Nintendo Switch Discussion

[Kalahari Inkantation]

That actually seems inventive, especially when compared to the wii and wii u.

to me this just makes nintendo's claims of 'original concept do not steal!!!' look even more absurd

there is nothing novel or innovative about this idea, it's just taking the wii u and remote play (neither of which is especially popular) to their logical extreme

it will be gimped in plenty of ways because it's a device that inherently contradicts itself, combining a handheld and a home console into one unit requires that you sacrifice the advantages of both

[Kalahari Inkantation]

and what an amazing catalog of third parties: a six-month-old sports game, and a five-month-old remaster of the five-year-old skyrim

90% of the people with any remote interest in skyrim have poured their 200 hours into it already

90% of the remaining 10% will play the remaster, with mods (or "mods" in the ps4's case), on a platform they already own, a full five months before the mod-free switch version is finally on sale for $60 (by which point all other versions will have been discounted to $40)

this is pretty much exactly what they wii u's launch looked like

all the switch has going for it is the zelda game it's taken hostage

[Samus Aran]

well actually skyrim isn't even confirmed to be on the switch at all, bethesda has gone on record saying it has no titles specifically confirmed for switch yet lol

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Wow.

[TooB]

kaz had like the exact same reaction when I told him. Lol

[squirrelfriend]

I think the video had fine print saying "trademarks used with permission"

[C.Mongler]

zelda, dq x, dq xi, and just dance are literally the only confirmed games for it right now lol

DUAL SCREENS WILL NEVER WORK!

[squirrelfriend]

they should have moved animal crossing to it (dunno about Pokemon because i see its demise coming)

[Samus Aran]

you see pokemon's demise coming? you must be joking lol the franchise is still ridiculously popular

[squirrelfriend]

The fact that Pokemon allocated less money to its upcoming anime series and cannibalized its traditional games with Pokemon go is the reason why I see its demise

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Solid state media isn't that expensive anymore (well it's way more than discs but compared to the n64 days at least) so it's possible they will have a 32 gb or even 64 gb maximum for the cards, which would negate the need for multicart games.

but it's yet another point in an ever-expanding list that discourages third parties from supporting the switch

porting to the switch is already a highly expensive proposition for third parties due to the costs (financial, temporal and otherwise) of supremely optimizing code for hardware that's two generations behind in computing power

but now they also have to pay a premium for solid state storage vs. discs (optical storage is about 1/10 the price/gigabyte of flash storage)

and the fruit of their labor would ultimately prove to be an inferior product to the ps4 and xbox equivalents every single time because of the immense power discrepancy

meaning ported software wouldn't sell well at all

so most developers are going to reasonably look at the switch and say 'what's the point', while pretending they're going to support it early on for marketing reasons just like what happened with the wii u

honestly, when after all these years nintendo still hasn't made any earnest attempt whatsoever to reconcile with third parties, nobody can blame them for snubbing nintendo

[squirrelfriend]

digital distribution, tec

[C.Mongler]

yeah i'm not sold on that argument whatsoever, we've seen a 3 minute marketing pitch and have no idea what 3rd party support they'll have (or lack thereof) nor development/porting process devs have to go through on this lol

regardless tec would only be happy if nintendo put out a 3 minute trailer that said "we're sorry" to announce them leaving the gaming business forever. unless you seriously believe that nintendo's only way back into the market would be putting out a $500 ps4pro competitor at this stage in the game, which l-o-fucking-l

[Kalahari Inkantation]

I wouldn't say they're dropping the console market to focus on handhelds. In fact, this is more of a console than a traditional handheld. I'd say they're more targeting a different category entirely. This is supposed to be more like a gaming tablet, a third option akin to where tablets lie vs computers and smartphones. Nobody expects their tablet to be as powerful as their desktop, but it' still doing some impressive things here.

i simply fail to see the appeal of such an inbetween device

if i wanted to play games on the go, why not get something that's legitimately portable and can easily be slipped into my pocket (and <half the price of the switch)

if i wanted a proper home console experience, why spend $400 on a product that's wholly inferior to the equivalently priced ps4 pro

how exactly do you market this to someone who really only plays games at home and never outdoors, someone who values power and cost effectiveness

how exactly do you market this to someone who's exactly the opposite and only ever plays on the go, someone who values extreme portability, discreetness, battery life, and cost effectiveness

Also while that graphic comparison shown is good, this will probably not be the X1 straight up, but likely a new optimized chip based on it. Plus as we know gaming systems do more with less hardware compared to computers & smartphones, so I think they'll probably get just a little more out of this. I don't expect it to have all the particle effects, but if they can run similar-looking games or get ports of PS4/xbone games that aren't dumbed down aside from a slight graphical downgrade, that's pretty fucking great.

according to rumours it's the x2, but who knows at this point

in either case it won't even compete with the xbox one, which means third parties will ignore nintendo yet again

dude solid storage has caught up to if not surpassed discs at this point

in capacity (and even then only arguably), not in price

so long as discs exist, flash storage will never be cheaper per unit than optical storage is

[strongbad]

this would make me very excited

also the mspaint mockup of switching out the switch controllers for gcn controller halves or whatever. that'd be kinda neat