Nintendo Switch

[pogo]

[Chontler]

Well no Red Dead 2 for switch it seems. but jeez it looks good:

[pogo]

The controllers are ingenious. Look at the analog stick placement, which is the basis for the logo. Odd but not too outlandish, but it ensures that when separated they are interchangeable for e.g. two player gaming. One and two player, mobile and home console gaming, all on one device with presumably no extra purchases.

[Dio]

Rumoured specs:



If true, less powerful than other consoles, although maybe better than half. It seems to correspond to about 1/3rd a 950, so it's waaaay behind PC throughput. Definitely no plans for a new Virtual Boy I guess . Wimpy on the CPU side compared to the consoles too, again about half rate.

Some thoughts that 'FLOPS' may actually be FP16, with half throughput at float.

... and a brand new API too, which game developers will be delighted with no doubt!

[SuperMappy]

[fog]

Not bad. Games look decent, not as convinced by the hardware.

Let's get the negatives out of the way...

The dock is a monstrosity. I assume it's more than just a charging dock otherwise why?

And in handheld for it's way too big to be used in the traditional sense. No way that's going in anyone's pocket.

The d-pad looks awful, borderline unusable. The Pro Controller has a different design so they are admitting it's not that great. Actually the mere existence of the Pro Controller raises a few questions about the "normal" controls.

The good...

Form wise it looks similar to the Vita and I'm ok with that. Better still, it looks like it has all the normal buttons, triggers etc that the Vita lacked. Bonus points for it not looking like a Fisher Price toy this time.

Plenty of third party support at launch. Just as importantly most game engines look like they support it too. Handy for those Indies to fill in gaps in the AAA release schedule.

Skyrim on the go? Oh yes.

So many unanswered questions...

No mention of touchscreen, but it would be silly not to have one and miss out of a load of easy mobile ports. And useless as a media player on the go unless you took the Joy Con controllers with you.

Power initially looks a bit low for a console. If, as rumoured, the handheld screen is 720, does this mean we should expect the same when played on TV?

Battery life? and does everything need to be charged or do they share power (the later I assume)

Storage? Will need minimum of 500Gb, preferably easy to expand.


A few very important questions still need answering, but overall I'm liking what I see.

[Deckard]

Well I am sold - what sorta price do you reckon ? 199 pounds ?

[Darkflame]

Maybe the docks also a cooler, which lets the cpu run at a higher clockspeed safely? Seems unlikely though.
--
Anyway;


Anyone know what those 5 sockets are next to the headphone jack?

[Darkflame]

Also note, in a round about way, this is the first console to dump optical media.

[TFO]

Joy-Con


Just....no

[Truder]

So this replaces the 3DS? Or the WiiU? I don't quite understand what Nintendo are doing? Are they trying to make dedicated console gaming portable? I don't see this doing well, if anything, Nintendo repeating the same mistakes with the WiiU.

[Deckard]

So this replaces the 3DS? Or the WiiU? I don't quite understand what Nintendo are doing? Are they trying to make dedicated console gaming portable? I don't see this doing well, if anything, Nintendo repeating the same mistakes with the WiiU.

They'd love it if it did the business the 3DS has done bud at 60 million plus....

[TFO]

So is this a replacement for the handheld too? Seems a bit big for that.
Can't imagine kids playing Pokemon on it on the go...

[Deckard]

So is this a replacement for the handheld too? Seems a bit big for that.
Can't imagine kids playing Pokemon on it on the go...

Most of the web forums seem to think it is - 3ds will carry on into 2017 and then after that be phased out in terms of support - Why would you have two handheld platforms ?

[Chontler]

Kids were oddly absent in this reveal.