• Save 15% on ALL SFF Network merch, until Dec 31st! Use code SFF2024 at checkout. Click here!

Nintendo Switch

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,960
4,959
I like everything about the Switch except what's inside. I could have been happy with 50% lower performance but the same hardware architectures, with a reasonable battery life instead of the one a gaming laptop has. I really like the flexibility and unique possibilities but as @3lfk1ng said: it's another Wii. Is it going to be a failure ? Who knows, I agree that competing inside the Playstation and Xbox arena is not something that's going to be any easier.

They used to be the alpha dog in the gaming world, but now that they don't rule the empire, they can't just ignore reality.
 

IntoxicatedPuma

Customizer of Titles
Original poster
SFFn Staff
Feb 26, 2016
992
1,272
I know this post has been dead for awhile but I thought i'd bring up some points since our studio has around 11 months of dev experience on Switch now.

Basically any game running on X1 or PS4 that is only managing 30fps, is going to run absolutely horribly on Switch if ported. It's going to be reduced so badly in graphics to get to 30fps, you're looking at maybe 360-480p at best, and it may still not be at a consistent 30 fps. Nintendo support is getting much better but they're basically relying on 3rd party teams to build up services. I think by next year my company should have enough infrastructure with Unity to be putting out a decent number of games if management wants to.

Sales also seem decent but not to the level of X1 or PS4 games. Since Scorpio and PS4 Pro are out, Switch is not going to get the AAA game titles and I think they should be wary of pushing developers to port older ones to the Switch. Single player games are also the priority, no voice chat pretty much kills any online MP games. The local system link setup is kind of cool though, i'd like to see more games do that.

The Joycon is one of my favorite controllers now, but the HD rumble was a gimmick and kind of a joke. After finding out how it works (uses sound WAV files) to basically trick the user into "feeling" the rumble in different places, it's lost its magic and doesn't feel so cool now. The Joycon is still a neat controller anyways.

The Switch is going to desperately need a hardware upgrade ASAP. At the very least, the same chip on a smaller process node for improved thermals and power consumption. That'll give it better performance in hand held mode, or more likely just better battery life/smaller size. Since Nintendo is going to need all of its games to support the original Switch for the next 4-5 years, it means they cant really move up in the graphics department unfortunately. Phones have the same problem though, so I am not sure if something like the Razer Phone can really take off even though its more powerful than the Switch.

Looking back, I almost would have preferred Nintendo had released some "Nintendo App Store" on Android and iOS and made the Joycon compatible with some sort of API that allows only Nintendo App Store games to use it. I know it would probably have been hacked quickly but the majority of users i doubt would bother with it, and the Switch was already hacked anyways IIRC. At least then we wouldnt be stuck with Nintendo's hardware which is just redundancy of our phone and only able to upgrade when they have the time. Though like Google Daydream, I guess they'd need a list of "Nintendo Compatible Phones".
 

IntoxicatedPuma

Customizer of Titles
Original poster
SFFn Staff
Feb 26, 2016
992
1,272
Oh dear, sounds like the exact same mistake they made with the Wii U devkits all over again.

I haven't worked on Nintendo systems before this, but our game designer who has more experience says they are "slightly better" but more or less the same as before.