Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I'd love a port of X. It's a gigantic game that would really benefit from being portable - I could complete some missions, or simply explore Mira without being tethered to my TV, and in HD.
It was a great game, it deserves a second chance away from the Wii U.

Let's hope that XBC2 lives up enough to get a port for the Switch U.

What they're essentially able to do is play back sound through the rumble. For a game like Mario Kart obviously they want the rumble to be like road noise for the most part. Which frankly isn't much different from what you'd get from standard rumble. But the coins? They are a bit different.

It's hard to kinda describe really. I kinda feel like ordinary rumble feels like holding an off-balance motor because that's what it is. With the Switch it sometimes feels the same. But sometimes feels like you're holding a box with bit of wood wound up in a rubber band

Yeah. I've been thinking about how to fix the RNG items, and the only good solution I've thought of is to improve item trading and information on how to find who has what item (and a better indication of where characters are would be highly appreciated in general)

On Gamespot they've ranked every console since the Dreamcast on gigaFLOPS/teraFLOPS.They say while it can provide a good indication of a consoles performance,it isn't perfect as some other factors have to be taken into account.Anyway,the Switch is ranked 6th behind the One/One S/PS4/PS4 Pro and One X,in that order.No surprises there but what I didn't know was when it comes to FLOPS the Switch is actually closer to the One (310 gigaFLOPS difference) than the One is to the PS4 (533 gigaFLOPS difference).As for the One X,that's way out on its own being nearly 2 Switch's of FLOPS more flopperful than than the PS4 Pro.

Well FLOP me sideways... and yet the Wii U, which is presumably in seventh place, is still the mother to the two best games of the last 3 years.

It just goes to show that many of these devs that say the Switch isn't powerful enough are talking out their FLOPShole.If they can get their games looking nearly as good on the One as they do on PS4 with a big difference in FLOPS then they can surely get them running and looking nearly as good on Switch,albeit with some sacrifices here or there.

It should be noted that this isn't how you should be measuring the gap in performance. What you want is a relative rather than a absolute difference in FLOPS. I mean the comparison is pretty meaningless because there's more to game performance than raw FLOPS but if you were to do it based on Gamespot's numbers.....

Wii U = ~1.5x more FLOPS than 360
Switch = ~3x more FLOPS than Wii U
XBOne = ~1.5x more FLOPS than Switch
PS4 = ~1.5x more FLOPS than XBOne

Though I'm not entirely convinced that the Switch is as powerful as the Gamespot article claims.

@skywake I think Mario Odyssey is proof that the Switch isn't close to the Xbox One. That's meant to be a game that according to Digital Foundry say, is pushing the system to it's limits (though again early games never look/run as well as they do later in a system's life so I take what they say with a pinch of salt) Although the game is really good looking and quite an accomplishment for a portable, I think it also shows the amount of downgrading you would need to do to get triple A games running on the system.

Strange concept, stop me if ya heard this before.

Is the game fun?
If yes: job done.
If no: move on.

Power does not determine enjoyment. It determines scope.

@BLP_Software But that can't be right, surely ultra realistic graphics is surely what gaming is all about right?... right?

@FragRed The reason why games looked better later in the system's life was because most consoles used a new architecture back in the day. Developers learned to utilise the hardware better over the course of the system's lifespan. I'm not sure how much of that still applies today, with consoles being close to PC/mobile architecture. They are already familiar with the hardware in a sense, so it's possible that the improvement isn't going to be as much as it used to be over the Switch' lifespan.

@FragRed
My understanding of the Switch spec is that it's pretty much half way between the Wii U and XBOne when docked. In portable mode it's basically as capable as the Wii U but with less of a CPU bottleneck and double the RAM. I don't know where the 1TFLOP figure for the Switch is coming from, I don't think it's accurate.

I was more making a comment about how you should be comparing power. Because in absolute terms there's a bigger difference in GFLOPS between the XBOne S and PS4 than there is between the NES and the 360. To the extent that the power gap matters you should only ever talk about how many times more powerful consoles are rather than how many extra GFLOPS there are.

@BLP_Software
I agree entirely. Though if we are going to talk about it we should at least talk about it correctly. The Switch is about a generation behind in terms of spec. But as a portable system that ain't bad given portables are usually two or three generations behind. I'm fine with that... especially given the diminishing returns we've seen with improving visuals and the explosion of the indie scene

Switch is about as powerful as a portable console can conceivably be at the present. There was no mobile chip yet released that could do more. In fact the only one in existence that was more powerful wasn't even production-ready, and would surely cost more than the console itself. By the time it's cheap enough for mass market consumer electronics, the 9th gen power consoles will be out and it'll be the same situation all over again. You simply can't attain parity with TV focused consoles as a portable device for the same cost.

But given where we're at today, that's totally ok. We've reached a level of graphical fidelity where games look absolutely gorgeous on Switch, even if games on other consoles look better. Arms and Mario Kart 8 and Zelda and Splatoon 2... they all look fine. And people are ok with how those games look. The biggest hindrance is the barrier it places between more demanding games, but given that most of those types of games wouldn't come to the system anyways and the ones that would, developers are finding a way to get them to run regardless... the impact will be negligible, while the benefit of a hybrid format is substantial.

So, I had my first Switch rooftop party, without Karin of course, and I guess without the roof, but there was a Switch. I expected the controllers to be tiny, but I was surprised to see how small they truly are. Does anyone know how they compare to the Pro Controller? Button size and overall size? I think I definitely need one of those if I want to play comfortably.

@Octane They are indeed small and take some getting used to but after a little while they feel great. For playing on the TV I'd definitely recommend the Pro controller though, it feels great to hold. The buttons are really big and clicky .I'd say one Pro button is about 4 times bigger than a Joy-con button. I don't know if you've held a Wii U Pro controller but it's buttons are about 30% smaller than the Switch's Pro even though it's a slightly bigger controller . I'm looking at the both them side by side just now.

@DarthNocturnal I'm hoping for a good sale during Black Friday. But it's something to factor into the price I guess. They're currently between €70 and €80 where I live.

@OorWullie Never owned a Wii U Pro Controller (I blame the lack of gyro sensors). I always used the GamePad, but I guess the button size is similar. The buttons on a Joy-Con felt even smaller than those on a 3DS. I also played without the straps, so I guess that makes it even less comfortable.

If you're playing with it mostly as a portable, you could probably get used to the JoyCons/JoyCon grip pretty quickly. If you're playing it mostly on the TV, I'd definitely recommend a Pro controller. I much prefer it to any other controller I've ever tried. The button size and basically everything about it is perfect IMO. I'd say the size of the buttons are pretty comparable to a Dualshock 4.

Flop floppity flop flop flop

I do have to say: Splatoon 2 looks absolutely gorgeous on the Switch. Especially in TV mode. It's a clear visual upgrade from the Wii U original.

@KirbyTheVampire I don't really care for portability. Well, maybe if those docks were a bit cheaper, but I expect it'll stay docked for the rest of its life.