The Switch is a console sandwiched between a bar of success lowered by the disaster of the Wii U and the considerable ground Nintendo must make up.
Compared to the Wii U on its merits, the Switch is a slam dunk. It takes the basic concept of the Wii U, of a tablet-based console, and fulfills the promise of it in a way Nintendo simply wasn’t capable of realizing in 2012. It’s launching with a piece of software that, more than anything in the Wii U’s first year, demonstrates its inherent capability of delivering what Nintendo says is one of the Switch’s primary missions: a big-budget, AAA game that exists across a handheld device and a television-connected portable. The hardware lives up to its name in how easily and smoothly it moves between those two worlds, in how dead simple it all is to make something pretty magical happen.
I am genuinely excited by the Switch, and the prospects it brings to the table. I’m worried about the lineup of games – or lack thereof, really – so I’m not going to jump in straight away. The reviews of the device and its launch Zelda title are positive, though, so I’m looking forward to what Nintendo has in store for the Switch.
Like the Wii U, the Switch doesn’t really have an audience. It’s not powerful enough for the ‘give me the same shit I played last month, but make it look better’ graphics snobs, nor does it really have any appeal for the majority of casual players, who now play games on phones and tablets; these people are not going to drag yet another device around with them, which is why the 3DS fizzled out like a bad fart. So the Switch will probably be another $300 hardware tax to play 1st party Nintendo games on.
Nintendo did right by starting to make games for smartphones, but they should’ve made Sony or MS pay them a shitload of cash to develop exclusively on one of those consoles.
Edited 2017-03-03 01:45 UTC
And here I thought the 3DS had been a huge success, with more than 60 million units sold and still going strong.
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/223720-nintendos-3ds-sales-are-pl…
Wonder why that happened?
Edited 2017-03-03 03:50 UTC
Definitely phones and tablets ate into their market. However, the 2ds mario kart bundle is priced at 79.99usd and you can buy a nintendo refurbished 2ds direct for ~60usd. 64 million is still a good amount of sales…
The switch should be interesting but I’ve neer been a launch day buyer, I always wait a couple of years to jump on board.
Reviews of the zelda game are VERY good, with 37 reviews it tops the all time charts (previously held by mario galaxy).
I believe it will be a huge success in Japan.
About the western markets I’m not sure, but if Nintendo supports it with excellent games and pushes hardware revisions (more battery life, a more portable version), I think it will succeed as well.
You just cannot compare the well written portable games running on a 3DS (or a Sony PS Vita) and what you get when you rummage in the garbage that feeds the cellphone game market. People who are content with yet another jewel color matcher or free-to-play piece of shit with double currencies and ultrasimplified gameplay are no market for this or any gaming console, fixed or portable. And this won’t change for as long as Apple and Google keep alive the 3^a‘not-a-pop software market (with extended free trials and insults from your users that feel entitled to play forever for free).
I used to have a Nintendo DS in the times of the dumb phone, and it gave me great enjoyment. I gave it away when the smartphone came with its promises of high-res 3D cheap games on the go, and now I don’t play on the go anymore: games suck or are unplayable without physical controls.
Now, having an excelent portable console is not enough to succeed — just see the Vita flounder. Of course, Sony has to keep more balls in the air — this will be the nest where Nintendo will lay all there eggs. I hope their strategy pays off.
You’re probably right about fixed consoles, but not portable. Several of us ditched our DS’s/3DS’s, because we didn’t need them anymore. Granted, most of the games on phones/tablets don’t match the kind of depth you might find on dedicated handhelds, but when I just want to play something for 10 minutes on the shitter or at the dentist office, they’re perfect. And there’s some goddamn cool games on mobile that are just as much fun as anything I played on Nintendo’s portable consoles, even if they only last 1/10th as long. But again, since I’m not looking to play for hours on a small screen, this isn’t an issue.
It’s like phone cameras – they don’t have to be better than digital cameras, they just have to be good enough to be used as the ‘default’ device.
Edited 2017-03-04 00:52 UTC
Mind recommending me a few? Must be at least half as good as Chrono Trigger. Thanks.
If you want RPGs to play, I can’t help you, since I don’t play those. Just Google ‘best rpgs on iOS/Android’. Honestly though, if you’re looking for a console-like experience on the go that you can play for hours, mobile obviously isn’t the best place to look. Mobile is better for those of us who like gaming in very short bursts.
Edited 2017-03-04 18:34 UTC
Never owned a Nintendo device, but I have a faint idea that it’s severely region limited.
Can anyone school me on what you have and don’t have access to if you buy a Switch (or any other Nintendo device) in Europe?
Pretty sure I read somewhere that it is region free.
According to Polygon (http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/12/14260646/nintendo-switch-region-fr…) and other sources the Switch is region free:
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima confirmed the system won^aEURTMt be region locked, meaning players will be able to play globally released software on the console-handheld hybrid.
RT.
Nintendo needs to realize that they really have essentially zero audience except for some hard-core fans. The SoC they’re using (it’s a custom NVIDIA Tegra chip for those who care) is really not all that impressive (it’s still 32-bit, and even aside from that still can’t match the PS4 or XB1 in terms of processing power), their graphics have barely improved at all (still limited to at best 1080p, and most games will probably not run higher than 720p), and the system as a whole is rather ridiculously large. Overall, it has near zero appeal for most hardcore gamers, and the price tag is ridiculous for their intended audience of children. Their only significant selling point for most people is their games, but they could make a lot more money on their games by just making them cross-platform.
There are a few things I have to admit they did well though, the ability to do up to 8-node mobile ad-hoc networks with the WiFi for local multiplayer is a great addition, and the usage of a standard charging port instead of a proprietary connector is a good step too.
So there is value still in what Nintendo brings to the table as a hardware player. Their controller layouts, ease of multiplayer, simplified gaming interface, etc. Their fans/customers understand that it will not be a XBox/PS contender, and I’m OK with that. Everything does not need to be equal to be enjoyable.
Actually, the SoC chipset/processor it has is NOT just 32 bit. It’s a combination of 32 bit processors AND 64 bit ones. Look up stats for the NVIDIA Shield TV since it’s the same SoC set, and you can find specific details if you want (I can’t recall the exact stats offhand).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHIELD_Android_TV#Hardware
Quick summary: it has four more powerful 64-bit cores, four less powerful (but more efficient) 64-bit cores, and a 700 series GPU tuned for better efficiency. For Nintendo, it’s pretty powerful considering how they normally go cheap on the hardware. It doesn’t compare to the PS4 or XBOne, but then Nintendo never tries to go head-to-head on power, relying on better development and exclusivity.
No, the Tegra X1 SoC is a quad-core, not a big.LITTLE octo-core.
Nvidia’s Tegra X1 (codenamed “Erista”) features four ARM Cortex-A57 cores and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores in big.LITTLE configuration, as well as a Maxwell-based graphics processing unit.
You were saying?
Now the NX Tegra X1 isn’t quite as certain. The spec for that say 4+? instead of 4+4. I can’t see them making too many changes from the normal X1 as that would cost money and take time, both of which would be better spent elsewhere. Now I COULD see them pulling a PS3 – disabling one of the processors if it’s bad to improve chip rates like Sony did with the SPUs in the CBE. So I’d believe a 4+3 configuration where the other processor is THERE, but may not work correctly.
The Tegra K1 is a 32-bit SoC.
The Tegra X1, which the Switch SoC is based upon, is a 64-bit SoC.
Saw a store demoing Breath of the Wild earlier today. I knew it was coming out soon, but had no idea it was today, so it caught me a bit off guard. The game looked utterly gorgeous. I just stood there for almost 45 minutes, simply admiring the thing. I pass by that store almost every work day – it’s in the mall next to the building I work in, right next to the car park I park at – and I’ve never stopped that long for any other game. Very Ghibli-esque in terms of aesthetics and mood. Good art direction beats pixel count every time. Got home and Googled for reviews, and if Metacritic is any indication, it seems to be doing very well. Can’t justify buying the Switch if that’s going to be the only game I ever play on it though. Will need to see what kind of catalog it’s got year from now.
The game selection is troubling. Like the Wii-U they said plenty of 3rd parties pledged to support the console, however the actual game line-up looks exactly like when the Wii-U was coming out and all the 3rd parties merely porting the famous last gen games from PS3/Xbox 360. It looks like the same exact story already, and I don’t expect to see enough new games being released for it after the first year on the market.
The only way I see Nintendo surviving is if they embrace using 3rd party game engines instead of building their own. The hardware and software have become too complex and using a 3rd party game engine is the only way they will get their franchise titles to market fast enough for there to be enough games to justify people buying their consoles.
Edited 2017-03-03 19:23 UTC