Topic: Nintendo Switch 2

@Quantumz00 I think it's more impressive, but mostly because it can reach that level of graphical fidelity with all that stuff going on- as you said.

It seems like Nintendo is still going to be going more for the scope of their games over the graphics. Not to say the graphics don't look good though- given that stuff like Donkey Kong Bananza genuinely do look next-gen. It's just that they're not going overboard like other companies have with the graphics for their first-party offerings. Probably to prevent over-inflation of budgets.

I think we are gonna see some gobsmacking games on this thing. Remember, it's more powerful than a PS4 pro - and PS4 had The Last of Us 2, still to this day one of the best looking games of all time. Can you imagine a Zelda pushing fidelity? Or a Monolithsoft developed Xenoblade Chronicles 4?

I don't have a horse in the race, but I think Mario Kart World looks nice

I remember certain crowds on internet complaining about how the Switch 1 peaked early with BotW and never really improved much afterwards. I always thought it was a bit silly of a topic overall tbh

@Quantumz00 Exactly! My advice to potential consumer is to ignore the social media chatter and online hate. To me there are far more positives than negatives. Actually from a technical perspective there hasn’t been one we’ve seen. All the supposed negatives are made up “what ifs.”

I'm in Thailand and according to Nintendo, Switch 2 won't be officially released here till sometime between July and September. I knew I'd still be able to get one though if I paid a little extra and I was right. Just spotted a MKW bundle for 24,490 baht (£563 / $732). Or around £35 cheaper for just the console. It's a
Japanese multi language model. Guaranteed to be delivered by June 10th.

I'm seriously tempted but the little extra I expected to pay is a little higher than I hoped it would be. If I wait till it's officially released, the price will be comparable to the UK price. If I knew it was releasing here July, I'd happily hang off but July to September is pretty wide window.

Or I take my chances and try and get one in the UK when I'm back for a visit in July. Not sure how easy that will be though.

On the tech side of things I have a theory. There was a rumor pre reveal that Nintendo was going to run the clocks in dock mode at their max which would have the console reach 4TF. The documents digital foundry got states the max clocks and what do you know, at those max clocks the console will hit right around 4TF. I really believe Nintendo will allow developers to use higher clocks and that is the real reason for the additional fan in the dock. I’m not sure if even at 8nm the clocks that are confirmed would need a fan in the dock. I also don’t buy needed an extra fan for the dock components. Only time will tell but if they allow developers with more demanding games to up the clocks that would be a dream come true for me as a gamer.

I don't trust anything Digital Foundry says. Unless they have a copy of a game or a genuine console, I'm not going to listen to them armchair speculate the specs of something. Especially when they did this for Tears of the Kingdom. They said that Tears of the Kingdom's 2021 trailer had clouds that were "too good to run on native switch hardware," and said that it meant the Switch Pro was happening. Still waiting for that.

@-Green-
YAYYYYYY FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!!!!!!
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
30FPS DOES NOT MATTER!!!

@VoidofLight They also said DLSS couldn't run on this thing unless there was some mythical lightweight version that doesn't exist, and failed to notice it was being used until developers told them it was at which point they admitted they didn't even know what it looks like being used on dedicated custom hardware.

Then there was outright denying the features of the screen only to be proved wrong a week later.

Then there's the existence of ray tracing that they were wrong about as well.

Then using a 2050 card on PC to simulate a chip that we now know is based on the 30 series to get an idea of how games run, which showed DLSS wouldn't have worked, and yet here we are.

Whilst I do think 3gb and 2 CPU cores reserved for the OS is mental (I can't say I'm ever going to use GameChat), I'm happy with the specs overall

The games will do alot of the talking for the system, just look at SF6, Cyberpunk etc, these are launch games, games will only look better as we progress through the systems life (At least for the first couple years) - I personally think Mario Kart World looks great too, 24 players, open world and all running at a crispy 1440p at 60fps, that is an enormous jump over MK8DX even if you might not think that at first glance

@VoidofLight @Haruki_NLI Digital Foundry gives me the vibes of a channel that likes to create console war content knowing that the comments they mostly get are people doing that that.

@FragRed @Haruki_NLI Yeah, it feels like they get waaaay too much praise for the amount of stuff they get wrong. Most of which seems extremely intentional in order to push a narrative of sorts, or buy into the hype of rumors. It's mainly just engagement bait which only sometimes actually has useful information.. and I'm getting tired of people acting as if they're the authority.

@VoidofLight To add to this, they’re all just PC hobbyists. That’s what they all have knowledge of. The whole idea for Digital Foundry was set up as a side project for Eurogamer and they have gone on record saying they thought it would be really easy to do until they actually started doing the work. I’m not even sure who outside of Eurogamer sites cite Digital Foundry for anything?

Digital Foundry is not perfect nor do they claim to be, but when they have all the data before them they know what they're talking about. I don't know about the Tears of the Kingdom thing, but Digital Foundry has been saying Switch 2 was technically possible to do raytracing since the first leaks.

In this very video they say it's ray tracing capable even though they have as yet spotted no games that use it. In that same portion, they said they anticipate over time some rare games will use it, and simulated how it might look using equivalent hardware at mid ray tracing settings. That is not at all saying what you claim, at least on that subject.

We now have the actual hardware of Switch 2, which was laser cut too utilizing cutting edge technology to really get deep into the weeds. We saw that with that channel a week ago when that Chinese gamer got the motherboard, and now Digital Foundry has the hard data to support their views.

You may not agree with them, but as someone who understands technology to a decent degree nothing they have said about Switch 2 is objectionable. It is exactly in line with leaks we have had for literally years around Switch 2. This is one of the few times there are not many surprises here.

Only mysteries are why handheld mode has higher clock speed, and the larger than expected 3gb ram footprint for the OS.

Confirmation bias is a real problem in this world. People have personal preferences and allow them to color how they interpret other people's analysis. Cast that aside. These aren't fanboy console wars, these are human beings analyzing technology often using fragments of the whole picture and often arduously pixel counting. They will make mistakes. But you find me a better funded channel that does these sort of analysis even half as accurately, and ill go there. You won't though.

I've got Switch 2 pre-ordered, along with several games and accessories. I can't wait for it! But seeing the tech under the hood, I get it's competitive with the ps4 pro but with more modern tools like DLSS 1x, 2x and 3x. This doesn't offend or shock me in the least, that sounds like a very capable handheld to me. More powerful than steam deck docked, competitively powered in handheld. I don't need to ask for more personally...

...It just gets me excited for what Nintendo is about to deliver.

Also Digital Foundry is quoted liberally everywhere in the gaming community. Yall need to leave Nintendo life and smell the world, it's not all contained here. I again submit: please put aside ones preferences. Please don't make me post endless pointless links sourcing the endless topic discussions going for 50 pages about digital Foundry analysis of various games or hardware just to prove you wrong lol

Edit: and let me be more concise here. Often when digital Foundry doubts something will happen on a platform, that's because they're incredulous any developer would waste that much hardware intensive resources just to do it when the hardware really isn't powerful enough to do it well.

Let's say Switch 2 comes out and three total games end up using raytracing in highly specific fashions, is this the system being capable of RT? Technically, yes. But nobody is going to play Switch 2 games looking for ray tracing, because it's gonna be Hella rare due to how hardware intensive it is. Heck, ps5 and Xbox Series don't even use it half the time!

Me neither, certainly not in relation to all the other hardware at the moment, just hoping Nintendo is going to get their skates on and show us some more WOW! first party games instead of relying upon all the mediocre third party ports.

What type of visuals are you hoping they push?

Nintendo has always been a gameplay first company, but it feel a lot of times the graphics in their games stand out in the details. For example, the astonishing animation in Donkey Kong Bananza or its destructability. Like Disney, their art direction has a lot of love put into it I feel...

You may not see hyper realistic textures or shaders, but definitely a superlative art direction...

Doesn't watching Mario kart world just bring a smile to one's face when you can tell how much fun Nintendo is having with the world design?

@Dhaladog What you mean by mediocre third party ports? I haven’t seen anything so far for Switch 2 that suggests they’re mediocre.

@Quantumz00 I completely agree with you. Hyper-realistic graphics have never interested me that much, since I think video games to be an art form, and strong, idiosyncratic art direction always trumps "looking like the real thing". To me, something like Super Mario Odyssey with it's wonderfully colourful, surreal world designs is alway gonna have better visuals than some grim & gritty realistic FPS where you can see every drop of blood and speck of dust.

Yup, that's where im at with it. It's always better to accept the world as it is instead of pretending it is something else.

To me, I can envision a next Mario game with animation that rivals the cg animated movies; just joyful to play and look at.

I can imagine a gorgeous cel shaded Zelda game with its own distinctive style that easily surpasses Hi-Fi Rush.

Imagine a new Wave Race with tsunami technology, focusing the systems powers on water physics and ray traced reflections.

Bro this system is gonna deliver fire in the end, even though it's "only" as powerful as a ps4 pro with a better, more modern toolset.

Very much agree with this. It always annoys me when people conflate super high quality (high performance) graphics with hyper-realism. There are so many amazing visuals you can make which require the performance aspect but have nothing to do with hyper-realism.

This is why I also don't believe the 'we've hit the peak, adding more power can no longer improve visuals'. Visuals can go far beyond hyper realism. I'm imagining a colorful world where every blade of grass is rendered individually and can be zoomed in on and because it's a magical world every blade of grass is playfully fighting with the blades next to each other in some non-copy-pasted way. Now imagine that as a tiny detail in an open world. Such a level of art and animation might be too expensive or too time consuming to make, but the potential greediness for ability to create new things with better graphical capabilities and performance is basically uncapped if time and money are not an issue.