Nintendo Switch
nintendo.co.jp
nintendo.co.jp
Essentially, they placed value squarely in the face of everything your PC/enthusiast-level gaming rig won't ever replace. The ability to pick up and play elsewhere. Like the Wii, it's not even trying to compete with the current crop of consoles. It's value proposition will be placed somewhere a bit obtusely, between your mobile phone and everything else you leave at home. Yes, this obviously functions as a home console as well, but I can't help but suspect Nintendo absolutely meant to go for what makes handhelds great. If any company can do it, they can. So what if it cannibalises their current 3DS offerings? Pokemon seems to be going strong with its fanbase.
The whole presentation, from the demonstration of the hardware to especially the finishing trademark "One more thing!" with Zelda making a predictable but nonetheless amazing launch date. It's a strategy that worked wonders for the Wii, remember, so why not?
Nintendo absolutely killed it, and I'll be keeping a really close eye on this thing. But the marketing and presentation was honestly textbook.
I'm afraid I have to disagree. Here's why:
- price: much more expensive than most people were expecting (£280 vs for example, £200 for a PS4 with a game)
- battery life: potentially only 2.5 hours? Really not good enough for a handheld.
- storage: only 32gb, will run out very quickly
- online offering weak vs ps4/xbox as only NES/SNES games and you only get them for a month
- very few titles on launch and key titles (e.g. Skyrim) delayed until much later in the year
Battery life and price are the real killers for me. I can see Nintendo slashing the price soon, just like they had to with the 3DS.
Edit: It seems like many others weren't impressed either. e.g. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-13-nintendos-preca...
-Battery life is 2.5-6 hours depending on the game. This is comparable to the 3DS line: http://kotaku.com/how-does-the-new-3ds-compare-to-the-older-.... We will have to see how well it does in practice though.
-Storage: The Wii U only had a basic 8GB which is enough for most use cases except downloading games. The switch can extend with SD cards too. As games will be shipped on cards like the DS I doubt this will be an issue for the average user.
-Online: I would consider the playing with others side of this more important than the free game. Though it is a shame that the games are only for the month. This is a fairly new thing for Nintendo so I hope it improves.
-Launch: it might have a few but I expect the fact that one of them is Zelda will help it a lot.
Personally I'm excited for it and it is perfect for my kind of gaming: mostly on the go. I'm rarely at home long enough to make the investment into systems that I can't take with me. Of course, YMMV.
[1] I'm not making a judgement call on specs here, just pointing out that, of course, an older console is cheaper.
[2] The accessories though, are not cheap.
And an even more conservative tripling of storage (64GB card) only sets you back about $20: http://amzn.to/2jfrROp
But I still buy the vast majority of my games on physical media, mainly because that's the only way to get a good discount. Until there's the option to be price-competitive via 3rd-party sellers, I'm not buying into any on-device game store at all.
The built in screen is fairly low resolution so there are potentially fewer pixels to push when the Switch is undocked. It remains to be seen exactly how quality/performance will be affected by undocking.
And its pretty much priced as a PS4 PRO, with 1 tb storage.
The games are on cartridges.. what year is this?
Assuming you are referencing optical media: A year in which optical media is actually having a hard time keeping up with cartridges in capacity and size and gets blown away on random read speed. (Possibly raw read speed too, depending on the specs.)
In the PS1/PS2 era, the optical media advantage in size and price per MB was clear. In the PS3 era it was possibly less clear, but still advantage optical media. But that advantage is largely gone now. The only advantage optical media has now is that it is still cheaper to make per MB (or GB if you prefer now), but carts have gotten cheap enough that that isn't necessarily a killer anymore.
Plus as I understand it, very few games even now fill a DVD, let alone fill a Bluray. And the optical media have some very significant disadvantages that are getting worse and worse relative to the rest of the hardware over time, particularly random read latency. Even the PS3 era required a lot of hacking under a lot of game's hoods to arrange the exact order things appeared on the disk to be able to stream in at anything like a reasonable speed, which is why this generation just straight-up requires you to install it to a hard drive (at least sometimes, I don't know if it's every game)... and even the hard drives they can afford to put in consoles at scale are starting to become performance bottlenecks themselves!
Optical media also means you aren't portable, which is a bit of a downer for the Switch.
Assuming you mean "why include anything at all and just let people download to local flash", I imagine it's because Nintendo still wants to sell to people who may not have internet connections that casually download 5GBs. Also, cartridge ROMs are a lot cheaper than flashable media, which is still expensive relative to the size of modern games to put in a console. I've got 512GB of very nice flash in my laptop, but that part alone cost more than the entire Switch. I imagine hitting their price points with enough flash to make it so that you're not constantly deciding which 5 AAA games you can fit on there would be quite difficult. Plus if they do ship out a game console in which the games are constantly "thrashing", Nintendo will actually pay for all the additional downloading that will result. And the end-user result is poor; "hey thanks for inviting us over but three of us need to agonize over which games to delete and then three of use will use your network connection to re-download Splatoon 2, oh dear, look at that, it's gonna take 5 hours" is not what they are looking for.
SD cards are not a perfect answer either; quality varies greatly. I can see why the 3DS has gotten away with it even as a putatively AAA console might not want to trust it entirely. It would help if people didn't buy the cheapest thing they could find with the capacity they want, but they do.
Whoah, can you source that? If that number is even remotely true the thing is completely useless as a handheld due to requiring 2-3 extra batteries for any longish trip.
Nintendo having an history of using proprietary cable, this is great news. Having the possibility to charge all of your device with one cable and sharing a unique powerbank is something really cool.
> Battery life can last for more than six hours, but will vary depending on the software and usage conditions.
> For example, The Legend of Zelda™: Breath of the Wild can be played for roughly 3 hours on a single charge.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/27/you-wont-be-able-to-upgr...
Battery life is on par with portable gaming devices currently so I am not sure if your expectations are a bit unrealistic. That said, it's 2.5 - 6 hours depending on the game. Something like Pokemon on the go might be a lot longer than 2.5 hours for something like Legend of Zelda.
Storage is probably ok. First, it's a cartridge based system so I don't expect game installs to take as much space as something like the PS4. Moreover, as others have pointed out, you can expand it by adding an SD card fairly cheaply...which is more than can be said for most consoles currently.
Online offering is pretty weak and I am disappointed that the industry has now made it "normal" for users to pay for online play in the console world...but oh well. On the other hand, local multiplayer and up to 8 device LANs is awesome!
Titles at launch are limited...but to be honest Zelda at launch will probably be enough to carry them through.
Regarding your killers, consider that the Switch has a USB-C connector so it may be possible to charge it on the go with a portable battery (perhaps even during use). That is huge when compared against the limitations of most gaming laptops (I am not familiar with other gaming portables though). Price is price, but I would focus more on the accessory costs than the console cost itself.
You can see the internals of the K1 here: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nvidia+Shield+Tablet+Battery+Re...
The X1 Shield tablet's FCC filing show it also has a 5200mah battery so I'm guessing the layout is similar to the K1 and the Switch (the Switch filing just says the battery is non-removable).
Whatever the design, I hope it's better than Nintendo's previous handhelds which had a lot of blank circuit board where there could have been more battery volume: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+3DS+XL+Motherboard+Rep...
It should be noted that both Microsoft and Sony recoup some loss leading with their subscription services.
Besides, this seems fairly on par with other portable gaming devices currently.
On top of this, I think they've made a fatal flaw when it comes to handheld pricing. If you remember, the 3DS launched at $250, tanked hard, and received a whopping 33% price cut only 4 months after it launched, followed by the announcement of the new 2DS which would be even cheaper. One of the things Nintendo produced the 2DS is because they found, to their great surprise, that almost 80% of 3DS customers outside Japan never took their 3DS outside the home. They weren't buying it for portability, like Japanese customers usually did; they were buying it because it was the cheapest way to play videogames, only a third the price of a console and with games that were half the price of console games (in many countries even less). Right now I can buy a 2DS for 105 and brand-new games for 40 where an Xbox One is 400 and games are 80 - 100. That's a big reason many of my friends have one.
Then note that they've also priced the Switch above the iPad Mini. Most handhelds are bought by parents for kids. If parents see that they can get an iPad for less than the price of this new console, they're very likely to: iPads are seen as luxury products with a wider variety of uses and many cheap games, and the iPad Mini is even more portable. This is the first handheld Nintendo have announced since iPads hit the market and I worry they haven't taken this into account.
For those customers, who make up a majority of 3DS customers worldwide, the Switch is a non-starter; it's likely to be considerably more expensive than its rivals, and those rivals happen to have either larger libraries, greater popularity, free online, and better graphics (Xbox One/PS4) or a luxury image, greater portability, lower software costs, and a wider variety of uses including educational uses (iPad Mini). I'm really hoping Nintendo succeeds, because I'm a big fan of theirs, but I worry they have totally killed the big draws to handhelds.
That's not true, they are buying a 3ds so they can play Pokemon. Without Pokemon every kid I know would rather have an iphone/ipad than a 3ds. (I'm talking about Pokemon Omega Ruby style games, not Pokemon Go).
I don't think that's right, price is not the only concern here. It's just a different feeling, from having to start a session on the TV or being able to play around the house, in bed, etc. -- tablets did that well also, and most people are more likely to open their 3DS than start up the TV and console. That's what they attempted to match here, and, to me, it seems successful. (Note that Wii U was directed towards that goal as well, but failed).
So far it feels like "the Wii part 3". Yes the Wii sold well, but it didn't sell very many games. Most Wii owners were perfectly content with Wii Sports. The Wii U has pretty much been a flop. Nothing about this presentation suggests to me the Switch will finally do what Nintendo has tried three times now: make a gimmicky, low powered console that appeals in non traditional ways and is successful. So far (and sure, a 1 hour video 3 months before launch isn't much), this very much feels like the Wii and Wii U, and not in the good ways.
I love Nintendo and am a huge fan. But part of me can't help but wish Nintendo would just straight up compete with Sony and Microsoft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
Some third party sales data which shows it was ahead of the 360 and PS3, launch aligned:
http://kotaku.com/5034951/heres-that-wii-third-party-sales-p...
Sony is dominating the high end, exclusive game market. The Last of Us, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid and coming up in 2017: Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding etc. All of these push the console to the limits and show just how superior the PS4 hardware is over its competitors.
Nintendo isn't really suited anyway. Their games are arguably better cel-shaded and cartoon-like. And so why not appeal to the less hardcore, graphics obsessed gamers. There's far more of them after all.
Surely though if you want that experience you can buy a PS4/Xbone/PC. Personally I'm really happy that Nintendo continues to give a different twist to their consoles and provide some texture to the market.
Well I don't love Nintendo, I think their consoles are pretty gimmicky and sales are fueled mostly by nostalgia and rehashing the same game titles over and over again (the Switch is getting a Zelda title and a Mario title? What a shocker!)
I honestly don't believe Nintendo is capable of competing with Sony or Microsoft. Maybe they could create hardware on-par with a PS4, but they can't get the publisher relations down, nor have they been able to get their online service to feature-parity with Xbox Live circa 2007 after a decade of trying. They also have this awful customer-hostile attitude that simply will not go away.
(Why should anybody have to buy a game title more than once, just because they bought a new game console? That's pure scam, Nintendo. On Xbox, you buy it once and you own it forever. On Nintendo, people re-buy Super Mario Bros 3 like clockwork every 3 years.)
Which is fine. There's already lots of competition in the "high powered console gaming" arena, and Nintendo would run the risk of becoming another SteamBox. And if their strength is nostalgia, maybe embracing that is a good business decision, even if the constant rehashing of the same titles over and over personally makes me gag.
And, if you subtract minecraft on Xbox, my kids spend 95% of their non-mobile gaming time on Wii U. No third party title time.
At any rate, I'm guessing it's when not if Switch will hit our house. Maybe I can hide it in my bag for a while before they find it. :)
Actually, this has me very worried. Putting down the controller and pulling out a smartphone to manage my online matches seems about the worst possible user interaction they could think of. No matter how good this smartphone app is (and really, is it going to be good?), it's going to pale in comparison to just selecting a menu on the console.
The fact that they said this at all makes me think they still haven't figured out online interactions. Microsoft and Sony have them down pat, all Nintendo really has to do is just copy them. But instead they're trapped in their own bizzaro world for some reason.
Very much looking forward to the switch.
I don't know if anyone else noticed but I thought this presentation would have played better if it had been done with a western live audience because of cultural differences. The Japanese audience was very polite and seemed fairly quiet throughout the presentation. If it was done in front of western fans, there would have been continuous eruptions of raucous applause during each of the game presentations (much like an Apple event).
Dragon Quest X launched in 2012 on the Wii, and from the way he announced it, it's not coming to the west.
Not if you want to get lots of controllers, though.
They didn't mention this at all, but I think it was a brilliant way to demonstrate that the next generation of Nintendo is as integrated and collaborative as ever, and let the games and the hardware speak for themselves. It also demonstrates the efficiency of the teams now that both the portable and home console teams are working together in one building at the new head office in Kyoto. A great subtle touch to an otherwise quite clear, explicit conference, and reminds me of how similar Nintendo and Apple are.
But overall I think they continue to show real innovation in gaming. They're the only company who puts so much effort into maximizing their software with the uniqueness of their hardware.
The Wii was basically just a higher-clocked (~2x CPU and GPU) Gamecube—much more like the XBO S or the PS4 Pro are for this generation, than like the architectural reinventions Nintendo usually gets up to. The fact that it seemed like a whole new console with new capabilities for games, is more than anything a statement of how much untapped potential there still was in the Gamecube's architecture at the end of its life, that Wii developers went on to find.
Hard to think of any real bombs in that entire library TBH.
I have sold my Gamecube but hold the Wind Waker in my heart as a game I could play and play. I simply loved sailing around in that little boat in a happy cartoon land. It's the one game my wife would happily watch me play for hours on end.
Wario World was also very good but I never completed it - kept getting stuck on the magical mirror level
Well, now you don't really get it on Nintendo consoles either. Out of the series you named only one has had a remotely recent installment, and the metroid IP had only been used for taking down fan projects since Other M. That's why, as of now at least, there's no way I'm buying one of these. I can play all the best games from Nintendo's library in Dolphin, on the same PC I run Skyrim on. I don't really see how that game is still supposed to be a selling point.
I also bought a PS3, but more as a DVD/BluRay player. Other than Little Big Planet and Skyrim I never liked any of the other games for it.
Sure, Melee was fun, but I played all the time at my friends' apartments. I didn't need to play it at home: multiplayer was where the fun was at. Usually after a class (I was in college during the GameCube's heyday), a classmate and I would go over to his apartment and play Melee for a few hours.
I might have bought a GameCube if it had a decent Mario platformer (and I felt burned by the N64 too... Super Mario 64 was a huge disappointment to me... the Galaxy games were the first 3D platformers I could stand, and I didn't really get the 3D platformer I wanted until 3D World).
Also of course the two excellent Zelda games. What a fab console.
Difficult control and the "battle mode" multiplayer is garbage, also lacks the character of F-Zero series but a very pretty and enjoyable game with lots of variety in the tracks.
I'd love to be able to get a few people over and just bust out the SSB for a few hours - so many great memories from uni. A seconnd hand GC + the game is ridic expensive though so my options are pretty much limited to homebrew
(It's playable on the older Wii models with gamecube ports if anyone is intrigued by the description)
Interestingly, if you think of the PSX as descending from the SNES architecturally, it's nearly identical to the end-state of "SNES + SuperFX GSU-1", but with the one added feature of DMA-streamed block IO from the CD device. (Thus why the FF7 demo on the N64 used polygonal backgrounds, while on the PSX you get pre-rendered backgrounds. Each version plays to its console's strength. Makes you wonder what would have been possible in an alternate world where the N64 had a CD drive as well as its better polygon-pushing abilities.)
This also means that the PSX->PS2 likely represents the largest single-generation leap in power of any console: it was a catch-up from "basically a SNES" to modern-for-the-time hardware, representing a literal 10x jump in CPU and GPU power.
We played Zelda a few minutes, but then switched to the PSX. We tried all games in a row less than 5 minutes each, they were disgusting in comparison. And these were mature sequels not launch lineup. When Zelda 64 was on screen we realized how much better everything was on the N64.
PS1 has nothing in common hardware wise with the "Nintendo Playstation" add-on other than in name alone.
"I kind of had a suspicion that things weren’t going too well for the 64 at that point, because … one of my responsibilities … was to write performance applications that compared how well the 64 fared against the prototype [PlayStation]. And we’d be running parallel comparisons between the [PlayStation] where you’d have a bunch of 2D sprites bouncing off the screen and see how many polygons you could get within a 60th of a second. And even without any kind of texturing or any kind of lighting, it was less than 50% of what you would be able to get out of the [PlayStation]. Of course, the drawback of the [PlayStation] is it didn’t really have a z-buffer, so you’d have these overlapping polygons that you’d have to work around so that you wouldn’t get the shimmering [look]. But on the other hand, there was no way you’d be able to get anything close to what FF7 was doing [on PlayStation] on the 64 at that time."
So, at least according to the square programmers the PSX was more powerful when it came to raw polygon processing power. Of course N64 was doing much more with it's hardware, and also having a Z-buffer for real depth information, so these numbers are not really directly comparable.
The NES was a phenomenal breakthrough, a paradigm shift.
Which is not to discredit Game & Watch, which brought Nintendo forward from an era of making playing cards. I had several clones as a kid.
Where it fails in comparison to other controllers is button-feel, IMO. The shoulder buttons for example, compared to those on the DS4, feel very clicky/hollow (actually I think this is true of everything other than the face buttons) and can be distractingly loud. The DS4 buttons manage to feel soft/gentle while still being precise (and quiet).
My uses tend to be almost entirely centered around pointing/aiming, so I absolutely love the SC and use it heavily, but I'm really looking forward to a second revision.
EDIT: Oh also, the Wavebird controller was the first wireless first-party controller.
I think they also introduced the "click" if you pushed all the way down. Such a satisfying, IBM Model M-esque feeling.
And here we are, in a console wasteland far in the future. The Switch is the only home system I am mildly excited about. For innovative games, I will stick with PC.
BTW, Sony actually had their own clone of the VMU dubbed the "Pocketstation" that they were planning, but ultimately scrapped the peripheral.
You can hardly say that for the WiiU...
http://nintendoenthusiast.com/interview/world-record-holder-...
http://kotaku.com/5955557/hurricane-sandy-forces-triforce-jo...
That guy is hardcore good at games all around.
Secondly, I'm surprised with how many people here find that the Nintendo Switch overpriced. We're all comparing the pricing to consoles that are sold at a loss (such as the PS4, they're essentially subsidized by the gaming industry). I bought a 3DS at about $200. For $100 more you get a tablet and console in one. I'm willing to bet like the 3DS, you'll be able to use this as a ad-hoc tablet for browsing the web as well and use it to play movies. I would jump on this if I had more time to game.
[1] Completely based on my opinion and might be subjected to cognitive bias and dissonance
I'm getting it as I hope having a portable console will give me more time to game. It'll fit in my suitcase and plug into nearly all hotel TVs. That is pretty awesome.
I really haven't seen anything like this before. I'm super excited to break it.
Edit: For those interested in working on this or following along, I created a Discord server for collaboration. Invite link: https://discord.gg/hSMpnuG
Hopefully it won't take long for a jailbreak to emerge.
As others have mentioned, they don't have backup cash cows like the other conglomerates so their short-term profits do vary wildly depending on the success of each platform, but the premise of one generation being a matter of life or death is a false.
I never realised this, so I went and checked. Nintendo has (per wikipedia) only 5k employees, compared to MS and SONY which both have more than 100k (across all divisions clearly).
Nintendo doesn't have that. They live and die by their console.
This is why Nintendo's recent forays into iOS gaming are done by producing brand new unique games designed very differently from their console games. For example, Super Mario Run, that's not a game you'd find on a console because its design is tailored to the smartphone and the ways people use their smartphones. I hope they keep doing stuff like this, but don't ever expect them to release one of their console games on another platform.
And for both companies gaming is important but so is providing media and services into the living room. Nintendo seriously has missed the opportunity every generation to expand beyond gaming and so they are more susceptible to the strength of the games themselves.
The Nintendo Switch has me so excited, I can't wait for the launch day!
Finally, I'll be able to have one piece of hardware for playing at home and on the go. If you don't see the awesomeness of playing Skyrim on your commute then probably are not in the right target group.
I like the Switch because it looks so versatile. You can play at home, on the go, alone, with friends, sitting down, standing up... There is going to be so many new experiences once the console is out.
Until you're done playing both games, and then what ?
Not even the wiiu controllers will work with the switch.
The Switch runs on an ARM CPU. I doubt it will be compatible in any way.
Switch takes new cartridges.
Skyrim is not a launch title.
You just can't make some people happy, they seem to be in an ever-negative spiral...
[1] - http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/13/14261018/nintendo-switch-p...
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/assets/img/event/top/exper...
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/assets/img/event/top/exper...
and these two:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/assets/img/event/top/prese...
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/assets/img/event/top/prese...
Any idea why?
Wii purchased titles could be transferred and played on the Wii U, but the Wii U had the "Wii Mode" to handle that and Wii disks.
Right now it seems, sadly, backward compatibility is something that is dying off with this generation.
Yacht Club Games [2] is also porting their retro-platformer Shovel Knight along with all its extension to the Switch. They also have a previous experience with Nintendo with a release of their game on 3DS and Wii U.
So at least 2 indie developpers I like are working on the Switch.
[1]: https://twitter.com/nicalis [2]: http://yachtclubgames.com/2017/01/switch-up/
Nintendo just sells these left & right Switch controllers you stick to the Switch screen BUT tries to get other smartphone manufacturers to integrate connectors to the left & right Switch controllers PLUS builds there own mobile phones. This is still the biggest bummer when playing games on phones—no physical buttons.
At the end of the day, Nintendo must get into the smartphone market and if it's just as a modded Android distribution or heck, just a pure Android with their own game app store (like Steam). They would have the killer properties to gain significant traction and enough users who would install a new app store just to play Mario (but they gave this opportunity away to Apple...).
Somehow I don't think this would be good for Nintendo.
Legend of Zelda - NES
Link to the Past - SNES
Links Awakening - Gameboy
Ocarina of Time - N64
Wind Waker - Gamecube
Twilight Princess - Wii
Skyward Sword - Wii
Heck, even the promise of how perfectly the WiiU's controller could have been for a Zelda game, was enough for me to buy the system.
I guess that makes me a fanboy. As long as Nintendo keeps making Zelda games, I'll keep buying the necessary hardware.
Maybe so, but there's no way[1] I would by a console just because I want to play a single game. It takes at least half a dozen exclusives that interest me (announced, they don't all have to be released yet) for me to consider buying another console.
[1] Not actually true: I'm considering buying a PS3 so that I can play Demon Souls. But a second hand PS3 is very cheap, so its not really the same thing IMHO.
(Cost of the console / number of hours played on Monster Hunter alone) always justifies it.
How many consoles can Nintendo make per day?
Not having both Zelda and Mario at launch is probably good for reducing demand a bit to help them keep up, because it's nice to sell out but not by too much.
Mario Kart's turning up a month later. Splatoon is coming during the year some time (can't remember if they said when).
And saving Super Mario Odyssey for next holiday season is clear marketing savvy. They get the Nintendo hardcore now, a nice flow during the year as the library strengthens, and then a big boom of Mario people for that bizarrely crucial holiday season.
And staggering out games with online multiplayer makes sense if this new service they're offering needs to have a bit of shakedown time.
If there are 100 games released for a console, how many of those games would appeal to you ? 10? 20?
How long do you play a game for before you've finished it. And then what ?
One game every few months isn't enough. So they release Splatoon in a few months, I'm not interested in that so from my point of view there isn't anything to play that month.
Personally, I was waiting for zelda before picking up a wiiU, it's the first nintendo machine I haven't owned since the NES (which I was too young for).
The Wii U has a higher price than the 3DS, and that is revenue Nintendo needs.
So how to create something as successful as the 3DS, with but as valuable as the Wii U... this seems to be their answer.
Then, "software sells hardware" is Nintendo's motto. They do not license their intellectual property, all games are exclusively released on Nintendo consoles.
Now, it has always been challenging for game studios other than Nintendo to profit a lot by releasing on a Nintendo system. Mostly because specs are always lower than the current generation of competitor consoles.
Why, Nintendo?
Nintendo are apparently working with DeNA on this (as well as on the smartphone games) so hopefully it'll be worth the money.
The obvious answer would be that multiplayer servers cost money to run.
But for a second you see that the New York level is really just a few city blocks. And all the skyscrappers are just a background skybox. So the city level is Mario level kind of small, not a complete city like in Lego City Undercover.
Overall the new Super Mario finally returns to the Mario 64 and Galaxy kind of real 3D gameplay. I personally did't like the isometric 2.5D style simplified 3DS and WiiU Mario World games.
I really have no regrets from buying the Wii U. It was such a good couch console!
To my disappointment, personally. I wish it were a home console rather than a handheld for reasons that are entirely based on my own needs and tastes (I'll never take it outside so it adds cost for no benefit, the need for portability means games can never really make great use of the motion controls, a lot of multiplayer seems based on the joycons which look absurdly small for adult man hands).
JP: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/presentation.html
USA: http://www.nintendo.com/switch/
Each of these pages has videos from the presentation.
Not sure if that's inflation or brexit or what, but damn.
Will see what happens in the next few weeks before deciding whether to cancel or not.
It's a long tradition of making European pay more when it comes to electronics.
It was interesting to see how all previous Nintendo consoles made controller improvements. Reminded me why Nintendo won so many generations. It seems they're trying the same with the Switch.
Arms looks pretty cool. I'm looking forward to more games that smartly use the controller's features.
The games I still enjoy playing have poor low resolution graphics, but they're challenging and fun.
This is one of the things I respect so much about Nintendo; they haven't given in to pressure to make everything realistic. They keep their focus on the game play and allow players to use their imagination when it comes to graphics.
The more realistic the character drawings are, they less _you_ project yourself into the story.
If this works for a static medium like comics, it could be much more important for dynamic conten like videogames. No wonder that cartoon-like characters like Mario, Link, or Pacman comes to mind before Chris Renfield (for instance).
What?! Okay so it might not look quite as pretty as The Witcher 3 or Uncharted 4 but it still looks modern. The explosion/fire/smoke effects are beautiful. The art style isn't for photo-realistic but to have a unique-yet-familiar style that allows them to make use of exaggerated/cartoon-like presentation.
Saying it looks like a 15 year old game is extremely unfair and totally wrong.
Do people really care about graphics that much? My guess would most casual gamers actually don't. Gameplay > all.
At least you can reuse their "hardware dongle" for more than a game ;-)
No touch screen? Not a single camera for AR content and/or social communication? The controllers look miniscule in the actor's tiny hands. The dock HAD to cover the screen of the device? I foresee the controller sliding and locking mechanism wearing down over time, leading to sloppy interconnection between the controllers and the device.
I could go on with the horrible design choices, but I cannot think of a single redeeming quality. It looks like the market is 6-12 year olds.
You can create hundreds of speculatively horrible design choices, but not one of them would mean a thing until you try the product and check if they apply right?
It is a portable console that I can take on business trips. That's a use-case :)
Why shouldn't it? You're not able to use the Switch when it's docked, and the screen is disabled, so why show the screen?
Will this really be able to stand up against iPhones and Android devices in a year or two? I sadly don't think so... the maxwell X1 it's shipping with will be under power as soon as a device is released and woefully as soon as other device manufacturers start shipping X2 (I think that's the name) Pascal or whatever new PowerVR chipset debuts soon based devices.
I think a lot of the tech going into VR like motion controls and low latency displays will destroy some of Nintendo's technical advantage they're as no longer the only game in town with it.
Finally, while making the SDK better by using open standards I think most devs would prefer a larger market; which, both iOS and Android provide.
I've been a Nintendo fan in a big way for 25 years and want to be wrong but I worry if they don't go big in another decade they'll be in the same place as Sega. I bought a Wii U solely for Smash Bros and will buy a Switch when it's (Smash Bros) ported but I don't think most folks are quite so obsessed or willing to invest that much for one game.
Glad to eat my words in a few months, hopefully I do.
Edit: updated with reference to another GPU manufacturer. For my point it's not the exact SOC that matters it's the speed of iteration/capabilities on the near horizon.
Edit 2: Here's a year old benchmark showing how the maxwell X1 stacks up:
http://wccftech.com/snapdragon-820-benchmarks/
Edit 3: added "casual gamer" after mass market for clarity.
If it were about power we would wax nostalgic about the NeoGeo, TurboGrafx 16, and Atari Jaguar.
Plus "power does not matter" does not make sense. It worked for Nintendo before. The SUper Famicom was the most powerful console at the time and it sold better than the Megadrive. The N64 did not beat the playstation but it was more powerful 3D-wise but they made the wrong choice to go with cartridges then. Nevertheless the N64 sold well and had very good games too.
The started dropping the ball with the Gamecube in terms of Raw Power - it was not better than the Xbox or the PS2 or at least not significantly to make any difference. And guess what, this is when Iwata was leading the design of the console. He is at the root of "we don't care about graphics, old-gen is the best". It did not work well. Even the Wii was not so much of a success- they sold a lot of hardware but very few games per system. Most consumers bought it for Wii Sports and left it at that and most units collected dust soon within a year of purchase.
In my opinion SNES and Neo Geo were, each in its style, the best consoles of all time, and in general they have aged really well, as can also be seen by the persisting popularity of their games in 2017. I think this is probably because they were the pinnacle of 2D gaming. Of course 3D bought amazing possibilities to gaming, but for example the precious artfulness and attention to detail in Last Blade II (IMO a much better game than the overrated KoFs, by the way) is something I am still yet to see in a modern fighting game. On the other hand, when I play an early 3D game like many PSX releases, I just see things that can be done much better now, which makes the game look more dated.
Can't wait for a sexting notification to show when I share my Phone screen to TV.
- Tegra K1 is used in the NVIDIA Shield Tablet/TV, Nexus 9, and two Chromebooks.
- Tegra X1 is in the Google Pixel C and NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV.
- Tegra P1 or a variant is rumored to be powering the Nintendo Switch
I love gaming as much as anyone else, but that makes a lot less sense than what Nintendo is currently doing. The Switch isn't a pocket-sized console, and doesn't pretend to be. It is big and powerful enough to drive a TV-based experience, while being portable enough for trips/public transit.
The video says the switch, depending on conditions has a battery life between 2.5 and 6.5 hours. That doesn't sound particularly better than a cellphone.
Gaming on mobile phones with controllers is a pretty janky affair right now. Poor quality controllers and iffy compatibility are the norm. Getting your display remoted to the TV is also well in the "doesn't always work" territory.
That people are using controllers with phone games tells me that there are still lessons to be learned from the Wii.
The screen is also much larger than a Phone screen, more like an iPad. So now you're selling an iPad accessory, locked to Apple's store and architectuaral decisions.
Not to mention that selling it themselves like this while controlling software distribution lets them subsidize the cost of the machine with software sales
It would be quite a challenge to get Skyrim working on a phone, I imagine.
Wanna put the phone on airplane mode so noone can interrupt when you are playing? Or want to have the owner of the phone take the phone away for calls when you are playing with the other guys?
And anybody wants to show their notification on the TV?
Phone functionality could turn off in "game mode". As far as the owner of the device "taking it away" to use it while it's being played...how is this a device issue?
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=382
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/10/26/youth-adjacent
If Nintendo wants to stay in game business they need to get serious. This press info was much worse than I expected it to be.
Admittedly, Wii had a bunch of launch games.
// ThatPlayer: Of course not, but they could make deals for the popular ones, etc.
I'm just worried about Nintendo. They had some money troubles a couple of years (?) ago and I'm not sure this thing is going to fix it.