Hacker News Reader

Comment by DCKing | Hacker News Reader

> Nintendo always uses slightly older hardware.

This is a bit of a meme, but it isn't generally true. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube were pretty cutting edge in their day. At the time the Nintendo Switch released, the Tegra X1 was still about as cutting edge as mobile GPUs came (in early 2016).

What Nintendo is about - to a fault, some would argue - is cost cutting. Sometimes that means they use older stuff, but using older stuff isn't always the best cost cutting balance to strike. The article even notes this:

> To be fair, it’s known that Nintendo’s choices are not always based on ‘cutting-edginess’ but on cost and supply.

View on HN

Hang on there. I think the more accurate sentiment is "Nintendo hardware has lackluster graphics".

Switch is as much a console as it is a mobile device. Compared to an XBox, a Switch is a few horses short of a full stable.

Even the blockbuster Wii could only do 480p while contemporaries were doing HD.

What Nintendo does well is make the tradeoff worth it. Both the Wii and Switch make up for their reduced graphics by pioneering new ways of thinking about console gaming.

Well it's about perspective I guess. I understand the expectations for a home console, but especially between 2016 and 2019 Digital Foundry kept gushing about what kind of graphics the Switch enabled specifically on a handheld. Handheld gaming is not necessarily my preferred mode either, but I don't think the generalizations about Nintendo are fair - neither that their hardware is old, nor that their graphics are lackluster. For the Wii and Wii U both things are true, but for the GameCube and Switch I just don't think that's a fair thing to say.

The one generalization that is maybe fair is that Nintendo's design goals don't seem to satisfy all of the desires of enthusiast gamers, and are not aiming to satisfy them.

The Wii gets a lot of hate for bad looking games. Deservedly so.

The example I like to give is the game GT Pro Series. It looked super rough even for the horsepower the Wii was packing.

However, the motion controls make that game among the most fun racing games I have ever played. It was great! I still play occasionally.

The gamecube is 20 years old though and ever since then they've had the weakest hardware. I remember buying a Wii the month it released and being pretty disappointed at how bad the graphics looked.

The Switch's mobile chipset was basically as bleeding edge as you could buy at the time. But it was a mobile chipset, so couldn't compete with a PS4 or Xbox.

The main problem is that even if it was cutting edge at the time, they can't or won't upgrade it. Of course iPads, which do upgrade their SoC every year, aren't as good at playing games.

A big issue with the annual upgrade cycle is that it becomes much harder for devs to test their games due to hardware fragmentation.

I still wonder if the 4KiB texture cache in the N64 was a cost-cutting decision. It totally defined the look of N64 games.

If it was a texture cache, it would have been fine. Unfortunately it was a manually loaded seperate bank of memory for textures.

You are right to say that they are actually using modern technology and sometimes even cutting-edge technology, but that does not mean that it is not inadequate technology.

The meme is about "Nintendo consoles have outdated technical capabilities and the games look like shit", and that is accurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com