Topic: Does anyone else feel like this is more "Switch U" than Switch 2?

@hYdeks

Fully I agree. I’ve got the same two games and cyberpunk is shockingly good. It looks as good as the PS5 version does. Perhaps if you break it down it has flaws but just playing the game I can’t tell the difference between the two either handheld or docked.

The only thing missing is games and I do know that they are coming similarly like with the Switch 1. I assume we have to get a release date for Metroid Prime 4 soon.

People keep saying there are no games, but dang, I’m overwhelmed. I’m 20 hours in MK World and have barely scratched the surface. I want to get around to the Zelda upgrades, Cyberpunk, and Rune Factory before Bonanza hits next month.

And then Metroid, Pokémon, and that new Zelda Warriors will be coming. Ah!

It's official, 3.5million in the first 4 days. And also an announcement of a new Splatoon spinoff game last night plus a free content and performance bump for Splatoon 3

I look forward to watching how the goalposts will move in light of this new information

Stepping away from financials and sales stats, the Wii U was one of my favorite gens. Yes, we waited for the games to hit, some first party droughts for sure, but there were cool HD games on it throughout that felt like a novelty for Nintendo. When the Nintendo titles did hit they were great, right up till the end with breath of the wild, a great sendoff for the console that kept it on for hours and hours for multiple weeks. If Switch 2 feels like that in the end, I’ll have no complaints

One very positive thing about the switch 2, I feel, is that while the hardware is familiar the games feel unique (first party) to a new generation. The Switch 1 shared its identity with the Wii U throughout its lifecycle, something that for me personally wasn’t a highlight of the system. But that’s not the case between the Switch 2 and Switch so far.

@NinChocolate
I would say Switch 2 has similarities to the Wii U in the sense that seeing Nintendo's output now target a higher quality is compelling in and of itself. And hopefully over the life of the console we'll see some compelling content beyond just the fidelity boost like we eventually got for Wii U. I'm not sure anything we've seen anything yet for Switch 2 that hits in the same way that Splatoon, Mario Maker or Mario Kart 8 did

Even now but, what we do have is what are enhancements. As just straight free updates sometimes. From day 1. Which is something no other Nintendo console has done. I'm getting as much value personally from the TotK Switch 2 Edition as I did Twilight Princess HD on Wii U

If people want to somehow discount these updates for whatever reason? Well ok. I disagree but people do what people do. But even then, it's a severely unbalanced comparison to compare the final library of a discontinued console to the current known library of a console not yet a week old

@skywake precisely, ya. There’s a lot still that can’t be said yet about Switch 2. Especially because Nintendo’s “extracurricular” entertainment ventures are in a full swing that just was not there for past console launches. And it has a bearing on the brand as a whole, which is the idea per Nintendo. So traditionally software sells hardware, for sure, but now Nintendo is more of an all-purpose entertainment name a la Disney.

I actually view the switch 2 similarly to how I saw the GameCube’s software. So far, at least. DK Bananza is striking at something unique. A unique twist for a character in the same vein as Luigi’s Mansion. And overall I think the game cube had a strong blend of differentiated games to the N64. I feel that could be how the Switch 2 goes down. This latest announcement, for example, with a Splatoon spinoff just further paints that picture

Why is the Wii U the console that's always thrown around when talking about Nintendo flops?

The Virtual Boy, N64 and GameCube were also flops compared to the competition and what else was on the market. Nintendo home consoles generally don't sell as well as other consoles but none of them are bad (well, the Virtual Boy was bad...).

I adore the Wii U, I love the library of games, even if it is small but that means I can actually potentially get a full collection at some point. It had flaws and it didn't sell well, but the Switch 2 is not going to be like that at all.

PlayStation and Xbox are always just a more powerful version of their last console and that's exactly what people expect. We demand that Nintendo innovate, complain that we didn't need that kind of innovation and expect them to be more like the competition and then complain that they just made a safe console. We're weird people.

The Wii U was a really big step up from the Wii in terms of power. The Wii was quite close to the Gamecube in that regard, and the Wii U was more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360, and their successors weren't out at the time. The gap between the Wii and the Wii U was like 1,5 generations, whereas I think the difference between Switch 1 and 2 is more like that of a normal generation. Apart from power, the Wii U was more innovative with its second screen than the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor, so... nah, the Wii U was a much larger step up than the Switch 2.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the Wii U was 360/PS3 adjacent than outright more powerful. In some regards it was more capable given it had more memory available and a more modern and slightly more capable GPU. But the CPU was slower and it was more constrained in terms of memory bandwidth. For small, constrained environments with fancy effects, relatively high resolution assets? The Wii U could beat PS3/360. But for bigger environments? .... not so much. And lets not forget that "their successors weren't out" was only true for about a year. This was very late 360/PS3 era, comparing the Wii U to the 360 is like comparing the Wii to the PS2. You can do it and technically they were on the shelves together but it's a misleading comparison

Of course, Wii to Wii U was a pretty substantial technical jump but so was XBox to 360, or indeed Switch to Switch 2. I don't think the Wii U was somehow ahead of the Switch 2 in this regard. I would argue that yes, both are ahead of the GC -> Wii and Wii U -> Switch transitions in terms of raw power. But outside of those two anomalies (the blue ocean and the move to mobile hardware) all of these generational transitions are largely similar kinds of jumps. If anything the outliers are SNES -> N64 and 3DS -> Switch

Who says innovation has to be in hardware? Why are we obsessed with innovation in hardware? I've been beating this drum for a while now but now we finally have the Switch 2 in our hands I think it's more obvious to see how software innovation can be as powerful as raw hardware tricks

Ok yes, Switch 2 has a mouse input. One hardware trick. But outside of that we have software advancements, many of which people are way to quick to dismiss but will have an impact. The software level Switch compatibility and solid accounts system allowing new versions or updates to last generation games without requiring the purchase of an entirely new copy. The addition of GameChat which some have dismissed but it's still a one button share/chat with friends. But also GameShare, especially when combined with GameChat, which is basically just the Wii U GamePad implemented in software. All of these things are pretty significant impacts on how we interact with Switch 2 software, I would argue more than touch screen, motion or an analogue stick (all of which, lets not forget, Switch 2 inherits)

Honestly, the Wii -> Wii U transition early on was mostly just Nintendo Land and the promise of Nintendo games in HD. Which for me was enough to get me there on day 1, just, but it wasn't a super compelling story. With Switch -> Switch 2? I'm a fair bit older, I have other things that chew my time, on paper I should be far less interested in new console hardware than I was almost 13 years ago (oof). I can tell you now with a fair amount of confidence, I've been playing more Switch 2 this launch than I did Wii U at its launch

It's easy to forget Nintendo 64 DD was a thing.

@Crimson_Ridley
That's an easy one.

It's because the Wii U existed during the social media era and those other Nintendo systems did not.

Sure, the N64 was a "flop," but if you were a gamer back then, you didn't have people screaming on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram about it constantly, creating this reverberation chamber of sweaty whining. That even went for the Gamecube. Yea, the internet was around, but not social media (Facebook and Myspace were in their initial phases in the early 2000s, but were not yet realized as avenues for people to attack eachother and whine constantly... that came later lol)

So, yea. I loved my N64 and had no idea it was "failing" at the time. And all these years later, we now recognize it failed, but it's so far removed that it's not really a worthwhile thing to talk about much.

What bothers me is that people forget the wider context of this generation as well.

Nintendo was not just riding on the Wii U at the time. 3DS had a slow start but went on to sell 75 million units. For comparison, the Xbox One sold ~60 million, and the Xbox 360 ~85 million. So during Nintendo's lowest point it managed to sell a number of units comparable to Xbox's highest point, and actually came second to Sony in terms of consoles sold (if we're not counting Switch as the same gen as PS4/XBO). Sure, there are some nuances to this discussion (e.g. the handhelds often selling more units due to repeat purchases, handhelds being cheaper than home consoles), but my point is that even when they're doing "bad"...people are still buying their systems.

I think part of why the Switch has done so well is the merging of Nintendo's home and handheld divisions. Nintendo have never failed in the handheld space, and I think the Nintendoom discussion fails to realise this. Sure, there is a first time for everything...but I think a lot would have to go wrong for the Switch 2 to fail.

wii u was generally less powerful than ps3 and 360 overall. Many of the games were inferior with slower frame rates, sometimes it was lower resolution and even had missing content. Both ps3 and 360 could stream in data from the hard drive but wii u pretty much didn't do that and relied on the optical drive. The PS3 had more CPU power than the PS4 overall such was the power of the Cell processors. It also had fantastic 7.1 sound. There were lots of issues with wii u in performance , video output quality and missing controller features but the wii u was a fantastic console due to its exclusive games. The wii u had 3 power pc cpu cores at 1.24Ghz. The PS3 had a similar single power pc core running at 3.2Ghz so even on the powerpc side the ps3 was similar in performance on its own but then the ps3 had 8 spe processors that were uniquely flexible at running different tasks including especially floating point operations. The wii u gpu was 176Gflops, the ps3's nvidia gpu was 192 Gflops and the Xbox 360 was 240 Gflops but the Xbox 360 had 10MB of extremely fast memory built into the GPU and graphically the 360 was most powerful of the 3 I think. It had the most consistent frame rates. The PS3 was strongest in CPU performance and the 360 in graphic performance. I still say a fully optimised ps3 game is the most impressive. The Resistance games with soo much happening on screen is extremely impressive. The wii u spent most of its time competing with xbox one and ps4 but even with their prior generations it was initially competing with it was still inferior technically on most levels. Even the Switch 2 isn't technically that impressive its a cost reduced design from 2021 but DLSS upscaling it enables it to output 1080p graphics that system only has to render at as low as 640x360p. This takes a huge amount of work of the main components. You wonder how fantastic the ps4 or xbox one would have been if they only had to render at as low as 360p under higher loads but with something like DLSS took them up to 1080p. Switch 2 is also a very low performance platform for its release but DLSS massively saves the day and gives the Switch 2 competitive performance which is very impressive. It feels going forward every new gaming device is going to make heavy use of AI upscaling.