Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@old-dad
We've kinda hit the point where capacity isn't really that much of a limitation for cartridges anymore. If you plot the highest capacity cartridges sold on Nintendo consoles over time vs the largest capacity commercial optical media formats this is the graph you get:

As it stands right now the highest capacity Switch cartridge is 64GB and the highest capacity BluRay disk is 100GB. Theoretically cartridges in the form factor of the Switch will overtake the BluRay discs supported by the PS5 during in the next few years. Ten years from now cartridges will theoretically be larger than even a theoretical optical media. And even if this wasn't the case, these days it's not uncommon for a large chunk of the game to not be in the physical package you buy in the shops anyways

There's a similar sort of trend if you plot the price of flash vs mechanical HDDs. NAND in general improves at a faster rate than other media. Eventually we will get to the point where SSDs are cheaper per GB than HDDs. ATM it's something around 4X the cost for an SSD vs a HDD, 10 years ago from memory it was something more like 20X

Also, you can render stuff at a higher resolution without higher resolution assets and you can render at lower resolutions with higher resolution assets. The two don't necessarily follow. I would think something like the Metroid Prime remaster as it is would look pretty great rendered at 4K with no changes to its assets

edit: for those interested, this graph above suggests that we should be at the point where 1TB optical media is possible. Well technically.... maybe not far off that being a thing. Whether or not it makes any sense to consumers given 8K is stupid, AV1 exists and Netflix/Disney/etc is how people consume movies these days? Not so sure

@JaxonH Absolutely appreciate all your points, and can certainly attest to the 'objective quality' of the game... for some reason I'm just struggling to get excited by it!
Its overwhelming critical acclaim, not to mention consistent fan accolades, make me determined to play/finish it - but for now I will park it and then revisit down the line (likely for a quick/short experience prior to losing myself in TotK)

What I've decided instead it to play Fusion later this week upon release on NSO, and get myself back into the Metroid groove. I loved Super, and absolutely adore Dread... so I'm hoping to really click with Fusion!

Thanks for the feedback as always, and I'm genuinely not crapping on Prime - but I guess sometimes we all need to accept that not every game is for everyone (but I will do my hardest to get on board ha!)

Have to apologize for my ignorance but there was a few things there I wasn't aware of, namely switch max cart size and 4k assets. Was there any games to actually use that ? Think the largest game I've gotten on eshop was 21.5

That is fantastic news on the asset resolutions, Prime, Luigis Mansion and Mario Odyssey would look gorgeous in 4k. Guess the big question would be which arm cpu/ram they are going to use.

@old-dad
The 64GB cartridge does exist though I'm not sure what games have used it if any. There are certainly games on Switch that approach 50GB though the companies that publish those titles.... I doubt they're putting the entire game on the cartridge. The NBA2K games for example. There are certainly people on this forum who are more versed in what titles came on what cartridge size than I am

In terms of asset resolution vs render resolution. IMO the main advantage of 4K is more that it's basically like a better way to do Anti Aliasing. I mean if you're putting extra effort into rendering the game to remove the jaggies why not just just put those extra pixels on the screen? In any case, there are a lot of games on Switch that have fairly decent quality assets and they'd scale pretty well by just rendering at a higher resolution. I won't link to them because it probably flirts with violating the forum rules but, if you google you should be able to find footage of what something like Metroid Prime Remastered running at 4K might look like with no changes to asset resolution

@old-dad

Base PS4

Allowing me to play DMC 5, Elden Ring, and/or Guilty Gear Strive at a steady 30 fps is the floor.

We already know the ballpark power from the Orin chip that's almost certainly being used.

Chip is around PS4 level. Of course it's going to need to be downclocked for battery life in handheld mode. On the other hand it'll likely have improvements in other areas just due to technology advancing for the 10+ years since PS4/X1 release.

So just like Switch is essentially a portable PS3, I expect Switch 2 to essentially be a portable PS4. Might be worse in some respects, better in others. But at the end of the day, the end result is going to be about what we see with Steamdeck. Except with better battery life.

...and not as stupidly big.

*Not a dig at SD owners or anything, I just don't want my handheld device to be that big.

On reflection I should probably omit the word 'stupidly' because no doubt it triggers people who can't read anything without getting triggered. Which is why I'm going to leave it in

🤣 love it !

I’m so triggered! How dare you call me stupid! No I won’t read your post! I will immediately hurl into a fit of rage and forever glower in your general direction. Good day sir!

Mvg had a pretty interesting video this morning.

@old-dad i believe the Nintendo Switch sucessor graphical/techinal power will be around a PS4 graphical/techinal power, so a hybrid PS4

Metroid Prime boss comparion(original Game Cube release/Switch remaster released)

@old-dad the notion that Nintendo will not do backward compartibly on it next hardware is just asinine, Nintendo know that everyone will be furious if they next hardware dont feature backward compartibly, most Nintendo hardware feature this, with the exception of Switch e Game Cube due to the chance of physical media used on they games(since N64 used cartdridge and Wii U used disk)

I've been playing the Link's Awakening remake. Not sure it was seeing the DX version on the NSO GBC app that made me finally take the plunge but I'm having a great time with it.

Everything that's ever been said about the game is clearly true - it's incredibly faithful to the original (which I've completed several times) and looks gorgeous. The technical difficulties are obvious and a bit annoying (even if they don't actually impact gameplay in any meaningful way at any point). The extra buttons really allow the game to be its best self - I can't imagine playing the "inventory shuffle" version again.

What's really striking is just how strong the original design was. The world is so dense.

I'm guessing that the Oracles games coming to NSO likely means that we're not getting similar remakes which is a shame. They're not as strong IMO as Link's Awakening but they're still very good and I'd particularly like to have seen Ages given a coat of polish (I thought it was weaker all round than Seasons but some minor quality of life improvements and a little nip tuck here and there would have really made the difference to that game).

It is fun to speculate, all the buzz about a new console and I enjoy reading about the tech that it might use. I'm hoping Nintendo/Nvidia started designing the switch successor with backwards compatible in mind. Then again I could see Nintendo stick with tegra soc and just upgrade the ram and clock speeds.

@StuTwo
I love the seasons games from the gbc. The only handheld version of Links many adventures I ever played. I have the sound track on my phone lol.

This will be 👌 even though I also wonder what it will mean for game development ? Will it take 5+ years to get a new Xenoblade, Zelda or Mario ? Just so many question's while also pretty exciting

@old-dad Nintendo will need to find a balance between power and battery life, so even when the Switch sucessor is downcloked to have a better battery life as @JaxonH stated, Nintendo developers/third parties partners could make much more ambitous games they coundt on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo must be thinking of the pro/cons of making a console that have a PS4 graphical/techinal power, with also keeping a good battery life on the console, ambitous games such of the Legend of Zelda/Xenoblade, Mario e Metroid franchise take more time to develop, look how long Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is in development(6 years), Nintendo is preparing to make more ambitous games and to on more powerful hardware, by increasing the development capacity of it studios, they are building a new development center to work.

@Giancarlothomaz @TheBigBlue

I would imagine we're still going to be in the 15 watt kind of range. Many tiny pc use 10 to 15 watt setups and they can game pretty good.

@TheBigBlue
They don't need to hit 4k- I do agree with that. But 1080p on the TV will be expected for the next Switch as a baseline. One or two games running at 900p isn't a big deal, but consumers will expect at least 1080p for 99% of games released, and the standard 720p in handheld.

The difference will be, many Switch games had to run 720p docked and 540p handheld. Not all. There are a number of games running 900-1080p docked and 600-700p handheld. But it's by no means standard. The next Switch will make it standard. And while they don't need to hit 4k, I do suspect they'll be leveraging DLSS 2.2 to upscale to higher resolutions.

After all, not everyone even has a 4k TV in 2023. But it's becoming much more widespread (I think over 90% of TVs being sold nowadays are 4k?). If the system releases in 2024 and lasts until 2031, they have to think about what expectations will be then, too. Not just now.

So ya, I expect a 1080p baseline, but I also expect 1440p to 2160p upscale of that baseline with DLSS.

@JaxonH well cant Nintendo use DSLL to output 4K resolution on docked mode? 1080p in handheld mode is a given, all TV that is sold here in Brazil have 4K/8K resolution due to the Xbox Series X/S e PS5, e most TV channels having this resolution.