Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Ersatz I like everyone freaking out that third parties wont want to make two versions of a game. Have they seen Sony lately? Only difference here is its one hardware unit not two.

To be fair, Sony doesn't have anything to prove considering their sales. Even xbox one has been selling very decently, at least in the US, over the past few months. Switch is untested and each generation Nintendo essentially wipes their entire slate clean. Which is good and bad in different ways

@Whitewatermoose Nintendo purchased I think it was 14% or there abouts of the shares last year when they officially announced the deal with DeNA whereas the sale of the baseball team happened only a few months back.

I'm banging my head on my desk so hard now after reading these comments. I want to forget everything I've read about speculations because they are blasphemy (nonsense is the right word for it). The curtain will be finally raised in Jan 12/13. So until then, you can believe everything that's on the Internet, I'll place any rumour (LKD, Eurogamer, Venturebeat, whatever) in my trash can.

I really hope we'll see Sonic Mania revealed in the presentation.Other than Yooka Laylee that's probably the 3rd party game I'm most looking forward to.I actually find it quite amusing,a brand new console generation in 2017 and outside of Nintendo's own games I'm most looking forward to 2 games firmly rooted in the 90's.

@MarcelRguez My point exactly! It was expensive. Would people have bought it if it were 50 or a 100 bucks cheaper from the start? Maybe, but it certainly would've had a better chance. Games are important, but variables like launch price are often the first hurdle. A system can a bazillion good games, but if it's priced too high, then people won't even buy it in the first place. What I was getting at was that Nintendo has a huge handheld fanbase, the question is whether all those people are on board with the Switch, or whether this is something that appeals more to a home console crowd. I guess only time will tell.

@erv That remains to be seen. It's true however that Nintendo has released mid-gen upgrades for pretty all the handhelds, so there's a good chance that the Switch will get one too. Especially now that it also seems common practice in the home console space, although I'm still a bit skeptical on that, maybe we'll remember the current gen as that weird time when Sony and MS tried mid-gen upgrades, an idea that never took off. If it does happen, I do hope they are able to support any model for longer than four years, that's a bit on the short side I think. Five years should be the minimum, like a regular console's lifespan. Not looking forward to buying new hardware every four years, when it used to be every five or six years.

@TomJ Well, my point exactly. For all I care they fill the system with Styrofoam, if it's able to play all the games, then I'm fine. Then again, we know that's not possible and there's a correlation between what's on the inside and what the system can play and what games it'll get. I've played The Last Guardian on PS4, and I can definitely understand why that game wasn't possible on PS3 (it's still struggling on PS4!). And it's not even about ''better graphics'' in this case. The AI is extremely taxing on the PS4's hardware, the result however, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something that couldn't have happened if the PS4 was a lot less powerful than it currently is. That's why I still care about hardware specs, not because the games can look better, but also because they can deliver new and unique gaming experiences that weren't possible before.

At the same time, you don't really need the absolute best specs to deliver a unique experience. Nintendo and other companies have accomplished this without the need for the best specs. In the end, it's ultimately how the system is used that matters.

@TomJ The Last Guardian isn't ground breaking in terms of visuals or anything like that (still looks good though), but the AI of the creature Trico is the best AI I've ever seen. It really felt alive at times. It's a puzzle-based game at its core and it still remains fascinating to see the AI, Trico, try and solve puzzles on its own.

About Seasons of Heaven, yeah that remains to be seen whether the gameplay we saw will actually be on the Switch. It's very possible that they don't have a dev kit yet. They are an unknown indie dev, and even some of the bigger devs reported that they even haven't received a dev kit yet. I guess this game won't show up during the January presentation. Looks like they're just hoping to receive a dev kit at some point.

The fact that Seasons of Heaven is even announced for the Switch should raise eyebrows.

Not even Skyrim, shown in the Switch reveal trailer, is officially announced for the Switch.

Folks should realise that the reveaal is meant to be big with lots of announcements to drum up interest. If bigger games were just name dropped prior minus the few exceptions to tease, then the reveal event would be dull.

Then again, smaller devs probably don't even have dev kits, so they're not under any NDA with Nintendo. Meaning they can say whatever they want. Just remember that they know just as much as we do, and that currently any Switch titles from those devs are nothing more than promises.

I'm not going to get upset about specs when I barely get all that jazz about Teraflops and the like. Wii U was weaker than others and the magicians at Monolith still developed Xenoblade Chronicles X, so for me power isn't a requirement for a good game.

Let's wait for January 12, shall we? The Switch is shaping up far better than the Wii U at this rate, anyway. We haven't had so much negative press as we had last time.

To be fair "hz" is a measure of how many cycles per second a processor can do. "FLOPS" is a measure of how many operations can be done per second. The reason "how many Ghz" is a useless measure is because different architectures can do different amounts of operations per cycle. Which is why FLOPS matter. The talk about how many hz the Switch has is only being discussed because we have a fair idea of how many FLOPS per hz a Tegra based system has.

That said there are more variables ontop of that. Because there can be different amounts of operations needed for the same end result on different architectures. Whether that's with the hardware itself or at the other end with good software optimisation. But we don't have that information yet. Short of doing a side-by-side comparison of the same game running on two platforms? Comparing FLOPS is the best thing we have.

Magicians..! That explains why everything suddenly pops up out of nowhere in that game!

What the upgrade from the Wii U will be:
GPU Power: ~350GFLOPS -> ~800GFLOPS
Memory Bandwidth: ~13GB/s -> ~26GB/s

Things that will change when undocked:
GPU Power: ~800GFLOPS -> ~350GFLOPS
Memory Bandwidth: ~26GB/s -> ~20GB/s
Max Video Output: 2.1MP -> 0.9MP

Some other changes based on educated guesses:
RAM: 2GB -> 4GB
Game read speeds: ~20MB/s -> ~50MB/s
CPU: Probably quite a bit better than Wii U but it's pretty impossible to guess
Video Output: No change, still HDMI 1.4
Other I/O: Potentially USB 3.1 rather than 2.0. Possibly 3.0. But it won't may any real difference

@skywake
Informative post, Skywake.

I'm not one of those "oh my goodness it better meet this arbitrary threshold or it's gonna suck!" kinda guys, but I'm definitely interested in the system's capabilities.

There's a lot of things to consider, that are important. Power is definitely one of them. But also battery life, and the more power it has the worse the battery life will be. Price, that's definitely important. Also, the jump when docked seems pretty significant which is good news. If those specs are true, it will still outmatch Wii U even when undocked... which is pretty incredible if you think about it. The power of the Wii U- more power, actually, all in a portable handheld. That's exciting.

And it seems like it will still be respectable as a console device. Won't be the most powerful console to play games on the TV, but it should at least still be able to offer those same games. Lower visual fidelity on the TV being a trade off for playing the game on a handheld device. Seems like a pretty good balance to me.

It actually sounds like they made it as powerful as humanly possible while still being a portable device (and not outrageously priced). I can't imagine getting more bang for your portable device dollar than this. GDP Win is about the closest thing, and Switch will cost less than that and run better looking games.

@skywake Well this thing also uses Open GL3.5 and Vulkan, so you can get closer to the nuts and bolts which the PS4 and Xbox One cant do, as Vulkan is new (Within a year old at this point). That alone is a factor we simply have no real comparison on outside of PC and the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Furthermore, we don't know what customisations have been made. As I have said before, this could be the most optimised system in a very long time.

@Whitewatermoose Third party support is mostly going to be Japanese games (both AAA and niche), and that includes previous 3rd party franchises that were on either 3DS or Vita.

There'll be some western support, but not full.

On the topic of Vita and 3DS 3rd parties, I think we can expect many of those franchises to become Switch/PS4 multiplats to make up for the severe rise in development costs. This includes franchises like Monster Hunter and God Eater.

@Whitewatermoose
I'm not going to speculate on games etc. A lot of that has more to do with how much effort studios are willing to put in. Which will come down to sales. But it can't be worse than the Wii U.....

On read speeds that's a bit easier. Lower latency will mean a generally snappier experience in games. But I don't expect the load times to be insanely fast. It'll be along the lines of how fast a game loads on a HDD vs a disk.

Well, PowerPC was a problem with Wii U, despite not being so with 360 for years...weirdly.

Anyhow, today, and yesterday, has been the longest and frankly loudest ever spree of Nintendoom I have ever seen in my life. Those specs, that Zelda rumour, have basically taken everyone not a more hardcore fan (Or rabbid fanboy, as the popular phrase is now), against Nintendo, and if it's not that, it's something else that has happened be it fangames, YouTube, Brand Ambassadors, even just general discussions between communities are becoming toxic Nintendo slam dunking sessions.

Can we have something positive? Please? Over the summer once I finished university for the year I finally went off my anti-depressants and now I'm back in university, trucking along, trying to deal with the nuclear meltdown that is this course and liking what I want to like there, drawing me close to being medicated again (Because absolutely screw getting this degree), and now feeling the absolute inability to open my mouth and say "Hey, I like x" online.

You know, if these rumours are false like the Zelda one is, the truth wont get around as much, because all the people seem to want is the end of Nintendo, especially from recent days. It wont get clicks. It wont make money, but saying it's doomed will.

We should be celebrating and seeing people talk about how this is the first dedicated home console to ever use Vulkan APIs, confirmed by the company behind it. But nope, a rumour about lower specs is more important, because it gets more attention.

But this optimism doesn't matter. The true facts about Switch as we know them now, don't matter, because there is a chance that something bad will happen. Being able to say "I want to spend my money which only affects me as an individual, on the Switch" is a death knell for any comment thread as you get barraged with the hard "truth" that your purchase decision was wrong and you're a "Nintendrone" and that they don't owe a consumer anything as they don't like you. They don't, they are a company, but if they make a product that is appealing....well why shouldn't you reward them for appealing to you with produce by giving them financial returns? It's your choice after all. But that's not allowed anymore is it? Cant be even cautiously optimistic about Nintendo even when admitting their faults, or looking at the possible positives. Because that's not how the world wants it to go!

If something Nintendo makes sells out, its a catastrophe. If Sony makes it and it sells out, it's a sales success get the champagne.

Taking a stance of objective neutrality is just flat out impossible on this Earth. You cant be positive about the Switch because objectively there is more chance of a rumour being true than the already confirmed truth being true, according to the world. Yes, the specs could be true. But unlike the Vulkan use, it's not confirmed. And there are people trying, so very hard bless them, to piece together everything we know within the context of the Switch's form factor and functionality, to explain why this is the case and why it would, in fact, work out. But that doesn't matter.

There is no middle ground it seems. No chance to say "Well if this is true, then this is how x would help" or vice versa. Negative takes precedence, get the pitchforks. Positivity shouldn't take precedence either, but would it kill to also discuss the good from Nintendo as well? Or just let people be happy with their decisions?

I say this because of my YouTube feed today being 1 guy taking the middle road, which I appreciate, and a screen full of doom. And that's a new experience.

Anyhow, regarding the specs, using the newer (Very new) APIs, is a good sign and way to eke out performance. With regards to the 40% portable thing, maybe the 720p screen doesn't require a lot of the juice, so its turned off to conserve battery. That could be a huge part of the oomph loss, simply accommodating for the fact it isn't needed. As for the docked specs? Well, we don't know the exact processor yet, what NVN does, and what technical wizardry Nvidia has used here. We have also yet to see how middleware has adapted to the Switch, and the full developer range of features.

All we have are rumoured specs, developer hearsay, confirmed APIs and general processor range. That's it. There is so many more pieces to this. Please, as stated above, be patient until we know, and let both sides be discussed. I can only take so much more negative before I fully relapse. :/