Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Man, I was researching something else at the Wikipedia page on best selling video games when I realized Mario Kart 8 sales (Wii U + Switch) are probably going to exceed the previous second best selling Nintendo title Super Mario Bros (NES + GB (Deluxe) + GBA (Classic NES Series) + Wii VC + Wii U VC) by the end of the year at the latest. That's just insane.

That puts it only behind Wii Sports, a pack-in title on an insanely well selling system... And it could still possibly (though it's unlikely) catch that by the end of the Switch's lifespan.

check out the second Pokémon Presents of 2022

That Pokemon presents was kinda meh, but that Scarlet & Violet trailer was pretty good.

plus real shiny Pokemon

@NeonPizza Nice shout. I'll have to grab Power Slave if the gyro aiming is that solid. I've been wanting a good shooter for my Switch, but I also can't abide stick aiming.

I know the original impressions weren't good, but has anyone been using the Switch's built-in bluetooth audio, and is it really as terribad latent as it originally seemed?

I like to use bone conductors with my Switch, but the pair of wired ones I got for switch is starting to wear out terribly with the seam splitting and exposing the wire. I was going to buy more, and, unfortunately they don't make the wired ones anymore since the world ditched wired anything (thanks, Apple!)

Might have to use bluetooth. I know Switch only has SBC, but the bone conductors only use a2DP, no APTx or anything there either so it doesn't matter. So it mostly is a debate between wireless sucking too bad to use, or not.

@NEStalgia
It's horrible.

Bluetooth was never designed to transmit full audio. Even the cutting edge codecs capable of higher bandwidth have latency, and the ones with lower latency come at the cost of audio quality.

Go wired. Not only is the signal not degraded, but all the good headphones are wired. Even the best Bluetooth headphones are a waste of money as the signal quality is bottlenecked by the Bluetooth codec itself.

@JaxonH Bah, darnit! Thanks. I'm not too fussed about SQ, it's bone conductors, SQ is compromised by nature, plus Switch headphone audio isn't spectacular to begin with, but the latency being bad is an obvious problem.

I like bone conductors so I'm not isolated from my surroundings if I'm playing handheld. But this race to get rid of wired everything has made it rough. Since bone conductors are aimed at the trendy fitness crowd, it's all modern (wireless) now, they only made the good wired ones for a few years and then stopped. I found one or two off brand generic Chinese wired ones, but I do question their actual quality vs the Aftershokz brand which does the best you can do with the nature of the tech. I expect it's like the old orange Gen 4 "Sport" Aftershokz model I had back during 3DS which sounded like tin cans and string, and a big step back from the ones I've been using that are falling apart.

I built a phone setup with a Kishi 2 for streaming from the power consoles locally which is nice, but I'm also stuck with BT there since the Kishi clamp blocks the headphone jack (it's an older phone that still has one) and the USB is power-only.

I'm kind of lukewarm towards Scarlet/Violet though every mainline Pokemon game since Sun/Moon (I'm including Sun/Moon here) has shown me that if you're at all interested in playing a mainline Pokemon game in its first few months you need to preorder and buy day 1.

Sword/Shield especially had gigantic stock issues in its first few months.

@NEStalgia
Switch headphone audio is superb. It allows a direct connection to the audio source. The limit is literally just the quality of your headphones. I use Hifiman Arya (v3 with Stealth Magnet planar drivers) and the sound is just excellent.

If you're going to use wireless, I recommend a headset with dedicated wireless USB-C dongle. You won't get great sound but you'll get far better than Bluetooth, which was virtually unusable for me on Switch. It's one thing to listen to music where delay doesn't matter. It's quite another to play a game where audio sync issues stick out like a sore thumb.

@JaxonH It's not so much that Switch's DAC is bad or anything, it's just that a majority of games seem to have pretty compressed audio on Switch. I mean it's not "bad", but it's not worth whipping out the planars for. _{Docked, I have the planars, though Though I do HDMI extraction and run it through some external switching and equipment first, so all the consoles feed the amp.}

This is purely for handheld, so light and unintrusive is key. Definitely sold on bone conductors for handheld. Been doing that since they first came out, and it's just liberating not being isolated while playing. Obviously not highest SQ, but it's really cool for portable play. But...yeah, with wired ones out of production, and USB audio delay being an issue....maybe I'll have to try those knock-off wired ones.

@NEStalgia
Some games do, but most in my experience sound great. In fact you'd be surprised just how many Switch games have 5.1 surround. Not that that benefits headphones but any game with 5.1 is going to have, at the very least, decent stereo audio.

@JaxonH I found a pair of wired ones. I totally need to rock these:

What'cha doin?

.....slaughtering demons with a chainsaw.

@NEStalgia
What is that headphone?
Aikatsu edition or Sailor Moon edition?

@NEStalgia
Looks like you've caught someone's attention with those sick cans 😉

@JaxonH I should have seen it coming, but shamefully, I did not

@Anti-Matter I don't think they're any licenced IP or anything. If they happen to look close to SM or Aikatsu designs, I think it's probably intentionally "inspired by" but not official 😆

I've followed the Game Builder Garage community very closely since launch and this is the most impressive thing I've seen. I got the game at launch and played the tutorials and tried to make something and gave up, everything I see people do with this game makes me want to make something in it even more.

For the first time it looks like FIFA is actually going to get #1 in the eshop charts. Currently it's at #2 with XC3 at #1.

Just to let you know Mick is short for Michelle. @Kermit1

Minecraft amiibo are up for preorder at US Best Buy.

Gotta love that MK8D and MHR:S updates are releasing so close to XC3. -_-

Guess I'll be bouncing between games for a while.