Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@FragRed I'd guess supporting Switch games for a long time via DLC and updates along with lots of ports and remasters would be Nintendo's strategy.

Like the whole Smash situation, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point next year it gets announced that Fighters Pass 3 is happening.

@FragRed @Grumblevolcano
Curious as to why you guys are saying SSD is this big thing that will hinder Switch 2? Its a storage medium. And one that Switch 2 could use given the current small form factors you can get it in now. Pretty sure even the current Switch could have accommodated an m.2 SSD stick with very little or no added bulk had it been designed to do so.

@Cotillion Because the SSD is forced for the next gen consoles, both Microsoft and Sony have said you can't play next gen games with a hard drive so next gen games will be designed with SSD in mind.

@Grumblevolcano I think the question was more what difference does it make if the SSD is forced. Most games will still be designed to work on PCs running HDDs after all.

@Cotillion As @Grumblevolcano stated, as the consoles will have SSD built in, the games will be designed with this type of storage in mind. It isn’t just the speed of loading games that the hard drive will have an advantage over. Look at the benefits that both Sony and Microsoft have said that the SSD will provide in developing games going forward. You will see why it will cause problems for Nintendo’s next console.

@Grumblevolcano It's still just a storage medium that Switch 2 could very easily utilize.
I'm both fascinated and confused by the recent high praise of tech that's been around for years just because PS and XB are going to be using it.
SSD only improves load times and a game 'designed with SSD in mind' would only be designed without load-time saving areas, such as hallways or corridors (like Metroid Prime used to hide load times). These games could still be ported and scaled so that, for example, they weren't loading as many textures in such a short time. Just because Sony and Microsoft says you can't play without an SSD on their systems doesn't mean devs can't port those same games elsewhere that don't have SSD.

@FragRed But again, how is this a problem for Nintendos next console? SSD form factors are such now that they can easily fit into a Switch. There's no reason Nintendo can't have SSD in Switch 2 unless for some bizarre reason they just didn't want to.

SSD could cause issues, but I don’t think those issues are insurmountable. Games are already pushing the limits of what can be done. Even with normal, slow hard drives, assets are able to be streamed in time for the biggest AAA games out today. While it’s theoretically possible there could be so many assets it can’t possibly be streamed in time from a normal slow HDD, I just don’t find that outcome very likely. And even if it is for a few games, they can simply decrease the number of assets, like Witcher 3 thinning out the vegetation, less NPCs, etc.

In the end, I think the main benefit is simply going to be boot time and load times. Anything beyond that is over hyping the reality of what SSDs bring to the table.

And I’m not trying to knock the significance of SSDs. I have TEN TERABYTES of SSDs in my gaming PC- two 4TB SSDs and a 2TB NVMe as a boot drive, and absolutely refuse to use anything less. They’re amazing. It’s great having your load times cut short, and it’s something that has been around for years. Certainly for boot drives and OS. Consoles are only now catching up.

The real problem is space. I can’t even hold all my games with a 6TB HDD on my X1, and next gen games are only going to be even bigger. Yet the space available for them is going to be MUCH less. Unless they have 10GB expansion SSDs, it’s going to be a massive issue. For me at least. But even for the regular user, 1TB is going to hold like, 8 big games? Regardless of buying physical or not. And even if you buy another 1TB expansion, that’s not gonna last very long either.

Which is why SSD’s are really only a feasible option on PC right now. I have $1400 worth of SSD on my PC just to obtain 10TB. Granted, I got them for less, $1000 total by shopping smart, but still. You’re not going to have the ability to buy 4TB SSD expansions on consoles, and certainly won’t have the ability to keep multiples in at once. And that is a very serious issue.

I think by the end of next generation it won’t be as much of a problem but I do think they jumped the gun on this one generation too early. With game sizes increasing well beyond 100gb, suddenly limiting the amount of space people have to hold those games will certainly result in gamers playing musical chairs with 50-150GB downloads per game.

edit
For the record, I do support the idea of Switch 2 using NVMe and an expandable NVMe storage bay. Like the GPD Win 2, they could use the 2242 NVMe instead of the 2280 (42mm long vs the standard 80mm used in PCs). By that point they’d make the 42mm in sizes just as large as micro SD anyways, and for basically the same price. Not only would this be great for load times, it would also help ensure there are no issues with ports.

@JaxonH Thanks, you got the point across better. Sony and Microsofts requirement of SSD means little to nothing in porting games to Switch 2. Even if Switch 2 didn't use as fast SSD, it's still not going to be running the antiquated HDDs in PS4 and XB1 and games can be ported.
SSD in next gen is one the most overrated things in gaming I've seen in a long time. Sure, they're amazingly fast for loading, but they've been out for a long time and consoles are just finally catching up.

As I've pointed out before, Switch gets almost no AAA third party games to begin with, so if that remains true next gen, literally nothing has changed.

Smaller and AA games aren't going to require an SSD to run properly. Actually, non-exclusive AAA games won't, either. Not for a long time, at least.

Right.

The games best suited to Switch are AAA 7th gen games because they were literally built ground up for hardware of roughly equivalent power. That’s why the best looking games on the system are all 7th gen AAA titles.

And the 8th gen titles that do come over are hand selected based on a number of other factors anyways.

And the vast majority of games releasing aren’t AAA. Clearly, the audience buying Switch isn’t the same audience chasing the latest and greatest AAA graphical powerhouse. The Switch audience likes the classics. The staples. And the select AAA titles that have proven themselves with evergreen appeal over a number of years.

The Borderlands of the world, the Civilizations, the Skyrim’s, the DOOMs, the Assassins Creeds (and evening that took a number of years for the Nintendo audience to finally become receptive to it), etc.

Question, how many of you guys regularly put your Switch to sleep with software still open? I'm weirdly obsessive about saving and closing any game I play because maybe, just maybe, there's the chance I might want to play something else next time and don't want to have to jump back into a different game first.

Well.....

Truth is I almost always suspend with a game still open. I usually pause the game first or open a menu, and I definitely save the game too beforehand, but otherwise it defeats the purpose of having such convenience.

If I do want to play something else, I just exit out and close the game, since I know I saved it beforehand.

@Heavyarms55 I can't recall the last time I had my Switch asleep without a game paused. But yeah, as Jaxon said, usually I'll be in a position where I can just hit close if I don't want to continue.

@link3710 Oh I save compulsively. Even mid game. All it took was one time as a kid - playing Pokemon for like 3 hours and forgetting to save - to scar it into my brain to be sure that I save. Now half the time when I'm stopping I end up saving 2 or 3 times just to make sure I remember that I did it and don't worry. lol

But still, for whatever reason, I don't like leaving software running while the console is sleeping.

I almost always put my Switch to sleep with a game paused, @Heavyarms55 .... I also like saving manually quite often in games & not relying totally on auto-save

I dunno about that. Doom, Witcher 3 and DQ11 were all pretty big deals for the Switch. Having nothing like that from this point onward will be a bit of a loss in my opinion.

hey question, just had a 'russia' log in, since i got the email notification. i changed my password immediately. is there anything else that you all would recommend i do? i also added the secondary log in confirmation with the google authenticator.

Not much, I don't think, @scubydo .... If you use the same password anywhere else, obviously....

quiet on here considering the shelter in place

with the rating company temporarily closing, will the 2k games be affected? i know xenoblade already has a rating but i couldn't remember if the others did.