NVIDIA boss: gamers will be 'amazed' by Nintendo Switch

NVIDIA has been working with Nintendo for two years on the design of their chip inside of the next-gen Switch console, something revealed during a chat between NVIDIA CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang, and VentureBeat.

Huang said: "We're dedicated to the gaming market and always have been. Some parts of the market, we just weren't prepared to serve them. I was fairly open about how, when this current generation of consoles was being considered, we didn't have x86 CPUs. We weren't in contention for any of those. However, the other factor is whether we could really make a contribution or not. If a particular game console doesn't require our special skills, what we can uniquely bring, then it's a commodity business that may not be suited for us".

He continued: "In the case of Switch, it was such a ground-breaking design. Performance matters because games are built on great performance, but form factor and energy efficiency matter incredibly because they want to build something that's portable and transformable. The type of gameplay they want to enable is like nothing the world has so far. It's a scenario where two great engineering teams, working with their creative teams, needed to hunker down. Several hundred engineering years went into building this new console. It's the type of project that really inspires us, gets us excited. It's a classic win-win".

During NVIDIA's earnings Q&A session, Huang said that the relationship between NVIDIA and Nintendo could last "two decades". Huang explained: "And so that's a real advantage and we're really proud of them. I guess you could also say that Nintendo contributed a fair amount to that growth. And over the next - as you know, the Nintendo architecture and the company tends to stick with an architecture for a very long time".

"And so we've worked with them now for almost two years. Several hundred engineering years have gone into the development of this incredible game console. I really believe when everybody sees it and enjoy it, they're going be amazed by it. It's really like nothing they've ever played with before. And of course, the brand, their franchise and their game content is incredible. And so I think this is a relationship that will likely last two decades and I'm super excited about it", Huang added.