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Comment by jareklupinski | Hacker News Reader

try a modern console :(

first you press the power button, then wait for the console to load (5-10s usually for a Switch), then dismiss the ads asking you to buy or subscribe to something, then navigate to the game you already have inserted into your console, then press play, then confirm you DON'T want the recommended update (which prevents you from playing the game), then accept the update when you realize it stops you from playing the game, then wait for the update to finish (10-30s + a console restart), then accept the System update which didn't even pop up before (another 1-2m + restart), then finally go through the above again, and now.... you're finally at the main menu of the game

sorry i just tried picking up the Switch again today during my sick day and had to wade through all this just to play Metroid Prime (a game that came out a decade ago)

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I don't want to dismiss your experience out of hand, but...how long had it been since you last turned it on? When I play my Switch regularly, I don't ever turn it off all the way; putting it to sleep (either by pressing the power button in handheld mode, not long-pressing it, or by holding the Home button on my controller and selecting the option to put it to sleep in docked mode) doesn't lose much power overnight even when it's not on a charger in my experience. I also don't really remember having either frequent or extremely larger updates very often on any of the games I've played, although I guess I might just happen to play games that are on the lower end of update density. I don't think I've ever _ever_ had any sort of ad that I had to dismiss before playing a game; the closest thing I can think of is the "News" app, and I definitely find it a little annoying that there's no way to completely disable the notification dot on it or (even unsubscribing from every possible channel in it doesn't seem to fully stop them) or uninstall it, but it doesn't actually cost me any time unless I decide to go in and mark all of the stories as "read" to make the dot go away.

I play with my Switch once every few months and have not encountered anything close to what he described so it’s probably longer. Honestly, I play more often on my switch over PC since it’s just easier to pick up and drop.

i admit it's been a while, but i did try to mitigate it by not connecting to wifi (I count News as an Ad when the News is "Buy More DLC!!")

i think the issue was the game had an update which wouldnt install unless the Switch was updated too; i didn't even include the time it took to put in my wifi info (and wait for connection to fail so i could try again)

just for blithe comparison, I can plug in my 30 year old NES which hasn't been powered on in eons and play Mario in less than a second :)

Wait, you get an update cycle done in 10-30s? I feel like on mine I download an update over the course of 3 weeks, and then it takes 4 hours to apply. Also every time I touch a game it needs to be updated, which takes another 4 hours.

All in all, I have been trained to never touch a console after I haven't used it for a day or two.

Switch updates are extremely fast. The other consoles aren’t.

God forbid you are not playing in handheld mode on the switch, it will take ten minutes to get the controllers in the right configuration

Hard agree, my 8 year old habitually un-docks the Switch does his controller set up and then puts it back in the dock. He discovered the time saving and convenience by himself and doesn’t even realize he is working around Nintendo’s lackluster design.

Addendum — he and I both truly enjoy playing on the Switch and Nintendo’s games, so no ‘hate’ intended; but it is worrying for future hardware from the company that their designs are badly implemented enough that a child has to invent a way around the inconvenience.

Then once you start the first hour of the game is an unskippable tutorial.

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