Next month will mark the two year anniversary since the launch of the Nintendo Wii U, which while it has a very solid library of first party games, the system has struggled mightily. As a result, many have wondered whether Nintendo may try to produce a more powerful console to compete with the likes of the PlayStation and Xbox One in the next year or two. That thought received a little more substance with a new job listing from Nintendo of America of work on a future gaming platform for Nintendo, that was subsequently removed.
Found on Nintendo’s Taleo job website, there was a job listing for what was called a Lead Graphic Engineer. While removed from the site, luckily a poster on NeoGAF alerted others to it prior to the removal and copied the job duties and requirements, which can be seen below.
Description of Duties
- Nintendo Technology Development is looking for a lead graphics architect in the system-on-chip architecture group in Redmond, WA. The group is responsible for the architecture of Nintendo’s game console SoCs. The graphics architect plays a key role in determining the SoC architecture. The job responsibilities are:
- Evaluate HW graphics (GPU) offerings from SoC solutions available in the market based on performance, power, and silicon area.
- Evaluate the performance of the SoC solutions for both proprietary and standard graphics APIs.
- Determine workloads and simulation models for both performance and power characteristics of GPUs.
- Keep track of GPU architectural improvements in the industry and devise strategies to incorporate them for future Nintendo gaming platforms.
- Act as the graphics architectural evangelist working with global Nintendo teams for future and on-going programs.
- Work with external SoC vendors as the Nintendo focal point for graphics GPU architecture.
- Should be prepared to work through architecture, design, validation, and bring-up stages of SoC design in cooperation with internal and external teams.
Summary of Requirements
- The ideal candidate will have had experience working directly in a GPU architecture and design team with significant responsibilities.
- Low power and SoC design experience would be a plus.
- The candidate is expected to have good architectural insights and the ability to apply that for setting future graphics direction for Nintendo.
- A bachelors degree (graduate degree preferred) in computer science/engineering or electrical engineering.
5+ years of lead or architectural role experience are required.
The question is whether they wanted to keep this position on the down-low or if it was mistakenly uploaded completely. For a full position description to go up, it would seem to be real but we likely won’t ever know for sure. Either way, Nintendo has to be looking towards the future if they plan on getting back into the console race eventually.
