Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday October 21 2016, @09:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the Now-that's-a-Switch! dept.

Nintendo's rumored "NX" console has been officially announced as the Nintendo Switch, a console-handheld hybrid. The Switch may be Nintendo's last stand in the console wars:

Previously code-named NX, now named the Nintendo Switch, the device looks like a tablet computer with controllers that attach to its sides. The device was revealed in a short "teaser" video posted on YouTube.

One analyst said the device could be Nintendo's "last shot" at selling a home console. "The Wii U was a car crash, basically," said Paul Jackson of the Ovum consultancy. They fudged the communication and confused everybody with the controller and what the screen was for. As a result it sold about a tenth of what the original Wii sold."

The Wii U was rapidly outsold by Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, although Nintendo has enjoyed success with its handheld 3DS device. The new Switch console can be seated in a dock to play games on a television, or used as a stand-alone portable device. Games will be delivered on small cartridges - a nod to older Nintendo consoles.

The console will use a customized NVIDIA Tegra system-on-a-chip. The core count/type is unknown, as is the choice of Maxwell or Pascal GPU.

The PS4 and Xbox One mid-cycle refreshes could allow Nintendo some breathing room to compete on graphics/processing capabilities, since developers will be forced to support the older consoles:

Strangely, though, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 may provide some relief. They aren't being abandoned – which means developers will already be focused on building games that scale down to less powerful hardware. It's not unreasonable to imagine the Switch will offer visual quality on par, or very nearly on par, with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 throughout its lifespan.

Also at WSJ.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @09:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @09:45PM (#417436)

    seriously underpowered

    Do you believe that having games with better graphics makes them more fun to play?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Touché=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday October 21 2016, @10:53PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday October 21 2016, @10:53PM (#417455)

    It's someone who doesn't realize the size of the market bounded by "more than casual touchscreen" and "less than 3 hours to enjoy and play correctly".
    The main competitor of the Switch is older consoles and their emulators, which it beats by being portable, HD, and party-friendly.

    I want split-screen fun games to play with others in my living room. The PC in the bedroom will keep beating consoles at the complex games, so Nintendo trying to fight the others on their turf would just make them bleed cash faster.

  • (Score: 2) by forkazoo on Friday October 21 2016, @10:57PM

    by forkazoo (2561) on Friday October 21 2016, @10:57PM (#417456)

    In same cases, that can actually be true. If devs have to dedicate more time to optimizing to get something to run well, it means less time focused on gameplay. If you have faster hardware, your initial shit prototype probably runs "basically fast enough" and you can write much sloppier code. Look at how many games today are glorified 16-bit style games that look just a little bit nicer that what a good SNES game looked like, but require a current GPU and a multi GHz CPU to run...

    That's basically why so many games ignored Wii-U this cycle. It's more than fast enough to run games. It's just a pain in the ass to port something targeting a PS-4 to something appreciably slower. That said, next year's low power Tegra will be pretty damn fast compared to last year's chips in the same power envelope. And a ton of devs will be targeting cell phones with much less power than the new Nintendo console.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday October 22 2016, @08:35PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday October 22 2016, @08:35PM (#417652) Journal

      But I just don't see devs wanting to mess with trying to port their triple a titles to what is basically a glorified cellphone/tablet chip which is what Nvidia has been pushing Tegra as. They can choose X86 and that will give them the PS4 AND the Xbone AND the PC with only minor tweaks as its all bog standard X86 but to support the Switch they are gonna have to basically do a rewrite and also focus on power consumption since the others are running on the mains and this can just as easily be running on battery.

      So I have a feeling its gonna be a "chicken and the egg" just like the Wii U, the devs won't support it until they see its a bonafide hit as they don't want to sink millions into making a separate port for a 'console' that may be another bomb and as we saw with Wii U there just isn't enough hardcore Nintendo fanbois to sell a console with no third party support. Whether Nintendo likes it or not people want their Tomb Raiders and Battlefield Is and Maddens and if they can't get them from Nintendo? They go somewhere else. And before someone brings up the 3DS it was not only cheaper than the home consoles but was pushed as strictly a portable, by bringing this into the living room people are gonna compare it to the other 2 and I think they will find it wanting.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 21 2016, @11:44PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday October 21 2016, @11:44PM (#417465) Homepage

    People, even kids, nowadays are too desensitized for Nintendo's cartoony teddy-beary kiddie crap where the enemies fart stars and jump off the screen when they die.

    What Nintendo needs are dismembered limbs, advanced physics engines for Peach's fat titties, unlocking all-nude mode for Samus Aran, SAW-like boss and player deaths, Satanic technometal stage music, Mario and Wario fighting to the death over lava or spike pits, spoken obscenities ("Che Palle! I'ma gonna rippa your ballsa-offa, Stronzo Luigi!"); and most importantly...

    blood, blood, blood.

    • (Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday October 22 2016, @09:00AM

      by tathra (3367) on Saturday October 22 2016, @09:00AM (#417554)

      What Nintendo needs are dismembered limbs, advanced physics engines for Peach's fat titties, unlocking all-nude mode for Samus Aran, SAW-like boss and player deaths, Satanic technometal stage music, Mario and Wario fighting to the death over lava or spike pits, spoken obscenities ("Che Palle! I'ma gonna rippa your ballsa-offa, Stronzo Luigi!"); and most importantly...

      blood, blood, blood.

      well i'll tell you something Nintendo definitely has in its favor - the game i'm currently playing, which is exclusive to Nintendo, the plot revolves around murdering the judeo-christian god, in all his sadistic, narcissistic, dictatorial, omnicidal maniacal glory. granted, not all nintendo games involve making pacts with demons and committing deicide and shit, but there are quite a few of them now.