Developer information regarding the upcoming Nintendo Switch has made its way online and there’s plenty of information for technology enthusiasts to dig through. What also may be of interest to some is the Nintendo Switch hardware specifications, however these might only be for the development kits and not the final build. Here’s all the info:
- HD Rumble’s technical name is a Linear resonant actuator
- When in handheld mode, the Switch will have an unlock screen like a smartphone to prevent accidental waking.
- The Switch features a Quick Menu. Press and hold the HOME Button for at least one second to display the Quick Settings screen on top of all other screens, including the HOME Menu and any applications. Unlike the 3DS, the active software will not be suspended when this menu is invoked
- The Switch’s keyboard will feature predictive text such as those on iOS and Android
- System Settings will allow the user to edit the following settings:
- Flight Mode Toggle
- Enable/Disable Bluetooth
- Manage Wi-fi
- Manage NFC
- Manage screen brightness
- Screen lock
- User Settings
- Create/Edit Mii
- Theme management
- Controller management
- System Update
- Miis will have more options for hair, eyebrows, eyes, facial hair, glasses, mouths, and skin.
- Miis will not store the creator’s name, their favorites, and their birthday anymore. Anyone can edit Mii characters
- Developers can create and sell Season Passes for their games
- This document confirms an X1 like SoC using Maxwell on the final retail version
- There are NO plans to provide an Internet Browser at this stage but developers are able to access a web applet to display specific websites within their game/app
- A maximum of 8 users can be registered on a system
- Friend requests and game invites CAN be sent from the console.
- “Friend Presence is a feature that uses the Internet to convey information in real time about the online status of friends and the applications they are playing. Among possibilities, we see this being used in the application to check whether friends are in the joinable state, and to use the Friend List system feature screen to show what applications friends are playing.”
- A Nintendo Account can be linked to multiple Switches BUT save data is not automatically synchronised
- There are TWO dev kit devices: SDEV and EDEV
- SDEV – Has built-in ports; no built-in battery
- EDEV – Resembles the retail product exactly but is black color
- Game cards come in 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB variations.
||Everything denied…||
That is wise, Commander. Always deny rumors until they are confirmed by High Command.
||Resist or deny…||
Looks good to me
https://68.media.tumblr.com/feaa39633d6853abd7ab92d503f0fbb3/tumblr_inline_ohru3lwvFh1utrd2q_500.jpg
No internet browser is not good. Hopefully that info is false.
I guess… never used the internet browser on the other systems. To me, that is needless, but I am not everyone.
I use the PS4 browser, it’s fun watching youtube videos on my tv. I sometimes used the Wii U browser, but the PS4 is far superior so I always found myself using that one instead.
To not include a browser in a paid service that we got on the Wii U for free is kind of insane honestly.
Meant to add, even the 3ds has an internet browser.
It might come down the line.
The Wii U is the only console that I DO use the internet browser on. Because the Gamepad is portable, and I can show things to my family. So I’m really hoping that the Switch eventually gets a browser. But I don’t care about Hulu, Netflix, or any other apps like that.
The Wii U browser was STELLAR for a game console back at launch. It was nearly flawless and seemed to be improving. However, somewhere along the way, it got broken. Later in the life of the Wii U, it seemed to get slower and slower and less and less functional. I have no idea what happened.
I get that, but for most people, there are just so many other devices to browse on that it seems unnecessary. Id rather they add the function later if needed than load the OS with too much “filler” like they did the Wii U, which ultimately wasted their time… Tvii comes to mind, even though I liked the idea of that as well
To be fair, Nintendo had no idea that these features were “filler”. At the time, they thought the Wii U might be a more all-purpose device with its tablet-like Gamepad. TVii was a fantastic idea that several start-ups were pushing at the time.
Looks good to me
What about Nintendo Network ID?.
Is that saying 3.25 GB of RAM is available for games? That’s actually really not that far off from PS4/XB1 which use 4-5. I guess now we know why the OS seems so crappy. For me it’s more than a fair trade off.
PS4 uses up to 5.5GB.
Yes but I’d imagine that’s not for everything and only the most graphics intensive games.
It really doesn’t matter if they’re graphically intense. Graphically intense games don’t inherently have to use more memory. An open world game might be using that memory to store larger sections of the game world in memory.
More like 6.0 not 5.5. 3.5 is okay for switch, but games look like the can do 4K.
coincides with what the ARMS developer said about the CPU. It looks accurate and would put it just a little below the xbox one as a console, and the most powerful handheld ever. I personally feel like Nintendo can make all their games 1080p 60fps so it’s all good to me. Make Bayonetta 3 happen Platinum.
Myself and Agato looked up the CPU performance of the A57 vs Jaguar cores just yesterday and we found that 4 A57 cores at 2Ghz (assuming that is the final clock) would be on-par with PS4’s CPU, but XBO’s would still be better. If the Switches CPU is actually clocked at 1Ghz like Digital Foundry said, then it’ll be about half the potential performance of the PS4’s CPU. The reason why I’m still willing to believe DF’s clock speeds is because console’s tend to use locked clock speeds so that performance and heat is consistent. This document says “up to” which infers a dynamic clock speed with highs that the X1 wasn’t able to reach in larger passively cooled devices.
I do not know that obssesion for the tech specs; the most imnportant thing is the games, and how they are played and look; i do not care if the’re some gobblins or ghost living and pushing buttons inside the console.
||Who told you about the Ghosts?…||
More importantly, the Goblins??
The tech specs can effect what games can be made on the system to some extent. An Assassin’s Creed game with large crowds you need to sneak through that all have their own viewing cones, pathfinding, and all that might require a decent CPU and stuff like Project Cars was CPU and GPU bound even on the PS4.
and Project CARS still Sucked! even with all its bells and whistles xD
And All games can be customized to the Switch, hell have you seen the Working Batman Arkham Asylum WII port?
I already clarified what I was getting at. Think of something like Pikmin as an example. Having 100 small Pikmin on screen doing their own thing is something that would have been impossible of the N64. We have gotten to the point where issues like that are far less of a problem but there’s always a possibility that somebody comes up with an idea for a game that has gameplay that is very CPU limited.
Assassin’s Creed was born in PS3/X360 generation… it’s not that far away now. All in all games can still be ported to older technology by cutting just ornaments. This generation is just an update to the previous one (big by RAM, that’s it).
The Switch is more powerful than previous generation so you can do anything with it. RAM… it got aplenty, etc.
It’s always the same soup reshuffled, just numbers… not actual gameplay changes. One or two characters more on the display does not change anything. It’s not Daggerfall vs. Morrowind. It’s even less than Morrowind vs. Oblivion.
Project Cars 2 it’s just bla bla, all in all it isn’t a revolution, just an update. It’s a revolution against Grand Prix Legends, a 20 years old simulation game.
If they want they can port it, if they don’t want it’s because they don’t see the market for it (me too).
I was actually thinking of Assassin’s Creed Unity as an example of an Assassin’s Creed game that is already CPU limited on the more powerful systems. I have not played the game but I’m imagining that, since it’s a stealth game, using dense crowds for cover and all that is inherently linked to the gameplay and if the crowds are overall far less capable of being dense, than you as a player have less of an idea of how hidden you are.
Saying Project Cars is just an update to Grand Prix Legends is kind of dismissive. I don’t understand the interest in simulation racing games but if simulation is really the selling point then that can’t always be scaled down. Sure, graphics and rain effects can be scaled down easily enough but you generally don’t want to scale down much of the car’s physics and how it handles in a game like that.
Basically, sometimes things we would normally see as just as visual (like the crowd density) can actually contribute to the gameplay. Obviously, that won’t be an issue with any game made exclusively for a platform but could be a problem for a game attempting to support multiple platforms with a high CPU requirement.
But Assassin’s Creed is always the same soup, you can make the crow bigger but mechanics still the same. New generation just added better graphics and some additional content thanks to RAM (useful in open worlds games, etc.) but that’s it. No revolutions, just updates like with PC. And the Switch, strangely, has plenty of RAM too… they didn’t run short on it.
With simulation, especially car racing, it’s easy to cut some ‘fidelity’ to port it to other consoles and it wouldn’t affect much your perception of the gameplay, it’s always about fun primarily, and every simulator will be tweaked to act ‘playable’ before ‘realistic’.
I can understand people liking more power because models are rendered better, and the likes. But with the old Uncharted on the PS3 we reached a ‘good enough’ graphics quality. And PS4 isn’t going to wow that PS3 player, they will see it as an update, just that. So why Nintendo should have not pursued it’s gameplay focused target with its decent price point target? To follow what? A skin update?
Right, all third parties will be not there, but they weren’t there even with the GameCube, they just don’t like Nintendo competition. Players tends to buy Nintendo games instead of third party games on their console. Nintendo just said “I do this for us” if you like it bring your games, you are welcome. And many will be on-board with something: Square-Enix, Ubisoft, SEGA, Bandai… those were supporting Nintendo and they still are. Then we will see by Christmas time if others will join the party. Anyway personally I’m following just Nintendo, Square-Enix and SEGA eventually… others can join the fun if they like and if they want to offer something substantial. Not the same Battlefield that I would buy on Steam for 20$…
I think you might have missed my point. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Assassin’s Creed because that just invites people to be dismissive of it.
I’m not talking about any revolutions, I’m simply stating that there have been games whose core concept was enabled by better hardware and it would be foolish to think that we’ve at the end of the line when it comes to stuff like that.
Some games would do something more, yes. Nothing really affecting gameplay though (apart for the added RAM, RAM was on the short side in the previous generation). That’s the point.
We need far more power for actual changes to gameplay. Those consoles had introduced nothing comparable to the Switch (motion controls and portability are very big features).
Thank you for being smart. IDC what the fuck people say, specs matter. Hyrule Warriors slows the fuck down when there’s a ton of enemies on the screen. That’s when specs come in. When you’re playing a game and there’s a ton of sprites on screen and things slow down, specs then matter.
There are two positions that I FLAT-OUT reject completely – and immediately:
1) Hardware specs (aka graphics capability aka performance) are EVERYTHING and an experience isn’t worthwhile if it’s not the bleeding edge – I reject that.
2) Hardware specs are NOTHING and in such a competitive and cutthroat market specs don’t matter at all so long as the games are fun. – I reject that too, and that seems to be the position you’re advancing.
I say the answer is somewhere in-between. Hardware without fun games is worthless. Granted. I mean, look at the Panasonic 3DO from the early-mid 90’s. That it was so expensive sure didn’t help either, did it? But in a world of high-end, huge, immersive blockbusters that require a great deal of oomph to run, underpowered hardware is going to keep those experiences and their developers – as well as the end users who demand them at bay, and Nintendo will only continue to be taken less and less seriously by more and more players. So we simply CANNOT take a “Hardware matters nothing” stance.
Of course, on the other hand, we don’t want to make TOO much of a big deal about it either, because the Switch has so much other stuff going for it. It has the first party IPs, of course, and it has better 3rd party support than Nintendo has had in decades, arguably. And while not exactly cheap, it’s also not crazy expensive…….and of course, the sheer number of use cases for it EXPONENTIALLY exceed that of any other game platform ever invented! Even with disappointing hardware, this system still has a lot going for it.
And besides, if these numbers are right, then it’s not super duper disappointing. It makes it significantly more powerful than the WiiU (which was my bottom line), approaching XB1 performance levels when docked, I believe, and would also be the most powerful handheld system ever made, even when undocked – by quite a significant vector! Indisputably.
Plus, this system is reported to have muuuuuuuuch better support for Unreal engine 4 than XB1 or PS4, plus a whole host of other cutting edge APIs, so even though technically weaker than the others, yes, if it can just harness these features and optimize their games to so much better a degree, then while I’m not exactly holding my breath, it’s still at least conceivable that the Switch could largely erase those Hardware deficits in terms of real-life practical experience with their games (or hope against hope remotely possible – even exceed them sometimes). Perhaps that’ll be enough to draw the developers. Of course, the 32GB limit of the cards is problematic, but there are ways around that if they work hard enough.
So, while I’m not exactly blown away by the specs, neither am I tremendously disappointed by them. I was hoping for Pascal architecture. So seeing Maxwell was a big let down. But unless I’m very seriously overestimating what i’m seeing here in print, this thing is more than powerful enough for what it needs to be, and again, the hardware specs, rightly said, are not even the star of the show.
So, amazing, utterly paradigmatic gaming potential through the ultra-unique, “absolutely everything” design approach with its million use-cases, paired with first party and second party Nintendo IPs, better 3rd-party support than we’ve seen in a real long time…..and as we now know, somewhat modest, but still TOTALLY respectable hardware – and all at a not unreasonable price…..I’m actually quite optimistic for the system and even more excited to get my hands on it!
The only lingering X-Factor now is whether or not we’ll be seeing any AAA blockbusters on it. I don’t think we’re sunk without them, necessarily. But having them would sure be a huge feather in the cap, wouldn’t it?
So yes, I’m reasonably happy. But let’s please keep BOTH the fact that hardware is not paramount, nor altogether unimportant in view. It IS important – and that’s not an opinion, good sir – it’s a FACT!
Cheers!
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So, basically the Eurogamer leak then?
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I thought that miis weren’t coming back? Unless I’m not remembering correctly.
Miis! Yay!
Now I can see why all these 3rd party devs are snickering about their games not being able to run on the Switch. The largest game card is 32GB.
That’s plenty
Even an old game like Destiny is 40GB. We will for sure not be getting games like Final Fantasy 15 (50GB)
Data can be compacted on cartridges. Explain how Destiny doesn’t fits but Skyrim or Breath of the Wild do. I’m pretty sure those have a lot more content.
Breath of the Wild is only 13.4GB and Skyrim remastered is 22.75GB
There are workarounds.
Yeah. I own two games on my X1 that were bigger than that without their updates.
Basically there will occasionally be games that switch won’t have a chance in hell of playing, but those should be infrequent, and I’m sure MOST anyone early adopting this thing are not too concerned.
I saw some more in-game footage of Zelda breath of the wild and I saw where are link held up a tablet and looked at the environment through the tablet. It made me very sad to think that that functionality may be gone.
If they truly gimped the Wii U version, then watching link use the GamePad in the game and not having that functionality usable is going to be a very painful reminder every time I play the game about what Nintendo was willing to do to sell Hardware by sacrificing its most popular IP.
I’m still holding out hope that the GamePad functionality is still in the game and Nintendo doesn’t consider it a game-changing experience, thus leaving it in. Fingers crossed.
At this time, the biggest is probably 32GB. Nothing says that in a year’s time 64GB cards will be available for use. Look at how SD cards are constantly growing in size. Even Super Nintendo started out with probably 2 or 4MBit cartridges and grew up to 32MBit by the end of its life. So I highly doubt 32GB cards (if true) will be as big as they’ll get.
To me this reads as the Switch is somewhere between the Wii U and Xbox One in terms of specs, don’t know what console it’ll be more comparable to though – hopefully it’s closer to the Xbox One than the Wii U in terms of power.
My impression, and seemingly, the majority view on the comments here seem to paint it much closer to XB1 – which is great! I wanted it to be at least that powerful – heck I wanted more.
But my minimum “deal/no deal” line in the sand was that it was at least as powerful as the WiiU, and it seems as if it blows waaaaay past that. So in terms of my purchasing plans and decisions, there’s a sense in which it no longer matters to me just how powerful it as it is at least powerful enough to meet my personal minimum requirements, and so Lord willing, I’m buying it either way.
However, the “tech-spec-head/nerd” in me will never let myself TRULY not care, and the foolish optimist in me will always be dreaming of and hoping for the maximum.
So knowing that it’s closer in spec to the XB1 than the WiiU, and that with its full API support could conceivably narrow or possibly even erase – or sometimes even possibly overcome – that hardware deficit against the bigger system leaves me ultimately satisfied with the specs – relieved even – heck, happy even – and yet, paradoxically, still somewhat disappointed. I was admittedly still hoping for even more power. I was disappointed to see Maxwell instead of Pascal for instance. Having just bought a GTX1070 for my computer, and comparing the Maxwell Titan X (which my Pascal 1070 just edges out) vs the new Pascal Titan X (which totally blows my 1070 out of the water), I know how big of a difference Pascal can make. Too bad Switch isn’t using it!
Anyway, short answer, the consensus here seems to put the Switch much closer to XB1 than to WiiU. So, hooray! :-)
Cheers!
Pascal, while a great architecture and all, technically isn’t that much better of an architecture than Maxwell is. If you look at the stock specs (for example) between a GTX 980 and a GTX 1080, the real difference is a die shrink. Maxwell is on a 28nm process and Pascale is on a 16nm process. This allows a Pascal-based GPU to shove more transistors, thus more CUDA cores, into the GPU. On top of that, the die shrink makes Pascal more energy and thermal efficient, which allows for a big boost in base clock speed (around 40% higher). That combination of more CUDA cores and higher clock speed give the GTX 1080 a nearly 80% increase GFLOPS performance over the GTX 980, over double the Texture rate, and about a 50% increase in pixel rate.
This leak could be true or at least mostly true, and even that is up for debate since it seems to come from July and not October, thus could represent earlier dev builds as this article states. It also doesn’t tell the whole story, like what kind of extra features the SoC has, what process it’s built on (Foxconn leak suggests 16nm, smaller than stock Tegra X1’s 20nm), what other customizations were done, etc. Nintendo and NVidia probably are using a Tegra X1 at least as a basis, and then modifying it from there.
So, if this is just a dev build, and the final specs are different, would we expect the final build’s specs to be higher or lower? Or is that a question that can’t be answered yet without more info?
Didn’t they say there were no more Mimi’s so that means this is false if so.
They said there would be Miis for profiles and such. But there will be nothing like Mii Plaza or Mii games. If I remember correctly.
A mii was shown in a game during the game montage.
Ahhh I see makes sense.
The spec sheet also mentions that the Switch can display 4k @ 30fps, which I’m not sure I believe. But if true, would be pretty impressive.
4k @ 30fps is likely for video and not for up-scaling games. A number of flagship mobile SoC’s and their GPUs (Tegra X1 included) are capable of displaying 4k video.
The fact it keep saying “TBD” makes me feel that these are just the July 2016 specs and not the updated October 2016 specs
Can we please have more hair color and eye options?
It’s kind of hard looking at how incomplete my Senran Kagura Miis look. Some heterochromatic eyes would be nice.
So my friend has an XBO set as the “home console” and he and his buddy buy one digital copy of a game and are both able to play it from two separate consoles. Could it be that we’ll be able to do the same thing? Open a friends MyNintendo on your Switch and download their games??
Any opinion or info is useful.
so basicly its just under the power of xbox one and ps4.
i figured as much, and with 64bit/Nvidea no wonder its being praised for its ease of developement, it might as well be a custom build pc with nintendo OS.
I figured too. The second it was revealed as a hybrid system rather than separate home and portable aspects, I figured it would run a more mobile architecture which would be less powerful of an XBox One and PS4 that are more PC-like. If you really look at it, that Switch is doing a hell of a lot with its mobile architecture. If you want to look at specs, it’s pushing around 3/4 of the XB1 performance using 14-20% the wattage (docked).
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There’s a tiny little voice inside of me that’s still a tad disappointed in these numbers, as I was hoping for more. For instance – I was hoping for Pascal architecture vs Maxwell.
But ultimately, I’m quite well satisfied with the specs – and even relieved as we were all afraid, I think, that it was going to be something quite a bit less substantial even than this. This at least puts it just below XB1 and PS4 territory, which is a satisfying leap beyond what the WiiU was (that it be more powerful than the WiiU was my bare minimum “deal/no deal” dividing line, and if nothing else, we’re going to at least be blowing way past that.)
So, while the tech-spec-geek in me will never allow myself be able to TRULY “not care how powerful this thing is”, at least in terms of its impacts to my buying decisions, there is a sense now in which it almost doesn’t matter to me anymore how powerful it is, because Lord willing, I’m buying this thing first chance I get no matter what.
It’s just nice that it does have some decent might to it after all, and if I have my facts straight here, it has so much better support for the hip new APIs like UE4 and Vulkan and all of that than the PS4/XB. So more exciting yet is that at least in abstract theory, should developers be able to properly utilize those APIs and sufficiently optimize their games for them, then at least in some cases, we should see that hardware deficit be partially or even entirely erased in terms of real-life gaming experience. Heck, wild pipe dream here, I’m sure – but there’s no reason to not even think in terms of it ultimately outperforming them in the right circumstances, despite the admittedly inferior hardware!
So, even though I was still hoping for more, myself, I have to admit that this just might well have been the PERFECT landing spot in the balancing act between “powerful enough” and “cheap enough” for a form factor / use case design where the hardware, regardless of how strong or weak it is is ultimately ANYTHING BUT the star of the show! They might’ve just nailed it perfectly!
Now I’m REALLY excited to get my hands on the Switch! This thing is gonna be AMAZEBALLS!! :-D
Cheers!
So, based on these specs, it’s roughly as powerful as Xbox One on a theoretical level.
Only 8 accounts per console? I would need nine. WTF is this shit?
Big family?
It’s a portable Wii U, that’s it. With more RAM and able to handle higher resolutions.
Look a the games, they are Wii U quality. What do you expect from a portable? An XB1? Be realistic guys.
Still very good technology, it costs 100$ more than a New 3DS and has:
1. Much better and larger screen (+contrast, +resolution, capacitive).
2. Wii U games quality (on the go!).
3. Joy-Con (high precision motion controllers).
4. A dock to play games on the TV at 1080p/60.
5. A revamped online (to be seen).
6. 32 GB cartridges (2x BotW content possible)
7. Multiple controllers out of the box.
8. A joypad base where to installs Joy-Cons for classic gaming on the TV.
9. Mario Odissey (!).
But what do you pretend from Nintendo? But really… I would never buy a New 3DS with this one out.
Though accessories price is atrocious.
WAIT A SECOND. Why doesn’t it support h.265? That would help reduce the size of pre-rendered cutscenes that are still sometimes in used in games and thus the size of games that use them. I’m also pretty sure it’s a requirements for 4K Netflix and is certainly a requirement for watching HDR content on Netflix.
They could have even provided the option for players to record gameplay in h.265 to save space. It just seems like a weird feature to opt out of.
‘Functionality available from the application’, it should have been locked to developers at that time, but if it’s supported in hardware it could be unlocked to developers by now. Anyway isn’t an important feature thinking only at the games. BotW is a very rich content game and it’s just 14 GB. H.264 is still very good and they can compress more by lowering quality without undermine perceived quality. I do compress a lot on my TV movies and don’t notice anything. 32 GB is an enourmous amount with that hardware in mind, though I suppose that actually they are using cartridges not bigger than 16 GB reserving 32 GB for a later time. Netflix does not seem to be planned.
The chart suggests its not supported by the hardware at all. Regardless of what can be done with h.264, you can always get away with more with h.265. I’ve done some testing with it recently and it can compress even 1440p really well at like 9Mbps.
I can tell you that Ghos is looking very good at 720p/h.264 and 1.8 Mbps on my 32″. ^_^
I don’t think Nintendo customers would care at all for 9 Mbps Full HD content. It’s far less noticeable than PS4 vs Switch graphics difference.
My point is that a 1080p game is going to have 1080p pre-rendered cut scenes, developers are going to try to put their games on the smallest cartridge they can, and the Switch itself is more storage limited than the other systems. It would be smart to not have to use any more space than you need to.
No problems at all, with 32 GB Nintendo will never eun out of space. With 4 gigs of those you can have already two hours of movie quality FMV, and you don’t need all that definition to make FMV looks great. First time BD came out they were using MPEG-2 compression, etc. H.264 is perfectly capable, and 32 GB are aplenty.
I am well aware of what different formats are capable of, I’m a film maker. I’ve dealt with compressed and uncompressed video for awhile.
Do you know Super Mario Galaxy to have a lot of pre-rendered cutscenes? Probably not, but they were there and account for 2.23GBs out of 3.26GBs (68%). That was just SD video. On the Switch, that’s the difference between shipping on a 4GB card or 2GB card.
When it comes to game capture, you’re not talking about less than 32GB of space. There’s still an operating system on there. On top of that, while you can get a lot out of pre-compressed h.264, you’re less likely to use bit-rate as efficiently when you’re encoding on the fly. The Wii U gamepad averaged 3Mbps but would spike to as high as 45Mbps for 854×480 video and people were still able to make out macro-blocking at times. I suppose they could buffer a second of footage in this case before it’s encoded but it’ll never be as space efficient as h.265 can be.
I hope I don’t find out that they also decided to get rid of ASTC and only S3TC as well because, if they did, then they would have officially thrown out every possible advantage they would have had over the competition.
But they can compress at the way they like. More tham 4Mbps at H.264 for 1080p content would be just a waste of resources. I don’t see any differences, and I’m pretty picky too like you. A polemic on this would be nonsense myownfriend, admit it. :)))
There is no storage problem on the Switch, just eventually the internal one, but it’s expandible with a 128GB common SD card, and the console itself it’s already cheap enough. It’s priced as a mediocre telephone… can’t ask more to Nintendo, really.
You know damn well that consoles and phones have very different business models that allow consoles to be sold for cheaper and we know this thing can be sold for $250. One can buy a PS4 bundle with a game for $250 right now and that supports Netflix, Twitch, and BD playback and has 500GB of storage. You can argue that using game cards removes the need for having vast amounts of internal storage but that really makes no difference for people who prefer downloading games.
Realistically, we know we’re not getting all of that 32GB of internal storage. The OS could easily take up 4GB, so that’s 28GB left. Installing BotW already brings your storage down to 14.6GB. Another game like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe could take up 6GB (if they’re not using ASTC). Then you have about enough space for about 86 minutes of recorded gameplay at 12Mb/s.
Yea, I know you think 4Mb/s is enough but that would be for slow moving, 24-30fps stuff. 4Mb/s would break up with a fast moving 60fps game. I just took 10 minutes of gameplay footage from Wonderful 101, a fast moving 720p 60fps game, and compressed it to 4Mb/s using h.264 and it was filled with noticeable artifacting. Maybe you can get away with 10Mb/s, but to say that you don’t need more than 4Mb/s for 1080p video is just plain wrong.
Ryse of Rome is 26 GB, Fallout 4 is 28, BotW 14… storage is enough. You seem to need a reason to attack that console. It uses cartridges, the best support ever. Sturdy, small.
Xbox 360 games were 7 GB.
It will cost 250$, if you need that price, wait one year and buy it then.
I’m comfortable at 299$. I payed 249$ for a Nintendo 64. I payed 399$ for a Samsung S5. I will not complain with a 299$ price point. There are development costs, etc., a sh1tty smartphone can cost more. It has many accessories compared to a stupid tablet at the same price. Joy-Con, dock, HDMI cable, 32 GB SSD, Joy-Con base. Anyway you can wait to buy it at the price you will like.
One only thing is bad in that system.: cost for additional accessories.
Again, you’re completely missing the point. I’m not attacking the use of cartridges, I love cartridges. But unlike Blu-ray discs, there is a reason to keep games small on the Switch. Those games would have to ship on 32GB cartridges and wouldn’t necessarily fit on the internal storage. Making larger cartridges also costs more and eats into a developers profit. So why not provide every tool that you can to make sure games are as small as possible?
Like I said, it worries me that the Switch version of BotW is actually slightly bigger than the Wii U version. The TX1 has support for ASTC which should allow any 4bpp S3TC textures to be at least 11% smaller and slightly better quality. Looking at it’s art style, I’m sure they could have gotten some to closer to half their size with no noticeable degradation in quality. Why is it larger on the Switch?
Btw, you showed yet again that you’re really out of your element when talking about this stuff. Did you just say this comes with a 32GB SSD? It doesn’t use an SSD. It’s a tablet, it uses 32GB eMMC flash memory. You know how much that costs? About $7. As for everything else, it should add up to about $200 including manufacturing.
And don’t compare it’s price to the N64. When the N64 was $250, it was on the bleeding edge of consoles. The Switch is expensive for what it offers. The succesor to the Wii U had so much potential but Nintendo messed it up with the Switch’s concept and even for what it is, they could have had higher performance at the same or lower manufacturing cost if they just made their own chip with licensed designs from ARM and PowerVR.
The games don’t have to fit in the internal storage and that it’s one of the cartridge’s conveniences.
32 GB is an enormous quantity of data for a cartridge/optical disk. Not for an SSD.
If it’s an eMMC it should be really special since it can trasfer data at 400 MB/s. If that’s the case congratulation to Nintendo for the achievement, though you can call it BBS but it’s just the internal storage of that console.
SSD, PCS… whatever the name that’s its job. An SSD it’s just NANDs coupled with a controller and a firmware, heh.
Whatever the cost Apple would let you pay 100 dollars for that alone, so what?
Exactly what would you like in an hybrid console (so portable too), an optical disk? Where are you headed with this polemic?
Who knows why it is larger? Maybe they put more data in, maybe differences in the file system, probably the former.
I’m out of my element when talking what? What exactly are you talking about? You are just doing polemics without any head or tail. Just bubbling numbers, definitions and speculation without any data. Who told you that the Switch storage is based off an eMMC? Who told you the format of the textures? You are talking about nothing, and pretend to be taken seriously. You even go along by saying that they need very high data throughput to make high resolution FMV on their games… it sounds sometimes pathetic you know.
The Switch IS the bleeding edge, it does not exist a single console comparable to this, just masked PC you like to praise and venerate.
You make it simple by saying: “Nintendo should have used ‘this’ technology”. My Nintendo News will surely fill out a letter for Nintendo, they will advice it that they need to hire you for your precious advice for their next console. Engineer myownfriend.
Signed and delivered. :lol:
Continue to revere the masked PCs… no one will told you to not do so. In the meantime I will enjoy my poor eMMC/cartridge/H.264 system.
Not even H.264 is official data. :lol:
At least the word ‘cartridge’ is. :rotfl:
“The games don’t have to fit in the internal storage and that it’s one of the cartridge’s conveniences.”
Again, you don’t understand what I’m saying. There are two ways people like to get games; they either download them or they buy them physically. If they buy their game’s physically, then the only time they’ll use internal storage is when saving games (assuming there’s not flash memory on the cartridge), installing patches and DLC, and capturing video. The example I brought up before was for someone who prefers to download their games. For them, they’ll need to by a MicroSD card within a week. Sure that only costs about $30 but the fact that they’ll need it so quickly means that the system is low on storage.
“32 GB is an enormous quantity of data for a cartridge/optical disk. Not for an SSD.
If it’s an eMMC it should be really special since it can trasfer data at 400 MB/s. If that’s the case congratulation to Nintendo for the achievement, though you can call it BBS but it’s just the internal storage of that console.”
Again, you’re making your point really badly. Why bring up that 32GB is enormous for cartridges and optical disks but not for SSD? Isn’t that just more proof that they should have given developers every tool possible to keep the size of game’s down? Also 32GB is not enormous for an optical disk because Blu-ray production has been well below $1 per disk for years. And what is Nintendo achieving here? They didn’t make the eMMC chip, they just bought an eMMC chip with a theoretical max performance of 400MB/s. Yea, that’s fast but it’s only really relevant to the OS. If you’re playing off a cartridge, then you’re not getting anywhere near those speeds and if you’re playing off an MicroSD card, you’re getting maybe 80-90MB/s max. The eMMC’s speed only counts for the few games you have on internal storage and it should reduce load times but you can’t build a games streaming system with those speeds in mind either.
“SSD, PCS… whatever the name that’s its job. An SSD it’s just NANDs coupled with a controller and a firmware, heh.”
Yea, which is why they’re never used in small tablets. An eMMC is NAND memory coupled with a controller. It takes up less space than a seperate controller and smaller NANDS.
“Whatever the cost Apple would let you pay 100 dollars for that alone, so what?”
And? We’re not talking about Apple here.
“Exactly what would you like in an hybrid console (so portable too), an optical disk?”
I actually don’t want a hybrid console and no, if you pay attention to what I was saying, I very clearly said that I really like cartridges, I’m just aware that they aren’t as cheap as optical disks, that’s why I’m talking about h.265 and ASTC. These are compression technologies and the latter one would not only shrink the size of most games which is advantageous to both developers and download-only games, but it speeds up load times and lowers memory bandwidth.
“Where are you headed with this polemic?”
Which polemic? The one on h.265, Switch, or you?
“Who knows why it is larger? Maybe they put more data in, maybe differences in the file system, probably the former.”
Not sure why the file system would be worse than the Wii U’s. I’m thinking it’s possibly more audio data but the fact that the game is still bigger suggests that they’re not using ASTC which would be a huge mistake. Even if assetts were already compressed with zlib or whatever Nintendo’s own compression algorithm is called, there would be a decrease in texture storage of about 40%
“I’m out of my element when talking what? What exactly are you talking about? You are just doing polemics without any head or tail. Just bubbling numbers, definitions and speculation without any data.”
There are bill of materials for devices available all from IHS that break down costs of individual parts in consoles, handhelds, phones, and tablets. There are also sites like DRAM exchange which provide current average prices for different types of flash memory and DRAM. Any other numbers I brought up were from benchmarks and you knew that so don’t claim I don’t have data.
“Who told you that the Switch storage is based off an eMMC?”
It’s obvious. That’s what embedded devices use and that’s what Nintendo has used in the Wii U and 3DS.
“Who told you the format of the textures?”
Nobody, which is why I’m question whether or not they’re using ASTC. Every console since the Gamecube has licensed S3TC. The only other formats available are ETC1/2 which has no size advantage over S3TC, PVRTC which is proprietary PowerVR format, and ASTC which is free to implement and can storage textures in as little as 0.89bpp. Unless Nintendo designed their own compresed texture format, than they’re using one of the three available to them.
“You are talking about nothing, and pretend to be taken seriously.”
Nope. Not really. I’m kind of talking about a lot and you’re on defensive for some reason.
“You even go along by saying that they need very high data throughput to make high resolution FMV on their games… it sounds sometimes pathetic you know.”
I never equated FMV resolution to the rendering resolution of the games. And 10Mb/s is not high throughput unless you’re talking about streaming stuff from Youtube. Every camera or capture device that uses h.264 records at bit-rates of at least around 15Mb/s. I also quite clearly was talking about game capturing as well, a feature that Nintendo has confirmed for the Switch but you ignored that. When you’re making an FMV, you can do things like multi-pass rendering and you can dedicate more time to it. If you’re encoding on the fly, as is the case when capturing game footage, you don’t have those advantages.
“The Switch IS the bleeding edge, it does not exist a single console comparable to this, just masked PC you like to praise and venerate.”
Have a brought up PC’s once? And no, it’s not bleeding edge. The Tegra X1, customized or not, is not the bleeding edge of mobile technology especially if it leaves out things like ASTC and HEVC.
“You make it simple by saying: “Nintendo should have used ‘this’ technology”. My Nintendo News will surely fill out a letter for Nintendo, they will advice it that they need to hire you for your precious advice for their next console. Engineer myownfriend.
Signed and delivered. :lol:”
Yea, and you’ll praise it because you won’t know it was made by me lol
“Continue to revere the masked PCs… no one will told you to not do so.”
Again, I never mentioned PCs. Unless you’re talking about the XBO and PS4 which I do not have and aren’t PCs.
“In the meantime I will enjoy my poor eMMC/cartridge/H.264 system.
Not even H.264 is official data. :lol:
At least the word ‘cartridge’ is. :rotfl:”
Good for you, Captain Complacent. Those who know better won’t be afraid to criticize bad decisions.
We don’t know about the Switch storage, I say this again. 400 MB/s though it’s SSD field. My SSD does worse.
They want to gain money from the hardware itself. The price is right, though I think they can go down to 199 without losing money but the 3DS costs that money. Certainly the aren’t getting 3x production price like Apple.
Digital people will buy an SSD card.
Most people will buy physical plus digital just for simple and cheap games.
You don’t know which compression technology will they use, H.264 still would be perfect. It’s the most diffused technology for 1080p content, if they can use H.265: just better.
More audio data it’s plausible since they said it was the better version for audio.
Those breakdown are of no use, they don’t take in consideration different dealers, etc.
Why you question it if no ones know it? And why it should be important from a customer point of view? (texture format)
I’m not defensive, I’m not happy about attacks on a system that no one knows even its specifications. They delivered BotW on an handheld and that’s ‘normal’. It isn’t and the good technology it’s showing off even without ‘public specs’.
I deal with 4 Mbps full HD content and it’s perfect on my TV. 24 fps obviously.
If system wasn’t cool I would have not planned to buy it. I never bought a Nintendo system in the last 10 years. Now it’s time.
“We don’t know about the Switch storage, I say this again. 400 MB/s though it’s SSD field. My SSD does worse.”
I’ll say this yet again. The speed of the internal storage does not matter much when most of the software will be on a MicroSD card or cartridge. I’ve been talking about the amount, not speed, of storage the whole time.
“They want to gain money from the hardware itself. The price is right, though I think they can go down to 199 without losing money but the 3DS costs that money. Certainly the aren’t getting 3x production price like Apple.”
Actually, I’m not completely comfortable saying they can still make a profit at $200 but they definitely can at $250. Survey’s have shown that roughly 60% of Japanese gamers feel the Switch is overpriced and that’s a sentiment a lot of people have in the US as well, so it’s really not priced right. Lowering the price would mean they make less money on each unit but they’ll sell more units overall and potentially make more money off game sales.
“Digital people will buy an SSD card.”
I assume you meant SD card. Still, the higher capacity SD cards get expensive very quickly so that doesn’t really solve the storage problem. The SD card becomes a cost that just raises the price in the eye of those gamers. 128GB is an additional $40 and 256GB is an additional $150-200.
“Most people will buy physical plus digital just for simple and cheap games.”
This is true but even those who buy physical will buy DLC which can be kept smaller with ASTC. When even Wii U DLC is 2GB-4GB, that can add up quickly. I don’t really download games on my Wii U except for indie titles, DLC, VC games, and demos and I only have 40GB left on the 128GB flash drive I bought about 2 years ago and there are people who buy way more games and DLC than than I do. Also, one thing you may not be aware of, which they hopefully fix, is that Virtual Console games are each packaged with an emulator on the Wii U so games even NES games take up 17MB and GBA games are about 50MB.
“You don’t know which compression technology will they use, H.264 still would be perfect. It’s the most diffused technology for 1080p content, if they can use H.265: just better.”
H.264 can’t be perfect if h.265 is better. That’s my point.
“Those breakdown are of no use, they don’t take in consideration different dealers, etc.”
Apple, Sony, and Microsoft aren’t buying parts from Newark.com and Monoprice, they’re getting parts directly from companies. When you find Hynix memory in something, they got it directly from Hynix so dealers aren’t a factor.
“Why you question it if no ones know it? And why it should be important from a customer point of view? (texture format)”
As I stated, it’s important because ASTC would have decreased the size of games and DLC. That means they take up less storage, they take less time to download, and they take up less bandwidth. Those better the user experience and are incredibly useful if someone has a metered internet connection. And as a technical critique of the system, ASTC would have further improved load times and used less memory and memory bandwidth. Using ASTC instead of S3TC or ETC could be the conceivably prevent some frame dips. It also would have been one thing that the Switch would have had over the XBO and PS4.
“I’m not defensive, I’m not happy about attacks on a system that no one knows even its specifications.”
Except specs have been brutally consistent across both rumors and official reports from sites that clearly have reliable sources. Further more, you’re not just claiming that specs are wrong, you’re also defending those specs.
“They delivered BotW on an handheld and that’s ‘normal’. It isn’t and the good technology it’s showing off even without ‘public specs’.”
Like I said, mobile technology has improved leaps and bounds since the Wii U came out so BotW on a portable device doesn’t surprise me. It’s not technological achievement that BotW is running in a handheld, it’s just what mobile chips are capable off now especially when you’re talking about 720p 30fps.
“I deal with 4 Mbps full HD content and it’s perfect on my TV. 24 fps obviously.”
Movies compress better because the bitrate is spread across far fewer frames and the camera is generally static or moves smoothly. Bokeh also compresses very well. Once you increase the frame rate to 60, then you’ll want to increase the bitrate to just as much which would be 10Mb/s. For video game footage, you’ll generally want a little more because of how much can change in the course of one second.
“If system wasn’t cool I would have not planned to buy it. I never bought a Nintendo system in the last 10 years. Now it’s time.”
Well, that explains a lot actually. You’re less familiar with what the Switch is dropping.
I actually love the Wii U. Sure, I wish it had better specs but the Gamepad is extremely cool to me. I call it the Swiss army knife of controllers. It’s got a touch screen, NFC, a camera, sensor bar, accelerometer, gyroscope, traditional controls, a microphone, speakers, and IR blaster. It combines so many things and does some much but was never used to full potential. Sure, it could have been lighter and smaller, it’s battery could have been better, and it’s range could have been better but all of those things would have gotten significantly better just through updated technology. A capacitive touch screen would have removed the need for the protective cage behind the controller making it lighter. The Wii U was released right before Sharp started making IGZO displays and right before 802.11ac. IGZO is perfect for what the gamepad does and could have potentially doubled it’s battery life and 802.11ac would have not only combined to the two wireless modules in the Wii U but it would have allowed the gamepad to switch to 2.4Ghz at a further range. Of course, h.265 would have also further increased stream quality while lowering bandwidth.
I also like Miiverse with one of my favorite communities being the Art Academy community and I liked all the other Miiverse art. Not only does the Switch not support Miiverse, but things like Art Academy just wouldn’t be as good on it.
I also love Streetpass on the 3DS which the Switch also doesn’t support. And I like that I can actually fit the 3DS in my pocket. I also really like the 3D.
There was so much Nintendo could have done, but they instead made this system of compromises that gives players the choice of two very standard gaming experiences. And not only did they barely improve upon one of the biggest flaws about the Wii U (it’s specs) they took out what I liked.
If people will have problems with the price it will not sell. We will see it.
Of that 60% only 20% said it’s really high. 40 said just little high. I think it will sell. We will see. They can cut the price at any time.
So you wanted them give away 128 GB storage? At that price? I don’t see the point. It’s an hybrid machine they can’t put an HDD inside. No one will cry for that.
Mostly will not buy DLC, but anyway there is no alternative storage so it’s an useless discussion.
Games are of the right size. Zelda is immense and is 14 GB, that’s enough explicative.
Loading times are very good (Zelda 10 secs) and ASTC is already in from Kepler’s times, but why looking at these technical nitpicks? nVidia already developed their technology the way they meant to be, everything works wonderfully on the hardware, etc. If you go playing the PS4 you will see games with frame drops and games with a resolution of 900p but not a single person questioning bandwidth of which you have no data about final hardware. The point?? As before… where you are headed?? All games at 1080p?? Before this ask the same at those custom-PCs, that should be tailored better (but don’t deliver).
You don’t need 60 fps FMV. Developers will choose whatever fits them. And it will be enough. It will definitely be enough.
The GamePad is opposed by almost anyone, I find it horrid too, very bad technology. A stupid way to increase price of the console and sucking power from the main SoC to lame the entire system. It was the biggest Nintendo’s fault together with the marketing and the name of the console.
I will not comment on Miiverse. I respect your enjoynment of it. I would have no use of it. Though it seems that the system will support other social media, I wish you to enjoy those the same or better of Miiverse. I will still not use that feature. I’m just for the games, still open to other features, but don’t really need them.
I’m sorry they took out things that you enjoyed, though don’t already judge the system. People that actually played with it said that it’s fantastic, and maybe when they will finalize online there will be more features to please you. Don’t judge it before having it in your hands. Preconceptions are always bad. You will see that Mario Kart 8 will be cool played in handheld mode. And anyway they will try this time to please everyone, even your uncle. I bet they will have a killer system in their hands this Christmas.
“If people will have problems with the price it will not sell. We will see it.”
I agree. I do know that I’ve seen a lot of people, including people who have been fans of Nintendo for 30 years, who are thinking of canceling their Switch pre-order.
“Of that 60% only 20% said it’s really high. 40 said just little high. I think it will sell. We will see. They can cut the price at any time.”
This is true. That would look bad though. If they sold it at a lower cost from the beginning, they would have been spared of having to do that.
“So you wanted them give away 128 GB storage? At that price? I don’t see the point. It’s an hybrid machine they can’t put an HDD inside. No one will cry for that.”
No. I’m against the very idea of the hybrid system because it attempts to mash together two opposites. But since it is a hybrid machine, I would hope they would try to give developers every tool possible to keep make the best use of the storage they have.
“Mostly will not buy DLC, but anyway there is no alternative storage so it’s an useless discussion.”
You don’t know Nintendo fans then. A lot of people bought the Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros DLC and Nintendo literally just announced two expansions for Breath of the Wild yesterday that people can get for $17.
“Games are of the right size. Zelda is immense and is 14 GB, that’s enough explicative.”
What the hell do you mean by “the right size”? It’s 13.4GB, by the way, not 14GB. Does that mean it’s not the right size anymore? You word things like everything is PERFECT. The fact is, if it’s not using ASTC, then it’s bigger than it needs be. I’ve literally never heard somebody go “I don’t want this game to be 8-9GB. I want it to be 13.4GB for no reason.”
“Loading times are very good (Zelda 10 secs) and ASTC is already in from Kepler’s times, but why looking at these technical nitpicks? nVidia already developed their technology the way they meant to be, everything works wonderfully on the hardware, etc.”
And HEVC was already in the TX1 and this article is saying Nintendo might have gotten rid of it. That’s my entire point. If they took at feature like HEVC which would have been useful to them, then they could have gotten rid of ASTC as well. If they did take out ASTC, then that would explain why BOTW isn’t smaller. Also you totally looked up ASTC just now lol
“If you go playing the PS4 you will see games with frame drops and games with a resolution of 900p but not a single person questioning bandwidth of which you have no data about final hardware.”
People are always critical of a console specs went it can’t reach 1080p or keep a consistant frame rate. Also, the reason people won’t immediately point to bandwidth if the PS4 only hits 900p or dips below its target frame rate is because it could be shader performance or CPU performance. In the case of the Switch and BOTW, BOTW has been reported to run very smoothly when undocked, and the dips are only seen when docked when bokeh and full screen flashes happen. Well we know the CPU is clearly enough to hand BOTW and the CPU is usage won’t go up along with resolution so it’s not the CPU. We know the GPU switches to a clockspeed at least 2.25x than when docked yet resolution only goes up 56% so it’s not starved of shader performance. Well whats the one thing that almost doesn’t scale up at all and would be most effected by alpha effects? That’s right. Bandwidth. I know you don’t want to beleive anything about clock speeds because it’s blows your mind that a 300Mhz TX1 can produce visuals on the level of a console from almost 5 years ago that itself is only slight more powerful than consoles from 11 years ago, but unless you think those reported clock speeds are wildly wrong, stop claiming that they’re not remotely respresentitive of the Switch’s hardware.
“The point?? As before… where you are headed?? All games at 1080p?? Before this ask the same at those custom-PCs, that should be tailored better (but don’t deliver).”
I’m asking that a system that can run a game at 720p at one clock speed can run it at 1080p at 2.5x the clockspeed. If someone makes a system that’s supposed to be able to do that, then do it right. If a dev’s game isn’t CPU limited and want to use the extra GPU resources to run a game at 30fps in handheld mode and 60fps when docked, then fine, do that. In both cases, bandwidth limitation would creep up because it doesn’t scale.
“You don’t need 60 fps FMV.Developers will choose whatever fits them. And it will be enough. It will definitely be enough.”
When I talk about 60fps HEVC, I’m talking about the PLAYER capturing gameplay footage using the RECORD button that’s on the left JoyCon. As for prerendered cutscenes in-game, I’m not saying they can’t do that with h.264, but I AM saying hat they keep the cutscene smaller while maintaining the same quality if they can use HEVC.
“The GamePad is opposed by almost anyone, I find it horrid too, very bad technology.”
I just realized you speak like Donald Trump. Anyway, most people haven’t used it and their main complaints were the battery life and it’s size. Both could be fixed.
“A stupid way to increase price of the console and sucking power from the main SoC to lame the entire system.”
Sucking power from the main SOC? The stream getting sent to the controller was encoded by a small chip connected to the 5Ghz WiFi module on the Wii U.
It had nothing to do with the main ASIC. Also, I’ve heard these rediculous claims that it cost more than the system. A year earlier, the cost of the 3DS was like $101 yet that had two screens, an SOC with a GPU and two CPUs, 3 cameras, an SD card reader, 2GB of storage, 128MB of RAM, and SD card reader, a hinged case, and that included boxed contents. The gamepad was maybe $60 and it did the job of a headset, had universal remote features, included the NFC reader/writer that made amiibo possible, and was the reason why people could actually use the Wii U in the car or on a airplane. And btw, its the reason my brother’s girlfriend, who has extremely poor eyesight was able to play Smash Bros with us.
“It was the biggest Nintendo’s fault together with the marketing and the name of the console.”
Yea, the marketing was crap. Early promotional videos made it feel like they were advertising a toaster. Didn’t mean that the concept of the system was bad though.
“I will not comment on Miiverse. I respect your enjoynment of it. I would have no use of it. Though it seems that the system will support other social media, I wish you to enjoy those the same or better of Miiverse. I will still not use that feature. I’m just for the games, still open to other features, but don’t really need them.”
Well I thank you for that. The social media features don’t do much to replace Miiverse though. The point of Miiverse was to ask for help in a game or show things off in communities of people who are also playing the same game.
“I’m sorry they took out things that you enjoyed, though don’t already judge the system. People that actually played with it said that it’s fantastic, and maybe when they will finalize online there will be more features to please you. Don’t judge it before having it in your hands.”
I’ve seen a number of people using it hands on a lot of people said it’s not a day one purchase and many complained about the lack of real directional bad on the left JoyCon. They even went as far as saying that it’s horrible for games like Shovel Knight and Street Fighter 2.
“Preconceptions are always bad. You will see that Mario Kart 8 will be cool played in handheld mode.”
I’ve already played Mario Kart 8. I’ve had it for over a year and I’ve played it on the gamepad.
“And anyway they will try this time to please everyone, even your uncle. I bet they will have a killer system in their hands this Christmas.”
Oh, I’m sure they’ll have amazing games available. I always knew I would be getting it eventually because I love Nintendo’s games, but I don’t see it selling to a handheld crowd and I see many people using it as just as console while using the handheld features just to play it around the house. So literally in the same way they use the Wii U. And a lot of people have said that even on this site. So even though I’ll like the games, I just don’t think the concept is worth it and might deprive them of third-party support in the long run. I don’t see the Switch getting something like Final Fantasy XV or FFVII Remake.
It would look very bad, definitely. Nintendo could have restrained themselves to the old pricing model: 250$. Though 299$ isn’t high price for all the things offered. I suppose they have done their own investigations and sat with a comfortable price. I too would have liked a lower price. But I’m poor and still interested (that’s good sign for them). Accessories price though is outrageous.
I know them but I don’t think in millions will buy DLCs. Just a fraction of their customers will buy their additional content, many will even do not know about that or see it as a waste of resources like me.
With right size I mean that content seems superior to actual data. BotW is immense and just weight 14 (or 13.4). If that can stay in a 16 GB cartidge I have no doubt other developers will not face problems. Then I’m not going to think that a Ryse like game can be converted exacly the same (textures, complexity, etc.) to the Nintendo Switch… and even that it’s only 27 GB.
Biggest Wii U software was 20 GB. If they will need additional space they can compress those FMV more, it will not change our life.
Suppositions. No one knows encoding or texture compression technology on the final console. One thing is clear: it can’t be worse than a Wii U.
In an interview Miyamoto talked about he was experimenting a Mario open world for the Wii U but the team wasn’t happy about the game performance since the CPU had to cover both the game and the GamePad (or something like that), so they decided to do it for their next console. The GamePad made the Wii U CPU limited somehow. It was a recent interview, I searched but didn’t find it.
I didn’t liked its concept, like I don’t like DS concept too. Though DS is more clever since the display are near to each other. With the GamePad you are going to see the TV or the GamePad, that’s not clever. Switch is clever since let you detach the console from the dock and use it in portable mode, but nothing gets in the way on you and your television.
There is Youtube for that. ^^
Anyway if they will include something it would be cool. Maybe that thing was clogging their servers and they got rid of it, or maybe it was a measure to protect childrens. Don’t know.
I do play beat’em ups with the analog stick, though they should’ve sacrificed something for that small form factor, no? D-Pad became an accessory in today’s world. Nothing can be perfect, they sacrificed D-Pad. We can’t moan on anything.
For me and many others it’s day one (actually I’ll buy it in April) but anyone can decide for himself. I have no other consoles as of now so the choice it’s easy.
Sure, it’s an hybrid system. I plan too play it at home, but I’m fairly happy about the chance to take it out of home. Maybe at the park or at my wife’s house (I’m separated but we love somehow each other anyway ^^), etc. It’s just there to broaden its audience. I’m already thinking at kids using this out of their homes.
Moreover I think Nintendo is watching suspiciously at this hardware run and eventually they think they can’t cope with the needs of ever-growing teams. Because games gets always more complex and cost lot more to make but price stays at 60$ and they profit less from each game. Eventually with a PS4 level hardware we would have seen shortage of games like with the Wii U (their teams weren’t prepared for that kind of stuff).
I suppose in the end if they sort one game per month we only have to benefit from this. Nintendo’s is for Nintendo’s lover first of all, then some third party titles. Though japanese seems to target the console well. I’m looking forward to those JRPGs announced.
“I know them but I don’t think in millions will buy DLCs. Just a fraction of their customers will buy their additional content, many will even do not know about that or see it as a waste of resources like me.”
I’m trying to find sales numbers for the Mario Kart 8 DLC, but I’m pretty a really large portion of people downloaded it. It was essentially 50% more game for like $12.
“With right size I mean that content seems superior to actual data. BotW is immense and just weight 14 (or 13.4). If that can stay in a 16 GB cartidge I have no doubt other developers will not face problems.”
I see what you mean. It doesn’t feel oversized to players. In fact, people who play open world games a lot would probably think it’s small. I get that. My criticism comes from my own testing though. In a game like BotW, even though it has voice acting, it seems like they majority of the size of hte game is textures and models. From my own tests recompressing textures from Wii U games as ASTC, most albedo textures can be half their size. Even if lossless compression is applied on top of that, the difference in textures sized between a group of ASTC textures and a group of S3TC textures would be 40% less. Like, even if just half the games size was textures, it would bring the game’s size down to 10.8 GB (13.4 – (13 / 2 * 0.4)). That’s less than a 3GB difference, but that definitely helps customers get the most bang for their buck storage-wise and could bring some games down a cartridge size. I know Tropical Freeze isn’t set to come out on the Switch, but since I have the files in front of me, lets try to figure how much smaller it could be with h.265 and ASTC.
The game is 10.6GB, so it would be on a 16GB cartridge. 10.1MB of that is the game’s code, 14.1 MB is metadata, and 10.5GB is assets. Of those assets, 422 MB are h.264 movies for the intro (720p 29.27 fps 10.7 Mb/s), ending (720p 29.27 fps 10.5 Mb/s), and 4 demo videos (720p 29.97 fps 6.5 Mb/s), the rest are materials, geometry, and audio. With h.265, I was able to bring the largest video down to 39% of it’s size with no noticeable loss in quality. Applying that metric to the rest of the videos brings their size down to just 163MB. Essentially, you could bring down the size of all of the videos to something smaller than one of the videos. That brings the game’s size down to 10.34 GB. A small gain, but the game isn’t heavy on videos anyway and they’re all 720p. The rest of the assetts are textures, geometry, and sound. Geometry is more easily compressed and there’s very few sounds in the game other than music and the owws and oohhs of the characters. Easily 80% of that could be textures but I’m gonna say that 60% of that is textures.
10.34 – (10.08 x 0.6 x 0.4) = 7.75GB
Now it could ship on an 8GB cartridge. And btw, without re-compressing the movies, it would be 8.008GB. Which, to be fair, they could get under 8GB even with h.264.
“Then I’m not going to think that a Ryse like game can be converted exacly the same (textures, complexity, etc.) to the Nintendo Switch… and even that it’s only 27 GB.”
Yes, but a game like Arkham Knight is 45GB. I don’t have any metrics for what makes up that 45GB but if it’s a lot of audio, for example, then decreasing texture resolution by one mip level (reduces texture storage to 1/4th) might not provide the decrease in size necessary to get it under 32GB. However, if 60% of the game’s size was textures, then decreasing it one mip level would bring it down to roughly 24.75GB. Obviously, that would fit on a 32GB cartridge but it’s cutting it dangerously close to the 25.9GB of internal storage available on the Switch out of the box (that number was confirmed by a person who got the Switch early). With ASTC, that would shave off at least an additional 2.7GB. And again, the savings from ASTC have the potential to be a lot more.
“Biggest Wii U software was 20 GB. If they will need additional space they can compress those FMV more, it will not change our life.”
I’m just using FMVs as one example. A lot of games don’t use a lot of FMVs, but if devs have more options to reduce the size of games, then we’re better off.
“Suppositions. No one knows encoding or texture compression technology on the final console. One thing is clear: it can’t be worse than a Wii U.”
This is true but that’s not what I was worrying about. I’m worried that it may be no better. Because the Switch is actually a new console generation for Nintendo, they can use things like ASTC and h.265 while things while updated versions of older consoles (PS4 Pro and Scorpio) can’t without shipping two sets of assets.
“In an interview Miyamoto talked about he was experimenting a Mario open world for the Wii U but the team wasn’t happy about the game performance since the CPU had to cover both the game and the GamePad (or something like that), so they decided to do it for their next console.”
That makes no sense considering the gamepad usually only displays menu-like things or mirrors the main screen. I’m doubting whatever they wanted to do different viewports on both screens or they wouldn’t have been able to move the game over to the Switch.
“The GamePad made the Wii U CPU limited somehow. It was a recent interview, I searched but didn’t find it.”
The streaming to the gamepad was entirely controlled by a seperate chip in the Wii U called the DRH which communicated with the DRC in the gamepad. If you can find the interview, please link me to it.
“I didn’t liked its concept, like I don’t like DS concept too. Though DS is more clever since the display are near to each other. With the GamePad you are going to see the TV or the GamePad, that’s not clever.”
They really shouldn’t be used the same way. I like to consider the gamepad to be a heads down display. It’s perfect for things like maps and inventory which you would ordinarily have to brink up with a menu that overlays the screen. It might not sound like much but it made Wind Waker way quicker to navigate and would be perfect for MMOs where pause the game isn’t an option and cluttering the screen with maps, quest logs, and inventory isn’t ideal. Since the touchscreen can also be operated without using buttons and can’t provide a touch keyboard, it can provide a great way to communicate in the chat log without having your controls remapped to the chat log like on PCs. It also would have been an ideal platform to release a D&D game with the gamepad player working like a dungeon master or something. There were a bunch of excellent ways to use the gamepad but the Wii U’s lack of sales meant that the concept wasn’t utilized to it’s full extent.
The DS and 3DS can actually use it to replace HUD to some extent which is useful because the screen is small. Both also allow touch controls without covering the screen.
“Switch is clever since let you detach the console from the dock and use it in portable mode…”
Yes, but it’s not remotely as portable as a 3DS. In fact, it’s wider as a handheld than it is as a console. My friend finds even the 3DS XL to be too big for her so the Switch is way to big. It’s size also means kids will have trouble bringing it to school and the lack of clamshell makes it far less kid-proof. Putting the 3DS and DS to sleep and waking them up was as simple as closing the clamshell and opening it again. On the Switch, you need to go into the menu, press the sleep mode button and press yes and waking it requires pressing the home button once initially, than 3 more times to unlock it. Lastly, it’s price is $100-120 more than a 3DS which means that it’s far less likely that people are going to buy multiple ones like they did with all of Nintendo’s previous ones.
Of course, that’s a lot of sales stuff. Concept wise, it provides you with a beautiful 6.2″ screen with haptic feedback and 10-point multitouch… which you can only use in handheld mode. In TV mode, you can apparently use the Right JoyCon as a pointer to replace the missing touchscreen functionality but can only emulate one touch point so gestures like pinch-zoom would have to be remapped to something else. We’re also supposed to be impressed by the ability to play two player gamers on the 6.2″ screen but I can already tell you that sucks because I tried doing it on the Wii U. It’s terrible. They also try to touch that you can link up 8 Switches and they try to make it look like a whole new gameplay paradigm because they pulled the controllers off, but it’s actually exactly what you can already do with the 3DS. One of the biggest things they showed off in the initial trailer was the guy playing his Switch on a plane. Not only can you already use a 3DS on a plane but you can use a Wii U on a plane and you wouldn’t have to worry about the battery because you can hook them to power. The Switch places it’s charging port on the bottom because that’s where it connects to the dock, but it means that you can’t use it the way that guys was AND charge it at the same time.
“but nothing gets in the way on you and your television.”
Nothing gets in the way of me and my television with the Wii U either. I’m currently playing Paper Mario Color Splash which uses the gamepad to choose battle cards out of deck, add paint to them, and then flick them flick them off screen to confirm the attacks. For that kind of battle system, not only is it less jarring than having that interface pop up over the TV, but I can’t imagine being able to pick cards and place them as quickly using a Pro Controller.
“There is Youtube for that. ^^”
It’s an entirely different dynamic.
“Anyway if they will include something it would be cool. Maybe that thing was clogging their servers and they got rid of it, or maybe it was a measure to protect childrens. Don’t know.”
It was already very heavily moderated and Miiverse is still going to be available for the 3DS and Wii U so it’s not like they’re ending it. It’s also integrated into many games in a manner similar to how Dark Souls has it’s note system, it’s a big part of the sense of community in Mario Maker, and I think you can even share levels through it.
“I do play beat’em ups with the analog stick, though they should’ve sacrificed something for that small form factor, no? D-Pad became an accessory in today’s world.
Nothing can be perfect, they sacrificed D-Pad. We can’t moan on anything.”
The D-Pad is still the preferred way for most people play fighters, old school platformers, and especially retro games. Throughout the 360’s entire lifetime people complained about it’s D-pad because of things like this. The D-pad hasn’t been replaced by analog sticks at all.
“For me and many others it’s day one (actually I’ll buy it in April) but anyone can decide for himself.”
So why did you say that it’s day one for you?
“I have no other consoles as of now so the choice it’s easy.”
“Sure, it’s an hybrid system. I plan too play it at home, but I’m fairly happy about the chance to take it out of home.”
I’m very curious to see how many other will take it out of the house. If most just undock it to play it around the house then it’s just a way more expensive and developmentally complex way to implement the same feature that the Wii U has with none of the gameplay and feature benefits.
Maybe at the park or at my wife’s house (I’m separated but we love somehow each other anyway ^^), etc.”
That’s sweet that you and your wife are still talking. Always good not to have grudges with people :-)
Do you mean that you would bring it your wife’s house with the dock because that feels like it misses the point of the system. At that point, it’s actually a bit less portable than other systems. You’d be bringing over 7 items (dock, console, 2 JoyCons, grip, HDMI cable, and power cable) while bring over a Wii U or PS4 would be 4 items.
“It’s just there to broaden its audience.”
That would only happen if it appeals to handheld-only gamers. At the moment, it’s handheld features also bloat the price of the system for console-only gamers without any advantage. As gaming experience, it offers less ways of input than the PS4,Wii U, and 3DS.
“I’m already thinking at kids using this out of their homes.”
See earlier in my response lol
“Moreover I think Nintendo is watching suspiciously at this hardware run and eventually they think they can’t cope with the needs of ever-growing teams. Because games gets always more complex and cost lot more to make but price stays at 60$ and they profit less from each game.”
Had they simply made a separate handheld and console that played the same games, they could have developed games for two systems for the cost of developing for one. And supporting the hardware compression technologies would not only allow devs to put games on smaller cartridges allowing the cartridges to eat into their profit less, but it would lower bandwidth on Nintendo’s end when people are downloading digital copies of their games.
“Eventually with a PS4 level hardware we would have seen shortage of games like with the Wii U (their teams weren’t prepared for that kind of stuff).”
The transition to the Wii U was hard for Nintendo because the Wii U used shaders, deferred rendering, and had multi-core CPU. The Wii and Gamecube used single core CPUs and graphical effects where done with the texture environment unit and it automatically used an on-chip frame buffer for the Z-buffer and color buffer and had a giant texture cache.
They wouldn’t have the same problems moving to PS4 level hardware because it would still use shaders and multi-core CPUS and such. If they used a tile-based GPU, they would also get the automatic on-chip frame buffer memory that the Gamecube had.
“I suppose in the end if they sort one game per month we only have to benefit from this. Nintendo’s is for Nintendo’s lover first of all, then some third party titles.”
That’s not a winning strategy for Nintendo. They make money off third-party game sales on their systems so it’s just going to result in less money for them.
“Though japanese seems to target the console well. I’m looking forward to those JRPGs announced.”
Yea, it is kind of nice seeing JRPGs on Nintendo’s consoles again but most of the developers supporting the Switch also supported the 3DS and Wii U.
Haven’t played it yet but it looks massive (Zelda).
ASTC is given, it’s old technology for nVIDIA (Kepler). Texture compression is a given, you can’t run uncompressed texture efficiently given the limits of the hardware (bandwidth, memory). Eventually it is not that deal (ASTC).
It’s not easy to make calculations and assumptions without data. And we have no data for the game except the total size.
It’s not supposed to be just better than a Wii U, it’s clearly more powerful but 2x power isn’t something that change how games looks. Odissey is still Odissey with any resolution, and Ocarina of Time is still Ocarina of Time with any resolution.
Switch is definitely more polished and advanced but it isn’t a generation jump. It’s still PS3 generation hardware. For an handheld-too console it’s impressive.
It was in an interview, they said nothing about streaming, they said that something occurred on the GamePad occupied CPU time in that specific game so they decided to wait the newer generation (NX).
I don’t remenber exactly which interview was, maybe I’m not remembering right.
They said they tested it and they weren’t happy with the outcome.
To me the GamePad it’s a waste of resources. I understand the map, etc. but it’s just an accessory that way, a costly one. It don’t bring big advantages like the Joy-Cons (motion controls, multiplayer without buying accessories).
It’s not ideal but I haven’t heard people saying it’s no good as a handheld, I see such happiness that was not there with the Wii U. Handheld mode is very appreciated even if it’s big and need a backpack or a specific case. Me too looking forward to that. Certainly the 3DS XL is more portable, but not by much (and it sells like cakes as just an handheld).
Split-screen multiplayer on that display would suck, definitely.
Miiverse is dead, and those two consoles too. It seems that just the Switch will survive in the future if the market will agree.
It’s day one for me in April because my birthday is in April, though I have already decided for it without doubts, so it’s like day one (no day one is for people with doubts). ^^
I’ll take just the console out in other houses when I will be away from home. With the Wii U I would have to take everything with me.
It’s a great pro portability, even if you just have to take children to their mother’s house.
It would still be problematic because a Wii U game would need a 30 members team size while a PS4 would need 2x/3x. More complex game = more people needed to do it.
“ASTC is given, it’s old technology for nVIDIA (Kepler). Texture compression is a given, you can’t run uncompressed texture efficiently given the limits of the hardware (bandwidth, memory). Eventually it is not that deal (ASTC).”
I’m not inferring that it has no texture compression, I’m just worried that they’re Nintendo just wanted S3TC since other consoles use it. Again, if the Switch doesn’t have h.265 despite being available in the TX1, then it’s not impossible that they could have said “Screw it. We’ll just go with S3TC so third-parties can just use the textures used on the other systems.”
“It’s not easy to make calculations and assumptions without data. And we have no data for the game except the total size.”
Well that’s why I provided where I was getting my numbers from. A huge portion of the size of all games now is their assetts and considering that most games have about 2 or 3 textures per model, a good portion of the size should be textures.
“It’s not supposed to be just better than a Wii U, it’s clearly more powerful but 2x power isn’t something that change how games looks. Odissey is still Odissey with any resolution, and Ocarina of Time is still Ocarina of Time with any resolution.”
That’s true for the most part. It seems like Nintendo wanted just enough to do 1080p Wii U games. That being said. I still don’t think Nvidia was the right choice to do that in the memory department. The Switch’s memory attempts to do with one pool of RAM what the Wii U did with a slower pool and eDRAM. And while I realize that having larger L2 cache would slower the amount of bandwidth required from external RAM, it’s not as much as tile-based GPUs.
“Switch is definitely more polished and advanced but it isn’t a generation jump. It’s still PS3 generation hardware. For an handheld-too console it’s impressive.”
I’m glad you at least don’t think it’s a pocket sized Xbox One like some people do. I still think they could have made fewer compromises if they used Mali or PowerVR though.
“It was in an interview, they said nothing about streaming, they said that something occurred on the GamePad occupied CPU time in that specific game so they decided to wait the newer generation (NX).”
You sure it was Mario?
“I don’t remenber exactly which interview was, maybe I’m not remembering right.
They said they tested it and they weren’t happy with the outcome.”
I’m think that because I really can’t imagine a scenario where the gamepad is sapping CPU time from something else.
“To me the GamePad it’s a waste of resources. I understand the map, etc. but it’s just an accessory that way, a costly one. It don’t bring big advantages like the Joy-Cons (motion controls, multiplayer without buying accessories).”
The gamepad had motion controls and vibration (not the same kind), too. The most expensive part of the gamepad would be the screen which the Switch has, too. But unlike the Switch, you can still actually use it while it’s connected to the TV. And again, it’s not just a visual thing, it’s another form of input.
If your referring to computing resources, it really doesn’t use much at all. The kind of stuff usually shown on it are no more complex than a menu. The Gamecube actually had 16MB of slower memory with a bandwidth of only 81MB/s. It was mainly meant to store sound and be used as a disk cache but another suggested use for it was to use it for menus so we’re talking about a very small amount of bandwidth and computationally they often don’t do anything that wouldn’t have to be done by the game anyway. If somebody wants to do something where a different camera is being shown on the second screen would literally be the only reason the devs can do whatever that is.
“It’s not ideal but I haven’t heard people saying it’s no good as a handheld, I see such happiness that was not there with the Wii U. Handheld mode is very appreciated even if it’s big and need a backpack or a specific case. Me too looking forward to that.”
Well, for what it’s worth, almost nobody has had the chance to bring it around with them. With the exception of that one guy, everybody else has only used it at events to use the Switch.
For what it’s worth, the Wii U also sold out all of it’s pre-orders. They sold like 3 million in like 2 months but then it dropped off from their.
“Certainly the 3DS XL is more portable, but not by much (and it sells like cakes as just an handheld).”
It’s actually quite a bit bigger than the 3DS XL. I made a little life-sized cardboard cutout of the Switch with removable JoyCons and it’s about 50% wider than the 3DS XL and about 10% higher. And the 3DS XL was already took big for some people.
“Miiverse is dead, and those two consoles too.”
Nintendo is still planning to release 3DS games into 2018 so Miiverse should be alive atleast until then. It’s also accessible from browsers.
“It seems that just the Switch will survive in the future if the market will agree.”
I just don’t see Switch’s concept being enough to make it the success Nintendo needed after the Wii U.
“It’s day one for me in April because my birthday is in April, though I have already decided for it without doubts, so it’s like day one (no day one is for people with doubts). ^^”
My birthday’s in April, too :-D
“I’ll take just the console out in other houses when I will be away from home. With the Wii U I would have to take everything with me.”
I personally wouldn’t because I can’t comfortably fit it in my pocket. Even if I could, it would be too expensive for me to bring around everywhere. I would be worried about breaking it.
“It’s a great pro portability, even if you just have to take children to their mother’s house.”
Pro portability?
“It would still be problematic because a Wii U game would need a 30 members team size while a PS4 would need 2x/3x. More complex game = more people needed to do it.”
Not necessarily. Developers don’t have to try to push the console. Games like Super Mario Oddysey could look pretty much the same but with high resolution shadows, anti-aliasing, self-shadowing, improved shadow draw distance, the park in New Donk City could have grass, etc. BotW could actually be in 1080p, there could be far less poppin, and the grass draw distance could have been extended. Both games could also have a 3D mode.
And, of course, third parties wouldn’t have to sacrifice the art style of multi-platform games.
Nope, I don’t think the textures come compressed, they are compressed on the fly by the system, so it should be transparent the compression method to the developers.
Any compression method is ok. All developers seems happy. The ones that aren’t is because of political reasons. Bethesda wasn’t happy on older hardware, now magically tthey are. So it’s all about politics.
If they have chosen that type of memory it’s because it’s good enough, Mario Kart 8 runs at 1080p/60. That’s what they needed.
It does the job and comes cheap. Win-win.
I skipped Wii U because the controller was cumbersome and there were few games and not that much interesting.
Now they have nice Mario, nice Zelda on the go, already the best Wii U game (Mario Kart 8) and probably will have the best Wii U games along the way, true portability, motion controllers and so on… that’s what I’m excited about, a portable XB1 would make to me no difference.
If they will sell well they will have a far more games and third party support than a Wii U and that’s what I’m looking for. I have no doubt this console will sell well.
Yeah, it was a Mario ‘open world’ the project ditched in favour of the new console, what it would have been Super Mario Odissey. Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly though I do remember about it.
GamePad with motion controls? It’s hard to imagine it as a racket. ^^
Bigger yes, but not that much: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7807023/switch_3ds_comparison.jpg
Still planning to release low budget games, and all should hope thast 3DS will not sink. But after the 2018 we can expect a Switch Pocket. What will happen then for the 3DS? They already said there is not a 3DS successor and that they hope people to jump for 3DS to Switch before or later. I assume that maybe they will jump on a Switch Pocket when they will release it. Just speculation, obviously.
You will wait for the Pocket one than… ^^
I actually like the big screen size.
Planning to get Nintendo’s case.
Obviously developers don’t need to, but why make a great costly console when developers aren’t going to push it? Than just do that PS3 generation console that’s good enough. Nintendo wont spend a 1000 people team for 60$ games. And they wont make people spend 500$ if they can’t get that benefit from Nintendo but just those GTAs… It’s a fact that people buy Nintendo console to plasy Nintendo games. Look at numbers.
Even when it was third party choice. Nintendo was selling their games for the most part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_video_games
No need to develop a costly system (just) for (some) third parties.
“Nope, I don’t think the textures come compressed, they are compressed on the fly by the system, so it should be transparent the compression method to the developers.”
The only compression that’s done on the fly in a GPU is things like delta compression. ASTC, S3TC, ETC, and PVRTC are all compressed before hand by the developer. That’s why things like PVRTexTool, Mali Texture Compression Tool, and Nvidia Texture Tools all exist. ASTC in particular has a lot of variables to take into account because it analyzes each block of the image and stores the data in different ways depending on whether the block is representing normals, a gray scale image, RGB, RGBA, etc. and what block size the developer has set and takes a really long time for larger textures especially when it’s set to Exhaustive. I’ve ripped 4k 8bpp S3TC textures from games and compressed them to ASTC and it’ll sometimes take a few minutes to do (I’m using a 6-core 4Ghz Intel CPU) but, in the one particular case I’m thinking of, I was able to compress it to .89bpp without any noticeable quality loss. It literally brought it down from 16MB to 1.78MB. Now that’s not a super common scenario but I’ve found that I can pretty regularly compress something to about half it’s size. On top of that, devs can always apply LZMA or Deflate compression and, provided their’s spare cycles to do this, decompressing them into memory would load them from slower memory like solid state storage, hard disks, optical disks, and network connections much quicker.
“Any compression method is ok. All developers seems happy. The ones that aren’t is because of political reasons. Bethesda wasn’t happy on older hardware, now magically tthey are. So it’s all about politics”
I’m not really concerned with developers in this regard. They’ll use whatever compression they have available, but compression has player facing advantages as well as hardware advantages. As I said before, ASTC can potentially allow devs to use smaller, cheaper cartridges and since that data is smaller, it can be transferred from storage and RAM much quicker while using less memory and fitting more in caches. It’s a feature that has advantages to so many parts of the hardware. To players, not only would downloadable games take up less space but so would updates which mean they take up less storage space and internet bandwidth and download faster.
“If they have chosen that type of memory it’s because it’s good enough, Mario Kart 8 runs at 1080p/60. That’s what they needed.
It does the job and comes cheap. Win-win.”
But it’s still insufficient for Breath of the Wild at 1080p 30fps. Maybe it wouldn’t be if would have gotten a little closer if it used ASTC though. I don’t like the idea of brute forcing, I’d rather lesser hardware be used more efficiently to get the same result. I don’t care peak thoeritcal GFLOPS, I care about real performance. I don’t care about having GDDR5 or HBM RAM and 512GB SSDs if lesser hardware can be made to do the job just as well.
“I skipped Wii U because the controller was cumbersome”
But it also ergonomic. Plus the Switch is almost just as wide.
“and there were few games and not that much interesting.”
I have about 20 physical Wii U games, 33 downloaded games, 45 virtual console games, and 27 Wii games that I can play on my Wii U and there’s still more I want to buy. If you like the lineup that the Switch has, then you would like the library of games you can play on the Wii U.
“Now they have nice Mario, nice Zelda on the go, already the best Wii U game (Mario Kart 8) and probably will have the best Wii U games along the way”
So the sales pitch here is that it has a few original games and I might be able to rebuy many of the Wii U games I already own for the Switch?
“true portability”
This is hotly contested by a lot of people.
“motion controllers”
as does the Wii U and 3DS which you skipped over.
“and so on… that’s what I’m excited about, a portable XB1 would make to me no difference.”
That’s great but a bunch of people are looking for something that’s as portable as their phone and console they can buy instead of a PS4 or XBO.
“If they will sell well they will have a far more games and third party support than a Wii U and that’s what I’m looking for.”
You already said you don’t have high hopes for third parties. Plus, many of the third parties supporting the Switch already support the Wii U.
“I have no doubt this console will sell well.”
Again, the Wii U had all the pre-orders the Switch has, and we know what happened there.
“Yeah, it was a Mario ‘open world’ the project ditched in favour of the new console, what it would have been Super Mario Odissey. Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly though I do remember about it.”
I would imagine that has more to do with storage access than anything else.
“GamePad with motion controls? It’s hard to imagine it as a racket. ^^”
The Gamepad DOES have motion controls though. It has a compass, accelerometer, and gyroscope. It could be used in Mario Kart 8 for steering, Splatoon and Wind Waker use it for aiming, the Nintendo Land used it for it’s F-Zero and Zelda games, and the browser uses it for quickly getting to the bottom or top of a page. The Wii U also supported the Wii Remotes for other motion control games.
‘Bigger yes, but not that much: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7807023/switch_3ds_comparison.jpg”
50% wider (3.5″) is much bigger when you’re talking about handhelds. The 3DS and 3DS XL are less than an inch wider and higher and that was enough for some people to find the 3DS to smaller or the XL too big. You called the Wii U gamepad clunky and it’s closer in size to the Switch than the 3DS XL.
“Still planning to release low budget games, and all should hope thast 3DS will not sink. But after the 2018 we can expect a Switch Pocket. What will happen then for the 3DS? They already said there is not a 3DS successor and that they hope people to jump for 3DS to Switch before or later. I assume that maybe they will jump on a Switch Pocket when they will release it. Just speculation, obviously.”
The guy who was responsible for the design of the Switch hopes that. Kimishimi says he sees a market for a 3DS successor.
“Still planning to release low budget games, and all should hope thast 3DS will not sink. But after the 2018 we can expect a Switch Pocket. What will happen then for the 3DS? They already said there is not a 3DS successor and that they hope people to jump for 3DS to Switch before or later. I assume that maybe they will jump on a Switch Pocket when they will release it. Just speculation, obviously.”
If the Switch is successful as a handheld then why would I need to get the Switch Pocket?
“Obviously developers don’t need to, but why make a great costly console when developers aren’t going to push it? Than just do that PS3 generation console that’s good enough. Nintendo wont spend a 1000 people team for 60$ games.”
I just explained a whole bunch of ways that Nintendo could make use of the hardware without having to increase development budget. If anything, they can get away with fewer optimizations and costs go down.
“And they wont make people spend 500$ if they can’t get that benefit from Nintendo but just those GTAs… It’s a fact that people buy Nintendo console to plasy Nintendo games. Look at numbers.”
Whose talking about spending $500 on a system? The PS4 and XBO are easy to dethrown as long as you don’t make something like the Switch.
“Even when it was third party choice. Nintendo was selling their games for the most part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_video_games“”
Nintendo doesn’t sell other companies games. If you saying that Nintendo still had the top-selling games on their system even when third parties were developing for them, that’s partly true but that list has 32 out of 46 of those games were third-party and the first game on the list was a pack-in title. The Wii U’s list was way shorter and every single game was first-party.
Are you now saying that third-parties are worth it?
“No need to develop a costly system (just) for (some) third parties.”
It wouldn’t have to be much more costly than the Switch.
Textures (dynamically generated) can be compressed on the fly through algorithms (with no dedicated compression hardware).
Though that is off topic. I used bad wording. I intended that developers do use the algorithm provided by the tools (development system) that should be transparent to the developer. If it’s ASTC they will use it.
If it’s supported (and most definitely it is since it was already a K1 feature) they will already use it, unless multiple formats are supported.
We don’t know why Zelda is running at 900p. It can be anything.
Real performance it’s clear, it’s more powerful than a Ps3 and less than an XB1. It’s powerful enough to runs PS3 games at 1080p.
No, Switch use a more ergonomic controller than a Gamepad that’s already inside the box (and one things Nintendo is : https://sickr.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/joy_con_in_grip.jpg
It wans’t bad but there were no Mario Odissey nor BotW, no F-Zero, no Metroid, no Wave Race. 2D Mario games are good, but not something I would spend 300$ on.
Mario Odissey is my killer app.
It will sell well forever. Wii U was just a bad experiment. Everything was wrong. Now it’s all right except third party support, for that we should wait for christmas time before judging.
Those motions controls aren’t useful as the Joy-Con. Almost useless eventually. The Dual-Shock has a (useless) gyro too.
Wii Remotes outside the box are of no use. History tells that you need to put your accessories in the box to get them supported (or better… targeted).
I don’t think the Switch is perfect size. At all. I do think it’s far better than the Wii U Gamepad since it’s far slimmer, narrower and weight 100 grams less.
GamePad is an ugly piece of plastic. No one would take out of home that orrid piece of plastics.
Definitely the ‘Switch Pocket’ has potential to take the 3DS market. We will see if there will be it in two or three years from now.
In the meantime the Switch will take eventually a slice of it, but we will see this by how much sells the 3DS in some months from now.
People will have different tastes. For me can be sufficient as an handheld, but some would like a smaller form factor.
They already have that experience with the 3DS, I think they will pursue this route.
If you use better technology you eventually spend more. Nintendo chosen this because they got a good deal. A more powerful SoC would have cost more, would have not been far more powerful or would have requested a better battery. Anyway if they decided for this one it’s because it was right.
They aren’t novices.
Third parties are ever worthed. If they are in everything is better obviously. I’m mostly interested in Nintendo stuff though.
I got really tired off both our conversations. Still thought I would post this though.
https://www.androidheadlines.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Helio-X30-MWC-2017-announcement_7.png
Looks like our buddy Mediatek released GFXBench scores for their Helio X30 with it’s 204.8/409.6 GFLOP GPU. Ignore the power efficiency one since it’s irrelevant here. Instead look at the DRAM bandwidth statistics which is really interesting as well as the T-Rex and Manhattan scores. It scores just 16% lower than the Pixel C and iPhone 7 in Manhattan. In T-Rex, it’s score is identical to the Pixel C and 14% lower than the iPhone 7. So there’s your PowerVR vs Tegra comparison on Android as well as a comparison of PowerVR running on Android vs iOS. Keep in mind that the iPhone 7 supposedly has a 253 GFLOP GPU so a 20% performance decrease is expected. The Pixel C on the other hand should be scoring anywhere from 2.13-2.5 times higher if we compared FLOPS.
That’s all I’m willing to talk about for now.
A portable super wiiu. I dig it, especially knowing Nintendo will eventually release a 4K dock in the future. They fucking have too for the switch to stay relevant.
No they don’t
Ummm no it doesn’t. 4K is great but it’s not that big of a deal to be honest and this is coming from a 4k tv owner.
Indeed. I just bought a new 75″ Sony UHD TV this year, during boxing week. I replaced a small 55″ UHD Samsung.( which i’m guessing is something like you have?) Obviously I use it as my computer monitor. When I game, it’s @ 4k and it is great.Yeah it’s costly but to say its no big deal shows some ignorance. This TV is pretty sweet but I also bought Atmos this year as well. I don’t know if you have it but damn its well worth it. Anyways, these specs really aren’t that great for the Switch. It is less then I expected. Seems almost like its outdated already. I know its a powerful handheld when compared to the current offerings but i don’t see how it can hold up against the 3rd party triple A’s that are getting more demanding by the month.
If only the Wii would have sold like shit eh? LOL. Oh Well.
It all depends on the install base and sale of the console. Sure,maybe some developers will opt out but if something sells well then they’re gonna want a piece of the cake and maximize their profits. Also,this rumor is based off of a dev unit from july so the specifications have probably changed since then so I’d take this with a grain of salt.
The dock wouldn’t be able to increase performance so that wouldn’t do anything. Adding a better GPU and more memory into the dock would change the Switch’s memory structure completely. No longer would it have shared memory but two pools just like a PC. They would be better off releasing a new system at that point.
Well….the it seems to be exactly what I thought. Remember Bethesda said admittedly that they it could be something on the Switch from them if the power would be close to at least the Xbox One so it seems to be that. Anyone thinking that the Switch would be above PS4’s specs when it’s a portable system first, should really research to see how expensive it is to format console power into a small form factor
Guys. It has a strong mobile processor. I don’t think it’s physically possible for it to run close to an Xbox One and quality without generating some serious heat and draining some serious battery power.
this is not going to be an Xbox One or PS4. it’s a mobile Nintendo Home console hybrid. keep your expectations in check and I’m sure you’ll be happy with what you get! :D
Latest Xbox revision is 60 watt (16 nm), Switch is 10 watt (20 nm) so it should be clearly far less powerful.
Everyone was expecting that anyway, no one can cheat mathematics.
Still we got that Zelda and that Mario on the go, more than the Xbox 360 (thats is still very good looking). I would call it a success.
For those who forgot the graphic quality of those consoles: http://www.magnificinsumos.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/uncharted-3-c.jpg
(Switch can be even better, full Vulkan and UE4 support)
You mean a stock Tegra X1 is 10 watt with a 20nm process. Even then, it pushes some amazing power that much less wattage. Plus, we don’t know if it’s the stock 20nm process of it’s 16nm like the Foxconn leak says, which would definitely drop the wattage. But I do agree with most… with the portable aspect and running a mobile SoC, I wasn’t expecting XBox One levels of performance. It’d certainly kill the battery and run hot as hell.
If it can run those games (Mario Kart 8, BotW, Skyrim) without a hiccup, etc. it’s fantastic technology. I could have not asked more from an hybrid console. It’s 70x more powerful than a N3DS, it’s 7x more powerful than a Vita and when attached to a TV it’s 2x more powerful than a Wii U.
Deal.
I think some of those numbers are a bit off. If you look at sheer GFLOPS numbers, the Wii U is about 7x-14x more powerful than the PS Vita (and even the Vita’s numbers are debatable, depending on GPU MHz). The Switch should be at least 2x to 3x the power of the WiiU in docked mode, depending on how the final Tegra SoC is used.
Vita is 50 GFLOPs, Wii U is 350 GFLOPs, Switch should (almost, in fact BotW does not run in a full 1080p resolution) double Wii U power but only when docked. Undocked should be the same. Games will target undocked, the additional power will just give more resolution.
Though nVidia APIs and UE4/Unity should make the Switch more effective as per GFLOPs.
I do believe the Vita’s specs sit somewhere between 25 and 50 GFLOPS. That depends on what the Vita’s PowerVR SGX543MP4 clock speed is (between 200-400MHz, I don’t think Sony ever confirmed) so yes, it makes the Wii U 7x-14x more powerful than the Vita.
Sickr! It’s not a rumor anymore. Bergsala has confirmed it.
I like the sound of Mii’s having more creation options (been needing those for ages). But I sure wish they’d allow people to put their real faces, instead of the silly caricatures. Some people are SO hard to create. Especially if they have weird skin color, like green or yellow.
This looks really promising. Please let me know the release date when you get any info about it
The Xbox One has double the RAM and almost double CPU power
Xbots shall be eliminated!… How’s my impression of Commander Quadraxis? Yeah… He does it better….
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