmable shading, and they all have basically similar features.”
Huang admits that the chips inside your PC, your PS4, and your Switch will still have differences. The processors will vary in design and capabilities, but they still all use a common architectural language. That’s despite Tegra using mobile ARM architecture and the other consoles using the PC-based X86 design.
“As a result of that, game developers can target a much larger installed base with one common code base and, as a result, they can increase the production quality, production value of the games,” he said.
The subtext of Huang’s comment is that developers should find it relatively easy to build a game for PC and then port it to PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. One of the biggest concerns that fans have when it comes to Nintendo’s new dedicated gaming hardware is third-party support. That’s something Nintendo consoles have always struggled with, and making it an easy platform to develop for is a key step in ensuring that companies not named Nintendo want to make software for it.
This sounds like the Switch is a developer’s dream console and should have little trouble with making games for it. Perhaps getting Nvidia on board was the best move Nintendo could make. It seems Nintendo and Nvidia have combined to create a true super console.