Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Well the discussion started with me saying that people should give up on the idea of the NX being a portable. Now we're at the point where everyone agrees it's replacing the Wii U. So I think the answer is a definite maybe.

I kind of think Nintendo doesn't care. As long as they get the audience who were taken by smartphones/tablets instead of buying 3DS/Wii U they'd likely be perfectly happy with angering their dedicated fanbase.

At most, I think it's this. The rest is just PR talk.

Made this on paint. Based on the GC pad but slightly altered.

@GrailUK: No shoulder buttons or triggers?

@Octane: I'm rubbish lol! Erm there are...you err...just cant see them . (Like the gamecube pad with the analogue triggers and z buttons)

I made up my mind on what the NX might be.
I think it's going to be a reverse WiiU.
So instead of being a home console with a built in (albeit super-limited) portable device, it's going to be a portable device that can stream games to the telly aswell.

to me it would make a lot of sense. Nintendo would use their strength (the portable market, but also, making games on a budget with a limited hardware) avoiding things that are, historically, weaknesses, like trying to compete in a market that is not tailor-made for them anymore, or time lost in juggling resources back and forth between the home and the portable departments. One console, all the resources invested on one single type of games, both markets tackled.

@spizzamarozzi:
To make a counter-argument there are a few very good reasons why the Wii U is the way around that it is. With the thing plugged into the wall and TV doing the work and the handheld component just displaying stuff. Well actually three main reasons:

1. The screen size and therefore resolution gap
On the Wii U GamePad they can get away with 480p and a little bit of compression. Something they wouldn't get away with if it was on a TV. Which means that they can get away with less bandwidth between the two devices. On a TV you'd expect it to run at HD. With the GamePad? Because of the size of it 480p is fine. Only streaming at 480p means that the Wii U GamePad has lower latency and a longer range than it would have had if it was doing 720p or 1080p.

2. A portable system is plagued by limitations
The battery limits the amount of horsepower you can get because if you push it too far you'll have a system that can only stay on for 30mins. The form factor limits you in a similar way because you can't really fit fans in something you can pocket. Storage is limited because you can't really use optical media or a HDD.

3. The expectations for a home console are higher
On a portable you can still get away with early 360 era visuals even a decade after the fact. On the 3DS they're getting away with something closer to Gamecube era visuals. It's not the same on a home console. On a home console the Wii U spec is passable but ideally it'd be a bit above that. We expect 1080p at 60fps or at least close enough. The 240p pre-Gamecube visuals of the 3DS would not impress anyone.... especially if there was compression. There's a reason why this game streaming idea has only ever been done from a powerful device, usually a full gaming PC, down to something like a Steam Link.

Believe me, people are trying to do things like make your phone become your PC. They want to dock your phone into a cradle and play games on your TV. It hasn't really worked yet. And it's not because nobody has done it properly yet. It's because mobile hardware is still well behind.

This doesn't sound promising:

Another underpowered system?

@Grumblevolcano: The question is whether he knows the specs, is just speculating or doesn't know anything at all.

@spizzamarozzi: i agree, i think that power wise it will be only slightly improved on wii u but massive improvement over 3ds so as a handheld will be fantastic and as a console it will be good but not great. which also links in well with liam robertson's comment

@neyoung8: I think you should read skywake's post. That's just a handheld that can stream to your TV. That isn't a home console.

@Octane: that. Plus I recall he is hit and miss on rumors. Then again that's me being on TeamPolarisGPU.

Also people need to learn not to take PR statements so seriously.

in the last 13 years Nintendo has achieved the best results by using the worst and cheapest technology available on the market, so I don't see them caring about specs all of a sudden.
It would be like me trying to improve my love life by buying a faster car.

It's simple - if Nintendo can sell millions and millions of 128-bit portable games but struggles enormously to sell their state of the art, expensive to make HD home games - why should they make more expensive HD games?! To dig themself a bigger hole?!

I knew a guy who owned both a fancy restaurant and a cheap pizzeria - the restaurant was failing but the pizzeria was making a ton of money. So he turned the restaurant into another pizzeria and now his customers have doubled, the income too, and he can do one thing as best as he can and it works for both places. True story. I used to work for that guy.

As a range of what I think it could be. Even at the low end I think it'll still be a home console that's still a fair amount more capable than the Wii U. Maybe it won't have a controller gimmick but instead its appeal will be that it's a cheap Nintendo box. Not so cheap that it's a "micro-console" but still very competitive. And maybe they do go with cartridges to further reduce costs of the console itself while at the same time emphasising downloads. It could also be pretty small if they removed the optical drive, especially if it has an external power supply. Think an Apple TV sized box that's maybe a tad under XBOne's specs.

On the higher end of the spectrum they could push it a lot further. In theory they could go as far as supporting 4K in a real way but they won't. Nintendo don't sell their hardware at a loss. They could however deliver something similar to what the PS4 Neo is rumoured to be. Then ontop of that push some sort of new controller gimmick. In theory they could also support VR if that's the amount of horsepower they want to deliver. Effectively it'd be the same thing as the PS4 but with Nintendo games on it.

But what I don't think it'll be is anything that answers the question of portables. I just can't see much room for a piece of hardware that does both being appealing. I also think it's clear that Nintendo thinks the NX is going to replace the Wii U and not the 3DS. That doesn't mean they're abandoning portables and focusing on the home console space. It just means that they're not replacing the 3DS at this very moment.

Yeah I think it's a 64 bit ARM, AMD Polaris, Cartridge based home console with heavy cross device integration.

^The problem with that analogy is assuming people were buying the Wii because it's cheap and not the waggle function, I even remember during the first xmas it was out there was a shortage and ebay prices were rocketing, and even the 3DS which people keep praising for it's success may end up being the worst selling portable console behind the Virtual Boy and even then it's been supported for longer than the GBA was which it's 20m sales behind.

I didn't say people bought the Wii because it was cheap - they bought it because it was a good, attractive console (even if the attraction mainly came from the novelty factor). There's no real reason people buy anything beyond it being good and attractive. And Nintendo can make good and attractive products using crap technology - that is pretty much a fact.

If the 3DS ends up being their worst selling portable is simply because the handheld market has changed so much and nowadays 100% of the audience already has a pretty darn good gaming machine in their mobile phone - so no need to buy another one.
It would have been surreal to expect 3DS to sell as much as the GameBoy, GBA or the Nintendo DS, because when these machines were out people didn't have these modern mobile phones that do everything.
The Ford Model T is one of the best selling cars of all time - why? - because when it was around there was literally no other car to buy. It was either that or a horse.

Why are you so convinced that it can only be one of these things? That it's either "just" a home console and not interesting OR it's something interesting that Nintendo doesn't want to talk about yet. Why can't it be a home console that's for all intents and purposes the Wii U's successor AND be interesting?