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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the start-saving-your-dollars dept.

Coverage of the Nintendo Switch console "launch" is available at Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware, Anandtech.

Nintendo Switch uses a USB Type-C cable for charging, and has a battery life ranging from 2.5 to 6.5 hours, comparable to (but less than) the latest version of the Nintendo 3DS XL. It can be played in Console, Handheld, and Tabletop modes. The handheld has a 6.2" 720p screen but the docked console supports 1080p60 gaming.

The Switch has 32 GB of internal storage, some of which is used for the operating system. It has a "game card slot" for games released on some form of proprietary physical flash media, but also comes with a standard microSD slot for expandable storage.

Nintendo will offer a free trial of a paid online gameplay service for the Switch (similar to Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus) until sometime in Autumn.

The system will be released on March 3, 2017 for $299.

Here are some of the games.

Previously: "Nintendo Switch" Coming in March 2017
Will Third-Party Developers Support Nintendo's Switch?


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:12PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:12PM (#455367)

    Its basically my sons $100 Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet without special offers and kindle app and with some joysticks plugged into the OTG hole (or bluetooth) and adds a HDMI port.

    Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

    I can tell the difference in the tech specs. The problem is they have to sell to grannie and mom who are gonna be like, why does that tablet cost 3x more than any old similar android tablet?

    There is another interesting problem in that fads go in weird waves and my son and his friends are in a wave of minecraft story mode. Why I donno. I tried to interest him in something microscopically more advanced like a RPG or adventure or old time text adventure but its mostly a peer pressure thing to mess with the AI/gameplay for fun and share stories. Anyway, the point is that runs fine on his tablet so its going to be a hard sell to ship "not much different than the old mario kart" and "its just like un-modded minecraft on every other platform" and "its the same minecraft story mode as every other platform" but the good news is you need to buy new hardware that looks the same but costs 3x as much.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:30PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:30PM (#455372) Journal

    Dunno about the ARM CPU (too lazy to care), but the GPU portion smokes your kid's tablet.

    I guess we could compare the undocked-tablet-faux3DS performance to the tablet, but even then it has fairly advanced GPU cores. Although not the Pascal cores that may have been available had Nintendo waited a few months*.

    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/nintendo-switch-nvidia-tegra-x1-specs-speed/ [arstechnica.com]
    https://www.slashgear.com/nintendo-switch-nvidia-maxwell-in-pascal-out-15467635/ [slashgear.com]
    http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/14/nintendo-switch-specs-less-powerful-than-playstation-4/ [venturebeat.com]

    Obviously, gameplay/controllers and a variety of games beats the need for cutting-edge hardware. There is a decent amount of doom and gloom over the Switch's chances. And although it has an ARM chip, it won't support the existing base of (mostly shitty) Android games out of the box. Although given the expandable storage and plenty of I/O and whatnot, this thing will probably be hacked to support Android games on Day 2.

    * Given the use of standard Nvidia ARM hardware, it shouldn't be impossible for Nintendo to refresh the hardware every 2-3 years at little additional cost. That is desirable simply because newer gens would have better battery life. It's basically the same story for PS4 and Xbone, but I think the Tegra SoC is even less customized than the ARM APUs those systems use. Consoles are now fancy PCs.

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by mth on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:58PM

      by mth (2848) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:58PM (#455560) Homepage

      Eh, PS4 and Xbone use x86-64 APUs.

      Given that a lot of games they announced aren't ready at launch, I do think they would have been better off waiting until the second half of the year, even more so if that would have gotten them a more advanced GPU.

  • (Score: 2) by mth on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:18PM

    by mth (2848) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:18PM (#455577) Homepage

    It's closer in hardware to the $200 NVIDIA Shield tablet, which also uses the Tegra SoC. So $100 extra gets you a dock, two wireless controllers and a fancy grip. It's not the best deal ever, but it's not terrible either, hardware wise. Subsidized console hardware is a thing of the past.

    Anyway, it might look like a tablet, but the use case is very different. Having physical buttons means you can play entirely different classes of games on it. Video games have been around since the 80's; some grannies might not know a lot about video games, but mom is likely to have grown up playing video games herself. She'll know the difference between a game pad and a touch screen.

    What is a pity is that unlike the Wii with Wii Sports, they're not bundling their 1, 2, Switch suite of minigames.

    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:52PM

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:52PM (#455654)

      Bear in mind that Wii Sports wasn't bundled in all regions. ISTR that it was sold separately in Japan.