re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

My Wii (along with my wavebird) still plays GC games just fine.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Crazy talk. Mario Kart 8 is fantastic and I would never go back to the GameCube versions of Wind Waker or Twilight Princess having played through the remasters on Wii U which fixes both of their issues.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

It's nice to know I'm not alone in appreciating Mario Kart: Double Dash! Honestly, that's the reason I bought a GameCube in the first place. Mario Kart Wii was pretty lousy, but I do agree that MK8 is top-shelf all the way, at least with the modes I like to play.

Super Mario Sunshine is the only mainline Mario game I've started and never finished, and I've had an itch to give it another shot over the past few years. (I dumped my copy on my father after giving him his own GameCube as a birthday gift, and he lost it ages ago.) I would've liked to have preferred a remaster to smoothen out its rougher edges a la Wind Waker, but...whatever.

If these rumors are true, presumably that means that unlike the Wii U, the Switch has analog triggers.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

It seems to me that people are going to jeer Nintendo unless they release a console that is comparable to the Xbox One S or PS4 Pro. I think throwing another console onto the pile of indistinguishable black and white boxes would be a terrible decision. In my opinion they're pursuing the right strategy.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

It worked so well last time! :)

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

There's also the fact that the U, controls aside, could play these Switch games just fine.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

To no greater an extent than the Xbox 360 and PS3 could play current-gen games just fine.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Yeah, on the flip side Nintendo has pursued the "different" strategy for the last two generations already and while it was a huge success initially for the Wii, it was a miserable last few years that seemed to continue with the Wii U.

I understand that competing head to head in power with MS/Sony isn't really feasible, but hopefully their roadmap is much better developed with the Switch then what we've seen in the past. They can overcome throwing money at gaming by leveraging a stronger strategy and the strength of their characters - I hope they can do it this time around, even if I personally don't care for the whole portable aspect.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

If you look at GTA V on the PS3 vs the PS4, you'd see that you're greatly exaggerating.

And doesn't the Switch have pretty much the same graphical capabilities as the U, or far closer to it than that of the two last Sony/MS consoles are to each other.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

I don't think anyone, publicly anyway, knows enough about the Switch's technical specs to properly answer that yet. Everything so far is just speculation based on what Nvidia has released in the past with their Tegra X1 (which is supposedly what's in the dev kit) and potential iterative upgrades since it's release, and I don't think i've seen any new rumors lately about what the final version will have.

That said, while there's more to performance then these figures like CPU architecture, memory bandwidth, and low level programming API's, here's the GPU comparison for reference (based on what I could find, could be wrong on one or two of these).

Wii U - 176 GFLOPS
Playstation 3 - 192 GFLOPS
Xbox 360 - 240 GFLOPS
Tegra X1 - 512 GFLOPS
Xbox One - 1.31 TFLOPS
Playstation 4 - 1.84 TFLOPS
Playstation 4 Pro - 4.2 TFLOPS
Xbox Scorpio - 6 TFLOPS

The Switch should at the very least be much more powerful then the Wii U just based on the Tegra X1 alone, in addition to other rumored improvements like twice the RAM and the CPU. I'd be surprised if the Switch is as powerful as the XB1/PS4 though, especially for the sake of battery life.

For reference the Snapdragon 820/821 that you see on high end cell phones today are around 520 GFLOPS too.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Ah. Thought I had read that since it's mostly portable, with it's own screen, it wouldn't push graphical capabilities far beyond the U.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Don't get me wrong, I'm intrigued by the Switch but at this point it's all riding on Nintendo's name. Their core franchises are running on fumes for me.

All I said was last great Zelda game...or rather the last one that I enjoyed enough to finish. Remasters are still the same game with polish. I am mildly interested in Breath of the Wild if only because it's waggle free.

Mario Kart 8 has its moments but is full of flaws. Pretty sure I laid them all out in the MK thread, so no need to rehash. The hover was a nice change of pace, but overall the series just keeps getting worse.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

It still could be, but I think all that talk has still just been speculation on how Nintendo would balance performance with battery life when running as a portable unit. Without knowing the final specs it's hard to guess, especially with other factors like the apparent performance boost while being docked and things like the portable screen only being 720p.

The Wii U had pretty low specs and that was 3 years ago, i'd be surprised if it was still that level (especially since we have word that Dark Souls 3 was running on the Switch).

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

[go to 4:55]



God, Fallon is insufferable.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Wow, I was dead certain that Nintendo would maintain radio silence about the Switch. Very cool to be proven wrong! ...and Shiggy doing the Wonder Red thumb...!

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Skepticism aside, that looked damn good running Zelda. Not surprising.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

If Zelda is day one for the Switch, pretty sure I will be too.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Does it? We were sorta promised something on the scale of Skyrim. It didn't look like anything approaching that; it was desolate, with very little detail or texture. If anything, I was let down a bit by that presentation.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

It looked less desolate than Skyrim :shrug:

But I guess texture is valid.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Looks pretty damn desolate to me :shrug:


https://abload.de/img/zelda21ds7g.png

I actually hope this is an early build, with textures and objects stripped out to make it run smooth for the presentation.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Zelda didn't look that impressive to me, although we also didn't see enough. But yeah, the textures in the world look terrible (sorry about the negativity).

Jimmy overdoes it a little, but he does sound like a real fan. And that's probably a good thing for marketing this thing to the people watching his show. At least it's a nice contrast to say, Conan having no idea what he's doing.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Can't disagree with any of the above; it just seems like Nintendo's vision for Zelda hits perfectly for my tastes. Every time they go with a stylized look it just seems right.

That screenshot looks as barren as described, but it didn't come off that way in motion when we weren't just staring at that one clearing.

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

I hope my venting earlier doesn't discourage any discussion; that's the last thing I'd want to do.

On another note, one of the most longstanding bits of speculation (though there haven't been any credible rumors to support it) is that the Switch would play Nintendo's mobile games. Reggie says that's not the case, at least for Super Mario Run:

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

Isn't SMR's entire UI tapping the screen? How in the world can you map that to a button?

re: Nintendo Switch: Building a New Generation of Hardware from Scratch
 

All the leakers have been saying that the Switch has a touchscreen, although it goes without saying that doesn't mean much when it's docked.

You're right that it'd be a whole different kettle of fish without a touchscreen, although it's still somewhere in the realm of probably-a-bad-idea-but-not-completely-impossible. Reggie, from that same interview: