Nintendo's Next Console Is Called Switch

Babbster said:
Here we go again. No Nintendo home console for you!

Seriously, can't they take the money they're blowing per unit on an LCD screen and battery and invest that into higher quality home hardware and just release a home console again? Given hardware standardization with the PS4 and Xbox One, it wouldn't even be that expensive to truly compete with those consoles on the power front while greatly expanding the third-party support.

Instead, they're offering a mixed-use device that will naturally both compromise the experience compared to other AC-locked devices and will cost more relative to the overall power of the hardware because of the included portability.

To me, this seems like a pass for at least the first year.
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I don't entirely understand your complaint. Think about it this way, it'll be more powerful than say a PS3 or 360 but be less powerful than a PS4 and Xbox One but it will give you the option to take it with you wherever you want to go. The plus side is that you CAN use it as a home console and never take it mobile if you want to. You have a choice.

I mean, if I could be playing Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim like in the video on the go with great graphics and great battery than this is a huge win for Nintendo. Not to mention thinking of playing Mario or Zelda on the go sounds awesome too. This is the best of both of the platforms they are great at. Their mobile platforms sell very well as well as built well and have stellar battery life, and their home consoles have always given us great first party content as well as other games. This is the best of both worlds, and with the list of partners making games for it I think it'll be great. I might actually buy this at launch.

Nintendo-Switch-Shot-06.jpg
 
zamardii12 said:
I don't entirely understand your complaint. Think about it this way, it'll be more powerful than say a PS3 or 360 but be less powerful than a PS4 and Xbox One but it will give you the option to take it with you wherever you want to go. The plus side is that you CAN use it as a home console and never take it mobile if you want to. You have a choice.

I mean, if I could be playing Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim like in the video on the go with great graphics and great battery than this is a huge win for Nintendo. Not to mention thinking of playing Mario or Zelda on the go sounds awesome too. This is the best of both of the platforms they are great at. Their mobile platforms sell very well as well as built well and have stellar battery life, and their home consoles have always given us great first party content as well as other games. This is the best of both worlds, and with the list of partners making games for it I think it'll be great. I might actually buy this at launch.
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To add onto this, I think of it more as a 3DS successor and not a home console competitor. In that it will be mobile first, but can plug into a big screen. Which is a plus. It will be the inferior home console, but that is not its primary market. Being a 3DS successor may be a great thing. On the other hand I am happy with my 3DS XL and don't want to get a new handheld console. :p
 
NickJames said:
1) Power consumption is not an issue when placed on the dock. As far as we know the console will use a custom designed scaling processor by Nvidia so the console will beef up when placed on the dock.
2) The controls are still pretty much standard placement. Triggers, bumpers, two joysticks, button pads. Now as far as the button pads, the portable system puts them on both sides so my guess is the button pad on the left becomes the D-Pad when playing on the go while at home or stationary you use the pro controller which has an actual D-Pad.
3) Cartridges can be made much faster and larger in size than a slow reading disc, also much more reliable.
4) Maybe games are designed to scale that? We don't know that yet.
5) Sharing a small screen? This just seems like nitpicking here.
6) Every Nintendo product in the last 16 years has had online play. I doubt things will change. Wifi hotspots are everywhere and phone tethering is a thing.
7) More nitpicking.

Nintendo makes unique designs that no other console maker has dared to try. And that's along with their first party titles is what makes them as successful as they are. To change that model and stick to the vanilla would be risking everything to appease an already largely captured demographic. You still see Nintendos in nearly every household with a child below the age of 10 and that's what Nintendo wants to be, the family console.
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I enjoy that you consider it "nitpicking" when you can't really argue against it.
 
Not sure why they said this was a supplement to the WiiU, and was designed to work along side it... not as a replacement. Am I missing something?
 
nutzo said:
Reminds me of the epic failure of Microsoft trying to make an OS that works on PC's and tablets. We see how well Windows 8 went over :p
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You're forgetting XP Tablet Edition and Windows ME /shudder

Ruoh said:
Not sure why they said this was a supplement to the WiiU, and was designed to work along side it... not as a replacement. Am I missing something?
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Yes. Every edition/color of the Gameboy and Wii ever made stashed under your mattress like porno
 
MOS8580 said:
I enjoy that you consider it "nitpicking" when you can't really argue against it.
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No because it's literally a dumb thing to complain about. Your complaint is the screen is too small for a group of people yet that's only because it's in portable mode. Would you rather lug around a 15" tablet or something more convenient in the 7-10" range? Also the fact that it even has same screen multiplayer is a god damn miracle in my book, since when has that existed in the todays gaming systems let alone in tablet form factor. Also it includes a controller that breaks down into two. Sorry but that's just fantastic design in my opinion considering the core demographic for Nintendo. And yet you ignore all my other points.
 
NickJames said:
You still see Nintendos in nearly every household with a child below the age of 10 and that's what Nintendo wants to be, the family console.
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One interesting thing about the announcement trailer were the ages of the actors in it - very much the 20-something demographic. And highlighting Skyrim and a sports title - makes me hopeful that Nintendo will also make a console that targets an older demographic (at least not forget them) and respects 3rd party support.
 
So they made a handheld that could be easily connected to a TV? That works - but it appears the focus really is on the handheld part. If they can continue the success of their previous handhelds then they have a winner (as a successor to that product line). If they expect this to be an actual home console and be a winner there as well, that very well may fail...
 
SeymourGore said:
One interesting thing about the announcement trailer were the ages of the actors in it - very much the 20-something demographic. And highlighting Skyrim and a sports title - makes me hopeful that Nintendo will also make a console that targets an older demographic (at least not forget them) and respects 3rd party support.
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Nintendo has always tried to keep up with the age of their audience but eventually most people fill that age 11-21 gap with PlayStation and Xbox. I tend to burnout on shooters after awhile and Nintendo is just a breath of fresh air.
 
Call me weird, but I actually like the general direction of "art" on a Wii than the newer consoles from MS and Sony.

There were a huge number of good games for the original Wii, and I wouldn't mind having a WiiU at all.

And their new console looks very appealing to me. Skyrim on a handheld... yes please!.

I generally also like more cartoony games on consoles... but Skyrim on the go..... did I mention Skyrim on the go?
 
cyclone3d said:
Call me weird, but I actually like the general direction of "art" on a Wii than the newer consoles from MS and Sony.

There were a huge number of good games for the original Wii, and I wouldn't mind having a WiiU at all.

And their new console looks very appealing to me. Skyrim on a handheld... yes please!.

I generally also like more cartoony games on consoles... but Skyrim on the go..... did I mention Skyrim on the go?
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If it launches with a day 1 Mario and Zelda game they got my sale. Wii U was a huge disappointment in my opinion. It took 2 years for me to get any significant use out of it and even then I have a library of maybe 4 or 5 games.
 
MaZa said:
Its actual software sales were not particularly hot though.
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/29/these-are-nintendos-lifetime-hardware-and-software-numbers

"Console Name Hardware Sales Software Sales Attach Rate
Wii 100.9 Million 892.34 Million 8.84

Wii’s attach rate flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that many people didn’t purchase games outside of a few big titles, though it’s important to note that Nintendo appears to count Wii Sports – a bundle-in – as a game sold."

Even without counting the bundled game, the attach rate would sit pretty nicely at almost 8 games per console.
 
A few things worry me about this. First is that it has like 3 or 4 parts with batteries. Here is hoping they are cheap to replace(The screen unit, both control pad things, maybe the part that makes them into a normal controller).

Second is the virtual console stuff. I wasn't happy when they didn't port a lot of the wii's to the wii u and where they did they charged extra to upgrade. They need to let you port everything over. Honestly I'd buy this for good virtual console support to play legacy games on the go.

Really the virtual console part brings up the issues of nintendo's past with their crappy stores and online presence. I haven't checked it recently on my wii u to see if it has improved but Microsoft showed them the way(sony as well) with the xbox 360 as far as how it should be done.

One other thing that I don't like although this might be less of an issue to others. I love how the xbox one really is at the center of the living room experience. The HDMI passthrough really changed the way I played games with friends as we could see the others were sitting in front of their consoles watching tv, playing a game, watching netflix, etc. It made it far easier to get a game invite while doing something else. You can kinda get around this with a smart phone app but it isn't the same. I really love the ability to be watching tv and get an invite to titanfall or something. It is something sony should have added to their pro ps4 and something nintendo really should add to their system if they are serious about playing with others across systems.
 
crusty_juggler said:
The smart money is on waiting for the Nintendo Switch VR Pro.
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This I actually think might happen. Given that the console itself is merely a handheld with a dock. Nintendo could release a headset dock and give VR out even cheaper than Sony's solution.
 
I've never played or owned any nintendo game (ever).

if this one is good (and reasonably priced) I might try it, just to see what i've been missing.
 
twonunpackmule said:
This I actually think might happen. Given that the console itself is merely a handheld with a dock. Nintendo could release a headset dock and give VR out even cheaper than Sony's solution.
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You're quite optimistic here.

They would have to release a VR add on that is damn near as capable as a PS4 on it's own to do any VR properly. Even PSVR comes with an extra processing unit to off-load work from the already powerful PS4. There's no way in hell a Tegra SoC is even remotely capable of VR so the add-on would have to do all of the work, aka: a whole new PS4-level console.
 
Sonicks said:
You're quite optimistic here.

They would have to release a VR add on that is damn near as capable as a PS4 on it's own to do any VR properly. Even PSVR comes with an extra processing unit to off-load work from the already powerful PS4. There's no way in hell a Tegra SoC is even remotely capable of VR.
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If cell phones can do it, the Switch can do it. It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to work.
 
Kwaz said:
Yeah but when was Nintendo ever about cutting edge graphics? It was about fun!

Sure consoles like SEGA had more powerful hardware, better graphics, more comfortable controllers that weren't a rectangle. Didn't matter! Nintendo was king.

They need to bring the fun back and "switch" it up a bit. Sorry, I know - I just gagged a bit myself.
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N64 and snes calls out.. both were pretty good. THey went for graphics and gameplay. even GameCube was competitive. being more powerful then ps2, not too much less than xbox.
 
twonunpackmule said:
It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to work.
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I feel like this right here is Nintendo's mission statement as a company. Gimped VR without any type of tracking, the way Cardboard/Samsung do it, is not gaming quality in the slightest.

It won't ever happen though because Nintendo purposely always goes against the grain. Never in hopes of innovating anything but always in the hopes of getting people's money. VR is gaining too much popularity and makes too much sense for Nintendo to invest time/money into.
 
Sonicks said:
I feel like this right here is Nintendo's mission statement as a company.

Gimped VR without any type of tracking, the way Cardboard/Samsung do it, is not gaming quality in the slightest.
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They have motion plus, and they have a dock. If they were to release a kit that involved this, it's a backdoor. It's not something Nintendo can't do. However, they are in a position to offer a cost cut to VR entry due to not having to sell an addition display. They already have it.

I can see them being able to sell it as an add-on for under $200.
 
twonunpackmule said:
They have motion plus, and they have a dock. If they were to release a kit that involved this, it's a backdoor. It's not something Nintendo can't do. However, they are in a position to offer a cost cut to VR entry due to not having to sell an addition display. They already have it.

I can see them being able to sell it as an add-on for under $200.
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Do you know how VR works? Motion plus doesn't mean they can do tracking. Motion plus is six-axis motion detection which is exactly what phones already do. At the VERY least, they would need to add a headset (that is, a head mounted display with a decent resolution to prevent the screendoor effectm at minimum one screen split into two) ONE infrared sensor to track the headset/body movements (the cheap Wii bar sensor will not suffice for this), AND (this one is huge) an additional CPU/GPU box to process all of this. And, if you've kept up with the [H] VR articles, it has to run these at 90fps.

Under $200? Not in the next couple of years and not at all as an add-on to a Tegra SoC. I'm sorry but Nintendo isn't god. They have great IPs but you shouldn't let that could your judgement this badly.
 
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I know this is going to sound crazy to some folks. I think its safe to say we know It will be as powerful as the current gen Sony/MS units; it may not not be quite as powerful as their upcoming refresh parts not that it needs to be. Having said that I do believe it may push those refresh consoles more then most people would think.

What matters in a console is how well the consoles OS employees the hardware it has. Nintendo has wisely gone to a system using ARM and Nvidia. As nice as it WAS for developers when sony and ms went to x86 meaning they only had to develop for one system. That simply isn't an issue anymore. All the major game engines can compile games for ARM hardware... and have been well tweaked for the ARMv8 architecture. Being able to release on mobile platforms with out spending millions of dollars has been the goal for a few years now. As a result the major game engines driving 95% of todays games are already very well optimized for a Nintendo ARM based system.

What we don't know at this point is how many cores the GPU has and how much Nvidia has tuned their in house denver cores for this custom chip. Considering the two year old shield was right in between the PS3 and PS4 in performance, I think its pretty safe to assume this new custom chip using a pascal GPU should be able at the least to hit PS4 parity. If Nvidia was able to squeeze enough cores in... with the experience Nintendo has milking ARM hardware at the OS level I believe this thing should punch well above its weight.

I mean lets face it the target(s) it has to shoot for... are Celeron powered Polaris GPU running machines with shared system/video memory, and hell one of them is even saddled with having to run the W10 kernel. ;)
 
dergreg said:
Where did they say that? I must have missed it.
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Nintendo Claims NX Won’t Replace Wii U or 3DS

Despite recent speculation, Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima explains that the company’s upcoming gaming platform the NX, won’t simply “replace” the Wii U or 3DS.
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05...not-the-successor-to-the-wii-u-nor-to-the-3ds

"The NX is neither the successor to the Wii U nor to the 3DS", said Kimishima (as translated by NeoGAF user GSR). "It's a new way of playing games, which I think will have a larger impact than the Wii U, but I don't feel it's a pure replacement for the Wii U."
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Many more sites that have similar quotes out there.
 
I'm just going to keep on saying it.

Nintendo has to stop making hardware. If they can partner with Apple and Google to make a separate Nintendo App marketplace that will be THE platform for all Nintendo/Third-Party Nintendo titles, then that's it. That's all they need. That's all this console is a solution to. They want in on the mobile gaming craze but refuse to use other platforms.

Couple this hypothetical Nintendo App Marketplace with Nintendo-designed and approved peripherals and BAM. Instant console gaming machine that will churn for years and years and years and years.
 
So they basically are releasing a handheld gaming device and charging a discount console prices on? Yeah you can hook it up to a tv, ooh the controllers slide off, but overall that Zelda they showed looked like ass, and might be a great little hand held type of gaming platform, but that's really all it is.
 
Sonicks said:
I'm just going to keep on saying it.

Nintendo has to stop making hardware. If they can partner with Apple and Google to make a separate Nintendo App marketplace that will be THE platform for all Nintendo/Third-Party Nintendo titles, then that's it. That's all they need. That's all this console is a solution to. They want in on the mobile gaming craze but refuse to use other platforms.

Couple this hypothetical Nintendo App Marketplace with Nintendo-designed and approved peripherals and BAM. Instant console gaming machine that will churn for years and years and years and years.
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If Nintendo quits making hardware who will innovate? Most of their hardware has been copied/imitated over the years. If this console sells well you can bet other companies are going to copy it. Look at the Wii and the motion controls. Sony ended up releasing that move pink dildo thing. You can look further back on what Nintendo released and others also implemented into their designs. The only thing other companies are doing is better hardware and VR. I don't know if this will be a day one purchase for me, but I will get it at some point.
 
To me the concept doesn't sound terribly different from PS Vita and Vita TV, with the exception that with Vita, you just plug in the card, with Switch, you plug in the entire console.

If I was in the market for a such a device, I would, as Sonicks have said, preferred the games to appear on Android/iOS (with a dedicated platform if need be).

One of the ways I'd like to see it work, is that Nintendo makes a standalone device, which connects directly to the TV, but has a Bluetooth receiver built in, and the hardware would be more powerful than any smartphone or tablet, for the expressed purpose of being able to render the games at a higher resolution (at least 4k or 1080p/60fps), and the Bluetooth serves as a save file transfer medium (if you played a game on the phone and make a save file, that file will be transferred over to the console that's connected to the TV, and vice versa). I also use bluetooth as a way to circumvent any potential communication issues with Android or iOS file transfer.

That way, you will have the portability and living room experience in the same device without needing to carry a secondary portable device.

That'd be what I want if I were in the market. Vita TV concept is nice, but the fact that it wasn't rendering the game at a much higher fidelity on the TV was kind of a deal breaker.
 
VELKYN said:
If Nintendo quits making hardware who will innovate? Most of their hardware has been copied/imitated over the years. If this console sells well you can bet other companies are going to copy it. Look at the Wii and the motion controls. Sony ended up releasing that move pink dildo thing. You can look further back on what Nintendo released and others also implemented into their designs. The only thing other companies are doing is better hardware and VR. I don't know if this will be a day one purchase for me, but I will get it at some point.
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Who in the god-damned shit is of the belief that Nintendo is innovating anything? They are trying so hard to sell 'innovation' but every single hardware release since the Gamecube has been a gimmick and nothing more. Sure other console makers have tried to add these 'innovations' (MS with Kinect and Sony with the Move) but they ultimately fell flat because they are shit gimmicks. Please prove to me otherwise. Wii games played better without motion controls. The DS can do without the second screen. The 3DS was such a flop they released a 2DS. The WiiU? I'm not even touching that. What. Do. They. Innovate?

Please enlighten.
 
chenw said:
hat'd be what I want if I were in the market. Vita TV concept is nice, but the fact that it wasn't rendering the game at a much higher fidelity on the TV was kind of a deal breaker.
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Not really. That wasn't the issue. It has limited compatibility with existing games, and it's a bit of a pain to use because you need to take out your memory cartridge (and possibly game cartridge) and it needs to rebuild its database every time you do so. Plus it's only compatible with the PS3 controller, and it limited a lot of the interactions depending on the game. Plus it didn't really replace something like the Roku.

As far as rendering and whatnot, you couldn't really expect a tiny black box that costs SO LITTLE (seriously it's freaking cheap) to actually have better graphics than the Vita in the first place. As far as value went I still thought mine was a good bargain, but the thing is that I tend to want to use my Vita on the go anyway. So I played around with the PS TV for a bit but it was just kind of silly being limited to my couch for most of these type of games. It's still great for some of them though.


But really what drove the nail in the coffin if anything was Sony. Sony just really messed up with the Vita and the TV. Both were amazing, but Sony just messed everything up.

I still love mine because the selection of JRPGs and visual novels is huge, and keeps getting updated.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Not really. That wasn't the issue. It has limited compatibility with existing games, and it's a bit of a pain to use because you need to take out your memory cartridge (and possibly game cartridge) and it needs to rebuild its database every time you do so. Plus it's only compatible with the PS3 controller, and it limited a lot of the interactions depending on the game. Plus it didn't really replace something like the Roku.

As far as rendering and whatnot, you couldn't really expect a tiny black box that costs SO LITTLE (seriously it's freaking cheap) to actually have better graphics than the Vita in the first place. As far as value went I still thought mine was a good bargain, but the thing is that I tend to want to use my Vita on the go anyway. So I played around with the PS TV for a bit but it was just kind of silly being limited to my couch for most of these type of games. It's still great for some of them though.


But really what drove the nail in the coffin if anything was Sony. Sony just really messed up with the Vita and the TV. Both were amazing, but Sony just messed everything up.

I still love mine because the selection of JRPGs and visual novels is huge, and keeps getting updated.
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Yeah, hence why I said the concept (being able to play the same game on two different devices) is nice, but the actual implementation is disastrous.

I would have prefered something like this:

The 'console' and the 'portable' both have similar games selection, but the data the 'console' and the 'portable' holds are completely different (IE the 'portable' will be optimised for low res low capacity devices, the console will have assets that's more suited for display on TV, larger files, textures, etc.), the bluetooth connection serves, essentially, a save file transfer between the two, so whatever progress you made on the console will be transferred to the portable, and vice versa.

Might not even need to be Bluetooth actually, could even have it connected via cloud, I use bluetooth as that's more generic (and DS4 uses Bluetooth).
 
Here's my thing - the games I most enjoy now are NOT heavy graphically intensive games. I love all the indie games on Steam and all the clever ways people have found a way to make a good game within a budget limit. If all of those developers port their stuff to a console like this it would be winner winner chicken dinner to me


Also whether people want to admit it or not - mobile gaming is the future for a majority of people. It does not need to compete with the Xbox or Ps4 to be a success. I think trying to take on those 2 consoles would have been a mistake
 
Sonicks said:
Why does Nintendo continue to hold onto the belief that they owe the world a gaming console every few years? This silly idea confirms that they know their future is in mobile gaming but refuse to develop for iOS/Android for some reason.

They absolutely need to become a software company and provide great peripherals for existing platforms. It just makes no sense for them to go this route when the market is saturated to the teeth with handheld devices that have the graphics performance of an Xbox 360 (phones/tablets).
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They want to keep their hardware revenue/profit so until people stop giving them money for some crappy low powered consoles, they will keep making them.

That would be fine if they were not such cowards when it came to consoles. There is nothing wrong with going for the handheld market, but constantly relegating home console devices to ancient technology is a terrible strategy. The wii only sold because it was a gimmick nobody knew how quickly would be left on a stand to collect dust and cobwebs while people played third party cross platform titles that are more modern.


All nintendo has/had to do was create a console with competitive graphic, release first party titles and woo third party devs as well. Then people who went sony or xbox might get a nintendo console instead as their first party titles bested the other two on top of having the third party titles everyone wants to play.


On handheld they still have a market, but this is not a real replacement for a home console. But we'll see if the toddlers prefer playing this toy at home compared to a more powerful console or pc version of games.
 
Stiler said:
I just don't see it working well.

Why on earth would ANYONE aside from die hard Nintendo fans choose this if they have a modern up to date phone?


It's not like you can throw this in your pocket + your phone.

Phones have pretty much taken over the market that handhelds used to have and if this thing doesn't allow you to text/browse the net and everything a phone does I just don't really see it being that huge a hit.

Then on the console side, it's likely that they won't be able to compete in terms of power vs the ps4/xbone, and with nintendo's usual lack of third party support I just don't really understand what they are doing here.
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Speaking of which, if Samsung really wanted to make an interesting splash, next year they should release a controller casing that used the s7/edge and up version of their phones and s8 screens as the central display of a controller for handheld android games.


Samsung sells enough phones to have dedicated controller gloves. It could even have a boosted battery pack. They already have special companion hardware in the gearVR, this would be a natural way to blunt nintendo in the games department and have something that plays similar games baked into something people ALREADY purchase, a high end smartphone.
 
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