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Nintendo Switch Discussion Thread (Question of the Day, Countdown, etc)

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M

moggio

Banned
B1G_A1AN said:
Hmm with the way that cable sticks out, it looks like it may not lay flat.

I don't want to go off topic, but Nintendo seem to be making this hard to be a handheld due to the size and hard to use at home if it won't lay flat, not everyone lives in a minimalist utopia! I mean look at this shot here from the Switch advert/reveal, this Switch doesn't have any cables or wires coming from it, how does it send the audio and video to the TV, with magic (yes I am being sarcastic).

rxCtbp5.jpg
Click to expand...

Embedded trunking in the wall.
 
Xdrive05

Xdrive05

Member
Honestly 4GB seems about perfect for hardware with capabilities between the Wii-U and Xbox One, and which will be low power consumption anyway. But it would probably mean some real headaches down-porting XBO/PS4 games to the thing. Assets will have to be compressed, etc. Not impossible, but certainly more trouble than if they were able to bump it up to 6GB.

Expecting 4GB, though.
 
H

-Horizon-

Member
B1G_A1AN said:
Hmm with the way that cable sticks out, it looks like it may not lay flat.

I don't want to go off topic, but Nintendo seem to be making this hard to be a handheld due to the size and hard to use at home if it won't lay flat, not everyone lives in a minimalist utopia! I mean look at this shot here from the Switch advert/reveal, this Switch doesn't have any cables or wires coming from it, how does it send the audio and video to the TV, with magic (yes I am being sarcastic).

rxCtbp5.jpg
Click to expand...

It looks like the cables are maybe also coming out of the side through that notch.

Or maybe I'm wrong and the image quality and lighting is playing tricks on my eyes and it really can't lay flat lol.
 
E

EDarkness

Member
Xdrive05 said:
Honestly 4GB seems about perfect for hardware with capabilities between the Wii-U and Xbox One, and which will be low power consumption anyway. But it would probably mean some real headaches down-porting XBO/PS4 games to the thing. Assets will have to be compressed, etc. Not impossible, but certainly more trouble than if they were able to bump it up to 6GB.

Expecting 4GB, though.
Click to expand...

Well, the rumor currently that it has 4 GB with 3.2 GB available for games. More than enough for anything you want to do. Not sure why people keep worrying about this....
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
ShadowFox08 said:
If Nintendo uped it to 6-8GB, it would go a long way, but this is implying that they'd want to make a console as powerful as xbone when docked.

Just imagine if Sony didn't change their ram from 4 to 8GB in the last minute. They wouldn't be the lead console for sure...

I wish Nintendo took more hardware power risks instead of playing it safe and cutting corners so they don't lose profit at launch. They really should try first for a couple of months.
Click to expand...

In sales or in game developments. I seriously doubt sales would have been seriously affected: Microsoft and Nintendo screwed up in too many ways for that to happen. In game development, the PS4 would still have a faster GPU and a RAM setup more efficient for 1080p, so those digital foundry analysis would have been interesting.

Something to consider: the PS4 reserves over 2GBs of RAM for other things besides games. If it only had 4GB of total RAM, it could have less than 2GBs for games. That is much less than what the Switch appears to have.
 
E

EDarkness

Member
brochiller said:
What's the XBO have for games?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter. There's no point in getting stuck on that number because 3.2 GB is more than enough to run whatever they want. This includes PS4/XBox One ports. Forget what they have because it's not important. RAM isn't what's gonna stop ports from happening.
 
C

ChrisMahoney

Banned
EDarkness said:
I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter. There's no point in getting stuck on that number because 3.2 GB is more than enough to run whatever they want. This includes PS4/XBox One ports. Forget what they have because it's not important. RAM isn't what's gonna stop ports from happening.
Click to expand...
Why didn't PS4 use 6 gigs and save money then?
3.2 seems low for both CPU and GPU memory
 
E

EDarkness

Member
ChrisMahoney said:
Why didn't PS4 use 6 gigs and save money then?
3.2 seems low for both CPU and GPU memory
Click to expand...

Who knows and it doesn't matter. 3.2 GB is fine. If you're worried about ports, then this is the wrong thing to be focused on. Worry about sales and whether or not people are going to be buying 3rd party games, because that's what's gonna matter most. Remember for perspective that Rise of the Tomb Raider was ported to the Xbox 360 and it only has 512 MB of RAM. The NS will have no problem with ports and 3.2 GB is fine.
 
T

Tom Nook Sawyer

Member
EDarkness said:
Well, the rumor currently that it has 4 GB with 3.2 GB available for games. More than enough for anything you want to do. Not sure why people keep worrying about this....
Click to expand...

quote-who-in-their-right-mind-would-ever-need-more-than-640k-of-ram-bill-gates-55-87-89.jpg


The quote isn't real but the point is. 3.2 GB is fine, but it's silly to argue more wouldn't be better, or that there's no usage case scenario where a developer may need more
 
E

EDarkness

Member
Tom Nook Sawyer said:
quote-who-in-their-right-mind-would-ever-need-more-than-640k-of-ram-bill-gates-55-87-89.jpg


It's not real, but the point still stands
Click to expand...

People are worried about ports, right? So if that's the case, then having 3.2 GB will not stop that from happening. Devs will port their games to the NS if there's an audience. 3.2 GB is plenty and I won't lie, more is good, too. But it wouldn't matter if the NS had 16 GB if no one purchased games, then ports wouldn't happen. If it had the best hardware ever made and no one purchased games there wouldn't be ports. RAM won't be the barrier of entry as people keep saying over and over again.
 
T

Tom Nook Sawyer

Member
EDarkness said:
RAM won't be the barrier of entry as people keep saying over and over again.
Click to expand...

Nor will any single piece of the Switch. Anything can be compromised enough to be a port. See: DKC on the GameBoy Color, or Doom on the SNES, or Half-Life 2 on the Xbox.

You're right that the audience will decide whether the Switch gets ports or not, but the hardware will dictate the quality.
 
E

EDarkness

Member
Tom Nook Sawyer said:
Nor will any single piece of the Switch. Anything can be compromised enough to be a port. See: DKC on the GameBoy Color, or Doom on the SNES, or Half-Life 2 on the Xbox.

You're right that the audience will decide whether the Switch gets ports or not, but the hardware will dictate the quality.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's up to the people doing the port. There have been some shitty ports done on great hardware and some excellent ports done on crappy hardware.
 
T

Tom Nook Sawyer

Member
EDarkness said:
There have been some shitty ports done on great hardware and some excellent ports done on crappy hardware.
Click to expand...

For sure, but there are limits, and the hardware dictates the cap. All 3 ports I mentioned were all extremely impressive given the restraints, but it doesn't change they were all compromised in their own ways
 
A

atbigelow

Member
If the I/O for game media is fast enough, you can deal with less RAM by streaming more often. That obviously can only go so far, but I also don't expect 4GB to be the impediment for ports.

For reference, tons of N64 games got around its bad RAM by streaming from the cart.
 
E

EDarkness

Member
Tom Nook Sawyer said:
For sure, but there are limits, and the hardware dictates the cap. All 3 ports I mentioned were all extremely impressive given the restraints, but it doesn't change they were all compromised in their own ways
Click to expand...

But this is always true, regardless of the hardware. I'm sure some PC folks would be happier with better ports sometimes and we all know that PCs don't have the same limitations as consoles do. It all comes down to who is doing the porting and how much money and time is put into it. In any case, the NS seems powerful enough to not have too hard of a time with ports of current games and 3.2 GB is close enough to the other system's available RAM that it won't be a real issue. What will drive ports for the NS will be sales and demographics more than the hardware, at least in my opinion.
 
Soapbox Killer

Soapbox Killer

Grand Nagus
EDarkness said:
But this is always true, regardless of the hardware. I'm sure some PC folks would be happier with better ports sometimes and we all know that PCs don't have the same limitations as consoles do. It all comes down to who is doing the porting and how much money and time is put into it. In any case, the NS seems powerful enough to not have too hard of a time with ports of current games and 3.2 GB is close enough to the other system's available RAM that it won't be a real issue. What will drive ports for the NS will be sales and demographics more than the hardware, at least in my opinion.
Click to expand...


I agree with this in theory but with this logic why did the 3rd party games skip Wii? There are 120million or so Wii in the wild but a whole lot of nothing.
 
S

saskuatch

Member
Smiles and Cries said:
it would still add to the cost of the machine also where would you put it?

more ram means more space needed so would you make the machine Thicker? Larger?

You can't just say I want 6GB without designing for it first.
Click to expand...

the problem is 4gb ram is too low even by today's standards. So I would image 2-3 years from now 4gb would just be unworkable for modern games. Basically kills any third part support beyond simple titles.
 
E

EDarkness

Member
Soapbox Killer said:
I agree with this in theory but with this logic why did the 3rd party games skip Wii? There are 120million or so Wii in the wild but a whole lot of nothing.
Click to expand...

I guess you missed the "Wii is for grandmas" mantra during those days. Ugh. So many failed attempts at trying to bring in that "family" market. I'm sure EA would like to forget games like Boogie. How many debates were there back then about "core" games and how many "test" games were there? 3rd parties totally screwed the pooch with the Wii.

Hardware had something to do with it, too. That's true, but the gap was huge between the Wii and the other systems. This won't be the case with the NS, which is why there's no reason to worry about hardware issues. If devs don't bring their games over, then it's not because of hardware.

saskuatch said:
the problem is 4gb ram is too low even by today's standards. So I would image 2-3 years from now 4gb would just be unworkable for modern games. Basically kills any third part support beyond simple titles.
Click to expand...

Heh, heh. Not at all.
 
Soapbox Killer

Soapbox Killer

Grand Nagus
EDarkness said:
I guess you missed the "Wii is for grandmas" mantra during those days. Ugh. So many failed attempts at trying to bring in that "family" market. I'm sure EA would like to forget games like Boogie. How many debates were there back then about "core" games and how many "test" games were there? 3rd parties totally screwed the pooch with the Wii.

Hardware had something to do with it, too. That's true, but the gap was huge between the Wii and the other systems. This won't be the case with the NS, which is why there's no reason to worry about hardware issues. If devs don't bring their games over, then it's not because of hardware.
Click to expand...


I gotcha. The perception of weakness can be just as damaging as actually being weak with gamers. One of the (many) problems with Wii U was the idea that the system was weak. While that was true in a sense it was still a capable system. We'll never see what a maxed out Wii U can do. (Maybe BotW)
 
R

Roo

Member
Sylverstone14 said:
Decided to do more boxart mockups while I twiddle my thumbs and wait for next month.
Click to expand...

Really nice job, Sylverstone.
I really like your minimalistic aproach. The Switch logo works perfectly with it.
Too bad boxarts are polluted with labels and other intrusive logos.
 
S

ShadowFox08

Member
saskuatch said:
the problem is 4gb ram is too low even by today's standards. So I would image 2-3 years from now 4gb would just be unworkable for modern games. Basically kills any third part support beyond simple titles.
Click to expand...

What's mainly going to kill 3rd party support is lack of sales.

Back in the Wii era, the wii did get CoD games like COD4, WaW, BO, and MW3 while retaining all of the most important gameplay, while running at 30fps tops(half of ps3/360). They got just enough sales to make a profit. So its certainly possible with a system that was believed to be close to 30 as less powerful as its competitors.


Any current gen game will be able to port on the switch at 4GB, but obviously downgraded. Still though RAM and bandwidth worry me. Nintendo could go a long way future proofing the Switch for several years to come by adding more RAM. The Wii U having an inferior CPU to PS3 and 360 was flat out embarrassing and obvious in many ports. If only Nintendo was able to risk losing some profit for the first couple of months.
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
ShadowFox08 said:
What's mainly going to kill 3rd party support is lack of sales.

Back in the Wii era, the wii did get CoD games like COD4, WaW, BO, and MW3 while retaining all of the most important gameplay, while running at 30fps tops(half of ps3/360). They got just enough sales to make a profit. So its certainly possible with a system that was believed to be close to 30 as less powerful as its competitors.


Any current gen game will be able to port on the switch at 4GB, but obviously downgraded. Still though RAM and bandwidth worry me. Nintendo could go a long way future proofing the Switch for several years to come by adding more RAM. The Wii U having an inferior CPU to PS3 and 360 was flat out embarrassing and obvious in many ports. If only Nintendo was able to risk losing some profit for the first couple of months.
Click to expand...
The big issue with the Wii U is that Nintendo put a lot of development into ensuring that the system was BC to the Wii (physically and internally). Nintendo acceptance to start over with a more efficent chipset was a major step.
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
ShadowFox08 said:
What's mainly going to kill 3rd party support is lack of sales.

Back in the Wii era, the wii did get CoD games like COD4, WaW, BO, and MW3 while retaining all of the most important gameplay, while running at 30fps tops(half of ps3/360). They got just enough sales to make a profit. So its certainly possible with a system that was believed to be close to 30 as less powerful as its competitors.


Any current gen game will be able to port on the switch at 4GB, but obviously downgraded. Still though RAM and bandwidth worry me. Nintendo could go a long way future proofing the Switch for several years to come by adding more RAM. The Wii U having an inferior CPU to PS3 and 360 was flat out embarrassing and obvious in many ports. If only Nintendo was able to risk losing some profit for the first couple of months.
Click to expand...

Inferior in some ways but the wii u cpu could smoke the ps360 cpus at some types of code
 
J

Jon Carter

Member
Turbowaffles said:
Any predictions on what week in March it's gonna be released?

I wanna plan my vacation around this thing lol
Click to expand...

Laura Kate Dale on Twitter said, "Being told March 17th is currently planned Switch launch day in PAL, will release worldwide that same week but not same date all regions."

Monster Hunter XX is releasing on March 18th in Japan, so that's a good candidate for the Switch launch date in Japan. No clue about NA.
 
Z

Zeyphersan

Banned
DecoReturns said:
A while back the rumor was March 17 or close to that.

People wanted Mar10 tho for obvious reasons.
Click to expand...

What's the reason for the 10th? Just that it's earlier?

My vote is Mar 17 since that's exactly two years after they announced their partnership with DeNA and the existence of the NX (Mar 17 2015 according to Wikipedia)
 
J

JoshuaJSlone

Member
lwilliams3 said:
Don't expect too many OS features. Looks like Nintendo isn't even going to reserve a gig for it like the Wii U.
Click to expand...
From a gaming standpoint I look at something like the rumored 800 MB for OS RAM and think "Geez, that's 50% more than a PS3 game." 1.5 Skyrims seems like a lot of RAM for just screenshots and a friend list.
saskuatch said:
the problem is 4gb ram is too low even by today's standards. So I would image 2-3 years from now 4gb would just be unworkable for modern games. Basically kills any third part support beyond simple titles.
Click to expand...
That's more a sales matter than technical. Games aren't on an irreversible treadmill of increased RAM use. If third party games are selling decently on Switch for the next 3 years, they might not be inclined to make it impossible. Sure it'll have to worry about games designed for PS5 or whatever, but that seems to be nowhere close.
 
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