Cathousemaster

If the initial shipment has sold out, Nintendo will be happy. Why would they reduce price now... This is because the best time of a consoles life to make extra $$$.

Sure, everyone wants it for less. But this is a business, not a charity. The best way to get 3rd parties into the console is to show it's highly profitable.

Expect this to be a pack in at some point in the future, possibly Christmas.

By doing a hybrid pack in / non-pack in, the game should become the new Wii play and will end up with mega sales assuming the Switch does OK...

@SLIGEACH_EIRE with a global launch, you can only assume Nintendo will sell out regardless. In fact they should be fine until Xmas... At which time they can unlease some bundles along with Mario.

Totally agree on 1 2, it looks and smells like a pack in title.

C'mon people. Airplane mode turns off all wireless communications. Nothing to do with mobile data.

Wow, this thread is priceless
It almost feels like I'm back at "VGChartz" ... lol.

Nintendo are not going to leave money on the table any longer everyone ... sorry about that. But make no mistake, once the big gaming titles start rolling in ... everyone will jump back onto the Switch bandwagon. Maybe it will take a price cut or two, but so be it.

Its better they start the price higher (like Sony & MS always do) then can actually bring it down ... rather than start it low, and are cornered on price for the next 4 years.

And regarding online ... there is so much Ninty can do to add value to the online system, its not even funny. Everyone slammed the MS Xbox Live Gold plans, yet they still ended up with 20m subscribers (or something). That's like an extra billion dollars in cash a year. Imagine what games Nintendo could deliver for that...

And ultimately, the Switch is all about delivering console level gaming in a DS-type device. Ever since I got the WiiU, I have wished for a fully-portable WiiU console ... and now Nintendo have delivered.

Given that I have very little time to game at home (but a lot of travel time) this is exactly what I want.

But the real elephant in the room is this ... will the 3rd parties actually start properly supporting this? Maybe their online plans link into full EA support in the future.

Still shocked at the prices in the UK ... is this purely the effect of the Brexit?

When I was there 10 years ago, 1 pound = $2.5 AUD. That would price the Switch around $700 AUD!!

Still waiting to see what prices we actually get here - better not be over $450 AUD...

Apart from the "paid" portion of this, I think this is ideal for a few reasons:

1/ The console doesn't have a camera - which means NO video chat if it was through the console. And if it did - how would that work in the dock?

2/ The design of the console is looking like a single, dedicated process controls all (most?) of the console at once. So side-process needed for chat / video. This makes development easier, and less scope for "reserve 10% of CPU for this side process", etc.

3/ The console has NO networking ability outside of a Wifi point. Phones do, and can provide the Wifi access point if needed.

4/ How are people supposed to text chat on a Switch?? Unless you are using it in handheld mode, its impossible.

Face it, pretty much everyone has a smartphone these days - so its really smart for Nintendo to leverage this.

Lets see how much it costs, and what the actual benefits are ... but the $$$ argument comes around every time for a new console. Previous generation console is always better value for money ... until new games come out which are "must-buys".

I would definitely use this. My wife is unable to stop the kids playing, so an enforced daily limit is a great idea.

Wonder how it works if the console isn't online... The console will almost certainly need to have an online account for this to work?

If you don't want to use this on the go, then get a PS4 instead... At least for now. It will be cheaper and have lots of cheap games as it's been out for a while.

But once a couple of good exclusives come to this, you'll regret it. Remember this is a console and handheld. Once you have a Switch, no more hardware purchases for 5 plus years...

Regardless of the price, it's a cheap and simple investment for me.

Before everyone complains about subscription online, let's see what it means. If this includes unlimited VC and free games every month, just watch everyone change their tune.

And there may be a cutdown free online as well.

Give them a chance, both Sony and Microsoft do it.

I'm not expecting the first version to support mobile data, but it's becoming increasingly critical, especially if this is a serious portable device. Hopefully they plan to iterate the hardware every year, with games working on every version.

I want to see some serious Japanese software support.

Netflix beats TV, because the interface is better. Because TV restricts what you can watch at any time.

At my house we don't play 30 games an hour... We play 1 or maybe 2. And thanks to digital purchases oUr WiiU is stocked with games to play without having to change disc.

No selling point here for cloud gaming.

@readyletsgo I had an update that said it made Nintendo $14m in 3 days, so that's well over 1m sales... Will know for sure in their next qrt report.

I'm not going to go into it again, but people do NOT understand how rendering and upscaling work on a console.

1440 makes no sense docked, as no TV could use resolution. It would imply the switch is targeting 3D TVs, rather than VR.

1080p would use minimal extra power over 780p, from a rendering perspective, as long as the Switch display was power efficient at that resolution.

At 5% attach rate, that is 2m sales in 4 days. Which is around $20m minus the 30% Apple usually gets.

If it ends up doing $100m on iOS devices, is that a bad outcome? It will have very long legs, if not "forever".

Does look a little too good IMO, for a first gen switch title. No Nintendo or official switch logos.

I wish them luck, as if this did come to switch I would be very interested. I'll wait for a release date and go from there...

Performance will be a function of supplied power and cooling. Even if battery pack doesn't run at full speed, it will last a lot longer. And no upscalar in the dock.

I called it. Makes perfect sense.

I'm not sure how, but I still haven't finished this. Up to around chapter 10, and about 100 hours in.

But i have to be straight about this: the game was a major disappointment to me.

I played it's predecessor on the 3ds and it quickly became one of my favorite RPGs ever. And I have played a lot of RPGs. So I had seriously high hopes for this game.. The potential was enormous.

I'm on my phone, so I'll summarise my key points of contention.

1/ story: the story to date (chapter 10, 100 hours?) has been very weak, unlike XC... Strong right from the start.

2/ Characters: the play style for every character on XC was different, which was an amazing feat. In XCX everyone feels the same to me, except for minor differences. Doesn't help that you can play as so many different people well.

3/ Items: Item and equipment progression in XC worked well, although the micromanagement was a pain. This got much worse in XCX... Except for major jumps in gear based on level, there was almost no point to upgrade.

4/ World: the real Candy in XC was the areas. I kept playing to see every new area, explore every secret. This was extended by story driven events which changed the areas. Every area had a unique style, and it was great. The biggest problem in XCX was lack of variety in the world's. Sure they were huge and looked great.. but it was all the same.

5/ skills: in XC finding and completing events which increased the bond between characters was essential. This is because it tied back into the skill tree... And getting a new skill, allowed you to rejig how your entire combat worked. This was lost in XCX for various reasons. Early on I found the bond between my main characters was already maxed out... Which was a major disappointment. I started swapping characters out more, but it just didn't really matter.

And to clarify, I still love XCX and want to get back to it... It's a total time sink. But it's not the 10/10 that XC was in my books. I hope Monolith gets to address some of these issues in their next game.

Two main comments:

1/ I'm lolling at all the fps comments. It's almost like Microsoft is paying people to FUD the game before it launches.

2/ Getting a strong OoT feeling. You'll play in the world, some disaster will occur, and you can either switch between before and after, or you have to fix the after to save the before.

Also too much green, but this is the easiest thing in the world for them to fix. Sure we have only seen a tiny fragment of the world and game.

Bring it on.

I thought the article about Mexico building a wall to keep Americans out was spot on.

Good luck America, i hope you get what you want.

What I'm most annoyed about is this is now the template for all future elections

You can't compare PC ram specs with a console. That's RAM for all the applications running, including windows. 8GB for a modern windows box is low-spec these days.

External hard drives will almost certainly not work. What happens when you are halfway through a save and undock the switch?

And portable? Carrying a hard drive and power supply around? I think not.

Between carts for retail games, and high density memory carts for downloadable games... I think it's covered.

Surely Nintendo wouldn't design a system where the controls would be gimped when it's docked.

Either the JoyCons control Pad thing also supports multi touch... Or there is no touch. This is the sort of complexity developers don't want to handle.

I'd be more comfortable if there is no touch at all. Look at the use cases with the kick stand. Touch wouldn't work there.

Even for mobile developers... Unless it does switch into a "true" mobile type device, like an iPad. Which means those games wouldn't work when docked, which would infer a streaming type model. Meh, very, very messy.

Keep this thing simple. Play high end console games on the go.

If you take out the portable part of the switch... You might as well stick with the WiiU. It would be playing a WiiU with a pro controller.

I've been posting from my phone, so I'm not going into details here. But it's very similar to how the WiiU works.

A game internally has several frame buffers. The main one is the one that program natively supports... This is the native resolution of the game... In flowerworks case this is 1080p (1920x1080) 32bit, no z-buffer. Please note that this has nothing to do with the resolution of the target device. The device tells the TV what resolution to support, not the other way around. These buffers consum heaps of memory, so they are precious. With a z buffer, 16 bit color... This can be massive... 20+ MB RAM, all super fast video RAM.

Then you have multiple frame buffer for video output. The format of this depends on the settings of the console... In the old days, pal, ntsc, ... Then 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1080i.

Consoles have a dedicated blitter which can copy from the frame (game) buffer to the render buffer in the background .. Handling scaling, anti aliasing and so. It also handles the refresh rate, so the when the device is ready to display a new frame... It switches which is the visible frame.

For the switch, it would know when it's targeting it's own screen. In this case it uses a specific format of frame buffer.

When it's not, it's just like any console outputting to a TV. The frame buffer will depend on the console settings... And it's up to the TV to try and display whatever the output signal is.

My point is, there is no need for an upscalar in the dock... And it doesn't make any sense either.

What does make sense, is when the console is plugged into power, that it becomes more powerful. Just like a phone on power saving mode vs when it's plugged into the powerpoin, or a laptop.

It's also possible, it's based on heat dissipation... Devices will slow down if they get too hot. What the dock could do is significantly improve the cooling of the switch (extra fans?) to allow it to run at full speed.

Of course it's possible that the switch is completely different from the WiiU, other consoles and PC games work... But I wouldn't bet on that

@ThanosReXXX I can only say what I can say . Native 1080p ... Which the WiiU already does, means no upscaling. It's native.

The dock doing other things... Sure, it's possible. Just not upscaling, it makes no sense. The device needs to generate native 1080p images, with larger frame buffers for it to be 1080p.

Otherwise you could stick a 4K upscalar in the dock and claim it does native 4k.

Back to work...

@ThanosReXXX I can guarantee that the dock will not contain an upscalar. It doesn't make any sense, and it's not how TV and other video devices work. Take this from someone who has WiiU devkits...

With the switch, Nintendo is making an effort to "switch" back to mainstream gaming. One screen. No touchscreen. Minimal crazy controls. Normal dev tools.

They want the 3rd parties back, and to be considered in the same breath as Xbox and PlayStation again. That is what killed the WiiU and commercially they can't let it happen again.

Depending on how well this goes, it may or may not replace the DS family. I'm guessing they hope it does?

This is why the reveal wasn't about kids or retro gaming. They want CoD, battlefield, skyrim, dishonoured, watch dogs, etc... On this.

@ThanosReXXX no the dock won't be upscaling... That's not how it works, and if it did... It would still be 720p on the TV not 1080p.

The device will almost certainly switch from full power "console" mode into "handheld" mode, dropping it's power and consumption. This includes resolution, but will almost certainly impact gfx quality and possibly framerate, etc.

I thought the video was all about the messaging. It couldn't have been clearer, which is the exact opposite of how the WiiU started.

This will kill off the PSV, and appeal to the hardcore gamers.

They just need to execute now. At first I was thinking switch is more handheld than console... But no longer. It's more console.

Regarding cost... Compared to a PS4 this has no optical drive, and no hard disk. It potentially needs less RAM given it has carts... But it has a screen and complex controllers.

As for killer features: multiplayer gaming on the go with a single unit. That's unique.

Everyone, there is no chance Digital 3ds or WiiU games will work... Unless there is an emulator involved. And if there is, it's just as likely to play PC, 360, PS2 games.

Streaming won't happen, as there is no connectivity on the go. Games will need to be designed for local WiFi not server based.

Also... JoyCons will need to be charged? Or do they charge off the main unit?

Wonder if this has an octo core attachment... Drops down to weaker and less CPUs on the go. The resolution is lower, but likely more than that.

Need sleep

This is a new console, aimed at a new market... With new games. Their 3rd pillar maybe.

It doesn't really replace the WiiU (play splatoon with just 1 screen??) And it doesn't replace the 3ds (no touch, 1 screen, no 3d).

Probably by design, it's a lot closer to a PlayStation or Xbox than the current Nintendo hardware. Makes me think no touch screen by design either.

"Make the Switch"...

Makes sense to me if the dock is seperate. One user may have one switch, but 3 TVs.

But the next house has 3 kids, each with a switch and just the 1 TV.

It's an accessory, you don't need a dock to play.

People have forgotten something very important...

The WiiU works because it's at home in a WiFi environment.

Unless the switch also has a mobile SIM slot, there will be no mobile ONLINE gaming... Which rules out almost every modern mobile game. No server, no play.

Maybe Nintendo will have mobile/4g version as well at launch.

Touch seems reasonable.

One thing I won't be liking... If someone takes this out, whoever stays at home can't play. This is a one device per person handheld, not a one per household console. That might mean multiple docks required at home depending on battery life.

@AlexSora89 Yeah, I don't know if it was the "first" Boulder Dash game (C64?) but it likely was. I never had a C64 - I had a MicroBee, which had a vastly superior Boulder Dash game (which was quite different too) - which was the one my version was based on. I think that came out in '87. All good.

Great, glad to hear it

Ha!

I had the exact same thing happen to me years ago ... we had a Boulder Dash styled game to be released as part of our UAG (Ultimate Arcade Games) titles for the GBA ... and First Star blocked that as well.

Its on copyright grounds, based on the style/graphics ... not the gameplay.

I rejigged our game to use a BeeHive style (drops of honey, etc) and it was fine... it got released as part of UAG. This was around 10 years ago now!!

I wasn't happy, because I wrote a Boulder Dash styled game back in 1990 ... before First Star were around.

When I saw Digger Dan, I wondered if they licensed Boulder Dash ... obviously not

Totally loved the first, the battle system is the best ever IMO. This sounds like a 10 to me... I'll buy this instantly. Digital or cartridge though?

@Mazz0928 I've been playing the witness on PC, which is strange for me as I never, ever play PC games. The gfx card is a few years old, but still pretty good... And on high quality I get between 1-5fps. On lowest settings probably 10-30fps.

That game has zero regard for attempting to hit a constant frame rate... Zero. If only it could do 30fps locked

@Mazz0928 you have to be joking? The PC gaming community? PC games are the worst for disregarding a constant framerate because the hardware is variable... If someone has an issue with frame rate the answer is for them to buy a more expensive rig. And this is why it's locked at 30fps ... Because it's better to run at 30fps 99% than 60fps at 60%.

For PC games the latter is acceptable, because users can vary resolution, detail and hardware. You can't on a console... The experience is the same for everyone, and 60% at 60fps and 40% at 30fps does not cut it.

Flowerworks runs at 1080p 60fps on the WiiU ... Because it hits it 99%.

You guys make me laugh. Knowing the people that are working on this project, and some of the difficulties they are facing working with the original source code and assets... All I can say for now is that none of you have any real idea.

You also haven't factored in the input changes, gamepad integration, miiverse, amiibo, and any new content that may be added.

You'll be shocked if you find out how much work this "cheap" project is, or how much money Nintendo are putting into it.

I'm going to contact the developers and see if I can get an official comment on the 60fps issue.

One of my least favourite Zelda's, but still looking forward to this. Kids will love watching/playing this together.

WiiU controls alone will make this worth a purchase, improved GFX or content is a bonus.

TTYD was my favourite game of the GC generation, even over Metroid Prime. I'll take a true sequel to that over anything else now, even another Mario Galaxy or Zelda (maybe...). I even finished the 100-level challenge thing. Still remember the train & wrestling(?) stories ... brilliant.

I really enjoyed Sticker Star - a lot more than I expected. Its no TTYD though - same world, but totally different game. Innovative gameplay though.

SPM had it moments, but ultimately ran out of ideas quickly and was under-polished. By the end it was just padding.

@BulbasaurusRex I started with Assembler, then hit BASIC (this was back in the 80's). Assembler was the best thing I ever did, because it forces you to understand what the hardware is doing.

The main advantage of assembler is pure, RAW speed. You can do things in assembler that are impossible in C or C++. Of course the bigger and more complex a project gets, the less relevant (and useful) assembler is ... as 98% of the source code for a project makes no difference to the running speed of it ... and headache of coding all that in Assembler is a pain.

I dug up Catapult the other day (Google it), and was thinking about bringing it to the WiiU. It would be cool - but also a heap of work. And it doesn't support 3D in any form, which is where the WiiU excels. Too much work, not enough time ... on the "would love to" projects backlog...

@paganSVK I (developers) got an email saying its been delayed for technical reasons. Real pity, would have been a nice holiday boost.

Have to say I hated the previous alpha dream Mario and Luigi title... I won't go anywhere near this.

A lot of people will be buying XCX digitally... Be an interesting poll for this site.

Logged on after midnight, bought it and it was ready for play in the morning. First couple of hours have blown me away... I can't imagine a better WiiU title. My son having a ball playing with me as well.

Can't wait for the next session.

Been saying this for months. NX is not a console. Its likely a platform, launching with a mobile-like handheld device to access it.

NX = Nintendo Cross Platform.

Can people stop comparing this to the WiiU and mentioning the PS4? This is almost certainly a next-gen handheld - we have no idea if it has any console-like abilities at this stage.

Personally, what I really want is a portable WiiU GamePad - being able to play games the calibre of Dynasty Warriors / Bayonetta / Zelda (etc) on the go is still a fantasy.

To solve this, they will need to address power issues, battery issues and the big one - storage issues. Storage is the one element that is stopping mobile games from getting even close to console games (no buttons doesn't help either...). Cartridges with the capacity of a BluRay, and the speed of a SSD?