Arrogance or Confidence?

Whatever reasoning that Nintendo Of Japan has or had regarding the rollout of OFFICIAL information regarding the Nintendo Switch successor obviously only they know, but I think it's gone too far now. The sad part about all this is that it doesn't even matter if the leaks are "real" or "fake." It's one thing when some random person on the internet makes statements on social-media or in columns of news journals regarding what they have heard or saw, but now you have 3rd-party accessory companies giving full blow-outs of the console showing the entire world what the Switch successor looks like. Sure, it is possible that the final design could be different, but you are not going to have multiple companies running around spending time, money, and other resources to make prototypes of accessories for a non-finalized design. You certainly would not have them showing it off at an event as huge as CES. I could be wrong, but I think that what we have seen is the final design of the Switch successor. The question is, why is everyone BUT Nintendo showing us this? Nintendo has remained quiet with zero commentary on all these leaks on THEIR device. I've never seen anything like this before. As I see it, there are two schools of thought on this. 1. Complete incompetence. 2. Unabashed arrogance. It doesn't seem to me that Nintendo would all of a sudden become this incompetent to let all this information leak by accident. My bet is on the latter. I think that they are just so arrogant that they can reveal it whenever they want to, however they want to. Under normal circumstances that would be true. Especially if all information about the device was still under wraps. Now, the cat is out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn, and the rats are off the ship. The only things we don't know at this point are, what the games look like, what the games are, the price of the system and games, and release date. That's basically it in terms of information that the consumer needs to know to make an informed purchase. The Bible says, "Pride goes before the fall." Nintendo is being super prideful right now. Legally, they are treading on thin ice as well. Nintendo has an investors meeting schedule for the beginning of February. I'm pretty sure that shareholders are not happy about all these leaks from outside sources but no information from Nintendo themselves. They are not going to be able to stand there and say... "We don't have any information regrading the Switch successor at this time. Please understand." That ain't gonna cut it. If I were a shareholder with Nintendo I would be like, "Naw, ya'll can miss me with that. I want to know what you are doing with MY money NOW." As a shareholder of any stock, it is Federal-law that you are REQUIRED to be informed about activities within the company that are directly linked to your shareholdings. For a company to withhold information in this regard and to engage in any activity that involves shareholder's money without their knowledge and consent, that is Securities Fraud which is a FEDERAL OFFENSE punishable of 5-years in prison per-offense in the United States. Now, I know that Nintendo is a Japanese company, but they have many shareholders in the United States as well as other nations. Plus, Japan has similar laws and consequences with their government. I say all that to say that Nintendo cannot get out of January with announcing the Switch successor. At this point, it is out of their hands and if all we have seen is what we are gonna get, a 3-minute trailer isn't going to do anything for you now. You might as well just scrap that and give us a regular Nintendo Direct showcasing the games and price information. There is no sense of anticipation anymore from a "surprise" standpoint unless everything we have seen thus far is wrong (which is still possible.) It's basically like you peaked in and saw your Christmas present ahead of time. You were initially excited when you saw it first, but when it came time to open the gift it wasn't that exciting because you knew you were getting it already. That happened to me in 1985. My mother came in from shopping and I could see through the bag as she walked past me that the Monopoly board game was in there.

Another time, when she wasn't at home, I peaked into her bedroom closet and saw on the top shelf that she had bought me Omega Supreme, which was one of my favorite Transformers. Sure, I was happy that I finally got to play with it on Christmas day, but I had to "fake" surprise and excitement because I already knew I was getting it.

Now, if ANY portion of what was leaked in the recent patent-filing by Nintendo regarding it's new variant of DLSS finds it's way into the Switch successor, I think the games could blow us away and MAYBE.....................that is the hook in all of this. Maybe the games look so incredible in comparison to what we have come to expect from Nintendo that they feel that will be enough to silence the masses. I guess we won't have long to wait to find out.

New Nintendo Patent Filed For AI Upscaling

Before I get started, I just want to put this disclaimer out there that patent filings don't necessarily mean that a company is planning to use these patents anytime soon, or at all. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadBasicPdf/12182966?requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiJhZTNlMDM2OS02M2RjLTQ0MWItOTdkNy1mMWVhMjg0MzIwNTEiLCJ2ZXIiOiIzNjdiZmZhZC0zMDI4LTQwYjctYjM5Ni05YzNhYzJjNDNkZjciLCJleHAiOjB9

This is what I want to talk about today. Some ACTUAL, TANGIBLE, REALISTIC INFORMATION, based on a REAL PATENT filed by Nintendo themselves. This is the short-description of the patent filed on July 13th, 2023 and was released to the public on December 31st, 2024. "A computer system is provided for converting images through use of a trained neural network. A source image is divided into blocks and context data is added to each pixel block. The context blocks are split into channels and each channel from the same context block is added to the same activation matrix. The action matrix is then executed against a trained neural network to produce a changed activation matrix. The changed activation matrix is then used to generate a converted image." What all this technical jargon means is that this patent will allow for Nintendo to use some type of AI to upscale images. It doesn't say when, where, or why. It just discusses what it does. Presumably, this would be the vaunted DLSS upscaling technology that we have heard about ad-nausea to this point. You ever notice how crisp images look on small screens sometimes even on low-powered machines, but when you take that image as it is and make it larger, the image loses visual integrity? It's because only so much information is there in the smaller image. If the image is smaller, you cannot see the holes where there is no information because everything is compacted down. When you blow it up, now you can see those holes. It's just like when you take a low resolution picture and it looks worse when you try to blow it up. While this is not precisely what it is doing, in Layman's terms what the system is doing is cutting the image into small pieces, adding more visual information there to fill those holes and making each piece more dense with data, and then the AI puts the image back together again. Now, when the image is upscaled to a higher resolution, it retains the visual fidelity it did at a lower resolution.

Now, in this image here it shows how the process works in simple terms. Obviously 1080p is NOT the desired output for the Switch successor (it better NOT be.) Patents are made to be ambiguous on purpose so that people cannot get the total context on what they are planning. You'll see patents that are clearly talking about the Switch successor but they show schematics of the current Switch because they don't want you to know what the new one looks like. It could also be why Nintendo hasn't said or done anything regarding all these supposed "leaks" to the Switch successor. Maybe it doesn't matter to them because what has been "leaked" is not to hook of the system and is self-explanatory e.g. magnetic Joy-Cons, Hall-effect thumbsticks, microphone, etc. Or, what has been shown is so far off the beam that they are just letting people make complete and utter fools of themselves. They've done it before.... Getting back to the point, this technology seems to be able to double the output resolution. So, for example, if a 1080p image is fed into the system, the output image would be at 2160p which is 4K.

This image really intrigues me. Obviously the neural network is referring to machine-learning AI, but how it is being implement in this diagram is interesting. I admit that I don't fully understand what is going on here, but it seems like some type of cloud-computing. This can mean a lot of things. 1. The raw-horsepower of the Switch successor and the leaked-specs are more about "portable" mode than "docked" mode. 2. Nintendo has a habit of taking failed projects from others and making it work for them. The nVidia Shield was a failed product (more or less) from nVidia, but Nintendo used that same Tegra X1 chip for the Nintendo Switch. The motion-control mechanism in the WiiMote was turned down by numerous vendors (including Sony,) before Nintendo bought the technology and used it for the Nintendo Wii. 3. Nintendo may have a partner in this to help them cloud computing. It was kind of strange that Activision boldly proclaimed that Call of Duty games would be coming to Nintendo platforms for the next 10 years. Those are games that require a LOT of power and a LOT of storage. There would have to be some level of confidence that their games would be feasible on future Nintendo hardware to commit for that long. At the end of the day, the RUMORED codename of the console which is "Oz" I've said is possibly a reference to The Wizard of Oz film in which a scientist used his technology to make himself look larger and more powerful than he actually was. These patents seem to go along with that idea, but, when it comes to Nintendo, the only thing for sure is that nothing's for sure.

So, what's in a name?

I really wished that Nintendo would hurry up and announce the Switch successor because some Nintendo fans are becoming totally insufferable. It is getting VERY annoying seeing all these so-called "leaks" based on rumors, speculation, and interpretation of designs that may or may not be finalized, or may or may not even be true in the first place. It is getting annoying listening to people stand on rumor and innuendo as the Gospel-truth, or their own opinions as FACT. People are getting into heated arguments based on information that could literally be 100% FALSE. It's not that serious. No one is going to give you a cookie if you are correct. The thing that is really a rock in my shoe right now is the arguments of the alleged name of the Switch successor. Many people accepted that it will be called "Switch 2." It doesn't take a lot of brain-power to come up with a name like that, so I don't know why people are carrying on like they just discovered gold. You have various people that don't have any proof of credentials connected to Nintendo claiming that this is the final name of the console. Who knows? It might very well be. The name doesn't bother me. If the console is weak-sauce I'm personally not gonna bother with the thing anyway, but "Switch 2" is a simple and effective name. Here are some pros and cons. Pros: 1. If Nintendo is planning to stick with the hybrid-format permanently, it makes sense to stick with the "Switch" brand-name. When people hear the name "iPhone," they automatically know what it is and what it does even if they don't have one. "Switch" is the same way IMO. Everyone knows what the Switch is and what it does. It would be foolish to abandon that and have to start all over again building a new brand. 2. It's easier to distinguish the predecessor from the successor by using sequential numbers, e.g. PlayStation 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. 3. From a design standpoint it will be easy to just slap a number "2" somewhere on the current Nintendo Switch logo and be done with it. Cons:

1. The only console that uses the sequential numbering model is Sony, but each iteration of the PlayStation was a generational-leap over the previous one. Based on what Nintendo has said, and based on the RUMORED specs, the Switch successor will NOT be a generational-leap in performance. Seeing the name "Switch 2" may cause the casual-consumer (not the core gamer) to expect something that the hardware doesn't provide.

2. As I mentioned earlier, when you have a successful brand the consumer base expects certain things just based on the name of that brand. Using iPhone as an example once again, lots of people have iPhones and they are numbered sequentially. There are people that upgrade to the newest iPhone as soon as it is released, but there are many people that have an iPhone that do not. If my current iPhone does everything that new one does and does everything that I need it to do, but the new one is just a bit more powerful, why do I need a new iPhone? I don't......so the "need" becomes a "want." The Switch got to where it is being a "need." I "need" a device that I can play on my TV and then take with me on the go and there is nothing else on the market (at that time) that does that. That's why I "need" the Switch. Now, in addition to numerous other hybrid-devices out there that do more and are more powerful, if I am currently happy with my Switch and it does everything I need it to do, why do I need a new one if it's not doing anything different that the one I have? If it does do something different, "Switch 2" doesn't tell the casual consumer what that is........necessarily...........depending on if certain rumors turn out to be true about a possible dual-screen. Now in all fairness I don't think it'll be that complicated. I'm just throwing out reasons for and against the name "Switch2." Like I said, if it's called that, I'm cool with it. I just think people need to understand that Nintendo does not conform to what you are I think makes sense. Historically, Nintendo names their console based on what the hook or "gimmick" is. If the name turns out to be "Switch 2," there is a REASON for that, and I doubt succession is that reason.