Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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Frankly I wasn’t a fan of the DS. It was cool and it’s not like I didn’t like it, but it just didn’t have a lot of games I liked. I was actually a PSP guy myself during that era. Though I was a fairly casual gamer back then.

And, that carried forward to Vita, which I bought day one. It’s just that... Vita kinda fell through on its potential and 3DS was so much cooler to me at the time. The 3D effect amazed me and I’ve continued being a fan of the 3D to this day. I’m not as enamored with it as I used to be, but I never disliked it like some people did. And it got so many games I was way more into. I sunk a lot of time into Vita, but 3DS dominated my playtime even more than Wii U and PS4 combined. That was the first time a handheld turned out to be my primary console.

And, it’s not like I planned for that to happen. I had always liked handhelds but they were never my preference. Mostly because of the lack of full button set, games that were dialed back and not on par with what consoles could offer, extremely sub-HD resolutions, and it sucked giving up TV play to get it. And in rare cases where a game did release twice on console too, you’d usually have to buy two versions of it and play the lottery in hopes of it having cross save, and even if it did it was a hassle to use every single time, because you had to boot up the actual game and do it in the menu. That’s if you’re even lucky enough to have it at all.

Switch basically wrecked every single complaint and barrier from the handhelds of yesteryear. No full button set? Let’s fix that. Dual shoulder buttons, clickable analogs, rumble, the works. No more relying on touchscreen for buttons that can’t be mapped. Don’t like pared back games? Let’s fix that. Switch runs the actual Wii U games on handheld, releases that were actual console games when I was playing 3DS. No more settling for 25fps DKC Returns in 240p. Now I get HD DKC Tropical Freeze in 60fps with a far more luxurious and ergonomic handheld. All those PS3/360 games that missed out on Wii U, and could NEVER hope to run on 3DS? Ya, they’re all on Switch. In gorgeous HD handheld play with gyro aiming and dual analog controls. Current gen console games can’t run on handheld? That’s still kinda true, but only for the really demanding AAA titles. Pretty much everything else comes to Switch. Tired of 240p on 3DS and the predominant 360-480p on Vita (and occasionally 540p)? Now that’s the floor. Almost all Switch games have 540p as a bare minimum rather than a hopeful ceiling, and most do even better than that. Tired of having to give up tv play for the benefit of portability? No problem. Switch is both. Not only is it both, it even takes it one step farther than that with tabletop “portable console” mode, which is different than handheld. Handheld is not portable console. You’re not playing on a separate screen with a dedicated controller. In tabletop you get a true portable console experience. 3 versions in 1, for every single game, no cross buy needed, no cross save needed.

No more Valkyria Chronicles 2 PSP version designed for handheld. Now we’re getting the real thing. Valkyria Chronicles 1 and even the newest console release, 4, as a console game, as a handheld game, as a portable console game. No more pixelated Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate with no online, unless you spend $100 for two versions to have on Wii U and 3DS, use the clunky save transfer tool to bounce between. Now we get Monster Hunter Rise, basically the MH World of the portable line. A game that looks so good half the responses in comments are a refusal to believe it’s running on Switch. Full button set. No loading zones. 3 versions in 1. No more Borderlands 2 at 20 FPS with missing buttons, using rear touchpad and corners of touchscreen for the 4 missing buttons, accidentally brushing your thumb against the corner of the screen and throwing a grenade indoors and killing yourself, or your middle finger accidentally brushing against the back of the consul and causing you to crouch when you’re running. Now we get a game that’s visually near indistinguishable from the PS4 remaster, at a rock solid Framerate, with gyro aiming, 3 versions in 1. And so on, and so on, and so on.

I’ve always liked Nintendo, mainly because it was what I was familiar with growing up, but I never had any particular attachment to them until I started playing all the amazing games on 3DS and Wii U. And as a new gamer who was discovering all these amazing experiences for the first time, it turned me into a fan. I didn’t like the systems and games because I was a fan of Nintendo, I became a fan of Nintendo because I liked the systems and games. And the same can be said for Switch. By the time the Switch released I was already a fan p, but the reason I love Nintendo so much now is because of how much I love the Switch. Their amazing system has blown me away and changed how I play games to such an extent that I can’t help but be a huge fan. As opposed to the other way around where someone merely likes something because they’re a fan. The hybrid concept really is that amazing.

It’s quite possible Nintendo screws it up in the future and abandons the hybrid concept. I don’t think they will, but it is a possibility. And while I would still continue to buy their hardware because I genuinely do enjoy the games they create, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as much of a fan if they opted for that route. My allegiance now lies with the hybrid concept as much as it does Nintendo. And I guarantee if anyone else makes a hybrid system like Switch, and it gets a brand new Monster Hunter built ground up, and equivalent library of amazing games, I’d love it every bit as much as Switch. Obviously any other system would be at a disadvantage because they’re not creating games like Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc. but if they had games just as good, I’d be just as much a fan.

My hope is that we hit the diminishing returns limit with PS/Xbox to where adding more power yields such negligible perceptible differences, they say screw it, may as well take the extra power and performance gains and make a hybrid. If we can have games that look essentially the same to the point nobody can even hardly tell a difference, but could offer them in hybrid format, why wouldn’t we? I’m not sure how long it will take but we will hit that limit one day and I’m inclined to believe we’re already hitting it. How much better are PS6 games really going to look? At this point it just feels like the cheerleaders will find reasons to see how much better it is but to a normal person just looking at the games I struggle to believe anyone will be able to tell a difference side by side with current gen. But maybe I’m wrong and it takes another two generations. That’s not the point. The point is we will hit that threshold in the coming years and when that day comes there will be nothing left to do with those power gains except go hybrid. I think it is... inevitable. We live in a mobile world. Phones went cellular, computers went wireless with laptops and tablets, movies went wireless with streaming, even headphones have gone mobile and wireless. Gaming is the only holdout. And while there are legitimate reasons for that now (substantial gains were still made with the new generation consoles), we will hit that point where a generational leap offers no noticeable difference visually or performance wise. It’s just going to be stacking up resolution and frame rates to insane levels that are completely unnecessary. When that day comes, I believe they’ll decide to make their next console a sidestep into a hybrid, like how Wii U sidestepped into Switch. Same fidelity basically, but hybrid. I think this will take 15 years before the technology gets to the point games can look like PS5 games on a portable system, but we will get there eventually. Switch is already paving the way, setting up the market.