The Nintendo Switch Thread

[MegasonicZX]

2 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

This is especially telling when you consider that the most looked foward to games on the system right now look as though they were designed for buttons and nothing else. This might have been an excuse back during Wii days (though I'll still never forgive Twilight Princess for basically codifying the standard for waggle that so many other developers used), but it's kind of weird that we've been through three gens of this shit now and even Nintendo developers doesn't seem to want to touch it.

Yeah, I appreciate all the things that Nintendo have pumped into this system as it really does seem like they're trying to create one unified experience with this being that you can literally play any game with any control setup which is good because one of the number one problems with some games in the past was that you had to play with Nintendos controls and not your own so unless you sucked it up and went with it, you were essentially out of luck. Two major problems I could see with though are 1. Devs not even bothering with them (heck, Zelda and Mario don't even use any gimmick controls from what we've seen outside of gyro) which would leads into number 2. Nintendo forcing usage of them which would result in more scenarios where the game comes out worse for it.

 

Edit: In short, I'm pretty happy about there being more options for control now but I'm worried about how it'll be used.

[Betz]

Just gonna leave this here. Thanks to Tyson Hesse for the fun comments.

[Lucid Dream]

I was thinking, what are the chances of Nintendo becoming a third-party publisher who publishes/ports their games on PC. Something similar to SEGA. Because I would be more then happy to see the Switch fail if it means we get Pokemon and Mario in 60fps 1080p on PC. For reasonable prices to boot.

The Switch has great concepts and all, but I don't see it being executed well enough to compete with PCs without relying heavily on console exclusives. 

[Nepenthe]

Did we forget how much going third-party absolutely wrecked Sega? More hardware competition is a good thing.

[Wraith]

1 minute ago, Nepenthe said:

Did we forget how much going third-party absolutely wrecked Sega? More hardware competition is a good thing.

Sega was pretty fucked BEFORE then to be fair.

[Blacklightning]

Not to mention I'm pretty sure Nintendo has stated on multiple occasions that they would sooner take their entire first party library to the grave than go full third party. Am I remembering that wrong?

[Nepenthe]

@Josh Well, I figured that was implied. Businesses don't go bankrupt without being in prior trouble.

[Wraith]

I mean I don't think Nintendo going Third party would do the same amount of damage to the company that sega going third party did. There was a variety of bad decisions both before and after that I don't think Nintendo would make if it ever came to that.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Also about people complaining about the additional price of memory, heres the current price to size ratio of currently mass-produced Sandisk MicroSDXC cards:

32GB-$12

64GB-$20(currently going for $16 on amazon)

128GB-$40

200GB-$70.

Which isn't a bad scale at all, not that horrible a cost, and they do go on sale. Not to mention that these will drop even further when 1/2TB models go into production next year. Add to that you likely won't need much until the Titles really start coming in heavy come this fall, most launch games will have minimal patches/DLC with the exception of Splatoon. And remember unlike PS4/Xbone you won't be installing every game on your system

[Dejimon11]

31 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

Did we forget how much going third-party absolutely wrecked Sega? More hardware competition is a good thing.

This is pretty much my stance on it. I don't understand people's fascination with seeing either Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft fail. That would be a bad thing for the industry

30 minutes ago, Josh said:

Sega was pretty fucked BEFORE then to be fair.

Well yeah and then things got worse for a while until now which feels like things are looking up for them. 

[Candescence]

7 hours ago, Zippo said:

Right. These are cool features, but are developers actually going to use them? 

Well, the good thing about having a touchscreen handheld is that optional touch functionality for at least menus and such is pretty much expected, so Switch ports will inevitably have. Hell, touchscreen functionality in modern engines is pretty much trivial to implement, and the SDK for the haptics probably isn't much more difficult to implement either, so we'll likely see both in every Switch game.

At worst, using the OS UI with the touch screen is going to be a delight.

[Meta77]

Since when did sega going good third party fuck them up. There have been a ton of good games I've enjoyed on pc or ps4cause of it.

 

[Nepenthe]

Game quality and the presence of many of their franchises dropped off a cliff afterwards, and it's only in the last few years where they've been gaining goodwill back, even though they keep doing dumb shit like Boom. The CEO had to apologize for it.

[The Deleter]

Just gonna leave this here...

Quote

So as many people know, the Switch was revealed to be $300~ at the Presentation event, despite all the $250 rumors everyone was hoping for. To make matters worse, several items of the Switch seem to be insanely overpriced. But chief among all, is the Switch dock.

This bad boy was revealed to cost 90 flipping dollars to buy seperately, disappointing the seven people who really wanted a dock for their bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom Tvs, (I kid, I kid...) while leaving the rest of the world comically amused. The Pro controller is 70, the joycons are 80, but 90 bucks for as simple a thing as a dock?!? That's gotta be a joke, right?
 

Turns out, it kinda isn't. When you start to look elsewhere for USB-type-c docks, the new standard adapter Switch hopped on... Really aren't that cheap when featuring Hdmi ports...

https://www.moshi.com/usb-c-multiport-adapter#silver $79.95

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-USB-C-Doc...I&ascsubtag=-1 $148

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product...AOS-UK-Aff-PHG $45

Now there are ports and docks that are cheaper than these, but they either only offer Hdmi output, are shoddily made, or have really bad lag going for them. Add to the fact that it has to have power, Hdmi, and USB pass-through with immediate response time for gaming, and you're reaching the higher end of the pricing range.

Why is this important? Well, because we've generally assumed that all the additional cost to the Switch came from the joy-cons themselves, but here's one aspect that's clearly bolstering the cost of this thing, if they're actually selling for $10-$5 profit. Difference is, unlike the joycons: this is new, expensive tech... For now. 

The price could drop over the course of time, like all adapter technologies do. Could be a year from now, could be 3 but the point is this price factor is flexible. $80 is a huge amount of wiggle room, and if we factor in the rest of the lowering production costs over time, perhaps $200 isn't that far off for the system in the mid-future?

Just something to consider when talking about the system's price, and predicting the future of the console, tbh.

And some more on other stuff, but it's more about the price and decisions of the controllers/system overall:

Spoiler

Now the joycons... Here's my argument for them... Or rather devils advocate...

Wiimotes costed $50 at launch, $40 at console death, right? They had several buttons, a gyro sensor, ir pointers, and a battery compartment and adapter, along with a sound chip and fully fledged motherboards. Their build quality was rather cheap, however.

By comparison, the joycons have buttons and analogs, entire rechargeable 500-mah batteries, seperate motherboards, and whatever tech allows them to connect with the system when docked. And according to reports, they're actually really sturdily made. So, going by comparative pricing of similar (but larger) controllers on the market, they're probably a $35 controller each, at their "base expectations" idea.

So you already have a pair that add up to $70 with the typical controller fees. At that point, why not add relatively cheap, yet new rumble tech (probably linear actuators) into it all? Or gyros and accelerometers that drastically cheapened and improved over the years? Ir camera I'm not too sure about the price of, but it can't be that much higher either.

Yes, it's $10 more than normal, but when it adds that much more versatility for that little... Well, why not go for it?

You're basically getting two superior wiimotes out of it, so outside of games like ARMS which would require two pairs for motion controls, (and even then ARMS has optional standard controls that can probably be played on one joycon) it's still pretty tame.

The Pro controller is probably the only clearly overpriced accessory there is, from what I can tell. It's got HD rumble and gyro as well, which is a godsend for me, but that should hardly be worth $20 more to it. Add to that it's being reported to be not that we'll built for a controller of that price, and yeah, it's definitely the typical Nintendo scam at that point.
 

One last thing to end on, is storage options. Right now 256gb is ridiculously expensive, at around $140 right now, with 200GB in tow around $60, but here's the thing: 200GB cards were the top of the line and at $110 only a year ago. Same applies to 126GB, released three years ago at the price of $200, now it's $40.

With the 512GB card starting to be released this year from the looks of things, the expected limit to eventually hit 2TB, and the Switch confirmed to support cards that high, we should see some pretty low prices for high capacities in the coming years. 2TB cards will probably always be out of reach in the +$100 range due to demand from camera companies and businesses, but 1TB should drop down to below that at the very least, given their nature.

I still don't like the pricing of this stuff at all, as a person who buys plenty of controllers for the family to play with, but it feels like there's more justification behind these prices than initially thought. And hopefully, as the tech of the type-c format improves, we'll see some possible price drops from that alone? *shrug*

2 hours ago, Mando-Whirl-Wind said:

Also about people complaining about the additional price of memory, heres the current price to size ratio of currently mass-produced Sandisk MicroSDXC cards:

32GB-$12

64GB-$20(currently going for $16 on amazon)

128GB-$40

200GB-$70.

Which isn't a bad scale at all, not that horrible a cost, and they do go on sale. Not to mention that these will drop even further when 1/2TB models go into production next year. Add to that you likely won't need much until the Titles really start coming in heavy come this fall, most launch games will have minimal patches/DLC with the exception of Splatoon. And remember unlike PS4/Xbone you won't be installing every game on your system

Pretty much. With smartphones and cameras pushing the format further and further towards the standard, the cards have been doubling their storage and releasing at a much faster rate than before, so I really wouldn't worry about storage capacities later on down the line. A year is pretty far away since we're at the very beginning of one, though, so I wouldn't exactly say they're right around the corner, especially with how long it takes for their price to drop.

 

Also, has anyone seen some of the recent comparison shots of the switch?! They're insane...

[Conando]

Yeah, I saw those earlier. All those concerns of the actual portability went out the window when I saw that it's only slightly larger than a new 3DS XL. It's insane how small it is and yet it's significantly above the Wii U in terms of power and extra tech.

[Linkabel]

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the dock also come with a charger and a hdmi cable?

Wouldn't it be $50 for the dock$30 for the charger and $10 for the cable? Seems fair to me.

[The Deleter]

47 minutes ago, El Driver said:

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the dock also come with a charger and a hdmi cable?

Wouldn't it be $50 for the dock$30 for the charger and $10 for the cable? Seems fair to me.

Just looked it up and yeah, it does. Though $30 for an AC adapter doesn't seem right to me, nor does the HDMI cost. If anything, those should be pretty cheap to come by. Unless the adapter is USB-C, as well?

On the haptic feedback talked about a bit further back, I've always thought it might be viable that Nintendo could add extensive "tablet" features to the Switch later on, but with this new haptic touch info shown off, I think it's pretty much a given now.

Mobile games like Mario Run should probably be a lock at the very least, along with some possible third party apps ported over, but they could also add a "joycon-less" mode for all the games to make it seem even more worthwhile, with buttons on screen and size brought down a bit. I mean, Nintendo patented raising, "clickable" touch screens a short while back, and while this isn't exactly the same thing, it could give an indication of how they plan on using it? Clickable touch screen bubbles seems a lot closer to traditional video game controls than not. Plus, this technology also allows digital joysticks to feel a lot more natural and tactile to slide around on a screen, as well.

As for why they aren't exactly raving about this feature just yet, it's probably because sporting a feature like that from the get go would have made the system seem more confusing to the average consumer, who would probably just think "Oh, so like a tablet... Why would I need the controllers then?" when they saw the commercials or the like. And a clouded direction is probably the last thing Nintendo wants for their new console after the Wii U did what it did. They'll probably just quietly announce it at a later date in a direct or something, and it would be accepted as an additional but secondary mode.

On that note, though, I hope they release some slot covers to make the system look and feel better to hold, like how they did for the joycons. Those edges look just plain uncomfortable to hold...

 

Edit: Oh, also, Reggie pretty much confirmed that Smash Bros would be headed towards the Switch in this interview.

Quote

And so our overall proposition will not look the same as our competitors. But what we will do, is we will recognize what consumers like about our competitors, we will look to do it in a way that has a Nintendo flair to it. And we will look to make sure that in the end, we’ve got this robust, online environment that not only works well for our games, like Splatoon and Mario Kart and Smash Bros., but that also works great for our third party developers.

Unsurprising, but still, good to have conformation of some sort.

[Conando]

The adapter is indeed USB-C, the Switch's only connection for charging is a USB-C port.

[The Deleter]

I meant for the dock specifically, since theoretically they could just use a standard adapter for it.

... And now I just realized that since it probably is a USB c adapter, and therefore the included charger, I'm gonna have to either reach behind my entertainment center to unplug it from the dock every time I go out... or buy another charger myself.

 

*siiiiiiiiigh*

 

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Yeah, every piece of Hardware, from the charger, to the controllers, to the CPU are all cutting edge, new technology. Heck, the CPU/GPU is 6 years newer than what's in the PS4/Xbone even. There's going to be cost, however the advantage is that it will become cheaper over the lifespan of the system allowing for pricedrop and revisions, unlike the wii-u

Edit: And for that matter take a look around you, if you've still got one, take a look at your PS3/Xbox360/Wii-u, then take a look at a DVD/standard DVD game case. They managed to fit guts more powerful than any of those 3 systems, and squeeze it into something the size of that DVD case, with a Screen and battery that gives it a decent lifespan of 2.5-6 hrs. That's downright incredible, and it costs the same or less than any of those at launch. It's really an impressive piece of tech that stands on it's own alongside the PS4/Xbone.

[Radiant Hero Ike]

There hasn't been any mention of a stylus, has there? Wondering if there are gonna be any art programs on here (preferably something less realistic than the Wii U has). Unless the... haptics (?) touch screen means anything can be used on it other than fingers.

[Junko]

Yet another thing I don't quite like but hey, here's why 1-2 Switch isn't a pack-in game.

Quote

When asked specifically about 1, 2, Switch and how it seems like the ideal evolution of the Wii Sports-style bundled game, Fils-Aime acknowledged the similarities between the two. However, he disputed this to some degree, arguing 1, 2, Switch is a more comprehensive game.

"You make the comment about Wii Sports, and certainly, the analogy that it's a great utilization of the Joy-Con and shows off the capabilities of the system, that is absolutely true," Fils-Aime said. "I would say, though, that 1, 2, Switch has many more experiences--it's a wider pallet of experiences, potentially more akin to Wii Play than to Wii Sports. And, again, from that standpoint, Wii Play was a standalone piece of software both with a controller at the time and without, so that's probably the better analogy."

1

 

[DiamondX]

Ok, but don't make it $50.

It's WAY too much.

I would give it $30, ot $40 at worst.

[Zippo]

Going by what we've heard so far, it's looking like potentially, we'll have Pikmin, Smash Bros., Retro Studio's new game, Pokemon and Metroid at E3, on top of what's already been announced, and that's most likely not including what Sakurai is working on and other surprises.

Already sounds like an amazing E3 to me.

[JaidynReiman]

40 minutes ago, Zippo said:

Going by what we've heard so far, it's looking like potentially, we'll have Pikmin, Smash Bros., Retro Studio's new game, Pokemon and Metroid at E3, on top of what's already been announced, and that's most likely not including what Sakurai is working on and other surprises.

Already sounds like an amazing E3 to me.

Some of these will probably be announced before then I'd argue. I think we'll get a Direct in early February.

Also, we can pretty much guarantee we'll see another Kirby game, they're practically a yearly release at this point. I also do expect a DK game from someone. At least DKC TF upgraded port, or a new 2D DK. If Retro is doing it, I only see it being a 3D DK. This could be 2017 or 2018 depending on when it started.

 

Not to mention Intelligent Systems. They've always got several projects in the works, and their last major title was Fates, right? Ok they did do Color Splash. They could potentially be doing an FE title. I don't expect a brand new one for Switch (yet) but maybe an HD remake of the Tellius games.