Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@XandertheWise
I just posted a list of like 50 or more of my favorite games on the system that were on sale for super cheap. So if you're looking for something good to buy, go read my previous post. Your taste may not align with mine exactly, but I'd be shocked and amazed if you didn't find anything in that list that intrigued your interest. Of course I'd always start by recommending Portal 1/2, Pikmin 1-4, Octopath 2, Triangle Strategy, DKC Tropical Freeze, Metroid Dread, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Divinity Original Sin 2, Pillars of Eternity, Monster Hunter Rise, Ori Blind Forest, Ori Will of the Wisps, Nier Automata, Sniper Elite 4, Zombie Army 4, Red Dead Redemption, Batman Arkham Asylum and City, Super Mario Bros Wonder, Trails From Zero (all the Trails games but this is a good one to start with and the port is far superior to the PS version), any Zelda or Xenoblade or Fire Emblem game, Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle or Sparks of Hope, Diablo 2 or 3, Bayonetta 1-3, Astral Chain, Wonderful 101, 13 Sentinels, Neon White, Olli Olli World, or heck if you like Persona, check out Persona 5 Strikers and Tactica. Great spinoffs. And Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes. Also a great spinoff.

@skywake
Oh it most certainly will now that you bought an OLED.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

I probably made a mistake when setting up the new Switch to say that I was going to continue to use the old one. I'm probably not but seemed like the right option to pick. I assume if I had said otherwise it would've given me an option to transfer my games locally rather than be limited to Australian internets for re-downloading my library. Also, unfortunately, moving across the microSD card... it wasn't a fan of that... it had me reformat my card.... so now I have to re-download my library....

As a side note, you know how there's that persistent idea that people push that the Switch's WiFi is horrible? People seem convinced it is because they do that little speedtest thing on it and it shows it's completely useless number that's not at all a reflection of the actual speed. I never really bothered to test it properly because watching stuff downloads isn't my idea of fun. Also for most of the life of the Switch I was only on 8Mbps internets anyways so it didn't matter. But now I'm downloading a couple of hundred GB so, I have time to watch it. I'm downloading at ~56Mbps. That may seem crap but, I only I pay for 50Mbps because a decade ago people thought it'd be funny to have a guy who eats raw onions as a prime minister. 56Mbps is pretty much as hard as my connection goes until at least (checks NBNco's website) late 2025

Also I guess while I'm here, some very, very, very belated impressions on the screen. I mean yep, it's an OLED screen. It's very OLED. I hope Switch 2 is also OLED because, OLED is great. More OLED. Someone earlier was saying that the screen is so much better than LG's TV, I'm not entirely convinced it is. But it's certainly nice and with 720p content at this size on OLED? I mean, there's not much to fault. But it's OLED, I know what OLED is like, was an expected upgrade. I think the thing that kinda surprised me a more is how much bigger the screen feels. I mean, I knew logically how big it was but when you boot up a game the screen just feels way bigger than it should be... it's nice....

@JaxonH ah understood. Thanks anyway!

@skywake I was thinking more along the lines of practicality rather than cost effectiveness.

As a hypothetical, Bimmy and Jimmy are participating in a test at Nintendo HQ. Two different colored NG Switches. One running TotK off an SSD and the other running off of a MicroSD card. If both were then asked if one felt any different than the other, how would Nintendo interpret that response?

@JaxonH 320 microSD cards? And here I was thinking you were winding down the Switch operation 😄

Enamored by your commitment, though that does sound rather an administrative nightmare keeping track of that little project.

@Skywake Condolences for the og Switch; 'grats for the OLED. YMMV but another potential irritation coming your way because you opted not to transfer from one Switch to the next is that of the activity log getting a bit messed up.

So Prince of Persia is native 1080p 60fps docked, 720p 60fps handheld, as Switch was lead platform... that's what I like to see.

Ppl say Switch as lead platform is bad for gamers on other systems but I say it's good. The game now hits 4k 120fps on other systems specifically because they targeted Switch. Had they targeted PS, it would be 4k 30 or 1080p 60, and Switch would be a low res mess with frames dropping to low 20s and textures not loading for several seconds, everyone loses when Switch isn't target platform.

Of course, once Switch 2 is out, making Switch 2 target platform will be a lot more viable.

@gcunit
I got x200 of the 8gb for $1/ea, and x100 of the 32gb for $2.25/ea, x20 of the 128gb for $6/ea.

I'd much prefer a flashcart with a built in menu so 1 card can store everything but at the risk of this thing getting shut down, I'm grabbing one asap.

I do wonder about digital games though. For physical dumps can be done with included tool, so I imagine updates will download to normal storage just like a real game cart. Which is fine, but I wonder if it's possible to have the entire game with all updates on the flash cart sd, and the system doesn't know the real cart had required a download or update. Either way, its a way to ensure games are preserved in perpetuity and I like that. Tiny round stickers included for each micro sd, with a legend card to write what each number is. So 1 = Mario Kart 8, 2 = Zelda BotW, 3 = Pikmin 4, etc.

I suspect they'll release a revision that has a menu or way to toggle games without ejecting but, for now, I figured I'd take the solution presented. That way all games can be dumped and not just put on sd, but backed up on PC on an external hard drive for long term storage. Don't have the energy to hack systems anymore. 3DS was the last one. Don't have the time or patience anymore. So flash cart was a great alternative solution.

@Magician
The cost of it is definitely a factor though. You only really see eMMC these days in legacy designs or in places where you know the manufacturer is trying to squeeze out every cent. Chromebooks, very cheap phones, that sort of thing. Of course it's not like Nintendo doesn't have a history of being cheap with storage. If they're as cheap as they were on the OG Switch, the OLED, the 3DS, the 8GB Wii U SKU? We're probably looking at 128GB of eMMC. So it's possible

But.... we're talking about a gaming device where storage actually matters. Not only in terms of the experience in actually using it but it's also one of the few specs that Joe Average understands. The OLED has 64GB of eMMC, they hide that fact on the box, it's deep in the spec sheet. They don't want you to be thinking about that when you're hovering over the add-to-cart button. I think the small additional cost is well and truly worth it just for the marketing value alone. If they go super cheap with storage? People aren't going to see it as a premium product worth paying $400US or $580AU for

And yes I do realise I'm saying this the day after paying $480AU for a device with 64GB of eMMC

The other bit, your main point, are people even aware of the difference between eMMC and NVMe? Or even the different varieties of NVMe drives, newer revisions of PCIe, various controllers and caches. And even if they are, do they care about load times? I mean sure, they aren't, they don't. They could easily go eMMC and nobody would really care. But the thing about eMMC is that it only exists at all because it's cheap. You don't really see any devices with eMMC with more than 128GB of storage because the only reason it's picked is to cut costs everywhere possible. 128GB these days is the minimum spec. If you're cutting costs you put in the minimum spec, that's kinda the point

I'm fairly confident that it's either 128GB of eMMC or it's a reasonably fast NVMe SSD @ 256GB or 512GB

A few more random points while I'm here. Firstly, kinda fun going through some of the older games in my library. Played a bit of Graceful Explosion Machine which is a game I probably wouldn't have bothered to get if it wasn't one of the titles there on day1. Is definitely launch window fodder, did a good job for what it was

Secondly, Animal Crossing. Obviously had to transfer my island so Animal Crossing was the first title I re-download and boot up to check it's all good. I haven't really played it for a long while. I booted it up I think once last year when I got my OLED TV, just because I was giving a few games a spin with an OLED panel. Obviously when I did that I didn't do a full run around because one of the villagers walks upto me and.....

..... oops

I do feel like this is an opportunity to clear out some games in my backlog. The three big ones left are Luigi's Mansion 3, Metroid Prime Remastered, Splatoon 2. Luigi's Mansion 3 is definitely the one I think I'm going to actually bother to get through now. Metroid Prime Remastered.... I'd rather play it with full surround. If I'm revisiting Metroid now on the OLED it'll probably be another run through Dread. Splatoon 2 I've got no chance of bothering with the single player mode

Slightly more hyped for Paper Mario TTYD now. Also really, really hoping we get Wind Waker HD now....

@skywake Would NVMe still allow physical games to function like the Switch where games that are fully on the cart can be played straight away or would you need to install the game to the memory like on PS/Xbox?

@Grumblevolcano
If a game requires the additional performance to run and if the new cartridge design doesn't allow higher speeds? Then yeah, there'd probably be some component of the game that would be put into the faster storage. But that's not too different from what happens from some games on Switch already where a lot of third party games go for a smaller cartridge and make half the game a download

It's also not really a new thing either. The Switch and Wii are pretty much the only consoles not to have some games install some component on internal storage for performance reasons. Xenoblade Chronicles X did this on Wii U, I believe BotW was the same. The Wii obviously didn't do it because it didn't really have that much storage and the Switch doesn't do it because the cartridge is about the same speed as the internal storage

But if they move from eMMC? If the bandwidth available from its storage lifts from ~2Gbps to 20Gbps, 50Gbps? I mean sure. I'm sure some developers would want that option to have some assets on the higher speed storage. Though it'll be less important than it is on PS5, BluRay tops out at something like 500Mbps with latencies in the 100s of ms. Different order of magnitude gap

Edit: something else worth noting. The leaks about the SoC Switch 2 will use included hardware acceleration for file decompression. That's not part of the standard Tegra SoC. I kinda doubt they'd bother asking specifically for that and then go super cheap on storage

Is it true that Nintendo soft confirmed the Switch 2 release date for 2026? Do we think it'll be a summer release or more of a Christmas release?

Nintendo definitely did not do that. All Nintendo actually confirmed was that there wouldn't be new hardware during the current fiscal year which means nothing before April 2024 (although announcements could potentially be before April). There was talk about the Switch life cycle which you may be referring to, but since Switch will still be supported for some time after 'Switch 2' is out, that doesn't really give us much information.

Current rumours are consistently 2024 release of new hardware, but nothing is verified. My personal guess is it will be released Fall 2024; if the February Direct doesn't mention it, it's certainly not coming out much earlier so we'll get at least a tidbit of information in early February one way or another. Some people think it will be announced in February; I guess we can wait a month and find out and assuming it is not announced we can then wait (im)patiently until summer to see if we find out then. 😝

2024 is definitely not confirmed either, but only outliers are predicting 2026. If they are right they get a cookie and the rest of us can feel silly.

@FishyS
I'm actually not expecting an announcement before the FY ends. They won't need as much lead up time before launch since its same concept. With Wii U/3DS to Switch they needed a good 5
months, but from Switch to Switch 2, I could see a June Direct reveal with a Sept release, a 90-100 day window. Or even a July/Aug reveal with a Nov release.

They'll wanna squeeze Switch sales as much as possible and once they confirm Switch 2, Switch sales will see a notable drop. So I'm thinking 90 day lead time, June announcement at the earliest, August at the latest.

@skywake
Graceful Explosion Machine is a superb little game. I put more time into that thing than I care to reveal. I was top of some of the leaderboards for awhile when it first came out.

I'm hoping we get something soon which I've never said. My V2 switch has seen better days. There's some jiggle in the joycon rails which stresses me out. Some obvious abrasion show on the switch and JC. It still works great, but im ready for something more sturdy.

@FishyS

When you say “predictions” are these people with any kind of actual information or are they just really good at predicting Nintendo?

Honestly, mostly people just making educated guesses. There have been some potential leaks. For example, Nintendo may have talked to vendors about Switch 2 (something which has to happen before a new console is released so games can be made). There are also a lot of fairly concrete potential leaks and rumours about precise chips which will be in Switch 2. But in terms of exact release dates? Basically 100% guesses. And even the plausible leaks haven't actually been confirmed (Nintendo implied the main one was false but they would never confirm new hardware before they want to so that doesn't necessarily mean much).

@FishyS

Did I read correctly that the chips are somehow still less powerful than the competing 9th gen consoles?

@Overzeal
It'll be a portable device, it's not going to outclass the PS5 and it'll almost surely fall well sort of the XBox Series S even. But that doesn't really matter too much if you're also portable, and cheaper. Also console generations are .... a bit of a fuzzy term. I'm not a fan. Personally I prefer to group consoles in terms of their relative power and then additionally whether or not they're portable

Tier 0: (single screen)
Atari, Fairchild, Pong etc

Tier 1: (scrolling 2D)
GB, GBC, NES, MS, Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket

Tier 2: (peak 2D)
TurboGrafx, SNES, MD, GBA, NeoGeo

Tier 3: (basic 3D)
Saturn, PS, N64, DS

Tier 4: (peak 3D)
PSP, Vita, PS2, GC, Wii, Dreamcast, Xbox, 3DS

Tier 5: (early HD)
Wii U, 360, PS3, Switch

Tier 6: (peak HD)
PS4, XBOne, XBOne S, Steam Deck, Series S, PS4 Pro, XBOne X... Switch 2

Tier 7: (post HD)
PS5, XBOne Series X

Did I draw the above lines somewhat arbitrarily? I mean sure. Some of those tiers are much wider than others. But I feel as though there are definitely tiers of performance that hardware has to clear before you are in a place where the games are consistently clearing a hurdle

As it stands the Switch is very firmly an "early HD" tier piece of hardware. It can do HD but not always and it's not necessarily without effort or compromise. It's kinda like what the N64 was for 3D. The tier above? It's largely aiming for the same thing except now it consistently hits it, it's doing it with higher resolution assets. The Dreamcast was the first piece of hardware that came out where you could say yes, we have hardware now that has mastered 3D. The XBOne and PS4 were kinda the same for HD

That's the jump we're going to make here. The Switch is kinda the king of my "tier 5" here, Switch 2 will be at the lower end of my "tier 6". So on paper it's not a huge leap, but it'll be a "new tier" regardless. We're going to go from a console where some games hit 1080p/60fps but most games don't. A console where "post-HD" era options like HDR, VRR, 120fps, 4K aren't even selectable. A console where when you push the hardware you're often land at around 20fps and sometimes well under 720p

We'll go from that to a console that's consistently hitting 1080p/60fps. A console where "post-HD" options are a thing and are possibly even a key selling point. And since we're this far down the road entering this era there may even be some Ray Tracing stuff going on at the edges. But.... we won't be rendering at 1440p or 4K routinely, we're not going to see games, even easy to run titles, where Ray Tracing entirely replaces traditional rendering techniques. But on a ~6-7" screen.... ahh... who cares? You don't really need post-HD stuff on a screen that size