@Indielink It's any other Switch. You can't own two consoles, you have to set one as your "home". The 15 days applies to any console that isn't your "home", even if you own two consoles. I have multiple consoles at different locations, for example, and right now can play every game I own on both systems.
So instead of being able to play every single game I own at any time on any Switch simply be logging into my account, I can now only play them on 1 console at a time, and have to update every 15 days if it's not my main console?
Wow. This is the biggest f-u by any gaming company in a LONG time. I hope there is backlash, but I doubt there will be ... and even if there is, Nintendo has never been all that big on listening.
It's more like a standard life sim, like a farm game without money. You walk around your island giving gifts to everyone to up your friendship and picking up resources as your basic loop.
While that is happening, a surprising number of quests pop up, some being friendship related, some expanding the island and unlocking new characters. It's much ... deeper then I was expecting. I've played every day since launch and new core quests are still popping up.
By the "end game" most of your time is spent finding the right way to decorate cabins so that new people will move in over time, celebrating special events and birthdays.
What acutely happened is more like Burger King buying "Jim's burger stand", then deciding to get rid of all the staff at that small stand either by letting them go, or re-hiring them as Burger King staff.
In the end, Burger King has more then enough staff to handle the day to day operations of Jim's burger stand and continue to serve all their customers.
Assuming you mean 802.11g or WiFi 4 as "G4", then you'll be compatible with 802.11ac or WiFi 6, as they both use a 5Ghz band. However, "WiFi" is rarely called "G#". That's generally cellular internet, because it wasn't until the WiFi 6 that they started calling them by numbers.
It's far more likely they are from PC. Most games focus on playing well "in motion" and modern rasterization generally makes individual frames look bad. If you want high quality stills you generally use PC tools to make them, not by simply taking a screen shot of the game running, but by rendering the frame in a completely different way.
Honestly I think that's a big of a stretch even if this was a Nintendo first party game, but it's really important to consider the fact that this isn't one.
Nintendo only owns 32% of TPC, meaning for this to happen they would need to convince the other 68% of share holders that it was a good idea to toss an important product under a bus. Creatures and Game Freak seem unlikely to be willing to do that and risk sales, given they have nothing to directly gain from the Switch 2 selling.
It also doesn't look "deliberately bad". It looks like a game running on 8 year old hardware that was years behind when it came out. Which it is.
Your logic is really solid, I just wanted to add another reason this happens so much with games ... media.
Generally if you can't buy a movie from the 80s it's because all of the licenses, as well as residual payments, were worded around theatrical vs. VHS release. That locks the movie into these formats. You can't release it on DVD without renegotiating everything.
Obviously you can see how this is an even bigger problem for games. Some games even have licenses that state flat out that the game will only ever be released on one platform and in one type of media, generally a "cartridge". This creates a nightmare of having to track down rights holders and renegotiate terms for a release on ... whatever modern platform you want to release it on. And people always want a completely unreasonable amount the second time around because the game had proven market value.
The Rare Replay extra features had a lot of information on what this actually looks like and it's really enlightening. By the end, the collection wasn't actually being sold at profit because they were paying out more under the newly negotiated terms then they were selling the discs for. It's why the collection had a limited run on only one console.
This is a cultural thing, and as long as it's Nintendo Japan calling the shots, it's not going to change.
In Japan, limited time products are the NORM. They are expected. They are valued. You can't even go to McDonalds with a reasonable expectation the burger you had last time is still on the menu, and that's how people like it. When you know it's leaving, it motivates you to enjoy it for a few more times before it's gone, and you wait for the next exciting new thing.
The idea that you need video games, or any product or service to be available to you 24-7 until the day you die ... hey no judgment. If that's how you want things, power to you. But just accept it's a very western ideology, and Nintendo doesn't understand what the big deal is. You had your chance to play it, and now that time is done. Play some other great games. Life is change.
Agreed, and the developer going off on Nintendo makes me very unsympathetic. Nintendo has a burden of care to the people using the e-shop, for sure, and eventually they need to remove this game if the claims are legitimate. But if anyone can point to a game, make a claim against it, and have Nintendo remove it without an investigation ... that's makes things much worse, not better.
I would be upset if this happens to me, for sure, but bro needs to claim down and realize that Nintendo and him are on the same side.
How much you can charge for repairs is regulated in Japan (as is how long you have to offer repairs). If the price is going up, it's because the weak Yen is making it more expensive to buy parts. There is literally no other reason Nintendo could legally make this change.
This isn't true of NOA, who do repairs for profit.
Not to butt in, but we all only know what we know. There is no reason to be uncivil when trying to inform people of new information.
It is true that patents are often rejected not on merit, but because the wording and details are too general. But it's also important to note that that happens because companies try to patent blatantly unpatentable things all the time!
I have not had the time to read all of the patents Nintendo filed, but I can tall you that, in general, Nintendo patents are rejected (in the US) because of NOA's overreach. Their recent patent for upscaling, in which they tried to include things already patented by Nvidia, is a good example.
This doesn't happen in Japan. Most of the patents that Nintendo applies for over there are granted. And while, again, it IS normal, I don't think we should support or give NOA a free pass for their attempts to toss as much as possible at the patent office, hoping some of it will stick.
I support patents because they protect the small player as much as the big guys. But that system only works if everyone plays fair. Palworld likely infringes, and that's bad. But using that infringement to try and push though 22 overly general and poorly worded patents? That's also bad.
Musk was the single largest individual contributor to the Republican party, and the single largest contributor to the German far right aFd. That money comes from the companies he owns. If you use products and services they offer, you are committing a political act, either of support or of apathy.
It is not politically neutral to use X. If you want to complain about someone "dragging politics" into it, maybe complain to the guy spending 100s of millions to elect political figures, who is currently choosing to work for the government?
Good on you for sticking up for yourself and for what you believe.
I personally can't stand the "don't get political" argument when it comes to X. I have a hard time believing that there are people who actually think that supporting a platform owned by someone who gave a Nazi salute and who gave millions of dollars to a German neo-Nazi party as politically neutral. Look I know calling people Nazis is cliché, but in the case of the aFd ... they are literally the remnants of the Nazi party!
Apathy is a political statement, and it's often the worst possible one. Encouraging apathy has long been the playbook of the people who are obviously the "bad guys".
Extreme right wing means you support a despot with total control over his subjects. It comes from the "right wing" of the French government, which supported the King. In practice, it also incudes ultra-nationalism. In literally every real world example of a far right wing government, they have committed geocide. There are no exceptions.
Left wing means the government is in the hands of the people. It comes from the left wing of the French government, which supported representative rule. Extreme left wing supports non-market economies like socialisms or communism. In practice, we've never actually seen what extreme left wing rule looks like. What we always end up with is an all powerful ruler who call his country "socialist" or "communist" even though it is absolutely not, because a left wing government is decentralized.
It is not a double standard to tolerate people who want to see wealth more evenly distributed while not supporting people who want to take away the rights of individuals and support gynecide.
The disconnect is likely that you are using the words "left wing" and 'right wing" incorrectly. That's not your fault, a lot of people do. If you are not speaking to how much control you want to give your king, or talking about market vs. non-market economics, you are not discussing left and right wing ideology.
Back when a game had 1-2 hours of content, it was a fantastic thing to get a sequel that gave you another 1-2 hours of content, even if it was almost exactly the same. Rockman is a great example of this, with the sequels essentially being new stages with very little else in the way of innovation.
Today, games don't give you 1-2 hours of content. We play modern games for dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours. By the time you're finished a modern game, you're likely "done" with the formula. You're hungry for something new that builds on the experience you just had maybe, but not for more of the same experience.
I think a great example is Avowed. It's a MUCH better sequel to Pillars of Eternity 2 then Pullers of Eternity 2 was to the first game because ... well, it's a completely different format.
After 100 hours of PoE, I was in love with the game world and wanted to experience more of it, but I was pretty done with turn based technical combat. PoE2 ended up being a bit "more of the same" for my tastes. But going back to the same world in a 1st person adventure game? I'm having a blast.
There is still room for "simple" and short games to get sequels that are close to the original, but if you looking for a answer to when that became a "bad" thing I think you need to ask another question. Could you release Rockman as a full price game today? Not a chance. A collection of games 1-6 wasn't even a full price game because we expect more content from our games now. And if your first exposure to the game was playing 1-6 all at once ... how hungry would you by for a sequel that was just a few more levels of the same thing?
Man, I'm super stocked to hear that people getting this on Switch will still have a great experience. I was really worried when it looked like no Switch review copies had been sent out!
This is such a great type of game to have "on the go", ready for long waits and long commutes. It's really the type of game that's known for making time disappear, and having it with you when time normally slows to a crawl is a real game changer.
Manufacturing cost is the same, because a tariffs doesn't effect Nintendo's cost. It's just a tax on import. If you're a retail store and you want to import a Switch that was made in China, you need to pay a 25% tax on the already marked up price Nintendo charges retailers, not on the manufacturing cost.
So you can either absorb the extra money by lowering your gross margin, or you can keep margin the same by having the costumer pay the tax. As you pointed out 100% of the time they do the latter.
If you were talking about how a US made product might react to a impart tax on steel, sure there is nuisance like you are pointing out. But for importing premanufactured goods, it's much more cut and dry, and that's what this conversation is speaking to; importing a Nintendo Switch and selling it.
That's up to Nintendo. But that would increases there manufacturing cost, so it's a lose lose situation. Nintendo needs to work out if there is more risk from lost sales, or more risk from spending money setting up new supply lines. In a climate were new tariffs are being interduce to new countries every day, why bother? You might spend millions shifting to manufacturing in country X, only to see country X get a seemingly random 100% tariff, and China's tariffs might go away at any time.
The one thing you want more then anything in trade is stability. So just ignoring what the erratic and unstable country is doing and focusing on increasing sales elsewhere is always going to be the better plan.
Tariffs are IMPORT TAXES, paid by the US importer and passed on to the consumer.
When Nintendo is speaking to the impact of tariffs, it's not to the bottom line. They don't pay tariffs. Americans do.
The impact potential is to the TOP LINE, meaning they might sell less consoles because in the US because they could cost much more then MSR and price some customers out. This is again, and I can not stress this enough, because 100% of tariffs are paid by Americans.
"We are putting a 25% tariffs on goods from China" is a way of saying "Everything you buy in America that is from China will now cost 25% more, because it will have a 25% tax that you need to pay."
State of Play had 25 Xbox games including 2 Game Pass day one title world reveals ... and they hate each other. We also learnt at State of Play that unless something changes, Microsoft will publish more games on PS5 this year then Sony will.
So yeah, you would expect a lot of cross promotion from the very friendly Nintendo and Microsoft.
This is the new normal. Games cost too much to develop for one system, and right now given install bases ... they cost too much to NOT develop for PC and Switch without taking a huge risk.
I think there is a lot of selection bias going on here. The early access reviews are MUCH worse then the professional reviews, and I think a pretty obvious reason for that is that if you liked Civ 6 enough that you were willing to pay an insane amount of money to play Civ 7 a few days early .... you're likely going to be ultra critical in general and especially of any changes.
Personally I'm happy that Civ 7 took some big swings, and I'm looking forward to it. It seems the one consistent problem is the UI, and that shouldn't be a hard fix. ARA went from having a completely unusable UI to a really good one in about a month after launch.
Retsuko just keeps delivering. Every one of her quests is an absolute gem.
It's also so great how she seems like she's just in a different world. Talk to any other character, it's cute, cute, friendship, love, talk to her and "WHY IS MY BOSS CALLING ME ON VACATION?"
Did you know that, officially, Hello Kitty's biggest regret in life is that she targeted herself towards young girls for too long, and let down all of the boys and adults that are her fans?
So Kitty's got your back. She understands. We all need some kawaii from time to time. This game is for everyone, and you shouldn't be embarrassed in the least.
Exploration is a real thing, and it was a very bad problem in film making. You might have noticed that rich film barons are often not too great people (Harvey Weinstein, for example) and it used to be commonplace to force young actors, especially young female actors, into working for free for "exposure", often in "skin films".
Thankfully, SAG put an end to that. If your film has over a $35,000, you have to pay your staff. If it's under $35,000, you can get people to work for free. (There are special rules for films between $35,000 and $50,000, but it's complicated)
Obviously that doesn't apply to a fan film like this unless they wanted to use SAG resources, but most serious film makers follow this rule because if you don't and try to join SAG or hire SAG members at some point, it can be a problem.
Also this happens in 1933. So hardly "nowadays".
That's likely is why the people making this film were asking strangers to give them $30,000 and not more, so they had the option of not paying people working on their crowd funded project.
But ... not so much. I wrote a LARP and a rules system for it. Given the LARP community is pretty small and mine was very well regarded, someone tried to effectively run a competing LARP in the world I created, so I got a copyright and sent a C&D. It's not like I own some huge money making property or something.
Just to clarify this statement to make it accurate:
If you do not defend your COPYRIGHT or IP RIGHTS in the US, you can be counter sued when you do try to enforce it, and if the party counter suing you manages to make a case for "selective enforcement", you will lose the ability to enforce the copyright in the US. It's not automatic, and selective enforcement is very hard to prove. While it's still a risk and justifies enforcement action like this, selective enforcement has only worked as a defense a handful of times.
I encourage you to be a little more gentle when trying to inform people. We only know what we know, and people are likely to just ignore you if you are rude to them. At the same time, as you've just seen, it's easier then you might think to have incomplete information about something,.
I know it's easy to get into the "big guy vs little guy" mentality, but I support this, and I think most people probably do to when they give it some thought.
I own an IP, and I wouldn't want some random person sharing stories about the world and people I've created in an environment where I was completely removed from creative control (nor do I have time to take creative control of any project like that).
Art always deals in themes. It always has a message, even if that message isn't front and center. More importantly, once art is out in the world, it's the viewer who owns it, and people often take messages that the artist didn't even think were there. What if the artiest includes or if people decide that this film deals with themes that are contraveral or flat out inexcusable, and that gets associated with Nintendo's brand? We can't expect Nintendo to take that kind of risk, and we can't expect them to spend time and money monitoring every fan project.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where people aren't so divided and don't hate each other to the point where literally any statement or theme is going to piss off some large group. I mean, a good deal of the time I DO live in that world, Japan, and Nintendo rarely shuts down fan projects over there. But in the English speaking world, where Link being pro science or anti-fascist makes him a political target ... you just can't risk it. You have to go scorched earth.
That's not even counting the fact that in the US, if you don't enforce your IP by suing everyone as soon as their infringement gains public awareness, you can loss the legal right to enforce your IP at all, for ever.
Nintendo didn't have a choice, where the guy making this film has the choice not to make it about Zelda, and not to try and release it while Nintendo is hyping a Zelda film. The fact that he's not even trying to argue "fair use", a legal defense that has allowed for fan films in the past, tells me he understands that the timing of the release is so suspect that no court is going to buy the argument that he isn't motivated, at least in part, by the millions Nintendo is dumping into promoting a film right now. He's also looking for the exact maximum amount of money you can get before SAG calls your film professional ... a much higher budget the most student or fan films, which is also pretty suspect.
Picture this: Your running towards a platform and you hit the "open inventory" button for 1/5th of a second, followed by the Jump button, that is right next to it.
This system would ignore the open inventory input, anticipating you did not actually mean to press that button. At a hardware level your keyboard and at a software level your OS are likely doing this right now. If you type "hello worl" followed by hitting "f" briefly (fractions of a second) before hitting "d", it will drop the "f" input and simply type "Hello World".
This is common tech in keyboard and some laptops. It's just as likely this is an attempt to patent "do it on consoles" by a company that already has the patent in a more general form.
Did they even send out any Switch review copies? If the answer is no, that might (unfortunately) be an indication that the port is less then stellar. If they were confident in the product, they would have wanted the reviews out at the same time as the PC ones.
The trick is well outside the limits of human capability, even more so on original hardware. It's not a proof of concept of a real world idea, it's a neat thing you can do in MAME. But it's hardly "meaningless". Uncovering mysteries and overcoming barriers is a core essence of the human experience, and what Kosmic did here is amazing.
Sure, it doesn't impact the Kong high score run, but it's an interesting discovery which he turned into entertaining content, and there is always the possibility that what he's uncovered about the code and hardware can lead to other discoveries in the future.
Can't encourage you enough to learn a bit about Hello Kitty. Truly an enigma. She's addressed the UN general assembly 3 times. She's run for Prime Minister of Japan twice. She is the official head of Japan's board of tourism (if you're lucky, she might reply to you if you e-mail them. There is zero fan-fair. Nothing to point out the message is from a cartoon cat. It's just signed "KItty White".) Someone in a Mascot custom takes the train from where she canonically lives to Sanrio headquarters at least once a week so that kids go home and tell their parents they saw Hello Kitty going to work.
It's honestly insane, but one of the happiest and most purely awesome human creation.
Officially, "Kitty White" is an entity that exists in the "real world". She works for Sanrio, runs the Japanese tourist board, and is an alternate ambassador to the UN. The character she plays in media is "Hello Kitty".
This started, like I'm convinced most things in Japan did, as a pun. Because the subject is implied, "Hello Kitty desu" can
mean "Hello, I am Kitty" or "I'm Hello Kitty" ... so her Iconic introduction is always introducing both "people" at the same time.
That's just a rumor. I mean, anything is possible, but there is no 8nm chipset that runs Ada Lovelace, and Ada Lovelace only became available in Oct 2022, which is about the same time reports of dev kits in the wild started popping up. So the only way it runs 3.5 is if:
1) Someone else bought 10m+ Tegra T239s and isn't using them for anything.
2) The Switch 2 is running a custom dye, and to keep it 8nm, it would be more advanced then the 40-- series line of video cards
3) NVidia somehow mass produced a custom Ada Lovelace chip in the millions of units without anyone noticing.
Haha, clearly I mistyped 760. I also mistyped 540 as 560! Not my best work.
We don't "know", but every hardware leak points to Ampere architecture, which would mean DLSS 2.0.
540p to 1080p looks fine. It's "performance" mode for 1080p output, and is a common recommend setting. The other option would be "balanced", which would render at 1114×627. It actually looks ... worse most of the time, because it's a wonky scaler.
We know the hardware has tensor cores, so DLSS will be supported.
Native 1080p scales to 4k without much issue, but based on the hardware we've seen, the Switch 2 will struggle to render native 1080p with modern rendering features enabled. It's much more likely that games are going to target either 540p or 720p and upscale that to 1080p. Native 1080p with any type of ray tracing or AO looks basically impossible, so as more 3rd party games embrace these techniques, they will either need to target lower resolution on Switch 2 or turn them off ... which might not be an option for games that forgo backed lighting altogether, like Indiana Jones of the new DOOM.
The patent that is the subject of the video is all about LOW end super sampling, and includes techniques to balance frame time and native resolution in real time, so it looks like (unsurprisingly) Nintendo's focus is going to be on a consistent gameplay experience over graphical power in first party games.
You can do a simple google search if you want to see the changes that NOA have made to games in the past, there is more then one web site that documents them. Recently they have been insisting that all remasters are the US release and not the Japanese release, which is why we have the version of Xenoblades X without the boob slider, with the ages adjusted, without several costumes, and with the dialog changed around sensitive themes.
Help me to understand what you're saying about LGTBQ+ content. I personally wasn't really speaking to that, because LGBTQ+ content in Japanize games is ... complicated to begin with. I was more speaking to general sexual content, as well as themes around sexual expression and, at times, even capitalism. There are several examples where games with anti-consumerism or anti-capitalist messages get changed in the US localization.
Ironically, it's worse for people who have invested in really good monitors / TV. If you have a really high end 4k or even 8k display, 1080p input can look really bad, which is why I think people being upset by Nintendo's lack of support for that format is at least somewhat valid.
But I think the vast majority of people share your experience, and would argue the difference between 4k and 1080p is overstated.
I mean, on a form like this you only get the opinions of people so into gaming that they seek out gaming sites, so there is a lot of selection bias. When you look at the general public though, it's telling that the most powerful system this generation, the Xbox Series X, sold like garbage, the second most powerful, the PS5, sold ... fine, but the one with graphically power on par with a T51 graphing calculator is the best selling console of all time.
I think the message Nintendo took from that is that most people don't actually care about graphics. And I think that was the right takeaway.
VR uses active scan from the base stations, which interact with photosensitive receptors on the controllers. It requires 2 base stations to triangulate with the controller (or a single unit can triangulate using a second controller of the headset, but with greatly reduced precision). The base stations don't need to interface with your computer ... they are sending out info that is read by the controllers, they are not receiving information from them ... which is why you don't have to connect them. So even if Nintendo was going to use a system like that, it wouldn't require the USB port because the "sensors" don't need to be plugged into the console.
While I'll be the first to argue that Nintendolife has maybe gone a bit overboard with fluff articles, this is a serious breakdown of a new technology and important for a gaming site to cover.
Besides, people like to speculate. Why yuk on their yum? I don't think you would tell people talking about who's going to win premier league to just shut up and wait until the season is over. It's fun to make predictions!
I get how hard it must be if you're someone who finds graphics important to accept the reality of the Switch 2, but it's been over a year at this point. From the point we knew it was going to be an 8nm system, 4k was all but out of the question. Yet every time a new bit of information comes out, it renews the hopium, and we start talking about how the impossible is now possible.
The bottom line, as we understand things today, is that Switch 2 is not going to be powerful enough to render a native image much higher then 720/60 or 1080/30, and with full modern rendering including things like AO or Ray Tracing, it's going to struggle to do even that.
Upscaling and frame generation are not magic. As Alex always says ... garbage in equals garbage out. The upscaling we are going to see in the Switch will take native 560p or 760p renders and upscale them to 1080p, because lower resolutions like that are the only way the Switch 2 is going to generate a decent image.
You can't take resolution that low and upscale it to 4k, and the Switch 2 isn't going to natively render in 1080p for almost all games.
I think Nintendo first party will be the only games to target native 1080, and they will do that the same way they always do ... removing all modern rendering techniques in favor of "stylized" graphics. We also might see 4k upscaling on last generation Switch games. But I think it's time we just move from the dream of 3rd party, 4k games on the Switch 2. It's not happening.
In the immoral words of Chrisjen Avasarala, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
Comments 2,060
Re: Nintendo Announces 'Virtual Game Cards' For Switch, Unlocking Digital Lending
@Indielink It's any other Switch. You can't own two consoles, you have to set one as your "home". The 15 days applies to any console that isn't your "home", even if you own two consoles. I have multiple consoles at different locations, for example, and right now can play every game I own on both systems.
Now that set up wont work any more.
Re: Nintendo Announces 'Virtual Game Cards' For Switch, Unlocking Digital Lending
@Kiz3000
I corrected what I typed ... I meant one console.
Also ... even if it was one at a time, that's not the issue. The issue is I can already do this, easier, with every single game on any console.
Re: Nintendo Announces 'Virtual Game Cards' For Switch, Unlocking Digital Lending
So instead of being able to play every single game I own at any time on any Switch simply be logging into my account, I can now only play them on 1 console at a time, and have to update every 15 days if it's not my main console?
Wow. This is the biggest f-u by any gaming company in a LONG time. I hope there is backlash, but I doubt there will be ... and even if there is, Nintendo has never been all that big on listening.
Re: Forget The Lawsuit, Pocketpair Says Palworld On Switch 2 Is "100% Worth Considering"
"If it's beefy enough""
So .. no then?
Re: Hello Kitty Island Adventure Sales Surpass Half A Million In 30 Days
@CRB1984
I can field that!
It's more like a standard life sim, like a farm game without money. You walk around your island giving gifts to everyone to up your friendship and picking up resources as your basic loop.
While that is happening, a surprising number of quests pop up, some being friendship related, some expanding the island and unlocking new characters. It's much ... deeper then I was expecting. I've played every day since launch and new core quests are still popping up.
By the "end game" most of your time is spent finding the right way to decorate cabins so that new people will move in over time, celebrating special events and birthdays.
Re: Round Up: Humble Games Showcase 2025 - Every Nintendo Switch Announcement
@gojiguy
What acutely happened is more like Burger King buying "Jim's burger stand", then deciding to get rid of all the staff at that small stand either by letting them go, or re-hiring them as Burger King staff.
In the end, Burger King has more then enough staff to handle the day to day operations of Jim's burger stand and continue to serve all their customers.
Re: Switch 2 Filings Show Support For Wi-Fi 6
@Anti-Matter
Assuming you mean 802.11g or WiFi 4 as "G4", then you'll be compatible with 802.11ac or WiFi 6, as they both use a 5Ghz band. However, "WiFi" is rarely called "G#". That's generally cellular internet, because it wasn't until the WiFi 6 that they started calling them by numbers.
Re: Was That Pokémon Legends: Z-A Footage Running On Switch 2? Digital Foundry Weighs In
@Axecon
It's far more likely they are from PC. Most games focus on playing well "in motion" and modern rasterization generally makes individual frames look bad. If you want high quality stills you generally use PC tools to make them, not by simply taking a screen shot of the game running, but by rendering the frame in a completely different way.
Re: Was That Pokémon Legends: Z-A Footage Running On Switch 2? Digital Foundry Weighs In
@PikminMarioKirby
Honestly I think that's a big of a stretch even if this was a Nintendo first party game, but it's really important to consider the fact that this isn't one.
Nintendo only owns 32% of TPC, meaning for this to happen they would need to convince the other 68% of share holders that it was a good idea to toss an important product under a bus. Creatures and Game Freak seem unlikely to be willing to do that and risk sales, given they have nothing to directly gain from the Switch 2 selling.
It also doesn't look "deliberately bad". It looks like a game running on 8 year old hardware that was years behind when it came out. Which it is.
Re: Opinion: Nintendo, Let Us Buy The Games Being Delisted From Switch Online
@KingMike @Ryu_Niiyama
Your logic is really solid, I just wanted to add another reason this happens so much with games ... media.
Generally if you can't buy a movie from the 80s it's because all of the licenses, as well as residual payments, were worded around theatrical vs. VHS release. That locks the movie into these formats. You can't release it on DVD without renegotiating everything.
Obviously you can see how this is an even bigger problem for games. Some games even have licenses that state flat out that the game will only ever be released on one platform and in one type of media, generally a "cartridge". This creates a nightmare of having to track down rights holders and renegotiate terms for a release on ... whatever modern platform you want to release it on. And people always want a completely unreasonable amount the second time around because the game had proven market value.
The Rare Replay extra features had a lot of information on what this actually looks like and it's really enlightening. By the end, the collection wasn't actually being sold at profit because they were paying out more under the newly negotiated terms then they were selling the discs for. It's why the collection had a limited run on only one console.
Re: Opinion: Nintendo, Let Us Buy The Games Being Delisted From Switch Online
This is a cultural thing, and as long as it's Nintendo Japan calling the shots, it's not going to change.
In Japan, limited time products are the NORM. They are expected. They are valued. You can't even go to McDonalds with a reasonable expectation the burger you had last time is still on the menu, and that's how people like it. When you know it's leaving, it motivates you to enjoy it for a few more times before it's gone, and you wait for the next exciting new thing.
The idea that you need video games, or any product or service to be available to you 24-7 until the day you die ... hey no judgment. If that's how you want things, power to you. But just accept it's a very western ideology, and Nintendo doesn't understand what the big deal is. You had your chance to play it, and now that time is done. Play some other great games. Life is change.
Re: "They Stole The Whole Game" - Horror Indie Dev Fights The eShop Scam Blatantly Ripping Their Work
@Lord
Agreed, and the developer going off on Nintendo makes me very unsympathetic. Nintendo has a burden of care to the people using the e-shop, for sure, and eventually they need to remove this game if the claims are legitimate. But if anyone can point to a game, make a claim against it, and have Nintendo remove it without an investigation ... that's makes things much worse, not better.
I would be upset if this happens to me, for sure, but bro needs to claim down and realize that Nintendo and him are on the same side.
Re: Switch Owners In Japan Will Have To Pay More For Nintendo Repairs
How much you can charge for repairs is regulated in Japan (as is how long you have to offer repairs). If the price is going up, it's because the weak Yen is making it more expensive to buy parts. There is literally no other reason Nintendo could legally make this change.
This isn't true of NOA, who do repairs for profit.
Re: The Pokémon Company Catches A Win In Lawsuit Against Another Rip-Off App
@Solid_Python @Lightsiyd
Not to butt in, but we all only know what we know. There is no reason to be uncivil when trying to inform people of new information.
It is true that patents are often rejected not on merit, but because the wording and details are too general. But it's also important to note that that happens because companies try to patent blatantly unpatentable things all the time!
I have not had the time to read all of the patents Nintendo filed, but I can tall you that, in general, Nintendo patents are rejected (in the US) because of NOA's overreach. Their recent patent for upscaling, in which they tried to include things already patented by Nvidia, is a good example.
This doesn't happen in Japan. Most of the patents that Nintendo applies for over there are granted. And while, again, it IS normal, I don't think we should support or give NOA a free pass for their attempts to toss as much as possible at the patent office, hoping some of it will stick.
I support patents because they protect the small player as much as the big guys. But that system only works if everyone plays fair. Palworld likely infringes, and that's bad. But using that infringement to try and push though 22 overly general and poorly worded patents? That's also bad.
No white hats in this one.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Pre-Order Preoccupation, Iterative Crimes - Nintendo Life Letters
@RetroGames
Musk was the single largest individual contributor to the Republican party, and the single largest contributor to the German far right aFd. That money comes from the companies he owns. If you use products and services they offer, you are committing a political act, either of support or of apathy.
It is not politically neutral to use X. If you want to complain about someone "dragging politics" into it, maybe complain to the guy spending 100s of millions to elect political figures, who is currently choosing to work for the government?
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Pre-Order Preoccupation, Iterative Crimes - Nintendo Life Letters
@Twilite9
Good on you for sticking up for yourself and for what you believe.
I personally can't stand the "don't get political" argument when it comes to X. I have a hard time believing that there are people who actually think that supporting a platform owned by someone who gave a Nazi salute and who gave millions of dollars to a German neo-Nazi party as politically neutral. Look I know calling people Nazis is cliché, but in the case of the aFd ... they are literally the remnants of the Nazi party!
Apathy is a political statement, and it's often the worst possible one. Encouraging apathy has long been the playbook of the people who are obviously the "bad guys".
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Pre-Order Preoccupation, Iterative Crimes - Nintendo Life Letters
@mr12calvin
Those are not random words. They mean things.
Extreme right wing means you support a despot with total control over his subjects. It comes from the "right wing" of the French government, which supported the King. In practice, it also incudes ultra-nationalism. In literally every real world example of a far right wing government, they have committed geocide. There are no exceptions.
Left wing means the government is in the hands of the people. It comes from the left wing of the French government, which supported representative rule. Extreme left wing supports non-market economies like socialisms or communism. In practice, we've never actually seen what extreme left wing rule looks like. What we always end up with is an all powerful ruler who call his country "socialist" or "communist" even though it is absolutely not, because a left wing government is decentralized.
It is not a double standard to tolerate people who want to see wealth more evenly distributed while not supporting people who want to take away the rights of individuals and support gynecide.
The disconnect is likely that you are using the words "left wing" and 'right wing" incorrectly. That's not your fault, a lot of people do. If you are not speaking to how much control you want to give your king, or talking about market vs. non-market economics, you are not discussing left and right wing ideology.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Pre-Order Preoccupation, Iterative Crimes - Nintendo Life Letters
Back when a game had 1-2 hours of content, it was a fantastic thing to get a sequel that gave you another 1-2 hours of content, even if it was almost exactly the same. Rockman is a great example of this, with the sequels essentially being new stages with very little else in the way of innovation.
Today, games don't give you 1-2 hours of content. We play modern games for dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours. By the time you're finished a modern game, you're likely "done" with the formula. You're hungry for something new that builds on the experience you just had maybe, but not for more of the same experience.
I think a great example is Avowed. It's a MUCH better sequel to Pillars of Eternity 2 then Pullers of Eternity 2 was to the first game because ... well, it's a completely different format.
After 100 hours of PoE, I was in love with the game world and wanted to experience more of it, but I was pretty done with turn based technical combat. PoE2 ended up being a bit "more of the same" for my tastes. But going back to the same world in a 1st person adventure game? I'm having a blast.
There is still room for "simple" and short games to get sequels that are close to the original, but if you looking for a answer to when that became a "bad" thing I think you need to ask another question. Could you release Rockman as a full price game today? Not a chance. A collection of games 1-6 wasn't even a full price game because we expect more content from our games now. And if your first exposure to the game was playing 1-6 all at once ... how hungry would you by for a sequel that was just a few more levels of the same thing?
Re: Review: Sid Meier's Civilization VII (Switch) - An Incredible Game That's Not Quite Ready
Man, I'm super stocked to hear that people getting this on Switch will still have a great experience. I was really worried when it looked like no Switch review copies had been sent out!
This is such a great type of game to have "on the go", ready for long waits and long commutes. It's really the type of game that's known for making time disappear, and having it with you when time normally slows to a crawl is a real game changer.
Re: Nintendo "Establishing Ways To Respond" To U.S. Tariffs, Says Furukawa
@KingMike
Manufacturing cost is the same, because a tariffs doesn't effect Nintendo's cost. It's just a tax on import. If you're a retail store and you want to import a Switch that was made in China, you need to pay a 25% tax on the already marked up price Nintendo charges retailers, not on the manufacturing cost.
So you can either absorb the extra money by lowering your gross margin, or you can keep margin the same by having the costumer pay the tax. As you pointed out 100% of the time they do the latter.
If you were talking about how a US made product might react to a impart tax on steel, sure there is nuisance like you are pointing out. But for importing premanufactured goods, it's much more cut and dry, and that's what this conversation is speaking to; importing a Nintendo Switch and selling it.
Re: Nintendo "Establishing Ways To Respond" To U.S. Tariffs, Says Furukawa
@MrCarlos46
That's up to Nintendo. But that would increases there manufacturing cost, so it's a lose lose situation. Nintendo needs to work out if there is more risk from lost sales, or more risk from spending money setting up new supply lines. In a climate were new tariffs are being interduce to new countries every day, why bother? You might spend millions shifting to manufacturing in country X, only to see country X get a seemingly random 100% tariff, and China's tariffs might go away at any time.
The one thing you want more then anything in trade is stability. So just ignoring what the erratic and unstable country is doing and focusing on increasing sales elsewhere is always going to be the better plan.
Re: Nintendo "Establishing Ways To Respond" To U.S. Tariffs, Says Furukawa
Tariffs are IMPORT TAXES, paid by the US importer and passed on to the consumer.
When Nintendo is speaking to the impact of tariffs, it's not to the bottom line. They don't pay tariffs. Americans do.
The impact potential is to the TOP LINE, meaning they might sell less consoles because in the US because they could cost much more then MSR and price some customers out. This is again, and I can not stress this enough, because 100% of tariffs are paid by Americans.
"We are putting a 25% tariffs on goods from China" is a way of saying "Everything you buy in America that is from China will now cost 25% more, because it will have a 25% tax that you need to pay."
Re: Expect To See The Switch Logo Pop Up In Future Xbox Showcases
State of Play had 25 Xbox games including 2 Game Pass day one title world reveals ... and they hate each other. We also learnt at State of Play that unless something changes, Microsoft will publish more games on PS5 this year then Sony will.
So yeah, you would expect a lot of cross promotion from the very friendly Nintendo and Microsoft.
This is the new normal. Games cost too much to develop for one system, and right now given install bases ... they cost too much to NOT develop for PC and Switch without taking a huge risk.
Re: Civilization VII Devs Detail First Batch Of Updates And Fixes Ahead Of Launch
@DadJKP
Sounds frustrating. I really hope they get it fixed ASAP.
Re: Civilization VII Devs Detail First Batch Of Updates And Fixes Ahead Of Launch
I think there is a lot of selection bias going on here. The early access reviews are MUCH worse then the professional reviews, and I think a pretty obvious reason for that is that if you liked Civ 6 enough that you were willing to pay an insane amount of money to play Civ 7 a few days early .... you're likely going to be ultra critical in general and especially of any changes.
Personally I'm happy that Civ 7 took some big swings, and I'm looking forward to it. It seems the one consistent problem is the UI, and that shouldn't be a hard fix. ARA went from having a completely unusable UI to a really good one in about a month after launch.
Re: Forget The Retail Delay, Nintendo's Tucking Alarmo In At Japanese Hotels
Better then Nintendo's first push into the Hotel business ...
Re: Round Up: The Reviews Are In For Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch)
@Erigen
Retsuko just keeps delivering. Every one of her quests is an absolute gem.
It's also so great how she seems like she's just in a different world. Talk to any other character, it's cute, cute, friendship, love, talk to her and "WHY IS MY BOSS CALLING ME ON VACATION?"
Re: Round Up: The Reviews Are In For Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch)
@SoIDecidedTo
Did you know that, officially, Hello Kitty's biggest regret in life is that she targeted herself towards young girls for too long, and let down all of the boys and adults that are her fans?
So Kitty's got your back. She understands. We all need some kawaii from time to time. This game is for everyone, and you shouldn't be embarrassed in the least.
Re: Nintendo Shuts Down Live-Action Zelda Fan Film, 'Lost In Hyrule'
@PokeMadness1996 @Spider-Kev
Exploration is a real thing, and it was a very bad problem in film making. You might have noticed that rich film barons are often not too great people (Harvey Weinstein, for example) and it used to be commonplace to force young actors, especially young female actors, into working for free for "exposure", often in "skin films".
Thankfully, SAG put an end to that. If your film has over a $35,000, you have to pay your staff. If it's under $35,000, you can get people to work for free. (There are special rules for films between $35,000 and $50,000, but it's complicated)
Obviously that doesn't apply to a fan film like this unless they wanted to use SAG resources, but most serious film makers follow this rule because if you don't and try to join SAG or hire SAG members at some point, it can be a problem.
Also this happens in 1933. So hardly "nowadays".
That's likely is why the people making this film were asking strangers to give them $30,000 and not more, so they had the option of not paying people working on their crowd funded project.
Re: Nintendo Shuts Down Live-Action Zelda Fan Film, 'Lost In Hyrule'
@Greatluigi
Sounds cool doesn't it?
But ... not so much. I wrote a LARP and a rules system for it. Given the LARP community is pretty small and mine was very well regarded, someone tried to effectively run a competing LARP in the world I created, so I got a copyright and sent a C&D. It's not like I own some huge money making property or something.
Re: Nintendo Shuts Down Live-Action Zelda Fan Film, 'Lost In Hyrule'
@Dr_Awkward @sonicbooming
Just to clarify this statement to make it accurate:
If you do not defend your COPYRIGHT or IP RIGHTS in the US, you can be counter sued when you do try to enforce it, and if the party counter suing you manages to make a case for "selective enforcement", you will lose the ability to enforce the copyright in the US. It's not automatic, and selective enforcement is very hard to prove. While it's still a risk and justifies enforcement action like this, selective enforcement has only worked as a defense a handful of times.
I encourage you to be a little more gentle when trying to inform people. We only know what we know, and people are likely to just ignore you if you are rude to them. At the same time, as you've just seen, it's easier then you might think to have incomplete information about something,.
Re: Nintendo Shuts Down Live-Action Zelda Fan Film, 'Lost In Hyrule'
I know it's easy to get into the "big guy vs little guy" mentality, but I support this, and I think most people probably do to when they give it some thought.
I own an IP, and I wouldn't want some random person sharing stories about the world and people I've created in an environment where I was completely removed from creative control (nor do I have time to take creative control of any project like that).
Art always deals in themes. It always has a message, even if that message isn't front and center. More importantly, once art is out in the world, it's the viewer who owns it, and people often take messages that the artist didn't even think were there. What if the artiest includes or if people decide that this film deals with themes that are contraveral or flat out inexcusable, and that gets associated with Nintendo's brand? We can't expect Nintendo to take that kind of risk, and we can't expect them to spend time and money monitoring every fan project.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where people aren't so divided and don't hate each other to the point where literally any statement or theme is going to piss off some large group. I mean, a good deal of the time I DO live in that world, Japan, and Nintendo rarely shuts down fan projects over there. But in the English speaking world, where Link being pro science or anti-fascist makes him a political target ... you just can't risk it. You have to go scorched earth.
That's not even counting the fact that in the US, if you don't enforce your IP by suing everyone as soon as their infringement gains public awareness, you can loss the legal right to enforce your IP at all, for ever.
Nintendo didn't have a choice, where the guy making this film has the choice not to make it about Zelda, and not to try and release it while Nintendo is hyping a Zelda film. The fact that he's not even trying to argue "fair use", a legal defense that has allowed for fan films in the past, tells me he understands that the timing of the release is so suspect that no court is going to buy the argument that he isn't motivated, at least in part, by the millions Nintendo is dumping into promoting a film right now. He's also looking for the exact maximum amount of money you can get before SAG calls your film professional ... a much higher budget the most student or fan films, which is also pretty suspect.
Re: Mysterious Patent Hints At "Predictive Input" For Nintendo Switch 2
@MSaturn
Picture this: Your running towards a platform and you hit the "open inventory" button for 1/5th of a second, followed by the Jump button, that is right next to it.
This system would ignore the open inventory input, anticipating you did not actually mean to press that button. At a hardware level your keyboard and at a software level your OS are likely doing this right now. If you type "hello worl" followed by hitting "f" briefly (fractions of a second) before hitting "d", it will drop the "f" input and simply type "Hello World".
Re: Mysterious Patent Hints At "Predictive Input" For Nintendo Switch 2
This is common tech in keyboard and some laptops. It's just as likely this is an attempt to patent "do it on consoles" by a company that already has the patent in a more general form.
Re: Round Up: Reviews For Civilization VII Are Mostly Positive So Far
Did they even send out any Switch review copies? If the answer is no, that might (unfortunately) be an indication that the port is less then stellar. If they were confident in the product, they would have wanted the reviews out at the same time as the PC ones.
Re: Random: Speedrunner Takes Donkey Kong Run To New Heights By Beating The Kill Screen
@Kiwi_Unlimited @Spider-Kev
The trick is well outside the limits of human capability, even more so on original hardware. It's not a proof of concept of a real world idea, it's a neat thing you can do in MAME. But it's hardly "meaningless". Uncovering mysteries and overcoming barriers is a core essence of the human experience, and what Kosmic did here is amazing.
Sure, it doesn't impact the Kong high score run, but it's an interesting discovery which he turned into entertaining content, and there is always the possibility that what he's uncovered about the code and hardware can lead to other discoveries in the future.
Re: Review: Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch) - A Cute Social Sim That Takes Notes From Nintendo's Best
@rvcolem1
You are one of today's lucky ten thousand.
Can't encourage you enough to learn a bit about Hello Kitty. Truly an enigma. She's addressed the UN general assembly 3 times. She's run for Prime Minister of Japan twice. She is the official head of Japan's board of tourism (if you're lucky, she might reply to you if you e-mail them. There is zero fan-fair. Nothing to point out the message is from a cartoon cat. It's just signed "KItty White".) Someone in a Mascot custom takes the train from where she canonically lives to Sanrio headquarters at least once a week so that kids go home and tell their parents they saw Hello Kitty going to work.
It's honestly insane, but one of the happiest and most purely awesome human creation.
Re: Review: Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch) - A Cute Social Sim That Takes Notes From Nintendo's Best
@sunspotty
Officially, "Kitty White" is an entity that exists in the "real world". She works for Sanrio, runs the Japanese tourist board, and is an alternate ambassador to the UN. The character she plays in media is "Hello Kitty".
This started, like I'm convinced most things in Japan did, as a pun. Because the subject is implied, "Hello Kitty desu" can
mean "Hello, I am Kitty" or "I'm Hello Kitty" ... so her Iconic introduction is always introducing both "people" at the same time.
Re: Review: Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch) - A Cute Social Sim That Takes Notes From Nintendo's Best
It's only January, and the GOTY is already here. The rest of the year is just the battle for second place. DISTANT second.
Re: Graded Prototype Pokémon Cards Worth Millions May Be Fakes, According To Hidden 'Metadata'
@SalvorHardin
From that episode where Sisko flat out murders a dude, and is very clear in pointing out he has no regrets and would do it again if he had to.
But the problem with modem Trek is that it's too dark.
Re: Graded Prototype Pokémon Cards Worth Millions May Be Fakes, According To Hidden 'Metadata'
Mad props for the DS9 deep cut!
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@MrCarlos46
That's just a rumor. I mean, anything is possible, but there is no 8nm chipset that runs Ada Lovelace, and Ada Lovelace only became available in Oct 2022, which is about the same time reports of dev kits in the wild started popping up. So the only way it runs 3.5 is if:
1) Someone else bought 10m+ Tegra T239s and isn't using them for anything.
2) The Switch 2 is running a custom dye, and to keep it 8nm, it would be more advanced then the 40-- series line of video cards
3) NVidia somehow mass produced a custom Ada Lovelace chip in the millions of units without anyone noticing.
4) They didn't finalized the design until 2023.
So ... my money is on no.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@MrCarlos46
Haha, clearly I mistyped 760. I also mistyped 540 as 560! Not my best work.
We don't "know", but every hardware leak points to Ampere architecture, which would mean DLSS 2.0.
540p to 1080p looks fine. It's "performance" mode for 1080p output, and is a common recommend setting. The other option would be "balanced", which would render at 1114×627. It actually looks ... worse most of the time, because it's a wonky scaler.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@MrCarlos46
We know the hardware has tensor cores, so DLSS will be supported.
Native 1080p scales to 4k without much issue, but based on the hardware we've seen, the Switch 2 will struggle to render native 1080p with modern rendering features enabled. It's much more likely that games are going to target either 540p or 720p and upscale that to 1080p. Native 1080p with any type of ray tracing or AO looks basically impossible, so as more 3rd party games embrace these techniques, they will either need to target lower resolution on Switch 2 or turn them off ... which might not be an option for games that forgo backed lighting altogether, like Indiana Jones of the new DOOM.
The patent that is the subject of the video is all about LOW end super sampling, and includes techniques to balance frame time and native resolution in real time, so it looks like (unsurprisingly) Nintendo's focus is going to be on a consistent gameplay experience over graphical power in first party games.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Caution, Unpopular Opinions, Easy Games - Nintendo Life Letters
@tobsesta99
You can do a simple google search if you want to see the changes that NOA have made to games in the past, there is more then one web site that documents them. Recently they have been insisting that all remasters are the US release and not the Japanese release, which is why we have the version of Xenoblades X without the boob slider, with the ages adjusted, without several costumes, and with the dialog changed around sensitive themes.
Help me to understand what you're saying about LGTBQ+ content. I personally wasn't really speaking to that, because LGBTQ+ content in Japanize games is ... complicated to begin with. I was more speaking to general sexual content, as well as themes around sexual expression and, at times, even capitalism. There are several examples where games with anti-consumerism or anti-capitalist messages get changed in the US localization.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@MrCarlos46
Ironically, it's worse for people who have invested in really good monitors / TV. If you have a really high end 4k or even 8k display, 1080p input can look really bad, which is why I think people being upset by Nintendo's lack of support for that format is at least somewhat valid.
But I think the vast majority of people share your experience, and would argue the difference between 4k and 1080p is overstated.
I mean, on a form like this you only get the opinions of people so into gaming that they seek out gaming sites, so there is a lot of selection bias. When you look at the general public though, it's telling that the most powerful system this generation, the Xbox Series X, sold like garbage, the second most powerful, the PS5, sold ... fine, but the one with graphically power on par with a T51 graphing calculator is the best selling console of all time.
I think the message Nintendo took from that is that most people don't actually care about graphics. And I think that was the right takeaway.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@abe_hikura
VR uses active scan from the base stations, which interact with photosensitive receptors on the controllers. It requires 2 base stations to triangulate with the controller (or a single unit can triangulate using a second controller of the headset, but with greatly reduced precision). The base stations don't need to interface with your computer ... they are sending out info that is read by the controllers, they are not receiving information from them ... which is why you don't have to connect them. So even if Nintendo was going to use a system like that, it wouldn't require the USB port because the "sensors" don't need to be plugged into the console.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@abe_hikura
While that's not a bad thought, the Joycons don't seem to support IR anymore. So an IR scanner bar don't make a lot of sense.
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
@StewdaMegaManNerd
While I'll be the first to argue that Nintendolife has maybe gone a bit overboard with fluff articles, this is a serious breakdown of a new technology and important for a gaming site to cover.
Besides, people like to speculate. Why yuk on their yum? I don't think you would tell people talking about who's going to win premier league to just shut up and wait until the season is over. It's fun to make predictions!
Re: Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation
I get how hard it must be if you're someone who finds graphics important to accept the reality of the Switch 2, but it's been over a year at this point. From the point we knew it was going to be an 8nm system, 4k was all but out of the question. Yet every time a new bit of information comes out, it renews the hopium, and we start talking about how the impossible is now possible.
The bottom line, as we understand things today, is that Switch 2 is not going to be powerful enough to render a native image much higher then 720/60 or 1080/30, and with full modern rendering including things like AO or Ray Tracing, it's going to struggle to do even that.
Upscaling and frame generation are not magic. As Alex always says ... garbage in equals garbage out. The upscaling we are going to see in the Switch will take native 560p or 760p renders and upscale them to 1080p, because lower resolutions like that are the only way the Switch 2 is going to generate a decent image.
You can't take resolution that low and upscale it to 4k, and the Switch 2 isn't going to natively render in 1080p for almost all games.
I think Nintendo first party will be the only games to target native 1080, and they will do that the same way they always do ... removing all modern rendering techniques in favor of "stylized" graphics. We also might see 4k upscaling on last generation Switch games. But I think it's time we just move from the dream of 3rd party, 4k games on the Switch 2. It's not happening.
In the immoral words of Chrisjen Avasarala, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.