Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@BLP_Software
Yea - it's discouraging to think that any guy with a microphone (not even a video camera) can set up shop on social media, come up with a sensationalist title, and get thousands of views without knowing what he's talking about.

@Octane: @erv: Just about every corporate company does what is best for its profits; how is Capcom any different? Just sayin'.

@gcunit: It would be insane to set up a projector game anywhere you want, but I just can't see a projector fitting inside a Switch, unless it was an add-on. If it was an add-on, you could make it fit like a joy-con and still be as big as you want, since the Switch would always be laying on the floor or coffee table in this scenario.

I feel like they're balancing both, actually. (Editing this to be more accurate) In the trailer, the Switch made it from a living room to the park, to the airport, to a plane, to a car, to a hotel room, back to a car, to a basket ball court, back to a living room, to a party, to a dressing room, and finally to a stadium hooked up to large TVs. It kept going back and forth between traditional home locations on TV mode and traditional on-the-go locations.

But then, on their website, it says "meet our next home gaming system." If you ask me, they're leaning towards the home aspect extra hard to make up for the fact that it looks like a handheld. It's all a fine balance that they've pulled off pretty well so far, because Nintendo doesn't want you to think they're focusing too hard on only one aspect.

@Nicolai
Yea, the trailer struck me as pretty even between home gaming and portable, with perhaps a slight lean toward the portable just in terms of seconds given to each mode.

I think most people come away saying "portable" because, honestly, the portable situations are more memorable from the trailer. And probably lots of Xbox/PS diehards haven't owned a portable since they were little (if they're old enough to have even been around for the Gameboy family), so anything along those lines is going to make them scream PORTABLE!!!!! and not want to listen to what the company is actually saying.

@Nicolai My point exactly. They're not bound by any contract and when a PS4/Xbox port is just a mere port away, I think that Capcom will definitely take that option into consideration.

According to one of Laura Kate Dale's sources, The Switch will launch on March 17th in PAL territories. The Japan launch may be a few days earlier, but the plan is to launch in all major territories in the same week.

I never said the game couldn't expand its audience in the west. I said that Monster Hunter existing on the PS4 and XBOne probably isn't going to impact the Switch much. Because they're not going to abandon the idea of a portable Monster Hunter in Japan, the game will do fine there. And in the West? They can't lose an audience to the PS4 when that audience barely exists in the first place. For all we know a push for the game on the PS4 and XBOne will give the game greater exposure. The game going multi-platform might well expand the audience for the game on Nintendo's platforms.

Was just thinking that given that this system has the guts similar to the Nvidia Shield that maybe it is taking a similar route to the shield in terms of third party gaming? Maybe it isn't aiming to secure all the latest third party titles (although I'm sure it will still have some), but is primarily trying to go after remasters of the best third party games that were on the previous gen. Would that be crazy?

Personally, I haven't played many titles outside of the Nintendo library- simply do not have enough time (or money) to make it worthwhile investing in two consoles. So a lot of third party games from last gen would be brand new to me. But I guess also the chance of playing these games again but on the go could appeal to a lot of people as well.

It obviously wouldn't be as good a strategy as going after all the latest games, but it would certainly help having a steady stream of games coming to the Switch. But do you think consumers would go for it?

@dtjive Obviously not. We already lived that in the early days of the Wii U. Besides, current gen consoles are already doing that on top of getting new games.

Hypothetical question:

Which of these three would you imagine would sell best?

a) A Nintendo Switch
b) A Sony Switch
c) A Sony Switch cellphone (i.e. identical hardware externally, but with cellphone capability included)

I just keep looking at the Switch thinking 'It's a slightly chunky (but acceptably so) phablet, so it better be able to make/receive calls', and if Switch does well, I can't imagine Sony won't copy it but stick cellphone capability in within a year or two.

@gcunit Sony will copy it, but half-ass parts of it, as usual, or gimp it in some way because "THey know whats best", and also not market it as it's not their main box but anything with PS on it sells itself, at least in their eyes.

@gcunit Option a. Sony has burned too many bridges with the people interested in portable devices and, unlike Nintendo, they have already tried something like that with the PlayStation phone.

Personally, I don't see Sony going for that market any time soon. They have bigger fishes to fry.

@MarcelRguez Sony is in the games market and the mobile phone market - they are frying those fish every day. While that remains the case they will never write off such an idea if it proves popular.

Personal technology is continually converging devices. For years people have speculated about the end of 'consoles as we know them' because we'll just use streaming boxes instead, but what if Switch proves to be the start of home consoles converging with portable devices?

If Microsoft and Sony stopped making home consoles and followed the Switch's lead, we wouldn't all just abandon them and resort to our PCs for gaming - portability could become the norm. Do not be surprised to see Valve put out a portable Steam device in the next 10 years (or get bought by Google or similar and them do it, or Microsoft just make a portable gaming Windows device that runs Steam etc. etc.)

Triple A games, at UHD etc. will be very expensive to produce - why not slow the advance of graphics down and instead focus on making every game portable. Switch is potentially going to show us that the power to play every game ever made up to, say 2012, is there in portable devices.

I don't see Sony copying the Switch anytime soon either, I'm afraid. The PS4's doing too well - it's probably best they focus on that for now, and I'd doubt they'd be able to support an additional gaming device on top of that (look at the Vita!)

I think if they are to do anything Switch-like, it'll be along the lines of increasing PS4/PS5/PSwhatever functionality with their other devices (e.g. phones, tablets, etc.).

@gcunit I think it might show us it can take any modern game.

Of course with less detail and lower resolutions. But that's exactly how it'll win.

@gcunit The dedicated console and phone market, that's what I'm referring to. Besides their VR push, of course. I'm with @Buizel, they have no reason to experiment when they're on top. I can see Valve expanding Steam beyond computers before Sony considers doing anything portable again.

@dtjive
NVidia got support for the Shield where it could and was in an entirely different position to Nintendo. So there's no point reading too much into what content appeared on the Shield. But I think its fair to say that Nintendo will continue to trade on nostalgia. So we'll keep getting ports and remasters of Nintendo classics.

@gcunit
In the long run as hardware becomes increasingly power efficient I think the Switch is what consoles will end up becoming. Well, that's one possible outcome anyway. Probably a better idea than the other alternatives this path will take us to. I don't want my phone to be my console, I don't want it built into my TV. The Switch is a better concept. But in the end home consoles will be replaced by something along these lines.

We're already at the point with the PS4 Pro where a home console has enough power to drive 1080p as good as you could reasonably want. Things can always be pushed more but still, at this point it's diminishing returns. More power if available will mostly be useful for resolutions and framerates beyond 1080p 60fps.

The Switch is somewhere around 5 years behind that. On paper at least. At the rate that Tegra is improving it'll be about another 5 years before that much power is possible on Tegra. So if a significant enough number of people don't move to, want or care about 4K? In 5 years something like the Switch could in every sense be all they need.

If 4K does become important then the wait will be a bit longer. 4K is about 4x the resolution and therefore requires more or less about 4x the horsepower. That's not exactly true because it needs a bit less than that but it's close enough. Such a GPU doesn't quite exist yet. But at the rate GPUs are currently improving? Give it 5 years and it'll be cheap enough for consoles.

And on that same point? All things being equal (and they most definitely aren't) it'll be ~10 years and you should be able to fit a convincingly 4K capable GPU into something like the Switch. ~5 years for 1080p, ~10 years for 4K. Not a long time at all when you think about it in terms of console generations. The PS5 might well be something like the Switch.

"Hopefully Nintendo finally listens to what everyone has been wanting, instead of telling us what we should want."

I really hope so as well!

@BiasedSonyFan I think the point is, mobile/portable tech is catching up with game software demands so fast that at some point we may dispense with labelling things 'mobile' or 'portable' or 'home' and it'll just be 'gaming'. Playstation fans won't have to 'embrace portable', portability would just become standard for gaming hardware, whether you want to use it in a portable fashion or not.

How many people have dispensed with landline telephone numbers? I don't know the answer, but I know many people have. When a portable device becomes nearly as good as it's fixed alternative, the portable option will take over.

@gcunit Your lack of quotation disturbs me... Oh wait, Vader was supposed to say that! Cackle.