Discostew

@Yalloo On the latest. I think I found the issue as it might be on my end. Before I moved, I was using Xfinity in Washington, but I moved to Idaho and Xfinity is not available, so I went with Quantum Fiber. All other devices have no issue, and while my Switch could connect, I hadn't tried downloading until recently to find it was problematic. I use WiFi (showed NAT type B), but I even hardwired via ethernet, and that had problems too.

I could connect to my phone via hotspot, and download that way through US Mobile, but I tried hotspot while having my phone connected to my home network. That was fine too, but I didn't want to have to do it this way each time. I do have a VPN I use for my phone, computer and NAS, the latter which I set up OpenVPN on my router to use it, so I assigned my Switch to use it as well when connected. An odd thing to do, but that seemed to help in both WiFi and Ethernet. But I imagine that would affect latency for games (WiFi showed NAT Type D under this), so again, I needed more checking.

Last thing I did was go over the WiFi settings, and remembered when I first set it up on my newer router (back when using Xfinity), the MTU was set to 1400 by default, and I had since then set it to 1500. So I reverted back to 1400, and that seemed to do the trick.

Dunno what's going on. I'm trying to DL the demo, and at first it took a very long time for the Home Menu image to even appear before the downloaded could begin, and then it got to 65% and is just stuck there. Never had that happen before with any demo or full game. Are their servers currently overloaded or something?

@HotGoomba I wouldn't say Sony is doing it by choice. Or technically, the choice is they either support platforms the IP owners demand, or Sony ends up not developing it at all.

@westman98 Sunshine is fully emulated, and Galaxy only has the CPU code recompiled to be native on Switch with everything else emulated. I don't think there's a particular "upscale" being done with those games, just using emulation like any other that supports rendering natively at higher resolutions.

Did they ever go back on their RTX 2050 laptop config when testing Death Stranding, and explained how their numbers for 4k60 not being possible for Switch 2 was based on them including the game's heavy post-processing effects AFTER the upscale to 4k?

24-player....... Split Screen! 5x5 windows. Each players gets a 768x432 window on 4K output, with the center window holding the map.

For all the leaks that occurred over the years for the system, the one thing none of them were able to do was give an actual look at what the system could do. We see numbers like 1.7 TFlops in portable mode, but those are just numbers, and what we try to compare that to is with what a "PC" can do with it, not a console. Consoles with custom chips are tailored to get as much performance for games as possible from their specs, not just in design, but granting devs that bare-metal access PCs simply cannot offer.

As it is, our first glimpse into the actual look of Switch 2 games comes from Nintendo with this teaser trailer, which let's be honest, it's an edited, YT-compressed mess, so we can't really see the finer details that the system is capable of. For all we know, what we saw was a cross-gen title that showed the Switch version so as to not give away the Switch 2's potential for that same game.

@nukatha I believe the output may be with regard to the combined output of everything external to the dock. Take for instance the Switch dock. Your numbers show 39W input and 33W output. The Switch itself only pulls 18W when docked and charging all batteries, meaning there is 21W to account for. By my understanding, each USB port on the dock is rated at 5V 1A for 5W each. There are 3 of them, so the combined output of docked Switch and USB ports matches the output you mentioned. So it's much like what you had, except the USB ports are not part of the remaining 6W.

But then again, the Switch OLED dock stats both input and output are 39W, so I dunno.....

I still feel it won't be on 8nm. Maybe a smaller Samsung node.

While folks are trying to measure by pixels and such, one person I saw took a different approach, using Orin. They adjusted the images so the chips would have 90 degree angles, and sized them up so the RAM chips of both the leaks and of images from Orin's motherboard would match. That then gave them an estimate of the sizes of the Orin and T239 chips. Of course the Orin chip is bigger (at 455mm^2?), but we also have an x-ray of the Orin chip with sectioned areas that relate to the CPU, GPU, etc. So they scaled that down to fit into the Orin motherboard, and then sectioned out pieces of the GPU and CPU to adjust to the info we know about the T239 (like cutting 1/4 of the GPU because Orin has 16 SMs while the T239 has 12 SMs), and then placed the modified sections into the T239. What amounted from that is that it is just too tight to fit those major components in while still needing room for various other things.

Based on folks doing investigations, it seems like the SoC is made by Samsung, BUT, it does not automatically mean it is Samsung 8nm. Size is still a factor, not to mention power consumption and thermals, and considering what is inside the chip besides a CPU and GPU, it doesn't seem it could fit into 8nm. Supposedly both 7nm and 6nm by Samsung are off the table because of them either winding down or have basically been delisted, so if not 8nm, then the most likely candidate is Samsung 5nm, which at lower clocks is not too far off from TSMC 5nm. The gap increases with higher clocks, but at that point, we're not worrying about portable mode.

@Bluelink45 DLSS is pretty good. FSR is not.

This really seems like a reaction to Nintendo's Switch successor rather than a general good business decision. It simply can't be something that plays PS5 games natively because mobile tech isn't to that point yet, not even in the next few years. It would be weaker hardware that could play downscaled ports of PS5 games, so devs would have to separately make games for it beyond already dealing with the PS5 and its Pro. With Sony barely making any games themselves as it is that aren't remasters/remakes of existing PS4 games, what is left are 3rd-party, which already have a home on portable devices thanks to portable PCs like the ROG Ally. They'd be competing with them in the end, not Nintendo.

I am siding on it being real. There are some that think the motherboard is 3d-printed, but that is simply not possible, not that the kind of details we have here. Even the casings look to be more than what any 3d-printer is capable of, because there are small details a 3d-printer would choke on.

It would be a similar situation like with 3DS launching at $250, and they are unlikely to go through that again.

Wasn't Chris Dring also the one that said "his sources" claim that TotK was Switch's last significant game? Then we got games like Super Mario Wonder, and soon-to-come Metroid Prime 4?

I'm really starting to hate how these folks are using "their sources" as a means to say whatever they want for clicks. Already have MLID claiming things that don't even align with the leaks Nvidia confirmed, but people eat it up anyways.

Folks asking about eShop's slowness/lagginess should know the reason it is this way is intentional. They are using a CPU-heavy security layer, which as far as I'm aware, does not work with JIT compiling. It's why it is somewhat slow when no game is loading (as it uses the 3 CPU game cores), but extremely slow when a game is loaded (as it uses the same core tge OS uses).

If you're a digital person and NSO-subscribed, just get it via voucher, or use DekuDeals and put it on your wishlist so you can be notified when it goes on sale.

@OldGamer999 The team that made both LM:DM on 3DS and LM3 on Switch are one in the same; Next Level Games. They are not the ones porting LM:DM to Switch. That would likely be Tantalus, as described in the video.

To say that they could just take the graphics and animations from LM3 and throw them into this HD remake of a 3DS game is like saying Retro Studios could have done the same with Metroid Prime Remastered for animations and such. They didn't. The animation are retained from the GC, as well as collision maps among other things. Prime Remastered released back in 2023, but Retro Studios took control of Prime 4 back as late as Jan 2019 when the apology video went public (meaning they likely took control earlier than that).

So they were juggling both Prime Remastered and Prime 4 at the same time, giving plenty of reason to not stick with old restrictions. But they did. Why they did has to do with the design of the game itself. They put on a new coat of paint via more detailed models, physics-based rendering, etc, but the structure of the game internally remains as it was back on the GC so they don't break it.

Same goes for LM2 HD. Graphics have been updated, but they aren't using what LM3 already had, not just because these are different studios, but the game internally for LM3 is different from LM:DM.

@NintendoKnight If it were $55, you'd probably still complain about it being too much, even though today's $55 is just under the value of $40 after 12 years of inflation.

As far as performance is concerned, we have platforms that are 20x stronger than Switch in docked mode, yet they have games that do drop into the 30fps range or drop as low as 720p. To top that off, these are games specifically made for the target hardware, not ports that are built on the design of older hardware. A game like Metroid Prime Remastered, while good looking AND from the GC era, is still held back by design for the era it was originally made for. Compare that to Metroid Prime 4, and you see just how much more can be done when it doesn't have to follow the same rules and can work to ALL of Switch's strengths.

Kids these days just don't spend enough time thinking rationally....

@Steel76 People assumed when Pikmin 4 was first previewed that it was running on Switch 2, but it wasn't. It was running on the good ol' Switch, so no reason to think this is any different. We even have a game that looks comparable on Switch. Can anyone guess what it is?

Form my understanding, the PS3 version was terminated after a certain patch/expansion because it was requiring more RAM than the PS3 had available. Switch itself has 8x as much overall, so in terms of that, it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, by cutting out the PS3, they could expand the game in other ways, and those could affect a Switch release.

How many people assume this is a ripoff when not taking into account inflation, or the fact that Nintendo didn't fall into the pit like other companies have when it comes to game pricing?

Back in 7th gen, Sony and MS were very aggressive with game pricing because of their competitiveness of having the same 3rd-party games, insomuch that they'd drastically discount games on their respective platforms near release. Folks got accustomed to it, and now get upset when a game doesn't get discounted like that, including Nintendo games when Nintendo wasn't even involved in that. Why? Because people want games cheap. Cheap to the point where they'll do what they can to get it free, hence the lead-in to piracy with cockamamie excuses to justify it.

And speaking of which, if game pricing had followed alongside inflation rather than have stayed stagnant for so long, we would have been paying much more than $60-70 today. People bringing up the Select lineups with regard to this to complain about pricing are not understanding the point of the Selects. They were not given to a newly released game on a platform (including ports/remasters/remakes). They were given to games that have existed on said platform for a while, with most of them having sold well beforehand. They were for people who hadn't already bought the game.

There isn't a one-button conversion process for porting games, and even if there was, there are steps involved to ensure that the game runs properly. QA to be exact. It takes time and resources just like a completely new game. Taking a GC game, designed with a completely different architecture than Switch, and remastering it onto a new platform is no simple action either. It isn't simply going from ATI to Nvidia on the GPU-side. It's going from GC's fixed-function pipeline using TEV units to fully-programmable shaders.

Yet through all this, Garry hasn't contacted Nintendo once. If he had, he would have said as much, right? What would he have to lose?

The thing about the frame rate situation is that every showing of this Switch version has been 30fps with the exception of one scene in the September Direct which ran at 60fps.

In order to play DVDs on the OG Xbox, you needed to buy the DVD Movie Playback Kit. It would not play them otherwise. PS2 had its own remote and such, but it could play DVDs just fine without them.

@Jalex_64 A thing about Playstation slim SKUs is that prior to the PS5, the slim SKUs would be cheaper. PS4 Slim, for example, was $100 off the price of the PS4 Phat when it released. With PS5 Slim, it's the same price as PS5 Phat, with the PS5 digital Slim being more expensive by $50 than the PS5 digital Phat. So my guess is that it's a blip like you mentioned. To me, it's not a bump by folks who have been waiting for the Slim since the PS5's launch as those folk likely were waiting for a price reduction like before. This bump is likely by folks who have been waiting for the Slim for a few weeks.

Were folks this opposed to the Luigi death stare?

I don't buy this 30fps limit on Switch being a problem with the hardware when the PS5/SeriesX versions can only go up to 1080p60. They are roughly 20x stronger than Switch is in docked mode, yet can only manage double the frame rate. This is more of the devs doing a piss-poor job, relying on the franchise to sell it.

The FTC fabricated a "high performance console market" specifically for this case. They are a joke, and even more so after the events as of late, such as where their own witness regarding cloud gaming backfired on them.

I waited a LONG time before actually heading into the depths, because when I first checked it out, I felt I needed to have a LOT of those brightbloom seeds to explore. By the time I felt I had a lot just to explore a little, I go under, and make my first trip from the initial quest to go in, and find out that the lightroots light up the sections.

Then there's the shrines. Searching for them in the overworld is exhausting, but when looking at the map between overworld and underworld, I realized that lightroots are practically located under shrines. Finding lightroots is much easier than shrines because of the dark.

@Classic603 It's possible that such a cheat is linked to something else that may be unstable, even if no one had experienced it. We don't know, only that the result involves patching this.

@Freek It even gave me access to retrieve a medal from Hero's Duty.

@blindsquarel I hate when people claim game preservation when it's not preservation that's the problem. Nintendo handles game preservation extremely well. They preserve the code, assets, etc of all the games that touch their platforms. It's how Square-Enix was able to recover the Secret of Mana games, as they had lost it. What folks are really calling for is game availability, but they use "preservation" so they don't look as entitled.

There seems to be a claim of specifics going on here when there doesn't seem to be any, as far as I can tell. Everyone is saying that MS was talking about the Switch, yet were they? Last I checked, they said "Nintendo platforms", which could very well be the Switch successor, which is rumored to release as soon as the end of this year. It would already take time to make any Nintendo version if one wasn't already in development.

@Xiovanni It was 3GB of RAM, just like the Shield TV. I believe that was confirmed in the Nvidia leak, but then again, the 2GB might have possibly been what the Switch would have had if Nintendo did not go with Nvidia with the Tegra X1. Nintendo was initially working with another company for a portable that was weaker than the Wii U, having a single 480p 3D screen.

@MARl0 It is really unfortunate. I really love these games, yet the scroll stuttering is starting to ruin it for me. Even FF6 has an odd scroll glitch that was happening during the opening sequence, where every so often, certain rows of pixels are not uniform in size like the rest. Even the very beginning as it begins the sequence, it's like it freezes, and then jumps ahead.

@blindsquarel And Nintendo is fantastic when it comes to game preservation, as they preserve every game made for their platforms, source code and all. It's how Square Enix were able to regain the code and assets for making the Mana collection, as they had lost their own copy of the code long ago.

What you're referring to is not game preservation, but having access to them.

@mariomaster96 You do know that Super Mario Sunshine stresses the Switch's CPU to its max, right? And that is on the low-end of complexity for Gamecube games. Nintendo not only had to make a Gamecube emulator, but had to tweak it heavily for it run as good as it currently does. They are not going to be able to make a generic GC emulator for Switch that runs ANY game from that platform at full speed. The only reason why Galaxy runs well is because it's a partial port, as they recompiled the CPU code and modified it so it would run natively. The rest like the GPU are still emulated.

The list shows "Claimed by Nintendo USA" and "Nintendo JP". Last I checked, Nintendo used IDs such as "Nintendo of America Inc" and other more unique/descriptive IDs. I think PointCrow and others got targeted by trolls, much like some from a few weeks ago got hit by someone using the ID "Nintendo".

@Hydra_Spectre In the latest preview of the console versions, they did show a frame of the march to Narshe, and it did show a credit. So for that game at least, it looks like they added that back in. Dunno if it's the original credits, or new credits though.

Great! I'll grab my stuff!

I bought $100 in eShop cards for $80 which will go towards 2 vouchers. One voucher will be spent on TotK. So essentially, I'll have spent $40 to get a $70 game.

Isn't that the same guy that complained about the doors he said he spent months working on having been screwed up, messing with the alpha, when in reality, the doors were fully redesigned intentionally? The guy hadn't worked at Retro for a long time, and this is how he spends his time?

It's not a simple alpha issue. Anyone that actually looked at the two can see it was completely redesigned. Even looking at them animated ingame shows they are intentionally different.

As some pointed out, it makes it easier to see from a distance, as before, it was harder to see if it blended in with the surrounding environment.

One other reason, imo, is the inclusion of the Color Assist display option for folks with problems seeing certain colors.

@whitespy12 @ModdedInkling I know I should just take their word for it, but to me, there's just various parts that seem off. For one, if it is based on prior emulation used in RR, then why does this feel like someone screwed up that which was working perfectly fine before? Polygon rendering for instance (that I mentioned earlier). Look back to prior N64 games on Rare Replay, and then look at Goldeneye. The prior releases did not have that polygon/vertex jumping issue. This isn't even a case of being an older N64 game either, as this issue is not present on hardware, NSO or homebrew N64 emulators. It's like they forced the emulator, if that is what it is, to act like this for no good reason.

@ModdedInkling The Xbox version is definitely not emulated. They recompiled from edited source code like they've done with prior N64 games on Xbox.

To note, there are various negatives on the Xbox version besides the lack of online (which on NSO is really part of the emulator, not the game). First is that there seems to be a lack of precision when rendering polygons. The scenery wobbles, almost like a PS1 game. Just load up the game and watch the first level cutscene and when you stand still. You can see how everything kind of jumps a bit. You don't see this on the emulated NSO version where it's smooth.

Another is the fog effect, where it's not uniform. First level again, when you get into the 1st-person view and watch as the truck drive into the tunnel from a distance, the truck is colored in the bluish fog effect while the surrounding area at that same distance is not.

Lastly from my general observation is the audio. It has a rattle-like effect on the instruments, which doesn't sound very good.

I had a thought that perhaps the reason we don't hear it is because it is muted on purpose (for the time being). For anyone that remembers, the start sound for races in Sunshine in the SM3DAS collection was not properly played, and required a patch to fix it. The thing is that happened in very specific instances that you triggered. With the music in Goldeneye, you are hearing it all the time. If for some reason the instrument is handled wrong in the emulator, you wouldn't want to hear that throughout the game, right? Just an assumption on my part, that they knew about it long before, muted it to work on other issues, but couldn't get back to it in time for this release.

Personally, I feel it could still hit this year. If not with TotK, then towards the end of 2023.There are various reasons for this, but the main one has to do with the chip, the T239, having been complete back in September with the publishing of the Linux commits. They even had engineering samples back in April 2022 because that was when there were commits to fix bugs with the PCIe timing, which required actual hardware to test.

People might say that releasing in May is unlikely because if that were the case, they would have done it already, basing their claim on the reveal to release time of the Switch. Problem is if they did that, that would have been right in the middle of the holiday season. No better way to ruin Switch holiday sales than to announce the next platform, especially if that was planned for the last major Switch push.

There's also the leak of the TotK Switch SKU, but when has a special edition SKU ever caused a next-gen platform to get pushed back? If anything, SE SKUs towards the end of a product's life are more to just move the remaining stock.

Folks might claim that Nintendo would be stockpiling the system to have a bigger launch, waiting until 2024, but stockpiling is expensive, and they'd have to stockpile the entire system, not just parts because the assembly lines can only handle so many order at a given time. So stockpiling entire completed systems, but not selling them really kind of goes against the philosophy that Nintendo has gone by lately.

Seems familiar....
https://i.imgur.com/lTeZNU2.png

@WeLiveInASociety Maybe, but I think a lot of it has to do with people altering their perception of what kind of Mario they were expecting. Before, they expected a Mario they've known for decades (including from the Super Show), but as they come to terms that this is not that same Mario that's well known in the Mushroom Kingdom, they started to become a bit more open-minded, and find that Chris's Mario isn't all that bad.