Nintendo Switch

defaultluser said:
The latest PX2 doesn't use 5 cores, it used 6:

2 Denver v2 corers

4 A57 cores.

Nvidia Parker SoC features 256-core Pascal GPU - CPU - News - HEXUS.net

None of these are "low-power," but can be clocked pretty low. I'd imagine the battery life will be pretty low, because running games like Skyrim at 720p eats a lot of power :)

But it could definitely be faster when docked. The whole purpose of that dock is to provide power, and to keep it vertical (best heat dissipation). Imagine if your cell phone stayed in turbo mode CONSTANTLY; that's what they're trying to do here.
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The older tegra had 4+1 but regardless my point was undocked has a lower power operation mode say it turns off 2 of 6 cores and limits the clock speed to 80% better battery life lower performance docked full power available.
 
Another flop for Nintendo. I got a great deal on a Wii u bundle a while ago and I'll just keep it til it dies. All we use it for is Mario kart and the dance games for the kids.

I wish they would sell the licensing for their exclusives to Microsoft or Sony. I wont get duped into buying another Nintendo console
 
If you take it as a home console, and compare to PS or Xbox, then it doesn't look that impressive.

However, if you take it as a new portable game system, with console level graphics and controls, then it's a pretty big deal.
 
I'm concerned, it's basically a tablet, tablets have come quite a ways, but how much GPU power can you get out of something this small without it burning up?
 
I think this is a win for me...

If its somehow backwards compatible with the 3ds, and if the base unit somewhere, somehow has a disc drive, which would be amazing (Wii-U and Wii backwards compat) than this is a total winner. Even if its just 3DS back-compat than I think that is a win too.
 
Nintendo already confirmed no physical backwards compatibility with WiiU or 3DS. But I guess that leaves digital as an option maybe.
 
Check this out, behind the scenes interview with guy in NS reveal trailer:

 
The one thing I think is cool is it will be one of the first consoles to use the latest technology for its hardware. I realize this is a tablet and not as fast as the latest desktop/laptop power, but it will be the fastest SOC available when it is built. If you think about the X1 or PS4, the hardware that was thrown into those when released were already a few years old. Here, we will be seeing Nvidia's latest SOC which I think is pretty neat. I am excited yet trying to be realistic with my expectations.
 
Looks like you will have to buy the Pro type controller if you want a decent D-Pad. I know Nintendo made them individual buttons on the Joy Con due to co-op with one system but...I'd rather just have a good D-Pad.
 
Bman123 said:
Another flop for Nintendo. I got a great deal on a Wii u bundle a while ago and I'll just keep it til it dies. All we use it for is Mario kart and the dance games for the kids.

I wish they would sell the licensing for their exclusives to Microsoft or Sony. I wont get duped into buying another Nintendo console
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Just because you say its a flop doesn't make it one. That's your opinion. This is one Nintendo product im excited for in a long time and both my kids saw the video and want it as well.
 
The more I think about the system the more I suppose its fate will be just like Nintendo's last 3 systems: "Will 3rd parties actually support it?"
Unless the answer is a resounding "yes" (and not just half-assed), it's probably going to be just another system with a dozen great 1st party games and little else. I'm not even sure the hardware and features will really matter to me. Nintendo does tend to favor 60fps more than the others, so I'll be happy with the quality I'm sure. It's just a matter of whether this is yet another Nintendo system I end up with for like 5 games.
 
First, it already looks like it will have decent 3rd party support out of the gate. It could definitely be better, but they've got some decent names on the list already, and quite a few non-game partners. Second, personally I couldn't give much less fucks about 3rd parties on a Nintendo system. Almost NOBODY buys just a Nintendo system, and doesn't own a PC, XB or PS as well. Nintendo is the perfect supplement to any of the other game options out there. The reason I think most people buy a Nintendo is to get their games. I mean really, who wants to buy Nintendo, and then just play Call of Assassins on it?!?!? Buy each system for what it's good at. Now, if most people just bought one system, and only gamed on that, that would be one thing. The reality is, people buy more than one thing if they're able. People own previous gen consoles, people own a PS4+XBOne, people own a Wii U and a PC, people own a 3DS+WiiU+PC+PS4. So, then buy the games that each one plays the best, and enjoy them all. That's not even to mention that this is the first handheld that has this kind of power. I can guarantee it's going to have better support than the Vita for example. So it already pretty much dominates the high-end portable market. The 3DSes will probably start falling in price, and become the budget portable option. The fact that it's probably more powerful than the PS4 and XBOne (assuming Pascal Tegra) doesn't hurt either. The reason for less 3rd Party support for the WiiU is that devs viewed it as inferior to the other consoles of the gen, and the odd-man out processor/chipset/architecture-wise. (not to mention Nintendo just not doing enough to get them onboard) They've already acknowledged that though multiple times, and have stated how much effort they're putting into getting more devs on board this time. We've even heard some excitement out of some of the larger AAA devs already. Why would they even bother talking about it at all if they had no intention of supporting it. IMO it's quite short-sighted to call it a failure before anyone has even seen what it can do properly, before final specs are released, until we see what all the launch titles are, etc.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Gamecube and up, definitely. They lost those due to less horsepower and went to gimmicks.
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Gamecube was actually the most powerful console of its generation in terms of combined processing power (11 GFLOP/s [Gamecube] vs. 7 GFLOP/s [Xbox] vs. 6 GFLOP/s [PS2]).
 
Armenius said:
Gamecube was actually the most powerful console of its generation in terms of combined processing power (11 GFLOP/s [Gamecube] vs. 7 GFLOP/s [Xbox] vs. 6 GFLOP/s [PS2]).
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I agree. Between my roommates and I, we had all three consoles (not to mention about 10 PCs) in the house during that generation. It was very apparent in most games that the GC looked the best. There were definitely games on each system that outshined others on the other systems, but in a general sense the GC tended to have higher framerates, or at least more consistent, and typically looked smoother. The XBox occasionally had games that looked spectacular for the time though as well. Both almost always looked better than the PS2. That didn't keep the PS2 from selling more though. I generally don't only take sales number into consideration when judging how successful a console was though. I typically decide that by how much actual fun I had with it. I easily had the most fun on the GC with that gen, followed fairly closely by the XBox. (discounting of course the constant Quake 3 Arena matches happening in the house :D )
 
I wouldn't be surprised given this is going to be a lower powered portable console that a lot of the thirdparty support ends up being last gen ports selling under the premise of the games now being portable.

I would hope they manage third part support better then gamecube, it may have been a powerful console but they fucked up thirdparty support out of the gate with that system too. A Dolphin’s Tale: The Story of GameCube
 
With no third party support we're going to be stuck with another round of Mario Kart, Zelda, Smash, and (if we're lucky) Metroid. I'm over dropping $300 for the privilege of playing the Nintendo franchises. Especially when they're usually on under powered (or at least "nuanced") hardware. After the Wii's end-of-life woes and the WiiU's troubles I'm clearly not alone. For long-term success Nintendo is going to have to have 3rd party support. The list of devs doesn't look that different from the list of devs who were behind their previous efforts. They need to come through with more than just 1-2 ports of older games this time. At the very least, if they can't then this thing needs to be cheap.
 
Between Nintendo and Platinum, (depending on what Platinum releases) that'll be 75% of what I'm looking forward to with this system. If they surprise me with some really good games, and not just ports of junk from the other consoles, I'll be a very happy person. Bethesda should be a pretty cool addition for a lot of people. I'd love to see Sega put out a new Jet Set Radio game on the Switch. Maybe with co-op? ATLUS will of course do something interesting I would think. Capcom could be interesting depending... That's a lot of potential right there, and the system power shouldn't prevent them from doing anything they want to do.

If we get some older games thrown in, say Bethesda puts Skyrim, Doom, and Fallout 4 on it, (hopefully something new too) but let's just say they port over some of their big older games like these, where else are you going to play these while you're out of the house? You'd need a pretty beefy laptop to do that otherwise.

I'm speculating here, but I don't think anything I've mentioned is terribly unreasonable.

If platinum does a Bayonetta game, and puts out the new NIER game on this, that's a big reason for me to buy right there, not to mention I personally don't get tired of playing new 1st party Nintendo releases. I'd buy this thing JUST for the new Zelda, and I already have a WiiU.

I could say the same thing about paying for the "privilege" of playing the 90th iteration of "insert "AAA" game here" on the other consoles. Or you know, I could just play on a PC and Nintendo, and experience everything I want. You're not wrong about the Nintendo games IF you don't like Nintendo games. Not knocking your taste if that's the case. It's just that for me, it's the opposite.
 
Armenius said:
Gamecube was actually the most powerful console of its generation in terms of combined processing power (11 GFLOP/s [Gamecube] vs. 7 GFLOP/s [Xbox] vs. 6 GFLOP/s [PS2]).
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No, it didn't.

The Xbox and Gamecube were roughly identical in specs:

Gamecube: 11 Gflops combined between CPU and GPU. CPU is responsible for 1.9 of those, 2 multiply accumulates per-clock.
xbox: 733mhz pIII with SSE = 4 32-bit flops/clock just like the Gamecube, but clocked 50% faster, so 2.9 GFLOPS/s
NV2A GPU: 7.3 GFLOPs:

List of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia

Combined = 10.2 GFLOPS/s, which is under ten percent difference.

They were identical in specs., the only reason the games looked worse is because it had 2/3 the memory of the Xbox. You can only do so much texturing and effects on-screen with 48MB combined.
 
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I'm not sure why Switch wouldn't have backwards compatibility with the 3DS. They're both ARM-based after all.
 
Stev3FrencH said:
Virtual Console....
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Doubtful, IMO.

Nintendo is trying to market this as a home console you can take anywhere. There is no stylus, second screen, nor 3D incorporated into the Switch as far as we know.
Could they do it? Sure, but I don't think Nintendo will from a business and quality standpoint. Not when the 3DS console and software is still selling strong.
 
jamsomito said:
I really wonder how Nintendo is going to handle downloadable games now that they switched back to physical cartridges. If everything is on cartridges they don't need any internal storage, but that would be silly in todays word. Though, if they put everything online, why have cartridges at all? Just curious to see how that plays out.
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Switched BACK to physical cartridges? Nintendo has always used physical cartridges for one thing or another so this is nothing new. Also, I am almost positive that there are two likely scenarios; one is that there is expandable memory and/or there are different HD sizes like the Wii U where there was a 32GB version and a lower memory version. Also since it is a mobile device as well as home it'll likely support external hard drives when it is at home and have a robust online store for downloading games on the go.
 
Not really feeling the 'projection' patent - that screams 'gimmick'.

I'm hoping the surprises are easy internal storage upgrades (I want to be able to have most of my library saved to my console - oh, and a Xbox/PS-esque account system for these saved games), and a low price tag.
 
Domingo said:
I'm hoping that I'll be able to play my current digitally downloaded WiiU games.
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That would be great. Or at least cross licenses for all first party games or something like that. I'd also like to be able to play the new Zelda on both. They said it would be identical on both devices a while back.
 
I'm not expecting backward compatibility, but it would be nice. At this stage I can emulate my GC and Wii games via Dolphin so I'll just need some (convenient) way to play MK8 and Smash WiiU. I downloaded both from the Nintendo store for the sake of convenience so hopefully that will be to my advantage.
 
SeymourGore said:
Not really feeling the 'projection' patent - that screams 'gimmick'.

I'm hoping the surprises are easy internal storage upgrades (I want to be able to have most of my library saved to my console - oh, and a Xbox/PS-esque account system for these saved games), and a low price tag.
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I really can't see them going backwards in regards to storage. All 3DS (and even DSi) support SD. The Wii and Wii U support SD for game data and other saved information. I'm guessing the cartridges are some form of SD-type memory as well. The New3DS hides the SD slot under the bottom cover, so even if we don't immediately see a slot on this device, I bet it has one. They're pretty smart, and even though they like to incorporate gimmickry into their products, they don't typically move backwards once they establish something. I ONLY buy my games digitally, and I know many other people do too, so gimping the local storage would be a horrible idea for them.
 
Domingo said:
I'm not expecting backward compatibility, but it would be nice. At this stage I can emulate my GC and Wii games via Dolphin so I'll just need some (convenient) way to play MK8 and Smash WiiU. I downloaded both from the Nintendo store for the sake of convenience so hopefully that will be to my advantage.
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I'm sure they'll have plenty of stuff in Virtual Console. Probably not Wii U. It's more than powerful enough to emulate GC/Wii. Possibly Wii U, but who knows. I've got a Shield TV, and it runs a lot of PC game ports very well, and that's just a Maxwell Tegra. I've been thoroughly impressed by its performance for what it is, and it would seem that the Switch will be a lot more powerful still. Maybe they can do a high-level wrapper for Wii U games, or maybe they just plan to port and cross-license. It will be interesting to see what they do though either way.
 
zamardii12 said:
Switched BACK to physical cartridges? Nintendo has always used physical cartridges for one thing or another so this is nothing new. Also, I am almost positive that there are two likely scenarios; one is that there is expandable memory and/or there are different HD sizes like the Wii U where there was a 32GB version and a lower memory version. Also since it is a mobile device as well as home it'll likely support external hard drives when it is at home and have a robust online store for downloading games on the go.
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Yes, switched back - on their home consoles. They've been using optical media for 3 generations now. I get it - handhelds have always used cartridges - but they're a different beast. Although I see your point with this being kind of a hybrid.
 
jamsomito said:
Yes, switched back - on their home consoles. They've been using optical media for 3 generations now. I get it - handhelds have always used cartridges - but they're a different beast. Although I see your point with this being kind of a hybrid.
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Well, for the last two generations you could also download digitally. The fact that memory is cheap and huge now, not to mention a million times more reliable really makes it the best option IMO. (aside from digital downloads of course)
 
I dunno. Seems like another gimmicky thing to me. Disinterested. Especially the mobile aspect. Now if they get 3rd party games going (same old old wish), maybe ill be tempted. I would like to see them do something other than Mario, Zelda etc. I get it. They are great, traditional IP and solid games, but some new creativity in that department would be welcome instead of fads.
 
How is it gimmicky to have a portable that's more powerful than all the base-level current gen consoles that can also be docked to play on a TV? Its performance will be competitive to everything you'd play on a TV (minus PS 4 Pro and Scorpio) and then you can take it with you, customize the controls in a million ways to suit the game you're playing, plus have standard gamepads? If anything it seems pretty ideal. The software side is debatable. I see your point, and even agree that some new IP is basically mandatory at this point. On the other side though I love the classic IP and will buy and enjoy anything they make there too.

There are HUGE portable markets, and HUGE home console markets. What exactly is wrong with having one device that does both well? It's like saying you don't want a smart-phone because you already have a phone and a Palm Pilot. :D If it wasn't competitive as a portable, or a console, or both, then ok, I'm with you. However, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that it will do both, and do both well.
 
J3RK said:
Well, for the last two generations you could also download digitally. The fact that memory is cheap and huge now, not to mention a million times more reliable really makes it the best option IMO. (aside from digital downloads of course)
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Yeah, agreed.
 
NES really popular
SNES really popular
Nintendo 64 popular
Game Cube sorta popular
Nintendo Wii really popular
Wii U not really popular
Nintendo Switch ???????

Consoles have run their time people still buy them but the people who buy them don't know how to run games on a PC or Steam Box. So consoles remain....let alone develop games that are innovative and fun on limited hardware. I just see a downward spiral the PS4 is probably the last console I'll even get in my life I even told the Gamestop kid that. Who said he will game into his 80s.....

Nintendo games used to be really easy to make back in the 80s there were tons of them now they are lengthy gamble.

What I seen with the Pokemon GO phenomenon that is all it takes to be successful is be innovative yet fun.
 
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J3RK said:
How is it gimmicky to have a portable that's more powerful than all the base-level current gen consoles that can also be docked to play on a TV? Its performance will be competitive to everything you'd play on a TV (minus PS 4 Pro and Scorpio) and then you can take it with you, customize the controls in a million ways to suit the game you're playing, plus have standard gamepads? If anything it seems pretty ideal. The software side is debatable. I see your point, and even agree that some new IP is basically mandatory at this point. On the other side though I love the classic IP and will buy and enjoy anything they make there too.

There are HUGE portable markets, and HUGE home console markets. What exactly is wrong with having one device that does both well? It's like saying you don't want a smart-phone because you already have a phone and a Palm Pilot. :D If it wasn't competitive as a portable, or a console, or both, then ok, I'm with you. However, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that it will do both, and do both well.
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Its a gimmick to me if the software doesn't back up the hardware a la Wii U, Kinect, PS Move controllers - to me, it was just a platform for regurgitated software with slightly different controls added on. 1st party at that. All promise, poor universal execution.

And as far as the Tegra x1, unless its heavily modified, I doubt it will approach Xbone and PS4 in terms of raw horse power - but that isn't the important part, its the software that I have issue with.
 
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