Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@gcunit
Wow...! 😲
With so many N3DS, how did you manage your eshop account ?
Because there is 1 3DS game that the Save Data is outside the cartridge, it saved inside the 3DS machine. It was Fantasy Life since the game have DLC.

@Anti-Matter Although I have 7 x N3DS, I only actively use one of them, my original one from 2015, bought new for about £125. So my eshop account just sticks with that model until I'm ready to do a system transfer to another model. Not that I've got many digital 3DS games - most of them that were available physically, I own physically. But I've no qualms about using custom firmware either, so I can copy my games and saves onto as many 3DS systems as I want whenever I like.

All the others were bought 'used' when market interest in the 3DS waned. The best deal I got was a Like New condition of a boxed white N3DS, with a Like New condition boxed copy of Metroid - Samus Returns for a little over £50. Copies of the game were selling for at least £20 at the time. Couldn't say no. But I don't think I paid more than £70 for any of the others, and most were boxed and Like New condition pretty much. I've got well over 200 3DS/DS games in my collection and I want to make sure I've got enough hardware to be able to work my way through all of them. Love the N3DS. But if I sold them all now, I'd also make a decent profit probably, which helps justify getting them all.

@JaxonH Cloud versions would probably be the solution if there is a large jump. Base Switch gets cloud version, more powerful Switch gets native port. So kind of like what is happening with Xbox, Halo Infinite is likely the last 1st party XB1 game but xCloud gets added to XB1 so XB1 owners can play next gen games.

I personally think the Radio Silence on Bayonetta 3 is to do with the Switch Pro. I think the initial trailer suggests split screen multiplayer, which could be quite a performance drain on the standard switch

@gcunit
Well, to be fair, there’s a difference between speculating and actually getting hard info. The person who has over estimated was just speculating before those devices came out. Which is something we all do. This is them saying they actually heard info. Still, equating it to other systems makes me real uneasy because perhaps they did hear hard, legit info, such as “DLSS and 4k” and the took the liberty of associating that with a certain level of power.

That said, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that a system running DLSS for 4K is going to be at least that powerful. After all, the PS4 and Xbox One released in 2013. That’s almost 10 years ago by the time this would release. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a jump to that level, just like Switch in 2017 was a jump to PS3 level which was roughly 10 years prior.

What’s unexpected is the deviation from norms. Usually it’s “wait a full generation, make a clean break, start all over”. Seems, if true, they don’t want to start over from scratch and are finally getting interested in more cutting edge tech. Which, Nintendo themselves said they were exploring more cutting edge tech.

I think they abandoned prioritizing power because it wasn’t getting them anywhere before hand. But now that they found a concept that really seems to resonate and could last for decades, if they stick with it, there’s really nothing else to do but increase the power.

@Dezzy
Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not. I hope so, but if not, it doesn’t really bother me personally. I haven’t really had any issues, and if I do I’ll just send them to them, and they can pay the bill.

I always take rumours and "leaks" with a pinch of salt (I think part of the reason people are disappointed by Directs is that they have certain things in mind as a given from Nintendo, when really they're just based on speculation...)

But aligning a Switch Pro with the release of Breath of the Wild 2 seems reasonable, and would explain why they're holding of showing the game for now. I don't for a second imagine that BotW2 would be a Pro exclusive, but I can see them wanting to use it to showcase extra features.

Ideally I'd like an "Pro" to be somewhat like the Gameboy Color. Just an enhancement to the Switch experience at first, which gradually maybe has a few of its own titles and perhaps becomes the next iteration without instantly leaving all the existing Switch owners behind.

@Wargoose What about the Bayonetta 3 trailer suggests split-screen multiplayer? I'm doubtful that a game that was announced in the first year of the Switch's life is dependent on the extra power of a Switch Pro.

@timleon its just a guess. Bayonetta gets cut clean in two at the end of the trailer, and Kamiya said something along the lines of the trailer contains a lot of clues to the direction of the game. Plus they experimented with multiplayer in Bayonetta 2. So my guess is there will be two Bayonettas, and there will be local multiplayer.

I'm assuming you'll need a Switch Pro to hit 60FPS in local multiplayer.

Persona 5 Strikers is so good so far

It does start off slow but the pacing does benefit from the game not really introducing who the characters are and just going straight into the story

Also already digging Zenkichi, he seems like more of a dad-type character than Sojiro is

@Wargoose While I do agree that you'd probably need a Switch Pro for 60 fps in split-screen multiplayer...when that trailer was released in 2017, Platinum would have been targeting the vanilla Switch. I guess they may want the improved performance of a Switch Pro to help sell the game, but I have little doubt in my mind that it will release on the original Switch and that it is the system that they've been primarily targeting.

Capcom Arcade Stadium is freaking AWESOME.

This is how you do retro games.

Every QoL feature you could imagine. It’s all here. Insert tokens, adjust gameplay speed in real time while playing, adjust difficulty, choose level, rewind, multiplayer, online multiplayer, trade single controller back and forth multiplayer, screen zoom, display filters, game manuals, favorite the games you like, save/load anywhere, trophy awards, leaderboards, and putting all the games into one package that just grows with DLC over time.

This is how it’s done.

@JaxonH

Very interesting leak. Would make sense if there was a 75-25% split like you said and Id imagine the exclusives will mainly come from Third parties. Nintendo games aren’t generally that power hungry and they could run in an enhanced form on the new version, indies and Retro would be no problem, but it would give third-parties more headroom for getting PS4 games to run. That system is likely to be well supported for another 2 years or so and if Nintendo could make it easy to port across to a new Switch the combination could work.

@electrolite77
Ya, I agree Nintendo would have all their games work across both. It would be more the 3rd parties who'd require a more powerful system.

It's clear Nintendo has learned to value 3rd parties this generation. We know Nintendo approached Bethesda, approached Blizzard, approached all these 3rd party devs because they knew they needed 3rd party support this generation. They listed to Capcom pertaining to their needs as a developer for Monster Hunter Rise.

So Nintendo has pivoted to listening to 3rd party devs. And you have to ask yourself- what do you think all these 3rd party devs are telling Nintendo they want? A more powerful system. With all the 3rd parties supporting Nintendo Switch now, Nintendo has likely heard over and over and over, "we'd like to see a more powerful system- in order to continue bringing games, we need a more powerful system".

And I think they're likely taking that to heart, given their newfound respect for the wants and needs of 3rd parties to ensure they get support.

So all the pieces kind of fit together. I hesitate to buy in all the way, but I really am starting to think this is legit.

But, for now I'm just gonna forget about it, and if it comes it comes. And if not, I'm still having a blast with my Switch as is.

@Ralizah this sound like Nintendo is making the Switch sucessor sooner then we expected.

@JaxonH Microsoft kind of did Nintendo a favour by holding back next gen with the underpowered Series S. From the description you gave, the rumoured new Switch specs probably aren't that far off the Series S specs.

@Grumblevolcano
At least, to the end user it would be in the ballpark. It wouldn’t actually be that powerful. More like an Xbox One or base PS4. But the DLSS would give such massive gains that a 1080p game could actually run in 4k, or at the very least 1440p. Or, it could target 1080p 60fps, which is the sweet spot imo, as the gains beyond 1440p are fairly negligible considering the extreme amount of additional power needed to attain it. Handheld could upgrade to a 1080p display and DLSS would pretty much ensure 720p 60fps or 1080p 30fps using the lower power profile of the handheld Switch, while still retaining adequate battery life.

So ya, to the end user, the result would be within the ballpark. Secretly, it would be base level 8th gen power, but DLSS can take that 8th gen power and double the FPS at a given resolution, or double the resolution, and make it seem like a much more powerful system than it really is. Hence the power of DLSS. It’s the secret weapon that could bridge the gap between an 8th gen powered hybrid and 9th gen powered consoles.

Nvidia has to be pushing the tech too. They were very proud of securing their contract with Nintendo and DLSS is a massive step forward in technology. Surely they must have at least demo’d the tech for Nintendo design engineers. And I can’t imagine Nintendo’s design engineers said nah, we’re not interested in that. No interest in doubling our performance capabilities whatsoever.

The challenge would come in integrating DLSS into a mobile chip, which to my knowledge, has never been done before. Not to say it can’t be done- it just hasn’t been. Not yet anyways. But they haven’t had a reason to. Now they do. Switch being that reason.

@JaxonH I was thinking more about how the CPU was the big limiting factor with PS4/XB1, it was bad even for 2013.

@Grumblevolcano
Ya, CPU would be upgraded, I imagine, and be a marked improvement over the PS4/X1 CPU. But even if it wasn’t, just having native power on par with 8th gen base consoles is a massive leap forward, old CPU or not. But assuming it did, and it had DLSS on top of it, the end result would be games that potentially look and run closer to PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

If Nintendo doesn’t work with Nvidia to utilize Tensor cores on their next revision or successor, they’re hopelessly idiotic. But to even be able to utilize DLSS you need a certain base level of power. I don’t know where that line is drawn, but I do know it’s more than the current Switch power level. Which might explain why they’re making the system more powerful to begin with (assuming it’s true, of course). Maybe they needed that level of power in order to be able to leverage the DLSS, and so it was kind of like, a lot of bang for buck. Making the system that powerful not only gives you more power, but it also enables you to then get a further 1.5X - 2X increase with DLSS, so the bang for buck of the increase was much more appealing.

But who knows. Worst case, we wait til 2024-2025 for a new generation model. Either way we’re going to get a more powerful Switch in the next four years, And I would be downright amazed if they didn’t at least make the jump to 8th gen power level for their next gen system.

I assume that part of it would be located in the dock? DLSS is just a better version of the MClassic really isn't it? In that it just takes in a video signal and works essentially as a post-processing shader.

Cos that can definitely be separated from the base console hardware.

@Dezzy @JaxonH Remember last year Nvidia had job listings for an engineer, with one task listed being integrating AI upscaling techniques into mobile chipsets, such as Tegra.

So ya know, we all KNOW Nvidia is going to make it happen.

@Haruki_NLI
Huh. Ya, I do remember that now.

It's an interesting piece of the puzzle, for sure. And does seem to line up with the hypothesis.