rjc-32

I’d double dip on the Switch Lite for the D-Pad and more comfortable handheld experience, unfortunately the fact that Nintendo won’t allow the same account across multiple devices is preventing me doing so. Shame because this looks very nice indeed.

I would say a lower priced kid friendly model is definitely coming soon, primarily due to Pokemon’s imminent release. Even without all the accessory leaks it’s easy to see why they’d release it this year.

@AndreaF96 I would imagine time constraints in regards to development are their reasons why. I'm sure the full line-up will be available on Switch in the future, what with inevitable gen 4 remakes and all. It will probably be gen 9 where everything is available, as a rough guess.

@AndreaF96 Well not really, given the fact that over 800 Pokemon could theoretically be copied over from the bank. This would only leave the 50-100 new Pokemon to catch, significantly less effort. Besides, I play Pokemon purely as a collectathon, I think I'd rather leave everything I've caught before on the 3DS carts and start afresh. I can see why players that battle/breed may be aggreived at this decision though.

Good decision in my opinion, will feel like a fresh new game, can actually work to complete as opposed to simply moving across via Pokemon Bank.

Dpad looks too far to the right

@smashboy2000 The Wii U had a better GPU than PS3/360 but was categorically inferior when it came to the CPU and memory configuration, particularly memory bandwidth which was less than half the competition at 12 GB/s. Classic case of system imbalance, pointless drawing frames if the CPU is too slow to process the instructions. Like pairing a 2080 ti with a budget i3.

@OorWullie

Are you based in Bangkok? Have you tried Mega Plaza?

How does it feel in portable mode without a d-pad? I got the PS4 version due to this reason, and just beat the game and all the blue spheres stages, can't imagine doing that on switch with the 4 buttons.... was fairly tough with a d-pad! Nintendo needs to release an alternative joycon with a d-pad...

Game is incredible, especially if you played S3&K as much as I did back in the 90's.... Why Sega couldn't have released this as Sonic 4 when they did is anyone's guess. Feels like my birthday in 1994 when I got Sonic and Knuckles, epic game

I wonder how it's going to work once all of Gen 2 are released into the wild... it's going to make catching the few gen 1 pokemon I need tougher as there will be less chance of a spawn... maybe they could introduce special incence that only make Gen 1 pokemon appear for 30 mins, same could be made for gen 2, have generation specific incenses

Nvidia are the market leaders when it comes to graphics R&D, I've every confidence they can create something special.

A large proportion of the people commenting here seem very obsessive towards "paper specs", however they fail to look at the bigger picture. One example you can look at is how iPhones have been of notably lower specs compared to their android counterparts, yet have managed to match or exceed their higher powered rivals thanks to good SoC engineering and software optimisation.

Really, if people are really bothered about raw specs, why not just make the transition to PC gaming. Then you can just chuck in 128GB of Dominator Platinum, although you'd see little to no increase in gaming performance....

People also seem to be commenting on the carts/SD cards providing additional memory, this does not work. It will create massive bottlenecks as the bus transmission speeds will be far too slow demanding graphics applications. You only need to look at the GTX 970 0.5GB "slower pool" fiasco to realise this; memory card bandwidth would be even slower.

The switch will probably be a 1080p, med/high setting system, it's not like you will be needing to load 4k textures into RAM, so there's no point in having overkill amounts in the system.

@j-life Yep, 4GB, along with clever optimisation and memory management, will be plenty for a Tegra "mobile SoC"

@Kirk Some of the points you are trying to make are rather baffling.

"These games are basically free for Nintendo to include at this point, regardless of how many it adds. It could technically include the entire NES library on a tiny bit of internal storage, with almost zero hassle, if it really wanted to."

Nintendo are ultimately a business. They are a business who create IPs to sell to the public at a profit, why should they essentially distribute these IPs free of charge (as good as in your eyes) when they can generate revenue from them? Do the creators not deserve to make money from their works? Nintendo also float on the stock market, they have shareholders who (rightfully) demand a return on their investment. How do you think these shareholders would feel if the company was throwing away potential income by severely undervaluing products?

Here's a hypothetical scenario: Say you (as in yourself) started a web design business, and after a decade or so this business becomes very successful. You have amassed a number of digital designs and templates for sites that you can continue to tender to potential customers to generate income.

How would you feel if a potential customer said to you:

"You've been developing websites for 10 years, and you have the framework for my site more or less archived. Why shouldn't I be charged 90% less than the price you've quoted?"

Would you substantially undervalue your works because they are old, potentially losing you important income? Income you could use to further develop new concepts and ideas? I'd hazard a guess that you wouldn't, because this would be unsustainable business practice.

Nintendo aren't screwing people over, they are operating as any business would, operating to generate revenue and make profit.

And no, I'm not sucking up to Nintendo, my points are applicable to any large company. Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Sony....

It's business. And there is one key objective in business, and that's to make money.

I definitely wouldn't preorder a device like this without knowing what the input lag and overall emulation is like. Those multi game Mega Drive units were terrible, and a lot of VC games have noticeably laggy controls. As pretty much all games included are side scrollers, this is kind of a big deal....

Xmas 97 memories! That Peach Slide level music!! I recently got an NTSC RGB modded N64 console and picked up the Japanese Shindou edition of Mario 64. The Rumble Pak support is great, and I also have a Hori 64 mini pad with a modern analog stick, playing this on a CRT is the absolute best experience I've had with this game, sharp graphics and perfect controller response times! I found the VC re-releases poor, lots of controller lag, and the UK Wii edition was the terrible PAL version!

In my opinion it doesn't matter when they release NX, if they want it to be a mass market commercial success then they need the full support of EA and Activision (amongst other third parties, but these two are key)

Nintendo hit the big time with the Wii, but ultimately it was a global craze, and global crazes come and go (how many Wii consoles sold have probably seen <6 months usage???)

Casual gamers have moved to mobile. Sports games (EA) and Call of Duty drive console sales amongst a massive proportion of gamers, without these games the NX is highly likely to become a business failure.
I understand there are lots of gamers that never play these titles (I like sport but hate sports games, and play COD single player only), but there are far more around the world that play these types of games. Also the online infrastructure needs improving, this is a core part of gaming these days, and Nintendo is way behind the times, particularly with their draconian store account policies.

I also hope they will use the x86 architecture in the NX, the power is less significant than the architecture used in my opinion, but using the same architecture as the rest of the industry is key. Third party developers will not waste large amounts of their budgets porting games primarily developed with x86 (PS4/XBO/PC) to another system with a different architecture. It just won't happen, re-coding on that scale would not be financially viable.

I want Nintendo to succeed, their games are iconic, and as much of a business failure the Wii U was, it's definitely one of my favourite consoles in relation to the first party games they've released for it. I've played Nintendo games since 1989 when I first got a NES, I wouldn't like to see them suffer the same fate as SEGA.

With the NX they have to appeal to the mass market, as well as the "hardcore" gamers. I really hope they had both their creative heads, and their business heads on during development of the system.

Well the term "better" could be seen as subjective. Hooking up to an LCD using component will produce a progressive image, which is far smoother than interlaced video. However, graphical imperfections will become more visible (aliasing, jaggies etc). CRT displays blur these imperfections and create a "smoother" looking image (aliasing will be less aparrant for example), however with RGB SCART the picture will be interlaced and frames will not appear as clearly as they would if it was progressive.

I'd take smoother framerates over image quality any day, but that's just me.

You also need to consider that LCD screens are fixed pixel, so every input is up scaled by the display to match the native resolution of the screen, this can lead to a blurry image if the input is of a lower resolution than the display itself.

The ultimate solution would be to hunt down a 4:3 CRT that supports progressive scan and has component inputs, but they are few and far between.