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Nintendo Switch

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251–260 of 431 posts

Re: Nintendo Switch

#251
post #138

In line at the NYC store. I'm #2. There are a few people hanging out looking into store which is holding an event with a bunch of kids. Fewer people overall than I expected but there are 9 hours to go.

You are waiting for >9h just to try a new console?

People have passions in their life. It might sound silly, but if waiting so long to try a new console makes a person happy, let them do it!

Re: Nintendo Switch

#252
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not tearing, it's called affine swim, and on PC is a tell tale sign of a software renderer. Overall the N64 was ok (I had one). The PS2 was so much better though, there was just a way better variety of good games. N64 kind of sucked if you didn't want to play Goldeneye, Zelda or Super Mario 64 clones. Also, Tetrisphere! There is a game I had forgotten about. It was so good!

> It's not tearing, it's called affine swim, and on PC is a tell tale sign of a software renderer. I've never hear the term "affine swim" before. Is it an artifact in rasterization (leaving gaps between triangles) or texturing (the term "affine" suggests that)? For the rasterization, I've heard the term "watertight rasterization" (or airtight?) being used for a gapless rasterizer. It's not necessarily a software vs.…

Unfortunately I am not an expert but the Wikipedia article has an explanation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping#Affine_textu...

Affine swim refers to the unique results this kind of texturing results in (it looks like textures are swimming)

Re: Nintendo Switch

#253
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS4 has more powerful hardware than the XBox One. If they are running the same game (The Witcher 3), logic tells us that it will be easier to get fluid framerates with the more powerful console. And that is what you care about, no? Now I don't know about The Witcher per-se but there have been a good number of multi-platform releases where performance and fluidity were compromised on XBox One. And it doesn't just…

Witcher 3 on PS4 has slightly better graphics and insane texture pop in and some frame drops. I'd take "inferior" xOne version any time of the day.

As I said; I don't know specifically about The Witcher. I used the name as an example. There will always be additional factors beside hardware power, but in general; more powerful hardware is easier to get good results with.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do want to point out that it matches current consoles in the US, but is actually going to be significantly more expensive than anything on the market in many countries. Where I am, for example, if they release at exactly the US price -- which they won't, prices always get inflated -- a Switch will cost more than a PS4 that comes packed with Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Dishonored 2, three hit games. On top of this, I thi…

Regarding the iPad, do kids/parents see that as a gaming device? You can't get real games on one of those.

There's a bunch of "real games". Additionally it also has great board game ports if that's your thing.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#255
Wow, I wonder where all this skepticism and negativity come from.

The Nintendo Switch has me so excited, I can't wait for the launch day!

Finally, I'll be able to have one piece of hardware for playing at home and on the go. If you don't see the awesomeness of playing Skyrim on your commute then probably are not in the right target group.

I like the Switch because it looks so versatile. You can play at home, on the go, alone, with friends, sitting down, standing up... There is going to be so many new experiences once the console is out.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do kids/parents see that as a gaming device? It's a "make my kids shut up in the car or in a restaurant" device.

unfortunate truth ..

It's especially bothersome to me when parents use "learning" apps to try and pretend that they're being a more productive parent by giving their child an iPad. Perhaps they can do some good, but their effects are also vastly overstated and are no substitute for hands-on physical teaching by parents.

Here is an example study that tries to test the effects of apps vs. parents teaching foreign language words: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20855901

Re: Nintendo Switch

#257
post #231

That[1] was masterful marketing of an upcoming videogame console on all fronts. From the beginning it emphasises mobility with a (hopefully good!) smartphone app to manage online/local wifi matches, as well as multiple levels of play while on the go. It's reasonably priced (matches current generation in total at the register) and has an incredibly diverse range of titles to be excited about this calendar year. It man…

'Nintendo absolutely killed it' I'm afraid I have to disagree. Here's why: - price: much more expensive than most people were expecting (£280 vs for example, £200 for a PS4 with a game) - battery life: potentially only 2.5 hours? Really not good enough for a handheld. - storage: only 32gb, will run out very quickly - online offering weak vs ps4/xbox as only NES/SNES games and you only get them for a month - very few…

> battery life: potentially only 2.5 hours? Really not good enough for a handheld.

Whoah, can you source that? If that number is even remotely true the thing is completely useless as a handheld due to requiring 2-3 extra batteries for any longish trip.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#258
post #231

That[1] was masterful marketing of an upcoming videogame console on all fronts. From the beginning it emphasises mobility with a (hopefully good!) smartphone app to manage online/local wifi matches, as well as multiple levels of play while on the go. It's reasonably priced (matches current generation in total at the register) and has an incredibly diverse range of titles to be excited about this calendar year. It man…

'Nintendo absolutely killed it' I'm afraid I have to disagree. Here's why: - price: much more expensive than most people were expecting (£280 vs for example, £200 for a PS4 with a game) - battery life: potentially only 2.5 hours? Really not good enough for a handheld. - storage: only 32gb, will run out very quickly - online offering weak vs ps4/xbox as only NES/SNES games and you only get them for a month - very few…

The battery life is bad, but I'm not that surprised by it. Current phone/tablets achieve a lot of their battery longevity by throttling performance, this is something that is not really acceptable when your device is a games console first. I can only imagine that if an iPad mini had to run a program as intensive as the upcoming Zelda appears to be that its battery life would also suffer.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#259
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody actually uses Nvidia's mobile offerings as I understand it, do they?

Their "current" mobile offerings are the Tegra K1 or the X1. The upcoming SoC is the Tegra P1. - Tegra K1 is used in the NVIDIA Shield Tablet/TV, Nexus 9, and two Chromebooks. - Tegra X1 is in the Google Pixel C and NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV. - Tegra P1 or a variant is rumored to be powering the Nintendo Switch

I have both the Shield Tablet and the Shield TV. The tablet suffers from the form factor (16:10, still don't get why) but the Shield TV is a fantastic little device.

It makes it even more crazy that both of the nVidia devices retail for under $200 but Nintendo's supposedly subsidised console costs a third more.

Re: Nintendo Switch

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As years go by the less I'm convinced that the platform with the fastest hardware is the best. It's never been the case. The GC was the most powerful console of its generation, the PS2 was by far the least powerful one (with the possible exception of the Dreamcast, not quite sure where that one was).

Gamecube was quite memory-limited both in main and video RAM compared to XBox and PS2. My team was not the only one that had to play tricks to fit on that thing, swapping in and out parts of main memory (to/from the overly spacious audio memory area IIRC).

> Gamecube was quite memory-limited both in main and video RAM

I'm not saying it was a supreme machine without limitation, I'm saying it was the most powerful one. It had by a fairly large margin the most powerful CPU and GPU subsystems.

That doesn't mean there were no tradeoffs, it was all strength and it was necessarily trivial to make use of that power. Think PS3.

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