Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Ralizah
It really does hold up. Open world games are notorious for being incredibly demanding, even for power consoles. So to see this game running on the Switch as well as it does, and from Ubisoft no less... is impressive. And the fog you see in one of the screenshots... that fog lifts as soon as you gain flight. I thought they’d used fog to hide draw distance, but it turns out it was just for the prologue (first hour is the prologue, then the game title appears very dramatic like on a high lookout point... and the fog is gone).

We were just joking the other day how this game already started going on sale on its launch day with its $49.99 Amazon price tag lol. I’m sure it’ll be half price soon enough. Ubisoft really screwed themselves by destroying their price integrity. Most people believe their games will drop price soon after launch, and thus refrain from buying day one. This is why Nintendo maintains price integrity. Nobody ever thinks twice about buying a Nintendo game day one because they think it’ll go on sale soon.

I try to buy all games on Switch that hold up at least as well as this one does. Switch gets fewer 3rd party games as it is, so I want as many of them as possible that I can get on a hybrid system. The ones that can’t hold up well... that’s what PC is for. Witcher 3 actually held up reasonably well given how demanding it was, but it definitely suffered because of it. That was a game I was glad to have on Steam also, especially since it had cross save. Speaking of which, this game also has cross save! So if you want to get it on PC also for an extra $20 to play that version on the TV and Switch on the go, you can do that. No gyro in any other versions though. And I feel it really does add a lot of enjoyment for Apollo’s Arrows, normal arrows, Far Sight mechanic looking for secrets and landmarks and marking pins, and throwing rocks and other heavy items.

@JaxonH In 10 years time ports of today's games will easily run at those levels. But modern games... who knows how hard they'll be pushing the hardware by then.

@link3710
We’ve been approaching a mathematical limit (like in calculus) for years, and even this generation is quite evident the leaps are so small you can hardly even tell PS5 versions of games from PS4 versions. Hence why the focus has been put on other aspects. At this point they’re just cranking up the resolution dial and the frame rate dial to absurd levels. Next generation, I challenge anyone to spot the difference between PS5 games and PS6 games.

Perceived Visual Fidelity (Console: Blue, Mobile: Red) Over 50 Year Timeline

With 2 more generational leaps in mobile hardware, the Switch 3 will easily, easily best 8th gen consoles. Maybe even reach parity with the Pro versions. And there’s not a game that exists from this day forward that couldn’t run on a PS4 Pro or Xbox Series X with at least 1080p 30fps, especially if its not running raytracing or any other crazy power-hungry processes. Unless it’s just incredibly poorly optimized.

Even if a small, select handful of AAAA games couldn’t quite run out of the box by dialing down to 1080p 30fps with lower than ultra settings (think medium or high), the vast majority would. To the point it wouldn’t really impact much of anything.

As we encroach ever further toward the limit, the gap between mobile and desktop will shrink even more. It only gets smaller from here on out. And frankly, even if a game somehow couldn’t hit 1080p, all it would have to do is hit 720p to nail 1440p docked with DLSS. And even that would be exceptional for a hybrid handheld. So either way, we’re covered... IF they integrate DLSS. If they don’t, they’re morons and should be replaced immediately with someone who has the common sense to leverage the solution staring them in the face.

@JaxonH Okay I have to ask. What is that graph? It doesn't even have labeled axes. Like I know what it's supposed to convey but...

@TheGameChallenger What makes you think horizontal groupings are 10 years? Why not 5? Or 20? And what year does the graph start on? And vertical may be perceived fidelity, but in what units? Is it converging to 100% or not?

As a graph, it's very vague.

Dutch news site Nu.nl is reporting that the Dutch consumer rights protection organization is collecting complaints about the Joy-Cons, together with other European consumer rights protectors. I'll try to find an English article on this later (after work), but for Dutch speakers: link

edit: quick search led to this article

I think my Joy-Con may have actually gotten drift after all this time. I rarely use Joy-Con but both my pro controllers ran out of charge while I was cutting down every tree in Akkala Citadel just over a week ago (there's a quest in Age of Calamity that requires a lot of wood and that story mission has lots of trees) so I changed to the Joy-Con grip while my pro controllers were charging and both player and camera control felt off.

do you guys think there will be a special edition switch/switch pro launched alongside botw2?

@Arbor i think is very likely to happen, Legend of Zelda along side Mario, is Nintendo bighest franchise, i believe they gonna release a Special edition Switch or the rumored Switch Pro to release along side Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2(something tell me that Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 is gonna be bighest game for 2021, maybe with also Super Mario Odyssey 2 releasing along side it).

@Arbor I think no because we're entering year 4 of the Switch and there's only been 3 1st party special edition Switch systems:

• Pokemon Let's Go (Switch)
• Pokemon Sword/Shield (Switch Lite)
• Animal Crossing New Horizons (Switch)

Meanwhile with the 3DS there were lots of special edition systems by this point.

I could see however there being Link green Joy-Con kind of like how Odyssey had Mario red Joy-Con.

@Grumblevolcano Ditto. A week ago I noticed my left gray joycon drifts enough to mess with gameplay. These are launch day joycons from march 3 2017. Calibration page showed it was slow to return to center, or slightly stick to a direction.

Online stores are sold out of gray joycons, but I walked into a Target store and they had one gray pair left on the wall. Full price, of course, $79.99 usd. I got lucky finding that pair.

@link3710 @ToadBrigade
Good thing it wasnt a graph made for a school, and instead was just a quick illustration made for a forum post done in 30 seconds to better communicate the concept which I was trying to convey. Which it does. It wasnt dressed up because it doesnt need to be. It's simply a visual tool to help communicate what my verbal language is describing.

You don't need a peer reviewed quality graph to get the idea (I can make one if you like, but I felt people are smart enough to infer the conceptualization).

The Y axis is perceived visual fidelity as a function of time. X axis is obviously time. If it represents 50 years, it should be evident you divide the span by 50 which is about 1 major line every 10 years. The units of Y are irrelevant. The point is the limit being approached (though sure, we could call that limit 100%), and the ever shrinking gap between mobile and console since they are both inevitably approaching the same limit. The mobile function is simply offset as its trailing by a decade or so.

Which, I think the point was clear enough, as people have already said. So why nitpick when it's just a quick sketch to help clarify. If we were in the same room, I would have drawn the same image with a pencil in 2 seconds (which is essentially what I did here, only I did it on desmos in 30 seconds), not drafted up a textbook caliber diagram.

Doesn't this one count?

@gcunit Yeah, that too. Forgot about it.

@JaxonH I said I got your point from the start, I just think the graph only served to be more confusing than helpful.

@link3710
My bad. Wasn’t trying to be confusing- the intent was to clarify. Hopefully this is less ambiguous...

Blue = Console
Red = Mobile
Time “0” = Year 2000

Per the graph, we’re at the 20 year mark (20 years into the new millennium), and mobile graphics are roughly at the same point console graphics were at 10 years ago (which you can estimate by picking a point on the red graph and moving your finger horizontally to the left until it hits the blue graph, and count how many years ago console technology was at the same point). Except you have to keep in mind, consoles only see a jump every 7-8 years, so while we saw a huge jump to X1 and PS4 around the start of 2014, we won’t see the corresponding jump in mobile to that level until around 2024.

It’s not perfect- I’d need to better estimate % perceived visual fidelity for the consoles at different points in time and extrapolate a best-fit curve that uses that data as calibration points, but as a quick and dirty reference, it works.

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Also, rumors if you add a lower price game into your cart first, it’ll take half off a higher priced game you add second. No promises though

@Ralizah

Well...I've messed around with the split pad pro for a few hours and I truly believe they're the joy-con alternative I've been desperately needing. Sure I'm giving up a whole lot of joy-con features, but I usually turn rumble off and rarely use motion controls and nfc anyhow. In the end my only hope is to stop the endless cycle of the joy-con I use contracting drift after roughly nine months of using them.

(For those who don't know, I'm now on my fifth pair of joy-con since August 2017 due to drift issues.)

So if the split pad pro manages to break the chain I say, "hallelujah!"

@Magician The SPP really is awesome for handheld play. I'll still switch to joycons + grip for games that really benefit from gyro and/or HD rumble, but the majority of games, I've found, don't really take advantage of those features, and for those games, the Split Pad Pro is perfect. The sticks and buttons are SO nice.

Also worth mentioning the ability to map controls to paddles on the back of the controller, and also the turbo function, which is tremendously helpful for games like Animal Crossing that make you press the same button over and over.

The biggest downside for me is the sheer... size of the thing. It really does make the Switch absurdly long when they're attached. But this isn't an issue for me, since I have a Lite that I use as a secondary console, and that's the machine I'll take around with me everywhere. The SPP is what I use for games when I play them around the house.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why not one single accessory manufacturer has made a set of joycon for enthusiasts that doesn’t cut ANY features, and adds things like a D-pad, assignable back buttons, etc.

Or even just joycon with a D-pad that actually have gyro and HD rumble, or is even wireless at all!

Nope. Every single blasted controller is missing something. Even the Power A pro controllers boasting gyro... they don’t have rumble. Not even normal rumble. Like... come on guys. 70 million Switches, and you don’t think there’s a market for enthusiast controllers? Rather than compete with 30 other off brand generics stripping back as many features as possible to sell for less, maybe release a single enthusiast model that offers everything gamers want. Nobody even tries. Other consoles, sure, all the time. But Switch? It’s like they think everybody is a casual who only cares about having buttons and nothing else.

What do you mean you want the controller to be wireless? We gave you a d-pad on it, why would you care about anything else? It’s only $20... Ya, and just MAYBE we want more than $20 worth of features!