Topic: 3rd party seems reminiscent of wii u. Hmmm?

@LegendOfPokemon
I think the western AAA market is pretty much written in stone at this point, for better or worse. Doesn't mean a few select games can't come to other platforms but that's all it will likely be- a few select games.

But hey, I'm just glad 2 consoles are all it takes to get 95% of the greatest games in the console market. And with Switch now offering portability, that's one less gaming device we need to buy. Who needs a Nintendo handheld when you can have portable play through the Switch? It may not have eliminated the need for a PS4 or Xbox One on the side, but it does eliminate the need for another handheld on the side. And hey, one less gaming device needed is one less gaming device needed... no matter which one it is. Let's celebrate that. After all, when's the last time a new console came out that eliminated the need for another?

(Me of course, I will always buy everything- as long as there's one single game I want on a platform that's not currently available to me, I'll buy the system)

@JaxonH Definitely. I love that the Switch is a 2-in-1 console, and that the price is still fair.

@LegendOfPokemon

The 2-in-1 Switch....

Sounds kinda like 1-2 Switch. Probably how it got its name. It's the showpiece for the Switch, which is 1 console working as 2.

@FragRed
I wasn't aware of any dev that said their game couldn't run on the Switch after actually trying. I remember that clickbait article from the Titanfall dev who laughed it off, but who also admitted they never actually tried or looked into it.

Did the Prey dev try and it wouldn't work? Because here's the thing: As stated numerous times, no sane person expects the Switch to run these big games exactly at the same settings as PS4 and Xbox One. But like you said, as soon as you start downgrading, then the Switch can run a great many games as long as the engine is supported (which that is looking MUCH better on the Switch than on the Wii U).

The real question is: How much lower must the Switch go to get a game like RE7 or Witcher running? And all we can do is conjecture and take pot shots at one another until a dev actually tries and we see something substantial. In this instance, I think the FIFA game for Switch will be very telling once we see it in the wild.

@rallydefault More than FIFA i would tell NBA 2K or Skyrim

@FGPackers
Yea, those two will be good as well. Basically any game where we have a bar set on the other consoles that we can actually compare to.

@twindragon I agree with what you say. Like Battlefield 1 am sure the Switch can handle it at 720p 30FPS. Call of duty again am sure the switch can handle it at 720p 60fps. But Activision and EA just does not seem to care to bring them to the switch. I personally think Nintendo should do everything they possibly can to persuade them to bring these titles to the switch.

I just think it's going to be another Wii U situation. 3rd parts will not want to bring there top games to the system due to the low install base. Customers won't be in a rush to get a switch due to the 3rd party's not being there.

@rallydefault Steep is another game that could be compared as well as the game syberia 3 and the racing game redout. You look at the minimum requirements for these games on pc and some of them need decent hardware to run at the minimum settings.

There's a third way to get in the ballpark which, frankly, is all you really need to do. From the demos they have shown it is clear that the Switch is running better than the Wii U in portable mode. We also know that when running in docked mode quite a few games are bumping the resolution upto 1080p with no drop in performance. Something which would generally require about 2x the performance. Lastly we know from looking at the games and its form factor that it's not going to be particularly close to the XBOne.

If you take all those observations together? You can conclude that the Switch is:
350-500GFLOPS undocked
700-1000GFLOPS docked

Which, all things considered, isn't a huge range.

There is either more reluctance/hesitation from third parties due to the relative failure of the Wii U, or Nintendo did not give third parties enough notice to ensure a more bountiful launch line-up.

Either way, time will ultimately tell, and I think the anytime, anywhere local multiplayer boasted by the Switch's portability can help to sell a lot of units by mid-year (with the system's first major AAA multiplayer title being Mario Kart 8 Deluxe). Visibility in the "wild" is what will spike interest in the system, and in turn, sales.

And if the Switch becomes a runaway success in the months ahead, then I suspect that we will have no shortage of major third party releases this holiday season.

@sillygostly well regardless of my concerns I am looking forward to the launch. I hope it sells a ton and 3rd parties see how lucrative getting games on the system will be. With Capcom saying they are looking into developing RE7 on the switch but are unsure if the engine will run on it. The switch was built from the ground up with the help of nvidia. It has all of the latest APIs. RE7 and any game that gets released on PC all have the same graphic settings that users can tweak to get it to run on older outdated cards that don't even have newer architecture. Im sure capcoms game developers can cut a few things that arent integral to the game if they decide to port. The game runs 1080p and 60 fps on the ps4 and xbox 360. Its not out of the question to run 900p 30fps. things can be done.

Do people honestly think anyone would care at all about a Nintendo console that was just a PS4-Pro with a Nintendo logo on the box? Because I don't think anyone would care.

I would care... I always care

@DefHalan
Fans will always care because of the first party exclusives they can't get elsewhere. I just don't see how they could have won an audience by being a PS4 clone. The same people whining about the power of the Switch and the third party line up? They'd be shrugging their shoulders if Nintendo did literally release a PS4 clone with all the third parties. If they don't care about Nintendo's exclusives on a unique system? They're not going to care about them on a cookie-cutter system.

@skywake
I understand that you can toss out ballpark figures based on rumors, but I'm sorry man, it's technically nonsensical to say you can nail down performance measures when we still don't even know what kind of GPU this thing is actually running much less uh... anything other than the screen resolution, to be honest.

I'm not saying it's going to be fast; I'm not saying it's going to be slow; I'm saying it's illogical to evaluate capability of a piece of technology like this before knowing exactly what is inside, that's all.

Ballpark is fine if you want to keep tossing around those figures for the next two weeks - knock yourself out. But I'll be glossing over that stuff until we have some dudes like Foundry tearing it apart on launch and seeing our first comparison games.

@rallydefault To be fair, what do expect the Switch is or isn't capable of then? The numbers skywake posted are completely reasonable, and I'll be baffled if the actual numbers are not in that range. Inductive reasoning; We know that the performance undocked is comparable to the Wii U, Breath of the Wild is a good example of this. This also means that when it's docked it's still a bit below the Xbox One. Given what we know about the system, that also seems completely reasonable. You don't always need the exact details to give an accurate estimate.

@Octane
Well you're not reading what I wrote, again. I never said @skywake isn't giving "accurate estimate[s]." In fact, I wrote exactly: "Ballpark is fine if you want to keep tossing around those figures for the next two weeks..." More than likely, the performance will fall somewhere into what @skywake is showing, at least if the rumors are true. I never disputed that. So again: Ballpark is FINE for now, but we simply CANNOT know EXACT performance capability at this point, logically.

Final (and true) system capability will not be known until somebody opens one up, and until we start seeing comparable software running on it. How can you possibly debate that point? Do you have some kind of definite knowledge that the rest of us are missing out on?

After @twindragon posted a link to Capcom being interested in getting RE7 running on the Switch, I think that answers your question as to what I think the Switch is capable of. In short, as long as it can run the engine (Unreal, Frostbite, etc.), I think it can pretty much run any game, albeit with varying degrees of downgraded settings.

Also, your assertion that the Switch undocked runs "comparable" to the Wii U is just straight-up wrong according to people who have used it. The only games that would really show that Wii U/Switch direct comparison right now are Mario Kart Deluxe and Splatoon 2, and from people who've had hands-on, they've been saying those games undocked are running smoother AND with better graphics than their counterparts on the Wii U. I don't see how you consider that "comparable," then - unless you're taking "comparable" to mean "much better." (I'm not including BotW, I know, because to be honest I can't make heads or tails of the reports I'm seeing comparing the Wii U/Switch versions. Some people say there is noticeable difference, others say there is almost none. Nintendo has officially said only music and - framerate? I forget - are different, but again that seems contradicted by people who have played both.)

@rallydefault ''and from people who've had hands-on, they've been saying...'' Mario Kart 8 Deluxe runs at 60fps, 720p in handheld mode (1080p docked), the same frame rate and resolution as Mario Kart on the Wii U (also, still no AA). Splatoon 2 runs at 60fps, 720p in both handheld and docked mode, the same as Splatoon on Wii U (and again, no AA). Meanwhile, Breath of the Wild runs at 30fps, 720p in handheld mode on the Switch (900p when docked) and also runs at 30fps, 720p on the Wii U. I think that's pretty comparable, isn't it?

I also think that with enough optimisation, RE7 could run at 60fps, 720p on Switch easily, maybe in 900p, but that may be pushing it.

Do we have any official confirmation that it would be 2x as powerful when it is docked? I suspect this is just pure speculation and not based on anything concrete. Zelda is reported as having smoother performance in handheld mode, which indicates less difference between the two modes.

Also, saying it has a powerlevel between 350-1000 gflops is really covering all bases.

@rallydefault this is why I need to see 3rd party games. They said they are looking into re7 but that doesn't mean the game will look good. So far there hasn't been a 3rd party announcement that shows the switch is capable of getting any AAA 3rd party game. Skyrim isn't a good indicator snake pass isn't because it's world isn't big enough and the graphics are on par with yooka lay lee which was gunna be on the Wii u. None of the first party games are either because they run on Wii u already. Steep maybe but I haven't seen enough of the game to form an opinion. This is what worries me. If we need to wait till e3 to have any annnouncements we will have our answer already because you can't wait 4 months after launch to reveal even one game.