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Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

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Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#591
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve got the weird shit covered still, apparently the joy cons in this gen can be used as mice. Was heavily rumoured/leaked and this teaser video literally shows them gliding along a surface. How Nintendo will leverage that functionality, who could honestly say, but that’s the genius of keeping a toy company mindset in an industry full of sports car company mindsets.

That last sentence is worth an essay of its own. Everyone else keeps pumping resources into being photo-realistic blah-blah-blah without nearly enough attention to "is this fun"?

I'm a huge Nintendo/Mario fan but I've recently been playing through Astro Bot on my PS5 and I must say, when you combine super fun mechanics with amazing graphics and performance, it's quite an experience! But there isn't nearly enough content like this on the non-Nintendo consoles, so point is definitely not lost on me.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#592
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's not the main focus in the majority of games. In many games that do offer gyro support, it's usually able to be toggled off. It's not like the Wii where the core of the controllers was pointing them and swinging them around.

I don't remember motion controls being a majority of Wii games either. A lot of them were played with a Nunchuk to emulate a classic controller (or attached to the actual Classic Controller or Rock Band instruments to play cross platform games). The motion control that comes to mind beyond Wii Sports were circling the Wiimote to collect things in Mario.

The Wii exclusive Zelda, Skyward Sword, was motion control only.

Even games that didn't require motion controls for basic gameplay still required you to do things like turn the controller around and use the pointer to select options from a menu rather than using the D pad. (I'm thinking Punch Out). I think Donkey Kong country occasionally made you shake the controller.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#593
post #501
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also expecting they would fumble marketing again and call the new console something like 'Switch U', but it seems they really learned their lesson there.

Or worse, "New Switch".

Nintendo Switch Bigger OLED

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#594

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NES->SNES didn’t do much with the form factor or the controls, but technologically it was an enormous leap. That’s the sort of thing that just can’t happen anymore, since video game technology is pretty much maxed out. You can always make things a little bit prettier, or have a little better framerate, but nothing too interesting. I suppose VR/AR is the one area where something big could still happen. The current sta…

I feel like VR would have “happened with the masses” by now given that the quest is wireless, excellent quality, and cheap. Personally I think it did, and it’s a success, it’s just that it has a lower ceiling because it’s an awkward rectangle that you strap to your face. There is also, IMO, a huge software quality problem with VR. I am baffled as to why all the first person games don’t copy Alyx’s control scheme, it’…

Those limitations provide room for something revolutionary. Figure out how to do VR without a giant rectangle strapped to your face, figure out better controls, figure out motion sickness, and you’ll have a revolutionary device.

For AR, I’m not thinking games, but computing in general. Glasses (or better yet, contacts) that can overlay things on your field of view could be huge. That could be the thing to displace smartphones once this becomes possible and actually good.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#595
post #245

I wish we could return to a Wii U like functionality where the switch could be used as a second screen when undocked. That was a really nice feature in games like Zelda where the controller in your hands displayed the inventory or a map.

Much like with the failed Macbook Touch Bar, I don't think it works having to look away and focus on another screen while playing a game. Also like the Macbook Touch Bar, now you have a whole other thing developers have to target and test for an end result that should just be possible yet more efficient in the main app. Take inventory for example. Instead you could just make it frictionless to open inventory in the m…

Yeah I played BOTW on the Wii U and remember at some point I just stopped bothering with the handheld screen.

I can't remember what game it was but I do remember having one game where the handheld add-on provided some functionality that seemed useful/fun. So it is possible, but much like the original wii's motion sensors - it is much more likely that developers will stumble across a bad application of the tech than a good one

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#596
post #389

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> I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much. The specs seems to be leaked here https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears... > TL;DR - CPU: Arm Cortex-A78C 8 cores Unknown L1/L2/L3 cache sizes - GPU: Nvidia T239 Ampere 1 Graphics Processing Cluster (GPC) 12 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) 1534 CUDA cores 6 Texture Processing Clusters (TPC) 48 Gen 3 Tensor cores 2 RTX ray-tracing core…

Only 2 ray-tracing cores makes you wonder why they’d even bother. Any actual game devs wanna chime in on whether that’s enough to actually do any ray tracing?

The leaks are a little inconsistent on this one.

On one hand, the base architecture is Ampere, but it's been repeatedly rumored that there are various backports from Lovelace. It's a weird mixture of the two, alone with some unique parts never seen elsewhere (a file decompression engine that accelerates LZMA, according to kernel commits).

It's hard to say then how powerful these raytracing cores are, or how many are even necessary for simple but beautiful effects. It's also worth remembering that the Switch bakes the graphics drivers into the game itself, uses data structures and shaders more native to the GPU without compilation, and has a custom low level graphics API called NVN (and NVN2), so performance is not necessarily linear compared to a PC.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#597
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last sentence is worth an essay of its own. Everyone else keeps pumping resources into being photo-realistic blah-blah-blah without nearly enough attention to "is this fun"?

I saw an interesting analysis years ago about whether or not the most powerful console 'won' in each generation (i.e. whether or not being the most powerful console of your generation leads to success). Generally speaking, no, it doesn't actually affect things, and in several cases (e.g. the Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch come to mind) the objectively 'worse' console (from a tech perspective) was more successful b…

It's interesting how many people see the Switch as being in its own category rather than acknowledging it as the winner of this console generation (which I completely agree it is).

Most people think the “console” battle is between PlayStation and Xbox, and that PlayStation is the winner.

This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#598

Happy to see that Nintendo is treating the switch more like how they traditionally handled their mobile platforms instead of their consoles. Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has it…

The games are crippled by how archaic and underpowered the hardware is. TOTK is beautiful _despite_ the hardware limiting its true potential, robbing world class studios, and forcing them to cut corners. It’s indefensible considering how much legendary IP that potato is holding hostage.

The good news is that the best Nintendo platform is also the best mobile platform: The Steam Deck. It plays Nintendo games better than Nintendo consoles do, and as a bonus, it plays everything else.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Nintendo fan but I still find this criticism unfair as it's simply the design reveal and a date of when more information will be provided (April 2, 2025).

Interesting, as an American, I read the date in the video (02.04.2025) as February 4th, 2025 (I agree that the DD/MM/YYYY format makes more sense, but dates are commonly listed MM/DD/YYYY everywhere here). It makes me realize when doing a worldwide release, it's important to be as explicit on the date as possible.

ISO 8601 is the only correct date format.

I don't care if people laugh at me when I sign documents and date them with "2025-01-16"

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were screwed from the start... The Xbox came out when the PS2 did. When it came time for the next generation, Sony went with the obvious PS3. Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3", and they couldn't skip right to "Xbox 3", so they called it the "Xbox 360", which was frankly genius because it had the 3 there anyway and put it on the same level in consumers' eyes. But after that it all f…

> Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3" Part of me wants to think that consumers can't possibly that uninformed, but I know in my heart I am wrong. They should have done what Nintendo (usually) does and left the numbers out of it. Call the next iteration of the Xbox the box.

A&W tried to make a 1/3 pound burger to compete with the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder but it failed because people thought it was smaller, because 3 is smaller than 4.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr...

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