Mon, Jun 07, 2010 | 11:53 BST
Rumour – Nintendo CTR is codename of 3DS, not connected with NVIDIA
Digital Foundry is reporting that a much speculated tie-in with Nintendo and NVIDIA on 3DS is no longer happening.
Instead, the Kyoto giant has picked a Japanese-based company to power the new handheld instead of the Korean firm. It was previously thought, according to DF, that 3DS would have contained a design similar to NVIDIA’s Tegra SoC.
The blog was also says the development codename for the handheld was known as “Nintendo CTR”. The name was part of an FCC filing from a while back, which further confirms the listing was for either a testing station or dev kit.
Over the weekend, it was said that 3DS would meet the visuals of both PS3 and 360.
We’ll find out what to expect from 3DS at Nintendo’s E3 press conference next Tuesday. This is probably the biggest hardware reveal E3′s seen in five years, so stay glued.
Timing on the conference is here.
3 comments
#1
ranigma
07/06/10, 1:05 pm
Nvidia isn’t Korean.Hq is in USA.And main founder is Taiwanese.
#2
rainer
07/06/10, 1:09 pm
Interesting so it’s not one of the established players, you’d need a fully custom SoC to get the level of rumored performance/power draw needed for the 3DS so that makes sense.
I’d wager Nintendo own the IP of this design (like MS & AMD GPU in X360) from this unknown company so they are saving money as with Nvidia they would of course have to pay increased royalties as Tegra is their SoC from top to bottom.
Possible risk is betting on an unknown/unproven mobile GPU developer. AMD sold off their mobile GPU division, Nvidia/PowerVR you must pay royalties though PowerVR is a lot cheaper still I guess Nintendo is squeezing every penny out of this.
#3
Bulk Slash
07/06/10, 1:42 pm
I’d be willing to bet Nintendo are going for an ARM/PowerVR combo. The iPhone and the iPad use those platforms and the battery life is very good, especially compared to an Nvidia graphics chip! Developers should be fairly comfortable with the polygon budgets and texture resolutions for those platforms too.
I’d say the two likeliest companies are either NEC who have experience with the PowerVR hardware or Sharp who are supplying the 3D screen.