Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@WebHead The Xbox One version is running at 900p and still struggles to maintain 30fps. I mean, regardless of the actual numbers, getting it to run on anything less powerful than the Xbox One was always going to be a challenge. Still, we also don't know what they call an acceptable state and whether the Switch will even get a Dark Souls port, maybe they were just playing around with the dev kit.

@WebHead Probably through a lack of downgrading and compromises to get it to work on the Switch. I want to see how the system handles triple A games from third parties, especially with these latest rumours as that will determine if this thing has a chance or not in my eyes.

@Whitewatermoose
Three things worth keeping in mind:
1. Performance gaps don't mean as much as they did 10 years ago
2. Despite the marketing this is also new portable system for Nintendo
3. At the end of the day third parties mostly care about potential revenue

I'm not worried about third parties supporting the Switch. Purely because I'm not worried about the potential of a two-in-one Nintendo device to sell well. If I'm worried about anything it's third parties not making well optimised ports. Some of them are going to be pretty average. But enough should be good enough to make it a solid little device.

The Switch better make some ace toast for third parties to join the Nintensquad.

I like the fact that it needs games to sell. Now it has both handheld and console divisions working on it too.

I'm loving people who thought it was PS4 level. Not in that form factor, for what it is. People aren't taking note of what it is, rather what they wanted it to be.

And yay, 2.5x 720p is 1080p. If it has a native 720p screen, well we just found out why it runs 40% portably. Mystery solved.

There comes a point where p[eople need to look past numbers, and which is higher, and look at it's context. 40% is all that's needed for the screen, otherwise youre just wasting energy.

@BLP_Software
Well performance doesn't scale to resolution exactly but it's close enough. That's probably what's happening here. But if they are forcing that sort of drop in power in portable mode it will have some other implications. It does mean that they're not going to be able to get away with games running in TV mode at 720p. Unless they are ok with the idea of games dropping down to SD resolutions in portable mode.

It just happens to be the case that the drop from 1080p -> 720p is the same as the drop from 720p -> 480p.

@skywake So that story about it targeting 1080p as standard is....actually kinda true?

Honestly? About time we had a system that despite being "Weaker" had a way of putting developers to the resolution lock. People don't mind 900p much on PS4 and the such, but blast Switch for supposedly being lesser (Even though its a more confined form factor, wish theyd understand that), so to see Nvidia and Nintendo say "Hey, 1080p that downs to 720p, or you go close to SD" is pretty cool for me. Means games will be more consistently high end rather than gimped slightly.

If the Switch does 1080p like that, and has that gold standard established and developers are able to conform to that via middleware, Vulkan, OpenGL or NVN libraries built to get close to the metal, then I see no problem with lower specs.

I actually think more raw number power doesn't help, just gives more room to be sloppy, but given the proper tools and environments, you can do a lot with little, as many developers across all platforms prove, and Switch is looking to be an almost scarily optimised machine.

I saw no complaints about this supposed horrendous, gamebreaking drop in performance when the Switch was played live on Jimmy Fallon. I only saw people being excited that the game was running so well, even during the explosion. People were rejoicing everywhere about how the Switch, docked or not, out-performed the Wii U, with no obvious drops in performance. Eurogamer is full of it.

2 things:
1) we didn't see the switch screen clearly when playing.
2) the switch screen is probably lower resolution (aka 720p) which makes up the difference in performance.

I could understand the underclocking for handheld mode, that was always going to happen if you don't want to drain its battery in minutes or turn the tablet into actual toast; however, I don't understand why they're still underclocking the system in docked mode, that is what I was getting at, running at 768MHz instead of the 1GHz that should be possible. It's probably so that conversion rate are much easier to deal with, but I'm not sure how big of an issue that was going to be anyway. Anyway, this means that all the Switch can do in docked mode is increase the resolution to 1080p from 720p. Meaning that there's still untapped potential to improve on frame rates or add more details or whatnot (PS4 Pro style). I don't understand why Nintendo would lock it down in docked mode too. Unless this is based of a dev kit that some kind of restrictions in place, cause you know, they're just dev kits. That's why I'm doubting the validity of the Eurogamer article, we don't know if they're talking about the final product or not.

Tighter dev kits mean less choppy performance on the real thing. It happens a lot. I suspect the entire spoof is based on an intermediate product.

Do you consider battery performance to go down after 2 years of use acceptable?

@Octane
I think it's fair to say we don't know the full story. There could be a whole range of reasons why they've gone with that spec. The most likely reason would be to reduce power consumption and keep the cost low. Either way we're still talking about a console that's about half way between the Wii U and XBOne.

@erv Battery life will always be a problem in any portable device, as long as we're using the current set-up. Batteries have improved over the years, but the current Li-ion batteries are still based on the same principle as the first batteries from the 1800's! We're due for a radical change in how we look at energy storage. Batteries wear down pretty quickly, and that's always going to happen as long as we keep using the same principle.

@skywake Which is completely acceptable for the handheld mode, but I don't see why the system needs to be underclocked in docked mode as well. Maybe that's just a dev kit thing? Who knows? I definitely hope it is.

@MarcelRguez And the Wii U sold as it did thanks to Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Zelda, etc. I hope the handheld crowd jumps on board with this system. If it's too expensive or not portable enough, it's possible that not everyone is on board with this system. I hope that rumour of a Pokemon game coming to the Switch it true, that may be a huge game changer.

@Octane
Well I think we can agree that cost is an issue regardless so that could be a reason. But power consumption isn't just an issue in portable mode. It could easily be that they picked that clock speed for dock mode because of the limitations of the heatsink/fan. Because it is a pretty slim device.

Now all of the sudden we became tech experts....

23 days for the event. I don't care about the rumours, I'm still excited for the Switch.

@Whitewatermoose A lot of that profit made from the Wii and DS era likely went into funding the 3DS and Wii U as well as paying for the huge losses they've been making the past 4 years in addition to researching the Switch, buying shares in DeNA, buying back shares in Nintendo themselves and management bonuses.

Also I expect holding that Nintendo Championship last year, the Smash Bros the year before and that big E3 space for Zelda this year cost them a lot of money.

@Octane It's not about the tech now. It's about what it implies.

You'll be able to have a software update in two years, when 2 newer switch models have been released, and have better performance for the newer games out of the older device. Which costs you some battery life - a tradeoff that seems acceptable to most people over time.

We're looking at a setup for incremental hardware upgrades.

We'll be downloading games from the eshop that are compatible with all switches from switch os 2 upwards, for instance. Like ios.

I suspect each hardware revision of the switch to aim for 3 or 4 years of full compatibility, or put in the reverse: every game to run on at least 3 switch years older switches.

Xbox360 clocks at 3.2GHz. Best...you know, drop the PS4...number don't matter folks, its what's done with it.

What Iwata had to say about making an "Apple - like system of devices" (roughly) rings true of not only the Switch's plan, but all other consoles as well. The PS4 Pro and XBone whatever are less of "new consoles" and more of "glorified PC upgrades". The graphics will be automagically toned down on the Switch in a simular way a PS4 game is graphically beefed up on PS4 Pro.

Nintendo was ahead of the curve on this one. They just didn't want to make a Wii U +.