Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Snaplocket
Definitely more impactful for gameplay, that's for sure, but the drops weren't as noticeable. My issue isn't that it interferes with gameplay, but rather, that's its incredibly annoying, regardless of whether it impacts gameplay or not. And the drops in Hyrule Warriors weren't nearly as severe, nor as frequent.

@JaxonH @MsJubilee It's funny. These complaints got really loud around the same hour the Switch OLED was revealed.

I also must say I enjoy the constant revising down of the figures. First people hated Nintendo first party titles running at 30fps. Later that day it was largely regarded as 25fps. Then 20. It'll be 15 by Monday

I mean I get it, sure demand more. Also demand more within a reason. A 4K system running on a battery at a consumer grade price while also being profitable per unit sold, as Nintendo likes to do it, is unlikely.

Even more so with the production issues currently plaguing....everything, from car chips to consoles to PCs.

This is likely Nintendo saying we want to, we have the screens, but we cant make these chips at a good quantity at a good price. Remember that inflated cost would be passed on to the consumers, and lower quantities means scalping hard.

I'm glad they have either waited to release whatever enhancements they wanted to do as reports stated, for what is now likely a new system outright.

Further, sure some third party games wont work well on the current Switch. I imagine it's preferable that Nintendo doesnt tell 85m+ users to go do one and upgrade for two years just to satisfy some third parties. I mean sure, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X didnt become the defacto console developers were targeting right away, but by 2019 it was obvious what developers were doing were absolutely not keeping base consoles in mind.

With how companies treat the Switch NOW, an upgraded model would just become the only system almost immediately to them. And then we end up with no one wanting to support it because it hasnt sold any units yet. And as an upgrade, there is no chance it will.

On the FPS debate, as long as its above 20fps consistently, I dont care. Stable is better than going from 30 to 60 on a whim a lot.

But less than 20? Yeah thats why I dont play N64 games. You wanna talk about games running like absolute crap, that was an entire 5 years of it from start to finish, especially in Europe. Enjoy Zelda at 15fps. Its a struggle.

@Haruki_NLI
Not sure who has been revising figures. Nobody I’ve seen in this thread. Most 1st party games run fine, with a few notable exceptions.

We don’t need 4k. That’s ridiculously overboard. We just need games that don’t visibly stutter for the majority of the time you play it. I don’t care if it’s 4k, 1080p or even 720p. Just keep the games running smooth.

I can’t speak for others, but I’m not “blaming” Nintendo for anything. They made the best system they could for the price point they’re offering and that’s totally fine. That still doesn’t change the fact that more and more games are releasing that have performance so bad it’s even turning me off, someone who has notoriously been resilient against frame rate issues.

I don’t care if they overclock to switch a bit at the expense of battery life (that’s something they could do right now without any new chip), increase memory bandwidth and RAM by even 2 GB (again, something very easy and relatively inexpensive to do), or just work with third-party developers to help them get their games running smoothly.

At the end of the day I don’t care how it gets done, I just want to see games that don’t stutter constantly. And if they can’t do that then I just won’t play them on Switch. I don’t say that with resentment or spite, but as a declaration of intent.

@Buizel that’s exactly what I said. All the leakers and insiders said third parties had games which they wanted to show on the pro. I can’t think of any third party game which demanded a switch pro which made me doubt a pro was coming. And sure enough all we got was an upgraded switch.

I haven't been frustrated with any of my Switch games and fps, and I've played most of what you guys are talking about (Calamity, Bowser's Fury, etc.)

Maybe my eyes are just getting old like the rest of me lol

If the OLED Switch is the stop-gap item due to the pandemic (which I totally understand and it's still a great buy for a lot of people), I almost wonder if Nintendo will go old-school and release some kind of RAM "pack" that can be easily installed at home. Even a tiny smidge more of RAM in a system that's already pushed to its limits by many games would go a long way. Just thinking back to the Expansion Pack or whatever it was called on the N64 lol

Would certainly bring back memories!

@JaxonH I feel like MH Stories 2 is a good illustration of why so many developers are choosing to target lower resolutions on the Switch. This feels like the developers chose to prioritize image quality to the exclusion of performance, since I believe it runs native res in handheld and dynamic 900p when docked. Which explains why, when you look at comparison footage with the PC version, there's barely a difference.

I have to imagine it'd be quite a bit more stable if it targeted 540p/720p like most other demanding Switch games do.

Hopefully they patch in an option to run the game in a performance mode that lowers the resolution or something. Then patch in the option to cap the framerate at 30fps and you'll have a mighty respectable version of the game.

@Ralizah
Exactly right. I admire Capcom’s commitment to resolution, but it’s pointless if it comes at the cost of a smooth experience.

Contrary to internet myth, 720p docked looks good enough in most cases (sure, you can tell it’s not full HD, but it’s only a bit soft- nothing to get worked up over) and 540p handheld looks good enough in most cases (again, you can usually tell it’s not quite as crisp, but for the most part 540p games look great in handheld).

I’d take that in a heartbeat with a capped 30. That would pretty much address the issue. Throw in a dynamic res as well if you have to. Not that I like the resolution dropping below 720 docked/540p handheld, because I don’t, but a brief momentary drop here and there is far better than a game that stutters.

I'm glad I'm not the only one weirded out by the FPS complaints online lately. Yes, enough of the handful of PS4 era ports and maybe two or three other big games have had issues normal people will notice. Considering how some of those games already have issues on other platforms (or in the case of Hyrule Warriors: AOC, is from a developer that has issues with this in their games fairly regularly).

This is normal. I do agree a Switch Pro would be a good thing to have with that in mind, but it feels like we're at a fairly normal amount of FPS issues, especially for a handheld. It's not like its the N64.

That being said, I have noticed that Nintendo's kinda walked back its serious 60 FPS focus it kept trying and succeeding to reach for so many of its Wii U games. That's a bit of a shame. Understandable for some games, but I hope they don't abandon it just to tryhard prove its games can have pretty enough graphics.

@kkslider5552000 The weird thing is how well Persona 5 Strikers seems to run on... everything. Like, usually the framerate being halved in the Switch version would bug me a bit in an action game, but it's so stable that I barely even notice the performance. And this also comes without any eye-bleeding resolution dips.

I feel like K-T benefits from working with a developer like Atlus that tends to release well-optimized games.

@Ralizah
Enough games run well that when I play a game that doesn't, it frustrates me, because I've seen countless games far more demanding running fine without issue.

MH Stories 2 in particular is frustrating because, as you said, the res has plenty of headroom to be lowered, and dynamic res is not being taken advantage of. It's like they don't even care.

Ys IX is frustrating because the Trails of Cold Steel games run just fine on Switch. Both Trails III and IV have no framerate issues, and their resolution is good too. And the game isn't exactly pushing the boundary of the technology. No reason Zelda and Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal can run fine but Ys IX can't.

And seeing Rune Factory 5 run in the 15-25 range is just unbelievable. You'd think these devs were fresh out of grad school or something. How is that even possible. That's frustrating because it's obviously not a graphically intense game.

Bravely Default ran fine, for the most part, but even that had some stutters in the grass. Like... how? The game was built ground up for the system and, sure, it's a big step up from 3DS, but not that big.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Razor's Edge is frustrating because the games were on PS3 and Vita. There should be no issues, especially at 30 frames.

Zelda Link's Awakening is frustrating because all they have to do is cap it at 30. That's it! Just cap it! Why on earth would you push 60 if it results in jarring dips to 30 and back? I just don't understand the why.

The overwhelming majority of games with issues are not ones too demanding to run. And in some cases, there's an easy remedy staring them in the face, and they simply opt to not address it.

What really gets me though, is that there's clearly issues on the software side, nonetheless, Nintendo could help address it by unlocking a higher tier of clock speed for developers, like they did when Mortal Kombat XI released. The Tegra X1 can push up to nearly twice what it's limited at right now. A 20% higher clock tier would result in 17% lower battery life, so games lasting 4 hrs 30 (which is the minimum we tend to see) would drop down to 3 hrs 45 min. A game lasting 5 hrs would drop to 4 hrs 10 minutes. A noticeable but worthy tradeoff, if it were absolutely needed (and in these cases, I believe it is).

edit
Zelda Joycon on Amazon Japan, ships global.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B08WW6G2LD?

@JaxonH The kicker for me is still Hyrule Warriors DE. Running at 1080p docked isn't where I'd go with it, but it never dips too low, so it's not that big of a deal. But the fact that it runs 1080p in handheld mode and made the game noticeably less smooth is incredibly annoying. The Switch can't even display over 720p natively, so you just get a downscaled image that nukes the performance.

@Snaplocket It's not really a lazy port, though. They integrate stuff from the 3DS and Wii U versions, improved the My Fairy mode, etc.

It's a great port... except for the weird downsampled 1080p performance issue in handheld mode.

To be fair nobody who has any idea what they're talking about has been asking for 4K running on a battery. Hell most of the discussion about "Switch Pro" wasn't even talking about full true 4K docked. People have been talking about rendering at maybe 1080p docked and upscaling that to something higher and possibly as far as 4K via DLSS. The general consensus from the tech literate is that the Switch is pretty solid in handheld mode. Most people who have any clue will trade resolution at 7" for battery life. The issue is that there's a huge gap between what they could do in docked mode and what they're actually doing.

The games people are citing generally hit their framerate targets in portable mode at a lower, but acceptable for the size, resolution. Personally, all I could want out of a hardware revision in portable mode is a nicer screen, a longer battery life and more games aiming for a 60fps target. And the OLED model delivers on one of those three things.... two if you still have an OG Switch, they already improved battery life somewhat

The issue is docked mode. A lot of games target a higher resolution when docked because, well, missing 720p is a bigger deal on a 60" screen. Which means there are a fair number of games that miss the 30fps target when docked. It's also 2021 so a lot of people these days have 4K panels that can do some form of HDR and the Switch doesn't bother with any of that. Hell, they don't even need new hardware to make some ground here. The current Switch underclocks itself in docked mode to be about 60% lower than the Tegra SoC can handle. There's a heap of room for improvement there.

Also, on the topic of "remaining profitable". The gap between the RRP of the OLED Model and the regular Switch is about $100AU. The gap in price between a 7" LCD panel and a 7" OLED panel for a Raspberry Pi at retail for an individual unit is about $50AU. Nintendo has a higher margin on this OLED model than they do on the previous Switch. This ontop of them only dropping the RRP for the Switch by $20AU since launch. I mean good on them, they can do it, but lets not pretend that they're eating into their profit margin here to include the OLED panel

OLED has traditionally cost 4X more than LCD, but recently prices have dropped significantly to be less than twice the cost. I don’t know what the extra cost per panel would be, but let’s assume $20. It could be more, but I doubt it’s less.

There’s still the wider kickstand which will require more total weight of materials. A small cost, but still a buck or two more. The storage will also add about $10 to the cost. The LAN adapter will add $10 to the cost. And the better speakers will add about $10 to the cost. So… it doesn’t seem to me as if they’re making any gains. I suppose it’s possible the storage, LAN and speakers only add $5 each, but it’s also possible that OLED adds more like $25-30 too.

All that said, I do agree they have room to make small improvements that wouldn’t impact compatibility. The biggest bang for buck I see is memory bandwidth. How much data throughput can be streamed from memory. A lot of the games that have issues, seemingly have issues streaming data from memory. Zelda Link’s Awakening stutters because of memory bandwidth, for example. If they simply improved memory bandwidth, and used 6 GB RAM instead of 4GB (heck, even 5GB- that extra gig would go a long ways), alongside a marginal boost to available clock speeds for devs (even just 10-20%), that would do wonders. And they could do all of that for a very minimal increase in cost.

@JaxonH I doubt 32GB more memory is going to add 10$. The retail difference for 32gb vs 64gb flash memory is less than that, manufacturing is probably 5$ or less. Same goes for the Ethernet port, those things usually go 10-15 at retail for an entire Ethernet card, and they can cut costs adding it to an existing pcb, never mind the retail markup.

Speakers? I know nothing there tbh. But I'm guessing that there's a already some extra profit on this model based on the parts I can price.

@JaxonH
I think you're overestimating some of those prices. I mean I'm looking at Australian retail prices for some of these things and even though AUD is weaker than USD the gap is still lower than you say. Going from a 32GB to a 64GB flash drive/microSD card is about $5AU and a Gigabit NIC for $15AU. So that's about $20AU at retail for those two things.

Also lets ignore my estimate of how much the OLED costs and go to this graph from Bloomberg....

Rounding up to $19US, $19US -> $25AU. So adding that all up it's about $45AU for these three components. Storage, network adapter (although we don't know if it's Gigabit) and OLED panel. And they're charging an additional $100AU at retail so there's at least $55AU of additional profit.

Of course this is ignoring that the current Switch also has a screen so it'd be less than that. And it'd be less again because there's no way Nintendo are paying what I'd pay for a LAN adapter and cheap flash. And again, their RRP hasn't really moved that much since launch while the components they use have dropped in price significantly. Point is, on paper they're making more on the OLED model than they ever have.

Not complaining about this, they can do this and it'll still sell so good on them. I'm just not buying into this narrative that a higher spec SKU is somehow impossible because Nintendo's profit margin has been eaten up entirely by the OLED panel. It hasn't.

@skywake
I agree it hasn’t. They’ve said from the start they make a small profit on each unit sold (think it was around $17 for base Switch at launch, iirc.)

At the same time I don’t think they’re raking in money hand over fist on these newer consoles they’re selling either. At least, not in the US (their largest market). It’s only $50 more here. There are also hidden costs such as storing additional inventory of new parts, shipping, additional labor to manufacture, the R&D to design it, etc, all of which must be recouped. It’s never as cut and dry as just adding up the sum of the pieces. And, they’re not going to eat up all their margin either. They like making a profit on each unit sold so there has to continue to be a buffer that doesn’t get whittled away.

But of course. The cost of the things I’ve spoken of are minimal, and could easily be done without significantly impacting the bottom line. It would have an effect, but the benefits of games running better should translate into more copies sold, and it’s good for the brand.

@JaxonH
$50US is $67AU so I agree it's a bit less of a markup than we're getting. But I'm not sure these additional costs your raise would have much of an impact. Yeah there are additional costs above BOM, of course there are. But the problem is these costs also exist on the original Switch.

Point is, Nintendo has a larger margin on the OLED model than the original Switch. We're talking at a real stretch $45AU over the current SKU in BOM which is $34US. It's almost surely less than that because Nintendo isn't paying $15AU ($11US) for the LAN port. However you slice it this is less than the premium they're setting the RRP at.

Also I'm not sure on discounting, the current Switch apparently has a RRP of $450AU but I regularly see it discounted to $400AU. The OLED Model is apparently $540AU RRP (so I was wrong, it's technically "only" $90AU more not $100AU) but it's not clear how much it may be discounted or even if it will be. The gap may shrink or it may be wider at retail.

Either way, Nintendo clearly has plenty of room here on price. The OLED Model is going to be a significantly larger margin product than their current SKUs. Although we kinda already know these are high margin products. They can sell the Switch Lite for $330AU, internally it's identical to the Switch. The difference is a marginally larger screen and the dock which is definitely not worth what they charge. There's a LOT of fat in these prices

https://gamerant.com/nintendo-switch-pro-specs-4k/
So, apparently one of the alleged Switch Pro sources says that all he's ever been told about it was that it would come out in 2022, which would mean that the OLED and the Pro aren't the same. Game Rant has an interesting idea that they maybe should just make it the true successor to the Switch instead. Any of y'all think there's any weight to this, or is it just someone grasping at straws trying to stay relevant?

@KAI_MIDORIKAWA
There’s weight to it. There’s multiple sources saying the same thing. And we had already figured out those reporting on it had conflated the two revisions a while back. There’s 3-4 separate sources all saying the same thing. What’s more, the incredibly respected Kopite who in an Nvidia leaker of high regard in that community has twice spoken about a new chip for Switch, implying Orin line by the internal chip number. This guy has never been wrong. Ever.

So ya, there’s definitely a separate, more powerful Switch coming that has nothing to do with OLED, which is just a normal timely revision as per usual.

And it probably is the next generation Switch, not a “Pro”. Nintendo isn’t the one that does “Pro” models anyways. That’s Sony and MS. That’s not to say it couldn’t be. And that’s not to say it will matter how they classify anyways- it very well could be a new generation, but with full BC and keeping the Switch branding, it won’t be functionally any different than a Pro.

So ya, we know a different more powerful model with Orin chip is in the pipeline. We know they’re looking at DLSS. But I wouldn’t get too hung up on it because that’s going to be a few years away. For now, OLED is what we have. Come 2023, if Nintendo hasn’t announced it yet, then we can start talking about what’s what.