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Comment by jm20 | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo has never competed on graphics. They compete on having the most fun, accessible, entertaining games as possible. And say what you will about their business practices, they’ve probably done a better job of that than any other gaming company in history. As more devs bundle ever higher quality graphics with ever higher in-app purchases and pay to win schemes, Mario remains…Mario.

I seriously doubt many Switch users would bail on the system because of “fake” HDR. They probably don’t care about HDR at all. As long as Mario remains Mario, they’re happy.

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Nintendo graphics are rarely technically impressive, but their games do tend to look good. I'd expect their games not to have washed-out colours.

The author's changes look more washed out to me than the original screenshots.

Nintendo has ABSOLUTELY competed on graphics. The NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube were graphical powerhouses upon release, at or near the top of their generations in graphical performance. It was only with the Wii, when they chose to iterate on the Gamecube design rather than pair a powerful multicore processor with a powerful shader-capable CPU like the PS3 and Xbox 360 did, that Nintendo started going all "but muh lateral thinking with withered technology" and claimed they never intended to compete in that space.

The GameCube was released 24 years ago. Its hardly fair to hold Nintendo accountable to a direction they haven't moved in for two and a half decades.

The visual difference between the N64 and GC was enough that it made sense to focus on upgraded graphics. When you play an N64 game, there's always the initial shock of "wow these graphics are a bit dated".

But you don't get that feeling when playing Melee, or Wind Waker, or many of the other artfully done GC games.

Essentially, somewhere around the GameCube era, graphics became good enough that the right artist direction could leap a game into the "timeless graphics" category.

And so it makes sense that Nintendo said "let's stop chasing better graphics, and instead focus on art direction and gameplay".

I think the biggest issue with Nintendo games until Switch at least has been the abysmal frame rates. We're not talking about dips just under 60fps, there are good examples of 15fps frame rates even with the best games such as Tears of Kingdom. I think they've finally fixed that issue with Switch 2, but the horrible performance of the games have been a huge issue since forever.

And of course it does not matter, Nintendo still sells because it's Mawio (and I say this with all the love, I'm a huge Mario fan myself).

> the Wii [.vs.] a powerful shader-capable CPU like the PS3 and Xbox 360

Outsold both the PS3 and XBOX360 by 15M units though. Given the lower hardware costs of the Wii (I've seen estimates of ~$160 compared to $840 for the PS3 and $525 for the Xbox 360 - both higher than launch price btw!), I'd suggest Nintendo made the right choice.

I'm a Nintendo purchaser. I absolutely care about HDR. Given they specifically advertised HDR, I suspect they expect me to care, otherwise why make noise about it?

I don't think it's fair to say they _never_ competed on graphics. The Super Nintendo was comparable and surpassed the Genesis in some graphics areas. The Nintendo 64 was a 3D monster compared to other consoles at the time. On paper, the GameCube out performs the PS2. It wasn't more powerful than the Xbox, but not a generation behind.

It wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo stepped out of the hardware race. Somehow this has been retconned into Nintendo never focusing on hardware.

If they thought it would sell more systems, they'd compete. The Switch 2 is evidence that it doesn't matter.

> It wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo stepped out of the hardware race. Somehow this has been retconned into Nintendo never focusing on hardware.

Fair point, but on the other hand... that was 20 years ago. So it's easy to understand why that gets rounded off to "never".

smh I feel so old

The "Lateral thinking with withered technology" quote goes back to Gunpei Yokoi designing the Game Boy in the late 80s.

I’m heavily disappointed. I’ve always been a HUGE Nintendo fan.

If the system was SDR only I would be disappointed but fine.

But they made it HDR. They made a big deal about it. And it doesn’t work well. It’s impossible to calibrate and ends up just looking washed out.

It’s broken.

And I don’t appreciate the insinuation that Nintendo fans will buy any piece of junk they put out. See: Wii U.

I read the above post, and honestly thought it was satire.

https://youtu.be/X84e14oe6gs?feature=shared

Agree, with the HDR marketing for the Switch 2 I expected a proper implementation. Sad that they cheaped out on it but at least we got this great article out of it

The Wii U had terrible wifi, but I can't really say I hated it. There were some real classics on that console - Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3D World (although those were both eventually ported to the Switch). It played Wii games and supported all the original controllers, but output HDMI and had real power management. I still use mine to play Wii games.

I loved mine. It had real problems but great games.

It was just an easy at-hand example.

I also liked the VirtualBoy. But I bought it and a bunch of game from Blockbuster for $50 total when they gave up on it. So my value calibration was very different from those who paid retail.

I am not a Nintendo fan (I do have a Switch 1) but this article is the first time I learned Nintendo added HDR graphics the the Switch 2 and this thread is the first time I learned HDR was actually being marketed. I genuinely doubt most Nintendo customers know about these features. It isn’t like Nintendo takes pride in technically impressive graphics anyway.

It was in the Nintendo direct presentations.

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