Holyfire

@Spiders
Ok, well, I'm not liberal on reply time here.
So I'll say this. I'm broadly making a guess here, but regarding that 1 GB of RAM the OS runs on (and 1 CPU core), between all the game title thumbnails, box windows, text scripts, settings menu, system control menu etc.., I'd guess, that everytime Nintendo does an update to the Switch (many of which don't provide one iota of visual difference), the devs are probably stuck meticulously calculating almost Kilobyte for Kilobyte how to squeeze in any possible menu modification, text line, button etc..,

Now take presumably a 720p image to use as a background, probably 100s of kilobytes in size.

This maybe a slight exageration of what they deal with, but really, ppl have too high expectation for Switch features. Ppl talk about browsers, facebook, Netflix etc etc, trying to turn the Switch into a multimedia platform. It struggles to merely run a cut down youtube app.

Switch hardware, particularly the CPU and memory bandwidth, bout 26.GB/s, (which is shared for games and the OS,) is getting truely feeble.

I'm just not seeing it. Watching the Switch crash as often as it does, I'd say Nintendo's #1 priority with any modification to the OS would be stability.

And there I've gone ranting paragraphs again. Your fault

@Yosher
You're right, I think Nintendo does infuriatingly save a lotta things for those rainy days.
I'm a Nintendo fan, but I always say, Nintendo are afraid of their own success. It's like they can never go all-out. Always holding back, where they have the resources to seemingly mop up the competition at times.

• If only they didn't cheap out on the Joy-con sticks. Even if they were like $20 more expensive, that coulda saved all their customer base several pairs of Joy-con purchases, not to mention the lost game sales when their Switch Lite sticks fail and ppl can't play at all.
  Why'd they take so long to start pushing Pokemon on their main systems? Sure they were busy on handhelds, but if Sony or M'soft owned the Pokemon IP, they'd have milked that franchise generations ago.
  Why not do a slight performance boost on the Switch OLED, it'd have been easy to get a few extra frame rates outta their games. Hackers have severely boosted Switch clock rates to great results. Switch hardware is struggling to keep up, a minor speed boost coulda been a huge advertising boon for the OLED.
  Nintendo is just one giant enigma

@Spiders Been a long time since I touched a 3DS, I forget it's full feature set. But mind you, Switch is just vastly higher rez than 3DS. Yes, Switch has vastly more hardware too, but not enough to accomodate that much a greater OS
Folders in themselves aren't taxing, but it's the added GUI doodads that'll slow the Switch.
When I made my original comment though, I was meaning more to suggest backdrop images were the bigger strain.
I'm sure Nintendo had thought of these feature idea's, but just remember, basically the entire operating system and every feature on it is running on 1GB of RAM. That's dismal by any standard.
And also that battery issue I mentioned as well.
Switch's launch models were being shredded by the crowds for a 2 odd hr batt life. Do you think Nintendo coulda comfortably afforded extra OS graphics and music at, who knows, maybe a 3% - 5% drop in battery time?
The Switch does some things amazingly well. The game suspend and resume feature was 2nd to nothing else out there.
It's just a matter of what features Nintendo decided to prioritize

@WiltonRoots Nothing much will change when the Steam Deck comes out. By the time it actually comes out, and factoring delivery delays Valve is touting, the Steam Deck won't be nearly as competitive as it looks now.
Some initially interested buyers may not even be able to get this thing until 2023, and tech is moving fast

@Spiders it could, depending how Nintendo programmed it, but they clearly didn't prioritize any of that, and I'd say rightly so.
Have you tried to load up the eShop before? Loading a few game graphics borderline crashes the whole Switch.
Sometimes it actually does.
I love the Switch, but it's truely running on a baby CPU.

@Deerock69 @Deerock69 Steam Deck will probably go nowhere fast. It's the best portable PC device to date by my view. But PC gamers are too hyped up about the next desktop GPU, than to expend several hundred or more on this thing, which would prove largely redundant to 'em.
Plus with it (barely) planning a launch in 2022, competition will be rife by the time it has a chance to get off the ground, including from a sequel Switch device.
The silver lining here is that no matter how few Steamdecks sell, it's no loss to anyone. The few consumers can enjoy their Deck, and at worst Valve loses a little money.
Games will still keep porting happily to the Steam platform

I hate the font size. For generic menus, it doesnt bother me, u learn those off by heart. But for story info it makes it so hard for me to dive into the games depth.
Monolith are in cahoots with TV manufacturers to force everyone to buy bigger more expensive displays

Reasonable article, but 2 points i think i like to contest.
Everyone drones on and on about price point, and WiiU being too expensive. Price had little to do with WiiU failure. It was EASILY the cheapest system, with no online fees, pack in game, and fully BC with controllers and peripherals.
It should have cost more and been more powerful. PS3 did ok, and XB1 and PS4 at their prices are selling fine.

Also i get tired of reading how phones and tablets took off and caught the casual market.
Phones and tablets never outshined consoles for ppls attention.
The one sole and only reason they ever took the market is because everyone is virtually forced to own a smartphone and tablet from the age of about 7 (literally). No one goes without a phone at least.
Consoles were never less interesting devices, but they are the luxury, phones and tablets are considered necessity

Probably 9 out of 10 [at very least] smartphone releases are financial failures. How its considered a smart move is mind boggling. Sony tried this with Playstation All Stars on mobile. Don't know how it did financially, but was reviewed as a failure game, citing it's obscure tether to Coke advertising as well as dismal gameplay. And its very release purely undermined its Vita version. Why would a consumer get both? Just created bad brand recognition for Sony and its All Stars IP

On a quick note. Splinter Cell on WiiU had Vsync running, which drastically hampers any extra frames. The 360/PS3 had tearing. And also WiiU version did have equivalent average frames to the alternate systems. Not to mention the WiiU is also running footage on the Gamepad, ppl seem to just miss that point that WiiU is actually pulling off much higher resolution (accomodating for that 2nd screen)
I don't see Nintendo releasing a SKU with an HDD, only because they're much bulkier than equivalent SSD memory, and would probably mean a complete overhaul of the entire WiiU chassis and shell design.
I almost can't see why installs can't be made optional on WiiU. I have a 2 Terabytes externally and the USB 2.0 connection should be fast enough to stream that data. Or better than the disc drive anyways.
A lot of these 3rd party games are still being developed with PS3/360 in mind as the common denominator. So WiiU's hardware still isn't being taken proper advantage of, like the extra 512 MB's of RAM the WiiU has onboard available for gaming (and extra 1.5 GBs if you include the OS memory).
WiiU isn't deficiant, it's only a matter of devs programming correctly for the system. More likely all the Indie devs will do good on that front.
And this article still also ignores the fact that game quality isn't defined by it's graphics, it's defined by game design and art direction. WiiU is more than capable of making titles that will rival XB1 and PS4 in terms of the fun-factor

@Park_Triolo

Nah, you were alright, I was just reading it on my tiny Android screen, half tired on a work break. Missed the word "it" in your reply. Sometimes my commenting can be a bit hasty using my cumbersome phone rushing in the time constraints of work breaks.
To the topic at hand, yes Pikmin 3 is a good game (and much better yet to come from Nintendo), and quite pleased to hear you share a common form of entertainment with you baby girl
Always enjoy

@Holyfire

Bach!, technicality, scrap that reply

@Park_Triolo

Careful what u say on public media, I found that comment amusing to read (not sure about everyone else)

@sinalefa
Nice post. Agreed 100%
There's probably 100s of 1000s of small time devs out there makinh games on Android that are getting nowhere. As games that sell for free usually dont make much money. And phones n tablets are so limited

@theadrock13
Because the moment a piece of software from Nintendo releases on another platform, ppl will assume Nintendo is cracking under pressure, and instantly ppl will stop buying their systems. Their hardware sector would diminish quickly and make life very tough for them. Who wants games on phones anyway? They're so simpleton , they can barely harnrss attention for even hours

@Lan
WiiU has a 32 GB version. And even PS4/XBOX One will likely be depending on external harddrives to fit their downloadable content, and game installations. Get an external harddrive. It'll be fine

Luigi's Mansion, Mario Sunshine, F-Zero, Mario Kart. Plenty of great games

@Erica_Hartmann
They're redoing Windwaker on WiiU, releasing very soon. Windwaker WiiU will be running on hardware about 20 times the performance. And it's an update. No need for Windwaker Gamecube to be released.
In face I'd call it a bad move on Nintendo to do so, as it'd detract attention away from the higher quality WiiU build.
Same goes for Metroid prime on that note, It's already got a compatible pointer control based Wii build. Gamecube version not necessary

The XBOX One reveal looked cool. But really its achieving nothing we cannot already do in todays living room. There were no new channels or net functions. There was very little new everything.
Its all just a little more seamless (hell, even had the reveal running on my TV via my WiiU while simultaneously surfing the web on gamepad. And it seems M'soft is bringing in the trojan to dominate all devices in ur living room and slowly have u depend on the cloud. Which is scary, cause who knows what profiteering M'soft will try to pull off of us once we're stuck in their clouds.
I still think come holiday 2013, WiiU will be the only affordable of the big 3, it'll have the install base, and by then, the games.
Meanwhile PS4 and XBOX One will be fighting each other and dealing with launch kinks.
Eg how does everyone in ur house control the TV while XBOX One is logged in ur account, responding to ur voice? Get the remote... Defeats the purpose lol
Im sure there will be a simple answer. But the way its looking. wiiU (and my PC have me covered 100%