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

Like some people have said earlier in the thread, I think it all depends on E3. Nintendo will probably lay low on announcements until then. You'll have your Spring lineup mostly be what has been announced for Spring so far and then E3 being the main source to the question "What has Nintendo been doing since summer 2016?" (June 2016 was when the release of the penultimate Wii U exclusive happened)

@Therad While I don't disagree that the ratio between docked and undocked performance is unknown at the moment, that talk of Zelda running smoother undocked compared to docked, is not from reliable sources either as far as I'm aware.

@Grumblevolcano Laying low is not advisable. Nintendo's reputation is close to flat-lining, taking a wait and see until E3 is not how you make sure your new console flies out of the blocks.

@Octane
Yes, they run at the specifications you're showing, but you're not also accounting for a general boost in graphics. Have you seen stills between MK8 on Wii U and Deluxe on Switch? Those ain't the same graphics. There's been a bit of upgrading done, for sure. I found this link on Reddit from a guy who's noticed the same. You can't look at these shots and say no upgrading has been done beyond FPS and resolution (which by themselves are very nice). https://gfycat.com/AliveCircularAcornbarnacle

This is the stuff I'm talking about. You have to dig a bit and look for yourself rather than just going with the same regurgitated stuff making the news cycles, which is exactly why I very adamant in saying I THINK there is going to be some noticeable differences in BotW between Switch and Wii U that go beyond sound effects.

@Grumblevolcano I hope so, because I just looked over the switches list of announced games and there isnt a game in there that indicates we will get any current AAA game ports.

I just hope Nintendos idea of AAA isnt old ports of games that are 5 - 10 years old. Just because they havent been on a nintendo console doesnt mean they are AAA 3rd party games this generation. I am talking about rumors of LA noire or Ultimate marvel vs Capcom. A resolution upgrade doesn't give you a new game.

@twindragon
I don't think the Switch will get major AAA games beyond Skyrim and those sports games unless it sells insanely well in its first year. Sad, but that's the reality after the Wii U (and Wii to a lesser degree). They don't want to get burned again, and I don't blame them one bit.

But my point is that I wouldn't take this initial dearth of third-party stuff as a sign that the Switch can't run the games, just as a sign that these companies are not willing to jump on Nintendo's wagon again unless they build quite the install base.

@rallydefault ! gra gra graphical boost?!! you mean an image that has more contrast and is shot from over someones shoulder? that is your graphics boost?

@twindragon
Thanks for the sarcasm; it's lovely. But you realize that's just the reality of having to take a picture at a live event like that, right?

Honestly, whatever, man. If you can't forget about the picture angle and contrast for a second and just admit that there are obvious upgrades to the graphics, then I really have nothing else to say in this conversation. They've definitely tweaked the lighting/shadows and textures. And that's not just from that picture - this is from people who've played the game at these live events and have said very clearly that Nintendo has done a bit of work in general on the graphics.

@rallydefault I don't like using off-screen images for comparisons, even the Wii U screenshot doesn't seem to be of the best quality. Still, from what I can see, they look the same to me (apart from the resolution), same textures (but again, rendered at a higher resolution), same models. Lighting seems different, but I can't tell if that's an improvement, a regular change or just an artifact of the low quality images. Whatever the differences are, they're difficult to spot. Now this is the kind of stuff I'd want to see a DF analysis on, because without a proper 1-to-1 comparison, it's difficult to tell.

@Octane
Well, that's what I've been saying all along. I want to see the Foundry analyses on all of this: games, hardware. That's what is going to show us what's really going on. This is still all conjecture.

@rallydefault True, if you really want to know the nitty-gritty of the hardware and games, you have to wait on a proper analysis. However, that doesn't take away that we can't accurately estimate what's inside the Switch, or what resolution or framerate BOTW runs at for example. I think that those are general things we can see. If you want to know the exact details of the hardware or the improvements in the lighting department, well, I agree, that's not something you're going to guess by just staring at some pictures.

@rallydefault
I'd argue that ballpark figures are good enough. We're talking +/- 20% based on those ballpark figures I listed. None of which is based on particularly outlandish assumptions. When you're talking that small a difference things other than the raw performance are likely to have a bigger impact.

And some of those other things could go some way to explain how it's doing things the Wii U couldn't even while undocked. It has twice the amount of RAM as the Wii U whether it's docked or not. The CPU itself is likely more capable than the Wii U's whether it's docked or not. Cartridges are certainly faster than disks. And it's running on an NVidia chip so there are different features available to developers.

@Therad
It might be 2x, it might be more or less than that. What we do know is that they are likely to drop the power of the chip to save power while undocked. We also know that while undocked the Switch is running Mario Kart 8 marginally better than on the Wii U. And when docked it's doing the same but at 1080p rather than 720p.

@gcunit While true, I think Nintendo probably is of the view that BotW is enough.

@rallydefault sorry about the sarcasm. I am a 3d artist who works in the game industry, I work on AAA games all of the time. My job is to evaluate and look at graphics. The only difference I see here is the contrast is higher on that switch image which gets rid of the foggy unsaturated tones of the wii u graphics. IT adds more darker blacks that cause the details to pop. I am sure the graphics are slightly enhanced. We all know docked the switch is probably at least double the power of a wii u so it can have a few upgrades but even at double the power thats still a far cry from the xbox one.

I want the switch to be more powerful. I really do but I think everyone is hoping for something that isnt true. Its Nintendo. when has nintendo come out and revealed a console that had the perfect balance of performance and uniqueness that could duke it out with other consoles.

@Grumblevolcano we aren't talking about games that are releasing right now like BOTW we are talking the future lineup of the switch we need to see that the switch is indeed supported.

I could very well just buy the switch for zelda, god knows I want to, the game looks fantastic. As well as mario odyssey. I also have always wanted mario kart as well but didn't want to get a wii u. Now I am interested in getting a switch but right now its just interest because I need to see that Nintendo didn't just basically release the same console as the wii u and made it portable. With no 3rd party support.

@twindragon That's what I'm talking about. Nintendo probably thinks BotW will gather enough hype for Switch that they don't need to announce anything new until E3 and if there's 3rd party AAA games coming then maybe setting embargoes for 3rd parties so Nintendo's presence at E3 is made even bigger.

@Grumblevolcano what Nintendo should do is do something similar to what Netflix does and purchase western studios to make 3rd party games. Monolith has already shown it is a heavy hitter when it comes to development from Japan also retro studios As a western developer but Nintendo needs more. Developers making yuuuge games as trump would say and more mature games too.

The difference in resolution doesn't say anything about relative power level. Because if it can run at 1080p on the big screen, it can run 720p with the same power level. The one thing we can get from MK8 is that Switch is more powerful than the Wii U, with at least 30% increase in rendering power.

Zelda is a much better metric, since in that case we know it can't run in 1080p on the switch, it runs at 900p. At 900p, it runs a bit better than Wii U at 720p. This means a power increase around 30-40%. But it seems to have better depth, with less popups. So it is probably more than that.

Now we come to the interesting part, the difference between 900p (screen) and 720p (tablet) on the switch. 900p@30 would mean a pixel throughput of 43.2 million pixels/seconds. 720p@30 is 31.32 million p/s. Which is about 75% of the 900p in power. With your assumption, it wouldn't be possible to achieve 30fps in handheld. It would need to be 20 fps for your claim that it is twice as powerful in docked mode. Or they use a lower resolution than 720p.

We have also heard reports that it seems to be smoother on the handheld than on the TV. This can be explained if it has the same power level regardless if it is docked or undocked, because it is less likely it would skip any frames.

If I would venture a guess, it is very close to the stock tegra X1. 500 gflops, which is an increase of around 40% from the Wii U. It also fits with the MK8 example above.

@Therad Regarding Zelda, people have been comparing the final build (Switch) with the E3 demo (Wii U). Maybe they haven't improved the Wii U version at all in the last 8 months or so, but my guess is that the draw distance in the final version of the Wii U isn't as bad as in the E3 demo. For what it's worth, according to Nintendo, only the resolution and sound quality are different between the two versions.

@Therad where are people saying the performance of mk8 is better then the wii u? Are we talking portable or docked? Mario kart 8 runs 1080p on the Wii u. Being portable you'd run even better on the switch being that it's 720p. Portable switch could even have less performance then a wii u given that it would never need to run games at 1080. The gflops could be between 300 portable and 500 docked. That would be ok for a portable wii u with no 3rd party games I suppose.

I agree, it is quite possible they have upped the visuals on the Wii U version. That is why I compared the docked switch with the undocked. I don't think it will be as much of a difference that some seem to think.