Happy to see that Nintendo is treating the switch more like how they traditionally handled their mobile platforms instead of their consoles.
Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.
I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much. The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom). So as long as it is actually a decent spec bump I am happy and have zero care to compare it to the other consoles (but I am sure people are going too and scream that it is "underpowered").
The biggest thing I am curious about, will it be OLED since that will be disappointing to go back to non OLED from the OLED Switch. And Price.
They’ve got the weird shit covered still, apparently the joy cons in this gen can be used as mice.
Was heavily rumoured/leaked and this teaser video literally shows them gliding along a surface.
How Nintendo will leverage that functionality, who could honestly say, but that’s the genius of keeping a toy company mindset in an industry full of sports car company mindsets.
That last sentence is worth an essay of its own. Everyone else keeps pumping resources into being photo-realistic blah-blah-blah without nearly enough attention to "is this fun"?
One of my favorite video essay's on this is "Nintendo - Putting Play First" by Game Makers Toolkit [1]. It goes into when making a game, Nintendo first determines the mechanic they want to focus on; jumping, throwing a hat, shooting paint, etc and finding out how to make it fun, then building and iterating on the idea.
It's how they can keep putting out essentially the same games but are completely different.
I can't tell you how much respect I have for this mindset. Like them burning a heap of money on Metroid Prime 4, for years, and then coming out with an announcement along the lines of "sorry guys, this sucks, so we've chucked it out and started again because we only do things right, see you in another 3-4 years when it's ready."
It pays dividends, because they just don't ship junk, so everything they DO ship sells extremely well.
GMTK is popular, but he's mostly talking out of his ass. He's got zero industry experience and most gamedevs I know personally clown on his takes constantly. Unless he references specific Nintendo interviews where they talk about their design process, I have doubts about this video containing an accurate description of how Nintendo does things.
At least in this video, all the interviews and documents that they base their claims/opinions on are listed in the description, so you can easily also peruse them if you doubt the interpretation.
I've seem some of his videos, but I'm not that familiar with GMTK. But they did release a game, and it was by all accounts "Very positive" /pretty good.
This always made sense to me. Think of Super Mario Bros. No way you come up with something like that from a top-down design document. Probably slapped Mario on a screen, played with the physics a bunch, and threw a lot of different stuff at the wall to see what stuck before they came up with the final product.
Not sure about the original game but at least since the 3d age, Miyamoto is on record, saying that when making a new Mario game, one of the first steps is that is just fun to goof around with Mario alone in an empty flat void and mess with whatever new abilities they are thinking of giving him.
I saw an interesting analysis years ago about whether or not the most powerful console 'won' in each generation (i.e. whether or not being the most powerful console of your generation leads to success).
Generally speaking, no, it doesn't actually affect things, and in several cases (e.g. the Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch come to mind) the objectively 'worse' console (from a tech perspective) was more successful by a country mile.
It's interesting how many people see the Switch as being in its own category rather than acknowledging it as the winner of this console generation (which I completely agree it is).
Most people think the “console” battle is between PlayStation and Xbox, and that PlayStation is the winner.
This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.
I kinda think that way when buying. The Nintendo console is the Nintendo console. If you want what they do, you're buying it. The other two are where the competition is and where there's a decision of which one, not buy this single product or don't. They're much closer to being interchangeable than the Switch is with either of them.
Personally I'd say both are true. They won the generation, but they did so by not bothering to fight directly with Playstation and Xbox. By basically ignoring them and having a distinct identity they won.
A. Sony has an amazing marketing strategy where they can paint their #1 competitor as not even a competitor.
B. Xbox has a terrible product direction, where they are trying (failing) to beat Sony at being Sony instead of looking at the gaming industry and trying to create a product people want.
I wouldn't say A because Nintendo hasn't bothered trying to compete with them. If they bothered and Sony still managed to be considered a separate category I would agree, but Nintendo appears to not care about them.
However I do think B is true. The only time they were able to go toe to toe with Sony was most of the 360 era when Sony got cocky and built a machine that was too complicated to work with relative to the value developers got out of that effort. Once Sony stopped doing that they've dominated Xbox (mind you the whiff on being too early proclaiming the digital era made it far far worse).
The market penetration of the switch makes it harder for Sony to expand into the family/casual gaming space. That forces Sony to stick to the AAA lane (which is where their focus is) limiting their growth opportunities.
If the switch had been a failure, then a lot of households that currently have a switch (only) would have bought a different console and that would likely have been a PS5 (even if they held on to their previous generation console, and waited a couple of years until the PS5 price dropped below $500)
I have a PS4 and a Switch at home. The kids play the switch and occasionally play on the PS4. I can't justify buying a PS5 because there's only so much
gaming time available, and family gaming is covered by the switch and my personal gaming is good enough on my PC. Take the switch out of the equation and that changes.
PS5 is winning the AAA console lane, no doubt. But Sony could have been making more money if they could also own a significant portion of the family console lane.
I don't know that the Playstation 5 really plays in that market when the cheapest version is $450, so nearly $200 more expensive than the switch. Keeping the price down is part of how Nintendo owns that market, on top of their first party game lineup and the like.
The PlayStation also doesn't play most games on Steam. Exclusive games don't mean the platforms aren't competitors — back in the day platform exclusivity was even more of the norm than it is today, and yet the SNES and the Sega Genesis were clearly competitors, as were the original PlayStation and the N64.
Well, that's because this console has different hardware than the others, with it's own pros and cons. And that has happened in every console generation.
Nobody would say the Sega Saturn wasn’t a console because it couldn’t run Crash Bandicoot, or that the N64 wasn’t a console because it couldn’t run Final Fantasy VII.
The Switch may not run certain titles, but it can run other AAA, like DOOM, Mortal Kombat, No Man’s Sky, The Witcher 3 and more. Sure, those games may run better on more powerful hardware, but that hardware isn’t portable. That doesn’t make the Switch any less of a console.
Most AA and indie games are available on all platforms, and all the reeeeally popular ones like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, Rocket League, etc.
Easily 80% or more of the catalog is the same across all consoles.
So why we define what a console is by those games that aren’t on the Switch’s catalog?
All 3 consoles are doing the same, they sell a closed hardware/software solution with access to a propetary storefront where they sell you games, the same games mostly. Their marketing may be directed to different demographics but at the end they all do the same and compete for the same market.
I find it interesting that we don’t see more “officially-licensed demakes” of AAA games being released for devices (the Switch; phones; old PCs) that can’t play the AAA version. It used to be very common (with e.g. SNES games getting simultaneous GB reinterpretations released with them.) But the only thing I can think of that did it in recent memory is Final Fantasy 15.
But if you demake a game hard enough (i.e. really clamp down on the asset details, by using intentionally-stylized art rather than lower-quality realistic art, etc) then it doesn't need to take so much time and money to create the port. It can be a bounded added marginal cost.
Also, there are things a modern "parallel demake" (like FFXV Pocket Edition) can do to reuse certain types of assets from its AAA sibling, that in the previous era would have required remaking those assets from scratch. So a modern demake can actually be cheaper to produce in some ways.
For examples:
• You can just copy-and-paste the script and associated audio assets straight over, as anything can play audio clips.
• You can also copy over all the animation "choreography" scripting for NPCs and cinematics, with the particular named animation cues just mapping to different actual animations for the simplified models.
• Depending on how your AAA game models environments, you might even be able to export the abstract "level data" (what type of terrain goes where; basic geometry and material-type for meshes of buildings; placement of things like furniture and other large freestanding decor objects) from your AAA game engine, and then import it directly into your demake's game engine. (You'll then still need to run over everything to add new decor and details, make sure nothing is clipping, etc — but this is still a major speed-up.) IIRC this is how the recent third-party-implemented Pokemon titles [Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and BD/SP] were implemented — they started with direct dumps and imports of the original games' level data into their engine.
There are some, like DOOM, but it’s not a lot. If Switch 2 can pull off PlayStation 4 quality I bet there’d be a bonanza of ports and some good money made.
> This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.
I don't have any current Gen console (nor have I played one) but as a long-time tech market "interested observer" my understanding is that XBox had a bit less raw power last Gen and tried correcting this Gen and succeeded in having a bit more raw power than PS5. However, it apparently didn't matter to the market. So it seems to be another example like Betamax vs VHS, where the product with somewhat better technology didn't win because consumers found other factors more important. In modern game consoles, I assume those factors would be some mix of exclusive titles, compatibility with existing previous gen game libraries, marketing+brand perception and, more recently, the console's subscription game service.
It's interesting that Microsoft apparently didn't internalize this lesson, since Nintendo has been remained competitive for ~20 years by combining significantly weaker hardware with high-quality franchise games plus a clever differentiating factor (novel interaction (Wii) or portability (Switch). Of course, it would be wrong to conclude "CPU/GPU power doesn't matter" because it's more complex than comparing mips, flops, rops, etc. It also depends on how much, and how well, developers and game engines optimize for a platform's hardware.
Microsoft definitely learned their lesson about high-quality franchise games with their recent (and very costly) acquisition spree including Call of Duty. Although, to get anti-trust approval it can't be platform exclusive for at least a decade. I'm wondering if MSFT's claims that they're happy to be a games software company selling on all platforms may actually be true. If so, it may not bode well for the future of the XBox hardware business - which would be sad because more competition is generally better for consumers.
Part of the issue is Xbox segmented the market with the less powerful Series S and put constraints on releases needing to have feature parity between the two, quite a few devs have had issues with. It delayed Baldur’s Gate 3 for months until MS waived off the split screen co-op. Seems bizarre to chase power at hard and then make it harder for your devs to develop to it.
I agree that the XBox senior leadership has made a series of critical strategic mistakes going back over a decade which have nerfed the otherwise generally quite good hardware, software, game and online service execution. Just with XBox One the long string of gaffes and fatal errors was... impressive.
* Going all-in on bundling the Kinect, a very costly depth camera interface peripheral, with every XBox.
* Committing to making XBox an "all-in-one entertainment system" by building in an expensive HDMI input capability to enable being an electronic program guide, digital video recorder, Blu-ray disc player, streaming TV service and music service. The Kinect camera peripheral also had a built-in IR blaster to control all your other living room devices.
* Announcing pervasive DRM that would tie game discs to the user's account, prevent reselling or lending game discs.
* Aggressively pre-announcing no backward compatibility with previous XBox games. A senior XBox exec apparently told the media (on the record), "If you're backwards compatible, you're backward."
While the last two mistakes were walked back before the console even shipped, building in & bundling costly hardware couldn't be walked back. Nor could the significant investment in developing operating system and application software to support electronic program guide, IR control, video streaming and recording. These large hardware and software investments certainly came at the cost of investing as much in hardware and software to better render games, play games and support game development. You can kind of understand why MSFT thought each of these things would be good for MSFT strategically, but they were all tone deaf in terms of what their market wanted and fatal distractions from the main business of being a good game console.
I hope someday a definitive case study will be written giving insight into how otherwise smart, experienced executives can make so many catastrophic strategic errors over such a long period of time.
I'd say your observation on hardware and software is quite accurate, except I don't agree PS is the one that's winning.
PS is suffering from decreasing fan loyalty due to the not-that-good subscription service and not-that-exclusive game titles. Also, their pace of new hardware seems to be off considering the half-dead PS VR2 or that streaming handheld thing. The way I see it, the subscription service is supposed to be a counterpart to MS's game pass or XGP; the handheld thing is most likely to be a compromise from current gen (PS5) performance and NS's pressure. But don't forget their legacy from previous generations, they have *the most* experiences in developing and publishing 3A titles, which is why PS is still my most played consoles.
On the other hand MS had the issue of XSS dragging XSX down (as mentioned above by others), and their hardware sales seems to be losing momentum due to "If I can play it on Windows why would I need a XBOX". But from their past doings I think MS is always on the chasing of "Combining their all platforms together". While Windows Phone might turn out to be a failure, XGP actually did succeed, thanks to the huge user base they have on Windows.
Whereas NS has the exclusive advantage of their cartoonish/pixelated artstyle. This alone, in my opinion, saves them a ton of money. Not saying the artstyle is worse than realistic ones, but the development cost is indeed much much lower. Not to mention it requires much less computing power to render, resulting in cheaper hardware products. Their console can't run 3A, but that is actually a smaller downside than some may think. Because cartoonish/pixelated game and smaller indie game is a huge market.
So... Though the 3 manufacturers are competing in the same game console market, they each found a smaller but more suitable target market for themselves. If there has to be a "winner", profit-wise, it should be NS undoubtedly. Just look at their hardware upgrade cycle and console/game sales/profit.
I agree. Sony isn't winning the console market. In terms of both unit sales and combined hardware/software profitability, I think it's pretty clear Nintendo is doing best. Although, Sony might possibly net more total revenue due to higher priced hardware, from a Return on Capital perspective Nintendo is doing better.
I think Sony probably feels they are doing okay, although they think they should be doing better than they are. It's Microsoft's XBox business that I think is in long-term trouble. While they may be profitable at the moment (I don't follow it closely enough to know), the brand and forward trends aren't looking good. To me, the massive acquisition spree buying leading game companies was a very risky 'bet all the marbles' kind of move. It was so expensive that to justify it, they not only have to win but win big. It's a huge bet on making their Game Pass service not only grow but increasingly profitable. And it has to win PC gamers and console gamers with a unified service. Maybe it'll work but the high costs and constraints limit the number of ways they can win while the number of ways to lose remains vast.
Competition isn’t the secret sauce we pretend it is. There is power in non-competing and doing your own thing as well. You just have to know when to use either strategy.
This is such a trite take. Whenever I hear it, what comes to my mind is: "bro, do you even play games?".
The gaming industry is huge and gamers are varied. What is fun and play to one person is boring and vapid to another. I think Nintendo's first party titles are generally excellent, but I recognize that they're not for everyone. It's not like the rest of the industry is shuffling around going "boy, if only we could figure out how to make fun games".
It seems that you want to exclude Nintendo from AAA gaming, which is also weird. Their first party titles are developed by large teams with big budgets. They're not some scrappy startup making indie titles.
FWIW, the game that won Game of the Year at the most recent game awards is Astro Bot - an amazingly fun and playful (some would say Nintendo-esque) game that is a PlayStation 5 exclusive.
Money happened. The gaming industry produces more revenue than the movie industry and the music industry combined. Making a AAA is a $50-$100 million endeavor. At that scale, doing weird stuff because maybe it'll pay off is almost unconscionably risky. It's the same problem movies have, and it's the reason why indy films and indy games are so much more interesting.
Singleplayer AAA gaming on top of all that feels like work, the older I got the less those games kept me playing because I don't want to spend 3 hours running errands to be rewarded with an item/spell/skill.
The melodramatic storylines are also pretty grating, there are a few games with good storytelling but most are some rehash of "this world has been destroyed/is in the process of being destroyed, in the aftermath a hero is about to rise and save it" so if the mechanics don't feel fun right from the get-go I lose interest completely.
The most fun I have with games are the ones with a very iterative game loop (roguelikes for example), or social/multiplayer games, anything with a lot of replayability, and the constant feeling of improvement is like crack to me.
A surprising example I re-discovered last year after only playing it for a while some 15 years ago is Trackmania, got even some friends hooked on it to play hot seating trying to beat each others time. The game loop is short and intense (about 1-2 minutes max), has a high skill ceiling, and you feel yourself getting better at a track each time you play it, nailing some very tricky part that felt impossible 30 min before is absurdly satisfying.
My biggest problem is I'll finally get a chance to sink enough hours in to start something AAA, do maybe 4-10 hours over two or three days, and then have life get in the way and not touch it for a month or more... and completely forget how to play and WTF I was doing.
Some of my favorite UX features in newer games are automatically and contextually reminding you how the controls work when you pick it back up after a while, and quick story recaps or quest reminders on loading screens. I like to label those games "parent-friendly".
I have this issue with TV and movies too. I have so many shows I want to finish but when I try I have no clue who anyone is or what’s going on. I either watch a recap or just give up instead of restarting.
Got any examples of a game doing recaps / control reminders? Curious to check them out
My biggest problem with AAA gaming is I waste a lot of time tuning graphics settings to keep games from crashing, and wait a lot for different sections of games to load. I miss the 90s era of snappy UIs.
I can't remember where I read this, but I came across someone talking about the fact that these AAA photo realistic games are hugely expensive to make, but if you look at what young people are spending their time playing, they're games like Fornite, Minecraft and Roblox. As soon as I read this, it clicked for me.
I have two teenagers (15 & 17) and this is exactly right. My son plays games all the time and although he's played Elden Ring and GTA and other games of that sort, over the years I would say 80% of his time has been Minecraft and this other 2D game with a platformer vibe whose name I forget that has procedurally generated maps. He's frequently calling me over to his computer to check out his latest architectural creation in Minecraft. I know it's not just him, because he plays multiplayer with his buddies as well, and again, a lot of it is these games with quite frankly primitive graphics. But they're fun!
I have a younger kid that's in Roblox a lot as well, and something I noticed the peer group do is have a facetime/voice call in the background so they can talk while they play. I like it better than watching them type chats.
I'm a huge Nintendo/Mario fan but I've recently been playing through Astro Bot on my PS5 and I must say, when you combine super fun mechanics with amazing graphics and performance, it's quite an experience! But there isn't nearly enough content like this on the non-Nintendo consoles, so point is definitely not lost on me.
I play one game at a time for about a month and then move to the next. When I first played Mario Odyssey on my switch I was over the moon with how much pure fun it was compared to all the good looking and serious RPGs I played in the decade before. I had forgotten games can be this enjoyable. Nowadays I try to do these super fun games in between my souls-like sessions.
Focusing on tech or unoriginal production values (that's photo real! You don't need a great art director, you need a photo..) is appealing to companies because it's predictable vs the creative uncertainty and subjectivity of "fun".
Astro Bot won game of the year because it had amazing graphics and physics and had Mario-tier fun. The team actually made a cryptic shout out to Nintendo at the award ceremony.
Nintendo has great games, but the resolution on TVs, even cheap ones, is outstanding now and it goes to waste using a Switch.
Playing a great game that also uses what the TV has on offer is really the best experience. If we get 4k and ray tracing on Switch I’ll be stoked.
The “is this fun” part is the reason why I bought a Switch in the first place. Still the only console I’ve ever owned
I love the “just start playing” ethos of most Nintendo games. Reminds me of the games I used to play as a kid. No long story or exposition - just a game load screen and a start button
the teaser also has a clear shot of the side and there's a sensor that looks identical to an optical mouse sensor. It seems really rough from an ergonomics perspective but maybe there are accessories for that. It could also go the way of the IR camera where it sees niche uses in a couple of random games but isn't really a staple of the console.
A lot of that was necessary for Nintendo get away from the "it's a video game console" comparison after the video game market crash. That's why the NES looks like a VCR too.
Ha. Since when does Nintendo care about ensuring functionality they add to their devices are leveraged? Other than first party games, and even that can be limited, almost no one ever implements the weird little functionality they add to their devices.
Not just Nintendo. The PlayStation 4 controller had that touchpad in the middle that also clicked in to act as a button. I played a lot of games that used it as a button (usually to open a map, or something) and don't remember a single game that used it as a touchpad.
Microsoft is somewhat to blame for new controller features being underutilized because they're extremely reluctant to add anything to the Xbox controller. Motion control in particular stands out, the hardware isn't expensive and it's proven to be very useful in some types of game, but the lowest common denominator Xbox controller still doesn't have it so multi-platform games can't be designed around it. Especially multiplayer games with crossplay since you can't let some players have more precise inputs than others.
As a mice or a air mouse. The smart tv stuff is limited by a remote control from 1980 (more or less, what changed?). I'd make lifestyle apps for the switch if they enable it.
As a mouse mouse. It seems to have an optical sensor on the inside edge (the side that attaches to the console) and the video shows the joy cons zooming around on that edge.
Nintendo has tended to maintain at most 1 generation of backwards compatibility, though you can get some fuzzy ideas of "generations" in a few cases.
Game Boy Color: plays original Game Boy games
Game Boy Advance: plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games
Nintendo DS: plays Game Boy Advance games
Nintendo DSi: plays Nintendo DS games
Nintendo 3DS: plays Nintendo DS and DSi games
Nintendo New 3DS: plays Nintendo DS, DSi, and (old) 3DS games
Nintendo Wii: plays GameCube games
Nintendo Wii U: plays Wii games
The Switch is a notable break in both of these lines, playing neither 3DS nor Wii U games.
Based on that list, they have tended really only to do that on mobile platforms. It was one of my favorite things about the platform, but it always felt like this was partially thanks to the older hardware still getting games well into the new hardware's life in many cases. Major games, I believe Pokemon has done this a few times?
Most of their home consoles were complete departures from previous hardware.
NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube all did not work with prior games were fairly different (ok admittedly the outward difference between the NES and the SNES were minimal but still no compatability).
So honestly I think it was more notable that the Wii could play Gamecube games than the other way around as far as Nintendo's track record goes.
GC emulation wasn't emulation; it was done with a separate chip. It was more like native support. Eventually Nintendo removed that chip and backward-compatibility support from the console.
(so, even if you could put a GC disk in, it didn't have capability to natively play the game)
It sounds like you're confusing the Wii's backwards compatibility with the PS3's. The Wii didn't have a separate "GameCube chip", its core was effectively an overclocked GC.
Ability to play smaller discs was normal in most CD-ROM and DVD players for many years before the Wii. A few people (probably half of whom have HN accounts) used to give out mini-CD business cards...sometimes even with truncated edges so the disc was not entirely round: https://www.duplication.com/cd-business-card-duplication.htm
Yeah but most of the optical drives that support this have trays or are top loading. It’s a little more counterintuitive to have a postbox-style drive (I don’t know what they’re actually called) that supports different sized discs.
for what it's worth Nintendo had planned to make the SNES backward compatible and that intention influenced design choices, particularly the very similar CPU.
I heard that it was a forced response to Sega aggressively cutting the price of the Megadrive/Genesis to the point that it made it very difficult for Nintendo to sensibly price the SNES bill of materials.
Something had to go and it was backwards compatibility.
Yeah, the SNES uses a 65816, which is pretty much a backwards-compatible and 16-bit extension of the 6502, used in the NES. The SPC is likewise capable of nearly perfectly reproducing the NES's audio capabilities, and the PPU has the same background and sprite layering as the NES as a foundation.
Sega actually did what Nintendidn't. The Sega Genesis had a Z80 coprocessor, a video chip that was yet another extension of the TMS9918A design, and a PSG sound chip -- all just more advanced, or supplemented by other hardware, versions of components the Master System had. With an adapter add-on called the Power Base Converter, Master System games could be played on the Genesis.
I know, and you can basically restore full GameCube compatibility on the Wii U via Nintendont. Neither of them let you use the actual physical games from the old system, and needing to perform jailbreak hacks to use them and load ROMs on anyway doesn't count as much as out-of-the-box compatibility.
The problem in both cases is that the consoles were actually missing a key piece of hardware: the ability to read the disc or cartridge.
If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally) then this doesn't matter. But for regular consumers, there needs to be a way to verify ownership.
Nintendo could have made some titles available digitally (which is what I wish they'd done), but that requires getting content rights sorted out for games that have never been sold digitally before, so the full catalog would not have been available. Also, there would have been a ton of hemming and hawing about "Nintendo is making me buy my Gamecube games again?!?" No comment on whether such complaints would have been reasonable.
The problem is deliberate hardware choices. They may be reasonable choices, but if Nintendo wanted to prioritize forever backwards compatibility, we could still have a GameCube-compatible disc drive and GBA and DS compatible catridge slots.
This is fair, although I do think the choice was reasonable. Disc drives are an expensive part, and consider how much space a cartridge slot would have used on the 3DS...
----
I have long had a total fantasy in this vein... what Nintendo could have done is release add-on hardware to read old media. Imagine a hybrid mini-disc and cartridge reader which connects to the Wii U via USB, and a Gameboy cartridge reader which connects to the 3DS via... uh, possibly NFC, Gameboy games are small and the games could be read once and cached to internal storage.
You could use this to add backwards compatibility all the way back to the NES and Gameboy! Games from consoles two generations back could have been run natively, everything older could have been trivially software emulated.
I don't think such a product would have substantially interfered with Virtual Console sales, it would have been too niche. Probably too niche to make sense in real life... but in my fantasy, the goal would have been PR. It would cement the idea that buying a Nintendo game is an investment which Nintendo will support long-term; whether a large number of people make use of that ability is irrelevant.
That's basically the niche that companies like Analogue are exploiting. I'm sure it'll forever be a niche market, but it's nice that someone caters to it. :)
I think being an official product makes it totally different and much more special. Maybe that's silly--but consider how well the NES Mini sold compared to similar unofficial products. (Unfortunately, the NES Mini couldn't read cartridges.)
If it was an official product, it would have to read from the real cartridge or disc. If nothing else, Nintendo does not have the legal right to redistribute games made by third parties.
I guess I shoild have quoted what I was referring to, since it seems to high ask to expect others to read the rest of the discourse.
> If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally)
Either way, I disagree with your definition too.
The ”hacker-type” is the one figuring out how to mod the wii-u. The one following some instructions to perform it using provided tools is simply a end user.
>Nintendo New 3DS: plays Nintendo DS, DSi, and (old) 3DS games
I know HN doesn't have any room for sarcasm but I couldn't not laugh trying to remember what were the NEW 3ds games. Sure the second pad made the 3DS way more comfortable to play, and 3D was a bit better, but we all got scammed here regarding games supporting this new hardware.
The New 3DS consoles did have double the RAM and an improved CPU and GPU, so there were quite a few games like Minecraft and the SNES Virtual Console that could only run on the New models.
There are a handful of more New 3DS exclusives than there were DSi exclusives. Both revisions failed to garner enough market for developers to try to target them.
IIRC Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem Warriors were the only ones I really cared about. Lots of people held onto their old hardware; probably wasn't worth excluding them.
The biggest advantage of owning a New 3DS turned out to be the huge performance uplift. A fair number of games ran at double the framerate or only supported 3D mode on the newer hardware. Code Name STEAM had substantially less downtime on the New models because the AI could process turns faster. Several reviews for Hyrule Warriors Legends flat out said not to buy the game unless you had a "New" model due to performance issues.
The Switch is interesting, because while you can't play the old games you already own, the Switch can play those games with an emulator, if you're willing to pay them more money to get a digital copy.
You probably know this but most of those aren’t really generations. Game boy color, DSi, new 3ds are just upgrades of the same generation kinda like PS5 vs PS5 Pro.
"Generations" is a fairly subjective term all things considered, and I basically acknowledged it by saying these things are fuzzy.
As the sibling post mentions, they all have exclusives, however, which is something Sony has refused to allow for PS4 Pro and PS5 Pro updates. And even though Nintendo considers the GBC to be the same console as the original GB when it comes to tallying sales figures, it's a rather significant upgrade. Slightly better than NES full color games, double the processor speed. It made a compelling upgrade and target for developers.
Back when they were first coming out, a lot of us also considered GameBoy Pocket to be a new "generation". I think it might have supported a few more shades of grey from the original? And better battery life. And lots of case colors.
Capabilities wise, it was identical to the original Game Boy. Just four shades of gray for games to draw in. Externally: smaller unit, better battery life, higher contrast screen, new link port (yay adapters for connecting to the original Game Boy...), and "Play It Loud" (the colored cases to choose from). A true revision, no room to question about leaps in gaming technology. :)
3DS has like ~15, though some heavy hitters (Xenoblade and Fire Emblem), DSi has like 6 no-names (and, technically, a whole lot on DSiWare); but there are many GBC-exclusive games.
Although funnily enough, in most regions Pokemon Gold and Silver were not actually GBC exclusive and would run on the original Game Boy, despite arguably being the game the GBC was most promoted for and having colour (which didn't work on the DMG, obviously) as their major features.
The Korean release of Gold and Silver, along with Crystal, did actually require a GBC.
The DS can't play GBC games at all, it doesn't have the Z80 CPU from that console to even provide backwards compatibility. Nintendo also removed it from the Game Boy Micro, making it a GBA-only console.
> The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom)
A bit of an aside, but... Tears of the Kingdom looks just awful to me. My kids played Breath of the Wild and when they got Tears of the Kingdom I walked in and was astonished at the graphic quality. I think I had just finished Doom 2016 at the time and I felt like I was rewinding the clock 15 years in graphical quality. I've heard literally zero other people have this complaint, so I suspect it's just my take on the aesthetics of the game.
I think the state-of-the-art on Switch is really Panic Button's work on the Doom and Doom Eternal ports, but those are frame locked at 30 FPS, so I think getting a spec bump in Switch 2 would certainly help the demographic that plays games like that. My family has left the Switch ecosystem for Steam Deck, and that does a lot better. Would be interesting to compare with the Switch 2 in terms of specs.
Most of the environments are empty planes with a 1-2 trees I think they needed to use a lot of tricks to have more than that. It might have also been an ai pathing issue
I would say gameplay and art style instead of what the rest of the industry calls graphics (polygon count basically).
Nearly all Nintendo (game freak is not technically Nintendo) games look beautiful thanks to having a great art style instead of just focusing on higher polygon count.
“Physically based rendering” does not mean “photorealistic rendering.” After all, PBR was pioneered by Disney for use in their animated films. I would be surprised if Mario Odyssey doesn’t use PBR.
I agree with you, but in some newer games it just doesn't make sense to me.
They want good graphics but the Switch can't handle them, but they still try to make them.
For example, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.
Gameplay and the game design for me personally is really great, but I can't stand the graphics. I would rather play on worse graphics just to not have constant frame drops and in some parts of the game N64 graphics and in some 4K ones.
Can't find it right now, but someone did some side by side comparisons of Scarlet/Violet next to similar Breath of the Wild scenes, and it's night and day.
I assume you're referring to Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet, but Legends: Arceus is also officially part of the main series. Offhand don't remember performance issues in that one.
Agree completely. I loved Tears and didn’t once think it looked bad in any way. It was a very clever game and made me feel like a kid again. That’s what I’m looking for in a Nintendo game. I’ll jump on my PS5 if I want to be wowed graphically.
Exactly. If you want to be dazzled with AAA titles running at 120Hz/60fps/4k then there are plenty of ways to spend your money. Frankly that segment of the industry feels like a treadmill of never ending upgrades for the same basic game.
My whole family shares and island in animal crossing, firing up some arcade brawlers on the couch. We’ve been playing the hell out of our switch for years and never once have we complained that it’s not flashy enough.
My main issue with the art style is that it's very flat, with large areas of a single, solid color, when more shading would add a sense of nuance and depth. A character's face, body, or hair will have a single light color, and a single dark color. This isn't about 4k, 120Hz, or huge polygon count, it's about basic shading to convey that things are 3d.
I've played mostly 20+ year old games for years, and don't own a gaming machine or high-end console. I'm into Doom from the 90s, OpenTTD, and Morrowind. But TotK should have been better, in my opinion. The art style just isn't my cup of tea.
I can see the lower quality of the rendering, but the graphical content is stunning in my opinion. The art in the game inspires me a lot more than more photorealistic games tend to. I think they did a stellar job given the resource constraints and the scale of the game.
It's a beautiful game, one of the first to use programmable shaders, and one of the earliest that doesn't look dated at all. The shaders make everything look smooth without looking blurry.
Loading screens are hidden, it's not like the contemporaneous PS2 game Mafia where you wait a few minutes to load, spend a few minutes driving across town on a mission to shoot up some people at a restaurant, get yourself shot up, then have to wait for it to load all over again.
The Switch 2 is supposed to be a bit faster than a PS4. It has more RAM and a much more modern GPU. It is using a LCD screen to reduce cost. I bet they will release a more expensive OLED version later.
> I bet they will release a more expensive OLED version later.
I would imagine the only reason they didn't launch with the OLED is to drive sales in the second half of the product lifecycle. If the PS4 equivalent claim is true that will be great, the Switch 1 was anemic at launch and borderline painful graphics in 2025.
I just hope its powerful enough that Indies can target it along with the Steam Deck, rather than just hope an pray like they did for Switch 1's late lifecycle. The amount of <30fps indie titles on there was sad.
I wouldn't blame Unity for this. It's perfectly capable of running games efficiently on mobile. Problem is people either don't know how to or don't care to optimize their games performance.
Sure, they're more limited but Unity actually has very good and accessible profiling tools included. It'd be easy for most developers to get quick wins if they've never optimized their game before.
The Switch was weak when it came out. Decent PCs from that same year can handle most of these games just fine. It's not really the developer's fault when the Switch is the only platform with issues, and they're usually not "pushing the envelope" in any way. The fault here is Nintendo's, they didn't prioritize support for ported games, though admittedly they couldn't really foresee the indie game boom, since it wasn't nearly as big of a deal at the time, especially in Japan.
First-party Nintendo titles are more or less the only games that actually manage to "push the envelope" on the Switch, and that's because they have the resources and experience to do it. Even then, some games end up constrained compared to the original vision, because the hardware can't handle it no matter how much insider knowledge you have about how it works and how to use it right.
Thanks to the success of The Witcher 3, I wouldn't call CDPR an indie dev anymore. I'm sure porting that game wasn't easy, but it had a well resourced studio behind it. Not all games can even make the tradeoffs that were necessary for it to work, though. Factorio, a 2D game, also made by a pretty competent but still indie developer, was ported to the Switch, but its expansion pack Space Age couldn't be.
Sorry, I only meant that the hardware was weak. As a product, the Switch was an overwhelming success, and I don't really think Nintendo made a mistake by choosing weaker hardware at the time. However, it's 9 years later and things are different now. The new platform should try to be more accommodating for ports IMO and the issues with the original are just backdrop.
Kinda. It had to be downscaled to below 720p to get passable frame rate performance. Compared to like almost any PC with a discrete GPU or any alternative console release it had, the Switch port was a huge step down in visual quality.
But i dont care about any of those things; they dont make the game more fun for me. It was a great port. Buy a different machine if you want to be inside the matrix.
Most indie devs don't have time and money to optimize. They will make the game primarily for the biggest audience, and then make it somewhat playable for everyone else.
The closer Switch is to the Steam Deck, the more likely both will be targeted.
"Beautiful art style" and "cutting-edge graphics" are nowhere near synonymous. They are orthogonally related at best (and many people would even argue that they are opposing goals).
Hopefully the Switch as a platform represents the end of the line. SD cards can be up to 2Tb, and that should be enough for anybody ;) So I don’t see why they would need to change up formats again.
They're optimizing for cost so I'd expect LCD. Then they can release an OLED model later down the line and the extra $50 won't seem as big of a deal on top of what we can probably already expect in the price bump from Switch 1.
OLED seems like a no brainer for a lifecycle refresh at the ~3-3.5 year mark. Particularly because they've done it before, and Valve very recently proved it's still a viable way to boost sales. Nintendo has had 7 years to prepare for this launch they likely have every mario, zelda, metroid release date pinned to a particular month and year through at least year 5. A display upgrade mid cycle is almost a given.
Honestly, if it keeps the price down I'm all for it. My switch spends 99% of the time in the dock, because I would far rather play with the pro controller on my big TV than play it in handheld mode. So I find the quality of the screen kinda irrelevant.
Me too, I usually upgrade to the latest and greatest with Nintendo systems (specifically if it's an improvement, the "new 3DS" but not like the 2DS for example)
But I never bought an OLED because I couldn't justify it for the amount I play my Switch handheld (almost never)
> Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.
Yeah, I've always felt that Nintendo being willing to try out cool stuff is something that will be very sad to lose. The Wii, DS, and the Switch have all been very cool consoles. I personally only buy Nintendo consoles, as I feel like everything else eventually gets ported to PC anyways.
The games are crippled by how archaic and underpowered the hardware is. TOTK is beautiful _despite_ the hardware limiting its true potential, robbing world class studios, and forcing them to cut corners.
It’s indefensible considering how much legendary IP that potato is holding hostage.
The good news is that the best Nintendo platform is also the best mobile platform: The Steam Deck. It plays Nintendo games better than Nintendo consoles do, and as a bonus, it plays everything else.
This is a statement that could only be made by an HN commenter. My wife has to drop into Arch to recover her audio every time she connects her Steam Deck to the TV. This is not a product ready for mass consumption.
Honestly, it's a milquetoast take. The only advantages of the Switch at this point are Nintendo exclusives and better support.
There are some rough edges with the Steam Deck, but it's a bit odd to frame the Switch as "ready for mass consumption" when it lacks access to Steam, something every other handheld has, and consumers expect in 2025.
I think the point is that with the Switch you get Nintendo only, and in the past at least that meant anemic hardware and paying for old games you already bought. With the Steam Deck you get a portable PC with all that implies, meaning PC games, but also emulation.
So on one hand you have a walled garden, of the type that HN tends to hate (when it's Apple), but on the other hand you have an open platform that's significantly more powerful.
Have you ever tried to use physical media with a Steam deck?
Have you ever tried to get 5 hours of battery life with a Steam deck?
Have you ever put a Steam deck in your pocket? (I do have big pockets, but at least with the Switch Lite, it's possible.)
Nintendo will be just fine. I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
I have docked my Steam Deck to a TV. I have also used physical media with a Steam Deck. The USB port lets you do both of these things. I also just plug it into my laptop dock to play more desktop-oriented games.
The Deck works for me since I rarely play for more than a couple of hours in a stretch (so I don't need 5 hours of battery life), and I don't need to stick it in a pocket. It's "just a PC", so you can still play non-Steam games on it if you need to avoid the Steam ecosystem for some reason. Its direct competitors (Asus/ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion and others) show there's a market for this type of device.
The Switch satisfies the needs for a lot of people people; great! Good ideas will cross-feed with those in the handheld PC gaming device realm.
> Have you ever tried to dock a Steam deck to a TV?
Yep, works great with non-proprietary docks vs even using a 3rd party dock on Switch has led to bricked units.
> Have you ever tried to use physical media with a Steam deck?
I haven't tried, but I'd be surprised if plugging in a USB optical drive wouldn't work. That'd be pretty silly though, but so are some of the Switch physical releases when the bulk of some games isn't actually on the cartridge.
I think the better thing to look at is DRM instead of specific transmission format. Steam itself is a grey area for DRM (some games are DRM-free IIRC), but you can also use things like Lutris... or generally whatever you'd like. Takes a bit of tinkering, sure, but a whole lot less tinkering than getting anything unofficial to run on a Switch.
> Have you ever tried to get 5 hours of battery life with a Steam deck?
Yep, works great. I'll still give the point to Nintendo because they prioritize battery life so much more, but if you aren't running the SD at full tilt with a large 3D game, it can get decent battery life.
> Have you ever put a Steam deck in your pocket? (I do have big pockets, but at least with the Switch Lite, it's possible.)
I would love a Steam Deck Lite or something. That's probably the biggest reason I keep my Switch Lite: it's easy to just toss in a bag on a whim while the SD (and other Switches) require planning to actually use them.
> Nintendo will be just fine.
Yup. They're probably still sitting on piles of cash from the DS and now Switch. People were saying Nintendo was doomed when the Wii U did poorly, but others at the time rightly pointed out that they've probably got enough runway to have a few more total flops of consoles.
> I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
Losing Newell is a valid concern (again, for Steam as a platform), but Nintendo is certainly an interesting choice to say they won't kick you out on a whim, given their track record of bans, lawsuits, and just being particularly litigious.
The Steam Deck is just a PC - nothing is locked down. You could install whatever OS you'd want to replace SteamOS, or you could buy your games somewhere other than Steam and just use SteamOS as a launcher.
> I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
This is a very strange take for someone arguing for locking into Nintendo's most-recent ecosystem (where you're generously allowed to re-buy some of the games you already own from previous generations) over an open, linux-based hardware platform that connects to steam.
>I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
Dude, you have to rebuy all the games you've already bought and already own every odd generation. Imagine paying for NES and SNES games, Wii and Wii U games and other old garbage you already own? That's Nintendo.
On steam you have absolutely massive library dating back almost 20 years by this point, and it comes with you every time you buy a new device, whatever it might be a PC, laptop or SteamDeck.
Yes, steamdeck is pretty large and bulky, but you can get 5 hours battery life on non-demanding indie titles (ie. Hades on the updated deck OLED models)
Yes, you can dock a Steamdeck to a TV easily.
It's all around better, completely open device, minus the size (and battery life in demanding AAA titles switch can't dream of running anyway)
I didn't mean that Nintendo was in trouble, I just meant what I said: the best way to play Nintendo's games isn't on Nintendo platforms. For me, I'm not going to be playing games away from the ability to plug in or dock for 5 hours. I don't put expensive electronics in my pocket, and yeah I've docked my Deck to a TV... it's great. As for physical media, why would I want to use that?
But sure, if you hate Steam on principle then obviously it isn't for you. In my 19 years of using steam I've never had any problems though, and I suspect that's true for most people.
I haven't tried in the last couple of months, but last time I tried connecting Deck to a TV it was _painfully_ obvious it was Linux with a thin veneer of Steam over the top.
Some of that is Valves' to fix, but some other things are just "that's how PC games are" — I genuinely can't believe "render the UI at native screen resolution, but the game at arbitrary different one" is not a standard feature in 2024.
I don't mind my game running at 720p, if I still can view the text and UI at native 4K; but apparently this is just not possible to get on PC.
What you are looking for is a render scale option. It is usually specified as a percentage of your display resolution but could also be combined with upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS, etc.) options.
It's something that is up to the game developer to implement but it is becoming more and more common to see in games now.
I don't know, it doesn't make much sense to call the Steam Deck the best mobile platform by dismissing things that a mobile platform should be good at just because you personally don't care about them.
I mean, there's no fucking way you could fit a regular Switch into your pocket. I don't care how big your pockets are. So that doesn't really seem like a fair criticism.
One of the things I find sad about the Switch is in fact that Nintendo seems to think it fulfills the same niche that their portable systems did, but it doesn't even come close. I can fit my 3DS (XL or not) into a pocket very comfortably, not so with my Switch.
That spec seems fishy given both Ampere and Ada both have 1 RT core in each SM. 12 RT cores would make much more sense. The 1534 Cuda cores is also weird since 128x12 would be 1536. ALSO the leak says "Nvidia T239 Ampere (RTX 20 Series)" but Ampere debuted in the RTX 30 Series.
On one hand, the base architecture is Ampere, but it's been repeatedly rumored that there are various backports from Lovelace. It's a weird mixture of the two, alone with some unique parts never seen elsewhere (a file decompression engine that accelerates LZMA, according to kernel commits).
It's hard to say then how powerful these raytracing cores are, or how many are even necessary for simple but beautiful effects. It's also worth remembering that the Switch bakes the graphics drivers into the game itself, uses data structures and shaders more native to the GPU without compilation, and has a custom low level graphics API called NVN (and NVN2), so performance is not necessarily linear compared to a PC.
> Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version.
I sort of feel like they were trying to fight emulation with a lot of their moves, doing things that were challenging to emulate, like the 3D stuff, or unusual hardware, etc.
This is the comment I was looking for. Entirely because the trailer makes it super unclear to me if they fixed the "port on the bottom" issue. There's definitely one on the bottom. It looked to me like there might be 2. But that the other way they fixed this issue was by changing the stand so it could lie better in a way that one could charge while playing.
NVM, just saw it in one of the flips around. There's definitely a port on the top. Glad they fixed this.
Some new games will work on S2, but not S1, most S1 games will work on S2. Glad they didn't go MS route of forcing compatibility for games releasing the higher powered platform to run on the lower powered platform.
MS didn't force compatibility between generations either.
The series X and series S are the same generation.
Wherever it was smart to start into this generation with a 3+ yrs old underperforming el-cheapo chipset is another question...
But for what it's worth, Nintendo has done the same decision according to the hardware leaks, they're just missing the equivalent to the Series X. (Which makes sense as it's a mobile device, so they don't want to gobble up electricity)
I personally agree that it was/is a terrible idea to start into a new generation with differently performing systems though. You can definitely release a "pro" version later for extra performance - but with the baseline being so underperforming as the series S... It never really had a chance, and most reviewers even said as much when they were initially announced.
The Series S may as well be an older gen, it is hobbled in ways that prevent it from actually running optimally. It has notably limited releases on xbox.
I assume when they said that only most games are compatible, the exceptions would be the ones that require the OG Switch's physical hardware. From what I heard Ringfit and Labo were only compatible with the OG Switch (not even the existing Switch OLED) because they're designed to fit specifically with its design.
I've had a lot of frustration with Switch joy-cons. Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation. No doubt my kids have subjected it to hard use and probably a drop or two, but still frustrating.
It looks like they've added some reinforcement to the joysticks, and changed the connection with the main body to be magnetic instead of sliding in and out (which causes wear and tear on the connectors over time). I hope the Switch 2 is more robust than the original Switch.
Some extra horsepower would also be appreciated. Recently we were trying to play Switch Sports with 4 players, and even my kids who are generally oblivious to graphical fidelity and framerate were complaining that it was basically unplayable in 4-player split screen.
RE horizontal - there is a ribbon cable that can literally fracture which causes the Zr and Zl buttons to quit working which only really manifests when trying to use 1 joycon horizontally (personally when Mario party happens).
The repair takes about 20 minutes the first time you do it and the ribbon cable is on amazon for about $7.
> Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation.
Yeah... I've repaired our joycons so many times (they all ended up getting the hall sensor joysticks from gulikit, some got new batteries), and despite this and actually not even heavy play time on them, the pairing is absolutely brutal. Definitely my most disliked aspect of the Switch.
We use gulikit controllers with the console pretty much exclusively. The price/performance ratio seemed right, I liked the first one we tried, and so I've just stuck with them.
Can wholeheartedly recommend swapping the sticks on the joycons with hall-effect ones from Gulikit. Made an immense difference for mine who were suffering from drift.
I don't like the aesthetic as much as the Switch 1. Looks a little too sleek, too monochrome, not Nintendo-y enough. Other than the splash of color around the thumbsticks it looks like any number of those handheld Steam Deck-alikes that have been coming out.
That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.
The current Switch had an alternative monochrome (grey) version from the start, so I guess there's a chance the alternative version of the new one would be colorful.
It's been a while, but from my recollection that was the main version at launch. It's what I got, anyways. I don't remember the red and blue joycons showing up until later.
The switch had the red and blue from launch. In the reveal trailer they only showed the grey, but then in the switch presentation they revealed the red and blue. I don't quite remember, but I think from then on they mainly used that in marketing. It could be the same situation here, but the fact that the joycons already have a hint of blue and red makes me think this will be the only version, as it's sort of a mix between the 2 versions of the original switch.
Personally I like it. I choose the grey version of the switch, and I think making the joycons the exact same colour as the system this time looks way better. Also I like the splash of colour rather than it being entirely grey/black.
I know for a fact they had the grey and colorful models on launch day, I bought the model with the red and blue joycons at mignight on launch day at my local BestBuy. The promo video in this article[1] shows some folks playing bomberman with those joycons about 2/3 in.
Not sure which version was more popular, but I bought a red/blue switch on launch day. And anecdotally I'd say I've seen more of those than the grey one over the years.
I personally like the new color scheme. It says "I'm mature now, but still playful". Also, all black is less distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a bigger screen which needs you to move your eyeballs.
Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.
I prefer just "playful" to "mature but still playful". Something about the straightforwardness of "this is a toy for people of all ages, but it is still a toy" speaks to me.
> Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.
I am a little concerned about that connector for the controls. I hope they have designed it to be sturdy. After working on broken Switch 1s a lot of USB C ports were abused by users.
It's so odd to see Nintendo who hasn't competed on hardware specs for decades to release new console without atleast some gimmick(s) to sell their severely underpowered hardware.
Absolute zero gimmicks and zero excitement.
I personally dont care for gimmicks, but I expect them from Nintendo.
That sounds like such an obvious oversight with benefit of hindsight. They could have instantly plugged Valorant/Apex gateway into PC established by YT Live/Twitch through that if only they had it on the right joycon.
Yeah, and this might make first-person shooters and some strategy games play a lot nicer if (big if) it works well. Perhaps the next iteration of Mario Maker might also make use of it.
They had it right with motion controls on the Wii. I could headshot on the Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 so effectively it was cheating.
The Switch also has motion control for fine aiming in some games (Zelda, Borderlands 2). Joysticks for gross movement then motion controls for smaller adjustments. Much better scheme than Xbox or PS.
Resi 4 on the Wii was so good. It was a good game anyway, but the aiming was precise and a hell of a lot of fun. I think about it a lot. I'm hesitant to play the remaster on my steam deck because I doubt it's possible to be as good
Yeah, I am not a big fan of the Switch UI. They really took out the "surprise and delight" compared to the Wii U and 3DS. Very bland and straightforward, and yet somehow awfully slow and laggy.
And you can only buy one game at a time, and have to enter your password in for each one? I like to do all my game research and shopping in one evening and buy 3-4 games at a time. If there's a way to do this I would love to know how!
That's the only part I don't like about the Switch OS, and, yes, it's very bad. And it always baffles me why they wouldn't improve the app that generates revenue of all things.
There's a very good reason for this: The whole OS is under 400MB. Every Nintendo Switch game cartridge comes with a full copy of the necessary OS on it.
Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.
I'll take that kind of functionality before "surprise and delight." We might get "surprise and delight" this generation though, if in part because the change to a modified Samsung NAND over Macronix might be cheaper at larger capacities if rumors are correct.
> Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.
This is mostly accurate, but not entirely afaict. I had to connect my switch to wifi in order to update the OS to play Xenoblade 3 (or Tears of the Kingdom? It's been a while).
What do you mean HUUUGE upgrade? The only difference between the 3DS and the 3DS XL is the battery. Same with the New 3DS XL and New 3Ds.
You might be getting confused because the New 3DS (which was a hardware upgrade) mostly sold in XL version in the US. The non-XL model was sold mostly as limited special editions.
The Switch was the first device where i saw how well the mobile + docked system worked and it was my favorite device until I got a Steam Deck. The Deck is killer IMO because it takes the same form factor of the Switch, gives you more power and no restrictions on games.
From a usability perspective, the Steam Deck is pretty good but the Switch blows it out of the water. Fast boot times, you don't need to restart it all the time, games don't crash frequently, controllers just work, it just slots into its dock, a much simpler UI, and no need to futz around with Proton.
The Steam Deck is cool but I waste infinitely more time dicking around with it than the Switch, where it just works. The Switch is the best console I've ever owned.
YMMV, but I'm not finding any of those to be problems with my Deck.
Reboots take a noticeable length of time and could certainly be faster but they're almost entirely "oh there's a new version of the OS" for me.
I haven't had any problem with games crashing either.
Its native controllers largely Just Work, and it's easy to turn on turbofire or rearrange buttons to work better with Steam Input. When I connect it to the projector and pick up the PS4 controller I have attached to the dock that works fine too, someday I should really try to properly pair it so I can use it wirelessly, but I mostly just play it handheld.
I basically spend zero time futzing around with Proton unless I am trying to get some old PC game to run.
I spent a while fooling around with installing emulators when I first got it, but I never actually touch them in practice, that's the only time I've ever been outside of the Steam UI.
I like my Steam Deck and would generally personally prefer it over a Switch if I had to choose one. I even use it in the "docked" way where it is both driving the family TV but can also be taken out and used directly.
And they've clearly put so, so much quality work into the Steam Deck. It's absolutely amazing considering the source material.
But it's also hobbled by so much of its library assuming it was built for a desktop PC or a notebook that could pretend to be a desktop. Some of my games react to being docked properly, some do not. Some can handle switching from the integrated controls to an external controller live, some do not. Some can handle switching resolutions, some do not. Some respond well to using the integrated controls to manipulate how much computing power you allocate to the games in real time, some do not. Some games work perfectly with multiple controllers, a couple freak out unless the stars align.
The Switch just works.
But I will say that even as someone who is generally not a graphics snob, the Switch is definitely not just aging, but aged. If all the Switch 2 is is basically "Switch 1 but with 2021-level power instead of 2013-level power" I'd be pretty happy.
From a usability perspective, I can play Halo on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can play Doom on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can offline Spotify music on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can SSH into my server from a Steam Deck.
The Nintendo Switch is cool but it is infinitely less useful than a Steam Deck. From a usability perspective, it's quite poor. The Steam Deck is the best console I've ever owned :)
Did you turn on beta OS updates? Because in my experience I have to restart it about every three months when Valve releases an OS update -- but when I had betas turned on, that was every few days instead. (Might also explain some stability issues for you.)
Also: I've seen one crash in the whole time I've owned one, the controllers work perfectly, and I don't think I've ever had to meddle with Proton in any way.
Dock cable going in on the top is a bit fiddly, though, I'll grant you.
Interesting I have had close to zero issues with my deck. Occassionally the audio is crackly when waking from sleep. But it's rare and goes away after a sleep/wake cycle. But then I never really fiddle with settings, at most I cap the FPS for more intensive games. I never dock it either
It's very usable for me. And wakes from sleep almost as quick as switch. That immediacy made switch my favourite console of all time until I got the deck.
the switch software feels so freaking good too. it feels rock-solid and fast. what really blew me away is how quick system updates are, from start to finish.
That's not a restriction, nobody's preventing Nintendo from bringing those games to the platform. I don't currently have pasta at my place, but that's because neither me nor my partner have bought any, not because it's banned from the house.
But Steam doesn't restrict Nintendo from releasing their game on the platform, so the platform isn't restricted.
To put it another way, if I invite you to my birthday party, but you say you're busy, does that mean that my house is restricted to you? Are my other friends restricted from hanging out with you because you decided to stay home?
We all know about piracy buddy, but between having to deal with a Switch emulator and the major pain points of extracting keys to get Tears of the Kingdom to run and putting in a credit card, I'll take the credit card route.
Isn't the Steam Deck too bulky to be used comfortably on your sofa for more than a few minutes? I already think that switch 2 seems too big. I'd wish the regular switch was the size of the lite already.
It's fascinating how the Switch can be such a different device for different people. I bought my Switch in 2022 and it has remained exclusively docked under my TV since then. I have yet to even conceive of a scenario in which I would want to play it on the go. Perhaps if I went on long flights more than a couple of times a year? But who am I kidding, I would still read or listen to podcasts on the plane.
The initial reason for me was to play it while others wanted to watch TV. And then once I got used to that, I found myself preferring to play it in other places in the house even when the TV was free - on the porch when the weather is nice, on my comfy reading chair, playing rhythm games on the exercise bike, next to the computer to have quick access to strategy guides, etc.
cloud gaming has given me this same revelation. It's as portable as a Switch but the gaming experience isn't limited by the hardware in hand. Connectivity is important for the experience, though.
Streaming videos, leasing cars, cloud gaming, spotify, are all great until the distributor takes it away.
I prefer to own my things. The sense that something is mine increases the pleasure of using something for me.
It probably stems from my acquired lack of trust in people. The idea that there's a suit in a high-rise building that spends their days thinking about how to exploit my continued enjoyment of a title by raising the fee, or not addressing congestion hours, or retracting the title when the contract is up and renewing would cost too much, or putting a clause in the service agreement that strips me of my right to sue them if I lose an arm in their amusement park, simply by blurring the lines of ownership.. it bothers me.
cloud gaming is good if you live close to the servers and don't care about graphics, but playing with +60-100ms for every action feels very bad. It almost feels like playing on 15-20 fps PC and quality of streaming video is always a problem compared to native quality maybe AV1 will fix it.
7ms latency, 4k120fps with geforce now. 10ms on wifi. I'm not kidding.
It's ALMOST perfect. I play BF1 through it. Try it once (I believe they still have the "free for 1hr per session, infinite sessions"? That's what sold it to me).
I can play very intensive games (graphically) on my macbook on the couch. It's amazing, and I couldn't believe the 10ms on wifi. It's mind-blowing.
BUT I live near Amsterdam, where a server cluster is.
Also, about the graphics: I'm borrowing a 4080 every time. Everything is on max. If you're in a very (very) hard scene for compression, then yeah, you'll see (very little) artifacts. But I run it on 75mbit, and that's a LOT.
Depends on the game. I think I'm more sensitive to latency (less able to compensate) than most people. I couldn't enjoy playing Titanfall until I put my Samsung TV in game mode; I would just get hit and couldn't do anything about it playing League of Legends on my gaming laptop with a 4K monitor, but when I hooked up an external monitor, mirrored the screen, and ran a clock, I took photos showing my laptops' screen was behind by 30 ms. I started playing on an external monitor and started to win. I even found I had a hard time with some 1 player games such as Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet if I didn't run in game mode.
On the other hand, I went through a phase where I did a lot of streaming from my PC to a NVIDIA Shield and an XBOX. Sometimes through wired Ethernet, something through an airMAX microwave link to my other house. Games like Persona 5 and Orcs Must Die 3 were just fine, but I could not play any Rhythm games, which I have a knack for, High-Fi Rush was no fun at all.
My kid plays fortnite using home streaming to an xbox, and says he doesn't notice the latency. I do the same on an Asus ROG Ally, and it's "good enough". I am not a competitive FPV player, but suffer from OCD and notice latency and it tweaks me hard.
I'm playing single player games via Parsec and the latency feels fine. Moonlight is tolerable but Steam streaming feels terrible for some strange reason. This is running two Wifi 6 devices so nothing is even wired. I often use a controller connected to my laptop, or even better use the wireless controller, connect that to the physical device then you bypass the controller latency and only the video has a lag, which is kind of a neat trick if you're close enough to the computer you're streaming from.
The only sorts of games I can't play are things like Binding of Isaac that are super dependent on reaction speeds, but even games like Elden Ring feel fine.
Sunshine on the server and moonlight on the client blows steam link out of the water in terms of latency. Even on my home network with everything on ethernet, steam link would stutter. I sometimes forget I am not directly connected to a computer while on the couch.
Did clicking on the Rent my PC tab really try to benchmark my GPU through my browser, or did I accidentally click another button on that page inadvertently that triggered that?
If the former, that's a terrible idea. If the latter, that button really needs a confirmation and explanation of what's about to happen.
I'm viewing on an Intel Mac and it hung my entire computer for like 15 seconds. I didn't even connect that it was related to viewing your site until I got the error at the end and everything unfroze.
It does. Sorry about the experience, we will try to improve it.
Having user confirm it is not a good option, because every click is a hassle.
What we could do is first run a very short version of a smaller benchmark, and if that takes too long, don't run the main one. Then the worst case you will have a 100ms lag at this point, which is way better than 5 seconds of reading.
It's a neat feature, I just think it'd be ideal to do a confirmation first. It wouldn't be a great experience if it happened on mobile, either.
Every click is a hassle, but principal of least astonishment applies here. Literally not a soul will be expecting that to happen when casually browsing your site.
What does utilization look like? I would be interested in running this on a spare machine but it's not clear how large the potential audience of renters may be in my area.
Right now the utilization is low (< 10%), but in the effort to prop the providers side the company is footing the bill and paying for availability approximately 50% of what the benchmark on the page tells you. This is a rather common strategy for bootstrapping any two-sided market.
I would say that after being a happy Switch owner for 6 years I still think the portability aspect is useless. It's too big to take with me when I leave the house, and if I'm at home I get a way better experience while docked. I thought it was a stupid gimmick on launch and I still think that. I recognize I'm apparently in the minority, though.
The Switch is genuinely one of the last pieces of hardware I was really excited about, and I can't say that about much anymore. It's extremely well put together, I've repaired mine a number of times with no issues (honestly opening anything made in Japan is a joy, the engineering is so good) and the specs leave a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate, but at the same time, you wouldn't know it while using it. The XBox is such a curmudgeonly slow experience to use, everything in the menus takes forever to load, the dash jerks and lags, and it's just like... this machine can run Halo Infinite, why does it struggle so damn hard with just... boxes and jpegs?
The Switch has a similar issue occasionally in the store application, but outside of that, settings are snappy, updates are practically instant, it turns on and off so quickly. It's what consoles are supposed to be.
And honestly in this same vein, the PS5 is also bloody impressive, but that impressiveness came with an impressive price too. The Switch costing as little as it did and still holding it's own is so cool.
We have a switch and an XBox and after liking the 360 back in the day the newer XBoxes just make me want to tear my hair out. They sold us all on bigger and bigger hardware to get rid of load times and they ended up with the system with the worst load times going all the way back to the 70s. Sometimes it seems like it takes 10 minutes to start up and actually play a game, and then there the updates.
My son got a Forza Horizon game for Xmas and it immediately said it needed to download 128GB from the internet before he could play it. With the way it worked out he didn't get to play it on Christmas day as it never finished downloading before we had to go leave to visit relatives.
Unfortunately the situation with needing to download huge updates is also occasionally present on the Switch. Several third party AAA games (EA sports titles come to mind) ship small cartridges and a require big downloads to the SD card to be playable. Switch game downloads (usually) aren't as large as Xbox/PlayStation downloads, but the wifi chip in the OG model was so slow, they might as well be.
I kind of like the joy con issue, as it means I can send the controllers back to Nintendo and get them fixed for free, even when the problem isn't the joycon - it's the kids destroying the controller.
You can get free replacements btw. My original switch from release finally got drift in the latter part of last year. Nintendo had replacements to me within a few days at no cost. Rare to have such a pleasant experience with customer support, it was a flawless process
New Switch user, believe it or not. I just purchased my second 8BitDo controller with Hall effect joysticks this week. Hoping I can avoid the drift problem by avoiding Joy-Cons! (We usually play on the TV.)
Honestly I swapped them myself both in the Joycons and in the Pro controller a couple times each over the years. The modules cost like $15 through Amazon or Ebay, and unlike the XBox controller, they're separate modules with a ribbon connector instead of soldered in, which makes replacing them a breeze.
At this point I'd be hard pressed to consider this over my Steam Deck. We will see the specs later but I doubt it will really compete processing-wise or screen-wise.
The openness (full arch desktop) of the Steam Deck is also awesome while having a great UI that you never have to leave if you don't want to.
EDIT: I mistakenly called it "fedora desktop", my bad
For the last few generations (since the Wii), you don't buy a Nintendo for the processing power. They haven't competed on processing power since the Gamecube. After the Gamecube generation, you bought a Nintendo for the exclusive games and that was it. Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, and others. Nintendo knows that their draw is just the games, and uses a lot of lawyers to make sure that normal gamers can't play those games on the Steam Deck. If you want to play what Nintendo has to offer on the Steam Deck you have to install an emulator and Nintendo has made sure that normal people would rather drop $300 on a Switch instead of risk legal issues.
Edit: I suppose that some people would also say the intuitive controls (motion control introduced on the Wii, dual screens (and touchscreen) on DS and WiiU, and detachable controllers on the Switch) have some draw, but those features have often been under-utilized except on a few titles.
I agree with you, for most people the Switch is the better/easier option if they are just looking to play a Nintendo-exclusive. Emulators aren't that difficult to set up on Steam Deck and you can easily launch the games from the Steam UI but nothing beats the plug and play of the Switch and double-y so if you are playing networked games.
This take is correct as the primary measure.
Its certainly why I bought one!
However computing juices really started to matter to me since that first buy …8 years ago? Ive been told this by other switch owners too. Some xplatform games get ported to switch and do end up being worse. Witcher 3, which ive beaten on switch, was repurchased on PC to play over steamlink because the switch was slow/choppy/lossy. Switch1 was precovid. Id imagine that many of us now want BOTH. Great content and great specs
The Steam Deck (which I have and love) is also far from a great experience docked, though I'm hopeful that a lot of those edges get ironed out over time.
I also wouldn't give my young kids a Steam Deck, but they will definitely be getting the Switch 2.
Nintendo does not compete on specs. They rely on the fact that fun is pretty much orthogonal to bleeding edge graphics.
They use that awareness and take advantage of simpler graphics to trade off processing power for features (portability, novelty) and profit (60>=usd games).
From time to time they also remind us that little hardware can do a lot if it's not running Chrome on a trench coat, and instead care is put in optimising things.
This is a pretty important point, and one that I'm mystified that a lot of people seem not to agree with. It doesn't matter if you're playing on a glorified smartphone with thumbsticks if the game is good enough. Moreover, having a selling point of state-of-the-art graphics today will turn into a _disadvantage_ in 5-10 years when newer games look even better; something designed to look good today with "lower quality" graphics is going to hold up better because it already is being compared to stuff taking advantage of every ounce of the latest save greatest hardware.
That's true, but Nintendo's counter to that is exclusive games, and they have big series like Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros. There's also newer ones that are more niche, but at least for me it's just the game where some new Smash Bros character comes from.
With exclusives games, emulation can be a problem, but many Nintendo games also rely on the novel things on their platform. For instance the Mario Party series has always tried to use something (rumble, mic, touchscreen, controller's shape).
This makes it necessary to get the console, and once you get market share it'll be worth porting and optimising games for an under-powered console (Celeste, Hollow Knight and probably every game runs worse on the switch, but it's playable). I'm not a gamedev, but it seems that nowadays it's easier than ever to port games since in practice there's fewer architectures around.
For a while Nintendo didn't have a competition in handheld market. If you wanted a handheld gaming device you only had Switch.
Now Steam deck easily competes on fun with Nintendo, because a lot of people have massive decades old steam libraries and constant supply of newest and greatest indie games, and quite a lot of power to play fairly modern titles.
This is hard to compete with because Nintendo likes you to pay for games you've already bought on their platform in past, including old NES and SNES roms (which are super embarassing to ask money for imo).
The only drawback of Steam Deck is that it's a fairly big and bulky.
Buying Switch 2 just for a odd once in every 5 years exclusive Zelda game is a pretty hard sell.
SteamOS is Arch, Bazzite is Fedora if you want a more Fedora experience.
I agree mostly because I find myself playing a lot of smaller games these days, and it's much easier for devs to release and patch their games on Steam than it is a Nintendo platform. They also have a much friendlier refund policy.
For the masses though, a Nintendo system just works. I can hand a Switch to my daughter and know she can play Nintendo games with little bullshit, it's easy to play couch co-op, the parental controls are very solid, etc.
In terms of hardware it's ARM and Nvidia, which is a solid foundation, and Nintendo titles look great without being technically demanding. I fully expect to see a 60 FPS Zelda game that uses DLSS upscaling to look great on my 4K TV. The Steam Deck is somewhat limited by FSR2.
> SteamOS is Arch, Bazzite is Fedora if you want a more Fedora experience.
Oops, edited, thank you!
> I agree mostly because I find myself playing a lot of smaller games these days
Same here, I play mostly indie <$20 games and have a blast doing it. These games would (almost) never launch on the Switch (or any console). Either that or I'm playing games that would never work well on the Switch (like Factorio, yes I know there is a port and I've also tried on my steam deck and it sucks, you need a mouse/keyboard IMHO).
> For the masses though, a Nintendo system just works. I can hand a Switch to my daughter and know she can play Nintendo games with little bullshit, it's easy to play couch co-op, the parental controls are very solid, etc.
Agreed, this is huge, I wouldn't recommend a steam deck to the average person, just tech people mostly.
Which is also a gray area. I personally am fine with it for older, depreciated consoles. But I won't emulate current gen games unless I'm also buying the game.. especially on the Nintendo platform where the games still have some "magic" to them, compared to the more generic games on other platforms that prioritize graphics over seemingly all other attributes.
Even if you buy the game you need to bypass encryption in order to dump the game data to run it on an emulator. A big part of why Nintendo prevailed in their lawsuit against Yuzu is that they proved the emulator could not be used without extracting encryption keys and bypassing copy protection.
So no, there's no legal way to use a switch emulator. At least not for playing commercial switch games, I guess you could theoretically home brew your own game to play on an emulator.
> A big part of why Nintendo prevailed in their lawsuit against Yuzu is that they proved the emulator could not be used without extracting encryption keys and bypassing copy protection.
Not a lawyer but as I understand it, the case resulted in a settlement and as such no legal determination was made. They didn't prove anything in court and no precedent was set regarding the legality of emulation.
Obviously there isn't a switch 2 emulator yet, and probably will be a while until one is released.
The challenge will not be hardware emulation (if it's a nvidia tegra 2 based SOC that will be easy) but hack the OS/security to make it usable.
So don't expect to play mario kart 9 on your steam deck anytime soon.
Edit: with easy i don't mean that it will not demand a really top of the line computer to run it. But that isn't completely undocumented or custom hardware, like i don't know, ps3 or sega saturn.
Sure, but you cannot play online, though. You can't trade Pokemon for example. Tetris 99 got a lot of play in our house. It heavily depends on what you're chasing.
They have sold millions of faulty joycons (referring to drift), when the solution was already available (hall effect sticks) but it would have cost them an extra $1 per joystick, reselling games that came out in 2010 for $60 today, and using DMCA to bully youtube channels that show videos of their games are some morally reprehensible things from the top of my head.
It does not entitle anyone to pirate their games, but taking your words, Nintendo is not exactly starving either, they could have spent the extra $1 on the joycons to fit them with non drifting sticks. Even if you use their replacement program, you just get another joycon with the same stick.
> Why pay for the Steam Deck, though? Buy it online and claim it never arrived to get a refund.
If you do so, the seller has one less device. If you copy a game, the seller still has the same number of games. Your analogy clearly doesn't work. A better analogy would be possible if we had Star Trek replicators: replicating a full Steam Deck.
> A better analogy would be possible if we had Star Trek replicators: replicating a full Steam Deck.
Well, we literally invented Star Trek replicators for information, and we've seen what happened. If we had Star Trek replicators people would be complaining that replicating food, medicine, etc. is immoral because you should be paying the "original creator" for their intellectual property.
Not defending the length of current US copyright, but as long as we live under capitalism, the people who spend years of their time making the information need to get compensated somehow.
What if you buy the game secondhand, cheaply? My friend got Animal Crossing with their switch for free with a bundle, but they don't like playing the game. This would be much better than paying full price for a game that never will go on sale.
Buying a used game means the original owner can no longer play, and has to repurchase if they want to play as again. The same is not true for emulators
Switch emulation works surprisingly well, but it has its quirks and some titles are barely playable. I love emulation primarily because it's necessary for long-term archival of game libraries, but emulating modern systems is not a super user-friendly process (not to mention the qualms around piracy).
The audience of people that would get a Steam Deck and then emulate Switch games is so small that this is a no-issue for Nintendo. If you can do that you're probably not the target audience to begin with.
One could in theory switch from Steam to Switch platform, rebuying everything. Doesn't make a ton of sense from PC gamer standpoint but that's PC gamer standpoint.
I have both and they certainly each have their place. The Steam Deck has a much wider variety of games and can handle heavier graphics loads, but it is too heavy to be all that comfortable for handheld use, and the Switch is in my mind the undisputed champion of local multiplayer (more portable controllers, controller connections Just Work, good variety of local multiplayer games, etc).
One might imagine, the design of the games are an intricate part of the companies core competencies. The impressive part is a next generation carrying through with the art.
The only reason I have a Switch is to play Nintendo games. They are only available there, and will continue to be only available on Switch 2. Steam deck offers nothing, by comparison.
I think that while this sentiment is very real for a lot of folks who are into the Steam Deck, that doesn't mean the Switch doesn't have its own unique advantages.
- The Nintendo software catalog. Sure, you can emulate on the Steam Deck, but it's a chore and far from perfect, and for most people who do it that is piracy.
- The Switch is far less bulky, and has better battery life, less noise. ARM architecture is very well-suited to mobile gaming.
- The docking mechanism is seamless and the dock is included with the device. Games are designed around that functionality specifically, e.g., you won't have controller or display configuration issues on a Switch because it's all pre-configured.
- The price is almost certainly lower.
- You can buy physical game cartridges and resell them, which is a big advantage for fans of physical media.
- The Steam Deck does rely on a lot on its compatibility software with PC games, and while it's mostly a non-issue there it's not by any means a perfect catalog. If you get a Switch, all Switch software is going to work and was made for and tested on a Switch.
I think there's also a certain amount of "jank" to the Steam Deck.
Don't get me wrong it is a super cool console and pushes a lot of boundaries, but you don't really 100% know whether a title is going to run the way you want it to on the steam deck.
The switch is a more curated experience, you can pretty much expect every game to run properly, going to put caveat for very heavy graphic cross platform title like the new Harry Potter game, etc.
Steam has a verification process to determine which games work properly on the Steam Deck. If you follow that then you should have no issues playing your games on a Steam Deck.
I can't buy steam games second hand, and I can't let my kids trade steam games with their friends, and I can't sell a steam game and get some $$ back if I decide I am not likely to play it again.
Looks like joy-cons will have 'mouse-like' functionality and there's a 'C' on right joy-con but its functionality is not reveled. New Mario Kart showcased would probably be one of the first exclusives.
A few details are quite different from 8, notably the boost and character animations, it's definitely a new game.
Marketing will be difficult, MK8 already peaked graphically and has 96 tracks, and will still work on Switch 2. I hope they'll find real selling points for MK9.
Would have not surprised me if it's actually Mario Kart 8 2. (Technically that's already what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is, so, actually, it would be Mario Kart 8 3).
I mean, at this point it makes little sense for them to start from scratch, releasing a newer game but with much less than the enormous amount of content provided by MK8D + DLC would seem like a very noticeable downgrade, so just revamping the old one would be a practical move, though I don't think fans would be happy with that.
MK8 was mostly flawless gameplay wise, how can it be improved? But at this point one has no choice but to trust Nintendo's ability to come up with surprises.
There are certainly some ways they can, I'd love to see a 100 man race or something crazy like that.
MK8 was also an iteration on MK7, with refinements to the handling, the addition of anti-gravity, and tweaks to items. It's certain there's going to be _some_ sort of mechanical shakeup.
Mario Kart sells like hotcakes; I doubt they'll have to do much to convince people to buy a new one, particularly folks who've played the old one for hundreds of hours.
yeah, i agree on that, makes more sense to update 8.
BUT, i don't know if i would use that as the first look at the new console, basically looks like really similar to a game that was released 10 years ago, i wouldn't buy a new system to play again mario kart 8.
I thought they were showing the retro compatibility feature, since the gameplay comes after the message that switch 1 games would be playable on 2 (maybe upscaled or something)
Everyone has a new design, maybe I'm more familiar with my Marios than most but I could tell immediately it has a more cartoonish design, and characters have a rubbery kind of stretch and bounce to their animations. You can see it notably on the closeup of Mario where he hops into a drift.
The art style is somewhere between the 2010s bog-standard Mario and Super Mario Bros Wonder.
To be fair, if we’re going by track alone, there’s nothing to say it’s not just a new track for the Switch 2 release (or even just released at the same time, but available on both).
That's so cliche and cringe nowadays, but the reason they didn't wait to do that is probably because of all the leaks. The specs, the name, photos of the console and internal components all leaked. Even the fan renders people were making turned out to be pretty damn accurate (https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/1i008os/nin...)
Calling anything “cringe” is pretty self-referential. This slang just makes me imagine a bunch of genZ folk wincing nonstop with the heads in their phones. Must be exhausting.
As long as the internet has existed, we have been lampooning corporate keynotes. The gaming industry does this every cycle, trying to hype up incremental updates as if it’s the best thing to ever get released. See you again in a few years!
I’m glad to see Nintendo found a form factor that’s kind of gimmicky that actually worked. The Wii and Wii U were too gimmicky, but portability was a great choice. I’m also glad to see backwards compatibility.
I’m excited to see what kind of hardware improvements have been made. The switch came out in March 2017, just about 8 years ago. Just due to the way Nintendo games have their animated charm, they’re able to make their games look excellent on that hardware still. That said, I’d love to see how good a Zelda game looks on some new hardware.
"Gimmicky" in the sense that they used movement controls and that's non-standard in the industry and went away mostly afterwards. I'm considering anything that isn't a traditional stationary control (keyboard + mouse or controller) as "gimmicky" or out of the ordinary.
In terms of sales, you're absolutely right - the Wii crushed it. I'd be curious to know about usage and software sales though. Maybe I'm wrong (very possible), but almost everyone I knew had a Wii at some point, but they didn't use it outside of a family toy with a few games when they first got it. I'd still consider that a win for Nintendo compared to less sales, but I'd imagine the average Xbox 360 or PS3 had a lot more software sales per console.
Right, but it's not the main focus in the majority of games. In many games that do offer gyro support, it's usually able to be toggled off. It's not like the Wii where the core of the controllers was pointing them and swinging them around.
I don't remember motion controls being a majority of Wii games either.
A lot of them were played with a Nunchuk to emulate a classic controller (or attached to the actual Classic Controller or Rock Band instruments to play cross platform games).
The motion control that comes to mind beyond Wii Sports were circling the Wiimote to collect things in Mario.
The Wii exclusive Zelda, Skyward Sword, was motion control only.
Even games that didn't require motion controls for basic gameplay still required you to do things like turn the controller around and use the pointer to select options from a menu rather than using the D pad. (I'm thinking Punch Out). I think Donkey Kong country occasionally made you shake the controller.
Come on, EVERYTHING about the Wii was about moving these like they were your hands in game. Pretty much NOTHING on the switch uses them. On the other hand VR has accomplished the dream of early Wii games like Red Steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfNgkhmPPsc
> almost everyone I knew had a Wii at some point, but they didn't use it outside of a family toy with a few games when they first got it.
At various points in my family's owning one, we obviously used it for the Wii Sports-type games, as well as non-motion games like NES titles from the Virtual Console (the Wiimote in its rubber case felt surprisingly decent in the hands while turned sideways). But we also used it for Netflix and YouTube with the official apps, and surprisingly, various other websites with the Internet Channel. We sometimes used the SD card reader to look at photos from digital cameras, which seems like it doesn't make a lot of sense today, but was easier than connecting up a camera or camcorder to a TV with a cable to look at things, which was also a thing back then.
It was certainly a "go long periods without touching it" part of the home, but it was also surprisingly versatile with the uses that did pop up for it. And I think we got more usage out of it, both in terms of hours and in terms of distinct use cases, than we got out of the Xbox 360 we had later (if not, it was basically due to Minecraft, not because we played a larger number of games on the Xbox).
I believe the Wii had the best or second best attach rate for a Nintendo console (how many games sold per console sold). It lived a long time and had a ton of good releases.
The switch may be kind of hard to count for home console sales, since the switch lite is a portable console (lacks hardware to use the dock) and may be included in some sales numbers.
> That said, I’d love to see how good a Zelda game looks on some new hardware.
Hopefully they'll go back and update their major Switch titles to leverage the new hardware. BOTW and TOTK look fantastic in an emulator with the resolution and framerate cranked much higher than the original Switch hardware could handle, even without updating any of the assets.
I personally don't have much faith that Nintendo will do that, _but_ I hope I'm wrong. That would be wonderful. Also just removing some of the lag from those games (and the Link's Awakening remake was pretty bad) would be a big win.
> which combines the best of both of those consoles.
Minus the dual screen of the Wii U, which was awesome. It'd be cool if the Switch 2's dock could work independently of the console, so that you could have a reverse Wii U- experience with it. The dual screen setup can be a neat gimmick for gameplay, but it's biggest strength is the convenience that comes from having a second screen closer to your face. You can have less visual clutter on the main screen, and reduce the amount of menus players need to click through.
TBH other then a few neat local multiplayer stuff in NintendoLand, there really wasn't much that actually utilized the dual screen in a way that actually enhanced the game. You couldn't quickly swap between the screens like you could on the DS, because the screens were different distances away and required re-focusing your eyes. This meant that most gamepad usages played the same as if you just pressed a button to bring up your inventory or switch views or whatever.
And that's before you take into account the fact that the biggest titles on the Wii U (Mario Kart and Smash Bros) didn't use the second screen at all. The second screen was a gimmick, and a gimmick that was exhausted pretty quickly.
Been forever since I played it, but I recall appreciating having 2 screens for Xenoblade X (which I'm curious to see how it feels on the Switch remaster coming out in March). But yeah as someone who bought a WiiU there weren't a ton of games that did a good job with the second screen.
Zelda Wind Waker made excellent use of the second screen. You could swap tools and scroll the map on the fly without pausing, while continuing to otherwise play normally.
I’m fairly certain I remember them suggesting that the original switch was capable of doing this but then they either never granted access to it in the dev kit or they just never had it end up getting used in any noteworthy games.
Nintendoland for the Wii U was _very_ fun in my memory. It was the only title that I remember leveraging the asymmetry of information that different players can have for local multiplayer.
That would be an interesting use of the USB connector at the top --- plug into the Dock and use the Switch as a gamepad à la the Wii U while playing on the TV.
I really loved some of the multiplayer games on Wii U that took advantage of the gamepad. Completely brilliant to have one "special" player with the gamepad + second screen vs. the rest of the plebs with Wiimotes.
> I’m glad to see Nintendo found a form factor that’s kind of gimmicky that actually worked.
I don't quite understand this comment. Parents will be unable to tell the difference (like parents buying their kids Xbox One S when Xbox Series S came out, really bad naming increment with form factor so similar), and other comments here note this Switch 2 is a regression to less quirk.
What's the gimmicky part of this that caught your eye you feel like they found in Switch 2?
My words definitely could've been better. I was referring to "portability" as the gimmick here since it's not the norm in the industry for primary console. Nintendo did handhelds for years, but that was also a secondary thing to their primary consoles. Having their only console also be handheld was what I was referring to as the gimmick here, but I understand the argument that that's not a gimmick.
As for naming, I think it'll be fine since they're using numbers. I'm not in the position of a middle aged parent who's getting a gift for a child, but the fact that Sony has successfully done it for this long makes me feel that it'll work.
Add a letter to the end is awful though. It took me a bit to nail down the Series X vs Series S Xboxs (granted, I haven't owned an Xbox in over a decade). The Wii U definitely confused people as well.
The portability was amusing but then turned out to be absolutely phenomenal (and likely resulted in multiple sales to individual households).
It both saved them from having to work out what to do with the handhelds, and introduced parents to "the kids can just bring it with them".
I have an Xbox Series X and I'm still not sure I got "the right one" but since I got it as a glorified blurry player that can also play games maybe, it's fine as is.
> It both saved them from having to work out what to do with the handhelds
Well, more accurate to say they just gave up. The Switch is very much not a viable replacement for a 3DS because of how damn big it is. You can't just slip it into your pocket and go.
I think parents will have no problem with the concept of a Thingie N+1 and most of those stories came from either XBOX's insane naming or from Wii->Wii U.
The gaming industry is much more mature and settled than the past when Nintendo could mess around with a crazy new gimmick every new console release.
People expect backwards compatibility now, and the Switch has such a mature software library, it would be a waste to throw it out. And it'll be harder than ever to re-sell people a port of a game from a few years ago that looks basically identical to how it did before (though Sony's been trying)
I'm looking forward to this, and I hope Nintendo patches OG Switch games to take advantage of the new hardware. It's a shame the only (official) method of playing the new Zeldas gets you frequently chugging along at like 15fps.
> The switch came out in March 2017, just about 8 years ago. Just due to the way Nintendo games have their animated charm, they’re able to make their games look excellent on that hardware still.
Even more impressive, the SoC in the Switch is from about 2013 I believe.
Arg, they make the screen look absolutely huge with that large front glass panel during most of the video and I was thinking to myself, nice! But then at the end they actually show how large the bezels are underneath the glass and it is quite disappointing. Someday we'll have modern smartphone like mini-bezels (a few mm at most) in our handheld gaming consoles, but I guess not yet.
well, first, the Switch does have a touch screen.... =)
but I think parent poster is referring to the somewhat common situation with portable devices where you're watching/playing in bed and the device is propped up on a pillow or blanket or something
I’ll never understand why people hate bezels so much. They have no bearing on the screen size, but merely offer a basis for comparison when you’re looking at the screen.
Personal opinion, but I didn't really have that reaction. That screen is still significantly bigger than the Switch 1.
Honestly it looks like a great size and if the bezels were smaller, it might be a problem to grip the device (with joycons detached) without hitting the touch screen.
The switch isn't a handheld though. It's way too big to be a viable replacement for a 3DS in that regard, Nintendo just gave up on that market segment for whatever reason.
Do we know if the aspect ratio is the same? Maybe they're demonstrating Switch 1 games that have a slightly different aspect ratio, but can be updated to fit the new screen in the future?
Microbezels are aesthetically great but practically horrible.
Having some practical space to grab onto wins at the end of the day, we presumably use these things instead of having one sit looking happy on a bookshelf.
It's a portable device, at some point or another I'm going to handle it without the side controllers. Having some place to grab the thing is basic ergonomics, much less something designed with kids in mind.
Where you touch it when not in use doesn't matter. You're not going to use it that way, because nothing uses the touchscreen for gameplay.
[edit] originally I said it didn't have a touchscreen, but I've been reminded that the original does actually have one and it's just never used by anything because ever requiring it in a game would be really dumb when the entire premise of the switch is that it's dockable.
>Where you touch it when not in use doesn't matter.
Being able to easily grab something is always important, especially anything portable. I'm going to pull it out of a bag, move it across a table, etc. and having microbezels gets in the way of that by reducing the useful grabbing space.
Smartphones are the epitome of horrible here. With silky smooth glass and/or sheer aluminum/plastic on all sides with nanobezels (or no bezels at all...) and razor thin thickness, they are a fucking pain to grab and handle without dropping them. Most of us put them into a case to give them the necessary girth and friction for practical handling.
Mobile device design and design in general nowadays focus on aesthetics way too much to the detriment of practicality. People handle and use them at the end of the day, they aren't for oogling.
> I'm going to pull it out of a bag, move it across a table, etc. and having microbezels gets in the way of that by reducing the useful grabbing space.
I think this is a weird you thing. You're allowed to touch the screen. It's not made of lava.
Screens are smooth and decidedly fragile compared to the rest of the chassis. You especially don't want to put much if any pressure on it, which you might need to do for a firm grip.
You also probably don't want to put too much handgrime on the screen, further incentivizing an unsecure grip.
Seriously, big bezels are great. I don't care how great something looks as decor if I can't handle it practically.
Clubhouse 51 has a section of games that utilize the touch screen, such as air hockey (along with others that're nice to be able to go between the touch screen and joysticks for, like the card games where the touch screen's a lot faster to use for moving cards around).
Relieved that they are just iterating instead of trying to go for something radically different like they did. Everybody is pretty happy with the current feature set, just add some stuff and get a nice power upgrade in there and you're all set for another 6 years.
It's possibly the most normal successor name they've ever chosen. I like it. I'm picturing someone suggesting "Switch U" and getting thrown out the window like in that meme comic, even though he's often used as the voice of reason...
I still like Famicom > Super Famicom as the best successor name, but having to go back that far to find some competition for naming probably says something.
With the habit they've developed of releasing upgraded versions inside a generation, especially already having Switch OLED, I think Super Switch would be too ambiguous.
The problem with Xbox naming is that names are both inconsistent and too similar to each other. Aside from the Wii/Wii U debacle, Nintendo console names haven't been consistent, but they have been distinct. It's easy to remember that the GameCube and the Wii aren't the same thing.
Xbox, though, it's just the word Xbox followed by arbitrary numbers, maybe with the letter S or X thrown in for fun. I have no idea why they thought Xbox Series X wouldn't confuse people right after the Xbox One X.
The Xbox came out when the PS2 did. When it came time for the next generation, Sony went with the obvious PS3. Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3", and they couldn't skip right to "Xbox 3", so they called it the "Xbox 360", which was frankly genius because it had the 3 there anyway and put it on the same level in consumers' eyes.
But after that it all fell apart -- they had no good options. They still couldn't jump to "Xbox 4". Maybe "720" would have worked. Someone decided to have a clean break and restart at "One" but of course that fell apart immediately at "Two". So another clean break to "Series..". And by that point it's so screwy they've lost any chance of fixing it...
They can't call it the <something else> Box because they don't want people to think of it as a Microsoft Device.
Nintendo can go from Nintendo 3DS to Nintendo Switch because the brand is Nintendo.
Microsoft clearly considers the brand "Microsoft" to be poison ivy to gamers, and always brands their gaming hardware as "Xbox" as if that were the company name. Going to Ybox would kill their brand and put them back at square one.
A&W tried to make a 1/3 pound burger to compete with the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder but it failed because people thought it was smaller, because 3 is smaller than 4.
I think "Xbox 4" coming after "Xbox 360" would have been the cleanest break. It would have been fine. Or heck, jump straight to "Xbox 5" if they really think the number in the name is the main point of comparison with the PlayStation.
>Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3", and they couldn't skip right to "Xbox 3"
Nope, it all goes back to Microsoft not naming the 360 "Xbox 3" with some lame excuse for why it did so. Yes, everyone would have laughed, but no one would remember or care today that the "Xbox 5" isn't actually the fifth Xbox.
An alternative that Microsoft missed, from Reddit:
>They could have named the Xbox Series X the Xbox 5 and said it was because they counted the One X as the 4th gen Xbox.
Exactly - or they could have released a rare, ignored souped up Xbox as the "Xbox 2" and done the "Xbox 3".
The 360 was a good "fix" for the problem but not going to something like Xbox13 or Xbox2013 (though year based names were on the out by then) - anything other than "Xbox One" (Xbone would have been better).
I still don't know how the various versions work and apply to the Series SeX.
I actually thought that would be cool for Switch 2 - call it the Switch 25. They could release the Switch 30 in 5 years and so on without too much confusion, assuming compatibility all the way through (by 2035 we'll probably all be on thin clients anyway).
I was also expecting they would fumble marketing again and call the new console something like 'Switch U', but it seems they really learned their lesson there.
I'm glad they finally learned to use sensible names. I guess it took the failure of the Wii U for them to realize they should just keep it simple if they want to be sure it's easy for consumers to understand what the product is.
They tried something similar with the New Nintendo 3DS but a lot of people got confused.
Sure, "new" is probably one the worst words you could use. But I don't think "super" would be better. And even if they did use "super" how do you name the next console ?
A little sad about the lack of a rail compatible with charging existing controllers. Hopefully it's compatible with current gen controllers anyway given how expensive they are.
One of my favorite parts about the Xbox Series generation of consoles is that it's fully compatible with the previous Xbox One controllers.
It would be amazing if they could get their multi-gen multi-console save-sync to work nearly as well as Microsoft's so I could switch back and forth between my existing Switch and Switch 2 seamlessly but I doubt that's in the cards, this is Nintendo were talking about.
I might throw a party to smash my joy cons. Some of the worst quality control in my long history of owning hardware, and from a company previously famous for that trait. Good riddance.
It always shocked me that for how bad the joycons were, the "Pro Controller" was one of the best controllers I've ever used. I don't know how they managed to nail one and get the other so wrong.
That's their actual standard and hopefully it has returned to the "default" controller(s). I think they just flew too close to the sun in terms of trade-offs with the Switch 1 joy cons. Not possible to make them good enough at that price at that size at the time of release
This would be extremely welcome news. Local multiplayer has always been Nintendo's bread and butter, so being able to keep using controllers from the previous system is a huge boon. Also means not having to invest in a new 'Pro' controller hopefully.
The version of the grip that you buy as an accessory (HAC-012) can charge the joycons. However the pack in one (HAC-011) can't.
Looking around, it appears that Nintendo have also released an official "Joy-con charging stand (2-way)", suspiciously it seems they only launched it in October 2024, when various 3rd party chargers have been around for years.
There's also the official AA battery packs. Yes, really.
Hmmm, I wonder if the Nintendo charging stand will charge the NES Joy-Cons, cause the BestBuy stand I have won't (no big deal currently, the switch is usually on the dock and I charge the NES controllers on it)
I wonder if they have a new control technique up their sleeve. Innovative gameplay and pushing new control ideas is one of Nintendo’s signatures. That said, being the switch 2, not a new console, maybe they kept it the same and just upgraded the processing and graphics hardware.
Both controllers have optical sensors (visible in the trailer), confirming the rumors that they'll have mouse like functionality. Remains to be seen if games will actually bother to implement it or if it'll remain a curiosity that only a handful of titles support.
For action games doesn't look like a good option. But i think it will be used if it works well on any surface.
Probably there will be a resurgence of point and click adventure games pushed by the new mouse functionality (or even republish some old sierra/lucas arts stuff with mouse support).
Also may be useful for pc ports like simcity clones and strategy games (i could use that in civ).
Some propietary nintendo stuff will use it like mario maker or wario ware, some zelda dungeon probably will have a gimmick around it. And also some small indy third party stuff, like i don't know, mini motorways, things like that, will be built arround it.
It would be great if games implemented it for aiming, but I am not sure that they will for sure. Given how few third party developers add a gyro-aiming option when they release a game on the console when most first party games have it in some way.
It will make for an interesting dynamic for games with cross-play with other consoles where implemented though.
We could hope that Nintendo exposes a mouse like interface when it's in mouse mode, which could help a lot for adoption for cross platform third-parties.
Dealing with Switch specific gyro info, sometimes coming from two sources sometimes from one must have been a PITA, especially for games using a cross platform engine.
All it does it confirm that they have something there. The Wii used a sensor to detect where it was pointing, the Switch had an IR camera for a variety of weird gimmicks, the NES and SNES had light-detecting "guns". Hell, it could even be an IR blaster like the Wii U Gamepad had, and not a sensor at all. We just don't know yet.
The trailer shows the joycons sliding on that side with an additional attachment (see: 1:10). It seemed pretty obvious they were trying to hint at some kind of mouse-like optical tracking on a flat surface.
Innovation is their way, but they're still burned a LOT by the Wii U. Now they've managed to find something that works, I think they'll stick with it for at least the Switch 2, maybe the 3 as well.
The Switch wouldn't exist if they hadn't first experimented with that form factor with the Wii U. The innovation and risk of the Wii U paid off for them in the long run.
True, but I think they still wanted the U to actually sell better than it did. It was a case of too much innovation too soon, IMO — having an alternating "evolution/revolution" cycle makes a lot of sense.
Every company wants a product to sell better than it did, but it's pretty obvious that the WiiU didn't meet expectations.
It sold 13m units, but the clearest sign of it not doing "as well as expected" is that they discontinued it as soon as possible as they could once the Switch was out.
From my experience both with "gamers" and "non-gamers" - it was too similar in name for the latter and not exciting enough for the former.
Yeah, definitely—it's my favorite thing about the company. Well, maybe second to their consistent level of quality. But seriously—the Labo piano used the IR camera to scan in waveforms to create new instruments. The VR kit had an elephant trunk mask to let you move around parts in a marble run game. Nintendo has a lot of wild experiments, and Labo takes that all to the next level.
And that's not getting into the quality of software for building the kits—way beyond any instructions that Lego has ever put out.
I hope I'll be able to pre-order one. I don't even care if they ship it right away. Promise me one within the first 2 or 3 years and I would be happy.
I know I'm going to want one and I know they are going to be snapped up by scalpers and be hard to buy at first. Fine. I just don't want to go through the stupid check Amazon, then GameStop, then BestBuy, then Walmart dance. Just let me order one and then not worry about it.
It seems like the days of revolutionary consumer electronics are over.
This looks nice, for sure. But it’s really more of the same. Not surprising. It does surprise me that there’s such emphasis on it, though. There’s the name, of course, and then the entire video is based around “it’s the same thing but a little better.”
Game console updates used to be big deals. The SNES was a revolution. PS2 was huge. Now… PS5? What’s different from PS4, again? Is there a 6? What’s different about that?
I don’t blame Nintendo or the others. I have no idea what they could do here they would be revolutionary. I think the design space has just been thoroughly explored by now and that’s where we are.
This pattern repeats all over the place. TVs are maxed out, with better visual quality than people care about, and size limited by wall space. Computers get a little faster every year. This year’s phones are last year’s phones with a minor performance bump and slightly better cameras. And again, I don’t see what they can do better, and that’s probably how it has to be at this point.
But it’s still a little shocking to see a company lean so far into the theme of “we made incremental improvements to this thing we released 8 years ago.”
> Game console updates used to be big deals. The SNES was a revolution. PS2 was huge.
There are two categories of "big deal". The SNES and PS2 were big deals simply because game graphics had so much headroom for improvement. Now that the low-hanging fruits of color palette, resolution, frame rate, texture quality, animation quality, and geometric complexity have all been squeezed, the improvements are more asymptotic.
The other "big deal" category is gimmicks. I would argue that while it is a hallmark of Nintendo, the gimmicks have flopped as often as not. Most of Nintendo's big sellers were fairly conventional. (The most glaring exceptions being the original Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch.) I'm glad they do the gimmicks, but I'm also glad they don't only do the gimmicks.
But those are three hells of exceptions (can you actually do that in English? I was trying to pluralize "a hell of an exception").
They are the 3rd, 4th and 7th best selling consoles of all time. And you forgot the dual screen in the DS (2nd best selling of all time).
Maybe many of the gimmicks flopped, but others wildly succeeded and Nintendo wouldn't be what it is without them. In fact, it probably wouldn't even make consoles by now, following the fate of Sega.
Exactly. For a while you could have huge improvements from better hardware. Then there were some cool new gimmicks. Now both of those seem to be played out.
And that’s happening across the board. All the stuff I’d go ogle in Best Buy as a teenager is now basically maxed out both in terms of hardware and gimmicks.
Nintendo has actually stated they view the SNES as a evolution of the NES. They have directly stated their hardware development cycle goes Revolution>Evolution>Revolution. Considering that the Switch was considered one of their revolutionary leap (their first hybrid console) it is no surprise the Switch 2 is a simple evolution of that concept. If their next console is another iteration of the Switch THEN it is safe to say they are no longer aiming to revolutionize their hardware.
Edit: After tons of searching I am starting to think that I am misremembering thing. I think this idea came about from the Wii's 'Revolution' code name and I Mandela Effected myself into think there was a interview we're either Miyamoto or Iwata talked about this being there philosophy when designing system.
That really sounds like something someone made up in marketing.
The Wii came about because an independent company pitched motion control technology to Nintendo and they liked it and licensed it. Not because of the 3d chess game of going from "evolutions" to "revolutions".
The Switch came about because it's less expensive to make software for a single hardware unit than a separate handheld and console and this became an issue as games got more expensive to make.
At the time, at least, I don't recall seeing SNES as a "revolution". It had better graphics etc, but the form factor was the same, and games were broadly similar, so it was more of a luxury option.
The SNES was, objectively, a huge jump over the previous generation (NES, Master System, etc.). Much better sound, 16-bit color, pseudo-3D with Mode 7, support for much much larger carts, support for coprocessors within the cart... An expansion port for a hypothetical CD-ROM addon (spoiler). I think that the revolution>evolution>revolution is revisionist, or at least something they said much later on. SNES might have started as a luxury option, as all consoles do, but it was obviously intended to compete with whatever Sega put out for that generation (and compared to the Genesis, Sega pulled out a few tricks so in the end the SNES wasn't a huge step above the Genesis either).
Sorry, tried to find the interview and failed. It would most like have come out around the Wii's release/development since it used the code name Revolution.
I apologize, I tried to find the interview were this was stated but unfortunately search engines are terrible now and no matter how hard I try I only get news about the Switch 2 or old stories about when the Wii has code named Revolution. Feel free to not take my word that this was actually stated.
The graphics bump you'd see from next gen systems prior 2010 was massive. So big in fact that it would unlock new genres of games which weren't previously possible.
ps1 > ps2 was pretty huge too because I'd argue the ps2 marked the first generation of consoles where games could move away from pixelated cartoony characters and into photo-realistic graphics and just about pull it off.
Today you get better lighting and shadows, or slightly higher FPS which is nice, but it doesn't really change the types of games you can make in the way the ps2 did.
PS1 launched without analog controls. This was later available as a newer controller for PS1, but if we count that as a PS2 base feature it's a nice innovation on PS1 at launch.
This all comes down to what the hardware improvements can mean in practice. It's not as if hardware isn't moving up, but that the new kinds of things double the hardware unlocks are much smaller than they used to be.
This is best seen on the PC market. What a gaming desktop today has running on it is, compute wise, unimaginably stronger than the best available 10-20 years ago. The increases in hardware just keep coming. But there's limits on how much more you can get out of being able to push more polygons, or to put more pixels on screen. We can do all kinds of extra photorealistic things in real time that before would have to be done only in movies, and rendered in server farms for weeks at a time. But the increased difficulty doesn't quite match how impressive the extra effects are.
You can also notice this by just playing old games, and seeing how they hold up. We can make 2d pixel art games that are much better than what a SNES could do, but many of those games still hold up just fine. Meanwhile most 3d games of the Playstation and even the PS2 era are downright painful, because the increases in power between generations back then lead to big practical differences in capability. A ps5 is much stronger than a ps4, hardware wise, but it didn't unlock much at all. All the extra power can get you cooler reflections on cyberpunk, and you can go even further with a PC that has over $1000 in video cards in it. But those reflections and atmospheric effects are eating up as much hardware as the rest of the game.
It’s some of each. Hardware is improving substantially slower than it used to. And at the same time, what you get out of better hardware has hit steeply diminishing returns.
> But it’s still a little shocking to see a company lean so far into the theme of “we made incremental improvements to this thing we released 8 years ago.”
It's certainly more 'shocking' to see Nintendo do it than, say, Microsoft or Sony. But Nintendo hasn't always introduced huge new changes with a console bump — NES->SNES wasn't particularly revolutionary, and there were certainly no gimmicks there. I think it's a very understandable reaction to a) the Wii U b) the enormous success of the Switch
NES->SNES didn’t do much with the form factor or the controls, but technologically it was an enormous leap. That’s the sort of thing that just can’t happen anymore, since video game technology is pretty much maxed out. You can always make things a little bit prettier, or have a little better framerate, but nothing too interesting.
I suppose VR/AR is the one area where something big could still happen. The current state of the art there is far from the “mostly limited by the size of your wall” stage.
I feel like VR would have “happened with the masses” by now given that the quest is wireless, excellent quality, and cheap. Personally I think it did, and it’s a success, it’s just that it has a lower ceiling because it’s an awkward rectangle that you strap to your face.
There is also, IMO, a huge software quality problem with VR.
I am baffled as to why all the first person games don’t copy Alyx’s control scheme, it’s the only one that feels correct to use. The rest of the first person games feel awful to play, once you get past the gimmick of “wow cool”.
Music/rhythm games work really well for VR, but that’s always going to be a niche market. I play beat saber all the time, it’s fantastic.
Everything else seems to be sandbox games. Fucking sandbox games. They’re funny the first time, but you can only throw objects so many times before the magic is lost, you just wish there was an actual game there to play.
I love VR, and I hope developers continue to innovate with it, but it’s never going to overtake console gaming, it’s just too different.
I don’t get why we think AR is going to be any different for games. Why would I want to see my living room while playing a game? VR puts you in whole other worlds. It’s… that simple, I think.
Those limitations provide room for something revolutionary. Figure out how to do VR without a giant rectangle strapped to your face, figure out better controls, figure out motion sickness, and you’ll have a revolutionary device.
For AR, I’m not thinking games, but computing in general. Glasses (or better yet, contacts) that can overlay things on your field of view could be huge. That could be the thing to displace smartphones once this becomes possible and actually good.
Hold up, what's the "revolution" between the PS1 and PS2? More processing power?
You could argue that no consoles in the Xbox or Playstation line are revolutionary, as they're the same format as the original SNES just with more buttons and processing power.
I would say the major shifts in controller type is simply a much rarer change than simple spec upgrades.
I've found more incredible improvements in AI than in consumer electronics these days. I'm still daily surprised at just how good ChatGPT is at understanding my pretty complex queries.
Maybe that will be the next big thing in games. Finally deliver on the promise of living, breathing worlds, instead of breaking the illusion when the character scripts start to repeat and you realize “your choices matter” means you can pick from one of three different endings.
I think this is it. Once a console can run an LLM you will see open world games with immersion that we’ve never seen before
Procedurally generated worlds are one thing but imagine exploring an endless world where you can talk to every NPC and never have the same conversation twice
It sounds like a good idea at first, but would people really care after the first few conversations? After all, the conversations are unlikely to be related to any of the gameplay, and even though you could drip feed worldbuilding to the player, you only have so much source material. After a while I suspect it would become obvious which things are part of the official world source material, and which things are being made up on the fly without any consistency from conversation to conversation.
That said, though, I can definitely see a use for making the world feel more alive. Watch_Dogs: Legion put a lot of effort into having tons of voiced NPCs with interesting conversations and phone calls, but you could go even further by having an LLM generate text to be read by an AI TTS system.
I’d expect some combination of large models, reinforcement learning and NPUs to substantially improve non player characters.
These days, AMD has low power SoCs that include an NPU, and Nvidia seems to have just remembered that the consumer market exists. I’m sure next gen (after this one) consoles will do something with that hardware.
Imagine that classic Star Trek scene where a crisis erupts, you’re in the captain’s chair, and you ask your bridge crew, “options?”
In a modern game, the crisis was scripted, and then you’ll get a scripted followup, or you’ll get a few scripted answers you can choose from, and half the challenge is figuring out which ones the game designers think are the good ones and which ones are supposed to kill you.
Now let’s imagine the crisis arose organically because you got yourself into a bad situation, and the options from your crew make sense in context, and maybe none of them will save you or maybe some will and you can’t just figure out which ones the game designers thought were good.
Basically, tabletop roleplaying with a good group and a good DM, but as a solo game with fancy graphics and all that.
I’d pay good money for that sort of thing, and it’s not something that can be built yet but which sufficiently good AI tech can enable (or maybe it’s now possible but only very recently).
Kinda tells us nothing, but I guess they got fed up with their supply chain leaking absolutely everything about the physical device before they could announce stuff.
I guess the direct will be interesting when they show some actually software and we can get a bit of a handle on what the device can actually do (although the MORE POWER type people are going to be disappointed, probably).
There was still some ambiguity on if it applied to physical games or only downloads. I'm all-digital on my Switch, so it doesn't affect me, but it'll be nice for the physical-only people to know with certainty.
I know it's perhaps a silly thing to nitpick on, but the general look of Switch 2 with its darker, Steam Deck-ish joycons don't look as fun as the first one to me.
Current Switch with the neon blue/red joycons had its own character, and IIRC that color combination was what Nintendo often marketed. This change makes it look like a MSI or ASUS product than a continuation of Nintendo's own line.
interesting you said that, because I was totally unimpressed and bored with it and thought, "Ok, so this it? So it's just the Switch, scaled up by 10%?"
It's not that I expected something groundbreaking, but if I had been the creative director I would have said that they need to focus on whatever was updated, e.g., graphics or performance since effectively nothing major has changed.
At the end of the video they announced a direct for the start of April. This video is just a teaser. I’m sure they will cover everything you mention in the direct.
Huh. I guess updated ergonomics / QoL stuff and confirmation of backwards compatibility counts as enough of an update over the last hardware refresh. But zero info on anything that could actually make this worth a buy. Granted, this feels like Nintendo who will do anything to not get dragged into PS/XBOX flops discussions. But without any real upgrade or even games announcements, I suppose most people will keep holding off their purchase decisions for now.
> But zero info on anything that could actually make this worth a buy.
Obvious answer: no more game released on Switch 1 so you want a Switch 2 if you want to play new games.
That's work well enough for Playstation/Xbox.
The difference with the other consoles mentioned is that it's portable, and the time already made clear (with Switch 1 and Steam Deck) there is a massive need.
Practically, yes, this is the main differentiator. But still it would be interesting to see some specs. Is the GPU 15% better, 50%, what? The switch came out 7 years ago... there is opportunity for some fairly serious performance improvements even in the mobile form factor.
Clearly it's the same basic platform. And I think that's fine - they've really cornered a pretty big niche of mobile (ish), motion controls, family.
I suspect the larger screen size is because more people are using the mobile aspect in their home, not out on the subway or something.
Im sure there are more details in this video for someone more discerning, too. My point is that I didn't find there to be much information in the trailer because it's clearly mostly a refresh. And I'm not complaining about that. Nor am I complaining about the nature of teasers.
The original Switch was released 7 years ago. I don't think Nintendo needs to justify the upgraded model. It simply is the Nintendo Switch, and we now know they can make it last for a VERY long time. I think that's enough.
This is a just first look trailer so yes I think most people have no choice but to hold off on a purchase decision
I saw a larger screen and exclusive titles for the switch 2. As with everything else in gaming I am expecting modest bumps in performance and since this is Nintendo it will sell very well and have Mario and Zelda releases that get 9/10 reviews on all the usual sites.
The gaming industry has been going through these cycles for decades. If you had a previous Nintendo system and still like to play video games, odds are good you’ll end up with one of these sooner or later too.
> most people have no choice but to hold off on a purchase decision
Probably all people, right? Who decides to buy the thing based on this sneak peek and then when it comes out and has some deal-breaking flaw says “oh no siree, I already made my decision when I saw the trailer months ago and I’m sticking to it no matter what”?
I'm quite certain that lot of people have already decided to buy it!
Nintendo's stuff isn't for everybody, but if you do like it... they truly do have a strong 40 year history of doing their thing and getting it mostly right nearly all of the time.
So for many people their default action is "buy the next Nintendo console every 5-10 years, because I would like the play the next 5-10 years of Mario/Zelda/etc games."
It's not unconditional love (Nintendo was in a tough place after the Wii U flop) but realistically, I think a lot of people have decided they're going to get one of these unless there's some big fiasco.
Great in theory, but only really works for first party games and does mean you occasionally end up with unfortunate situations like Tears of the Kingdom where it runs better on an emulator than the actual hardware.
Ooh, thank you for the reminder to see where the state of emulation is. I played Breath of the Wild on both Switch and on PC under emulation, and the difference was night and day. The stuttering on the Switch distracted quite a bit. My PC played in beautiful 4k.
It works for everyone, provided they have the skills.
I have stop buying most AAA games, because they are GB of useless gameplay, or remakes from remakes of remasters, that is better invested into sponsoring indies.
Tears of the Kingdom is far from the only Switch game with performance issues. Off the top of my head, the newest Pokemon games (and the next newest, to a lesser extent) run like shit on the Switch. I've heard complaints about other games too.
It was underpowered when it was released in 2016, so it really shouldn't be that surprising.
And if we are going to start counting frame drops as argument against focusing on gameplay instead of triangles per second, there is no safe platform then.
I don't think the number of games in the catalogue matters in this discussion? There are hundreds of Switch games that perform great, and I don't care because I will never play them.
When I play a game and there are frame drops, stuttering, lag, dropped inputs, etc., it reduces my fun just as much as if the game were poorly designed. Maybe that's not the case for you, maybe you don't care, but I do, so do others.
I don't think Nintendo should make a console that rivals the best machine money can buy. I do think they took too long to refresh the hardware in the Switch lineup and their customers are worse off for it.
I don't have this issue on other computing devices. My PC runs all the games I want to play on it very well. I can also upgrade the hardware whenever I want, unlike in my Switch.
> Having been through the demoscene and home computing days since their birth, I can only laugh when calling Switch underpowered.
What does this have to do with the fact that the Switch has performance issues with first party Nintendo games? Hardware power only makes sense when talking about the software you want to run on it. The Switch is underpowered for software released exclusively for it, by the company that makes it. It's not underpowered for NES games, sure, but neither is an NES.
It's not "safe from any frame drops" vs. "has frame drops." How often they drop to what framerate for how long is what makes up the experience. (Similarly, I don't need games on my Switch to look as high-fidelity as my 4090 renders them on my PC, but more textures/reflections would still be welcome over less.)
That's why I agree with what some others in the thread have said-- we'll need to wait for either numbers or, absolutely, some real-world experience to know how big of an improvement we can actually expect to get from an upgrade.
I'll geek out on the specs once they're leaked or announced or reverse engineered, but also I sorta don't care. It's going to be a solid upgrade over the Switch 1, which is already a lot of fun as long as you're not looking to play contemporary AAA titles from other systems.
But then I thought...
Hmmm. If it's powerful enough to essentially be "portable PS4 era level hardware" then that really increases the number of quality third-party titles we'll see ported over. Sure, they won't be latest and greatest PS5 era level AAA stuff. But they might be last generation's AAA stuff and that could be a very very very solid addition to this thing.
We know the first party Nintendo games will be good, so, the ability (or not) to actually get good ports from other systems (even if not the latest) is pretty compelling.
They supposedly had this console ready to ship a year or even two ago. Rumor is the reason they are releasing it this year is to have a decent catalogue of games lined up for launch and launch window.
That makes it even weirder why they would only show a few short hints of one possible new Mario Kart game. The original switch reveal had glimpses of new Zelda, Mario and even the first portable version of Skyrim.
Aside from missing out on the last software dev cycle's worth of hardware updates, unless they've continued to bump the specs to match what's become available in the meantime. (I know the line does need to be drawn somewhere.)
I'm no Nintendo fan but I still find this criticism unfair as it's simply the design reveal and a date of when more information will be provided (April 2, 2025).
Interesting, as an American, I read the date in the video (02.04.2025) as February 4th, 2025 (I agree that the DD/MM/YYYY format makes more sense, but dates are commonly listed MM/DD/YYYY everywhere here). It makes me realize when doing a worldwide release, it's important to be as explicit on the date as possible.
I really wonder how big that market can be. I mean, for people who still haven't gotten a switch or steam deck or anything similar until now, how likely is this going to change their mind?
That is me right here... Plus I have some younger kids who have had fun playing with old Nintendo DSes for now. But their friends often have the Switch and I want the updated graphics plus group play (Mario Kart) so we'll buy at least one of these when it comes out. I've been holding off because the original hardware just seemed a bit wimpy when reading the experiences of people playing Breath of the Wild on it. I'm hoping the new model will have enough power to do full justice to BotW.
This has always been such a weird take for me. I know PC gamers get caught up in hardware arms races but Nintendo handheld consoles have always been about having fun playing cartoony games. Animal crossing doesn’t need much horsepower to trap my kids into putting a thousand hours into their islands.
Nintendo has never needed to compete on frame rate or vRAM to be successful
Developers are asking for it. It shares a market with bigger consoles but in terms of capabilities it's closer to a tablet.
It's hard to cross-port from PC/PS/Xbox to Switch because it is so far behind. Not impossible, of course, but if you're choosing to target Switch from the start you're often committing to building your game on all platforms without using some modern technologies or new engine features. If you're backporting from a more powerful platform then you might need to make significant (expensive) changes to get it running.
It's mostly a developer cost calculation, but one that can keep new titles away from the Switch.
(Could GTA VI run on Switch 2? I'm pretty sure Nintendo would want that even if it's not their traditional user base.)
People always have this argument that it's hard to port for it because it's so underpowered. But ultimately, games like Balatro or Neon White absolutely shine on Switch, while extremely graphic intensive games like Indiana Jones and his Big Circle cannot run
Nintendo has correctly decided that if it can attract all the low requirements indie titles plus offer its own games, then it has an extremely compelling product. Which it does, it outsold Sony and Microsoft combined.
I don't care what hardware is inside the new Switch 2. It cannot compete with the Steam Deck because the Switch 2 is still made by Nintendo.
Made by Nintendo means that it'll be a super locked down device that only plays games made by Nintendo or a rather small list of 3rd party game makers. Developing for the platform is expensive and requires an extremely lengthy certification process. This means that all the games are reasonably high quality, sure but it also means that small developers or games with some adult content will never make it.
The Steam Deck, on the other hand runs an enormous library of Steam games and new games crop up every day. It also runs Switch 1 games! The barrier to entry is tiny and it's actually possible to mod games which is probably the single most important feature in modern gaming if you want your game to last and be popular for a very long time.
The Steam Deck also runs Linux which means hackers all over the world can make it better. Even simple shell scripts that automate common tasks provide an enormous benefit! You can automate synchronizing your save games between your PC and your Steam Deck wirelessly, for example without much effort because it's just (mostly) normal Linux.
The Steam Deck is general purpose hardware in a portable form factor running a general purpose operating system that's been optimized for (portable) gaming. If you want a feature you can make it happen yourself or ask the monstrously huge (and obsessed) Linux community for assistance.
The Switch is locked-down, application-specific hardware in a portable form factor running an application-specific operating system that's severely locked down and can't be modified or improved in any way by end users. If you want a feature you have to ask Nintendo and pray.
Nintendo's "moat" is their exclusive IP and single-screen multi-player party games, which other platforms have largely forsaken. Their competition is still mostly PlayStation and Xbox, too. (Steam Deck sales are a rounding error.) So portability is still an edge for now.
I do hope Steam Decks become more mainstream, though.
Yet its sales leave the SteamDeck miles behind, and its future is kind of uncertain with a dependency on Windows games translation, that currently Microsoft happens to tolerate.
I mean, it's almost certainly got updated hardware too right? The Tegra in the OG switch is getting pretty long in the tooth. This isn't just a hardware refresh, it's a whole new console
I'm so glad that they named this the "Switch 2" instead of going with something really stupid like "Switch U". It's simple and it immediately explains to the consumer what the product is.
I'll be really curious to see what the gpu specs are like since it'll likely be nvidia again. The original Switch was 720p but lets you bump up to 1080p when in docked mode, so developers had to restrict design to accommodate both modes, but nvidia could possibly do a dlss trick when plugged in so devs just need to worry about 1 render target that will get upscaled automagically.
DLSS is disappointing compared to actual resolution increases. It adds plenty of artifacts like shimmer, ghosting, occlusion issues. I’m expecting Nintendo to use it unfortunately.
Have you watched any of the recent videos about dlss 4?
It's using a different neural network for upscaling, and these issues seem to be massively reduced. It should be compatible back to at least the 20xx GPUs as well, not just the new 50xx GPUs. Maybe it'll be on the switch 2 as well.
I've only seen a few clips of Cyberpunk but they surprised me a lot. If that level of quality can work on other games too then it'll be a huge upgrade.
I'm not talking about teasers, the one I watched was from digital foundry who were given some time with the game and took their own videos as far as I know.
I’ll try it when out. Marketing videos are not a useful way to test something like DLSS which is easy to mask the issues with things like low bitrate, slow pans, avoiding problematic situations, etc.
They have to be using upscaling. No matter your feelings on it, it is the way everything is moving and will become a requirement to run any "AAA" game going forward soon enough.
The last time I tried to use my Switch, I realized that the joy cons are no longer usable separately. Seems the connection to the internal shoulder buttons is broken, and you can't reorient the controllers unless you can hold them both down.
I dropped my Switch from knee height, and now the left hand joycon is slightly loose and disconnects from too much upward pressure. Maybe the damage is on the joycon, but it seems more likely the mechanism (don't have a spare to test).
A lot of people here are criticising Nintendo not showing specific details here, seemingly forgetting a few key points:
A. The announcement is nothing more than a hype video, it obviously isn't intended to be the only marketing tool.
B. On the specifications front, Nintendo never focus on performance, and it's unlikely that will change now; their focus tends to be on games and features.
I would say it's more about minimizing cost of the console and their first party games just so happen to be not intensive enough to need it... But some games would have absolutely benefitted from a bit better hardware.
There was a rumor about an optical sensor on the side of a joycon that would turn it into a mouse. Is this out of the equation? This would have been awesome!
It would be awesome to have new Labo sets that make use of that sensor. But I suspect that Labo will not get a second chance, given that the first sets were seen as a failure (despite being really cool).
> There was a rumor about an optical sensor on the side of a joycon that would turn it into a mouse. Is this out of the equation? This would have been awesome!
They literally depict them as mice at 1:12. Like the animal, or at least that's how I interpreted it before I even knew about this rumor from your comment.
Im not sure what the point is. Sure you can point and click but no keyboard? That's way lower input than simply using the joycon and all the buttons. Seems like a gimmick.
My concern with this is that the joycob being larger won't fit the hands of younger kids anymore. The switch 1 joycon was the only one that allowed reaching the controller buttons and the stick (while held horizontally) for my 3 years old. All other controllers that exist are too big, clearly nobody tested with young children.
And I wish they had names for their arrow buttons, because when held horizontally it makes things very confusing: "press b" what is b?
Fair concern, but on the other hand joycons are seriously uncomfortable for people older than that because of how small they are. It seems reasonable for Nintendo to optimize for the common users, not the extreme minority of small children.
Of course, however adults can buy the Pro controller, but kids have no other option.
Just voicing my frustration with the gaming industry as a whole: there isn't a controller for kids, even the ones that claims to be are for 8+ I suspect.
It's a toy like any other, my son is great at playing Kirby, the game delivers some great family time (Kirby star allies is a 4-players game).
Most of first-party nintendo games are also display a rating of "3+"
We have gotten so much use out of our original switch I can't really imagine not picking it up, even if only to keep playing the games we already have.
I am sucker for Nintendo stuff. I can't imagine not getting it, but this trailer did not necessarily make me look forward to it more: It got a bit more generic in design, and I don't trust that controller attachment system.
There are many reasons why the portable factor is good, not least you can enjoy it riding the bus or laying in bed Saturday morning; you can play big games in spare minutes side by side with the rest of your life.
Sony's Vita was quite successful with titles like Killzone Mercenary which was as fun a shooter as you'll find on any platform, but Sony gave up on the form factor because of the phone fever sweeping the world. Fortunately the culturally Japanese games like Akiba's Trip, Persona, Fate/Extella, Hyperdimension Neptunia and such have jumped to Steam.
There's the Steam Deck and countless off-brand competitors, Microsoft is talking about a portable XBOX, Sony is planning a PS5P which sounds overly ambitious -- TV-attached consoles are becoming irrelevant when you can connect an XBOX controller to your PC and have a console experience, but much better, with Steam, GOG, Origin and other PC app stores.
> Sony's Vita was quite successful with titles like Killzone Mercenary which was as fun a shooter as you'll find on any platform, but Sony gave up on the form factor because of the phone fever sweeping the world.
I think they gave up on it when they realized they didn't have the resources to support both a console and a handheld with the rising costs of game development. Nintendo faced the same issue but they got rid of their console instead and designed their handheld to be able to be docked in order to get similar functionality.
This is a hardware reveal trailer. Nintendo likely released this because of all of the recent leaks, which have put their 3rd party accessory vendors in a weird position. More details will be revealed at the Nintendo Direct on the 2nd.
I'm not a gamer, but the original Switch joycons always struck me as overly complicated and expensive. It should be cheaper to manufacture and sell Switches with the controllers attached. Indeed, this is what they did with the Switch Lite. For games that take advantage of joycon functionality, Nintendo could have sold something like an updated Switch version of the Wiimote as an optional accessory.
Do users who are happy with their Nintendo Switch have a favorable opinion of the joycons, or would you be happy without them?
The joy cons are fine, but I think them always being attached also removes the key benefit of the Switch. That was something that a lot of people talked about when the Switch Lite came out.
They could be better and given the limitations, I think they do the job. If you don't like them they offer the pro controller. But there have been times (especially when flying) that I have used them detached when not docked.
I honestly don't think the Switch would have succeeded the way it did if the controllers were always attached, forcing you to buy another controller for when you wanted to dock.
They are fine but they break very easily; after a while they start to "drift" and the games become unplayable.
I needed to repair one pair last year because the drift was unbearable; the repair costs almost as much as a new one. (And one started drifting again.)
I am not a heavy player at all and I got the drift.
They have quality issues with stick drift, and the "single joycon as controller" setup is clearly designed for child-sized hands, but it's definitely an advantage to be able to play the system handheld but also have minimal extra to pack (just the rails widget) if I want to put it on a train table on the kickstand and the use the controllers more ergonomically.
And I mean, if you have kids, being able to double your controllers when they have friends around is also helpful to avoid arguments.
I love that the controls are split between two hands. It makes certain types of lounging gameplay (e.g. one hand behind head) possible that aren't with single controllers.
I'm generally in favour of the joycons as a concept. They make multiplayer party games a breeze.
But the execution in the Switch 1 is flawed. They're on the small side, and generally fiddly. If the joycons for the Switch 2 are larger and just more ergonomic then I think it'll be a win.
EDIT: the joycons also being little motion wands was also quite good. You don't need a separate accessory like on the other consoles. Overall the joycon is a neat little package of functionality, if imperfect.
I think they're fine when mounted, but I use a the pro controller. Using them individually when you have people over sucks, but it's a neat way to turn one controller into two, so I can't throw too much hate.
That's if we're ignoring the absurd drift their sticks have that Nintendo has seemingly never fixed. I hope to god they fixed them in this next gen console.
They're nicer for a quick game of Mario Party or other casual game because you can just tear them off the system and have two players, but I wouldn't want to play anything serious with them.
Everyone I know with a Switch uses it primarily attached to their TV in the dock and only secondarily as a portable. A separate controller seems necessary for that.
I agree that they are/were far too expensive, especially given the drift problems. Other than that, they're a neat bit of tech and, with the included 'grip' controller, I found them totally suitable for the first 6 months or so. After that, I got the Pro controller and never looked back. Last year, I picked up a CRKD Nitro and that is a massive upgrade on the Joy-Con.
I don't like them. They're too small to be comfortable for use on their own, and all they really enable is motion controls (meh). The pro controller is far superior and is 90% of my switch controller usage.
There are plenty of alternative controller options for the Switch, it's not that much of an issue.
For portable play, yes, the stick drift issues suck, but Nintendo will fix it for you. And yeah, most portable systems today overall just have better analog sticks.
But if I'm at home I'm going to be using a Pro controller or an 8bitdo or something like that.
A mouse with an analog controller will make for a very powerful 3D manipulator, like a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse. Combine with the improved kickstand, it will be interesting to see what devs come up with.
Everyone is going to buy one of these as soon as they can ship them to them, so if the thumb sticks could not be intentionally engineered to fail this time, that would be great, thanks.
Switch 2 in comparison with the original Nintendo Switch:
Category Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Switch
CUDA Cores 1536 256
Bus Width 128-bit 64-bit
Memory Size 12 GB 4 GB
Memory Type LPDDR5X LPDDR4
SM Count 12 2
Bandwidth 120 GB/s 25.6GB/s
Dimensions 206 x 115 x 14 173 x 102 x 13.9
(LWD mm)
The biggest problem is the memory bandwidth. PS4 memory bandwidth is 176 GB/s. These specs are quite bad, It's supposed to be Ampere based, so RTX 30 series. It was released in Sep 2020. That's over 4 years ago. Part of the problem with NVIDIA is that they have been milking their architectures.
For comparison, the Steamdeck was released in Feb 2022, and RDNA2 was released in Nov 2020. So the architecture gap was 1.5 years for Steamdeck, but 4.5 years for the Switch 2.
I guess there might be a chance that they enable DLSS4 for this device, but it's still sad to watch this unfold.
GPU performance should be somewhere between PS4 and PS4 Pro. More memory is a good sign that Nintendo's machine will allow a larger software catalogue than that of the Xbox Series S, where 10 GB has been a severe impediment to porting.
Maybe on short duration single threaded CPU benchmarks.
But its not true if you are talking about sustained gaming performance compared to an equally priced new PC. Even for $800 (entry level iPhone) a PC will be a much better performer for gaming.
I’ve heard different leaks to the tune that it is actually significantly more powerful. Rationale being because Nintendo presumably finally needs to take 4k and higher frame rates seriously, and the hardware situation has improved enough for that to be possible under Nintendo’s philosophy (shit hardware with innovative and engaging gameplay). I mean their beloved launch title for the Switch had performance problems maintaining even 20fps at 720p. Pretty embarrassing.
Have they mentioned anything? All they have done so far is show the hardware off and one new game, which for the record does look more detailed than its predecessor.
Looks like a new controller attachment system, maybe magnetic, except that doesn't seem robust enough for excited play.
I wonder what that means for spare controllers. It's a waste to make people go buy new extra controllers for multiplayer games. Maybe you can use your old Switch as a charger and pair via BT? Not nearly as nice as just sliding it on to pair, but hopefully reduces e-waste.
> except that doesn't seem robust enough for excited play.
Yeah. First thing I thought when they showed the controllers snapping in place was "I would definitely yank one of those out on accident while playing."
Arguably the "gimmick" for the N64 -> GameCube was 3D games and "stock" analog stick, with the c-buttons on the N64 turning into the C-Stick on the GameCube. At launch both the PS1 and Saturn controllers were d-pad only.
Hopefully game saves will sync between Switch 1 and 2. It would not be great to have to restart games with 80+ hours or drag 2 consoles around with you to access your full Switch 1 library. I'm mildly optimistic given Switch 1 has online save backup capability for a lot of its games.
As much as I would love this (not interested in a portable game console, but definitely interested in a new top-of-line set-top-box) I can't imagine this is what's been holding nVidia back on a Shield refresh.
If anything, the Switch was a way to sell a boatload of existing chips. They've had plenty of opportunity to put out a Shield 2 in the meantime, but instead have backed off their focus on game streaming and other main features of a set-top-box.
I'd love to see it happen, but I feel like the Shield is just not a big enough seller for them to put many resources behind an update. Prove me wrong, nVidia! TVs have only gotten worse in terms of embedded systems and software, and I don't have (or plan on) buying into the Apple ecosystem enough to make AppleTV compelling.
IIRC the whole reason Nvidia was not able to make a new Shield or Shield tablet was because all their chips were being used in the Switch, and the basically all used the same chip
We got a switch a few years ago and it collected dust. The shop is overpriced (and slow) and I guess we aren't really into their first-party titles. I don't see what it offers against a steam deck except the aforementioned first-party titles.
edit: except the aforementioned first-party titles
It offers the first-party titles, basically. If you don't want those then there's no reason to get one.
For me, Nintendo is the most reliable game developer these days. Every main Mario and Zelda game offers something new and executes it well on the first try. I'll buy Switch 2 for Mario and Zelda alone.
I tried BotW and it didn't really click. The food mechanics felt bolted on, just like the weapon durability stuff, and everything felt too easy/within reach. I guess I'm not the target, it's okay.
Got it. Then, for sure, the switch wasn't going to be for you.
I'm not a Nintendo die hard, but I played on my N64 a ton. Then spent some solid years on PC or xbox360. Now, with kids, the switch is my preferred console.
The entire reason to buy the switch is the first party titles. If you don't like those/Nintendo games, the switch and all switch derivatives aren't going to be for you.
The design changes showcased in the video are definitely a welcome improvement. As someone who owns both a Steam Deck and an OLED Switch, I find the Switch to be a bit too small for my hands, while the Steam Deck feels slightly large and bulky. Could the Switch 2 strike the perfect balance between the two?
I wish we could return to a Wii U like functionality where the switch could be used as a second screen when undocked. That was a really nice feature in games like Zelda where the controller in your hands displayed the inventory or a map.
Much like with the failed Macbook Touch Bar, I don't think it works having to look away and focus on another screen while playing a game.
Also like the Macbook Touch Bar, now you have a whole other thing developers have to target and test for an end result that should just be possible yet more efficient in the main app.
Take inventory for example. Instead you could just make it frictionless to open inventory in the main game and create quick-swap slots. Tears of the Kingdom is a good example. Swapping out arrows mid combat by looking at your controller would not be an improvement.
Yeah I played BOTW on the Wii U and remember at some point I just stopped bothering with the handheld screen.
I can't remember what game it was but I do remember having one game where the handheld add-on provided some functionality that seemed useful/fun. So it is possible, but much like the original wii's motion sensors - it is much more likely that developers will stumble across a bad application of the tech than a good one
BOTW didn't even leverage the Wii U gamepad. The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remakes let you equip items with it, and I think that was the original plan for BotW too, but they removed the feature likely because then it would have an extra feature over the Switch version that launched at the same time.
Might be possible if the Switch 2 contains a "cast" feature, but the cast landscape may be too incomplete and fractured (AirPlay, Chromecast, Miracast, etc.) for Nintendo to bother with that.
Has anyone played any games besides Zelda / Mario Kart that actually felt complete and worth the money. I love love love the switch but getting really demoralized by the lack of titles I can play with friends; especially online.
Xenoblade is excellent, Metroid is excellent, Kirby is excellent. There are others but those are the primary ones which come to mind for me. Obviously they're all Nintendo games but that's what you get a Nintendo system for. You don't get it because it's the best option for playing third party games.
Maybe that is the case. But when the switch came out the marketing was heavily skewed towards "party" games to play with your friends in the same room.
The joycons seem to attach as easily as a MagSafe connector… but I hope they don't detach as easily! I wonder if the handheld ergonomics were battle-tested to prevent accidental joycon detachment while gaming.
Yeah, I was concerned about that too. It looks like it has a small thin edge connector on the body of the Switch 2, sort of like a USB-C port but without the protective shield around it. If it's not designed well, we could see it snapping off in kid's hands and requiring expensive repairs.
I doubt they attach like that I think it’s just for the video… looking again there are holes at the top and bottom of the joycons presumably for some kind of locking mechanism to fit into.
They probably are magnetically attached but also feature a latch somewhere to make sure they don't accidentally pop out.
Alternatively they could just be using really strong magnets and tight tolerances for the fit inside the Switch 2. That's a tough thing to get right though because if they make it too tight it'll be annoying to get them lined up juuuuust straight enough to snap in but if they make it too loose they can pop out too easily.
I think people are sleeping on Meta's compounding advantage in VR/AR. The Quest 3 is 15 months old, and it's wild how much it has improved over that time purely due to software and interaction model improvements. Aside from the recent bricking issue, I think the Meta Quest is accelerating at the OS level. I'm looking forward to Mario on Quest 4 or 5, but it will be a bit sad.
You can't see the shortcomings until you have the hardware, and once you solve those there is a next set of shortcomings. I think that road is longer and deeper than I had appreciated, Meta is the only company iterating fast enough to be serious about serving "normies".
The name of the game is the game. Meaning that hardware is popular insofar as the games that are on it. And Nintendo, with its massive war chest and toymaker history, will never turn into a third-party developper. They'll keep making their underpowered Nintendo machines, and good for them.
Ooh that would be nice. Although I wonder if they'll simply stop producing as many (IDK what even goes into that though... I imagine its pretty cheap to produce). Sadly I feel like the opposite happens with many things, not sure about video games though.
and incorporates cutting-edge "security" controls to keep the system secured (against the user of course, because the owners of the device nowadays are the primary security threat, regardless how technical they are). Otherwise, what if grandma gets tricked into installing a Steam game or *gasp* an open source operating system onto her switch?
I really hope my old switch controllers are compatible, at least via wireless. It would be a monetary and environmental shame if my six controllers became useless.
For those of us with zero interest in playing a console on the go I wish they would release a non-mobile version and put the money saved into beefier specs.
It’s more for playing in your room where you don’t have a TV, than necessarily on-the-go. Just how smartphones are nowadays used for gaming at home by the younger generation. You still don’t want to be tethered to a power outlet.
The beefier specs would be wasted though since game developers would still be primarily targeting the handheld (since that is still their main offering, so that's what most people have).
Honestly, they did exactly what they should have done here. Made a more powerful Switch with better hardware and backwards compatibility, with a clear and easily understandable name.
Regardless, the things they need to update/fix are all really just technical and UI design problems; Joy-Cons drifting and rails failing to work, Switch Online being a laggy mess for many games, the eShop being near impossible to filter or find things in, etc. If they can get those things fixed, and get some popular Nintendo franchises out within the first year or so, then this could be a huge success.
Instead of commenting on the switch 2 characteristics, i just want to take some time to celebrate Nintendo, and to say how happy i am this company still exists although it went through difficult times.
As some comments point out, Nintendo is the only console/video games company that's been trying to do fun things instead of trying to come up with the most powerful console in the universe.
This is the gaming i like, i don't care for 3000 fps and 1000Ghz consoles, i just want to have fun :-)
So, yeah, thanks Nintendo, i'll be buying this Switch 2.
I get this is Nintendo, so it'll never be fixed, but I honestly hate having to buy Nintendo hardware just to play the three or four big-name platform exclusives per generation. It would be so much better for consumers if they would just abandon the hardware and be a regular games company
To Nintendo's credit, their big exclusive titles tend to take advantage of the special hardware.
Zelda was weird and impractical outside of the standard controls, but still somewhat benefited from NFC.
Splatoon plays a lot better with the motion controls, NFC is actually a nice QOL improvement. A game like Arms is also nicer in split mode, even if core players tend to get back to the standard controller mode.
I see it along the lines of the Allan Kay "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware" quote. Nintendo should stay serious IMHO.
In early footage of BoTW when it was a Wii U exclusive there was more usage of the Tablet for things like maps and inventory management, which was later cut for presumably parity with the Switch version.
For Splatoon it's used to quickly switch to preset weapons and gears as well, which is nice. You widly experiment with your gear and instantaneously get back to your "serious" setting at any time.
I think the same thing. Metroid is good, but is it $250+ good? Meh.
Microsoft more-or-less does the same thing with Windows in the personal consumer market. With Office being online these days, the primary motivation for a lot of people to buy a Windows license for a computer instead of using Linux or buying a Mac is gaming, along with pure inertia.
This will be a problem with everything until games are FLOSS.
You could probably get away with a purely volunteer effort on... eh, how to describe this... like Super Mario 64 for Mac/Linux/PC.
And I do mean Super Mario 64 with respect to the technology/artwork level. Which is fine by me.
But the big AAA games and the multiplayer games that all of the hip young people with their poggers Twitch streaming and their deadass rock music play? Yeah, can't build those given the state of everything these days.
On the other hand, games are so hard to build and require so much vision that despite decades of gaming history, volunteers/hackers are mostly limited to modifying existing games rather than building a game from scratch.
You use Super Mario 64 as some sort of low/achievable bar for what volunteers might be able to build, as if SM64 is an easy game to build, yet nobody is building games like that on a volunteer basis.
Even look at the engineering that went into OpenMW: once again hackers were only able to recreate a game engine that runs existing game files (Morrowind) which is the easy part of building a game.
Most successful games, AAA or indie, are the result of years of full time work, most of which is making the content. I just don't see that being possible in general, without being independently wealthy.
Games also benefit from a single vision in general, which is hard to square with volunteer style development.
There are certainly exceptions of games that are built as a community: nethack, space station 13, idk probably a third one. But I just can't see this being commonly done until we figure out how free software devs can eat.
With that said: I love free software and hope this problem is solvable, but unless society changes dramatically we may need to learn to do without not just AAA scope games, but even Stardew Valley scope games
I actually don't think there is a big obstacle to this. Most people don't care about FLOSS and don't even know what it is, so I think that shouldn't really affect sales. I think companies are just worried about people stealing their code to use it for more "undesirable" (to them) things like cheating and mods, and then having to go after them for it because you do actually have to try to defend your copyright/trademarks if you want to keep them.
People will know and care instantly when there's an easily accessible storefront like app with those games one click away and perfectly legal. Same reason excellent tools like Aseprite are no longer floss - it got packaged (legally) in Debian and others and why on earth would you go way out of your way to buy it, or even think that they might be trying to charge.
I don't think games companies are against mods generally, many have steam workshop support built in. Nintendo as the big exception here ofc.
Cheating is ofc a huge problem for multiplayer games and can absolutely tank some genres. Very mixed feelings about the kernel level rootkit type spyware but there's no denying that games companies are paying big money to put them there for the players benefit.
I don't think a majority of people will even go to alternative storefronts to get the software in big enough numbers to matter. I think it's more of a legal concern than a monetary (sales) one, but I could be wrong.
I think you're right, as it stands now, especially for platforms like Android with one canonical store that already has many free offerings. I use fdroid because i love the philosoply and am willing to put up with it but to be clear, the apps there are unprofessional and ugly and I get why most people don't.
But if this became a common practice I think people absolutely would. Tons of professional quality games instantly available for free is such an incredibly good value.
> This will be a problem with everything until games are FLOSS.
I mean there is nothing stopping that right now. You can give up your time and learn game programming and asset design and make a game and give it away for free.
Sad they’re keeping at the same thing, I was personally hoping for a NEW thing like innovation but it seems like theyre just keeping steady at the same pace.
Of course looking back at the past this shouldn’t have been a huge surprise with their ds to 3ds to new3ds shenanigans
> Sad they’re keeping at the same thing, I was personally hoping for a NEW thing like innovation but it seems like theyre just keeping steady at the same pace.
Why risk it though? The original Switch is a money printer but it became obvious that it's ... lacking brawns and brains after eight years of service. Fix that by upgrading the SoC to something with more power and remove a few other annoyances (the flimsy stand, primarily), and that will be enough to make it sell like lemonade on a hot summer day.
Honestly i was expecting a little more info. I get this is on purpose, to create hype, but not having a graphical demo, a release date... anything really more than the design, input ports, and joycons, seems too little.
And the direct in april seems too far away honestly.
All they showed is the things that leaked, i mean, to me (besides the confirmation of something that was obvious) is like nothing happened really. I know the same as yesterday + the plastic texture maybe and i have to wait almost 3 months for the next official info.
That was a pretty boring annoucement. Yeah its cool how the elements on the device appear, but it gets boring when this is shown for both sides of the attachebles controllers. They have the opportunity to show e.g. exclusive games which would now look and perform super duper on the new hardware, because of a better resolution opr maybe HDR, but nothing like that? Or a comparison of the old one with the new? I think its a bit thin...
I think that's the point. You'll probably get it. I probably will too. I would imagine this device will improve unit sales and also has improved margins on a per unit basis. Easy win without trying all that much. Take the W.
I understand the financial part of it. I'm not sure it's a W for gamers like us. Obviously, I don't know the spec and detail so I'm happy to be corrected. From the video, they could've released this 4 years ago and I would've still gotten it back then. Since I view switch as a console system rather mobile system, the gain we are getting just seem a bit disappointing after 8 years.
I don't care too much about the hardware spec. That's not why you buy a Nintendo. I hope Nintendo modernizes its software. I am talking about the UI and its multiplayer user experience.
Preventing any modern chat/voice feature under the excuse of wanting to protect children from online danger is a laughable as it is solvable by expanding the parental control features.
I am optimistic regarding this as Nintendo seem have turned its vision to taking a bit more risks as hinted in games like Super Mario Wonder that try to innovate in the multiplayer space. You'd say that that is not much but very few would have foreseen such a move from Nintendo.
I like the image halfway down the announcement page that shows not only will your Switch 2 have larger controllers, but your hands will also be larger. Cool benefit, at the right price.
Disappointed that it doesn't look to fix the biggest issue I have with the Switch, which is that docking it feels awkward and clumsy. You have to blindly line up a USB-C port/connector, and that seems to be the same approach they're going with here. At least the Joycons look like they'll be a little smoother to attach/remove.
Indeed. Unfortunately, even if all of HN boycotts the Switch 2 it won't have an effect on Nintendo, but their behavior is entirely unacceptable and is boycott-worthy.
Please tell me the joycons are built with a more robust analog stick… it was hard to tell if they changed at all in this video. That’s about my only gripe with the switch, those sticks drift so badly if you so much as look at them.
The giant 2 is a bit obnoxious. Other than that everything looks good.
And for the love of God Nintendo you better be using hall effect joysticks for this one. Can't imagine the amount of e-waste they generated with the Switch joycons.
I've skipped a few Nintendo console generations, but may grab this one. Right off the hop I can catch up with a decent library. The draw is it would be nice for the kids.
Part of me was hoping it would be something more visionary, but maybe it's just not the right time. I noticed that competition is similarly betting on handheld devices.
This thing is gonna get swallowed in an ocean of steam decks and other similar clones. Unless you want to play the third installment of Mario Kart 8, I guess.
That is precisely the only reason people choose Nintendo over more powerful and capable devices. The Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Zeldas, Marios etc.
They got a robust ecosystem going on and with them shooting down pirating left, right and center they keep a tight ship going.
Nintendo has set themselves up so they don't need 3rd party titles to survive. Carved out a good niche for themselves. They don't even see themselves as direct competitors with Sony. They used to but that was a long time ago.
I understand, after all, they are the Disney of gaming in terms of IP.
It’s just strange, this is the first time I’ve seen them so…lazy. The Wii U was a flop, but it was a bigger leap than this. SNES at least had more buttons and significantly better graphics.
I think they’re just gonna milk this till streaming takes over.
Well I think they're definitely leaning into giving the best portable experience for the dedicated consoles (that are not Steam). I think they've come to understand that's their niche and the sales of the Switch seem to suggest it.
I don't think they feel like they need a huge departure, but rather just to improve on the shortcomings of the Switch itself and just a bit more power. Whatever they can achieve.
But they also know they can never compete with the PS5 in terms of specs and still put out a portable.
And they're probably well aware that they'll have to make up their tech shortcomings with good games ... as they always have.
So you're right. They'll continue with this until has diminishing returns and then they'll probably pivot / evolve again.
This doesn't seem to stem out of an innovation cycle, so the biggest advantage for consumers is (IMHO) that prices of the current generation will drop.
I don't think I can see myself ever buying a Nintendo console again. My switch collects dust. They are always substantially under powered and likewise their games are simple - aka quite easy to emulate. I would much prefer a mobile device that can "do it all" like a steamdeck which is able to run native games, run emulators, and also remote to a beefy desktop gaming rig for games with higher demands.
That being said I realize I am not the target market. Nintendo has always been a pretty safe bet for the "just works" department. They are great for kids or casual gamers.
Bright-colored controllers were so much better. Also the way they were attached before is much better.
Switch 1 was the work of art. This one looks like the work of A/B testing and “we are losing customers as they choose Steam Deck over us, so let’s make it look like Steam Deck”
Nintendo sold an all-gray Switch 1, that’s the one I got.
Yes this console does feel like a more “grown up” Switch but I don’t think it’s a sign of chasing after Steam Deck; switch has sold 2 orders of magnitude more copies than Valve ever will.
If anything it’s following the same pattern as Wii (white) WiiU (dark) for the successor to be a bit more serious and grown up looking.
Kids who got their Switch 1 when they were 10 are now 17, ready for a more grown up console.
> switch has sold 2 orders of magnitude more copies than Valve ever will.
In the first year Nintendo sold 13.2 million Switches. In the ~2 years since the introduction of the Steam Deck Valve has sold somewhere between 5 and 6 million units.
Nintendo had a enormous, loyal, and obsessive user base and decades of history selling portable consoles. The Steam Deck is Valve's first portable console and it's running a new OS that no one is used to. It also cost $100 more than the Switch.
Furthermore--now that the platform itself has proven itself--Valve is going to allow 3rd parties to use SteamOS on their own portable consoles. If those 3rd parties have similar successes I think Nintendo will become a minor player in the portable console market in comparison.
The old mechanism had one serious usability flaw. This is a common sequence:
1) Put console into dock when you get home. 2) Some time later, remove controllers to use them
To remove them you need to pull them up, while the console is in the dock. That's a bit fiddly. Just being able to pop them off sideways sounds much better.
I really don’t like the old attachment mechanism. It was robust when connected, but it’s annoying to connect and especially disconnect, and it’s especially awkward that are two different retention mechanisms that need to be released depending on what’s connected.
I imagine the new connection will have a mechanical match of some sort and generally work better.
I know you're joking but technically it does have AI, the SOC is built on Nvidia's Ampere architecture with tensor cores. If nothing else they'll probably be used for DLSS upscaling.
1. Looks boring. I want my washing machine to look boring, not my fun entertainment device.
2. It's literally the same thing they released 8 years ago, except the electronics are new. In 8 years they did zero creative progress. "People don't want cars, they want faster horses".
3. Switch was already huge, this thing will be giant, so it will be portable as in "portable fridge".
This will probably sell well because Switch sold well and the brand is strong, but honestly, I don't see any reason to buy this thing. They're basically reinventing a gaming laptop, except with Nintendo first-party games.
I guess you never got a PS2/PS3/PS4/PS5? Sometimes, the internals are the right thing to upgrade. And there definitely is some hardware innovations. I look forward to learning more!
I got an Xbox 360 strictly because I wanted to play Guitar Hero. To me, home consoles are like PC, but worse, but more convenient for a non-technical user.
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Happy to see that Nintendo is treating the switch more like how they traditionally handled their mobile platforms instead of their consoles.
Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.
I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much. The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom). So as long as it is actually a decent spec bump I am happy and have zero care to compare it to the other consoles (but I am sure people are going too and scream that it is "underpowered").
The biggest thing I am curious about, will it be OLED since that will be disappointing to go back to non OLED from the OLED Switch. And Price.
They’ve got the weird shit covered still, apparently the joy cons in this gen can be used as mice.
Was heavily rumoured/leaked and this teaser video literally shows them gliding along a surface.
How Nintendo will leverage that functionality, who could honestly say, but that’s the genius of keeping a toy company mindset in an industry full of sports car company mindsets.
That last sentence is worth an essay of its own. Everyone else keeps pumping resources into being photo-realistic blah-blah-blah without nearly enough attention to "is this fun"?
One of my favorite video essay's on this is "Nintendo - Putting Play First" by Game Makers Toolkit [1]. It goes into when making a game, Nintendo first determines the mechanic they want to focus on; jumping, throwing a hat, shooting paint, etc and finding out how to make it fun, then building and iterating on the idea.
It's how they can keep putting out essentially the same games but are completely different.
1. https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ
I can't tell you how much respect I have for this mindset. Like them burning a heap of money on Metroid Prime 4, for years, and then coming out with an announcement along the lines of "sorry guys, this sucks, so we've chucked it out and started again because we only do things right, see you in another 3-4 years when it's ready."
It pays dividends, because they just don't ship junk, so everything they DO ship sells extremely well.
Some stuff they have sells well: Smash, Zelda, Pokemon. Metroid sells a lot less well.
How does that relate to this discussion?
This is the right mindset. It makes your customers trust you.
GMTK is popular, but he's mostly talking out of his ass. He's got zero industry experience and most gamedevs I know personally clown on his takes constantly. Unless he references specific Nintendo interviews where they talk about their design process, I have doubts about this video containing an accurate description of how Nintendo does things.
At least in this video, all the interviews and documents that they base their claims/opinions on are listed in the description, so you can easily also peruse them if you doubt the interpretation.
I've seem some of his videos, but I'm not that familiar with GMTK. But they did release a game, and it was by all accounts "Very positive" /pretty good.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2685900/Mind_Over_Magnet/
You should have watched the video before you shat on it.
Yes, he references specific Nintendo interviews in the video. Frequently, in fact, and in detail.
Most games are pretty bad, so this tracks I guess.
Need more Larians in the world.
His videos are great!
This always made sense to me. Think of Super Mario Bros. No way you come up with something like that from a top-down design document. Probably slapped Mario on a screen, played with the physics a bunch, and threw a lot of different stuff at the wall to see what stuck before they came up with the final product.
Not sure about the original game but at least since the 3d age, Miyamoto is on record, saying that when making a new Mario game, one of the first steps is that is just fun to goof around with Mario alone in an empty flat void and mess with whatever new abilities they are thinking of giving him.
I saw an interesting analysis years ago about whether or not the most powerful console 'won' in each generation (i.e. whether or not being the most powerful console of your generation leads to success).
Generally speaking, no, it doesn't actually affect things, and in several cases (e.g. the Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch come to mind) the objectively 'worse' console (from a tech perspective) was more successful by a country mile.
It's interesting how many people see the Switch as being in its own category rather than acknowledging it as the winner of this console generation (which I completely agree it is).
Most people think the “console” battle is between PlayStation and Xbox, and that PlayStation is the winner.
This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.
I kinda think that way when buying. The Nintendo console is the Nintendo console. If you want what they do, you're buying it. The other two are where the competition is and where there's a decision of which one, not buy this single product or don't. They're much closer to being interchangeable than the Switch is with either of them.
This plays out in ownership too, I know a small number of people with all 3 but a lot that have a Switch plus 1 of either a PS5 or an Xbox
Personally I'd say both are true. They won the generation, but they did so by not bothering to fight directly with Playstation and Xbox. By basically ignoring them and having a distinct identity they won.
This framing only highlights either
A. Sony has an amazing marketing strategy where they can paint their #1 competitor as not even a competitor.
B. Xbox has a terrible product direction, where they are trying (failing) to beat Sony at being Sony instead of looking at the gaming industry and trying to create a product people want.
I wouldn't say A because Nintendo hasn't bothered trying to compete with them. If they bothered and Sony still managed to be considered a separate category I would agree, but Nintendo appears to not care about them.
However I do think B is true. The only time they were able to go toe to toe with Sony was most of the 360 era when Sony got cocky and built a machine that was too complicated to work with relative to the value developers got out of that effort. Once Sony stopped doing that they've dominated Xbox (mind you the whiff on being too early proclaiming the digital era made it far far worse).
Regarding B, the Xbox has always primarily been a strategy to put the Windows kernel in to every living room.
From there, it’s made sense that they would use pc-tier components rather than phone-tier as Nintendo is on.
How is the Switch a competitor when it doesn't even play most games that you can find on Playstation or Steam?
I think Nintendo is- respectfully- in their own lane.
The market penetration of the switch makes it harder for Sony to expand into the family/casual gaming space. That forces Sony to stick to the AAA lane (which is where their focus is) limiting their growth opportunities.
If the switch had been a failure, then a lot of households that currently have a switch (only) would have bought a different console and that would likely have been a PS5 (even if they held on to their previous generation console, and waited a couple of years until the PS5 price dropped below $500)
I have a PS4 and a Switch at home. The kids play the switch and occasionally play on the PS4. I can't justify buying a PS5 because there's only so much gaming time available, and family gaming is covered by the switch and my personal gaming is good enough on my PC. Take the switch out of the equation and that changes.
PS5 is winning the AAA console lane, no doubt. But Sony could have been making more money if they could also own a significant portion of the family console lane.
I don't know that the Playstation 5 really plays in that market when the cheapest version is $450, so nearly $200 more expensive than the switch. Keeping the price down is part of how Nintendo owns that market, on top of their first party game lineup and the like.
Interesting. Yea if the switch didn't exist I could see a re-attempt at the PSP (or the Vita? whatever that thing was).
The PlayStation also doesn't play most games on Steam. Exclusive games don't mean the platforms aren't competitors — back in the day platform exclusivity was even more of the norm than it is today, and yet the SNES and the Sega Genesis were clearly competitors, as were the original PlayStation and the N64.
Due to the switch's low processing power, it can't run many AAA titles (for example Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty games etc.)
That's why it's considered its own category.
Well, that's because this console has different hardware than the others, with it's own pros and cons. And that has happened in every console generation.
Nobody would say the Sega Saturn wasn’t a console because it couldn’t run Crash Bandicoot, or that the N64 wasn’t a console because it couldn’t run Final Fantasy VII.
The Switch may not run certain titles, but it can run other AAA, like DOOM, Mortal Kombat, No Man’s Sky, The Witcher 3 and more. Sure, those games may run better on more powerful hardware, but that hardware isn’t portable. That doesn’t make the Switch any less of a console.
Most AA and indie games are available on all platforms, and all the reeeeally popular ones like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, Rocket League, etc.
Easily 80% or more of the catalog is the same across all consoles.
So why we define what a console is by those games that aren’t on the Switch’s catalog?
All 3 consoles are doing the same, they sell a closed hardware/software solution with access to a propetary storefront where they sell you games, the same games mostly. Their marketing may be directed to different demographics but at the end they all do the same and compete for the same market.
I find it interesting that we don’t see more “officially-licensed demakes” of AAA games being released for devices (the Switch; phones; old PCs) that can’t play the AAA version. It used to be very common (with e.g. SNES games getting simultaneous GB reinterpretations released with them.) But the only thing I can think of that did it in recent memory is Final Fantasy 15.
Games used to take way less money and time to create, so it was viable to make 3-4 different versions of the same game for different platforms.
But if you demake a game hard enough (i.e. really clamp down on the asset details, by using intentionally-stylized art rather than lower-quality realistic art, etc) then it doesn't need to take so much time and money to create the port. It can be a bounded added marginal cost.
Also, there are things a modern "parallel demake" (like FFXV Pocket Edition) can do to reuse certain types of assets from its AAA sibling, that in the previous era would have required remaking those assets from scratch. So a modern demake can actually be cheaper to produce in some ways.
For examples:
• You can just copy-and-paste the script and associated audio assets straight over, as anything can play audio clips.
• You can also copy over all the animation "choreography" scripting for NPCs and cinematics, with the particular named animation cues just mapping to different actual animations for the simplified models.
• Depending on how your AAA game models environments, you might even be able to export the abstract "level data" (what type of terrain goes where; basic geometry and material-type for meshes of buildings; placement of things like furniture and other large freestanding decor objects) from your AAA game engine, and then import it directly into your demake's game engine. (You'll then still need to run over everything to add new decor and details, make sure nothing is clipping, etc — but this is still a major speed-up.) IIRC this is how the recent third-party-implemented Pokemon titles [Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and BD/SP] were implemented — they started with direct dumps and imports of the original games' level data into their engine.
There are some, like DOOM, but it’s not a lot. If Switch 2 can pull off PlayStation 4 quality I bet there’d be a bonanza of ports and some good money made.
> This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.
I don't have any current Gen console (nor have I played one) but as a long-time tech market "interested observer" my understanding is that XBox had a bit less raw power last Gen and tried correcting this Gen and succeeded in having a bit more raw power than PS5. However, it apparently didn't matter to the market. So it seems to be another example like Betamax vs VHS, where the product with somewhat better technology didn't win because consumers found other factors more important. In modern game consoles, I assume those factors would be some mix of exclusive titles, compatibility with existing previous gen game libraries, marketing+brand perception and, more recently, the console's subscription game service.
It's interesting that Microsoft apparently didn't internalize this lesson, since Nintendo has been remained competitive for ~20 years by combining significantly weaker hardware with high-quality franchise games plus a clever differentiating factor (novel interaction (Wii) or portability (Switch). Of course, it would be wrong to conclude "CPU/GPU power doesn't matter" because it's more complex than comparing mips, flops, rops, etc. It also depends on how much, and how well, developers and game engines optimize for a platform's hardware.
Microsoft definitely learned their lesson about high-quality franchise games with their recent (and very costly) acquisition spree including Call of Duty. Although, to get anti-trust approval it can't be platform exclusive for at least a decade. I'm wondering if MSFT's claims that they're happy to be a games software company selling on all platforms may actually be true. If so, it may not bode well for the future of the XBox hardware business - which would be sad because more competition is generally better for consumers.
Part of the issue is Xbox segmented the market with the less powerful Series S and put constraints on releases needing to have feature parity between the two, quite a few devs have had issues with. It delayed Baldur’s Gate 3 for months until MS waived off the split screen co-op. Seems bizarre to chase power at hard and then make it harder for your devs to develop to it.
https://www.techradar.com/gaming/is-the-xbox-series-s-holdin...
I agree that the XBox senior leadership has made a series of critical strategic mistakes going back over a decade which have nerfed the otherwise generally quite good hardware, software, game and online service execution. Just with XBox One the long string of gaffes and fatal errors was... impressive.
* Going all-in on bundling the Kinect, a very costly depth camera interface peripheral, with every XBox.
* Committing to making XBox an "all-in-one entertainment system" by building in an expensive HDMI input capability to enable being an electronic program guide, digital video recorder, Blu-ray disc player, streaming TV service and music service. The Kinect camera peripheral also had a built-in IR blaster to control all your other living room devices.
* Announcing pervasive DRM that would tie game discs to the user's account, prevent reselling or lending game discs.
* Aggressively pre-announcing no backward compatibility with previous XBox games. A senior XBox exec apparently told the media (on the record), "If you're backwards compatible, you're backward."
While the last two mistakes were walked back before the console even shipped, building in & bundling costly hardware couldn't be walked back. Nor could the significant investment in developing operating system and application software to support electronic program guide, IR control, video streaming and recording. These large hardware and software investments certainly came at the cost of investing as much in hardware and software to better render games, play games and support game development. You can kind of understand why MSFT thought each of these things would be good for MSFT strategically, but they were all tone deaf in terms of what their market wanted and fatal distractions from the main business of being a good game console.
I hope someday a definitive case study will be written giving insight into how otherwise smart, experienced executives can make so many catastrophic strategic errors over such a long period of time.
I'd say your observation on hardware and software is quite accurate, except I don't agree PS is the one that's winning.
PS is suffering from decreasing fan loyalty due to the not-that-good subscription service and not-that-exclusive game titles. Also, their pace of new hardware seems to be off considering the half-dead PS VR2 or that streaming handheld thing. The way I see it, the subscription service is supposed to be a counterpart to MS's game pass or XGP; the handheld thing is most likely to be a compromise from current gen (PS5) performance and NS's pressure. But don't forget their legacy from previous generations, they have *the most* experiences in developing and publishing 3A titles, which is why PS is still my most played consoles.
On the other hand MS had the issue of XSS dragging XSX down (as mentioned above by others), and their hardware sales seems to be losing momentum due to "If I can play it on Windows why would I need a XBOX". But from their past doings I think MS is always on the chasing of "Combining their all platforms together". While Windows Phone might turn out to be a failure, XGP actually did succeed, thanks to the huge user base they have on Windows.
Whereas NS has the exclusive advantage of their cartoonish/pixelated artstyle. This alone, in my opinion, saves them a ton of money. Not saying the artstyle is worse than realistic ones, but the development cost is indeed much much lower. Not to mention it requires much less computing power to render, resulting in cheaper hardware products. Their console can't run 3A, but that is actually a smaller downside than some may think. Because cartoonish/pixelated game and smaller indie game is a huge market.
So... Though the 3 manufacturers are competing in the same game console market, they each found a smaller but more suitable target market for themselves. If there has to be a "winner", profit-wise, it should be NS undoubtedly. Just look at their hardware upgrade cycle and console/game sales/profit.
I agree. Sony isn't winning the console market. In terms of both unit sales and combined hardware/software profitability, I think it's pretty clear Nintendo is doing best. Although, Sony might possibly net more total revenue due to higher priced hardware, from a Return on Capital perspective Nintendo is doing better.
I think Sony probably feels they are doing okay, although they think they should be doing better than they are. It's Microsoft's XBox business that I think is in long-term trouble. While they may be profitable at the moment (I don't follow it closely enough to know), the brand and forward trends aren't looking good. To me, the massive acquisition spree buying leading game companies was a very risky 'bet all the marbles' kind of move. It was so expensive that to justify it, they not only have to win but win big. It's a huge bet on making their Game Pass service not only grow but increasingly profitable. And it has to win PC gamers and console gamers with a unified service. Maybe it'll work but the high costs and constraints limit the number of ways they can win while the number of ways to lose remains vast.
Software, it can't be compared because of a unique catalogue. How would switch sales be impacted if Zelda was on the ps or Xbox?
This is probably a big, major effort by PlayStation’s marketing team to get people to think that
Competition isn’t the secret sauce we pretend it is. There is power in non-competing and doing your own thing as well. You just have to know when to use either strategy.
Strongly agreed. When I think of the best Nintendo products the words “fun” and “play” spring to mind.
AAA gaming on the other hand, either resembles sports, shallow short-form media, or Oscar-bait melodrama. Very little fun to be had.
What ever happened to fun and play?
This is such a trite take. Whenever I hear it, what comes to my mind is: "bro, do you even play games?".
The gaming industry is huge and gamers are varied. What is fun and play to one person is boring and vapid to another. I think Nintendo's first party titles are generally excellent, but I recognize that they're not for everyone. It's not like the rest of the industry is shuffling around going "boy, if only we could figure out how to make fun games".
It seems that you want to exclude Nintendo from AAA gaming, which is also weird. Their first party titles are developed by large teams with big budgets. They're not some scrappy startup making indie titles.
FWIW, the game that won Game of the Year at the most recent game awards is Astro Bot - an amazingly fun and playful (some would say Nintendo-esque) game that is a PlayStation 5 exclusive.
I do think they got it right, but Game Awards is 90% weighted towards games professionals/critics, so it's not very populist.
(Their award that is 100% consumer/gamer vote based goes to mobile games, because they bribe their audience to vote for it.)
Money happened. The gaming industry produces more revenue than the movie industry and the music industry combined. Making a AAA is a $50-$100 million endeavor. At that scale, doing weird stuff because maybe it'll pay off is almost unconscionably risky. It's the same problem movies have, and it's the reason why indy films and indy games are so much more interesting.
Fun doesn't map 1:1 into a trailer or a screenshot. Graphics do, voice acting, cutscenes, and big set pieces do.
Singleplayer AAA gaming on top of all that feels like work, the older I got the less those games kept me playing because I don't want to spend 3 hours running errands to be rewarded with an item/spell/skill.
The melodramatic storylines are also pretty grating, there are a few games with good storytelling but most are some rehash of "this world has been destroyed/is in the process of being destroyed, in the aftermath a hero is about to rise and save it" so if the mechanics don't feel fun right from the get-go I lose interest completely.
The most fun I have with games are the ones with a very iterative game loop (roguelikes for example), or social/multiplayer games, anything with a lot of replayability, and the constant feeling of improvement is like crack to me.
A surprising example I re-discovered last year after only playing it for a while some 15 years ago is Trackmania, got even some friends hooked on it to play hot seating trying to beat each others time. The game loop is short and intense (about 1-2 minutes max), has a high skill ceiling, and you feel yourself getting better at a track each time you play it, nailing some very tricky part that felt impossible 30 min before is absurdly satisfying.
My biggest problem is I'll finally get a chance to sink enough hours in to start something AAA, do maybe 4-10 hours over two or three days, and then have life get in the way and not touch it for a month or more... and completely forget how to play and WTF I was doing.
Some of my favorite UX features in newer games are automatically and contextually reminding you how the controls work when you pick it back up after a while, and quick story recaps or quest reminders on loading screens. I like to label those games "parent-friendly".
I have this issue with TV and movies too. I have so many shows I want to finish but when I try I have no clue who anyone is or what’s going on. I either watch a recap or just give up instead of restarting.
Got any examples of a game doing recaps / control reminders? Curious to check them out
My biggest problem with AAA gaming is I waste a lot of time tuning graphics settings to keep games from crashing, and wait a lot for different sections of games to load. I miss the 90s era of snappy UIs.
I can't remember where I read this, but I came across someone talking about the fact that these AAA photo realistic games are hugely expensive to make, but if you look at what young people are spending their time playing, they're games like Fornite, Minecraft and Roblox. As soon as I read this, it clicked for me.
I have two teenagers (15 & 17) and this is exactly right. My son plays games all the time and although he's played Elden Ring and GTA and other games of that sort, over the years I would say 80% of his time has been Minecraft and this other 2D game with a platformer vibe whose name I forget that has procedurally generated maps. He's frequently calling me over to his computer to check out his latest architectural creation in Minecraft. I know it's not just him, because he plays multiplayer with his buddies as well, and again, a lot of it is these games with quite frankly primitive graphics. But they're fun!
> and this other 2D game with a platformer vibe whose name I forget that has procedurally generated maps.
Terraria?
> Terraria?
Yes!
Perhaps it was this, which I saw recently:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/arts/video-games-graphics...
I have a younger kid that's in Roblox a lot as well, and something I noticed the peer group do is have a facetime/voice call in the background so they can talk while they play. I like it better than watching them type chats.
I'm a huge Nintendo/Mario fan but I've recently been playing through Astro Bot on my PS5 and I must say, when you combine super fun mechanics with amazing graphics and performance, it's quite an experience! But there isn't nearly enough content like this on the non-Nintendo consoles, so point is definitely not lost on me.
I play one game at a time for about a month and then move to the next. When I first played Mario Odyssey on my switch I was over the moon with how much pure fun it was compared to all the good looking and serious RPGs I played in the decade before. I had forgotten games can be this enjoyable. Nowadays I try to do these super fun games in between my souls-like sessions.
Focusing on tech or unoriginal production values (that's photo real! You don't need a great art director, you need a photo..) is appealing to companies because it's predictable vs the creative uncertainty and subjectivity of "fun".
Astro Bot won game of the year because it had amazing graphics and physics and had Mario-tier fun. The team actually made a cryptic shout out to Nintendo at the award ceremony.
Nintendo has great games, but the resolution on TVs, even cheap ones, is outstanding now and it goes to waste using a Switch.
Playing a great game that also uses what the TV has on offer is really the best experience. If we get 4k and ray tracing on Switch I’ll be stoked.
The “is this fun” part is the reason why I bought a Switch in the first place. Still the only console I’ve ever owned
I love the “just start playing” ethos of most Nintendo games. Reminds me of the games I used to play as a kid. No long story or exposition - just a game load screen and a start button
Do they? I haven't seen a meaningful improvement in video game graphics for at least 5 years, maybe even 10.
the teaser also has a clear shot of the side and there's a sensor that looks identical to an optical mouse sensor. It seems really rough from an ergonomics perspective but maybe there are accessories for that. It could also go the way of the IR camera where it sees niche uses in a couple of random games but isn't really a staple of the console.
https://www.polygon.com/nintendo-switch-2/509821/nintendo-sw...
Never forget, they had Rob the robot. And to my recollection, he only worked with Gyromite.
A lot of that was necessary for Nintendo get away from the "it's a video game console" comparison after the video game market crash. That's why the NES looks like a VCR too.
Also NES appeared before the US as a VCR design because well, American's loved VCRs
Don't forget Stack-Up! :P
Indeed I forgot Stack-Up!
When you try weird shit you’re bound to have failures. Nintendo has a remarkable success rate with their weird shit, though.
Ha. Since when does Nintendo care about ensuring functionality they add to their devices are leveraged? Other than first party games, and even that can be limited, almost no one ever implements the weird little functionality they add to their devices.
Not just Nintendo. The PlayStation 4 controller had that touchpad in the middle that also clicked in to act as a button. I played a lot of games that used it as a button (usually to open a map, or something) and don't remember a single game that used it as a touchpad.
Microsoft is somewhat to blame for new controller features being underutilized because they're extremely reluctant to add anything to the Xbox controller. Motion control in particular stands out, the hardware isn't expensive and it's proven to be very useful in some types of game, but the lowest common denominator Xbox controller still doesn't have it so multi-platform games can't be designed around it. Especially multiplayer games with crossplay since you can't let some players have more precise inputs than others.
Would be amusing if they just allowed it anyway and if you use an Xbox controller, you just suck at the game. Pressuring MS to add gyro.
It’s used very heavily for system functionality, such as with the onscreen keyboard. Not so often with the games.
It’s an expensive component and they brought it back for free he second gen so they must think it’s worth it
Likewise for the PS Vita's features such as the rear touchpad.
I think someone at Nintendo has a brother-in-law that owns an IR sensor manufacturer. Only explanation for that feature being in every right joycon.
As a mice or a air mouse. The smart tv stuff is limited by a remote control from 1980 (more or less, what changed?). I'd make lifestyle apps for the switch if they enable it.
As a mouse mouse. It seems to have an optical sensor on the inside edge (the side that attaches to the console) and the video shows the joy cons zooming around on that edge.
A mouse wood be very nice for Super Mario Maker!
or the upcoming civ 7, or any number of games!
Nintendo has tended to maintain at most 1 generation of backwards compatibility, though you can get some fuzzy ideas of "generations" in a few cases.
The Switch is a notable break in both of these lines, playing neither 3DS nor Wii U games.Based on that list, they have tended really only to do that on mobile platforms. It was one of my favorite things about the platform, but it always felt like this was partially thanks to the older hardware still getting games well into the new hardware's life in many cases. Major games, I believe Pokemon has done this a few times?
Most of their home consoles were complete departures from previous hardware.
NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube all did not work with prior games were fairly different (ok admittedly the outward difference between the NES and the SNES were minimal but still no compatability).
So honestly I think it was more notable that the Wii could play Gamecube games than the other way around as far as Nintendo's track record goes.
First Wii was able to play Game Cube Games. WiiU was backwards compatible to Wii. All theses consoles used nearly the same chipset anyways.
WiiU also had the back compat hardware of the Wii, just couldn't take a gamecube disc in it's drive.
Similarly, a lot of the SNES internally looks like it was at least initially designed for back compat with the NES.
GC emulation wasn't emulation; it was done with a separate chip. It was more like native support. Eventually Nintendo removed that chip and backward-compatibility support from the console.
(so, even if you could put a GC disk in, it didn't have capability to natively play the game)
It sounds like you're confusing the Wii's backwards compatibility with the PS3's. The Wii didn't have a separate "GameCube chip", its core was effectively an overclocked GC.
https://youtu.be/meZA9KHkFuY?si=5xrsSjNxKLxLnd6J
He explains it quite well. Sorry it’s German but I guess the information about the chips and reasons Nintendo choose them should be all over the net.
I was always amazed the Wii with its full size discs could play the GameCube mini discs.
Ability to play smaller discs was normal in most CD-ROM and DVD players for many years before the Wii. A few people (probably half of whom have HN accounts) used to give out mini-CD business cards...sometimes even with truncated edges so the disc was not entirely round: https://www.duplication.com/cd-business-card-duplication.htm
Yeah but most of the optical drives that support this have trays or are top loading. It’s a little more counterintuitive to have a postbox-style drive (I don’t know what they’re actually called) that supports different sized discs.
> postbox-style drive (I don’t know what they’re actually called)
Slot-loading.
for what it's worth Nintendo had planned to make the SNES backward compatible and that intention influenced design choices, particularly the very similar CPU.
I heard that it was a forced response to Sega aggressively cutting the price of the Megadrive/Genesis to the point that it made it very difficult for Nintendo to sensibly price the SNES bill of materials.
Something had to go and it was backwards compatibility.
Yeah, the SNES uses a 65816, which is pretty much a backwards-compatible and 16-bit extension of the 6502, used in the NES. The SPC is likewise capable of nearly perfectly reproducing the NES's audio capabilities, and the PPU has the same background and sprite layering as the NES as a foundation.
Sega actually did what Nintendidn't. The Sega Genesis had a Z80 coprocessor, a video chip that was yet another extension of the TMS9918A design, and a PSG sound chip -- all just more advanced, or supplemented by other hardware, versions of components the Master System had. With an adapter add-on called the Power Base Converter, Master System games could be played on the Genesis.
3DS has hardware support for GBA games too, actually, though these only got distributed via the Ambassador program.
Also had VC for most of Nintendo's platform.
I know, and you can basically restore full GameCube compatibility on the Wii U via Nintendont. Neither of them let you use the actual physical games from the old system, and needing to perform jailbreak hacks to use them and load ROMs on anyway doesn't count as much as out-of-the-box compatibility.
Fair. A shame, still, especially for GC compat on WiiU.
The problem in both cases is that the consoles were actually missing a key piece of hardware: the ability to read the disc or cartridge.
If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally) then this doesn't matter. But for regular consumers, there needs to be a way to verify ownership.
Nintendo could have made some titles available digitally (which is what I wish they'd done), but that requires getting content rights sorted out for games that have never been sold digitally before, so the full catalog would not have been available. Also, there would have been a ton of hemming and hawing about "Nintendo is making me buy my Gamecube games again?!?" No comment on whether such complaints would have been reasonable.
The problem is deliberate hardware choices. They may be reasonable choices, but if Nintendo wanted to prioritize forever backwards compatibility, we could still have a GameCube-compatible disc drive and GBA and DS compatible catridge slots.
This is fair, although I do think the choice was reasonable. Disc drives are an expensive part, and consider how much space a cartridge slot would have used on the 3DS...
----
I have long had a total fantasy in this vein... what Nintendo could have done is release add-on hardware to read old media. Imagine a hybrid mini-disc and cartridge reader which connects to the Wii U via USB, and a Gameboy cartridge reader which connects to the 3DS via... uh, possibly NFC, Gameboy games are small and the games could be read once and cached to internal storage.
You could use this to add backwards compatibility all the way back to the NES and Gameboy! Games from consoles two generations back could have been run natively, everything older could have been trivially software emulated.
I don't think such a product would have substantially interfered with Virtual Console sales, it would have been too niche. Probably too niche to make sense in real life... but in my fantasy, the goal would have been PR. It would cement the idea that buying a Nintendo game is an investment which Nintendo will support long-term; whether a large number of people make use of that ability is irrelevant.
That's basically the niche that companies like Analogue are exploiting. I'm sure it'll forever be a niche market, but it's nice that someone caters to it. :)
I think being an official product makes it totally different and much more special. Maybe that's silly--but consider how well the NES Mini sold compared to similar unofficial products. (Unfortunately, the NES Mini couldn't read cartridges.)
You could probably do effectively that by just shipping a usb drive. After game from the NES-N64 are just a few GB.
If it was an official product, it would have to read from the real cartridge or disc. If nothing else, Nintendo does not have the legal right to redistribute games made by third parties.
Downloading roms is all it takes to be regarded a hacker-type these days? I feel words keep losing their meaning …
Downloading roms? Probably not
Modding your Wii-U to run those roms?
I feel that probably qualifies someone to be regarded as a hacker -type
I guess I shoild have quoted what I was referring to, since it seems to high ask to expect others to read the rest of the discourse.
> If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally)
Either way, I disagree with your definition too.
The ”hacker-type” is the one figuring out how to mod the wii-u. The one following some instructions to perform it using provided tools is simply a end user.
I think they are both hacker like behavior, just varying skill levels
Using a tool someone else built is definitely the gateway to hacker mindset and culture
Gatekeeping the term hacker is... paradoxical.
>Nintendo New 3DS: plays Nintendo DS, DSi, and (old) 3DS games
I know HN doesn't have any room for sarcasm but I couldn't not laugh trying to remember what were the NEW 3ds games. Sure the second pad made the 3DS way more comfortable to play, and 3D was a bit better, but we all got scammed here regarding games supporting this new hardware.
The New 3DS consoles did have double the RAM and an improved CPU and GPU, so there were quite a few games like Minecraft and the SNES Virtual Console that could only run on the New models.
There are a handful of more New 3DS exclusives than there were DSi exclusives. Both revisions failed to garner enough market for developers to try to target them.
Super Smash Brothers worked very well with the second pad.
IIRC Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem Warriors were the only ones I really cared about. Lots of people held onto their old hardware; probably wasn't worth excluding them.
The biggest advantage of owning a New 3DS turned out to be the huge performance uplift. A fair number of games ran at double the framerate or only supported 3D mode on the newer hardware. Code Name STEAM had substantially less downtime on the New models because the AI could process turns faster. Several reviews for Hyrule Warriors Legends flat out said not to buy the game unless you had a "New" model due to performance issues.
The Switch is interesting, because while you can't play the old games you already own, the Switch can play those games with an emulator, if you're willing to pay them more money to get a digital copy.
You probably know this but most of those aren’t really generations. Game boy color, DSi, new 3ds are just upgrades of the same generation kinda like PS5 vs PS5 Pro.
"Generations" is a fairly subjective term all things considered, and I basically acknowledged it by saying these things are fuzzy.
As the sibling post mentions, they all have exclusives, however, which is something Sony has refused to allow for PS4 Pro and PS5 Pro updates. And even though Nintendo considers the GBC to be the same console as the original GB when it comes to tallying sales figures, it's a rather significant upgrade. Slightly better than NES full color games, double the processor speed. It made a compelling upgrade and target for developers.
Back when they were first coming out, a lot of us also considered GameBoy Pocket to be a new "generation". I think it might have supported a few more shades of grey from the original? And better battery life. And lots of case colors.
Capabilities wise, it was identical to the original Game Boy. Just four shades of gray for games to draw in. Externally: smaller unit, better battery life, higher contrast screen, new link port (yay adapters for connecting to the original Game Boy...), and "Play It Loud" (the colored cases to choose from). A true revision, no room to question about leaps in gaming technology. :)
All of those have games exclusive to them.
3DS has like ~15, though some heavy hitters (Xenoblade and Fire Emblem), DSi has like 6 no-names (and, technically, a whole lot on DSiWare); but there are many GBC-exclusive games.
Although funnily enough, in most regions Pokemon Gold and Silver were not actually GBC exclusive and would run on the original Game Boy, despite arguably being the game the GBC was most promoted for and having colour (which didn't work on the DMG, obviously) as their major features.
The Korean release of Gold and Silver, along with Crystal, did actually require a GBC.
I almost forgot the switch doesn't play Wii U games, given that almost all Wii U games worth playing were also released for the Switch.
> playing neither 3DS nor Wii U games.
Except the ones they remaster for us for $70.
I was about to say that. Pretty much every unique Wii U game has been remastered for Switch.
im pretty sure all the later versions of gameboys could play the old games, so long as the cartridges have the same package and connector.
the GBC games just didnt fit well in the DS
The DS can't play GBC games at all, it doesn't have the Z80 CPU from that console to even provide backwards compatibility. Nintendo also removed it from the Game Boy Micro, making it a GBA-only console.
> The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom)
A bit of an aside, but... Tears of the Kingdom looks just awful to me. My kids played Breath of the Wild and when they got Tears of the Kingdom I walked in and was astonished at the graphic quality. I think I had just finished Doom 2016 at the time and I felt like I was rewinding the clock 15 years in graphical quality. I've heard literally zero other people have this complaint, so I suspect it's just my take on the aesthetics of the game.
I think the state-of-the-art on Switch is really Panic Button's work on the Doom and Doom Eternal ports, but those are frame locked at 30 FPS, so I think getting a spec bump in Switch 2 would certainly help the demographic that plays games like that. My family has left the Switch ecosystem for Steam Deck, and that does a lot better. Would be interesting to compare with the Switch 2 in terms of specs.
Tears of the Kingdom's only graphical issue is framerate and resolution. Maybe some ground textures.
If you have issues with it it's entirely with the style, the graphics are fine.
The world is noticeably empty due to hardware limitations.
The style is entirely informed by hardware limitations. They did their best with what they could.
Yes, hardware limitations of the Wii U, not the Switch
Tears of the Kingdom is a Switch exclusive.
The style is influenced by Breath of the Wild, but nothing about the development of Tears was held back by the Wii U.
Lack of ram meant it could only handle a couple trees at a time
That's not true. There's a couple of forests that are as dense as gameplay can reasonably allow.
Most of the environments are empty planes with a 1-2 trees I think they needed to use a lot of tricks to have more than that. It might have also been an ai pathing issue
To me, Nintendo is more about gameplay then graphics and i hope it stays that way.
I would say gameplay and art style instead of what the rest of the industry calls graphics (polygon count basically).
Nearly all Nintendo (game freak is not technically Nintendo) games look beautiful thanks to having a great art style instead of just focusing on higher polygon count.
> what the rest of the industry calls graphics (polygon count basically)
IMO the focus of cutting edge triple-A graphics is physically based rendering.
“Physically based rendering” does not mean “photorealistic rendering.” After all, PBR was pioneered by Disney for use in their animated films. I would be surprised if Mario Odyssey doesn’t use PBR.
I agree with you, but in some newer games it just doesn't make sense to me.
They want good graphics but the Switch can't handle them, but they still try to make them.
For example, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.
Gameplay and the game design for me personally is really great, but I can't stand the graphics. I would rather play on worse graphics just to not have constant frame drops and in some parts of the game N64 graphics and in some 4K ones.
Scarlet/Violet look atrocious even next to other Switch Pokemon games. The art direction wasn't great, and it was a really poor game technically.
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-pokemon-scarle...
Can't find it right now, but someone did some side by side comparisons of Scarlet/Violet next to similar Breath of the Wild scenes, and it's night and day.
Neither generation of Switch Pokemon games looked or performed decent, but I guess bad performance is a gamefreak constant since at least the 3DS
I assume you're referring to Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet, but Legends: Arceus is also officially part of the main series. Offhand don't remember performance issues in that one.
Arceus is amazing. I never bothered to get Scarlet/Violet because to me they're a regression and just look like a lazy attempt at money grab.
Agree completely. I loved Tears and didn’t once think it looked bad in any way. It was a very clever game and made me feel like a kid again. That’s what I’m looking for in a Nintendo game. I’ll jump on my PS5 if I want to be wowed graphically.
Exactly. If you want to be dazzled with AAA titles running at 120Hz/60fps/4k then there are plenty of ways to spend your money. Frankly that segment of the industry feels like a treadmill of never ending upgrades for the same basic game.
My whole family shares and island in animal crossing, firing up some arcade brawlers on the couch. We’ve been playing the hell out of our switch for years and never once have we complained that it’s not flashy enough.
My main issue with the art style is that it's very flat, with large areas of a single, solid color, when more shading would add a sense of nuance and depth. A character's face, body, or hair will have a single light color, and a single dark color. This isn't about 4k, 120Hz, or huge polygon count, it's about basic shading to convey that things are 3d.
I've played mostly 20+ year old games for years, and don't own a gaming machine or high-end console. I'm into Doom from the 90s, OpenTTD, and Morrowind. But TotK should have been better, in my opinion. The art style just isn't my cup of tea.
Is sharing an island possible to do across multiple Switches?
> My kids played Breath of the Wild and when they got Tears of the Kingdom I walked in and was astonished at the graphic quality.
You must have good eyes! I've played through both and would be hard-pressed to tell a scene from BotW from TotK at a glance.
TotK seems extremely washed out and low-contrast is a majority of the environments. I played a bit of BotW and thought it was much more vibrant.
I can see the lower quality of the rendering, but the graphical content is stunning in my opinion. The art in the game inspires me a lot more than more photorealistic games tend to. I think they did a stellar job given the resource constraints and the scale of the game.
State of the art imo is Metroid Prime
It's a beautiful game, one of the first to use programmable shaders, and one of the earliest that doesn't look dated at all. The shaders make everything look smooth without looking blurry.
Loading screens are hidden, it's not like the contemporaneous PS2 game Mafia where you wait a few minutes to load, spend a few minutes driving across town on a mission to shoot up some people at a restaurant, get yourself shot up, then have to wait for it to load all over again.
As soon as you said Mafia I felt that loading in my bones…
Beautiful art direction to be sure.
But let's be real, it's Super Metroid. :)
The Switch 2 is supposed to be a bit faster than a PS4. It has more RAM and a much more modern GPU. It is using a LCD screen to reduce cost. I bet they will release a more expensive OLED version later.
> I bet they will release a more expensive OLED version later.
I would imagine the only reason they didn't launch with the OLED is to drive sales in the second half of the product lifecycle. If the PS4 equivalent claim is true that will be great, the Switch 1 was anemic at launch and borderline painful graphics in 2025.
I just hope its powerful enough that Indies can target it along with the Steam Deck, rather than just hope an pray like they did for Switch 1's late lifecycle. The amount of <30fps indie titles on there was sad.
Unity's fault?
Unity also kinda killed playing indie games on a laptop (at least on battery) on x86...
I wouldn't blame Unity for this. It's perfectly capable of running games efficiently on mobile. Problem is people either don't know how to or don't care to optimize their games performance.
Kind of by definition indies don’t have the resources to optimize their games as much as a major studio.
Sure, they're more limited but Unity actually has very good and accessible profiling tools included. It'd be easy for most developers to get quick wins if they've never optimized their game before.
Man that's 100% on the indie dev. Most people don't buy indie games for cutting-edge graphics. You start pushing the envelope, you get what you get.
The Switch was weak when it came out. Decent PCs from that same year can handle most of these games just fine. It's not really the developer's fault when the Switch is the only platform with issues, and they're usually not "pushing the envelope" in any way. The fault here is Nintendo's, they didn't prioritize support for ported games, though admittedly they couldn't really foresee the indie game boom, since it wasn't nearly as big of a deal at the time, especially in Japan.
First-party Nintendo titles are more or less the only games that actually manage to "push the envelope" on the Switch, and that's because they have the resources and experience to do it. Even then, some games end up constrained compared to the original vision, because the hardware can't handle it no matter how much insider knowledge you have about how it works and how to use it right.
Witcher 3 was an amazing port.
Thanks to the success of The Witcher 3, I wouldn't call CDPR an indie dev anymore. I'm sure porting that game wasn't easy, but it had a well resourced studio behind it. Not all games can even make the tradeoffs that were necessary for it to work, though. Factorio, a 2D game, also made by a pretty competent but still indie developer, was ported to the Switch, but its expansion pack Space Age couldn't be.
I agree with all of your points, but they dont merit a logical conclusion of "therefore the switch was a weak console"
Sorry, I only meant that the hardware was weak. As a product, the Switch was an overwhelming success, and I don't really think Nintendo made a mistake by choosing weaker hardware at the time. However, it's 9 years later and things are different now. The new platform should try to be more accommodating for ports IMO and the issues with the original are just backdrop.
Kinda. It had to be downscaled to below 720p to get passable frame rate performance. Compared to like almost any PC with a discrete GPU or any alternative console release it had, the Switch port was a huge step down in visual quality.
But i dont care about any of those things; they dont make the game more fun for me. It was a great port. Buy a different machine if you want to be inside the matrix.
Most indie devs don't have time and money to optimize. They will make the game primarily for the biggest audience, and then make it somewhat playable for everyone else.
The closer Switch is to the Steam Deck, the more likely both will be targeted.
What a bizarre thing to say. People buy indie games for all sorts of different reasons, and sometimes it's the beautiful art style.
"Beautiful art style" and "cutting-edge graphics" are nowhere near synonymous. They are orthogonally related at best (and many people would even argue that they are opposing goals).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#DS_family_Comparis...
* Nintendo DS, 2004
* Nintendo DS Lite, 2006
* Nintendo DSi, 2008
* Nintendo DSi XL, 2009
* Nintendo 3DS, 2011
* Nintendo 3DS XL, 2012
* New Nintendo 3DS, 2017
* New Nintendo 3DS XL, 2020
Hopefully the Switch as a platform represents the end of the line. SD cards can be up to 2Tb, and that should be enough for anybody ;) So I don’t see why they would need to change up formats again.
Early leaks said screen was LCD, hoping for them to be wrong
They're optimizing for cost so I'd expect LCD. Then they can release an OLED model later down the line and the extra $50 won't seem as big of a deal on top of what we can probably already expect in the price bump from Switch 1.
OLED seems like a no brainer for a lifecycle refresh at the ~3-3.5 year mark. Particularly because they've done it before, and Valve very recently proved it's still a viable way to boost sales. Nintendo has had 7 years to prepare for this launch they likely have every mario, zelda, metroid release date pinned to a particular month and year through at least year 5. A display upgrade mid cycle is almost a given.
Honestly, if it keeps the price down I'm all for it. My switch spends 99% of the time in the dock, because I would far rather play with the pro controller on my big TV than play it in handheld mode. So I find the quality of the screen kinda irrelevant.
Me too, I usually upgrade to the latest and greatest with Nintendo systems (specifically if it's an improvement, the "new 3DS" but not like the 2DS for example)
But I never bought an OLED because I couldn't justify it for the amount I play my Switch handheld (almost never)
I would pay extra 100$ for an LCD. OLED screens' PWM give me headaches. I'm using an iPhone SE because of that.
> Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.
Yeah, I've always felt that Nintendo being willing to try out cool stuff is something that will be very sad to lose. The Wii, DS, and the Switch have all been very cool consoles. I personally only buy Nintendo consoles, as I feel like everything else eventually gets ported to PC anyways.
The games are crippled by how archaic and underpowered the hardware is. TOTK is beautiful _despite_ the hardware limiting its true potential, robbing world class studios, and forcing them to cut corners.
It’s indefensible considering how much legendary IP that potato is holding hostage.
The good news is that the best Nintendo platform is also the best mobile platform: The Steam Deck. It plays Nintendo games better than Nintendo consoles do, and as a bonus, it plays everything else.
This is a statement that could only be made by an HN commenter. My wife has to drop into Arch to recover her audio every time she connects her Steam Deck to the TV. This is not a product ready for mass consumption.
Honestly, it's a milquetoast take. The only advantages of the Switch at this point are Nintendo exclusives and better support.
There are some rough edges with the Steam Deck, but it's a bit odd to frame the Switch as "ready for mass consumption" when it lacks access to Steam, something every other handheld has, and consumers expect in 2025.
The majority of the population doesn’t hang on Gabe Newell’s every word and buy 75 early access Factorio clones at each biannual sale.
> The only advantages of the Switch at this point are Nintendo exclusives and better support
Err what? This has always been the point of a Nintendo console.
It’s like saying “the only reason people buy Windows/macOS is because they want an easy to use OS.” Like, yes. That is indeed the point.
I think the point is that with the Switch you get Nintendo only, and in the past at least that meant anemic hardware and paying for old games you already bought. With the Steam Deck you get a portable PC with all that implies, meaning PC games, but also emulation.
So on one hand you have a walled garden, of the type that HN tends to hate (when it's Apple), but on the other hand you have an open platform that's significantly more powerful.
Have you ever tried to dock a Steam deck to a TV?
Have you ever tried to use physical media with a Steam deck?
Have you ever tried to get 5 hours of battery life with a Steam deck?
Have you ever put a Steam deck in your pocket? (I do have big pockets, but at least with the Switch Lite, it's possible.)
Nintendo will be just fine. I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
I have docked my Steam Deck to a TV. I have also used physical media with a Steam Deck. The USB port lets you do both of these things. I also just plug it into my laptop dock to play more desktop-oriented games.
The Deck works for me since I rarely play for more than a couple of hours in a stretch (so I don't need 5 hours of battery life), and I don't need to stick it in a pocket. It's "just a PC", so you can still play non-Steam games on it if you need to avoid the Steam ecosystem for some reason. Its direct competitors (Asus/ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion and others) show there's a market for this type of device.
The Switch satisfies the needs for a lot of people people; great! Good ideas will cross-feed with those in the handheld PC gaming device realm.
> Have you ever tried to dock a Steam deck to a TV?
Yep, works great with non-proprietary docks vs even using a 3rd party dock on Switch has led to bricked units.
> Have you ever tried to use physical media with a Steam deck?
I haven't tried, but I'd be surprised if plugging in a USB optical drive wouldn't work. That'd be pretty silly though, but so are some of the Switch physical releases when the bulk of some games isn't actually on the cartridge.
I think the better thing to look at is DRM instead of specific transmission format. Steam itself is a grey area for DRM (some games are DRM-free IIRC), but you can also use things like Lutris... or generally whatever you'd like. Takes a bit of tinkering, sure, but a whole lot less tinkering than getting anything unofficial to run on a Switch.
> Have you ever tried to get 5 hours of battery life with a Steam deck?
Yep, works great. I'll still give the point to Nintendo because they prioritize battery life so much more, but if you aren't running the SD at full tilt with a large 3D game, it can get decent battery life.
> Have you ever put a Steam deck in your pocket? (I do have big pockets, but at least with the Switch Lite, it's possible.)
I would love a Steam Deck Lite or something. That's probably the biggest reason I keep my Switch Lite: it's easy to just toss in a bag on a whim while the SD (and other Switches) require planning to actually use them.
> Nintendo will be just fine.
Yup. They're probably still sitting on piles of cash from the DS and now Switch. People were saying Nintendo was doomed when the Wii U did poorly, but others at the time rightly pointed out that they've probably got enough runway to have a few more total flops of consoles.
> I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
Losing Newell is a valid concern (again, for Steam as a platform), but Nintendo is certainly an interesting choice to say they won't kick you out on a whim, given their track record of bans, lawsuits, and just being particularly litigious.
The Steam Deck is just a PC - nothing is locked down. You could install whatever OS you'd want to replace SteamOS, or you could buy your games somewhere other than Steam and just use SteamOS as a launcher.
> I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
This is a very strange take for someone arguing for locking into Nintendo's most-recent ecosystem (where you're generously allowed to re-buy some of the games you already own from previous generations) over an open, linux-based hardware platform that connects to steam.
> I do have big pockets, but at least with the Switch Lite, it's possible.
Can you dock a Switch Lite with a TV?
>I personally will never use a platform that can kick me out on a whim, or could screw me the moment Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus.
Dude, you have to rebuy all the games you've already bought and already own every odd generation. Imagine paying for NES and SNES games, Wii and Wii U games and other old garbage you already own? That's Nintendo.
On steam you have absolutely massive library dating back almost 20 years by this point, and it comes with you every time you buy a new device, whatever it might be a PC, laptop or SteamDeck.
Yes, steamdeck is pretty large and bulky, but you can get 5 hours battery life on non-demanding indie titles (ie. Hades on the updated deck OLED models)
Yes, you can dock a Steamdeck to a TV easily.
It's all around better, completely open device, minus the size (and battery life in demanding AAA titles switch can't dream of running anyway)
I didn't mean that Nintendo was in trouble, I just meant what I said: the best way to play Nintendo's games isn't on Nintendo platforms. For me, I'm not going to be playing games away from the ability to plug in or dock for 5 hours. I don't put expensive electronics in my pocket, and yeah I've docked my Deck to a TV... it's great. As for physical media, why would I want to use that?
But sure, if you hate Steam on principle then obviously it isn't for you. In my 19 years of using steam I've never had any problems though, and I suspect that's true for most people.
I haven't tried in the last couple of months, but last time I tried connecting Deck to a TV it was _painfully_ obvious it was Linux with a thin veneer of Steam over the top.
Some of that is Valves' to fix, but some other things are just "that's how PC games are" — I genuinely can't believe "render the UI at native screen resolution, but the game at arbitrary different one" is not a standard feature in 2024.
I don't mind my game running at 720p, if I still can view the text and UI at native 4K; but apparently this is just not possible to get on PC.
What you are looking for is a render scale option. It is usually specified as a percentage of your display resolution but could also be combined with upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS, etc.) options.
It's something that is up to the game developer to implement but it is becoming more and more common to see in games now.
The bizarre thing about this is that virtually all multi-platform games implement this anyway — it just works this way out of the box on consoles.
But glad to hear it’s becoming more common - I might check it out on Deck again soon.
It's basically a hard requirement on consoles because they just can't render games at full resolution.
I don't know, it doesn't make much sense to call the Steam Deck the best mobile platform by dismissing things that a mobile platform should be good at just because you personally don't care about them.
> Have you ever put a Steam deck in your pocket?
I mean, there's no fucking way you could fit a regular Switch into your pocket. I don't care how big your pockets are. So that doesn't really seem like a fair criticism.
One of the things I find sad about the Switch is in fact that Nintendo seems to think it fulfills the same niche that their portable systems did, but it doesn't even come close. I can fit my 3DS (XL or not) into a pocket very comfortably, not so with my Switch.
Fits in my pocket: https://imgur.com/a/9tT0r7N
I hope it has at LEAST 12 GB of RAM. Hopefully 16 or 24 GB.
Most brand new laptops are not even there.
> I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much.
The specs seems to be leaked here <https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears...>
TL;DR
- CPU: Arm Cortex-A78C 8 cores Unknown L1/L2/L3 cache sizes
- GPU: Nvidia T239 Ampere 1 Graphics Processing Cluster (GPC) 12 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) 1534 CUDA cores 6 Texture Processing Clusters (TPC) 48 Gen 3 Tensor cores 2 RTX ray-tracing cores
- RAM: 12 GB LPDDR5
Only 2 ray-tracing cores makes you wonder why they’d even bother.
Any actual game devs wanna chime in on whether that’s enough to actually do any ray tracing?
That spec seems fishy given both Ampere and Ada both have 1 RT core in each SM. 12 RT cores would make much more sense. The 1534 Cuda cores is also weird since 128x12 would be 1536. ALSO the leak says "Nvidia T239 Ampere (RTX 20 Series)" but Ampere debuted in the RTX 30 Series.
The leaks are a little inconsistent on this one.
On one hand, the base architecture is Ampere, but it's been repeatedly rumored that there are various backports from Lovelace. It's a weird mixture of the two, alone with some unique parts never seen elsewhere (a file decompression engine that accelerates LZMA, according to kernel commits).
It's hard to say then how powerful these raytracing cores are, or how many are even necessary for simple but beautiful effects. It's also worth remembering that the Switch bakes the graphics drivers into the game itself, uses data structures and shaders more native to the GPU without compilation, and has a custom low level graphics API called NVN (and NVN2), so performance is not necessarily linear compared to a PC.
> Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version.
I sort of feel like they were trying to fight emulation with a lot of their moves, doing things that were challenging to emulate, like the 3D stuff, or unusual hardware, etc.
Unfortunately for them, they are subject to the most interest from emulation devs by far.
Let me just say what I'm seeing here... Folks can correct me, or add their own observations
* Screen is bigger
* Seems like it has a new texture
* USB-C port (on the bottom?)
* Another USB-C port (on the top?)
* Headphone jack
* Pull-out stand, supports multiple positions
* Bigger controllers
* New coloring on the controllers
* The built-in top buttons on the hold-it-sideways configuration appear to be nicer
* The controllers have a custom port to connect, and a little magnet-looking thing next to it
* The controllers seem like they can slide on tables like a mouse
* The controllers snap into the screen, rather than sliding down to lock
* Dock looks similar to the old one
* Controllers can slide into a pro grip, like before
* Physical Switch games slide in like they used to
Anything else?
This is the comment I was looking for. Entirely because the trailer makes it super unclear to me if they fixed the "port on the bottom" issue. There's definitely one on the bottom. It looked to me like there might be 2. But that the other way they fixed this issue was by changing the stand so it could lie better in a way that one could charge while playing.
NVM, just saw it in one of the flips around. There's definitely a port on the top. Glad they fixed this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBqcgbf8Iag&t=162s
Some new games will work on S2, but not S1, most S1 games will work on S2. Glad they didn't go MS route of forcing compatibility for games releasing the higher powered platform to run on the lower powered platform.
MS didn't force compatibility between generations either.
The series X and series S are the same generation. Wherever it was smart to start into this generation with a 3+ yrs old underperforming el-cheapo chipset is another question...
But for what it's worth, Nintendo has done the same decision according to the hardware leaks, they're just missing the equivalent to the Series X. (Which makes sense as it's a mobile device, so they don't want to gobble up electricity)
I personally agree that it was/is a terrible idea to start into a new generation with differently performing systems though. You can definitely release a "pro" version later for extra performance - but with the baseline being so underperforming as the series S... It never really had a chance, and most reviewers even said as much when they were initially announced.
Series S is severely ram-starved at 10GB (~2GB used for OS, so 8GB functionally)
Switch 2 has 12GB according to leaks
The Series S may as well be an older gen, it is hobbled in ways that prevent it from actually running optimally. It has notably limited releases on xbox.
I assume when they said that only most games are compatible, the exceptions would be the ones that require the OG Switch's physical hardware. From what I heard Ringfit and Labo were only compatible with the OG Switch (not even the existing Switch OLED) because they're designed to fit specifically with its design.
That would be pretty great if that's the only limitation.
Would be cool if you could still pair old gen controllers to the new switch for things like ring fit.
>most S1 games will work on S2
Most? Why not all?
> * The controllers have a custom port to connect, and a little magnet-looking thing next to it
the thing next to the port looks like an optical sensor to me.
You're probably right.
https://imgur.com/9OBN31C
At first I thought it was a dimpled magnet. Now it looks more like a lens covering a projector and another covering the receiver.
I think that's for the mouse feature.
I've had a lot of frustration with Switch joy-cons. Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation. No doubt my kids have subjected it to hard use and probably a drop or two, but still frustrating.
It looks like they've added some reinforcement to the joysticks, and changed the connection with the main body to be magnetic instead of sliding in and out (which causes wear and tear on the connectors over time). I hope the Switch 2 is more robust than the original Switch.
Some extra horsepower would also be appreciated. Recently we were trying to play Switch Sports with 4 players, and even my kids who are generally oblivious to graphical fidelity and framerate were complaining that it was basically unplayable in 4-player split screen.
RE horizontal - there is a ribbon cable that can literally fracture which causes the Zr and Zl buttons to quit working which only really manifests when trying to use 1 joycon horizontally (personally when Mario party happens).
The repair takes about 20 minutes the first time you do it and the ribbon cable is on amazon for about $7.
> Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation.
Yeah... I've repaired our joycons so many times (they all ended up getting the hall sensor joysticks from gulikit, some got new batteries), and despite this and actually not even heavy play time on them, the pairing is absolutely brutal. Definitely my most disliked aspect of the Switch.
We use gulikit controllers with the console pretty much exclusively. The price/performance ratio seemed right, I liked the first one we tried, and so I've just stuck with them.
Can wholeheartedly recommend swapping the sticks on the joycons with hall-effect ones from Gulikit. Made an immense difference for mine who were suffering from drift.
I have four controllers and basically none of them worked after a few years. I don't know how I feel about the quality of their stuff these days.
My original GameCube controller has zero issues after 20 years.
I've owned a switch for 5 years and never had any problems with joycons
I don't like the aesthetic as much as the Switch 1. Looks a little too sleek, too monochrome, not Nintendo-y enough. Other than the splash of color around the thumbsticks it looks like any number of those handheld Steam Deck-alikes that have been coming out.
That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.
The current Switch had an alternative monochrome (grey) version from the start, so I guess there's a chance the alternative version of the new one would be colorful.
It's been a while, but from my recollection that was the main version at launch. It's what I got, anyways. I don't remember the red and blue joycons showing up until later.
The switch had the red and blue from launch. In the reveal trailer they only showed the grey, but then in the switch presentation they revealed the red and blue. I don't quite remember, but I think from then on they mainly used that in marketing. It could be the same situation here, but the fact that the joycons already have a hint of blue and red makes me think this will be the only version, as it's sort of a mix between the 2 versions of the original switch.
Personally I like it. I choose the grey version of the switch, and I think making the joycons the exact same colour as the system this time looks way better. Also I like the splash of colour rather than it being entirely grey/black.
I know for a fact they had the grey and colorful models on launch day, I bought the model with the red and blue joycons at mignight on launch day at my local BestBuy. The promo video in this article[1] shows some folks playing bomberman with those joycons about 2/3 in.
1: https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/13/14241960/nintendo-switch-l...
Not sure which version was more popular, but I bought a red/blue switch on launch day. And anecdotally I'd say I've seen more of those than the grey one over the years.
I personally like the new color scheme. It says "I'm mature now, but still playful". Also, all black is less distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a bigger screen which needs you to move your eyeballs.
Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.
I prefer just "playful" to "mature but still playful". Something about the straightforwardness of "this is a toy for people of all ages, but it is still a toy" speaks to me.
Your taste/view is as valid and correct as mine.
If these things could be standardized, we would have only one design for every category of item, possibly from different brands.
Since it can't, we have this thing called design and art, which is a good thing :)
Absolutely! I was just elaborating on my tastes, didn't mean to come across as disparaging yours.
De gustibus et coloribus… :)
I am personally not a fan of the toy-like aesthetic of the colourful switch. But having a choice between both styles is ideal.
Definitely marketed towards middle age “gamers” with their mario toys on their shelves.
Do young people even play on switch any more? Pretty sure it is xbox, mobile and pc.
> Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.
I am a little concerned about that connector for the controls. I hope they have designed it to be sturdy. After working on broken Switch 1s a lot of USB C ports were abused by users.
Nintendo is not Nintendo-y enough for a while now. The switch system UI is bland and on launch the gray switch was the one being presented.
Speaking of - does anyone know of an HTPC frontend which duplicates the look and feel of the Wii menu?
Who even runs HTPCs these days?
I was interested in disconnecting my smart TV from the internet and using a replacement which I am in complete control of.
As to "who", some part of the demographic who runs JellyFin/Plex/Etc.
people who appreciate that Roku is a marketing company and not a gadget company
It's so odd to see Nintendo who hasn't competed on hardware specs for decades to release new console without atleast some gimmick(s) to sell their severely underpowered hardware.
Absolute zero gimmicks and zero excitement.
I personally dont care for gimmicks, but I expect them from Nintendo.
People are speculating that you can use the controllers like a computer mouse. You can see an allusion to that towards the end of the video.
That sounds like such an obvious oversight with benefit of hindsight. They could have instantly plugged Valorant/Apex gateway into PC established by YT Live/Twitch through that if only they had it on the right joycon.
The Lenovo Legion Go I think has this for FPS games. Joycon like thing goes into a little slider adapter and becomes a vertical mouse.
That's a really old-school gimmick if so.
Retro things have a habit of coming back. See: polaroids
Yeah, and this might make first-person shooters and some strategy games play a lot nicer if (big if) it works well. Perhaps the next iteration of Mario Maker might also make use of it.
They had it right with motion controls on the Wii. I could headshot on the Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 so effectively it was cheating.
The Switch also has motion control for fine aiming in some games (Zelda, Borderlands 2). Joysticks for gross movement then motion controls for smaller adjustments. Much better scheme than Xbox or PS.
Strategy games might benefit.
Resi 4 on the Wii was so good. It was a good game anyway, but the aiming was precise and a hell of a lot of fun. I think about it a lot. I'm hesitant to play the remaster on my steam deck because I doubt it's possible to be as good
Yeah, I am not a big fan of the Switch UI. They really took out the "surprise and delight" compared to the Wii U and 3DS. Very bland and straightforward, and yet somehow awfully slow and laggy.
I disagree. I find it delightful. The sounds are awesome.
Have you scrolled through the Switch store? The UI freezes for seconds at a time while network requests lock up the main thread.
And you can only buy one game at a time, and have to enter your password in for each one? I like to do all my game research and shopping in one evening and buy 3-4 games at a time. If there's a way to do this I would love to know how!
That's the only part I don't like about the Switch OS, and, yes, it's very bad. And it always baffles me why they wouldn't improve the app that generates revenue of all things.
The sound design is in fact delightful. Nintendo is great at sound design.
Didn’t a third party company design the Switch UI?
That sounds like an extremely unlikely claim
I hated the 3DS UI. It was not exciting, it was bad and inconsistent. At least with the Switch it is unobstrusive.
There's a very good reason for this: The whole OS is under 400MB. Every Nintendo Switch game cartridge comes with a full copy of the necessary OS on it.
Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.
I'll take that kind of functionality before "surprise and delight." We might get "surprise and delight" this generation though, if in part because the change to a modified Samsung NAND over Macronix might be cheaper at larger capacities if rumors are correct.
> Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.
This is mostly accurate, but not entirely afaict. I had to connect my switch to wifi in order to update the OS to play Xenoblade 3 (or Tears of the Kingdom? It's been a while).
Might be TOTK; I personally updated an offline Switch to use Sonic X Shadow Generations from the cartridge alone yesterday.
400MB is huge, and cute touches can be very small.
It's not that large considering the size of NVIDIA drivers + WebKit alone.
By comparison, the Wii U with it's "nice touches" was over 5 GB.
The necessary OS for running the game doesn't need webkit, and I doubt the important part of the nvidia drivers is super big.
I would doubt they made a build of the OS without webkit, or else you’d have a OS without captive portal or eShop support. Feels annoying.
I only know a few users but they all (three, one being my kid) have covered their console in stickers, so that monochrome is completely hidden.
I think this is aimed at a slightly older audience than the "regular" switch.
This is more like a switch "pro", and I assume a switch 2 lite and such will follow.
This is like the 3ds XL, which in terms of hardware was a HUUUUGGE upgrade to the 3ds, but they didn't really mention it anywhere.
What do you mean HUUUGE upgrade? The only difference between the 3DS and the 3DS XL is the battery. Same with the New 3DS XL and New 3Ds.
You might be getting confused because the New 3DS (which was a hardware upgrade) mostly sold in XL version in the US. The non-XL model was sold mostly as limited special editions.
Were the Wii and Wii U not sleek and monochrome?
This has more color than either of those.
> That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.
Yeah, I am sure there will be plenty of playful and colourful joycons for the Switch 2 as well.
** N64 has entered the chat
I was pretty skeptical about the original Switch but bought it on a whim after being laid off.
It quickly became one of my favorite gaming consoles. The ability to play anywhere didn’t seem like a big deal until I could do it.
I have zero interest in being tied to a single spot like the traditional console experience now.
The Switch was the first device where i saw how well the mobile + docked system worked and it was my favorite device until I got a Steam Deck. The Deck is killer IMO because it takes the same form factor of the Switch, gives you more power and no restrictions on games.
From a usability perspective, the Steam Deck is pretty good but the Switch blows it out of the water. Fast boot times, you don't need to restart it all the time, games don't crash frequently, controllers just work, it just slots into its dock, a much simpler UI, and no need to futz around with Proton.
The Steam Deck is cool but I waste infinitely more time dicking around with it than the Switch, where it just works. The Switch is the best console I've ever owned.
YMMV, but I'm not finding any of those to be problems with my Deck.
Reboots take a noticeable length of time and could certainly be faster but they're almost entirely "oh there's a new version of the OS" for me.
I haven't had any problem with games crashing either.
Its native controllers largely Just Work, and it's easy to turn on turbofire or rearrange buttons to work better with Steam Input. When I connect it to the projector and pick up the PS4 controller I have attached to the dock that works fine too, someday I should really try to properly pair it so I can use it wirelessly, but I mostly just play it handheld.
I basically spend zero time futzing around with Proton unless I am trying to get some old PC game to run.
I spent a while fooling around with installing emulators when I first got it, but I never actually touch them in practice, that's the only time I've ever been outside of the Steam UI.
I like my Steam Deck and would generally personally prefer it over a Switch if I had to choose one. I even use it in the "docked" way where it is both driving the family TV but can also be taken out and used directly.
And they've clearly put so, so much quality work into the Steam Deck. It's absolutely amazing considering the source material.
But it's also hobbled by so much of its library assuming it was built for a desktop PC or a notebook that could pretend to be a desktop. Some of my games react to being docked properly, some do not. Some can handle switching from the integrated controls to an external controller live, some do not. Some can handle switching resolutions, some do not. Some respond well to using the integrated controls to manipulate how much computing power you allocate to the games in real time, some do not. Some games work perfectly with multiple controllers, a couple freak out unless the stars align.
The Switch just works.
But I will say that even as someone who is generally not a graphics snob, the Switch is definitely not just aging, but aged. If all the Switch 2 is is basically "Switch 1 but with 2021-level power instead of 2013-level power" I'd be pretty happy.
From a usability perspective, I can play Halo on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can play Doom on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can offline Spotify music on my Steam Deck.
From a usability perspective, I can SSH into my server from a Steam Deck.
The Nintendo Switch is cool but it is infinitely less useful than a Steam Deck. From a usability perspective, it's quite poor. The Steam Deck is the best console I've ever owned :)
Did you turn on beta OS updates? Because in my experience I have to restart it about every three months when Valve releases an OS update -- but when I had betas turned on, that was every few days instead. (Might also explain some stability issues for you.)
Also: I've seen one crash in the whole time I've owned one, the controllers work perfectly, and I don't think I've ever had to meddle with Proton in any way.
Dock cable going in on the top is a bit fiddly, though, I'll grant you.
Interesting I have had close to zero issues with my deck. Occassionally the audio is crackly when waking from sleep. But it's rare and goes away after a sleep/wake cycle. But then I never really fiddle with settings, at most I cap the FPS for more intensive games. I never dock it either
It's very usable for me. And wakes from sleep almost as quick as switch. That immediacy made switch my favourite console of all time until I got the deck.
Was just saying the same thing on another comment!
Feels like the Steam Deck is like a Hot Rod / Muscle car and the Switch is a Toyota Corolla.
Might not be as cool or have as much HP and you aren't going to tinker without it but you can always turn it on and get to your destination.
the switch software feels so freaking good too. it feels rock-solid and fast. what really blew me away is how quick system updates are, from start to finish.
No restrictions, except you can't play the Zelda, Mario, etc. games.
That's not a restriction, nobody's preventing Nintendo from bringing those games to the platform. I don't currently have pasta at my place, but that's because neither me nor my partner have bought any, not because it's banned from the house.
Obviously Nintendo is stopping them from going onto those platforms. It is very much like Spaghetti being banned from the house.
But Steam doesn't restrict Nintendo from releasing their game on the platform, so the platform isn't restricted.
To put it another way, if I invite you to my birthday party, but you say you're busy, does that mean that my house is restricted to you? Are my other friends restricted from hanging out with you because you decided to stay home?
Of course you can.
We all know about piracy buddy, but between having to deal with a Switch emulator and the major pain points of extracting keys to get Tears of the Kingdom to run and putting in a credit card, I'll take the credit card route.
You don't need to extract keys. Other people have already done that. The "pain point" is just positioning a file in a directory.
You talk about piracy, I talk about just having to bring a single device of the devices I own with me and using a paid product on another paid device.
Isn't the Steam Deck too bulky to be used comfortably on your sofa for more than a few minutes? I already think that switch 2 seems too big. I'd wish the regular switch was the size of the lite already.
I found the (non-lite) Switch to be rougher on my hands due to less ergonomic design. Deck is larger and heavier, but it sits nicer in hands.
I found it quite bulky at first, especially after owning a switch. But I adjusted quickly. I don't have large hands either
Personally I find it fine. It's a lot bigger than the Switch, but the grips make it more comfortable to hold overall.
It's fascinating how the Switch can be such a different device for different people. I bought my Switch in 2022 and it has remained exclusively docked under my TV since then. I have yet to even conceive of a scenario in which I would want to play it on the go. Perhaps if I went on long flights more than a couple of times a year? But who am I kidding, I would still read or listen to podcasts on the plane.
The initial reason for me was to play it while others wanted to watch TV. And then once I got used to that, I found myself preferring to play it in other places in the house even when the TV was free - on the porch when the weather is nice, on my comfy reading chair, playing rhythm games on the exercise bike, next to the computer to have quick access to strategy guides, etc.
Airplane is the only time ours comes undocked from the TV.
Play it in bed.
I have no desire to do that though. It's uncomfortable to sit up in bed, and uncomfortable to play games lying down.
cloud gaming has given me this same revelation. It's as portable as a Switch but the gaming experience isn't limited by the hardware in hand. Connectivity is important for the experience, though.
Streaming videos, leasing cars, cloud gaming, spotify, are all great until the distributor takes it away.
I prefer to own my things. The sense that something is mine increases the pleasure of using something for me.
It probably stems from my acquired lack of trust in people. The idea that there's a suit in a high-rise building that spends their days thinking about how to exploit my continued enjoyment of a title by raising the fee, or not addressing congestion hours, or retracting the title when the contract is up and renewing would cost too much, or putting a clause in the service agreement that strips me of my right to sue them if I lose an arm in their amusement park, simply by blurring the lines of ownership.. it bothers me.
cloud gaming is good if you live close to the servers and don't care about graphics, but playing with +60-100ms for every action feels very bad. It almost feels like playing on 15-20 fps PC and quality of streaming video is always a problem compared to native quality maybe AV1 will fix it.
7ms latency, 4k120fps with geforce now. 10ms on wifi. I'm not kidding.
It's ALMOST perfect. I play BF1 through it. Try it once (I believe they still have the "free for 1hr per session, infinite sessions"? That's what sold it to me).
I can play very intensive games (graphically) on my macbook on the couch. It's amazing, and I couldn't believe the 10ms on wifi. It's mind-blowing.
BUT I live near Amsterdam, where a server cluster is.
Also, about the graphics: I'm borrowing a 4080 every time. Everything is on max. If you're in a very (very) hard scene for compression, then yeah, you'll see (very little) artifacts. But I run it on 75mbit, and that's a LOT.
I have gigabit, but no servers that are close, it's... rough
Streaming in the same house still isn’t very good. Games are very latency sensitive.
Depends on the game. I think I'm more sensitive to latency (less able to compensate) than most people. I couldn't enjoy playing Titanfall until I put my Samsung TV in game mode; I would just get hit and couldn't do anything about it playing League of Legends on my gaming laptop with a 4K monitor, but when I hooked up an external monitor, mirrored the screen, and ran a clock, I took photos showing my laptops' screen was behind by 30 ms. I started playing on an external monitor and started to win. I even found I had a hard time with some 1 player games such as Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet if I didn't run in game mode.
On the other hand, I went through a phase where I did a lot of streaming from my PC to a NVIDIA Shield and an XBOX. Sometimes through wired Ethernet, something through an airMAX microwave link to my other house. Games like Persona 5 and Orcs Must Die 3 were just fine, but I could not play any Rhythm games, which I have a knack for, High-Fi Rush was no fun at all.
My kid plays fortnite using home streaming to an xbox, and says he doesn't notice the latency. I do the same on an Asus ROG Ally, and it's "good enough". I am not a competitive FPV player, but suffer from OCD and notice latency and it tweaks me hard.
I'm playing single player games via Parsec and the latency feels fine. Moonlight is tolerable but Steam streaming feels terrible for some strange reason. This is running two Wifi 6 devices so nothing is even wired. I often use a controller connected to my laptop, or even better use the wireless controller, connect that to the physical device then you bypass the controller latency and only the video has a lag, which is kind of a neat trick if you're close enough to the computer you're streaming from.
The only sorts of games I can't play are things like Binding of Isaac that are super dependent on reaction speeds, but even games like Elden Ring feel fine.
Steam Streaming was what I used which was noticeably delayed, so I should try some alternatives.
Sunshine on the server and moonlight on the client blows steam link out of the water in terms of latency. Even on my home network with everything on ethernet, steam link would stutter. I sometimes forget I am not directly connected to a computer while on the couch.
Do you expect less than 7ms? Because that's my latency with Geforce Now. Almost unnoticable.
7ms is intra national ping, I have about half a continent to the closest GeForce Now and a bit more to the closest XCloud
200+ ms
Shameless self-PR: we are building p2p cloud gaming at https://borg.games
You should get low latency as long as anyone in your city joins as a provider.
Did clicking on the Rent my PC tab really try to benchmark my GPU through my browser, or did I accidentally click another button on that page inadvertently that triggered that?
If the former, that's a terrible idea. If the latter, that button really needs a confirmation and explanation of what's about to happen.
I'm viewing on an Intel Mac and it hung my entire computer for like 15 seconds. I didn't even connect that it was related to viewing your site until I got the error at the end and everything unfroze.
It does. Sorry about the experience, we will try to improve it.
Having user confirm it is not a good option, because every click is a hassle.
What we could do is first run a very short version of a smaller benchmark, and if that takes too long, don't run the main one. Then the worst case you will have a 100ms lag at this point, which is way better than 5 seconds of reading.
It's a neat feature, I just think it'd be ideal to do a confirmation first. It wouldn't be a great experience if it happened on mobile, either.
Every click is a hassle, but principal of least astonishment applies here. Literally not a soul will be expecting that to happen when casually browsing your site.
What does utilization look like? I would be interested in running this on a spare machine but it's not clear how large the potential audience of renters may be in my area.
Right now the utilization is low (< 10%), but in the effort to prop the providers side the company is footing the bill and paying for availability approximately 50% of what the benchmark on the page tells you. This is a rather common strategy for bootstrapping any two-sided market.
Yeah my experience has been thats its basically unplayable. I'm the kind of person who refunds when a game is <60fps though.
Yeah I gave GeForceNow a run and I really liked it. There are limits but I like just firing up a game regardless of platform.
I would say that after being a happy Switch owner for 6 years I still think the portability aspect is useless. It's too big to take with me when I leave the house, and if I'm at home I get a way better experience while docked. I thought it was a stupid gimmick on launch and I still think that. I recognize I'm apparently in the minority, though.
The Switch is genuinely one of the last pieces of hardware I was really excited about, and I can't say that about much anymore. It's extremely well put together, I've repaired mine a number of times with no issues (honestly opening anything made in Japan is a joy, the engineering is so good) and the specs leave a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate, but at the same time, you wouldn't know it while using it. The XBox is such a curmudgeonly slow experience to use, everything in the menus takes forever to load, the dash jerks and lags, and it's just like... this machine can run Halo Infinite, why does it struggle so damn hard with just... boxes and jpegs?
The Switch has a similar issue occasionally in the store application, but outside of that, settings are snappy, updates are practically instant, it turns on and off so quickly. It's what consoles are supposed to be.
And honestly in this same vein, the PS5 is also bloody impressive, but that impressiveness came with an impressive price too. The Switch costing as little as it did and still holding it's own is so cool.
We have a switch and an XBox and after liking the 360 back in the day the newer XBoxes just make me want to tear my hair out. They sold us all on bigger and bigger hardware to get rid of load times and they ended up with the system with the worst load times going all the way back to the 70s. Sometimes it seems like it takes 10 minutes to start up and actually play a game, and then there the updates.
My son got a Forza Horizon game for Xmas and it immediately said it needed to download 128GB from the internet before he could play it. With the way it worked out he didn't get to play it on Christmas day as it never finished downloading before we had to go leave to visit relatives.
Just a horrific experience compared to Switch.
Unfortunately the situation with needing to download huge updates is also occasionally present on the Switch. Several third party AAA games (EA sports titles come to mind) ship small cartridges and a require big downloads to the SD card to be playable. Switch game downloads (usually) aren't as large as Xbox/PlayStation downloads, but the wifi chip in the OG model was so slow, they might as well be.
Except for the drifting joycons problems. We had to replace many. Hope Switch2 fixes that drift.
The new one is rumored to feature hall-effect sticks on the Joycons which would hopefully solve that issue.
I kind of like the joy con issue, as it means I can send the controllers back to Nintendo and get them fixed for free, even when the problem isn't the joycon - it's the kids destroying the controller.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/region/d/joycon...
(Nintendo has always had excellent support - I remember getting a Gamecube refurbished long after the Wii was everywhere).
You can get free replacements btw. My original switch from release finally got drift in the latter part of last year. Nintendo had replacements to me within a few days at no cost. Rare to have such a pleasant experience with customer support, it was a flawless process
New Switch user, believe it or not. I just purchased my second 8BitDo controller with Hall effect joysticks this week. Hoping I can avoid the drift problem by avoiding Joy-Cons! (We usually play on the TV.)
Honestly I swapped them myself both in the Joycons and in the Pro controller a couple times each over the years. The modules cost like $15 through Amazon or Ebay, and unlike the XBox controller, they're separate modules with a ribbon connector instead of soldered in, which makes replacing them a breeze.
At this point I'd be hard pressed to consider this over my Steam Deck. We will see the specs later but I doubt it will really compete processing-wise or screen-wise.
The openness (full arch desktop) of the Steam Deck is also awesome while having a great UI that you never have to leave if you don't want to.
EDIT: I mistakenly called it "fedora desktop", my bad
For the last few generations (since the Wii), you don't buy a Nintendo for the processing power. They haven't competed on processing power since the Gamecube. After the Gamecube generation, you bought a Nintendo for the exclusive games and that was it. Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, and others. Nintendo knows that their draw is just the games, and uses a lot of lawyers to make sure that normal gamers can't play those games on the Steam Deck. If you want to play what Nintendo has to offer on the Steam Deck you have to install an emulator and Nintendo has made sure that normal people would rather drop $300 on a Switch instead of risk legal issues.
Edit: I suppose that some people would also say the intuitive controls (motion control introduced on the Wii, dual screens (and touchscreen) on DS and WiiU, and detachable controllers on the Switch) have some draw, but those features have often been under-utilized except on a few titles.
I agree with you, for most people the Switch is the better/easier option if they are just looking to play a Nintendo-exclusive. Emulators aren't that difficult to set up on Steam Deck and you can easily launch the games from the Steam UI but nothing beats the plug and play of the Switch and double-y so if you are playing networked games.
And let's not forget the size and weight difference. It's a lot easier to slip into a bag, and it doesn't run super hot under load.
I am willing to pay $300 for the privilege of paying $60 each for their games. No joke.
This take is correct as the primary measure. Its certainly why I bought one!
However computing juices really started to matter to me since that first buy …8 years ago? Ive been told this by other switch owners too. Some xplatform games get ported to switch and do end up being worse. Witcher 3, which ive beaten on switch, was repurchased on PC to play over steamlink because the switch was slow/choppy/lossy. Switch1 was precovid. Id imagine that many of us now want BOTH. Great content and great specs
The Steam Deck (which I have and love) is also far from a great experience docked, though I'm hopeful that a lot of those edges get ironed out over time.
I also wouldn't give my young kids a Steam Deck, but they will definitely be getting the Switch 2.
Nintendo does not compete on specs. They rely on the fact that fun is pretty much orthogonal to bleeding edge graphics.
They use that awareness and take advantage of simpler graphics to trade off processing power for features (portability, novelty) and profit (60>=usd games).
From time to time they also remind us that little hardware can do a lot if it's not running Chrome on a trench coat, and instead care is put in optimising things.
This is a pretty important point, and one that I'm mystified that a lot of people seem not to agree with. It doesn't matter if you're playing on a glorified smartphone with thumbsticks if the game is good enough. Moreover, having a selling point of state-of-the-art graphics today will turn into a _disadvantage_ in 5-10 years when newer games look even better; something designed to look good today with "lower quality" graphics is going to hold up better because it already is being compared to stuff taking advantage of every ounce of the latest save greatest hardware.
This is true. But high specs are a big win anyway if it opens up access to a bigger library of 3rd party games.
That's true, but Nintendo's counter to that is exclusive games, and they have big series like Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros. There's also newer ones that are more niche, but at least for me it's just the game where some new Smash Bros character comes from.
With exclusives games, emulation can be a problem, but many Nintendo games also rely on the novel things on their platform. For instance the Mario Party series has always tried to use something (rumble, mic, touchscreen, controller's shape).
This makes it necessary to get the console, and once you get market share it'll be worth porting and optimising games for an under-powered console (Celeste, Hollow Knight and probably every game runs worse on the switch, but it's playable). I'm not a gamedev, but it seems that nowadays it's easier than ever to port games since in practice there's fewer architectures around.
For a while Nintendo didn't have a competition in handheld market. If you wanted a handheld gaming device you only had Switch.
Now Steam deck easily competes on fun with Nintendo, because a lot of people have massive decades old steam libraries and constant supply of newest and greatest indie games, and quite a lot of power to play fairly modern titles.
This is hard to compete with because Nintendo likes you to pay for games you've already bought on their platform in past, including old NES and SNES roms (which are super embarassing to ask money for imo).
The only drawback of Steam Deck is that it's a fairly big and bulky.
Buying Switch 2 just for a odd once in every 5 years exclusive Zelda game is a pretty hard sell.
I just don’t hear the word orthogonal used in this context enough. Refreshing
SteamOS is Arch, Bazzite is Fedora if you want a more Fedora experience.
I agree mostly because I find myself playing a lot of smaller games these days, and it's much easier for devs to release and patch their games on Steam than it is a Nintendo platform. They also have a much friendlier refund policy.
For the masses though, a Nintendo system just works. I can hand a Switch to my daughter and know she can play Nintendo games with little bullshit, it's easy to play couch co-op, the parental controls are very solid, etc.
In terms of hardware it's ARM and Nvidia, which is a solid foundation, and Nintendo titles look great without being technically demanding. I fully expect to see a 60 FPS Zelda game that uses DLSS upscaling to look great on my 4K TV. The Steam Deck is somewhat limited by FSR2.
> SteamOS is Arch, Bazzite is Fedora if you want a more Fedora experience.
Oops, edited, thank you!
> I agree mostly because I find myself playing a lot of smaller games these days
Same here, I play mostly indie <$20 games and have a blast doing it. These games would (almost) never launch on the Switch (or any console). Either that or I'm playing games that would never work well on the Switch (like Factorio, yes I know there is a port and I've also tried on my steam deck and it sucks, you need a mouse/keyboard IMHO).
> For the masses though, a Nintendo system just works. I can hand a Switch to my daughter and know she can play Nintendo games with little bullshit, it's easy to play couch co-op, the parental controls are very solid, etc.
Agreed, this is huge, I wouldn't recommend a steam deck to the average person, just tech people mostly.
> They also have a much friendlier refund policy.
I can see why steam has an easier refund policy. It’s easy to buy a game that doesn’t work well (or at all) on your hardware.
But the switch shouldn’t have this issue, and that’s basically only reason I would ever return a game.
Steam has a refund policy because consumer law requires them to have a refund policy.
Isn't the point of owning a switch to play games that aren't on the Steam Deck? Zelda, Mario, etc.?
With emulators those games can also be played on the Steam Deck.
Which is also a gray area. I personally am fine with it for older, depreciated consoles. But I won't emulate current gen games unless I'm also buying the game.. especially on the Nintendo platform where the games still have some "magic" to them, compared to the more generic games on other platforms that prioritize graphics over seemingly all other attributes.
"You need to buy the game" hardly makes it a gray area.
Even if you buy the game you need to bypass encryption in order to dump the game data to run it on an emulator. A big part of why Nintendo prevailed in their lawsuit against Yuzu is that they proved the emulator could not be used without extracting encryption keys and bypassing copy protection.
So no, there's no legal way to use a switch emulator. At least not for playing commercial switch games, I guess you could theoretically home brew your own game to play on an emulator.
In the US. Most of the world doesn’t have these laws.
> A big part of why Nintendo prevailed in their lawsuit against Yuzu is that they proved the emulator could not be used without extracting encryption keys and bypassing copy protection.
Not a lawyer but as I understand it, the case resulted in a settlement and as such no legal determination was made. They didn't prove anything in court and no precedent was set regarding the legality of emulation.
Just so you know, it’s _deprecated_.
Obviously there isn't a switch 2 emulator yet, and probably will be a while until one is released.
The challenge will not be hardware emulation (if it's a nvidia tegra 2 based SOC that will be easy) but hack the OS/security to make it usable.
So don't expect to play mario kart 9 on your steam deck anytime soon.
Edit: with easy i don't mean that it will not demand a really top of the line computer to run it. But that isn't completely undocumented or custom hardware, like i don't know, ps3 or sega saturn.
Sure, but you cannot play online, though. You can't trade Pokemon for example. Tetris 99 got a lot of play in our house. It heavily depends on what you're chasing.
You can't play online on an official Switch either, unless you subscribe to Nintendo's "we give you an internet connection" monthly service offering.
Why pay for the Steam Deck, though? Buy it online and claim it never arrived to get a refund.
I’m yet to hear a moral argument for emulating current games you don’t own unless you’re poor and need to choose between buying Zelda and starving.
They have sold millions of faulty joycons (referring to drift), when the solution was already available (hall effect sticks) but it would have cost them an extra $1 per joystick, reselling games that came out in 2010 for $60 today, and using DMCA to bully youtube channels that show videos of their games are some morally reprehensible things from the top of my head.
It does not entitle anyone to pirate their games, but taking your words, Nintendo is not exactly starving either, they could have spent the extra $1 on the joycons to fit them with non drifting sticks. Even if you use their replacement program, you just get another joycon with the same stick.
> Why pay for the Steam Deck, though? Buy it online and claim it never arrived to get a refund.
If you do so, the seller has one less device. If you copy a game, the seller still has the same number of games. Your analogy clearly doesn't work. A better analogy would be possible if we had Star Trek replicators: replicating a full Steam Deck.
> A better analogy would be possible if we had Star Trek replicators: replicating a full Steam Deck.
Well, we literally invented Star Trek replicators for information, and we've seen what happened. If we had Star Trek replicators people would be complaining that replicating food, medicine, etc. is immoral because you should be paying the "original creator" for their intellectual property.
Not defending the length of current US copyright, but as long as we live under capitalism, the people who spend years of their time making the information need to get compensated somehow.
Indeed everyone needs to be compensated somehow regardless of what they enjoy doing or are capable of doing.
Not disagreeing, but also not sure what your point is
What if you buy the game secondhand, cheaply? My friend got Animal Crossing with their switch for free with a bundle, but they don't like playing the game. This would be much better than paying full price for a game that never will go on sale.
Buying a used game means the original owner can no longer play, and has to repurchase if they want to play as again. The same is not true for emulators
What if I emulate current games that my friend owns, but I make sure to never play the same game at the same time as he does?
I already own those games and can only fit one device into my bag
Switch emulation works surprisingly well, but it has its quirks and some titles are barely playable. I love emulation primarily because it's necessary for long-term archival of game libraries, but emulating modern systems is not a super user-friendly process (not to mention the qualms around piracy).
The audience of people that would get a Steam Deck and then emulate Switch games is so small that this is a no-issue for Nintendo. If you can do that you're probably not the target audience to begin with.
> The audience of people that would get a Steam Deck and then emulate Switch games is so small that this is a no-issue for Nintendo
Given how Nintendo handled the situation with Ryujinx and Yuzu, they clearly thought it was an issue for them.
you can see why they are so aggressively pursuing emulators
One could in theory switch from Steam to Switch platform, rebuying everything. Doesn't make a ton of sense from PC gamer standpoint but that's PC gamer standpoint.
I have both and they certainly each have their place. The Steam Deck has a much wider variety of games and can handle heavier graphics loads, but it is too heavy to be all that comfortable for handheld use, and the Switch is in my mind the undisputed champion of local multiplayer (more portable controllers, controller connections Just Work, good variety of local multiplayer games, etc).
The point of a Nintendo system will always be Nintendo games.
If that is not enough then by all means press on with Steam Deck.
One might imagine, the design of the games are an intricate part of the companies core competencies. The impressive part is a next generation carrying through with the art.
The only reason I have a Switch is to play Nintendo games. They are only available there, and will continue to be only available on Switch 2. Steam deck offers nothing, by comparison.
I have a Steam Deck and agree, but I think this is more for kids and younger people.
It’s for people who play Nintendo games first of all.
I think that while this sentiment is very real for a lot of folks who are into the Steam Deck, that doesn't mean the Switch doesn't have its own unique advantages.
- The Nintendo software catalog. Sure, you can emulate on the Steam Deck, but it's a chore and far from perfect, and for most people who do it that is piracy.
- The Switch is far less bulky, and has better battery life, less noise. ARM architecture is very well-suited to mobile gaming.
- The docking mechanism is seamless and the dock is included with the device. Games are designed around that functionality specifically, e.g., you won't have controller or display configuration issues on a Switch because it's all pre-configured.
- The price is almost certainly lower.
- You can buy physical game cartridges and resell them, which is a big advantage for fans of physical media.
- The Steam Deck does rely on a lot on its compatibility software with PC games, and while it's mostly a non-issue there it's not by any means a perfect catalog. If you get a Switch, all Switch software is going to work and was made for and tested on a Switch.
I think there's also a certain amount of "jank" to the Steam Deck.
Don't get me wrong it is a super cool console and pushes a lot of boundaries, but you don't really 100% know whether a title is going to run the way you want it to on the steam deck.
The switch is a more curated experience, you can pretty much expect every game to run properly, going to put caveat for very heavy graphic cross platform title like the new Harry Potter game, etc.
Steam has a verification process to determine which games work properly on the Steam Deck. If you follow that then you should have no issues playing your games on a Steam Deck.
> You can buy physical game cartridges and resell them, which is a big advantage for fans of physical media.
This isn't much of an advantage anymore since they used NAND memory and you get like 10 years of shelf life before bit rot starts to set in.
https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/nintendo-switch/switch_a...
I can't buy steam games second hand, and I can't let my kids trade steam games with their friends, and I can't sell a steam game and get some $$ back if I decide I am not likely to play it again.
Maybe somebody wants to play assassins creed without uplay bullshit.
I hate to be the “um.. actually” guy, but isn’t steamdeck running on read only Arch system rather than Fedora? I have one but I only game on it.
Oops, edited, thank you!
Relevant: https://www.nintendo.com/successor/en-us/index.html
Nintendo Direct focused on Switch 2: Apr 2nd.
Looks like joy-cons will have 'mouse-like' functionality and there's a 'C' on right joy-con but its functionality is not reveled. New Mario Kart showcased would probably be one of the first exclusives.
That was a new mario kart? it looked like mario kart 8 to me.
A few details are quite different from 8, notably the boost and character animations, it's definitely a new game.
Marketing will be difficult, MK8 already peaked graphically and has 96 tracks, and will still work on Switch 2. I hope they'll find real selling points for MK9.
Would have not surprised me if it's actually Mario Kart 8 2. (Technically that's already what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is, so, actually, it would be Mario Kart 8 3).
I mean, at this point it makes little sense for them to start from scratch, releasing a newer game but with much less than the enormous amount of content provided by MK8D + DLC would seem like a very noticeable downgrade, so just revamping the old one would be a practical move, though I don't think fans would be happy with that.
MK8 was mostly flawless gameplay wise, how can it be improved? But at this point one has no choice but to trust Nintendo's ability to come up with surprises.
There are certainly some ways they can, I'd love to see a 100 man race or something crazy like that.
MK8 was also an iteration on MK7, with refinements to the handling, the addition of anti-gravity, and tweaks to items. It's certain there's going to be _some_ sort of mechanical shakeup.
Mario Kart sells like hotcakes; I doubt they'll have to do much to convince people to buy a new one, particularly folks who've played the old one for hundreds of hours.
yeah, i agree on that, makes more sense to update 8.
BUT, i don't know if i would use that as the first look at the new console, basically looks like really similar to a game that was released 10 years ago, i wouldn't buy a new system to play again mario kart 8.
I thought they were showing the retro compatibility feature, since the gameplay comes after the message that switch 1 games would be playable on 2 (maybe upscaled or something)
There are 24 starting positions visible while MK8 only supported 12-player races.
Donkey Kong has a new design, it’s definitely the new game.
Everyone has a new design, maybe I'm more familiar with my Marios than most but I could tell immediately it has a more cartoonish design, and characters have a rubbery kind of stretch and bounce to their animations. You can see it notably on the closeup of Mario where he hops into a drift.
The art style is somewhere between the 2010s bog-standard Mario and Super Mario Bros Wonder.
Karts look different from 8
That's not one of the gazillion Mario Kart 8 tracks.
To be fair, if we’re going by track alone, there’s nothing to say it’s not just a new track for the Switch 2 release (or even just released at the same time, but available on both).
There would be a certain beauty in releasing Mario Kart 8 for the third console in a row.
Leaks say C is Campus, equal to the PS share button.
I was honestly a bit disappointed this wasn't revealed in a Nintendo Direct.
"Nintendo Direct: New games in 2025" would have been the perfect setup for a "and one more thing"-moment.
> "and one more thing"-moment
That's so cliche and cringe nowadays, but the reason they didn't wait to do that is probably because of all the leaks. The specs, the name, photos of the console and internal components all leaked. Even the fan renders people were making turned out to be pretty damn accurate (https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/1i008os/nin...)
Calling anything “cringe” is pretty self-referential. This slang just makes me imagine a bunch of genZ folk wincing nonstop with the heads in their phones. Must be exhausting.
As long as the internet has existed, we have been lampooning corporate keynotes. The gaming industry does this every cycle, trying to hype up incremental updates as if it’s the best thing to ever get released. See you again in a few years!
I’m glad to see Nintendo found a form factor that’s kind of gimmicky that actually worked. The Wii and Wii U were too gimmicky, but portability was a great choice. I’m also glad to see backwards compatibility.
I’m excited to see what kind of hardware improvements have been made. The switch came out in March 2017, just about 8 years ago. Just due to the way Nintendo games have their animated charm, they’re able to make their games look excellent on that hardware still. That said, I’d love to see how good a Zelda game looks on some new hardware.
The Wii was on the of the best selling consoles of all time? I believe only surpassed by the PS2.
Is the gimmicky a personal opinion or something you believe didn’t resonate with customers?
"Gimmicky" in the sense that they used movement controls and that's non-standard in the industry and went away mostly afterwards. I'm considering anything that isn't a traditional stationary control (keyboard + mouse or controller) as "gimmicky" or out of the ordinary.
In terms of sales, you're absolutely right - the Wii crushed it. I'd be curious to know about usage and software sales though. Maybe I'm wrong (very possible), but almost everyone I knew had a Wii at some point, but they didn't use it outside of a family toy with a few games when they first got it. I'd still consider that a win for Nintendo compared to less sales, but I'd imagine the average Xbox 360 or PS3 had a lot more software sales per console.
The Wiimotes were a clear influence on the Joy-Cons.
Nintendo still uses motion controls; they just made them portable and more resilient with gyros instead of IR.
The Wii Remote Plus had gyroscopes built-in, the attachable 'Nunchuk' also had an accelerometers.
The Wii was pretty clearly sold as a Wii sports console, which got people who would never have touched a "standard" console into the market.
The attachment rate was likely lower because of that.
Right, but it's not the main focus in the majority of games. In many games that do offer gyro support, it's usually able to be toggled off. It's not like the Wii where the core of the controllers was pointing them and swinging them around.
I don't remember motion controls being a majority of Wii games either.
A lot of them were played with a Nunchuk to emulate a classic controller (or attached to the actual Classic Controller or Rock Band instruments to play cross platform games).
The motion control that comes to mind beyond Wii Sports were circling the Wiimote to collect things in Mario.
The Wii exclusive Zelda, Skyward Sword, was motion control only.
Even games that didn't require motion controls for basic gameplay still required you to do things like turn the controller around and use the pointer to select options from a menu rather than using the D pad. (I'm thinking Punch Out). I think Donkey Kong country occasionally made you shake the controller.
Yep, Skyward sword vs Skyward sword HD on the switch. Gimmick is still there but not forced on those who don't like it.
Come on, EVERYTHING about the Wii was about moving these like they were your hands in game. Pretty much NOTHING on the switch uses them. On the other hand VR has accomplished the dream of early Wii games like Red Steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfNgkhmPPsc
> almost everyone I knew had a Wii at some point, but they didn't use it outside of a family toy with a few games when they first got it.
At various points in my family's owning one, we obviously used it for the Wii Sports-type games, as well as non-motion games like NES titles from the Virtual Console (the Wiimote in its rubber case felt surprisingly decent in the hands while turned sideways). But we also used it for Netflix and YouTube with the official apps, and surprisingly, various other websites with the Internet Channel. We sometimes used the SD card reader to look at photos from digital cameras, which seems like it doesn't make a lot of sense today, but was easier than connecting up a camera or camcorder to a TV with a cable to look at things, which was also a thing back then.
It was certainly a "go long periods without touching it" part of the home, but it was also surprisingly versatile with the uses that did pop up for it. And I think we got more usage out of it, both in terms of hours and in terms of distinct use cases, than we got out of the Xbox 360 we had later (if not, it was basically due to Minecraft, not because we played a larger number of games on the Xbox).
I believe the Wii had the best or second best attach rate for a Nintendo console (how many games sold per console sold). It lived a long time and had a ton of good releases.
Looks like the DS and switch both sold about 50m more units.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_co...
Yes, great source. filter that by Home vs the mobile category to see it is only beat by PlayStation.
You could argue the Switch is a home console as well.
The switch may be kind of hard to count for home console sales, since the switch lite is a portable console (lacks hardware to use the dock) and may be included in some sales numbers.
The switch was basically the first hybrid
Good point, I just looked at consoles in general.
Fifth best selling of all time and most successful of its generation, per Wikipedia.
> That said, I’d love to see how good a Zelda game looks on some new hardware.
Hopefully they'll go back and update their major Switch titles to leverage the new hardware. BOTW and TOTK look fantastic in an emulator with the resolution and framerate cranked much higher than the original Switch hardware could handle, even without updating any of the assets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2iIvuc78k
I personally don't have much faith that Nintendo will do that, _but_ I hope I'm wrong. That would be wonderful. Also just removing some of the lag from those games (and the Link's Awakening remake was pretty bad) would be a big win.
The Wii was a huge success and the Wii U was a step toward the Switch, which combines the best of both of those consoles.
> which combines the best of both of those consoles.
Minus the dual screen of the Wii U, which was awesome. It'd be cool if the Switch 2's dock could work independently of the console, so that you could have a reverse Wii U- experience with it. The dual screen setup can be a neat gimmick for gameplay, but it's biggest strength is the convenience that comes from having a second screen closer to your face. You can have less visual clutter on the main screen, and reduce the amount of menus players need to click through.
TBH other then a few neat local multiplayer stuff in NintendoLand, there really wasn't much that actually utilized the dual screen in a way that actually enhanced the game. You couldn't quickly swap between the screens like you could on the DS, because the screens were different distances away and required re-focusing your eyes. This meant that most gamepad usages played the same as if you just pressed a button to bring up your inventory or switch views or whatever.
And that's before you take into account the fact that the biggest titles on the Wii U (Mario Kart and Smash Bros) didn't use the second screen at all. The second screen was a gimmick, and a gimmick that was exhausted pretty quickly.
Been forever since I played it, but I recall appreciating having 2 screens for Xenoblade X (which I'm curious to see how it feels on the Switch remaster coming out in March). But yeah as someone who bought a WiiU there weren't a ton of games that did a good job with the second screen.
Zelda Wind Waker made excellent use of the second screen. You could swap tools and scroll the map on the fly without pausing, while continuing to otherwise play normally.
I’m fairly certain I remember them suggesting that the original switch was capable of doing this but then they either never granted access to it in the dev kit or they just never had it end up getting used in any noteworthy games.
Nintendoland for the Wii U was _very_ fun in my memory. It was the only title that I remember leveraging the asymmetry of information that different players can have for local multiplayer.
A feature they could still possibly have snuck in would be the ability to cast a feed from the handheld to a TV.
That would be an interesting use of the USB connector at the top --- plug into the Dock and use the Switch as a gamepad à la the Wii U while playing on the TV.
I really loved some of the multiplayer games on Wii U that took advantage of the gamepad. Completely brilliant to have one "special" player with the gamepad + second screen vs. the rest of the plebs with Wiimotes.
> I’m glad to see Nintendo found a form factor that’s kind of gimmicky that actually worked.
I don't quite understand this comment. Parents will be unable to tell the difference (like parents buying their kids Xbox One S when Xbox Series S came out, really bad naming increment with form factor so similar), and other comments here note this Switch 2 is a regression to less quirk.
What's the gimmicky part of this that caught your eye you feel like they found in Switch 2?
My words definitely could've been better. I was referring to "portability" as the gimmick here since it's not the norm in the industry for primary console. Nintendo did handhelds for years, but that was also a secondary thing to their primary consoles. Having their only console also be handheld was what I was referring to as the gimmick here, but I understand the argument that that's not a gimmick.
As for naming, I think it'll be fine since they're using numbers. I'm not in the position of a middle aged parent who's getting a gift for a child, but the fact that Sony has successfully done it for this long makes me feel that it'll work.
Add a letter to the end is awful though. It took me a bit to nail down the Series X vs Series S Xboxs (granted, I haven't owned an Xbox in over a decade). The Wii U definitely confused people as well.
The portability was amusing but then turned out to be absolutely phenomenal (and likely resulted in multiple sales to individual households).
It both saved them from having to work out what to do with the handhelds, and introduced parents to "the kids can just bring it with them".
I have an Xbox Series X and I'm still not sure I got "the right one" but since I got it as a glorified blurry player that can also play games maybe, it's fine as is.
> It both saved them from having to work out what to do with the handhelds
Well, more accurate to say they just gave up. The Switch is very much not a viable replacement for a 3DS because of how damn big it is. You can't just slip it into your pocket and go.
I think parents will have no problem with the concept of a Thingie N+1 and most of those stories came from either XBOX's insane naming or from Wii->Wii U.
The gaming industry is much more mature and settled than the past when Nintendo could mess around with a crazy new gimmick every new console release.
People expect backwards compatibility now, and the Switch has such a mature software library, it would be a waste to throw it out. And it'll be harder than ever to re-sell people a port of a game from a few years ago that looks basically identical to how it did before (though Sony's been trying)
I'm looking forward to this, and I hope Nintendo patches OG Switch games to take advantage of the new hardware. It's a shame the only (official) method of playing the new Zeldas gets you frequently chugging along at like 15fps.
> The switch came out in March 2017, just about 8 years ago. Just due to the way Nintendo games have their animated charm, they’re able to make their games look excellent on that hardware still.
Even more impressive, the SoC in the Switch is from about 2013 I believe.
Arg, they make the screen look absolutely huge with that large front glass panel during most of the video and I was thinking to myself, nice! But then at the end they actually show how large the bezels are underneath the glass and it is quite disappointing. Someday we'll have modern smartphone like mini-bezels (a few mm at most) in our handheld gaming consoles, but I guess not yet.
Screen estate all to the edge of the device can be annoying too, just a wrinkle on your clothes will then cover a bit of the screen.
Play with no clothes on, problem solved.
Yes, because our chiseled bellies don’t get in the way.
Tuck it in bro!
Commando gaming is a time-honored tradition!
You clearly have not seen the wrinkles on my body.
And I thank the gods for that ;)
It's not a tablet. It has physical controllers. You don't use a switch by grabbing the screen.
well, first, the Switch does have a touch screen.... =)
but I think parent poster is referring to the somewhat common situation with portable devices where you're watching/playing in bed and the device is propped up on a pillow or blanket or something
There are many people who do though, and there are many games that heavily utilize the touchscreen.
Gotta leave something for the Nintendo Switch 2 OLED
And upsell a magnifying lens to make the screen bigger.
/s
(1) https://www.thevintagegamers.com/2013/11/game-boy-screen-mag...
I’ll never understand why people hate bezels so much. They have no bearing on the screen size, but merely offer a basis for comparison when you’re looking at the screen.
What's not to understand? If the bezels were smaller, either the screen would be larger or the system would be smaller. Both are desirable.
Personal opinion, but I didn't really have that reaction. That screen is still significantly bigger than the Switch 1.
Honestly it looks like a great size and if the bezels were smaller, it might be a problem to grip the device (with joycons detached) without hitting the touch screen.
The switch isn't a handheld though. It's way too big to be a viable replacement for a 3DS in that regard, Nintendo just gave up on that market segment for whatever reason.
Phones have a lot of that market covered, and the Switch Lite gets close enough for a lot of people who want something other than a phone.
I guess Nintendo don't see enough left over space to bother trying.
Oh, sneaky! I fell into the trap without even realizing. Thanks for pointing it out!
Maybe they wanted more battery life without making it thicker? I want to see what the teardown looks like.
Do we know if the aspect ratio is the same? Maybe they're demonstrating Switch 1 games that have a slightly different aspect ratio, but can be updated to fit the new screen in the future?
That's a new Mario Kart game they're showing on the screen, not the Switch 1 version.
I didn't realize. That's disappointing
Microbezels are aesthetically great but practically horrible.
Having some practical space to grab onto wins at the end of the day, we presumably use these things instead of having one sit looking happy on a bookshelf.
> Having some practical space to grab onto wins at the end of the day,
I guess I hold onto the controller parts on the sides, not the center component. It isn't a tablet.
It's a portable device, at some point or another I'm going to handle it without the side controllers. Having some place to grab the thing is basic ergonomics, much less something designed with kids in mind.
Where you touch it when not in use doesn't matter. You're not going to use it that way, because nothing uses the touchscreen for gameplay.
[edit] originally I said it didn't have a touchscreen, but I've been reminded that the original does actually have one and it's just never used by anything because ever requiring it in a game would be really dumb when the entire premise of the switch is that it's dockable.
>Where you touch it when not in use doesn't matter.
Being able to easily grab something is always important, especially anything portable. I'm going to pull it out of a bag, move it across a table, etc. and having microbezels gets in the way of that by reducing the useful grabbing space.
Smartphones are the epitome of horrible here. With silky smooth glass and/or sheer aluminum/plastic on all sides with nanobezels (or no bezels at all...) and razor thin thickness, they are a fucking pain to grab and handle without dropping them. Most of us put them into a case to give them the necessary girth and friction for practical handling.
Mobile device design and design in general nowadays focus on aesthetics way too much to the detriment of practicality. People handle and use them at the end of the day, they aren't for oogling.
> I'm going to pull it out of a bag, move it across a table, etc. and having microbezels gets in the way of that by reducing the useful grabbing space.
I think this is a weird you thing. You're allowed to touch the screen. It's not made of lava.
Screens are smooth and decidedly fragile compared to the rest of the chassis. You especially don't want to put much if any pressure on it, which you might need to do for a firm grip.
You also probably don't want to put too much handgrime on the screen, further incentivizing an unsecure grip.
Seriously, big bezels are great. I don't care how great something looks as decor if I can't handle it practically.
Huh? It totally has a touch screen — it has to, for backward compatibility.
Sorry, you're right. I forgot because literally nothing supports it other than maybe wifi password entry and navigating some menus.
Clubhouse 51 has a section of games that utilize the touch screen, such as air hockey (along with others that're nice to be able to go between the touch screen and joysticks for, like the card games where the touch screen's a lot faster to use for moving cards around).
And the eshop. And at least one of the games I play regularly uses it in several places for text input.
> at least one of the games I play regularly uses it in several places for text input
Hehe. Ok, but, question:
Do the other interactions in the game use the controllers?
Because if so then you're still necessarily holding the controllers and not the screen.
At the same time, a larger handheld to fit those big bezels is unfortunate because we don't have a proper replacement for the gameboy/ds line.
Relieved that they are just iterating instead of trying to go for something radically different like they did. Everybody is pretty happy with the current feature set, just add some stuff and get a nice power upgrade in there and you're all set for another 6 years.
I'm a bit sad. They could at least make the controls a bit funny.
Wasn't expecting it to actually be called "Switch 2", but I'm glad they stuck to a name that makes sense.
It's possibly the most normal successor name they've ever chosen. I like it. I'm picturing someone suggesting "Switch U" and getting thrown out the window like in that meme comic, even though he's often used as the voice of reason...
I still like Famicom > Super Famicom as the best successor name, but having to go back that far to find some competition for naming probably says something.
"Super Switch" would've been pretty bad-ass.
With the habit they've developed of releasing upgraded versions inside a generation, especially already having Switch OLED, I think Super Switch would be too ambiguous.
They can go the DBZ route and continue of of there. “Super switch 3, 4”, “Legendary super switch” etc etc.
I think the acronym made that a sketchy choice. Even if Nintendo never used the acronym, the gaming community seems to use them extensively.
Or "Switch Advance."
Agree. PlayStation 1...5 has worked well for Sony. XBOX is a mess (I am an XBOX guy myself).
The problem with Xbox naming is that names are both inconsistent and too similar to each other. Aside from the Wii/Wii U debacle, Nintendo console names haven't been consistent, but they have been distinct. It's easy to remember that the GameCube and the Wii aren't the same thing.
Xbox, though, it's just the word Xbox followed by arbitrary numbers, maybe with the letter S or X thrown in for fun. I have no idea why they thought Xbox Series X wouldn't confuse people right after the Xbox One X.
They were screwed from the start...
The Xbox came out when the PS2 did. When it came time for the next generation, Sony went with the obvious PS3. Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3", and they couldn't skip right to "Xbox 3", so they called it the "Xbox 360", which was frankly genius because it had the 3 there anyway and put it on the same level in consumers' eyes.
But after that it all fell apart -- they had no good options. They still couldn't jump to "Xbox 4". Maybe "720" would have worked. Someone decided to have a clean break and restart at "One" but of course that fell apart immediately at "Two". So another clean break to "Series..". And by that point it's so screwy they've lost any chance of fixing it...
> Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3"
Part of me wants to think that consumers can't possibly that uninformed, but I know in my heart I am wrong.
They should have done what Nintendo (usually) does and left the numbers out of it. Call the next iteration of the Xbox the <something else>box.
They can't call it the <something else> Box because they don't want people to think of it as a Microsoft Device.
Nintendo can go from Nintendo 3DS to Nintendo Switch because the brand is Nintendo.
Microsoft clearly considers the brand "Microsoft" to be poison ivy to gamers, and always brands their gaming hardware as "Xbox" as if that were the company name. Going to Ybox would kill their brand and put them back at square one.
A&W tried to make a 1/3 pound burger to compete with the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder but it failed because people thought it was smaller, because 3 is smaller than 4.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr...
Why’d they give up? They should have just made a 1/5 pound burger.
The last time I was in Canada they were selling something inexplicably named the "Teen Burger".
Even Linux users in 1999 (when you had to be pretty well informed to know that Linux even existed) were truly that uninformed.
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0
I don't think you are wrong. There's absolutely no way people are that stupid.
People are absolutely, unequivocally that stupid, in droves.
I think "Xbox 4" coming after "Xbox 360" would have been the cleanest break. It would have been fine. Or heck, jump straight to "Xbox 5" if they really think the number in the name is the main point of comparison with the PlayStation.
Calling it the xbox 720 would not have worked in that era. Sounds too much like 720p when they're targeting 1080p gaming.
Microsoft should have gone for XBOX 3. To give the idea that it was on the same technology level than the PS3.
We all remember dBase II. ;)
>Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3", and they couldn't skip right to "Xbox 3"
Nope, it all goes back to Microsoft not naming the 360 "Xbox 3" with some lame excuse for why it did so. Yes, everyone would have laughed, but no one would remember or care today that the "Xbox 5" isn't actually the fifth Xbox.
An alternative that Microsoft missed, from Reddit:
>They could have named the Xbox Series X the Xbox 5 and said it was because they counted the One X as the 4th gen Xbox.
Exactly - or they could have released a rare, ignored souped up Xbox as the "Xbox 2" and done the "Xbox 3".
The 360 was a good "fix" for the problem but not going to something like Xbox13 or Xbox2013 (though year based names were on the out by then) - anything other than "Xbox One" (Xbone would have been better).
I still don't know how the various versions work and apply to the Series SeX.
(I am still trying to work out if the 360 was named after the 360º ring of red on the power light that it so often would produce...)
RRoD only had 3 of the 4 quadrants lit so that'd be the Xbox 270.
As someone that experienced it several times, the red ring of death was a 270 degree circular segment - a full red ring indicates cable failure.
This is from the people who brought you "Microsoft Windows 10 Home Single Language 32-bit" though.
They could have gone by release year (Xbox 01, Xbox 05, Xbox 10, etc.)
I actually thought that would be cool for Switch 2 - call it the Switch 25. They could release the Switch 30 in 5 years and so on without too much confusion, assuming compatibility all the way through (by 2035 we'll probably all be on thin clients anyway).
Not bad yes, better xbox 2021, xbox 2025, etc?
I was also expecting they would fumble marketing again and call the new console something like 'Switch U', but it seems they really learned their lesson there.
Or worse, "New Switch".
Nintendo Switch Bigger OLED
Swiitch 2 U
I'm glad they finally learned to use sensible names. I guess it took the failure of the Wii U for them to realize they should just keep it simple if they want to be sure it's easy for consumers to understand what the product is.
I think this is because it is kinda an iteration instead of a totally new wild gimmick.
They could have at least gone with "Super Switch" or something like that.
They tried something similar with the New Nintendo 3DS but a lot of people got confused.
Sure, "new" is probably one the worst words you could use. But I don't think "super" would be better. And even if they did use "super" how do you name the next console ?
Switch⁶⁴ :)
The Switch is already the first 64bit Nintendo console since the N64, so calling the second one Switch 64 would be a wonderful farce.
Ultra
I wanted Super Nintendo Switch :) but Switch 2 is fine.
"Switcheroo"
A little sad about the lack of a rail compatible with charging existing controllers. Hopefully it's compatible with current gen controllers anyway given how expensive they are.
One of my favorite parts about the Xbox Series generation of consoles is that it's fully compatible with the previous Xbox One controllers.
It would be amazing if they could get their multi-gen multi-console save-sync to work nearly as well as Microsoft's so I could switch back and forth between my existing Switch and Switch 2 seamlessly but I doubt that's in the cards, this is Nintendo were talking about.
I might throw a party to smash my joy cons. Some of the worst quality control in my long history of owning hardware, and from a company previously famous for that trait. Good riddance.
It always shocked me that for how bad the joycons were, the "Pro Controller" was one of the best controllers I've ever used. I don't know how they managed to nail one and get the other so wrong.
That's their actual standard and hopefully it has returned to the "default" controller(s). I think they just flew too close to the sun in terms of trade-offs with the Switch 1 joy cons. Not possible to make them good enough at that price at that size at the time of release
The rumour has it the older joycons can still be used wirelessly, just not physically connected.
This would be extremely welcome news. Local multiplayer has always been Nintendo's bread and butter, so being able to keep using controllers from the previous system is a huge boon. Also means not having to invest in a new 'Pro' controller hopefully.
So how are you going to charge them then? Have the old Switch 1 lying around as a charging station?
The version of the grip that you buy as an accessory (HAC-012) can charge the joycons. However the pack in one (HAC-011) can't.
Looking around, it appears that Nintendo have also released an official "Joy-con charging stand (2-way)", suspiciously it seems they only launched it in October 2024, when various 3rd party chargers have been around for years.
There's also the official AA battery packs. Yes, really.
Hmmm, I wonder if the Nintendo charging stand will charge the NES Joy-Cons, cause the BestBuy stand I have won't (no big deal currently, the switch is usually on the dock and I charge the NES controllers on it)
> This charging stand can also charge the wireless full-size NES Nintendo Entertainment System Controllers controllers for Nintendo Switch
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/joy-con-charging-...
You can get standalone charging docks for them, but I agree it kinda sucks.
I wouldn't be surprised to see new functionality that would pin games to the switch 2 controllers though, gotta sell new accessories.
I have multiple charging "controller docks" that you can plug the joycons into and then use them like a two-stick-controller and charge via usb-c.
You can buy chargers for joycons
I wonder if they have a new control technique up their sleeve. Innovative gameplay and pushing new control ideas is one of Nintendo’s signatures. That said, being the switch 2, not a new console, maybe they kept it the same and just upgraded the processing and graphics hardware.
Looking forward to more!
Both controllers have optical sensors (visible in the trailer), confirming the rumors that they'll have mouse like functionality. Remains to be seen if games will actually bother to implement it or if it'll remain a curiosity that only a handful of titles support.
For action games doesn't look like a good option. But i think it will be used if it works well on any surface.
Probably there will be a resurgence of point and click adventure games pushed by the new mouse functionality (or even republish some old sierra/lucas arts stuff with mouse support).
Also may be useful for pc ports like simcity clones and strategy games (i could use that in civ).
Some propietary nintendo stuff will use it like mario maker or wario ware, some zelda dungeon probably will have a gimmick around it. And also some small indy third party stuff, like i don't know, mini motorways, things like that, will be built arround it.
It could be nice for FPS.
The current motion controls for the pro controller work well, but a mouse + single hand controller setting could work as well.
It would be great if games implemented it for aiming, but I am not sure that they will for sure. Given how few third party developers add a gyro-aiming option when they release a game on the console when most first party games have it in some way.
It will make for an interesting dynamic for games with cross-play with other consoles where implemented though.
We could hope that Nintendo exposes a mouse like interface when it's in mouse mode, which could help a lot for adoption for cross platform third-parties.
Dealing with Switch specific gyro info, sometimes coming from two sources sometimes from one must have been a PITA, especially for games using a cross platform engine.
I'm hoping for an RTS comeback.
that would be cool.
I would like the command & conquer/red alert remaster on switch.
Maybe Microsoft releases aoe2 since they are open to release games on other platforms now?
All it does it confirm that they have something there. The Wii used a sensor to detect where it was pointing, the Switch had an IR camera for a variety of weird gimmicks, the NES and SNES had light-detecting "guns". Hell, it could even be an IR blaster like the Wii U Gamepad had, and not a sensor at all. We just don't know yet.
The trailer shows the joycons sliding on that side with an additional attachment (see: 1:10). It seemed pretty obvious they were trying to hint at some kind of mouse-like optical tracking on a flat surface.
https://youtu.be/itpcsQQvgAQ?t=70
That could well be what those are, but to me they just looked like the wrist-straps, like the original Switch has. https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/joy-con-strap-gra...
They're both.
> confirming the rumors that they'll have mouse like functionality.
The idea of controlling a game with two mice is suddenly interesting to me.
The Steam Deck has two trackpads, tho obviously games don't support them specifically, they get mapped to existing controls
I remember how fun it was to use that in Wii based Metroid Prime games. Hoping they return this feature in creative ways!
RTS and 4x could be way better with the use of a mouse.
Innovation is their way, but they're still burned a LOT by the Wii U. Now they've managed to find something that works, I think they'll stick with it for at least the Switch 2, maybe the 3 as well.
The Switch wouldn't exist if they hadn't first experimented with that form factor with the Wii U. The innovation and risk of the Wii U paid off for them in the long run.
True, but I think they still wanted the U to actually sell better than it did. It was a case of too much innovation too soon, IMO — having an alternating "evolution/revolution" cycle makes a lot of sense.
Every company wants a product to sell better than it did, but it's pretty obvious that the WiiU didn't meet expectations.
It sold 13m units, but the clearest sign of it not doing "as well as expected" is that they discontinued it as soon as possible as they could once the Switch was out.
From my experience both with "gamers" and "non-gamers" - it was too similar in name for the latter and not exciting enough for the former.
Another sign of it not having done well is that they re-released a bunch of Wii U games on Switch - for example, Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8.
...there was also the GBA long before the Wii U. Less buttons but same form factor.
The innovation was a handheld console that works on both the TV and the tablet, the GBA is a much different thing.
Wii U seems like it was a useful stepping stone to the Switch.
Looks like the sliding controllers bit means that they will work like a computer mouse.
It's probably too much to hope for to get more Labo sets, but a guy can dream, can't he?
Forgot all about Labo. The amount of wild experiments Nintendo has shipped is admirable.
Yeah, definitely—it's my favorite thing about the company. Well, maybe second to their consistent level of quality. But seriously—the Labo piano used the IR camera to scan in waveforms to create new instruments. The VR kit had an elephant trunk mask to let you move around parts in a marble run game. Nintendo has a lot of wild experiments, and Labo takes that all to the next level.
And that's not getting into the quality of software for building the kits—way beyond any instructions that Lego has ever put out.
I hope I'll be able to pre-order one. I don't even care if they ship it right away. Promise me one within the first 2 or 3 years and I would be happy.
I know I'm going to want one and I know they are going to be snapped up by scalpers and be hard to buy at first. Fine. I just don't want to go through the stupid check Amazon, then GameStop, then BestBuy, then Walmart dance. Just let me order one and then not worry about it.
I read recently their plan is to produce enough so they are always in stock.
Bravo on them making the video 2:22 for Switch 2.
Edit: the mobile web version of the same video shows as 2:21. Interesting YouTube bug!
3 2's? Are you saying Half-Life 3 will be a launch title?
Switch 2
Switch is 6 characters long, 6 divided by 2 is 3
Half Life 3 confirmed.
It had quite a bit of dead space in the video, especially at the start. Recall the first switch trailer which was completely different stylistically.
It seems like the days of revolutionary consumer electronics are over.
This looks nice, for sure. But it’s really more of the same. Not surprising. It does surprise me that there’s such emphasis on it, though. There’s the name, of course, and then the entire video is based around “it’s the same thing but a little better.”
Game console updates used to be big deals. The SNES was a revolution. PS2 was huge. Now… PS5? What’s different from PS4, again? Is there a 6? What’s different about that?
I don’t blame Nintendo or the others. I have no idea what they could do here they would be revolutionary. I think the design space has just been thoroughly explored by now and that’s where we are.
This pattern repeats all over the place. TVs are maxed out, with better visual quality than people care about, and size limited by wall space. Computers get a little faster every year. This year’s phones are last year’s phones with a minor performance bump and slightly better cameras. And again, I don’t see what they can do better, and that’s probably how it has to be at this point.
But it’s still a little shocking to see a company lean so far into the theme of “we made incremental improvements to this thing we released 8 years ago.”
> Game console updates used to be big deals. The SNES was a revolution. PS2 was huge.
There are two categories of "big deal". The SNES and PS2 were big deals simply because game graphics had so much headroom for improvement. Now that the low-hanging fruits of color palette, resolution, frame rate, texture quality, animation quality, and geometric complexity have all been squeezed, the improvements are more asymptotic.
The other "big deal" category is gimmicks. I would argue that while it is a hallmark of Nintendo, the gimmicks have flopped as often as not. Most of Nintendo's big sellers were fairly conventional. (The most glaring exceptions being the original Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch.) I'm glad they do the gimmicks, but I'm also glad they don't only do the gimmicks.
But those are three hells of exceptions (can you actually do that in English? I was trying to pluralize "a hell of an exception").
They are the 3rd, 4th and 7th best selling consoles of all time. And you forgot the dual screen in the DS (2nd best selling of all time).
Maybe many of the gimmicks flopped, but others wildly succeeded and Nintendo wouldn't be what it is without them. In fact, it probably wouldn't even make consoles by now, following the fate of Sega.
On your English question, “three hells of exceptions” sounds like something from Dante’s Inferno. It’s a nice phrase but not quite what you’re after.
I can’t think of how to make it work. That phrase might just be inherently singular. Too bad, plural would be useful.
Exactly. For a while you could have huge improvements from better hardware. Then there were some cool new gimmicks. Now both of those seem to be played out.
And that’s happening across the board. All the stuff I’d go ogle in Best Buy as a teenager is now basically maxed out both in terms of hardware and gimmicks.
>The SNES was a revolution
Nintendo has actually stated they view the SNES as a evolution of the NES. They have directly stated their hardware development cycle goes Revolution>Evolution>Revolution. Considering that the Switch was considered one of their revolutionary leap (their first hybrid console) it is no surprise the Switch 2 is a simple evolution of that concept. If their next console is another iteration of the Switch THEN it is safe to say they are no longer aiming to revolutionize their hardware.
Edit: After tons of searching I am starting to think that I am misremembering thing. I think this idea came about from the Wii's 'Revolution' code name and I Mandela Effected myself into think there was a interview we're either Miyamoto or Iwata talked about this being there philosophy when designing system.
That really sounds like something someone made up in marketing.
The Wii came about because an independent company pitched motion control technology to Nintendo and they liked it and licensed it. Not because of the 3d chess game of going from "evolutions" to "revolutions".
The Switch came about because it's less expensive to make software for a single hardware unit than a separate handheld and console and this became an issue as games got more expensive to make.
I’d be curious to know when they said that. It sounds like revisionist history to me.
Based on the switch launch video, the delta between the NES and SNES was much higher than Switch -> Switch 2.
Here’s an analogous snes ad, which spends most of its time showing off 3d and increased sprite counts:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBFw93V3Rg
At the time, at least, I don't recall seeing SNES as a "revolution". It had better graphics etc, but the form factor was the same, and games were broadly similar, so it was more of a luxury option.
The SNES was, objectively, a huge jump over the previous generation (NES, Master System, etc.). Much better sound, 16-bit color, pseudo-3D with Mode 7, support for much much larger carts, support for coprocessors within the cart... An expansion port for a hypothetical CD-ROM addon (spoiler). I think that the revolution>evolution>revolution is revisionist, or at least something they said much later on. SNES might have started as a luxury option, as all consoles do, but it was obviously intended to compete with whatever Sega put out for that generation (and compared to the Genesis, Sega pulled out a few tricks so in the end the SNES wasn't a huge step above the Genesis either).
It was the first taste of (sorta) 3D, at least in Nintendo’s lineup. Games like Pilotwings and Mario Kart were a big change.
Sorry, tried to find the interview and failed. It would most like have come out around the Wii's release/development since it used the code name Revolution.
I apologize, I tried to find the interview were this was stated but unfortunately search engines are terrible now and no matter how hard I try I only get news about the Switch 2 or old stories about when the Wii has code named Revolution. Feel free to not take my word that this was actually stated.
> PS2 was huge
PS2 was literally just an iteration on the PS1. More powerful console, DVD instead of CD, and that was it. Nothing really new there.
Hell, the Switch 2 is more innovative than the PS2 was in terms of iteration on a previous console.
“More powerful” was enough to be a step change at the time. You’d get huge improvements in image quality, realism, and immersion.
Now, compare a new game with one from ten years ago. The new one looks a little better. Not much.
The graphics bump you'd see from next gen systems prior 2010 was massive. So big in fact that it would unlock new genres of games which weren't previously possible.
ps1 > ps2 was pretty huge too because I'd argue the ps2 marked the first generation of consoles where games could move away from pixelated cartoony characters and into photo-realistic graphics and just about pull it off.
Today you get better lighting and shadows, or slightly higher FPS which is nice, but it doesn't really change the types of games you can make in the way the ps2 did.
PS1 launched without analog controls. This was later available as a newer controller for PS1, but if we count that as a PS2 base feature it's a nice innovation on PS1 at launch.
> More powerful console, DVD instead of CD, and that was it
Wrong. PS2 had pressure sensitive buttons, hard drives/linux, network multiplayer, camera, etc..
This all comes down to what the hardware improvements can mean in practice. It's not as if hardware isn't moving up, but that the new kinds of things double the hardware unlocks are much smaller than they used to be.
This is best seen on the PC market. What a gaming desktop today has running on it is, compute wise, unimaginably stronger than the best available 10-20 years ago. The increases in hardware just keep coming. But there's limits on how much more you can get out of being able to push more polygons, or to put more pixels on screen. We can do all kinds of extra photorealistic things in real time that before would have to be done only in movies, and rendered in server farms for weeks at a time. But the increased difficulty doesn't quite match how impressive the extra effects are.
You can also notice this by just playing old games, and seeing how they hold up. We can make 2d pixel art games that are much better than what a SNES could do, but many of those games still hold up just fine. Meanwhile most 3d games of the Playstation and even the PS2 era are downright painful, because the increases in power between generations back then lead to big practical differences in capability. A ps5 is much stronger than a ps4, hardware wise, but it didn't unlock much at all. All the extra power can get you cooler reflections on cyberpunk, and you can go even further with a PC that has over $1000 in video cards in it. But those reflections and atmospheric effects are eating up as much hardware as the rest of the game.
It’s some of each. Hardware is improving substantially slower than it used to. And at the same time, what you get out of better hardware has hit steeply diminishing returns.
> But it’s still a little shocking to see a company lean so far into the theme of “we made incremental improvements to this thing we released 8 years ago.”
It's certainly more 'shocking' to see Nintendo do it than, say, Microsoft or Sony. But Nintendo hasn't always introduced huge new changes with a console bump — NES->SNES wasn't particularly revolutionary, and there were certainly no gimmicks there. I think it's a very understandable reaction to a) the Wii U b) the enormous success of the Switch
NES->SNES didn’t do much with the form factor or the controls, but technologically it was an enormous leap. That’s the sort of thing that just can’t happen anymore, since video game technology is pretty much maxed out. You can always make things a little bit prettier, or have a little better framerate, but nothing too interesting.
I suppose VR/AR is the one area where something big could still happen. The current state of the art there is far from the “mostly limited by the size of your wall” stage.
I feel like VR would have “happened with the masses” by now given that the quest is wireless, excellent quality, and cheap. Personally I think it did, and it’s a success, it’s just that it has a lower ceiling because it’s an awkward rectangle that you strap to your face.
There is also, IMO, a huge software quality problem with VR.
I am baffled as to why all the first person games don’t copy Alyx’s control scheme, it’s the only one that feels correct to use. The rest of the first person games feel awful to play, once you get past the gimmick of “wow cool”.
Music/rhythm games work really well for VR, but that’s always going to be a niche market. I play beat saber all the time, it’s fantastic.
Everything else seems to be sandbox games. Fucking sandbox games. They’re funny the first time, but you can only throw objects so many times before the magic is lost, you just wish there was an actual game there to play.
I love VR, and I hope developers continue to innovate with it, but it’s never going to overtake console gaming, it’s just too different.
I don’t get why we think AR is going to be any different for games. Why would I want to see my living room while playing a game? VR puts you in whole other worlds. It’s… that simple, I think.
Those limitations provide room for something revolutionary. Figure out how to do VR without a giant rectangle strapped to your face, figure out better controls, figure out motion sickness, and you’ll have a revolutionary device.
For AR, I’m not thinking games, but computing in general. Glasses (or better yet, contacts) that can overlay things on your field of view could be huge. That could be the thing to displace smartphones once this becomes possible and actually good.
Oh yeah that would be a great use of AR, totally agree, and feel like we’re not even that far off on this one.
I think the biggest unknown is, how do you display dark pixels on a bright world in AR? Battery life will also be an issue. Both seem surmountable.
VR and, at some point, 3D.
Elaborate. Isn't all VR 3D by virtue of delivering different images to each eye?
I guess I was thinking non-glasses 3D, so 'holographic' or that kind that some people briefly had in their TVs during the last decade.
The Super Nintendo had totally new controllers and was top-loading. The UX was substantially different than the original Nintendo's VCR-style design.
Those are very minor 'gimmicks' compared to handheld, touch control, motion control, or hybrid.
The Famicom was top loading, too.
NES was only side loading because in the US Nintendo was trying to distance itself from the consoles that came before.
They did release a top-loading NES as well, although it came out after the SNES.
Hold up, what's the "revolution" between the PS1 and PS2? More processing power?
You could argue that no consoles in the Xbox or Playstation line are revolutionary, as they're the same format as the original SNES just with more buttons and processing power.
I would say the major shifts in controller type is simply a much rarer change than simple spec upgrades.
A lot more processing power, at a time where that made a huge difference in the graphics.
I've found more incredible improvements in AI than in consumer electronics these days. I'm still daily surprised at just how good ChatGPT is at understanding my pretty complex queries.
Maybe that will be the next big thing in games. Finally deliver on the promise of living, breathing worlds, instead of breaking the illusion when the character scripts start to repeat and you realize “your choices matter” means you can pick from one of three different endings.
I think this is it. Once a console can run an LLM you will see open world games with immersion that we’ve never seen before
Procedurally generated worlds are one thing but imagine exploring an endless world where you can talk to every NPC and never have the same conversation twice
It sounds like a good idea at first, but would people really care after the first few conversations? After all, the conversations are unlikely to be related to any of the gameplay, and even though you could drip feed worldbuilding to the player, you only have so much source material. After a while I suspect it would become obvious which things are part of the official world source material, and which things are being made up on the fly without any consistency from conversation to conversation.
That said, though, I can definitely see a use for making the world feel more alive. Watch_Dogs: Legion put a lot of effort into having tons of voiced NPCs with interesting conversations and phone calls, but you could go even further by having an LLM generate text to be read by an AI TTS system.
I’d expect some combination of large models, reinforcement learning and NPUs to substantially improve non player characters.
These days, AMD has low power SoCs that include an NPU, and Nvidia seems to have just remembered that the consumer market exists. I’m sure next gen (after this one) consoles will do something with that hardware.
Imagine that classic Star Trek scene where a crisis erupts, you’re in the captain’s chair, and you ask your bridge crew, “options?”
In a modern game, the crisis was scripted, and then you’ll get a scripted followup, or you’ll get a few scripted answers you can choose from, and half the challenge is figuring out which ones the game designers think are the good ones and which ones are supposed to kill you.
Now let’s imagine the crisis arose organically because you got yourself into a bad situation, and the options from your crew make sense in context, and maybe none of them will save you or maybe some will and you can’t just figure out which ones the game designers thought were good.
Basically, tabletop roleplaying with a good group and a good DM, but as a solo game with fancy graphics and all that.
I’d pay good money for that sort of thing, and it’s not something that can be built yet but which sufficiently good AI tech can enable (or maybe it’s now possible but only very recently).
Kinda tells us nothing, but I guess they got fed up with their supply chain leaking absolutely everything about the physical device before they could announce stuff.
I guess the direct will be interesting when they show some actually software and we can get a bit of a handle on what the device can actually do (although the MORE POWER type people are going to be disappointed, probably).
At least we know for sure that it's backwards compatible with the old Switch.
This has been announced back in November: https://x.com/NintendoCoLtd/status/1853972163033968794; though if you're not extremely plugged in, it has been rather easy to miss.
There was still some ambiguity on if it applied to physical games or only downloads. I'm all-digital on my Switch, so it doesn't affect me, but it'll be nice for the physical-only people to know with certainty.
That was a very enjoyable trailer - visuals and sound both. That being said, the new Switch looks less ... "fun" than the existing Switch.
I know it's perhaps a silly thing to nitpick on, but the general look of Switch 2 with its darker, Steam Deck-ish joycons don't look as fun as the first one to me.
Current Switch with the neon blue/red joycons had its own character, and IIRC that color combination was what Nintendo often marketed. This change makes it look like a MSI or ASUS product than a continuation of Nintendo's own line.
interesting you said that, because I was totally unimpressed and bored with it and thought, "Ok, so this it? So it's just the Switch, scaled up by 10%?"
It's not that I expected something groundbreaking, but if I had been the creative director I would have said that they need to focus on whatever was updated, e.g., graphics or performance since effectively nothing major has changed.
At the end of the video they announced a direct for the start of April. This video is just a teaser. I’m sure they will cover everything you mention in the direct.
Huh. I guess updated ergonomics / QoL stuff and confirmation of backwards compatibility counts as enough of an update over the last hardware refresh. But zero info on anything that could actually make this worth a buy. Granted, this feels like Nintendo who will do anything to not get dragged into PS/XBOX flops discussions. But without any real upgrade or even games announcements, I suppose most people will keep holding off their purchase decisions for now.
> But zero info on anything that could actually make this worth a buy.
Obvious answer: no more game released on Switch 1 so you want a Switch 2 if you want to play new games.
That's work well enough for Playstation/Xbox.
The difference with the other consoles mentioned is that it's portable, and the time already made clear (with Switch 1 and Steam Deck) there is a massive need.
Practically, yes, this is the main differentiator. But still it would be interesting to see some specs. Is the GPU 15% better, 50%, what? The switch came out 7 years ago... there is opportunity for some fairly serious performance improvements even in the mobile form factor.
Clearly it's the same basic platform. And I think that's fine - they've really cornered a pretty big niche of mobile (ish), motion controls, family.
I suspect the larger screen size is because more people are using the mobile aspect in their home, not out on the subway or something.
> But still it would be interesting to see some specs. Is the GPU 15% better, 50%, what?
This is obviously more of a teaser than an actual full trailer.
They announced a Nintendo Direct on Feb 2, so I’m sure full/most details will be covered then.
I don't doubt it will be released.
Im sure there are more details in this video for someone more discerning, too. My point is that I didn't find there to be much information in the trailer because it's clearly mostly a refresh. And I'm not complaining about that. Nor am I complaining about the nature of teasers.
They announced a direct on 2nd April.
wrt portability - this console will be competing with a healthy market of PC handhelds, which Xbox is preparing to enter soon.
In a couple years we'll have a new console war between Switch 2, Steamdeck 2, and Xbox portable.
This is where your first point is critical. People who want to play Mario/Zelda/Pokemon etc will buy the console, regardless of form factor.
Obviously, new games are still being regularly released for PS4 4+ years after PS5's release. For this reason, I haven't bought a PS5.
The original Switch was released 7 years ago. I don't think Nintendo needs to justify the upgraded model. It simply is the Nintendo Switch, and we now know they can make it last for a VERY long time. I think that's enough.
This is a just first look trailer so yes I think most people have no choice but to hold off on a purchase decision
I saw a larger screen and exclusive titles for the switch 2. As with everything else in gaming I am expecting modest bumps in performance and since this is Nintendo it will sell very well and have Mario and Zelda releases that get 9/10 reviews on all the usual sites.
The gaming industry has been going through these cycles for decades. If you had a previous Nintendo system and still like to play video games, odds are good you’ll end up with one of these sooner or later too.
> most people have no choice but to hold off on a purchase decision
Probably all people, right? Who decides to buy the thing based on this sneak peek and then when it comes out and has some deal-breaking flaw says “oh no siree, I already made my decision when I saw the trailer months ago and I’m sticking to it no matter what”?
I'm quite certain that lot of people have already decided to buy it!
Nintendo's stuff isn't for everybody, but if you do like it... they truly do have a strong 40 year history of doing their thing and getting it mostly right nearly all of the time.
So for many people their default action is "buy the next Nintendo console every 5-10 years, because I would like the play the next 5-10 years of Mario/Zelda/etc games."
It's not unconditional love (Nintendo was in a tough place after the Wii U flop) but realistically, I think a lot of people have decided they're going to get one of these unless there's some big fiasco.
The great thing about how Nintendo approaches games is that it is about game design, not triangles per second.
Great in theory, but only really works for first party games and does mean you occasionally end up with unfortunate situations like Tears of the Kingdom where it runs better on an emulator than the actual hardware.
I've been playing TOTK over the last month and have had zero issues running it on my switch (OLED edition).
Of course, but that doesn't negate OP's comment that it runs better emulated still.
Ooh, thank you for the reminder to see where the state of emulation is. I played Breath of the Wild on both Switch and on PC under emulation, and the difference was night and day. The stuttering on the Switch distracted quite a bit. My PC played in beautiful 4k.
It works for everyone, provided they have the skills.
I have stop buying most AAA games, because they are GB of useless gameplay, or remakes from remakes of remasters, that is better invested into sponsoring indies.
But Mr. Anderson, how can Tears of the Kingdom run better on an emulator... if no emulators for the system can legally exist?
Coming from a modern console, the first hour of Tears of the Kingdom felt painfully sluggish.
One complaint from a catalog of how many games?
Tears of the Kingdom is far from the only Switch game with performance issues. Off the top of my head, the newest Pokemon games (and the next newest, to a lesser extent) run like shit on the Switch. I've heard complaints about other games too.
It was underpowered when it was released in 2016, so it really shouldn't be that surprising.
Again, from how many?
And if we are going to start counting frame drops as argument against focusing on gameplay instead of triangles per second, there is no safe platform then.
I don't think the number of games in the catalogue matters in this discussion? There are hundreds of Switch games that perform great, and I don't care because I will never play them.
When I play a game and there are frame drops, stuttering, lag, dropped inputs, etc., it reduces my fun just as much as if the game were poorly designed. Maybe that's not the case for you, maybe you don't care, but I do, so do others.
I don't think Nintendo should make a console that rivals the best machine money can buy. I do think they took too long to refresh the hardware in the Switch lineup and their customers are worse off for it.
So better not buy any computing device.
Having been through the demoscene and home computing days since their birth, I can only laugh when calling Switch underpowered.
> So better not buy any computing device.
I don't have this issue on other computing devices. My PC runs all the games I want to play on it very well. I can also upgrade the hardware whenever I want, unlike in my Switch.
> Having been through the demoscene and home computing days since their birth, I can only laugh when calling Switch underpowered.
What does this have to do with the fact that the Switch has performance issues with first party Nintendo games? Hardware power only makes sense when talking about the software you want to run on it. The Switch is underpowered for software released exclusively for it, by the company that makes it. It's not underpowered for NES games, sure, but neither is an NES.
The Switch 1 is certainly underpowered compared to what it's competing with in the market with right now. That's why Nintendo is making a switch 2.
It's not "safe from any frame drops" vs. "has frame drops." How often they drop to what framerate for how long is what makes up the experience. (Similarly, I don't need games on my Switch to look as high-fidelity as my 4090 renders them on my PC, but more textures/reflections would still be welcome over less.)
That's why I agree with what some others in the thread have said-- we'll need to wait for either numbers or, absolutely, some real-world experience to know how big of an improvement we can actually expect to get from an upgrade.
Why do people by a Switch? Mario (Kart), Zelda, and Pokémon.
Those three franchises represent a huge percent of sales. 70%?
People that hardly know Nintendo yes.
People that know Nintendo, buy those and plenty of others.
I was about to say...
I'll geek out on the specs once they're leaked or announced or reverse engineered, but also I sorta don't care. It's going to be a solid upgrade over the Switch 1, which is already a lot of fun as long as you're not looking to play contemporary AAA titles from other systems.
But then I thought...
Hmmm. If it's powerful enough to essentially be "portable PS4 era level hardware" then that really increases the number of quality third-party titles we'll see ported over. Sure, they won't be latest and greatest PS5 era level AAA stuff. But they might be last generation's AAA stuff and that could be a very very very solid addition to this thing.
We know the first party Nintendo games will be good, so, the ability (or not) to actually get good ports from other systems (even if not the latest) is pretty compelling.
They supposedly had this console ready to ship a year or even two ago. Rumor is the reason they are releasing it this year is to have a decent catalogue of games lined up for launch and launch window.
That makes it even weirder why they would only show a few short hints of one possible new Mario Kart game. The original switch reveal had glimpses of new Zelda, Mario and even the first portable version of Skyrim.
I think they revealed the current Switch this way. 1st a small tease then a Direct with plenty of details.
That is happening on April.
It says in the trailer that they're going to be having a direct for it... on April 2nd.
It's only the first reveal. I'm sure they'll be raising the hype with game trailers until the release date.
which makes complete sense, no?
Aside from missing out on the last software dev cycle's worth of hardware updates, unless they've continued to bump the specs to match what's become available in the meantime. (I know the line does need to be drawn somewhere.)
of course
I'm no Nintendo fan but I still find this criticism unfair as it's simply the design reveal and a date of when more information will be provided (April 2, 2025).
Interesting, as an American, I read the date in the video (02.04.2025) as February 4th, 2025 (I agree that the DD/MM/YYYY format makes more sense, but dates are commonly listed MM/DD/YYYY everywhere here). It makes me realize when doing a worldwide release, it's important to be as explicit on the date as possible.
ISO 8601 is the only correct date format.
I don't care if people laugh at me when I sign documents and date them with "2025-01-16"
Same here until I saw the date below that spelled out April 2nd :)
on the other side, it could be a big plus for new comers into the Nintendo Switch platform
I really wonder how big that market can be. I mean, for people who still haven't gotten a switch or steam deck or anything similar until now, how likely is this going to change their mind?
People who started to look when the Switch was already 3-4 years old, and passed because it's underpowered.
That is me right here... Plus I have some younger kids who have had fun playing with old Nintendo DSes for now. But their friends often have the Switch and I want the updated graphics plus group play (Mario Kart) so we'll buy at least one of these when it comes out. I've been holding off because the original hardware just seemed a bit wimpy when reading the experiences of people playing Breath of the Wild on it. I'm hoping the new model will have enough power to do full justice to BotW.
People who believe this thing will not be underpowered compared to current gen hardware have obviously not followed Nintendo over the past 25 years.
This has always been such a weird take for me. I know PC gamers get caught up in hardware arms races but Nintendo handheld consoles have always been about having fun playing cartoony games. Animal crossing doesn’t need much horsepower to trap my kids into putting a thousand hours into their islands.
Nintendo has never needed to compete on frame rate or vRAM to be successful
Developers are asking for it. It shares a market with bigger consoles but in terms of capabilities it's closer to a tablet.
It's hard to cross-port from PC/PS/Xbox to Switch because it is so far behind. Not impossible, of course, but if you're choosing to target Switch from the start you're often committing to building your game on all platforms without using some modern technologies or new engine features. If you're backporting from a more powerful platform then you might need to make significant (expensive) changes to get it running.
It's mostly a developer cost calculation, but one that can keep new titles away from the Switch.
(Could GTA VI run on Switch 2? I'm pretty sure Nintendo would want that even if it's not their traditional user base.)
People always have this argument that it's hard to port for it because it's so underpowered. But ultimately, games like Balatro or Neon White absolutely shine on Switch, while extremely graphic intensive games like Indiana Jones and his Big Circle cannot run
Nintendo has correctly decided that if it can attract all the low requirements indie titles plus offer its own games, then it has an extremely compelling product. Which it does, it outsold Sony and Microsoft combined.
Those developers should spend less time with Unreal and Unity, and dust off some Michael Abrash books.
Those folks would never played any GB generation device, the whole line of devices.
Nor are old enough to have lived through 8 and 16 bit home computers days.
There’s always someone turning 12.
I don't care what hardware is inside the new Switch 2. It cannot compete with the Steam Deck because the Switch 2 is still made by Nintendo.
Made by Nintendo means that it'll be a super locked down device that only plays games made by Nintendo or a rather small list of 3rd party game makers. Developing for the platform is expensive and requires an extremely lengthy certification process. This means that all the games are reasonably high quality, sure but it also means that small developers or games with some adult content will never make it.
The Steam Deck, on the other hand runs an enormous library of Steam games and new games crop up every day. It also runs Switch 1 games! The barrier to entry is tiny and it's actually possible to mod games which is probably the single most important feature in modern gaming if you want your game to last and be popular for a very long time.
The Steam Deck also runs Linux which means hackers all over the world can make it better. Even simple shell scripts that automate common tasks provide an enormous benefit! You can automate synchronizing your save games between your PC and your Steam Deck wirelessly, for example without much effort because it's just (mostly) normal Linux.
The Steam Deck is general purpose hardware in a portable form factor running a general purpose operating system that's been optimized for (portable) gaming. If you want a feature you can make it happen yourself or ask the monstrously huge (and obsessed) Linux community for assistance.
The Switch is locked-down, application-specific hardware in a portable form factor running an application-specific operating system that's severely locked down and can't be modified or improved in any way by end users. If you want a feature you have to ask Nintendo and pray.
Illegal emulation is not a fair play here.
Nintendo's "moat" is their exclusive IP and single-screen multi-player party games, which other platforms have largely forsaken. Their competition is still mostly PlayStation and Xbox, too. (Steam Deck sales are a rounding error.) So portability is still an edge for now.
I do hope Steam Decks become more mainstream, though.
Yet its sales leave the SteamDeck miles behind, and its future is kind of uncertain with a dependency on Windows games translation, that currently Microsoft happens to tolerate.
My kids are just getting to the age where they can use a gaming device like this. Obviously I'll get the Switch 2 rather than the Switch.
I mean, it's almost certainly got updated hardware too right? The Tegra in the OG switch is getting pretty long in the tooth. This isn't just a hardware refresh, it's a whole new console
New Mario Kart
> But without any real upgrade or even games announcements, I suppose most people will keep holding off their purchase decisions for now.
It's not for sale yet—they haven't even announced when it will be for sale. So what purchasing decision are you talking about?
"This year we put a 12 on the box"
I'm so glad that they named this the "Switch 2" instead of going with something really stupid like "Switch U". It's simple and it immediately explains to the consumer what the product is.
I know. My mind is blown. I was convinced they wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to name it something stupid.
Switch 2? Switch to what?
To the Switch 2, obviously.
2 switch 2 switch 2
Will Switch 2 games still use NAND memory that means your games will start failing after as little as 10-20 years of sitting on a shelf? https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/nintendo-switch/switch_a...
I'm guessing not. I don't there there any many or any manufacturers that make ROM chips with the size required for the games
I'll be really curious to see what the gpu specs are like since it'll likely be nvidia again. The original Switch was 720p but lets you bump up to 1080p when in docked mode, so developers had to restrict design to accommodate both modes, but nvidia could possibly do a dlss trick when plugged in so devs just need to worry about 1 render target that will get upscaled automagically.
DLSS is disappointing compared to actual resolution increases. It adds plenty of artifacts like shimmer, ghosting, occlusion issues. I’m expecting Nintendo to use it unfortunately.
Have you watched any of the recent videos about dlss 4?
It's using a different neural network for upscaling, and these issues seem to be massively reduced. It should be compatible back to at least the 20xx GPUs as well, not just the new 50xx GPUs. Maybe it'll be on the switch 2 as well.
I've only seen a few clips of Cyberpunk but they surprised me a lot. If that level of quality can work on other games too then it'll be a huge upgrade.
DLSS 3 looked great in their teasers too, but it's filled with temporal ghosting in practice.
I'm not talking about teasers, the one I watched was from digital foundry who were given some time with the game and took their own videos as far as I know.
I’ll try it when out. Marketing videos are not a useful way to test something like DLSS which is easy to mask the issues with things like low bitrate, slow pans, avoiding problematic situations, etc.
They have to be using upscaling. No matter your feelings on it, it is the way everything is moving and will become a requirement to run any "AAA" game going forward soon enough.
They will likely leave it up to the developer and not us it too much in their own games.
Did they finally fix the early dying joysticks? Because that's the main issue of the switch.
The last time I tried to use my Switch, I realized that the joy cons are no longer usable separately. Seems the connection to the internal shoulder buttons is broken, and you can't reorient the controllers unless you can hold them both down.
I dropped my Switch from knee height, and now the left hand joycon is slightly loose and disconnects from too much upward pressure. Maybe the damage is on the joycon, but it seems more likely the mechanism (don't have a spare to test).
The new joycon connector looks more robust.
Rumor has it the Switch 2 has Hall-effect sticks. Here's hoping.
Shame the link isn't to https://www.nintendo.com/successor/ so it would attempt to pick a video with the most appropriate date format.
Definitely, I watched the UK version shared somewhere else and thought the direct was 2 months earlier than it was!
or just use month names like normal people
A lot of people here are criticising Nintendo not showing specific details here, seemingly forgetting a few key points:
That's what I wanted. An improved Switch. Waiting for the specs
Same here. Really hope it is more than what was rumoured, which was using some 6 years old tech.
Nintendo never really uses brand new tech. It's their design philosophy. https://medium.com/@adamagb/nintendo-s-little-known-product-...
It's a philosophy that worked for them incredibly well with the Switch, so unlikely they'll totally reverse it for the Switch 2.
> It's their design philosophy
I would say it's more about minimizing cost of the console and their first party games just so happen to be not intensive enough to need it... But some games would have absolutely benefitted from a bit better hardware.
Previous Nintendo were on 4-5 years tech. The rumoured tech is 5-6 years. A difference between two cycles or three cycles.
What was missing from games 6 years ago that current tech has made possible?
Besides more leaves on trees, of course.
BoTW definitely struggles in many situations FPS wise... And thats running the same resolution I ran on my PC in 2008, but now on my 4k tv...
It's kind of hard to look past it at this point.
HDR, other dynamic lighting things like raytracing, and ability to have lots of characters on screen.
Compare any Mario game to Astrobot and you can see the difference.
Solid 60 fps in Tears of the Kingdom would be great.
My number one wish for this iteration is more reliability out of the joycons.
There was a rumor about an optical sensor on the side of a joycon that would turn it into a mouse. Is this out of the equation? This would have been awesome!
Didn't you see the section where joycons appear to slide over a table? If anything, the video confirms the rumor
At 1:02 it shows the optical mouse sensor pretty clearly.
It would be awesome to have new Labo sets that make use of that sensor. But I suspect that Labo will not get a second chance, given that the first sets were seen as a failure (despite being really cool).
Yeah the sensors are there, you can see them if you look closely
> There was a rumor about an optical sensor on the side of a joycon that would turn it into a mouse. Is this out of the equation? This would have been awesome!
They literally depict them as mice at 1:12. Like the animal, or at least that's how I interpreted it before I even knew about this rumor from your comment.
Im not sure what the point is. Sure you can point and click but no keyboard? That's way lower input than simply using the joycon and all the buttons. Seems like a gimmick.
I love the Switch and will love the Switch 2. But this video feels so cheap. Didn’t enjoy the launch video at all.
My concern with this is that the joycob being larger won't fit the hands of younger kids anymore. The switch 1 joycon was the only one that allowed reaching the controller buttons and the stick (while held horizontally) for my 3 years old. All other controllers that exist are too big, clearly nobody tested with young children.
And I wish they had names for their arrow buttons, because when held horizontally it makes things very confusing: "press b" what is b?
Fair concern, but on the other hand joycons are seriously uncomfortable for people older than that because of how small they are. It seems reasonable for Nintendo to optimize for the common users, not the extreme minority of small children.
Of course, however adults can buy the Pro controller, but kids have no other option.
Just voicing my frustration with the gaming industry as a whole: there isn't a controller for kids, even the ones that claims to be are for 8+ I suspect.
I mean, maybe 3 year olds are simply too young to be playing video games?
It's a toy like any other, my son is great at playing Kirby, the game delivers some great family time (Kirby star allies is a 4-players game). Most of first-party nintendo games are also display a rating of "3+"
Have there been any leaks of the price yet?
We have gotten so much use out of our original switch I can't really imagine not picking it up, even if only to keep playing the games we already have.
I am sucker for Nintendo stuff. I can't imagine not getting it, but this trailer did not necessarily make me look forward to it more: It got a bit more generic in design, and I don't trust that controller attachment system.
I'll probably wait for the OLED version, which they will obviously release maybe 2-3 years down the line.
I have a steam deck right now which has more than enough games to keep me busy for a few more years.
On the other hand, I haven't finished Zelda BOTW yet nor even started TOTK.
A bigger one seems too bulky to me, I was thinking I'd rather have a tiny progress on performance and a smaller footprint.
The game is afoot.
There are many reasons why the portable factor is good, not least you can enjoy it riding the bus or laying in bed Saturday morning; you can play big games in spare minutes side by side with the rest of your life.
Sony's Vita was quite successful with titles like Killzone Mercenary which was as fun a shooter as you'll find on any platform, but Sony gave up on the form factor because of the phone fever sweeping the world. Fortunately the culturally Japanese games like Akiba's Trip, Persona, Fate/Extella, Hyperdimension Neptunia and such have jumped to Steam.
There's the Steam Deck and countless off-brand competitors, Microsoft is talking about a portable XBOX, Sony is planning a PS5P which sounds overly ambitious -- TV-attached consoles are becoming irrelevant when you can connect an XBOX controller to your PC and have a console experience, but much better, with Steam, GOG, Origin and other PC app stores.
> Sony's Vita was quite successful with titles like Killzone Mercenary which was as fun a shooter as you'll find on any platform, but Sony gave up on the form factor because of the phone fever sweeping the world.
I think they gave up on it when they realized they didn't have the resources to support both a console and a handheld with the rising costs of game development. Nintendo faced the same issue but they got rid of their console instead and designed their handheld to be able to be docked in order to get similar functionality.
I was so worried that Nintendo was going to make Switch backwards compatibility digital-only. I am very relieved.
This is a hardware reveal trailer. Nintendo likely released this because of all of the recent leaks, which have put their 3rd party accessory vendors in a weird position. More details will be revealed at the Nintendo Direct on the 2nd.
I can't wait to play all the new Switch 2 games on my Steam Deck
The single player games maybe
How do Switch users feel about the joycons?
I'm not a gamer, but the original Switch joycons always struck me as overly complicated and expensive. It should be cheaper to manufacture and sell Switches with the controllers attached. Indeed, this is what they did with the Switch Lite. For games that take advantage of joycon functionality, Nintendo could have sold something like an updated Switch version of the Wiimote as an optional accessory.
Do users who are happy with their Nintendo Switch have a favorable opinion of the joycons, or would you be happy without them?
The joy cons are fine, but I think them always being attached also removes the key benefit of the Switch. That was something that a lot of people talked about when the Switch Lite came out.
They could be better and given the limitations, I think they do the job. If you don't like them they offer the pro controller. But there have been times (especially when flying) that I have used them detached when not docked.
I honestly don't think the Switch would have succeeded the way it did if the controllers were always attached, forcing you to buy another controller for when you wanted to dock.
They are fine but they break very easily; after a while they start to "drift" and the games become unplayable.
I needed to repair one pair last year because the drift was unbearable; the repair costs almost as much as a new one. (And one started drifting again.)
I am not a heavy player at all and I got the drift.
I wish you could just turn off the sticks in the system software — it's a trivial fix that would make the problem a whole lot more bearable.
They have quality issues with stick drift, and the "single joycon as controller" setup is clearly designed for child-sized hands, but it's definitely an advantage to be able to play the system handheld but also have minimal extra to pack (just the rails widget) if I want to put it on a train table on the kickstand and the use the controllers more ergonomically.
And I mean, if you have kids, being able to double your controllers when they have friends around is also helpful to avoid arguments.
I was traveling through Asia with the original Switch and got a cute girl who didn't speak English to play Mario Kart with me on the ferry.
The detachable controllers were pretty magical, modulo the reliability problems.
I love that the controls are split between two hands. It makes certain types of lounging gameplay (e.g. one hand behind head) possible that aren't with single controllers.
I'm generally in favour of the joycons as a concept. They make multiplayer party games a breeze.
But the execution in the Switch 1 is flawed. They're on the small side, and generally fiddly. If the joycons for the Switch 2 are larger and just more ergonomic then I think it'll be a win.
EDIT: the joycons also being little motion wands was also quite good. You don't need a separate accessory like on the other consoles. Overall the joycon is a neat little package of functionality, if imperfect.
I think they're fine when mounted, but I use a the pro controller. Using them individually when you have people over sucks, but it's a neat way to turn one controller into two, so I can't throw too much hate.
That's if we're ignoring the absurd drift their sticks have that Nintendo has seemingly never fixed. I hope to god they fixed them in this next gen console.
They're nicer for a quick game of Mario Party or other casual game because you can just tear them off the system and have two players, but I wouldn't want to play anything serious with them.
I barely use the joycons.
I mostly play with either a Switch Pro Controller or an 8BitDo (that is actually my favorite).
I have large hands and the joycons are a little uncomfortable for me. But it makes sense, they should feel great in the hands of a child.
Everyone I know with a Switch uses it primarily attached to their TV in the dock and only secondarily as a portable. A separate controller seems necessary for that.
I agree that they are/were far too expensive, especially given the drift problems. Other than that, they're a neat bit of tech and, with the included 'grip' controller, I found them totally suitable for the first 6 months or so. After that, I got the Pro controller and never looked back. Last year, I picked up a CRKD Nitro and that is a massive upgrade on the Joy-Con.
They’re my favorite controller out of the ones in the market right now. I really enjoy being able to have one controller in each hand.
As others have said, their primary issue is with quality control around stick drift.
I love the Lite but it was kneecapped by not having video output.
I don't like them. They're too small to be comfortable for use on their own, and all they really enable is motion controls (meh). The pro controller is far superior and is 90% of my switch controller usage.
There are plenty of alternative controller options for the Switch, it's not that much of an issue.
For portable play, yes, the stick drift issues suck, but Nintendo will fix it for you. And yeah, most portable systems today overall just have better analog sticks.
But if I'm at home I'm going to be using a Pro controller or an 8bitdo or something like that.
A mouse with an analog controller will make for a very powerful 3D manipulator, like a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse. Combine with the improved kickstand, it will be interesting to see what devs come up with.
Everyone is going to buy one of these as soon as they can ship them to them, so if the thumb sticks could not be intentionally engineered to fail this time, that would be great, thanks.
So I can only guess the reason why they didn't mention how much more powerful NS2 is compared to NS1, is because it is not that much more powerful?
I would guess only 30 to 50% more powerful
If you believe the leakers [1]:
Switch 2 in comparison with the original Nintendo Switch: [1] https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears...How would that compare to other consoles, like the PS4/PS4 Pro?
Just based on teraflops it sits between a PS4 and a PS4 Pro.
But teraflops isn’t the whole picture though, it has other modern features like AI upscaling (DLSS) plus others.
For a portable it’s pretty nice.
The biggest problem is the memory bandwidth. PS4 memory bandwidth is 176 GB/s. These specs are quite bad, It's supposed to be Ampere based, so RTX 30 series. It was released in Sep 2020. That's over 4 years ago. Part of the problem with NVIDIA is that they have been milking their architectures.
For comparison, the Steamdeck was released in Feb 2022, and RDNA2 was released in Nov 2020. So the architecture gap was 1.5 years for Steamdeck, but 4.5 years for the Switch 2.
I guess there might be a chance that they enable DLSS4 for this device, but it's still sad to watch this unfold.
GPU performance should be somewhere between PS4 and PS4 Pro. More memory is a good sign that Nintendo's machine will allow a larger software catalogue than that of the Xbox Series S, where 10 GB has been a severe impediment to porting.
I would guess much weaker, but IMO the switch's point is not raw performance but rather innovative gameplay and style
pc vs cell phone
The iPhone is faster than most PCs
Maybe on short duration single threaded CPU benchmarks.
But its not true if you are talking about sustained gaming performance compared to an equally priced new PC. Even for $800 (entry level iPhone) a PC will be a much better performer for gaming.
but quite different architectures
The leaks specs are [1]:
- ARM 8 Arm Cortex-A78C
- GPU: Nvidia T239 Ampere, 12 SM/1534 Cores
- 12 GB of ram.
Compared to Switch 1 [2]:
- ARM 4 Cortex-A57 cores @ 1.02 GHz
- GPU: NVIDIA Maxwell 256 cores
- 4 GB of ram.
It should like it should be a major boost in performance from those specs, like maybe 4x improvement overall?
Of course there are more pixels on this screen, so the amount of GPU per pixel may stay roughly the same.
[1] https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch
I’ve heard different leaks to the tune that it is actually significantly more powerful. Rationale being because Nintendo presumably finally needs to take 4k and higher frame rates seriously, and the hardware situation has improved enough for that to be possible under Nintendo’s philosophy (shit hardware with innovative and engaging gameplay). I mean their beloved launch title for the Switch had performance problems maintaining even 20fps at 720p. Pretty embarrassing.
No, it's because Nintendo prides itself to be about games, not about performance.
I think they've done something smart here by partnering with NVIDIA and given the success of the switch 1 they've probably built a good relationship.
So, although you're right, NVIDIA might be giving them a good performance/efficiency bespoke chip.
This was just a hype video, they didn’t mention anything other than “2025” and the date of the Nintendo Direct with more information.
That said, I’m not expecting it to be a giant step up in performance.
Have they mentioned anything? All they have done so far is show the hardware off and one new game, which for the record does look more detailed than its predecessor.
Missing 4K is notable in the current Switch.
Surprisingly big day for launches: New Glenn, Switch 2, Starship.
It's not a launch, just a (official) reveal.
Is the date April 2 or February 4?
2 April. This is the American trailer so the date is dumb
I hope they fix the issues with the controllers dying.
Looks like a new controller attachment system, maybe magnetic, except that doesn't seem robust enough for excited play.
I wonder what that means for spare controllers. It's a waste to make people go buy new extra controllers for multiplayer games. Maybe you can use your old Switch as a charger and pair via BT? Not nearly as nice as just sliding it on to pair, but hopefully reduces e-waste.
I would be surprised if older joycons can't be paired via BT.
There are already alternative ways to charge them, either charging stations or charging grip.
There seem to be a latch mechanism to keep it attatched. I would be surprised if it was designed to rely solely on magnets.
> except that doesn't seem robust enough for excited play.
Yeah. First thing I thought when they showed the controllers snapping in place was "I would definitely yank one of those out on accident while playing."
Pretty much all the rumours confirmed, and a Direct on 2nd April for more. It was nice to see the Joy-Con being all mouse-like, though.
Top comment says "There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas."
I bet you that Nintendo will never release a Nintendo Switch 3. They do sequels in consoles (like they did the SNES), but after that they innovate.
Game Boy -> Game Boy Color -> Game Boy Advance
DS -> 3DS
NES -> Super Nintendo -> N64 -> GameCube
Wii -> Wii U
Definitely a pattern
Arguably the "gimmick" for the N64 -> GameCube was 3D games and "stock" analog stick, with the c-buttons on the N64 turning into the C-Stick on the GameCube. At launch both the PS1 and Saturn controllers were d-pad only.
Hopefully game saves will sync between Switch 1 and 2. It would not be great to have to restart games with 80+ hours or drag 2 consoles around with you to access your full Switch 1 library. I'm mildly optimistic given Switch 1 has online save backup capability for a lot of its games.
Nice, will we also get soon a Nvidia Shield 2 with Auto AI HDR etc. now that we have a new Nintendo Switch Nvidia CPU ?
As much as I would love this (not interested in a portable game console, but definitely interested in a new top-of-line set-top-box) I can't imagine this is what's been holding nVidia back on a Shield refresh.
If anything, the Switch was a way to sell a boatload of existing chips. They've had plenty of opportunity to put out a Shield 2 in the meantime, but instead have backed off their focus on game streaming and other main features of a set-top-box.
I'd love to see it happen, but I feel like the Shield is just not a big enough seller for them to put many resources behind an update. Prove me wrong, nVidia! TVs have only gotten worse in terms of embedded systems and software, and I don't have (or plan on) buying into the Apple ecosystem enough to make AppleTV compelling.
IIRC the whole reason Nvidia was not able to make a new Shield or Shield tablet was because all their chips were being used in the Switch, and the basically all used the same chip
We got a switch a few years ago and it collected dust. The shop is overpriced (and slow) and I guess we aren't really into their first-party titles. I don't see what it offers against a steam deck except the aforementioned first-party titles.
edit: except the aforementioned first-party titles
It offers the first-party titles, basically. If you don't want those then there's no reason to get one.
For me, Nintendo is the most reliable game developer these days. Every main Mario and Zelda game offers something new and executes it well on the first try. I'll buy Switch 2 for Mario and Zelda alone.
I tried BotW and it didn't really click. The food mechanics felt bolted on, just like the weapon durability stuff, and everything felt too easy/within reach. I guess I'm not the target, it's okay.
Did you play and complete a lot of the other Zelda games growing up?
Just majora's mask, I'm not exactly a nintendo kind of guy.
Got it. Then, for sure, the switch wasn't going to be for you.
I'm not a Nintendo die hard, but I played on my N64 a ton. Then spent some solid years on PC or xbox360. Now, with kids, the switch is my preferred console.
The entire reason to buy the switch is the first party titles. If you don't like those/Nintendo games, the switch and all switch derivatives aren't going to be for you.
It offers first party titles, you said it yourself
The design changes showcased in the video are definitely a welcome improvement. As someone who owns both a Steam Deck and an OLED Switch, I find the Switch to be a bit too small for my hands, while the Steam Deck feels slightly large and bulky. Could the Switch 2 strike the perfect balance between the two?
I wish we could return to a Wii U like functionality where the switch could be used as a second screen when undocked. That was a really nice feature in games like Zelda where the controller in your hands displayed the inventory or a map.
Much like with the failed Macbook Touch Bar, I don't think it works having to look away and focus on another screen while playing a game.
Also like the Macbook Touch Bar, now you have a whole other thing developers have to target and test for an end result that should just be possible yet more efficient in the main app.
Take inventory for example. Instead you could just make it frictionless to open inventory in the main game and create quick-swap slots. Tears of the Kingdom is a good example. Swapping out arrows mid combat by looking at your controller would not be an improvement.
Yeah I played BOTW on the Wii U and remember at some point I just stopped bothering with the handheld screen.
I can't remember what game it was but I do remember having one game where the handheld add-on provided some functionality that seemed useful/fun. So it is possible, but much like the original wii's motion sensors - it is much more likely that developers will stumble across a bad application of the tech than a good one
BOTW didn't even leverage the Wii U gamepad. The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remakes let you equip items with it, and I think that was the original plan for BotW too, but they removed the feature likely because then it would have an extra feature over the Switch version that launched at the same time.
Might be possible if the Switch 2 contains a "cast" feature, but the cast landscape may be too incomplete and fractured (AirPlay, Chromecast, Miracast, etc.) for Nintendo to bother with that.
Couldn't the handheld pair with the dock with whatever protocol they want, and the dock is wired into the TV?
Absolutely. I was stuck thinking about the simple plastic Switch 1 dock. Switch 2 dock could definitely be more of a dongle.
Has anyone played any games besides Zelda / Mario Kart that actually felt complete and worth the money. I love love love the switch but getting really demoralized by the lack of titles I can play with friends; especially online.
Xenoblade is excellent, Metroid is excellent, Kirby is excellent. There are others but those are the primary ones which come to mind for me. Obviously they're all Nintendo games but that's what you get a Nintendo system for. You don't get it because it's the best option for playing third party games.
I've played Smash Ultimate probably more than any other game in my life.
Yes
Baba is You is great if you want additional demoralization
Bought it for 70% cheaper on my phone
Most Japanese video games are designed for solo play.
Maybe that is the case. But when the switch came out the marketing was heavily skewed towards "party" games to play with your friends in the same room.
How is a portable console about playing with your friends? It's about playing alone on the couch, on the bed, on the plane, on the toilet.
The joycons seem to attach as easily as a MagSafe connector… but I hope they don't detach as easily! I wonder if the handheld ergonomics were battle-tested to prevent accidental joycon detachment while gaming.
There is a button you must press to detach it. You can see it here: https://www.nintendo.com/successor/assets/img/bg-movie.mp4 at 0:23
If this hotlink doesn't work, it's visible on this page: https://www.nintendo.com/successor/en-ca/index.html
The connector on the main body is just exceptionally questionable, I see it being a big issue of getting broken or worn and then non trivial repairs.
Yeah, I was concerned about that too. It looks like it has a small thin edge connector on the body of the Switch 2, sort of like a USB-C port but without the protective shield around it. If it's not designed well, we could see it snapping off in kid's hands and requiring expensive repairs.
I doubt they attach like that I think it’s just for the video… looking again there are holes at the top and bottom of the joycons presumably for some kind of locking mechanism to fit into.
They probably are magnetically attached but also feature a latch somewhere to make sure they don't accidentally pop out.
Alternatively they could just be using really strong magnets and tight tolerances for the fit inside the Switch 2. That's a tough thing to get right though because if they make it too tight it'll be annoying to get them lined up juuuuust straight enough to snap in but if they make it too loose they can pop out too easily.
Came here to say exactly this. It looks like with a small push they could pop out. Or snap the connector.
Nintendo has a clear focus on a younger audience so I have to assume they’ve got this figured out.
Man, this video is giving me some serious Neverhood vibes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neverhood
Why?
I think people are sleeping on Meta's compounding advantage in VR/AR. The Quest 3 is 15 months old, and it's wild how much it has improved over that time purely due to software and interaction model improvements. Aside from the recent bricking issue, I think the Meta Quest is accelerating at the OS level. I'm looking forward to Mario on Quest 4 or 5, but it will be a bit sad.
You can't see the shortcomings until you have the hardware, and once you solve those there is a next set of shortcomings. I think that road is longer and deeper than I had appreciated, Meta is the only company iterating fast enough to be serious about serving "normies".
The name of the game is the game. Meaning that hardware is popular insofar as the games that are on it. And Nintendo, with its massive war chest and toymaker history, will never turn into a third-party developper. They'll keep making their underpowered Nintendo machines, and good for them.
So can we finally expect to see first-party Switch 1 games get discounts?
Ooh that would be nice. Although I wonder if they'll simply stop producing as many (IDK what even goes into that though... I imagine its pretty cheap to produce). Sadly I feel like the opposite happens with many things, not sure about video games though.
Cool, a new steam deck, but it can only run some games at a lower FPS.
and incorporates cutting-edge "security" controls to keep the system secured (against the user of course, because the owners of the device nowadays are the primary security threat, regardless how technical they are). Otherwise, what if grandma gets tricked into installing a Steam game or *gasp* an open source operating system onto her switch?
I really hope my old switch controllers are compatible, at least via wireless. It would be a monetary and environmental shame if my six controllers became useless.
I'm surprised they don't already drift to the point where you can't use them on your old switch either.
Well I own more than six, only six still work. :) The rest have drifted.
I hope they fixed the joystick drift issues. It’s why I stopped playing my switch. I don’t want to be buying controllers as a maintenance item
Just wait for "Switch 2 lite" which will be the same size as the original Switch and compatible with the original switch joycons.
For those of us with zero interest in playing a console on the go I wish they would release a non-mobile version and put the money saved into beefier specs.
It’s more for playing in your room where you don’t have a TV, than necessarily on-the-go. Just how smartphones are nowadays used for gaming at home by the younger generation. You still don’t want to be tethered to a power outlet.
The beefier specs would be wasted though since game developers would still be primarily targeting the handheld (since that is still their main offering, so that's what most people have).
Not necessarily, there are pro versions of both PlayStation and Xbox
Same. They already made the Lite, I wish they’d make the opposite.
That's my case as well, especially now that Switch has established itself and you can get Switch Mini for $200 if interested in on-the-go experience.
Nintendo's best selling consoles are all handhelds, its not surprising for them to stick with the hybrid form factor.
Switch 1 was released on March 3, 2017 - what a great run!
NES - 1983; SNES - 1991
Seems about right.
No sepcs. No games. We need it, Nintendo, WE NEED IT.
Well, MK9 was in there.
It was mario kart 9? it looks way too similar to 8 then.
Yeah, all zeldas, marios and pokemons will be there by default. Still no new info ;)
can't help but smile watching the video
i expected a radical redesign, but this switch 2 is great too
can't wait to play old switch games on it, as well as new ones!
Apple should just buy Nintendo at this point. They don’t seem to have anything else going on.
> They don’t seem to have anything else going on.
Apple? Are you certain about that?
Somewhat larger screen (and presumably faster hardware) is enough for me to buy in. Don't mess with what works.
The larger, higher resolution screen will make me happy too.
Been playing a lot of Factorio on my OG switch… it works. Barely.
What a well produced video. I don't think I've ever watched a 2 minute advertisement all the way through before.
It's a nice video but even if it was extremely bad I would have still watched the whole thing lol.
Why don't they just make 2 controllers that you can snap to the sides of an iPhone?
Edit: like this: https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/HRDG2ZM/A/backbone-one...
Save the planet, reuse hardware.
Honestly, they did exactly what they should have done here. Made a more powerful Switch with better hardware and backwards compatibility, with a clear and easily understandable name.
Regardless, the things they need to update/fix are all really just technical and UI design problems; Joy-Cons drifting and rails failing to work, Switch Online being a laggy mess for many games, the eShop being near impossible to filter or find things in, etc. If they can get those things fixed, and get some popular Nintendo franchises out within the first year or so, then this could be a huge success.
Damn, can't wait to pay 500+ USD to play mobile games! :)
Instead of commenting on the switch 2 characteristics, i just want to take some time to celebrate Nintendo, and to say how happy i am this company still exists although it went through difficult times.
As some comments point out, Nintendo is the only console/video games company that's been trying to do fun things instead of trying to come up with the most powerful console in the universe.
This is the gaming i like, i don't care for 3000 fps and 1000Ghz consoles, i just want to have fun :-)
So, yeah, thanks Nintendo, i'll be buying this Switch 2.
Give me 4K, joycons that never disconnect or drift, and up to 16 players locally, and I’m in!
I’m in regardless.
So not radically different, but hey, why risk ruining a good thing? I'm sure my kid will die if he doesn't get one.
Im buying one and not connecting it to the internet so I can root it later.
I get this is Nintendo, so it'll never be fixed, but I honestly hate having to buy Nintendo hardware just to play the three or four big-name platform exclusives per generation. It would be so much better for consumers if they would just abandon the hardware and be a regular games company
To Nintendo's credit, their big exclusive titles tend to take advantage of the special hardware.
Zelda was weird and impractical outside of the standard controls, but still somewhat benefited from NFC.
Splatoon plays a lot better with the motion controls, NFC is actually a nice QOL improvement. A game like Arms is also nicer in split mode, even if core players tend to get back to the standard controller mode.
I see it along the lines of the Allan Kay "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware" quote. Nintendo should stay serious IMHO.
In early footage of BoTW when it was a Wii U exclusive there was more usage of the Tablet for things like maps and inventory management, which was later cut for presumably parity with the Switch version.
By NFC, you mean amiibo? I think "in game perks for buying collectible junk" is not actually a good feature.
Motion controls, eh, they're supported on ps5. They could just sell the switch pro controller.
Yes, amibo.
For Splatoon it's used to quickly switch to preset weapons and gears as well, which is nice. You widly experiment with your gear and instantaneously get back to your "serious" setting at any time.
I think the same thing. Metroid is good, but is it $250+ good? Meh.
Microsoft more-or-less does the same thing with Windows in the personal consumer market. With Office being online these days, the primary motivation for a lot of people to buy a Windows license for a computer instead of using Linux or buying a Mac is gaming, along with pure inertia.
This will be a problem with everything until games are FLOSS.
Sadly, I don't think games will ever be FLOSS until we figure out how to get people to pay for FLOSS software.
You could probably get away with a purely volunteer effort on... eh, how to describe this... like Super Mario 64 for Mac/Linux/PC.
And I do mean Super Mario 64 with respect to the technology/artwork level. Which is fine by me.
But the big AAA games and the multiplayer games that all of the hip young people with their poggers Twitch streaming and their deadass rock music play? Yeah, can't build those given the state of everything these days.
On the other hand, games are so hard to build and require so much vision that despite decades of gaming history, volunteers/hackers are mostly limited to modifying existing games rather than building a game from scratch.
You use Super Mario 64 as some sort of low/achievable bar for what volunteers might be able to build, as if SM64 is an easy game to build, yet nobody is building games like that on a volunteer basis.
Even look at the engineering that went into OpenMW: once again hackers were only able to recreate a game engine that runs existing game files (Morrowind) which is the easy part of building a game.
Most successful games, AAA or indie, are the result of years of full time work, most of which is making the content. I just don't see that being possible in general, without being independently wealthy.
Games also benefit from a single vision in general, which is hard to square with volunteer style development.
There are certainly exceptions of games that are built as a community: nethack, space station 13, idk probably a third one. But I just can't see this being commonly done until we figure out how free software devs can eat.
With that said: I love free software and hope this problem is solvable, but unless society changes dramatically we may need to learn to do without not just AAA scope games, but even Stardew Valley scope games
I actually don't think there is a big obstacle to this. Most people don't care about FLOSS and don't even know what it is, so I think that shouldn't really affect sales. I think companies are just worried about people stealing their code to use it for more "undesirable" (to them) things like cheating and mods, and then having to go after them for it because you do actually have to try to defend your copyright/trademarks if you want to keep them.
People will know and care instantly when there's an easily accessible storefront like app with those games one click away and perfectly legal. Same reason excellent tools like Aseprite are no longer floss - it got packaged (legally) in Debian and others and why on earth would you go way out of your way to buy it, or even think that they might be trying to charge.
I don't think games companies are against mods generally, many have steam workshop support built in. Nintendo as the big exception here ofc.
Cheating is ofc a huge problem for multiplayer games and can absolutely tank some genres. Very mixed feelings about the kernel level rootkit type spyware but there's no denying that games companies are paying big money to put them there for the players benefit.
I don't think a majority of people will even go to alternative storefronts to get the software in big enough numbers to matter. I think it's more of a legal concern than a monetary (sales) one, but I could be wrong.
I think you're right, as it stands now, especially for platforms like Android with one canonical store that already has many free offerings. I use fdroid because i love the philosoply and am willing to put up with it but to be clear, the apps there are unprofessional and ugly and I get why most people don't.
But if this became a common practice I think people absolutely would. Tons of professional quality games instantly available for free is such an incredibly good value.
> This will be a problem with everything until games are FLOSS.
I mean there is nothing stopping that right now. You can give up your time and learn game programming and asset design and make a game and give it away for free.
Any speculation on the hardware that might be in it?
Sad they’re keeping at the same thing, I was personally hoping for a NEW thing like innovation but it seems like theyre just keeping steady at the same pace.
Of course looking back at the past this shouldn’t have been a huge surprise with their ds to 3ds to new3ds shenanigans
> Sad they’re keeping at the same thing, I was personally hoping for a NEW thing like innovation but it seems like theyre just keeping steady at the same pace.
Why risk it though? The original Switch is a money printer but it became obvious that it's ... lacking brawns and brains after eight years of service. Fix that by upgrading the SoC to something with more power and remove a few other annoyances (the flimsy stand, primarily), and that will be enough to make it sell like lemonade on a hot summer day.
Though the OLED Switch had a much better stand than the launch switch and the stand on this one actually kind of looks like a regression.
Yeah, it feels like a very iterative update compared to previous Nintendo consoles.
Honestly i was expecting a little more info. I get this is on purpose, to create hype, but not having a graphical demo, a release date... anything really more than the design, input ports, and joycons, seems too little.
And the direct in april seems too far away honestly.
All they showed is the things that leaked, i mean, to me (besides the confirmation of something that was obvious) is like nothing happened really. I know the same as yesterday + the plastic texture maybe and i have to wait almost 3 months for the next official info.
I think it comes out in June.
That was a pretty boring annoucement. Yeah its cool how the elements on the device appear, but it gets boring when this is shown for both sides of the attachebles controllers. They have the opportunity to show e.g. exclusive games which would now look and perform super duper on the new hardware, because of a better resolution opr maybe HDR, but nothing like that? Or a comparison of the old one with the new? I think its a bit thin...
It looks very pretty but the display bezels look kinda thick.
After 8 year, all we get an improved version? Do they not have anything else in the pipeline?
I'll probably get it, lol! Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for some wacky stuff!
Edit: Seems odd to get down voted.
I think that's the point. You'll probably get it. I probably will too. I would imagine this device will improve unit sales and also has improved margins on a per unit basis. Easy win without trying all that much. Take the W.
I understand the financial part of it. I'm not sure it's a W for gamers like us. Obviously, I don't know the spec and detail so I'm happy to be corrected. From the video, they could've released this 4 years ago and I would've still gotten it back then. Since I view switch as a console system rather mobile system, the gain we are getting just seem a bit disappointing after 8 years.
I don't care too much about the hardware spec. That's not why you buy a Nintendo. I hope Nintendo modernizes its software. I am talking about the UI and its multiplayer user experience.
Preventing any modern chat/voice feature under the excuse of wanting to protect children from online danger is a laughable as it is solvable by expanding the parental control features.
I am optimistic regarding this as Nintendo seem have turned its vision to taking a bit more risks as hinted in games like Super Mario Wonder that try to innovate in the multiplayer space. You'd say that that is not much but very few would have foreseen such a move from Nintendo.
But did they fix the dreaded Joy-Con drift?
It looks so much like the Retroid Pocket 5 and other chinese android consoles that are all over the emulator space.
At least they've finally moved on.
Unsure about the magnets, it kind of looks like it will have trouble with the joycons falling off while you're playing.
Looking at the rest of the page, it seems like there's a button to press to start removing the joycons. I wonder if it latches at the final bit.
I like the image halfway down the announcement page that shows not only will your Switch 2 have larger controllers, but your hands will also be larger. Cool benefit, at the right price.
I think that’s an optical illusion, the hands are just higher up.
Can I get 10 inches taller too?
If you're 12 years old, probably yes.
nope :(
Disappointed that it doesn't look to fix the biggest issue I have with the Switch, which is that docking it feels awkward and clumsy. You have to blindly line up a USB-C port/connector, and that seems to be the same approach they're going with here. At least the Joycons look like they'll be a little smoother to attach/remove.
should we expect re-release of all the usual games?
Absolute friendly reminder: this is a device from the company which they do C&D and abuse DMCA to community devs
Indeed. Unfortunately, even if all of HN boycotts the Switch 2 it won't have an effect on Nintendo, but their behavior is entirely unacceptable and is boycott-worthy.
Please tell me the joycons are built with a more robust analog stick… it was hard to tell if they changed at all in this video. That’s about my only gripe with the switch, those sticks drift so badly if you so much as look at them.
The giant 2 is a bit obnoxious. Other than that everything looks good.
And for the love of God Nintendo you better be using hall effect joysticks for this one. Can't imagine the amount of e-waste they generated with the Switch joycons.
I've skipped a few Nintendo console generations, but may grab this one. Right off the hop I can catch up with a decent library. The draw is it would be nice for the kids.
Part of me was hoping it would be something more visionary, but maybe it's just not the right time. I noticed that competition is similarly betting on handheld devices.
Huge bezels!
Unimpressive. But that isnt what sells Nintendo platforms.
20+ years of relentless marketing to children is what sells.
This thing is gonna get swallowed in an ocean of steam decks and other similar clones. Unless you want to play the third installment of Mario Kart 8, I guess.
That is precisely the only reason people choose Nintendo over more powerful and capable devices. The Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Zeldas, Marios etc.
They got a robust ecosystem going on and with them shooting down pirating left, right and center they keep a tight ship going.
Nintendo has set themselves up so they don't need 3rd party titles to survive. Carved out a good niche for themselves. They don't even see themselves as direct competitors with Sony. They used to but that was a long time ago.
I understand, after all, they are the Disney of gaming in terms of IP.
It’s just strange, this is the first time I’ve seen them so…lazy. The Wii U was a flop, but it was a bigger leap than this. SNES at least had more buttons and significantly better graphics.
I think they’re just gonna milk this till streaming takes over.
Well I think they're definitely leaning into giving the best portable experience for the dedicated consoles (that are not Steam). I think they've come to understand that's their niche and the sales of the Switch seem to suggest it.
I don't think they feel like they need a huge departure, but rather just to improve on the shortcomings of the Switch itself and just a bit more power. Whatever they can achieve.
But they also know they can never compete with the PS5 in terms of specs and still put out a portable.
And they're probably well aware that they'll have to make up their tech shortcomings with good games ... as they always have.
So you're right. They'll continue with this until has diminishing returns and then they'll probably pivot / evolve again.
This doesn't seem to stem out of an innovation cycle, so the biggest advantage for consumers is (IMHO) that prices of the current generation will drop.
I don't think I can see myself ever buying a Nintendo console again. My switch collects dust. They are always substantially under powered and likewise their games are simple - aka quite easy to emulate. I would much prefer a mobile device that can "do it all" like a steamdeck which is able to run native games, run emulators, and also remote to a beefy desktop gaming rig for games with higher demands.
That being said I realize I am not the target market. Nintendo has always been a pretty safe bet for the "just works" department. They are great for kids or casual gamers.
Bright-colored controllers were so much better. Also the way they were attached before is much better.
Switch 1 was the work of art. This one looks like the work of A/B testing and “we are losing customers as they choose Steam Deck over us, so let’s make it look like Steam Deck”
Nintendo sold an all-gray Switch 1, that’s the one I got.
Yes this console does feel like a more “grown up” Switch but I don’t think it’s a sign of chasing after Steam Deck; switch has sold 2 orders of magnitude more copies than Valve ever will.
If anything it’s following the same pattern as Wii (white) WiiU (dark) for the successor to be a bit more serious and grown up looking.
Kids who got their Switch 1 when they were 10 are now 17, ready for a more grown up console.
> switch has sold 2 orders of magnitude more copies than Valve ever will.
In the first year Nintendo sold 13.2 million Switches. In the ~2 years since the introduction of the Steam Deck Valve has sold somewhere between 5 and 6 million units.
Nintendo had a enormous, loyal, and obsessive user base and decades of history selling portable consoles. The Steam Deck is Valve's first portable console and it's running a new OS that no one is used to. It also cost $100 more than the Switch.
Furthermore--now that the platform itself has proven itself--Valve is going to allow 3rd parties to use SteamOS on their own portable consoles. If those 3rd parties have similar successes I think Nintendo will become a minor player in the portable console market in comparison.
Until Microsoft says Windows translations is enough.
> If anything it’s following the same pattern as Wii (white) WiiU (dark) for the successor to be a bit more serious and grown up looking.
The Wii U also comes in white. My grandparents own one.
Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if the Switch 2 came in more colors than what's shown, just like the Switch did.
Here's hoping for see-through purple.
The old mechanism had one serious usability flaw. This is a common sequence:
1) Put console into dock when you get home. 2) Some time later, remove controllers to use them
To remove them you need to pull them up, while the console is in the dock. That's a bit fiddly. Just being able to pop them off sideways sounds much better.
I really don’t like the old attachment mechanism. It was robust when connected, but it’s annoying to connect and especially disconnect, and it’s especially awkward that are two different retention mechanisms that need to be released depending on what’s connected.
I imagine the new connection will have a mechanical match of some sort and generally work better.
it definitely does look a bit like a steam deck
From the trailer the way the new controller attach to the console seems fragile, but they might have done some apple-like magnet magic..
I think the updated "click" sound present in the trailer indicates that yes they will snap on pretty forcefully with magnets.
Nice, it comes with BC
The hand placement when using the controllers attached to the screen somehow looks even more uncomfortable than on the original.
HOMINA HOMINA HOMINA....
That was fun!
I'm a little disappointed they didn't fix the terribly unergonomic joy cons though.
The console appears to be a little bit bigger, which would help the ergonomics of the joy-cons if they’re bigger.
It’s bigger; that might be the fix in and of itself
A big problem is not length but width. I've 3d printed a _pad_ for solo joycon and the difference is day and night
Don't the attachable rails help the width (or did you mean thickness)?
Attaching the grips helps a lot with that.
I got some 3rd party ergonomic handles and it was so worth it. Strongly recommended.
No support for AI? The Switch 2 is DOA /s
I know you're joking but technically it does have AI, the SOC is built on Nvidia's Ampere architecture with tensor cores. If nothing else they'll probably be used for DLSS upscaling.
It's an NVIDIA chip. They're 100% gonna use DLSS for literally every game in the library (ok, maybe not 2D games)
I've heard rumors about MarioGPT.
I actually don't mind modern version of Nintendo Tip Line
I see you're a man of culture as well :)
1. Looks boring. I want my washing machine to look boring, not my fun entertainment device.
2. It's literally the same thing they released 8 years ago, except the electronics are new. In 8 years they did zero creative progress. "People don't want cars, they want faster horses".
3. Switch was already huge, this thing will be giant, so it will be portable as in "portable fridge".
This will probably sell well because Switch sold well and the brand is strong, but honestly, I don't see any reason to buy this thing. They're basically reinventing a gaming laptop, except with Nintendo first-party games.
I guess you never got a PS2/PS3/PS4/PS5? Sometimes, the internals are the right thing to upgrade. And there definitely is some hardware innovations. I look forward to learning more!
I got an Xbox 360 strictly because I wanted to play Guitar Hero. To me, home consoles are like PC, but worse, but more convenient for a non-technical user.
Am I getting this right? Nintendo pushed the announcement forward because of the massive “Nate the great” leak?
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