Unfortunately, despite the fact many of us would be well aware of the issues and limitations with non local storage, Nintendo won’t accept any additional storage that can’t be contained within the system. Essentially because there will be some people, younger or less tech savvy, who wouldn’t grasp the concept that once they undock the system they lose access to whatever is on the dock storage, and it’s just not something that fits with the general ethos of Nintendos design philosophy.
The trouble there is, as usual, there’s lots to be shared, and lots of things people are itching to share, but I’m sure you’ll be well aware of how information spreads once it’s out there. And when it does, well, I don’t need to tell you about the wrath of Nintendo, to say they’re secretive would be a ridiculous understatement.
lol, yeah mine started being charged a couple of days ago. Funny how easy it is to forget just how many hundreds of pounds extra you’ve spent over and above the console itself.
Right now I’m definitely not the target demographic for this, the camera doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Why post then? Because the camera won’t be the only accessory for the S2 that plugs into the USB port, there’s more to come and and that point, I can see myself buying this type of accessory. I have some already that would work, as many of you will too, but they’d be dangling down, certainly not as elegant a solution as this is.
Amen. I’ve said it many times before myself, but a portable (slightly better than) PS4, with much more power than PS4 when docked is just amazing. People are so jaded these days, I’ve said before it’s possibly because I remember back in the days of the first handheld consoles, imagining what they’d be like with the power of home consoles. And here we are, with exactly that, it’s a great time to be a gamer.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Cyberpunk on S2 is going to get a lot more game time from me than it does with my Steam Deck and Legion Go combined. No farting about with settings on SD, no arguing constantly with Windows on Legion Go, just plug in, play and enjoy. Bliss.
I am. I already have it on PC (and by extension Steam Deck and Legion Go), as well as Xbox Series X and PS5 Pro.
But, it’s cross save compatible, so I can continue where I left off and when I travel, the Switch 2, like its predecessor, is likely to be the one dedicated gaming system I take with me.
So yeah, definitely hyped to finally see this running on my own S2 in a couple of weeks and more than happy to support work well done and releasing on an actual proper cartridge. Man it feels weird to say that’s it just a couple of weeks now after all those years of waiting.
HDMI 2.0 can support VRR, indeed the Xbox One S, One X, Series S, and Series X all support VRR via HDMI 2.0. The big differences with HDMI 2.1 are that it standardised a format for VRR (as opposed to 2.0 which had to have specific formats, such as Freesync built-in) the second big change with 2.1 was a huge increase in bandwidth to 48Gbps, up from 18Gbps in 2.0, which enabled uncompressed 4K 120Hz (and above) VRR.
The benefit of all of the PC handhelds being AMD, there’s a significant amount of chips that are compatible with AMD VRR, there’s same is sadly not true for Nvidia.
It’s not Nintendo being cheap and skimping out on more modern HDMI standards, it’s just technically more difficult to convert Nvidia DisplayPort VRR to HDMI compliant VRR than it is with AMD.
I do think it’s something that they should have already resolved, considering the development time of the hardware, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they’re not going to give us a reason as to why they’ve had to delay it.
If you don’t notice high frame rates, fair enough. I don’t really understand how you don’t see the difference between a game running at sub 60fps, or even a stable 60fps, and a game running either at 120fps, or 40fps 120Hz with VRR. Everyone I know who sees it on my OLED with PS5 Pro is blown away by how much smoother the image is.
120fps and 40fps VRR are both very good options. Sure, if your display isn’t capable of anything other than 60Hz, it’s not going to be worth while, but for those of us with displays capable of higher refresh rates, it really does make a huge difference.
And as for the soap opera effect, that has literally nothing to do with a display running at 120Hz. You get the same effect with 60Hz TVs as well, it’s to do with motion interpolation and how well your TVs chipset can cope with that. When you watch something filmed at 24fps on a 60Hz display, there’s obviously not a precise division, 60/24 means that the TV has to create extra frames in-between the ones from the source material. So generally if you hike up the motion handling settings of any display to the higher levels, you get what is generally referred to as the soap opera effect.
There’s always a chance that It’ll come, eventually. But that depends entirely upon the specs of the Realtek DP to HDMI converter, annoyingly there’s little hard evidence of the full capabilities of the one the S2 dock uses.
Obviously the S2 is limited to 4K 60Hz as anything above that with this specific converter would require Display Stream Compression, due to the 32Gbps maximum bandwidth of the chip. That’s the sole reason Nintendo has implemented this restriction on a chip that can technically do 8K 60Hz, with DSC.
It may be that Nintendo were exploring the possibility of 4K 120Hz VRR to accommodate 40fps games but were unsatisfied with the results, hence its removal for the launch window. I have a feeling that if and when they implement docked VRR it’s going to be 1080p 120Hz VRR to avoid DSC.
Maybe not, after all DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI converters that support VRR and are compatible with Nvidia GPUs are thin on the ground as it is. So I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of VRR in a future firmware update, but at the same time, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
It’s not the end of the world, it certainly won’t stop me buying Switch 2, but VRR is an excellent option to have in a game. If you’ve never had the chance to experience it, you probably don’t think, or realise, just how much of a difference it can make to the smoothness of the image. But it’s a proper game changer to any game that can’t hit a minimum of 60fps. Using 40fps at 120Hz with VRR is not just a good compromise, it’s a significant improvement over juddery, dropped frames.
The screen really will be a huge upgrade that I think some people are overlooking the impact of. Sure, it’s just less than an inch more than the OLED, but even then it’s still a massive difference.
I was playing on my LGo last night, haven’t for a while I’ve mostly been playing Switch lately. And it struck me again just how much bigger the 8 inch screen seems over the 7 inch one of the OLED Switch. For people coming from an original, or Switch Lite, that screen is going to surprise them.
I can definitely sympathise with you there. I only have the one, he’s two and a half now but he was born extremely prematurely at just 22 weeks and 2 days, so the past couple of years have hardly been the traditional child raising in many ways.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s genuinely the most amazing human I’ve ever encountered, he’s been through more than many of us can even imagine. That he’s doing as well as he is, well, even the (many) specialists he’s seen in the past couple of years are astonished.
Obviously we are forever in the debt of the amazing NHS teams that helped him during his 8 month stint in hospital, and the Ronald McDonald House charity that meant my wife and I could be there 24/7 for those 8 months. But even the specialists gave up on him 4 times during the early days, told us to be with him all night and genuinely couldn’t understand how he made it through the night.
He’s a fighter, no doubt about it. But I digress, where was I going, oh yeah….
I’m the same, my life has been dedicated to raising him since we got home with him.
I get an hour before bed if I’m lucky to do a spot of gaming, assuming I’m not too knackered and just want to collapse in a heap on the floor. But the TV is generally being used by my wife then, so I’ve transitioned almost exclusively to handheld gaming.
The Switch I’ve had since day one, just as I do with every Nintendo system, but I’ve recently had to buy a PlayStation Portal to use with my PS5 Pro (I could go up to the office and play the PS5 or XsX in there, but I’d probably wake the wee man when I inevitably shout at the screen 🤣), I’ve got a Steam Deck and Legion Go for my PC gaming, because most of my computers are in the office and although I have a couple of laptops, I hate gaming on a laptop on the couch.
So having handhelds is the most logical solution to getting in some game time. And I think that most of my others will fall by the wayside a little bit once the S2 arrives. I may be in the minority, but having a handheld (and I do mean in handheld mode) that can produce games on par, or better than a PlayStation 4 is amazing to me, I think it’s a stunning piece of hardware considering how slim it is and with a TDP of about 10W. How are people not impressed by that??
Maybe it’s because I’m old and remember fantasising about how awesome it would be if you could have a portable console that could produce games on par with the SNES, as I tried to tilt my GameBoy to just the right angle so that I could see what was happening on the extremely dark screen. Each new generation of handheld devices has impressed me ever since then.
I remember slotting a game card into my PC Engine GT and having my jaw drop as I saw the same game I’d just been playing on the TV, in the palm of my hands. And now we have systems that can punt out things like Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Star Wars Outlaws and practically anything Nintendo puts out. It’s a great time to be a gamer.
Hmmm, I’ve digressed again. I really shouldn’t start typing after I’ve had my morphine 🙄
Oh, I’ve been a collector for 40 odd years, although I’m reaching the point where I’m considering selling off a lot of the systems and games I’ve accumulated since 1978.
But the backlog I have is from the past few years, I used to be able to get through the vast majority of games at a fair clip. But since (finally) becoming a grown-up (unless you believe my wife 🤣) it’s taken a back seat to everything else. But when that happened, my compulsion to buy games I want to play didn’t change along with it, particularly if I see one on sale when I’m passing a shop, or browsing websites.
When the wee man starts nursery next year, I’ll be able to get a good few extra gaming hours in, I haven’t decided if I’m going to bother going back to work or not yet, I work for myself anyway and for the best part of 15 years it’s only been my own workaholic attitude that’s kept me doing it. Things have changed though, and I’m rather enjoying spending time with my family instead of working all the hours god sends. So that backlog will rapidly come down, assuming I don’t instantly turn back into Mr I need to do work because I’m awake.
Between Switch, PS5, PC and XsX I have a backlog of games that stretches into the hundreds. Since becoming a first time dad at the ripe old age of 48, which is now 50 year old me running around after a two year old all day and night, for some reason I can’t fathom, I just don’t have the same amount of time to spend playing games that I used to.
But I wouldn’t change that for the world.
What it does mean though is that most of my gaming has transitioned to handheld, either Switch, PlayStation Portal or Legion Go, in the hour I get to relax before bed. So overall, my play time is down across the board. But I am and will be playing my Switch just as much as I was pre-Direct, until the Switch 2 lands on my doorstep next month. I’ve already declared the first Saturday after it arrives me being locked in my office playing Mario Kart World day, think I’m about due a day off by now 🤣
For my own take, the games are all that matter, so if they’ve had all of that extra development time to play around with, just think of the games they could have nearly ready to launch in time for their big Christmas push. It’s going to be a good year.
What difference does it make if a game features a man, woman, or anthropomorphic turnip (all of any colour), what matters is gameplay.
I honestly cannot conceive of avoiding a game because of the main character. Maybe I should avoid Sonic games because you don’t get blue hedgehogs in real life that can break the sound barrier. And don’t get me started on why a fat plumber can shoot fireballs because he eats a mushroom, talk about promoting the use of narcotic substances.
Should women in games just be resigned to a damsel in distress? Would Metroid, Tomb Raider, Horizon, Control and countless others be better if the main character was a man? Would San Andreas, Prototype 2, Spider-Man Miles Morales be better if they had a white man running around under your control?
I’m sorry, but while I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I can’t help but disagree when that opinion appears to be ridiculous.
You’re bang on the money. The S2 CPU is slightly more than double the single core performance of the PS4, multi-core is significantly faster.
The GPU, if you care about TFLOPS which are far from a good way to assess the full capabilities of any GPU, but do at least give a baseline to compare show that in handheld the S2 is roughly on par with the PS4, when docked, it’s just a smidge less than PS4 Pro
But that’s just a raw compute, it’s not taking into account any of the more modern architectural elements of the chipset.
At the end of the day though, none of that really matters, what matters is what you see with your eyes and in that department, only the most jaded will proclaim disappointment with the S2.
One has to remember that this is first and foremost a handheld device, not a home console with a significantly higher power budget. The S2 will have a TDP of about 10W, and what it’s actually capable of doing within such a limited power draw is pretty incredible.
If the S2 could produce visuals which were ‘only’ on par with a base PS4, are there really people who would be disappointed with that for a handheld device? I for one am most certainly not disappointed, and rest assured, claims of the S2 being around, or less capable than a base PS4 are woefully underestimating the capabilities of the S2.
Some of the launch window games, Cyberpunk included, are already impressive for a handheld console. But just wait until the second wave of games come along, in particular ones that are built from the ground up to take advantage of everything the S2 chipset has to offer, there’s going to be a few jaws hitting the floor.
Naturally, being a handheld, it has its limitations to conserve power. Lower memory bandwidth and the like, but these things can be compensated for. Consider this, the Switch 1 was in the ballpark of comparable to the PS3 and Xbox 360, and look at what miracles were achieved on that. The Switch 2 is leapfrogging past the PS4 and into PS4 Pro territory, that’s a huge generational achievement for such a thermally limited device.
Then one has to consider just how amazing some games were on the PS4/PS4 Pro. Look at Infamous Second Son, Horizon, The Last of Us, God of War, Days Gone, Cyberpunk, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted 4, Spider-Man and god knows how many others.
Disappointed? Hell no, I’m looking forward to Switch 2 more than I did my PS5/PS5 Pro. And no, obviously I don’t mean on a power level, but simply on the good old fashioned concept of fun, enduring games. If they happen to look as good as, or better than the PS4 generation, well that’s just gravy for me, I care infinitely more about gameplay than I do shiny graphics……
….. And yeah, I’ve got my copy of Cyberpunk pre-ordered for S2 already, despite owning it on three other platforms already, I’m still nowhere near finished with it.
I would have thought any reasonable person, who’s come to love the Switch and what it offers both in hardware, convenience, flexibility and vast range of excellent, exclusive software has a simple set of requirements for a successor; bigger screen, better JoyCons and more power.
It’s certainly what I’ve been wanting for the past few years, and from what I’ve seen they’ve hit my targets. Bigger screen? Check. Better JoyCons? Check (other than still no D-Pad or analog triggers, but I can forgive them there). More power? Definitely check. It’s 10 times more powerful than Switch 1 if you believe the marketing fluff but in reality it is easily that performant, its CPU has twice the single core performance than PS4 and considerably more in multi-core, faster internal and external storage, a GPU that while some may consider “already outdated” is actually quite the power house for the form factor and power envelope.
I was ridiculed months ago by revealing that the Switch 2 would be capable of 4K 60fps gaming, so feel free to ridicule me again when I tell you that the majority of the first batch of games are just scratching the surface of what this little beast is capable of. Even those that are already seemingly pushing the hardware aren’t taking full advantage of what it has to offer, particularly because most of them weren’t designed with the technology in mind. Watch this space, there’s better to come, we’re only just beginning.
Makes one wonder if there’s an exploit of some kind inherent to the hardware/software of the Switch 2 that they are already well aware of, but haven’t been able to completely expunge from the system for some reason.
Why wait until basically EOL for the Switch to make changes like this to the EULA and not back in the early days when people started exploiting them. If the Switch 2 was securely locked down (though obviously no system is 100% unhackable, one just has to find it) then Nintendo would be confident enough in the security of the system.
Of course, it’s just as possible that they’re being overly cautious after the abundance of hacked Switch 1 systems. But still, I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a good reason they’ve changed the wording beyond just caution.
“ No other game has the detail and the amount of realism that this does and will have when it’s released, so everybody complaining out there needs to just zip it, because whatever amount this game costs, $80 bucks or whatever, is going to be worth it”
To hear a developer saying something like this is appalling. I obviously don’t want them to suffer or be unemployed really, but if you think the main thing that’s important in a game, any game, is visual fidelity, then you’re in the wrong industry.
Gameplay first, everything else comes way down the list of priorities in what makes a game fun, isn’t that why we’re playing in the first place?
I like GTA, despite its atrocious mechanics at times, and yes, they can be visually appealing, no one could argue that there’s a significant amount time, effort and money going into them. But so are a lot of other games. I personally wouldn’t put it anywhere near my top 10 games that are just pure joy to play. And I certainly don’t go back to GTA time and time again to just enjoy playing it in the same way I have many other games for decades, Mario Kart included, but that’s just me.
I think some people look at the numbers and think, oh ok, in portable the S2 has the same TFLOPs as a PS4 and when docked a bit less than a PS4 Pro.
TFLOPs however don’t tell the whole story, sure it’s not an irrelevant measurement of raw performance, but it does not take into account any differences in generational technology. It doesn’t for instance take into account DLSS in any way, nor does it account for improvements to compute shaders, or any other more modern aspects of the GPU.
Similarly, it doesn’t fully take into account memory bandwidth or other aspects that could go in the Switch 2’s favour, and indeed, count against it when there’s more limited bandwidth for certain tasks.
The best way to evaluate how good the system is? Forget the raw numbers, play the games, enjoy them and don’t get caught up in the, oh it’s not going to look as good as a PS5, or will it even be able to match a PS4 (it’s a lot better than a base PS4 for the record), will it be as good as a Steam Deck? The games are all that matters, and more importantly, the gameplay, if it looks great and runs at a good frame rate, all the better.
But let’s be honest, are any of us buying the S2 solely for third party games and shiny new graphics? Surely not? Those things are just gravy, very tasty gravy, but gravy nonetheless.
We’re buying it for the first party Nintendo games, because if we weren’t, well surely we’d be buying a PS5 or something else instead. And if 46 years of gaming on the vast majority of platforms ever released have taught me anything, you can guarantee most of the first party Nintendo games are going to make you very happy indeed…..
……. I’m sure I was going somewhere with this, clearly one should refrain from typing once one has had one’s morphine 🤣
As far as having a disc inserted on PS5/Series consoles, yes if you buy physical it doesn’t matter if the full game is on disc or not, the disc needs to be inserted whenever you want to play the game for ownership verification, but the game itself can only ever work from the internal storage.
The situation is much like in Switch 2, some discs are little more than a means to access a digital download, with no actual game data on the disc itself. While some others do actually contain a fully playable (if not up to date) version of the game on the disc. I actually know someone who doesn’t connect their PS5 to the internet and exclusively buys games that have the full data on disc. Even as someone who prefers physical media, even I wouldn’t go that far.
Whatever some consumers prefer in the form of physical media, myself included, is largely irrelevant at this point. The industry is heading toward an all digital future, that decision was made a long time ago and even at this point, worldwide physical sales are a tiny amount compared to digital.
Most publishers want an all digital future because it has less overheads and they can charge as little or as much as they like because they can opt to have no real competitors for selling. Some (not many) choose to pass on some of the savings to end users, while some still charge outrageous prices and create “special editions” that give you access to the game a couple of days early and a few cosmetic items for eye watering prices. Yes some AAA budgets are wildly out of control, but that’s another matter.
You’re right about the good old days, publishers and developers chose CD’s because they offered vastly expanded storage space at a fraction of the price of cartridges and really, who can blame them. In many ways digital distribution is the natural evolution of that, nobody has continued to develop a low cost, high capacity, infinitely faster physical media. So the obvious alternative is digital, the games run from internal storage, so there’s no concern for read speeds, the games themselves can be any size at all, there’s no limit beyond a users drive space, which they can expand as needed, and the overall costs are lower than producing physical media.
It’s an evolution, based on the same principles, of what we saw 30 years ago with the change to CD’s, the obvious difference being that we have no hard copy of our game data, so whether we can access them in 30 years time in the same way, well I wouldn’t like to put money on that, time will tell.
But one things for sure, unlike the tens of thousands I’ve invested in hardware and software over the past 45 years, I don’t expect the money I’m spending from here on out to be worth anything at all in 45 years time, it will have just vanished into the ether as servers are shut down, companies cease to exist and the ones who are left don’t see the financial sense in continuing to maintain access to 45 year old software that so few people still want access to.
And I don’t just mean actual monetary value, I have over 100 consoles and computers that I’ve accumulated over the past 45 years along with god knows how much software and accessories. I still play the vast majority of them when I get the chance, but I plan on passing them onto my son if he’s interested. Will that be possible with digital games? I honestly doubt it, especially as most of them are non-transferable.
The big difference there is that PS5 and Series consoles have to install the games to their internal storage simply because the read speed of a Blu Ray disc is far too slow to accommodate playing the game from disc,.
The Switch and more importantly for the subject at hand, Switch 2 don’t have that limitation. The read speed of data from the cartridge is at least as fast as that of the internal storage.
So there’s no technical reason or disadvantage to a game being put entirely onto a cartridge, assuming of course that the cartridge can actually accommodate the entirety of the data, not all games are going to be below 64GB.
Personally I won’t be buying Key Cart games, I don’t sell on my games, so there’s no incentive there for me to buy them. So far at least, it seems to be limited to third-party games, so chances are I’ll be buying the lions share of them on a different platform anyway.
I do prefer physical media, with actual game content on said media, and whenever that’s an option, that’s what I’ll continue to do. But even I’ve accepted that digital distribution is where the industry is going to end up, I get the feeling this generation will be the last with physical media that’s not just a license on a disc/cartridge.
It’s annoying for someone who’s collected physical their entire life, but there’s no point fighting it, the market for physical media is a rounding error compared to digital sales now. Younger generations who’ve grown up with digital distribution being the norm aren’t going to suddenly change tactics and start buying physical.
The argument that always seems to crop up whenever you try and say physical is better, is that it’s always been a licence to play the game you’ve purchased, nothing else. And I’ll grant you, that is technically true. But I’d like to see someone try and stop me playing my copy of SSX before it eventually rots away in a few decades time. I don’t have that kind of confidence in any digital purchases I’ve made.
They’re clearly cleaning up and improving things before the launch of the Switch 2, so that it has a better experience from the get go. Slightly annoying that it’s taken them eight years and the impending launch of a new console to actually bother improving the user experience.
Seems like a step in the right direction, but what I really want in any digital storefront is a comprehensive collection of filters and sorting tools. The last thing I want is for it to end up like the Apple AppStore, where you basically only get to see what’s been paid to be seen, or heavily curated to show only those that will make the storefront the most money.
Yes, it’s a business and all businesses exist to generate revenue, it’s their primary purpose. But if we can’t find the games we want, well you’re not getting my money. Couldn’t tell you the last time I paid for software that’s featured on either Apple or Android, I have to specifically search and scroll through slop to find what I want every single time, and it has reduced my spending on those platforms significantly over the past 6 or 7 years.
5 TFLOPs for Switch 2 would be awesome, sadly it’s nowhere near that in reality.
In docked mode, you’re looking at around 3.9 TFLOPs and about 1.7 TFLOPs in handheld mode.
Still not bad numbers for a mobile device, and then you’ve got more modern architectural changes over the OG Switch, faster storage, faster RAM. DLSS and so on.
At the end of the day though. FLOPs are a terrible way to actually compare what a system is fully capable of. Sure they’re a basic baseline but they don’t account for everything.
The best way to evaluate performance, if one cares so much about it, is to do real-world testing and side-by-side comparisons with other systems.
Or, y’know, we could just enjoy what’s there regardless, as many of us will, quite possibly yourself included. I mean, consider the resolution, frame rate, texture quality and all of the other shiny bells and whistles completely absent from Breath of the Wild. Did it ruin the 200 and odd hours I played the game for, hell no, once I got lost in the gameplay it all just melted away.
Super Mario Wonder may well be considered basic by many people, but I’ve finally just got around to completing it and I can say with confidence that for me, that was a beautiful game. It’s not always about the most powerful, graphically feature rich presentation. Art style, level design and direction play a big part in it for me at least.
That’s not to say I don't care for uber settings, full path ray tracing, particle effects up the wazoo and everything else, I enjoy it as much as anyone else, I just don’t care about that stuff anywhere near as much as I care about good gameplay.
Switch 2 should perform as well as, if not better than the PS4 in the actual images it puts on the screen. A couple of days ago I was playing the PS4 version of Days Gone on my PS5 Pro (I’ve not bothered upgrading to the PS5 “remaster” yet), and I actually forgot that I was playing a PS4 game for a while. That’s just one example of course, there are many beautiful PS4/Xbox One games. We’re going to be getting that in a handheld console. Are people really complaining that’s not enough? Not me, that sounds freaking awesome to me.
Even at 800p, and most settings cranked down, I still don’t get a stable 60fps on my Legion Go. It can definitely hit 60 fps with the right settings, but I’ve personally never gotten it stable at that point.
For me the sweet spot is 40fps, it’s a better trade of between quality and performance. Would be even better if the bloody LGo had VRR.
You can get between 30 - 45 fps on Steam Deck at 800p (native resolution), but you have to make some compromises with the level of detail, density, effects and so on, as you would expect.
Just as there will be compromises made for the S2 version.
I haven’t played it extensively on my Deck in quite a while, if I’m playing handheld Cyberpunk at the moment it’s either on my Legion Go, or PlayStation Portal (which doesn’t count), however I did fire it up to do an off the cuff comparison between it and the footage we’ve seen of the unfinished Switch 2 version and I have to say, as a platform agnostic player, I’d definitely give the edge to the Switch 2 at this point.
Obviously we’ll know more in a few weeks when we can do proper comparisons, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the game on S2.
Completely different architectures, it’s why, for instance, Apple’s M series chips can outperform X86 chips in the same class, while using significantly less power. Don’t get me wrong, X86 has been improving greatly in more recent chips when it comes to power per watt, but they’re still catching up to ARM.
There isn’t a massive Apple M series sized performance upgrade for Switch 2, obviously, and we know the general limitations of the Nvidia chipset already, but it is an impressive, significant jump over Switch 1 (he said stating the obvious). It also has an advantage of being a fixed platform with a lightweight, highly streamlined OS and SDK, and when software is properly optimised for the system, there is some surprising potential to be found in the chipset.
The main difficulty in that respect is porting a game originally designed for X86 across every platform it currently runs on, over to ARM64.
With time and a fair amount of work, amazing results can be achieved as we’ve seen from other platforms, but the best performance for Switch 2 is not surprisingly mainly going to come from games designed for the architecture from the ground up.
I’ve pre-ordered this, despite owning it already on PS5, XsX and PC (including my Steam Deck and Legion Go). I wasn’t hugely impressed with it on my Steam Deck, it’s a good achievement getting it running on there, but you need to make a lot of compromises. It’s somewhat better on the Legion Go.
Obviously there’s going to be compromises for the Switch 2 version, we already know that, but the footage so far is looking pretty damn good for a mobile platform. I like flashy graphics as much as the next person, which is why I have a PS5 Pro and decent gaming laptop. But I’m not a graphics hoe the way some people are. I’m perfectly happy playing an ancient 8 bit game as much as the latest and greatest AAA.
I actually read an, I’m going to say article but that’s being generous, where the writer specifically stated he wouldn’t buy a Switch 2 because it’s basically not a PlayStation 5, and no, I’m not exaggerating.
Temper your expectations a little, considering the hardware and you’ll probably enjoy it regardless. Hell, as much as I’m not blown away by the performance of it on Steam Deck, I still enjoyed my time playing it there. So I have no doubt, based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, that I’ll enjoy it on Switch 2.
I’m still holding out hope that the S2 will do 40fps 120Hz VRR when docked. Sure they’ve removed mention of it from the website, but even HDMI 2.0 can manage that, so there’s a part of me hoping they’ve just removed mention of it to avoid another disclaimer explaining that it’s certain games, with compatible displays and yada yada yada. You never know with Nintendo really.
Yeah I’ve got them both and I’ve already pre-ordered Fusion for Switch 2. They’re good games, the colour switching mechanic gets on my bloody nerves a bit, I’d love a mode where the boost pads are just normal boost pads, but considering the alternative, I put up with it.
Amen to that, the water effects in 64 and Blue Storm were epic and those alone showed what the systems could be capable of. Throw in the weather effects and sublimely designed courses.
Yeah, long overdue. Nintendo, I don't give a damn if you can’t find anything new to push the series on, it doesn’t need it, just give us a new entry with stunning water, superb handling, weather conditions, day/night cycle and new tracks, I’ll throw money at you.
I’m with PJ, more or less, as a (very) old person I’d really love to see a new F-Zero game, it’s long, long overdue. Likewise Wave Race, I’d really like a new entry in that series, why it died with GameCube I’ll never know.
But there are loads of series I’d love to see return, a really good, new Star Fox wouldn’t hurt either, along with Kid Icarus, the exceptionality unlikely Eternal Darkness and all of the obvious ones.
However, I did vote for Zelda over F-Zero, purely because I’m really curious where they are going to take the series after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (which I haven’t played much and am now saving to play with my “free” upgrade on Switch 2.)
I suppose they are technically just faster Micro SD cards in a basic sense, but on a technical level they are very different. Unlike any of the older SD/MicroSD cards they don’t use the same interface, instead they use PCIe, the same interface used for NVME drives such as you’d find in a PC, or PS5. They maintain backwards compatibility with the older SD UHS interface because they have that interface built-in as well.
So when they’re inserted into a device, they will use one of the two available interfaces, based on the host devices capabilities. Which is why an older UHS Micro SD card cannot be used for data storage in the Switch 2, it’s designed to use PCIe as its storage type interface, with only basic backwards compatibility with UHS cards.
Unfortunately the ship has sailed, the gaming industry is, and has been for years, pushing us towards digital distribution. Sadly, it has succeeded, it won’t be long before physical games are a complete thing of the past.
We will own nothing (ok technically even with games fully on either disc or cartridge we’re still actually just buying a license to use it, but there it’s extremely difficult to prevent you from doing so) and access to games can be revoked on the whim of the publisher and/or distributor.
In the UK last year, physical game sales amounted to around £70 million - a not insignificant sum at all, until you realise that is only 2.4% of all games sales. Clearly digital already accounts for almost the entire market and that’s a damn shame as far as I’m concerned.
Yes digital is extremely convenient, on a whim I can buy a game at 3 in the morning and be playing it 5 minutes later. But unlike the vast majority of systems and games I’ve owned in my life, I won’t necessarily be able to pass them on to my son or, god willing, grandchildren, because by that time the servers will probably be shut down and the games lost forever. The only retro gaming that will exist in the future will be things like NSO, a curated collection they want you to have access to… if we’re lucky.
Directly to the process of software development in a vacuum, no, of course it doesn’t. In relation to selling products, which is what we were actually talking about to begin with, yes, it does, very much so and trust me, there’s not a publisher out there who doesn’t consider that factor when a product is being planned, so indirectly in relation to software development it does, generally in the form of budget allocation. Context is everything.
As for your limited description of economies of scale, that is one small part of a much, much larger picture. There are dozens of different aspects which affect economies of scale, it is not one simple rule, but the combination of many different factors. Which is why it takes so long to cover the subject for anyone studying business and logistics. The ultimate goals of any of these however is twofold, a reduction in cost of production and/or a lower end price to purchasers.
For example, if a company has efficient logistics in place and bulk buys products this results in their cost per unit decreasing, which subsequently gives them the ability to offer a lower price to the end user. Generally this equates to an increase in sales of the product over competitors selling at a higher price, or an increase in sales from the same company prior to stock obtained under different circumstances.
Oh, I get it completely. But diseconomy of scale is not always the reason for higher prices in hardware, or software. Diseconomy of scale is, in essence, a result of poor management, it does not specifically apply to a company of any type increasing costs simply due to the complexity of production, cost of production, or size of workforce.
If you want to know if a company is really suffering from diseconomy of scale, take a look at their financial results. Do you think Apple, for instance, has such high prices due to diseconomy of scale? No, they do not, not when you look at their finances and see that they are making hundreds of billions of dollars in pure profit every year. Thats not a diseconomy of scale, their workforce is expanding, the cost of r&d is increasing, the cost of manufacturing is increasing, but crucially every aspect is extremely well managed. They are charging higher prices simply because they get away with it, people will pay the artificially inflated prices, and the more they do, the higher the prices will creep over the years.
The exact same is true for any company, whether they’re primarily consumer electronics, gaming, clothing, food, or anything else.
There are undoubtedly many companies, particularly in the gaming industry where diseconomy of scale is very applicable, and it’s not too difficult to spot the ones who suffer from it. But manufacturing/production costs, unit sales, and crucially, increased costs to the end user are not always as a result of diseconomy of scale, it’s simply because they can.
Speaking as someone who’s been in the business for over a decade, economies of scale most definitely applies just as it does anywhere else. There’s a good reason that, for instance, sales of software on Steam, or console stores, generally have a large boost when they go on sale as compared to their normal listed price. That is the very definition of economies of scale, sell lower but sell more.
The same goes for online stores and brick and mortar stores, software on sale will generally sell significantly more in that period, compared to previous and succeeding weeks.
There are obvious exceptions to the rule, as there is with any rule, it is after all where the expression comes from. Games such as Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, Mario whatever, Zelda, GTA 3/4/5/6 and so on. These products will naturally sell, and sell well, right from the start purely because of their popularity and reputation that has been built over many generations. People will take a chance on new games simply because almost every other entry in the series has been good, that’s where the exception comes in. The games can be priced higher and people will still buy them.
Don’t get me wrong, development costs are rising industry-wide, as we all know. Particularly with the larger companies, with some games in development for significantly longer than they were in previous generations, they keep getting bigger, the assets have to be of a much higher quality, the game engines are more complex to develop (when you’re not using Unity, Unreal or several others), in fact every aspect for these companies is getting more expensive. The budgets for some games are truly staggering, to the point where many of us are of the opinion that we need to take a step back and evaluate where the real value lies, because it’s simply not feasible to keep the budgets expanding as they have been. It’s rather obviously why so many tens of thousands of people in the industry have lost their jobs over the past few years, the bean counters aren’t seeing the sort of roi that they would like to and in their view the easiest way to get profits back on track is to trim the fat. I tend to disagree with that to a point, in my opinion the best way to get the best roi from your software is to ensure you’re investing your money wisely and making games of a very high quality. By which I don’t necessarily mean make a game that looks better than anything else, no, gameplay is first and foremost the aspect to concentrate your resources on. By all means make a beautiful game, but I’d rather spend my time playing Breath of the Wild (beautiful in its own way) than something like Suicide Squad.
Nintendo are one of the very, very few who have actually bucked that trend, not resorted to laying of staff and shuttering studios. Instead, they have continued to invest, expand their teams and concentrate on just making quality content. In that aspect I respect them and hope they will be able to continue that trend into the next generation of hardware and software. But I digress.
I’m hopeful that it will, I have the N64, SNES and MegaDrive pads from Nintendo and those work fine with my BlueRetro and 8BitDo adapters/boards. So as the new GameCube one will operate over Bluetooth, it should be fine. Worst case scenario, we’ll need a firmware update, but I don’t think we will.
I’m somewhere in-between, I’ve got a 3060 in my gaming PC and there are times when I enable some of the DLSS features in games and really enjoy the experience, without noticing any major side effects.
But there are times when I really notice flaws such as flickering and corruption, for want of a better word, especially with shadows.
Having said that, I’m fairly confident that the implementation with the Switch 2 will be more performant than I often see on PC, simply due to the locked down nature of the platform.
When you’re dealing with a fixed platform, it’s a lot different to dealing with PCs where you have to try and take into account the thousands of possible variables in hardware configuration and performance. It’s significantly more efficient to get right down to the bare metal on a fixed configuration that won’t ever change in any meaningful way that will impact the chipset.
So I have high hopes that between Nvidia and Nintendo, they’ll have optimised the butt out of the implementation of DLSS on Switch.
Time will tell, while I have no doubt we’re going to be impressed by some of the launch window software, I think a year or two down the road, when we’ve all got more used to the SDK and how best to optimise our software for it, then we’re really going to see what T239 is truly capable of.
Yeah I think that’s part of the problem with some people unfortunately. I didn’t bother waiting to see if I got an invite from Ninty (which I haven’t so far) and just pre-ordered from Argos, they’ve been reliable in the past so I’m happy enough to stick with them.
I did order the GameCube controller from Nintendo when it went on general sale, got to have that one, I’m actually wanting it more for my actual GameCube with a Bluetooth controller adapter from 8BitDo than I am for the Switch 2, though I will use it on that as well. Yet to decide who I’m going to order the pro controller from, there’s a few reliable places still with stock.
The “lower the price” crowd tends to be a very vocal minority of the actual market size. Not to mention that it always tends to be significantly overblown on the various forums and social media platforms, the vast majority of people who will be buying the Switch 2 are likely completely unaware that the people making noise about the price even exist, let alone hear what they are saying.
I’m with you there. I mean, I can totally understand the social aspect of it, and between games I don’t have a problem with video chatting with people. But I just think having a few video streams going, during actual gameplay would be a distraction.
You get used to it, but I do agree to some extent, even though I’ve played a lot of Fast RMX on Switch, I have often thought that I would enjoy the game significantly more if I didn’t have to keep changing between the two colours.
I honestly think the Fast games are good enough to hold up on their own without that switching mechanic in the game, but because it’s inherent to the history of the series, I don’t see them changing it.
Though I’d love for them to put in a mode where it’s just straightforward boost pads and orbs, with the switching mechanic, I think I’d play that a whole lot more.
Economies of scale, one of the first lessons you learn from either running a business, or studying for it. Unfortunately it’s a concept that’s increasingly becoming lost on many businesses these days, and why? Because time and time again people have proven they’re willing to pay well above the odds for almost any product.
I had a few computer shops when I was a teenager and I always priced fairly and usually below my competitors, a tactic that paid dividends. But in the days of £2000 smartphones, £7000 laptops, £400 jeans and the rest of the artificially inflated prices because companies know they can get away with it, nothing will change for the better.
It will take a major market crash, or millions of people voting with their wallets (not going to happen), for a return to a stable, sensible markup on products. Do people seriously think that, for instance 1. 128GB of memory on a MacBook Pro really costs anywhere near the £1000 it costs to upgrade to it, or 2. That £1000 for 128GB of memory is good enough value to justify paying it?
There’s always been an “Apple Tax” but in recent years it seems to have become significantly worse and sadly, instead of fighting against it, the rest of the industries are following along and increasing their prices. Not because the BOM and associated costs are increasing at the same rate, no, it’s simply because they know they can get away with it and generate hundreds of billions of dollars more in revenue. And why shouldn’t they? They’re all businesses, they all have varying costs, from R&D, salaries and everything else, they have investors to satisfy and every business exists to make money.
But people have been conditioned to believe over the past couple of decades that there’s somehow an inherent value in these “premium” products and that the vastly increased cost is worth paying, when in reality the only legitimate added value is in increasing the profits of the multinational corporations behind them.
I’ve actually been re-playing Fast RMX on Switch for the past week while, awesome game even if I suck the donkeys at the harder levels 🤣
I’m surprised Fusion is so cheap to be honest, I’m sure they’d have gotten away with a higher price, but good on them.
Already pre-ordered it and using up my gold points means I’m getting it at half price as well, serious bargain. Although it would be at a higher price as well, the game is looking great from the little I’ve seen of it, and I’m sure it will provide me with months of frustrating, fun, getting my butt handed to me gameplay.
Comments 137
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Dev Used Procedural Generation To Manage 100,000 Different Assets
@mariomaster96
Think yourself lucky, I was around for Pong in the 70’s 🤣
Re: Want Even More USB Ports On Switch 2? Accessory Firm JSAUX Has Got You Covered
@Whirlwound
Unfortunately, despite the fact many of us would be well aware of the issues and limitations with non local storage, Nintendo won’t accept any additional storage that can’t be contained within the system. Essentially because there will be some people, younger or less tech savvy, who wouldn’t grasp the concept that once they undock the system they lose access to whatever is on the dock storage, and it’s just not something that fits with the general ethos of Nintendos design philosophy.
Re: Want Even More USB Ports On Switch 2? Accessory Firm JSAUX Has Got You Covered
@SamusHunter182
The trouble there is, as usual, there’s lots to be shared, and lots of things people are itching to share, but I’m sure you’ll be well aware of how information spreads once it’s out there. And when it does, well, I don’t need to tell you about the wrath of Nintendo, to say they’re secretive would be a ridiculous understatement.
Re: Want Even More USB Ports On Switch 2? Accessory Firm JSAUX Has Got You Covered
@karatekid1612
lol, yeah mine started being charged a couple of days ago. Funny how easy it is to forget just how many hundreds of pounds extra you’ve spent over and above the console itself.
Re: Want Even More USB Ports On Switch 2? Accessory Firm JSAUX Has Got You Covered
Right now I’m definitely not the target demographic for this, the camera doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Why post then? Because the camera won’t be the only accessory for the S2 that plugs into the USB port, there’s more to come and and that point, I can see myself buying this type of accessory. I have some already that would work, as many of you will too, but they’d be dangling down, certainly not as elegant a solution as this is.
Re: Video: Check Out New Direct-Feed Gameplay Of Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2
@Varkster
Amen. I’ve said it many times before myself, but a portable (slightly better than) PS4, with much more power than PS4 when docked is just amazing. People are so jaded these days, I’ve said before it’s possibly because I remember back in the days of the first handheld consoles, imagining what they’d be like with the power of home consoles. And here we are, with exactly that, it’s a great time to be a gamer.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Cyberpunk on S2 is going to get a lot more game time from me than it does with my Steam Deck and Legion Go combined. No farting about with settings on SD, no arguing constantly with Windows on Legion Go, just plug in, play and enjoy. Bliss.
Re: Video: Check Out New Direct-Feed Gameplay Of Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2
@Dhaladog
I am. I already have it on PC (and by extension Steam Deck and Legion Go), as well as Xbox Series X and PS5 Pro.
But, it’s cross save compatible, so I can continue where I left off and when I travel, the Switch 2, like its predecessor, is likely to be the one dedicated gaming system I take with me.
So yeah, definitely hyped to finally see this running on my own S2 in a couple of weeks and more than happy to support work well done and releasing on an actual proper cartridge. Man it feels weird to say that’s it just a couple of weeks now after all those years of waiting.
Re: Nintendo Apologises For "Error" With Mention Of Switch 2 VRR TV Support
@Specters
HDMI 2.0 can support VRR, indeed the Xbox One S, One X, Series S, and Series X all support VRR via HDMI 2.0.
The big differences with HDMI 2.1 are that it standardised a format for VRR (as opposed to 2.0 which had to have specific formats, such as Freesync built-in) the second big change with 2.1 was a huge increase in bandwidth to 48Gbps, up from 18Gbps in 2.0, which enabled uncompressed 4K 120Hz (and above) VRR.
Re: Nintendo Apologises For "Error" With Mention Of Switch 2 VRR TV Support
@Vectrex
The benefit of all of the PC handhelds being AMD, there’s a significant amount of chips that are compatible with AMD VRR, there’s same is sadly not true for Nvidia.
It’s not Nintendo being cheap and skimping out on more modern HDMI standards, it’s just technically more difficult to convert Nvidia DisplayPort VRR to HDMI compliant VRR than it is with AMD.
I do think it’s something that they should have already resolved, considering the development time of the hardware, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they’re not going to give us a reason as to why they’ve had to delay it.
Re: Nintendo Apologises For "Error" With Mention Of Switch 2 VRR TV Support
@Misima
If you don’t notice high frame rates, fair enough.
I don’t really understand how you don’t see the difference between a game running at sub 60fps, or even a stable 60fps, and a game running either at 120fps, or 40fps 120Hz with VRR. Everyone I know who sees it on my OLED with PS5 Pro is blown away by how much smoother the image is.
120fps and 40fps VRR are both very good options. Sure, if your display isn’t capable of anything other than 60Hz, it’s not going to be worth while, but for those of us with displays capable of higher refresh rates, it really does make a huge difference.
And as for the soap opera effect, that has literally nothing to do with a display running at 120Hz. You get the same effect with 60Hz TVs as well, it’s to do with motion interpolation and how well your TVs chipset can cope with that. When you watch something filmed at 24fps on a 60Hz display, there’s obviously not a precise division, 60/24 means that the TV has to create extra frames in-between the ones from the source material. So generally if you hike up the motion handling settings of any display to the higher levels, you get what is generally referred to as the soap opera effect.
Re: Nintendo Apologises For "Error" With Mention Of Switch 2 VRR TV Support
There’s always a chance that It’ll come, eventually. But that depends entirely upon the specs of the Realtek DP to HDMI converter, annoyingly there’s little hard evidence of the full capabilities of the one the S2 dock uses.
Obviously the S2 is limited to 4K 60Hz as anything above that with this specific converter would require Display Stream Compression, due to the 32Gbps maximum bandwidth of the chip. That’s the sole reason Nintendo has implemented this restriction on a chip that can technically do 8K 60Hz, with DSC.
It may be that Nintendo were exploring the possibility of 4K 120Hz VRR to accommodate 40fps games but were unsatisfied with the results, hence its removal for the launch window. I have a feeling that if and when they implement docked VRR it’s going to be 1080p 120Hz VRR to avoid DSC.
Maybe not, after all DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI converters that support VRR and are compatible with Nvidia GPUs are thin on the ground as it is. So I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of VRR in a future firmware update, but at the same time, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
It’s not the end of the world, it certainly won’t stop me buying Switch 2, but VRR is an excellent option to have in a game. If you’ve never had the chance to experience it, you probably don’t think, or realise, just how much of a difference it can make to the smoothness of the image. But it’s a proper game changer to any game that can’t hit a minimum of 60fps. Using 40fps at 120Hz with VRR is not just a good compromise, it’s a significant improvement over juddery, dropped frames.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Ghosting Switch 1 To Save Yourself For Switch 2?
@Oppyz666
The screen really will be a huge upgrade that I think some people are overlooking the impact of.
Sure, it’s just less than an inch more than the OLED, but even then it’s still a massive difference.
I was playing on my LGo last night, haven’t for a while I’ve mostly been playing Switch lately. And it struck me again just how much bigger the 8 inch screen seems over the 7 inch one of the OLED Switch. For people coming from an original, or Switch Lite, that screen is going to surprise them.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Ghosting Switch 1 To Save Yourself For Switch 2?
@AdolBannings-Laylee
I can definitely sympathise with you there. I only have the one, he’s two and a half now but he was born extremely prematurely at just 22 weeks and 2 days, so the past couple of years have hardly been the traditional child raising in many ways.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s genuinely the most amazing human I’ve ever encountered, he’s been through more than many of us can even imagine. That he’s doing as well as he is, well, even the (many) specialists he’s seen in the past couple of years are astonished.
Obviously we are forever in the debt of the amazing NHS teams that helped him during his 8 month stint in hospital, and the Ronald McDonald House charity that meant my wife and I could be there 24/7 for those 8 months. But even the specialists gave up on him 4 times during the early days, told us to be with him all night and genuinely couldn’t understand how he made it through the night.
He’s a fighter, no doubt about it. But I digress, where was I going, oh yeah….
I’m the same, my life has been dedicated to raising him since we got home with him.
I get an hour before bed if I’m lucky to do a spot of gaming, assuming I’m not too knackered and just want to collapse in a heap on the floor. But the TV is generally being used by my wife then, so I’ve transitioned almost exclusively to handheld gaming.
The Switch I’ve had since day one, just as I do with every Nintendo system, but I’ve recently had to buy a PlayStation Portal to use with my PS5 Pro (I could go up to the office and play the PS5 or XsX in there, but I’d probably wake the wee man when I inevitably shout at the screen 🤣), I’ve got a Steam Deck and Legion Go for my PC gaming, because most of my computers are in the office and although I have a couple of laptops, I hate gaming on a laptop on the couch.
So having handhelds is the most logical solution to getting in some game time. And I think that most of my others will fall by the wayside a little bit once the S2 arrives. I may be in the minority, but having a handheld (and I do mean in handheld mode) that can produce games on par, or better than a PlayStation 4 is amazing to me, I think it’s a stunning piece of hardware considering how slim it is and with a TDP of about 10W. How are people not impressed by that??
Maybe it’s because I’m old and remember fantasising about how awesome it would be if you could have a portable console that could produce games on par with the SNES, as I tried to tilt my GameBoy to just the right angle so that I could see what was happening on the extremely dark screen. Each new generation of handheld devices has impressed me ever since then.
I remember slotting a game card into my PC Engine GT and having my jaw drop as I saw the same game I’d just been playing on the TV, in the palm of my hands. And now we have systems that can punt out things like Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Star Wars Outlaws and practically anything Nintendo puts out. It’s a great time to be a gamer.
Hmmm, I’ve digressed again. I really shouldn’t start typing after I’ve had my morphine 🙄
Re: Talking Point: Are You Ghosting Switch 1 To Save Yourself For Switch 2?
@kmtrain83
Oh, I’ve been a collector for 40 odd years, although I’m reaching the point where I’m considering selling off a lot of the systems and games I’ve accumulated since 1978.
But the backlog I have is from the past few years, I used to be able to get through the vast majority of games at a fair clip. But since (finally) becoming a grown-up (unless you believe my wife 🤣) it’s taken a back seat to everything else.
But when that happened, my compulsion to buy games I want to play didn’t change along with it, particularly if I see one on sale when I’m passing a shop, or browsing websites.
When the wee man starts nursery next year, I’ll be able to get a good few extra gaming hours in, I haven’t decided if I’m going to bother going back to work or not yet, I work for myself anyway and for the best part of 15 years it’s only been my own workaholic attitude that’s kept me doing it. Things have changed though, and I’m rather enjoying spending time with my family instead of working all the hours god sends.
So that backlog will rapidly come down, assuming I don’t instantly turn back into Mr I need to do work because I’m awake.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Ghosting Switch 1 To Save Yourself For Switch 2?
Between Switch, PS5, PC and XsX I have a backlog of games that stretches into the hundreds. Since becoming a first time dad at the ripe old age of 48, which is now 50 year old me running around after a two year old all day and night, for some reason I can’t fathom, I just don’t have the same amount of time to spend playing games that I used to.
But I wouldn’t change that for the world.
What it does mean though is that most of my gaming has transitioned to handheld, either Switch, PlayStation Portal or Legion Go, in the hour I get to relax before bed.
So overall, my play time is down across the board. But I am and will be playing my Switch just as much as I was pre-Direct, until the Switch 2 lands on my doorstep next month. I’ve already declared the first Saturday after it arrives me being locked in my office playing Mario Kart World day, think I’m about due a day off by now 🤣
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Hardware Chip Was Potentially Finalised As Early As 2021
For my own take, the games are all that matter, so if they’ve had all of that extra development time to play around with, just think of the games they could have nearly ready to launch in time for their big Christmas push. It’s going to be a good year.
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Hardware Chip Was Potentially Finalised As Early As 2021
Queue the inevitable outdated hardware nonsense 🙄
Re: Metroid Prime Dev's Cancelled 3D Platformer 'Harmony' Streamed Online For More Than Four Hours
@Not_Soos
What difference does it make if a game features a man, woman, or anthropomorphic turnip (all of any colour), what matters is gameplay.
I honestly cannot conceive of avoiding a game because of the main character. Maybe I should avoid Sonic games because you don’t get blue hedgehogs in real life that can break the sound barrier. And don’t get me started on why a fat plumber can shoot fireballs because he eats a mushroom, talk about promoting the use of narcotic substances.
Should women in games just be resigned to a damsel in distress?
Would Metroid, Tomb Raider, Horizon, Control and countless others be better if the main character was a man? Would San Andreas, Prototype 2, Spider-Man Miles Morales be better if they had a white man running around under your control?
I’m sorry, but while I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I can’t help but disagree when that opinion appears to be ridiculous.
Re: Feature: "We’re Very Confident" - CD Projekt Red On Delivering The Full Cyberpunk 2077 Experience On Switch 2
@Zarraya
You’re bang on the money. The S2 CPU is slightly more than double the single core performance of the PS4, multi-core is significantly faster.
The GPU, if you care about TFLOPS which are far from a good way to assess the full capabilities of any GPU, but do at least give a baseline to compare show that in handheld the S2 is roughly on par with the PS4, when docked, it’s just a smidge less than PS4 Pro
But that’s just a raw compute, it’s not taking into account any of the more modern architectural elements of the chipset.
At the end of the day though, none of that really matters, what matters is what you see with your eyes and in that department, only the most jaded will proclaim disappointment with the S2.
One has to remember that this is first and foremost a handheld device, not a home console with a significantly higher power budget. The S2 will have a TDP of about 10W, and what it’s actually capable of doing within such a limited power draw is pretty incredible.
If the S2 could produce visuals which were ‘only’ on par with a base PS4, are there really people who would be disappointed with that for a handheld device?
I for one am most certainly not disappointed, and rest assured, claims of the S2 being around, or less capable than a base PS4 are woefully underestimating the capabilities of the S2.
Some of the launch window games, Cyberpunk included, are already impressive for a handheld console. But just wait until the second wave of games come along, in particular ones that are built from the ground up to take advantage of everything the S2 chipset has to offer, there’s going to be a few jaws hitting the floor.
Naturally, being a handheld, it has its limitations to conserve power. Lower memory bandwidth and the like, but these things can be compensated for. Consider this, the Switch 1 was in the ballpark of comparable to the PS3 and Xbox 360, and look at what miracles were achieved on that.
The Switch 2 is leapfrogging past the PS4 and into PS4 Pro territory, that’s a huge generational achievement for such a thermally limited device.
Then one has to consider just how amazing some games were on the PS4/PS4 Pro. Look at Infamous Second Son, Horizon, The Last of Us, God of War, Days Gone, Cyberpunk, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted 4, Spider-Man and god knows how many others.
Disappointed? Hell no, I’m looking forward to Switch 2 more than I did my PS5/PS5 Pro. And no, obviously I don’t mean on a power level, but simply on the good old fashioned concept of fun, enduring games. If they happen to look as good as, or better than the PS4 generation, well that’s just gravy for me, I care infinitely more about gameplay than I do shiny graphics……
….. And yeah, I’ve got my copy of Cyberpunk pre-ordered for S2 already, despite owning it on three other platforms already, I’m still nowhere near finished with it.
Re: Nintendo Defends Switch 2's Perceived Lack Of Innovation
I would have thought any reasonable person, who’s come to love the Switch and what it offers both in hardware, convenience, flexibility and vast range of excellent, exclusive software has a simple set of requirements for a successor; bigger screen, better JoyCons and more power.
It’s certainly what I’ve been wanting for the past few years, and from what I’ve seen they’ve hit my targets. Bigger screen? Check. Better JoyCons? Check (other than still no D-Pad or analog triggers, but I can forgive them there). More power? Definitely check. It’s 10 times more powerful than Switch 1 if you believe the marketing fluff but in reality it is easily that performant, its CPU has twice the single core performance than PS4 and considerably more in multi-core, faster internal and external storage, a GPU that while some may consider “already outdated” is actually quite the power house for the form factor and power envelope.
I was ridiculed months ago by revealing that the Switch 2 would be capable of 4K 60fps gaming, so feel free to ridicule me again when I tell you that the majority of the first batch of games are just scratching the surface of what this little beast is capable of. Even those that are already seemingly pushing the hardware aren’t taking full advantage of what it has to offer, particularly because most of them weren’t designed with the technology in mind. Watch this space, there’s better to come, we’re only just beginning.
Re: Nintendo Updates Its User Agreement To Crack Down On Emulation
Makes one wonder if there’s an exploit of some kind inherent to the hardware/software of the Switch 2 that they are already well aware of, but haven’t been able to completely expunge from the system for some reason.
Why wait until basically EOL for the Switch to make changes like this to the EULA and not back in the early days when people started exploiting them.
If the Switch 2 was securely locked down (though obviously no system is 100% unhackable, one just has to find it) then Nintendo would be confident enough in the security of the system.
Of course, it’s just as possible that they’re being overly cautious after the abundance of hacked Switch 1 systems. But still, I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a good reason they’ve changed the wording beyond just caution.
Re: Former Rockstar Dev Throws Shade At Mario Kart World, Says New GTA Will Be Worth The Price
“ No other game has the detail and the amount of realism that this does and will have when it’s released, so everybody complaining out there needs to just zip it, because whatever amount this game costs, $80 bucks or whatever, is going to be worth it”
To hear a developer saying something like this is appalling. I obviously don’t want them to suffer or be unemployed really, but if you think the main thing that’s important in a game, any game, is visual fidelity, then you’re in the wrong industry.
Gameplay first, everything else comes way down the list of priorities in what makes a game fun, isn’t that why we’re playing in the first place?
I like GTA, despite its atrocious mechanics at times, and yes, they can be visually appealing, no one could argue that there’s a significant amount time, effort and money going into them. But so are a lot of other games. I personally wouldn’t put it anywhere near my top 10 games that are just pure joy to play. And I certainly don’t go back to GTA time and time again to just enjoy playing it in the same way I have many other games for decades, Mario Kart included, but that’s just me.
Re: Final Fantasy VII 'Creator's Voice' Implies Rebirth May Also Come To Switch 2
@StewdaMegaManNerd
I think some people look at the numbers and think, oh ok, in portable the S2 has the same TFLOPs as a PS4 and when docked a bit less than a PS4 Pro.
TFLOPs however don’t tell the whole story, sure it’s not an irrelevant measurement of raw performance, but it does not take into account any differences in generational technology. It doesn’t for instance take into account DLSS in any way, nor does it account for improvements to compute shaders, or any other more modern aspects of the GPU.
Similarly, it doesn’t fully take into account memory bandwidth or other aspects that could go in the Switch 2’s favour, and indeed, count against it when there’s more limited bandwidth for certain tasks.
The best way to evaluate how good the system is? Forget the raw numbers, play the games, enjoy them and don’t get caught up in the, oh it’s not going to look as good as a PS5, or will it even be able to match a PS4 (it’s a lot better than a base PS4 for the record), will it be as good as a Steam Deck? The games are all that matters, and more importantly, the gameplay, if it looks great and runs at a good frame rate, all the better.
But let’s be honest, are any of us buying the S2 solely for third party games and shiny new graphics? Surely not? Those things are just gravy, very tasty gravy, but gravy nonetheless.
We’re buying it for the first party Nintendo games, because if we weren’t, well surely we’d be buying a PS5 or something else instead. And if 46 years of gaming on the vast majority of platforms ever released have taught me anything, you can guarantee most of the first party Nintendo games are going to make you very happy indeed…..
……. I’m sure I was going somewhere with this, clearly one should refrain from typing once one has had one’s morphine 🤣
Re: Talking Point: Will You Be Buying Any Game-Key Card Switch 2 Games?
@Smerd
As far as having a disc inserted on PS5/Series consoles, yes if you buy physical it doesn’t matter if the full game is on disc or not, the disc needs to be inserted whenever you want to play the game for ownership verification, but the game itself can only ever work from the internal storage.
The situation is much like in Switch 2, some discs are little more than a means to access a digital download, with no actual game data on the disc itself. While some others do actually contain a fully playable (if not up to date) version of the game on the disc. I actually know someone who doesn’t connect their PS5 to the internet and exclusively buys games that have the full data on disc. Even as someone who prefers physical media, even I wouldn’t go that far.
Whatever some consumers prefer in the form of physical media, myself included, is largely irrelevant at this point. The industry is heading toward an all digital future, that decision was made a long time ago and even at this point, worldwide physical sales are a tiny amount compared to digital.
Most publishers want an all digital future because it has less overheads and they can charge as little or as much as they like because they can opt to have no real competitors for selling. Some (not many) choose to pass on some of the savings to end users, while some still charge outrageous prices and create “special editions” that give you access to the game a couple of days early and a few cosmetic items for eye watering prices. Yes some AAA budgets are wildly out of control, but that’s another matter.
You’re right about the good old days, publishers and developers chose CD’s because they offered vastly expanded storage space at a fraction of the price of cartridges and really, who can blame them. In many ways digital distribution is the natural evolution of that, nobody has continued to develop a low cost, high capacity, infinitely faster physical media. So the obvious alternative is digital, the games run from internal storage, so there’s no concern for read speeds, the games themselves can be any size at all, there’s no limit beyond a users drive space, which they can expand as needed, and the overall costs are lower than producing physical media.
It’s an evolution, based on the same principles, of what we saw 30 years ago with the change to CD’s, the obvious difference being that we have no hard copy of our game data, so whether we can access them in 30 years time in the same way, well I wouldn’t like to put money on that, time will tell.
But one things for sure, unlike the tens of thousands I’ve invested in hardware and software over the past 45 years, I don’t expect the money I’m spending from here on out to be worth anything at all in 45 years time, it will have just vanished into the ether as servers are shut down, companies cease to exist and the ones who are left don’t see the financial sense in continuing to maintain access to 45 year old software that so few people still want access to.
And I don’t just mean actual monetary value, I have over 100 consoles and computers that I’ve accumulated over the past 45 years along with god knows how much software and accessories. I still play the vast majority of them when I get the chance, but I plan on passing them onto my son if he’s interested. Will that be possible with digital games? I honestly doubt it, especially as most of them are non-transferable.
Re: Talking Point: Will You Be Buying Any Game-Key Card Switch 2 Games?
@Smerd
The big difference there is that PS5 and Series consoles have to install the games to their internal storage simply because the read speed of a Blu Ray disc is far too slow to accommodate playing the game from disc,.
The Switch and more importantly for the subject at hand, Switch 2 don’t have that limitation. The read speed of data from the cartridge is at least as fast as that of the internal storage.
So there’s no technical reason or disadvantage to a game being put entirely onto a cartridge, assuming of course that the cartridge can actually accommodate the entirety of the data, not all games are going to be below 64GB.
Re: Talking Point: Will You Be Buying Any Game-Key Card Switch 2 Games?
Personally I won’t be buying Key Cart games, I don’t sell on my games, so there’s no incentive there for me to buy them. So far at least, it seems to be limited to third-party games, so chances are I’ll be buying the lions share of them on a different platform anyway.
I do prefer physical media, with actual game content on said media, and whenever that’s an option, that’s what I’ll continue to do.
But even I’ve accepted that digital distribution is where the industry is going to end up, I get the feeling this generation will be the last with physical media that’s not just a license on a disc/cartridge.
It’s annoying for someone who’s collected physical their entire life, but there’s no point fighting it, the market for physical media is a rounding error compared to digital sales now.
Younger generations who’ve grown up with digital distribution being the norm aren’t going to suddenly change tactics and start buying physical.
The argument that always seems to crop up whenever you try and say physical is better, is that it’s always been a licence to play the game you’ve purchased, nothing else. And I’ll grant you, that is technically true. But I’d like to see someone try and stop me playing my copy of SSX before it eventually rots away in a few decades time. I don’t have that kind of confidence in any digital purchases I’ve made.
Re: PSA: Redownloading Switch eShop Games Has Now Changed With Latest Update
They’re clearly cleaning up and improving things before the launch of the Switch 2, so that it has a better experience from the get go.
Slightly annoying that it’s taken them eight years and the impending launch of a new console to actually bother improving the user experience.
Re: Switch eShop Update Puts Less Focus On The Terrible 'eSlop'
Seems like a step in the right direction, but what I really want in any digital storefront is a comprehensive collection of filters and sorting tools. The last thing I want is for it to end up like the Apple AppStore, where you basically only get to see what’s been paid to be seen, or heavily curated to show only those that will make the storefront the most money.
Yes, it’s a business and all businesses exist to generate revenue, it’s their primary purpose. But if we can’t find the games we want, well you’re not getting my money.
Couldn’t tell you the last time I paid for software that’s featured on either Apple or Android, I have to specifically search and scroll through slop to find what I want every single time, and it has reduced my spending on those platforms significantly over the past 6 or 7 years.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
@mr12calvin
5 TFLOPs for Switch 2 would be awesome, sadly it’s nowhere near that in reality.
In docked mode, you’re looking at around 3.9 TFLOPs and about 1.7 TFLOPs in handheld mode.
Still not bad numbers for a mobile device, and then you’ve got more modern architectural changes over the OG Switch, faster storage, faster RAM. DLSS and so on.
At the end of the day though. FLOPs are a terrible way to actually compare what a system is fully capable of. Sure they’re a basic baseline but they don’t account for everything.
The best way to evaluate performance, if one cares so much about it, is to do real-world testing and side-by-side comparisons with other systems.
Or, y’know, we could just enjoy what’s there regardless, as many of us will, quite possibly yourself included. I mean, consider the resolution, frame rate, texture quality and all of the other shiny bells and whistles completely absent from Breath of the Wild. Did it ruin the 200 and odd hours I played the game for, hell no, once I got lost in the gameplay it all just melted away.
Super Mario Wonder may well be considered basic by many people, but I’ve finally just got around to completing it and I can say with confidence that for me, that was a beautiful game. It’s not always about the most powerful, graphically feature rich presentation. Art style, level design and direction play a big part in it for me at least.
That’s not to say I don't care for uber settings, full path ray tracing, particle effects up the wazoo and everything else, I enjoy it as much as anyone else, I just don’t care about that stuff anywhere near as much as I care about good gameplay.
Switch 2 should perform as well as, if not better than the PS4 in the actual images it puts on the screen. A couple of days ago I was playing the PS4 version of Days Gone on my PS5 Pro (I’ve not bothered upgrading to the PS5 “remaster” yet), and I actually forgot that I was playing a PS4 game for a while. That’s just one example of course, there are many beautiful PS4/Xbox One games. We’re going to be getting that in a handheld console. Are people really complaining that’s not enough? Not me, that sounds freaking awesome to me.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
@TheExile285
Yeah, it was inevitable, but c’mon, it’s half the fun in the run-up to a new console 🤣
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
@Toastmaster
Even at 800p, and most settings cranked down, I still don’t get a stable 60fps on my Legion Go. It can definitely hit 60 fps with the right settings, but I’ve personally never gotten it stable at that point.
For me the sweet spot is 40fps, it’s a better trade of between quality and performance. Would be even better if the bloody LGo had VRR.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
@N00BiSH
You can get between 30 - 45 fps on Steam Deck at 800p (native resolution), but you have to make some compromises with the level of detail, density, effects and so on, as you would expect.
Just as there will be compromises made for the S2 version.
I haven’t played it extensively on my Deck in quite a while, if I’m playing handheld Cyberpunk at the moment it’s either on my Legion Go, or PlayStation Portal (which doesn’t count), however I did fire it up to do an off the cuff comparison between it and the footage we’ve seen of the unfinished Switch 2 version and I have to say, as a platform agnostic player, I’d definitely give the edge to the Switch 2 at this point.
Obviously we’ll know more in a few weeks when we can do proper comparisons, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the game on S2.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
@WhiteUmbrella
Completely different architectures, it’s why, for instance, Apple’s M series chips can outperform X86 chips in the same class, while using significantly less power. Don’t get me wrong, X86 has been improving greatly in more recent chips when it comes to power per watt, but they’re still catching up to ARM.
There isn’t a massive Apple M series sized performance upgrade for Switch 2, obviously, and we know the general limitations of the Nvidia chipset already, but it is an impressive, significant jump over Switch 1 (he said stating the obvious). It also has an advantage of being a fixed platform with a lightweight, highly streamlined OS and SDK, and when software is properly optimised for the system, there is some surprising potential to be found in the chipset.
The main difficulty in that respect is porting a game originally designed for X86 across every platform it currently runs on, over to ARM64.
With time and a fair amount of work, amazing results can be achieved as we’ve seen from other platforms, but the best performance for Switch 2 is not surprisingly mainly going to come from games designed for the architecture from the ground up.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 On Switch 2 Is "Best Way" To Play Handheld Says CD Projekt Red
I’ve pre-ordered this, despite owning it already on PS5, XsX and PC (including my Steam Deck and Legion Go).
I wasn’t hugely impressed with it on my Steam Deck, it’s a good achievement getting it running on there, but you need to make a lot of compromises. It’s somewhat better on the Legion Go.
Obviously there’s going to be compromises for the Switch 2 version, we already know that, but the footage so far is looking pretty damn good for a mobile platform. I like flashy graphics as much as the next person, which is why I have a PS5 Pro and decent gaming laptop. But I’m not a graphics hoe the way some people are. I’m perfectly happy playing an ancient 8 bit game as much as the latest and greatest AAA.
I actually read an, I’m going to say article but that’s being generous, where the writer specifically stated he wouldn’t buy a Switch 2 because it’s basically not a PlayStation 5, and no, I’m not exaggerating.
Temper your expectations a little, considering the hardware and you’ll probably enjoy it regardless. Hell, as much as I’m not blown away by the performance of it on Steam Deck, I still enjoyed my time playing it there. So I have no doubt, based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, that I’ll enjoy it on Switch 2.
I’m still holding out hope that the S2 will do 40fps 120Hz VRR when docked. Sure they’ve removed mention of it from the website, but even HDMI 2.0 can manage that, so there’s a part of me hoping they’ve just removed mention of it to avoid another disclaimer explaining that it’s certain games, with compatible displays and yada yada yada. You never know with Nintendo really.
Re: Talking Point: Which Nintendo Series Are You Most Excited To See Return On Switch 2?
@Spider-Kev
Yeah I’ve got them both and I’ve already pre-ordered Fusion for Switch 2. They’re good games, the colour switching mechanic gets on my bloody nerves a bit, I’d love a mode where the boost pads are just normal boost pads, but considering the alternative, I put up with it.
Re: Talking Point: Which Nintendo Series Are You Most Excited To See Return On Switch 2?
@SpinEnDash
Amen to that, the water effects in 64 and Blue Storm were epic and those alone showed what the systems could be capable of. Throw in the weather effects and sublimely designed courses.
Yeah, long overdue. Nintendo, I don't give a damn if you can’t find anything new to push the series on, it doesn’t need it, just give us a new entry with stunning water, superb handling, weather conditions, day/night cycle and new tracks, I’ll throw money at you.
Re: Talking Point: Which Nintendo Series Are You Most Excited To See Return On Switch 2?
I’m with PJ, more or less, as a (very) old person I’d really love to see a new F-Zero game, it’s long, long overdue. Likewise Wave Race, I’d really like a new entry in that series, why it died with GameCube I’ll never know.
But there are loads of series I’d love to see return, a really good, new Star Fox wouldn’t hurt either, along with Kid Icarus, the exceptionality unlikely Eternal Darkness and all of the obvious ones.
However, I did vote for Zelda over F-Zero, purely because I’m really curious where they are going to take the series after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (which I haven’t played much and am now saving to play with my “free” upgrade on Switch 2.)
Re: Switch 2's Dock Isn't Compatible With The Original Switch, According To Nintendo
@nukatha
I suppose they are technically just faster Micro SD cards in a basic sense, but on a technical level they are very different.
Unlike any of the older SD/MicroSD cards they don’t use the same interface, instead they use PCIe, the same interface used for NVME drives such as you’d find in a PC, or PS5.
They maintain backwards compatibility with the older SD UHS interface because they have that interface built-in as well.
So when they’re inserted into a device, they will use one of the two available interfaces, based on the host devices capabilities. Which is why an older UHS Micro SD card cannot be used for data storage in the Switch 2, it’s designed to use PCIe as its storage type interface, with only basic backwards compatibility with UHS cards.
Re: Every Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Release
@PharoneTheGnome
Unfortunately the ship has sailed, the gaming industry is, and has been for years, pushing us towards digital distribution. Sadly, it has succeeded, it won’t be long before physical games are a complete thing of the past.
We will own nothing (ok technically even with games fully on either disc or cartridge we’re still actually just buying a license to use it, but there it’s extremely difficult to prevent you from doing so) and access to games can be revoked on the whim of the publisher and/or distributor.
In the UK last year, physical game sales amounted to around £70 million - a not insignificant sum at all, until you realise that is only 2.4% of all games sales. Clearly digital already accounts for almost the entire market and that’s a damn shame as far as I’m concerned.
Yes digital is extremely convenient, on a whim I can buy a game at 3 in the morning and be playing it 5 minutes later. But unlike the vast majority of systems and games I’ve owned in my life, I won’t necessarily be able to pass them on to my son or, god willing, grandchildren, because by that time the servers will probably be shut down and the games lost forever. The only retro gaming that will exist in the future will be things like NSO, a curated collection they want you to have access to… if we’re lucky.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
@Glasso
Directly to the process of software development in a vacuum, no, of course it doesn’t. In relation to selling products, which is what we were actually talking about to begin with, yes, it does, very much so and trust me, there’s not a publisher out there who doesn’t consider that factor when a product is being planned, so indirectly in relation to software development it does, generally in the form of budget allocation. Context is everything.
As for your limited description of economies of scale, that is one small part of a much, much larger picture. There are dozens of different aspects which affect economies of scale, it is not one simple rule, but the combination of many different factors. Which is why it takes so long to cover the subject for anyone studying business and logistics. The ultimate goals of any of these however is twofold, a reduction in cost of production and/or a lower end price to purchasers.
For example, if a company has efficient logistics in place and bulk buys products this results in their cost per unit decreasing, which subsequently gives them the ability to offer a lower price to the end user. Generally this equates to an increase in sales of the product over competitors selling at a higher price, or an increase in sales from the same company prior to stock obtained under different circumstances.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
@Glasso
Oh, I get it completely. But diseconomy of scale is not always the reason for higher prices in hardware, or software. Diseconomy of scale is, in essence, a result of poor management, it does not specifically apply to a company of any type increasing costs simply due to the complexity of production, cost of production, or size of workforce.
If you want to know if a company is really suffering from diseconomy of scale, take a look at their financial results. Do you think Apple, for instance, has such high prices due to diseconomy of scale? No, they do not, not when you look at their finances and see that they are making hundreds of billions of dollars in pure profit every year. Thats not a diseconomy of scale, their workforce is expanding, the cost of r&d is increasing, the cost of manufacturing is increasing, but crucially every aspect is extremely well managed. They are charging higher prices simply because they get away with it, people will pay the artificially inflated prices, and the more they do, the higher the prices will creep over the years.
The exact same is true for any company, whether they’re primarily consumer electronics, gaming, clothing, food, or anything else.
There are undoubtedly many companies, particularly in the gaming industry where diseconomy of scale is very applicable, and it’s not too difficult to spot the ones who suffer from it. But manufacturing/production costs, unit sales, and crucially, increased costs to the end user are not always as a result of diseconomy of scale, it’s simply because they can.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
@Glasso
Speaking as someone who’s been in the business for over a decade, economies of scale most definitely applies just as it does anywhere else. There’s a good reason that, for instance, sales of software on Steam, or console stores, generally have a large boost when they go on sale as compared to their normal listed price. That is the very definition of economies of scale, sell lower but sell more.
The same goes for online stores and brick and mortar stores, software on sale will generally sell significantly more in that period, compared to previous and succeeding weeks.
There are obvious exceptions to the rule, as there is with any rule, it is after all where the expression comes from. Games such as Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, Mario whatever, Zelda, GTA 3/4/5/6 and so on. These products will naturally sell, and sell well, right from the start purely because of their popularity and reputation that has been built over many generations.
People will take a chance on new games simply because almost every other entry in the series has been good, that’s where the exception comes in. The games can be priced higher and people will still buy them.
Don’t get me wrong, development costs are rising industry-wide, as we all know. Particularly with the larger companies, with some games in development for significantly longer than they were in previous generations, they keep getting bigger, the assets have to be of a much higher quality, the game engines are more complex to develop (when you’re not using Unity, Unreal or several others), in fact every aspect for these companies is getting more expensive. The budgets for some games are truly staggering, to the point where many of us are of the opinion that we need to take a step back and evaluate where the real value lies, because it’s simply not feasible to keep the budgets expanding as they have been. It’s rather obviously why so many tens of thousands of people in the industry have lost their jobs over the past few years, the bean counters aren’t seeing the sort of roi that they would like to and in their view the easiest way to get profits back on track is to trim the fat.
I tend to disagree with that to a point, in my opinion the best way to get the best roi from your software is to ensure you’re investing your money wisely and making games of a very high quality. By which I don’t necessarily mean make a game that looks better than anything else, no, gameplay is first and foremost the aspect to concentrate your resources on. By all means make a beautiful game, but I’d rather spend my time playing Breath of the Wild (beautiful in its own way) than something like Suicide Squad.
Nintendo are one of the very, very few who have actually bucked that trend, not resorted to laying of staff and shuttering studios. Instead, they have continued to invest, expand their teams and concentrate on just making quality content. In that aspect I respect them and hope they will be able to continue that trend into the next generation of hardware and software. But I digress.
Re: Switch 2 Launch Day Delivery "Not Guaranteed" From Nintendo In The US
@TwinFami
I’m hopeful that it will, I have the N64, SNES and MegaDrive pads from Nintendo and those work fine with my BlueRetro and 8BitDo adapters/boards. So as the new GameCube one will operate over Bluetooth, it should be fine. Worst case scenario, we’ll need a firmware update, but I don’t think we will.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Confirmed As The First Switch 2 Title To Use Nvidia's DLSS Upscaling
@JaxonH
I’m somewhere in-between, I’ve got a 3060 in my gaming PC and there are times when I enable some of the DLSS features in games and really enjoy the experience, without noticing any major side effects.
But there are times when I really notice flaws such as flickering and corruption, for want of a better word, especially with shadows.
Having said that, I’m fairly confident that the implementation with the Switch 2 will be more performant than I often see on PC, simply due to the locked down nature of the platform.
When you’re dealing with a fixed platform, it’s a lot different to dealing with PCs where you have to try and take into account the thousands of possible variables in hardware configuration and performance. It’s significantly more efficient to get right down to the bare metal on a fixed configuration that won’t ever change in any meaningful way that will impact the chipset.
So I have high hopes that between Nvidia and Nintendo, they’ll have optimised the butt out of the implementation of DLSS on Switch.
Time will tell, while I have no doubt we’re going to be impressed by some of the launch window software, I think a year or two down the road, when we’ve all got more used to the SDK and how best to optimise our software for it, then we’re really going to see what T239 is truly capable of.
Re: Switch 2 Launch Day Delivery "Not Guaranteed" From Nintendo In The US
@Peach64
Yeah I think that’s part of the problem with some people unfortunately. I didn’t bother waiting to see if I got an invite from Ninty (which I haven’t so far) and just pre-ordered from Argos, they’ve been reliable in the past so I’m happy enough to stick with them.
I did order the GameCube controller from Nintendo when it went on general sale, got to have that one, I’m actually wanting it more for my actual GameCube with a Bluetooth controller adapter from 8BitDo than I am for the Switch 2, though I will use it on that as well.
Yet to decide who I’m going to order the pro controller from, there’s a few reliable places still with stock.
Re: Switch 2 Launch Day Delivery "Not Guaranteed" From Nintendo In The US
@SwitchplayerJohn
The “lower the price” crowd tends to be a very vocal minority of the actual market size. Not to mention that it always tends to be significantly overblown on the various forums and social media platforms, the vast majority of people who will be buying the Switch 2 are likely completely unaware that the people making noise about the price even exist, let alone hear what they are saying.
Re: Hori's New Switch 2 Camera Is Built For Handheld Play
@canaryfarmer
I’m with you there. I mean, I can totally understand the social aspect of it, and between games I don’t have a problem with video chatting with people. But I just think having a few video streams going, during actual gameplay would be a distraction.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
@nkarafo
You get used to it, but I do agree to some extent, even though I’ve played a lot of Fast RMX on Switch, I have often thought that I would enjoy the game significantly more if I didn’t have to keep changing between the two colours.
I honestly think the Fast games are good enough to hold up on their own without that switching mechanic in the game, but because it’s inherent to the history of the series, I don’t see them changing it.
Though I’d love for them to put in a mode where it’s just straightforward boost pads and orbs, with the switching mechanic, I think I’d play that a whole lot more.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
@karatekid1612
Economies of scale, one of the first lessons you learn from either running a business, or studying for it. Unfortunately it’s a concept that’s increasingly becoming lost on many businesses these days, and why? Because time and time again people have proven they’re willing to pay well above the odds for almost any product.
I had a few computer shops when I was a teenager and I always priced fairly and usually below my competitors, a tactic that paid dividends. But in the days of £2000 smartphones, £7000 laptops, £400 jeans and the rest of the artificially inflated prices because companies know they can get away with it, nothing will change for the better.
It will take a major market crash, or millions of people voting with their wallets (not going to happen), for a return to a stable, sensible markup on products.
Do people seriously think that, for instance 1. 128GB of memory on a MacBook Pro really costs anywhere near the £1000 it costs to upgrade to it, or 2. That £1000 for 128GB of memory is good enough value to justify paying it?
There’s always been an “Apple Tax” but in recent years it seems to have become significantly worse and sadly, instead of fighting against it, the rest of the industries are following along and increasing their prices. Not because the BOM and associated costs are increasing at the same rate, no, it’s simply because they know they can get away with it and generate hundreds of billions of dollars more in revenue.
And why shouldn’t they? They’re all businesses, they all have varying costs, from R&D, salaries and everything else, they have investors to satisfy and every business exists to make money.
But people have been conditioned to believe over the past couple of decades that there’s somehow an inherent value in these “premium” products and that the vastly increased cost is worth paying, when in reality the only legitimate added value is in increasing the profits of the multinational corporations behind them.
Re: Fast Fusion Price On Switch 2 Puts Welcome Tour To Shame
I’ve actually been re-playing Fast RMX on Switch for the past week while, awesome game even if I suck the donkeys at the harder levels 🤣
I’m surprised Fusion is so cheap to be honest, I’m sure they’d have gotten away with a higher price, but good on them.
Already pre-ordered it and using up my gold points means I’m getting it at half price as well, serious bargain. Although it would be at a higher price as well, the game is looking great from the little I’ve seen of it, and I’m sure it will provide me with months of frustrating, fun, getting my butt handed to me gameplay.