Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@GrailUK Funny you mention Red Dead actually; my local CEX has the original PS3 GOTY Edition available for about €28. Been thinking about grabbing it recently, though I'm probably going to go the triple whammy of FFX/X-2 HD, Ni No Kuni and Dead Space first (all of which together total to €4 less than Red Dead ironically enough XD).

@Fizza I think Pokemon will be August's NSO games (Stadium 2 and TCG out of the already announced stuff but maybe others too).

@Grumblevolcano A large part of me still yearns for the mainline GB/GBA games (i.e. Gens 1, 2 and 3) to get announced/released for NSO through a Presents the same way the Virtual Console releases of RBY and GSC got announced/released through Pokemon Directs many moons ago. Stadium 2 and TCG would be pretty logical predictions though (maybe with a surprise like Pokemon Pinball chucked in there as well? It was one of the first games datamined for GBA NSO emulation back in 2022 after all).

@Grumblevolcano Can we get the mainline Pokemon games on NSO already? Pokemon basically IS the GB lineup in terms of popularity and notoriety, having GB on the NSO without RBY and GSC is like having N64 without Mario 64 and OoT, or the Wii without Wii Sports. Even worse really, because aside from Tetris and the Super Mario Land games nothing else on the GB even sold a FIFTH of what the mainline Pokemon games sold whereas some of those other platforms had a fair share of hits outside of those key pillars. There's... really not much out of the rest of the lineup that's particularly popular and having played multiple of them, not much that's particularly good either.

@Fizza There are so many good games I haven't played from that generation. Too many in fact lol.

@Bolt_Strike
There are plenty of good GB(C) titles and the library is compelling without Pokemon. But in terms of popularity you're right. Pokemon pretty much single handedly extended the GB's relevancy by ~3 years. NSO not having it is a huge black hole

With that said with Zelda and Mario the GB on NSO has merit. Throw in Donkey Kong Land and Mario Tennis and I'm a happy camper. Pokemon would be the icing on the cake at that point

@Fizza @Bolt_Strike That's why I said maybe others too. The long N64 gap (Stadium 1 released on April 12th which is approaching 4 months ago) would make a lot more sense if Nintendo's adding Transfer Pak functionality between the N64 and GB apps.

Ah Andy Robinson. The same guy who said twilight princess and wind waker were both coming in 2021.

Edit: i guess it's actually vgc and eurogamer. Could be accurate I suppose.

Guys, I have key sources telling me the Switch successor will in fact launch in the year 20XX and will contain analogue sticks, at least 1 controller button and is expected to run games.

Speculation is heating up, it's all very exciting.

But my interest in Nintendo's next platform hinges on their approach to backwards compatibility.

Best case scenario, my physical collection carries over. Next best scenario, Switch 2 ships with two cartridge slots, one for the previous platform and one for the "new" cartridges. The less appealing solution is for digital purchases and only a select few first party games getting performance patches (probably for a $5-$10 fee per game). And then the worst case scenario is for nothing to carry over and Nintendo asks their customers to re-purchase their games.

Really don't get the anxiety over backwards compatability. Of course it's going to have it. Remember, Nintendo said the Switch was them starting from square one (huge reshuffle and everything.) BC is pretty much where the industry is (and folk seem to think Nintendo are a stranger to it!) and I'm sure Nintendo and NVidia are savvy enough to have that baked in their 20 year partnership.

No doubt in my mind (at least) that the Switch successor (can I call it the Switch Neo...or Neo Switch???) will have backwards compatibility.

The only thing I DON'T want Ninty to focus on is...brace yourselves...4K. 1080p/60fps is good enough for me. Though 1080p/30fps is doable. depends...

@DanijoEX
Some games will be 4K/30, some will be 1080/60, some might even be 1080/120. Some will go for a straight up pixels, some will push for more effects, some will make the game more responsive

It's going to be entirely up to developers how they use that extra power. As it should be.

I’m curious, if these dev kits are really in the hands of those who are doing the talking, they don’t seem to have much to say beyond late 2024 release date. By this I mean, there’s nothing about hardware performance itself which you’d think they’d know by now. But maybe not. Maybe it’s still not totally finalised.

I think the next Switch machine will be like Transformers style.
It can be like 3DS style in handheld mode, it can be like Wii U style in docked mode.

Erm, you do realise that no matter how powerful a console is, frame rate over visuals will always be a design choice. 60 FPS is an unrealistic ideal without hamstringing some creative types who want to make sure their game looks good in a screen grab lol.

@FragRed
For one dev kits tend to have slightly different specs. More RAM in particular because you'll want to debug your code but also the method and amount of storage is going to be entirely up in the air

Secondly NDAs, it comes down to the value of the information and the jobs . If you're an office admin, the postie guy or even a QA tester and you leak that yes your company has new Dev kits? Probably not a huge deal if you loose your job and also it's such low value info nobody probably cares anyway

But if you're a game developer and you leak specific specs? That's career ending stuff. You'll never get another game development job with a black mark like that against your name. Hell, if you have a history of leaking confidential information you'll struggle to get any development job. And a development job, that's a very specific career path

I do hope they choose an SSD for the new system.

@HotGoomba
There isn't much of a cost advantage going with eMMC vs SATA or NVMe anymore. And we're at the point now where the gap in performance between what cheap NAND can do and what eMMC allows is non-trivial

Also while I don't have the deep dive specs of the rumoured SoC on hand I would assume it's going to have a lot more pcie lanes to use. Storage is how you'd likely use them

@skywake That does make sense. Though these sources don’t seem to sound like your admin type guy because I couldn’t see them knowing it’s LCD instead of OLED. But a QA tester, that would make sense as someone who’d have hands on knowledge of the dev kit.