The journey to Nintendo Switch • Hacker News Board

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#121

Post by throwaway675309 » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

gbasp wrote: post #114

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

I think the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch makes for more interesting games in general. Most of the games on my Xbox and PC tend to be FPS/Action games with very boring, brown and green "realistic" environments whereas games on my Switch tend to be bright and colorful with lots of 2D and pixel graphics and games in the vein of simulators, adventures, roguelikes etc.

A lot of the best 3rd party switch games are ports from PC games or games available on other consoles: spelunky, shovel knight, cup head.

I think the technical imitations can definitely hamstring their games, even the first party ones. breath of the wild comes to mind, and frequently dips into sub 30 fps which breaks the immersion factor.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#122

Post by dmitriid » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

gbasp wrote: post #114

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

I think the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch makes for more interesting games in general. Most of the games on my Xbox and PC tend to be FPS/Action games with very boring, brown and green "realistic" environments whereas games on my Switch tend to be bright and colorful with lots of 2D and pixel graphics and games in the vein of simulators, adventures, roguelikes etc.

It would be true if Nintendo still had support of a beast like Rare. Alas, there are very few if any companies that are willing to work with these limitations and create games specifically for Switch.

And the main reason the games are colorful on Switch is that Nintendo still, to this day, has a reputation of kids-only console. And Switch also pushed it towards "casual one-off gaming" which invites bright colors (think Candy Crush).

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#123

Post by Semaphor » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

gbasp wrote: post #114

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

I think the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch makes for more interesting games in general. Most of the games on my Xbox and PC tend to be FPS/Action games with very boring, brown and green "realistic" environments whereas games on my Switch tend to be bright and colorful with lots of 2D and pixel graphics and games in the vein of simulators, adventures, roguelikes etc.

But that's your choice. Almost all of my PC games are 4X and turn based RPGs. All of them make heavy use of a mouse and keyboard. And in addition, you don't need stupid 4 slot cards to play them.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#124

Post by izacus » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

Sadly, pretty much all of the games I want to enjoy run terribly on the Switch to the point where I had to go back to my 800$ GPU to play them.

Pretty much every strategy / tactics game (outside a single one: Fire Emblem) runs terribly, below 30 fps, looks very burry and... the killing blow... has crazy long loading times. You can go grab coffee while Civ6 is loading and still won't be done by the time.

Quality control of games from Nintendo is very very poor. There are several games that came out which were unfinishable or unplayable and they just happily certified them.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#125

Post by izacus » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #18

> Now, the final startup time when the game is installed on internal storage is 70 seconds, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe I don't notice this with other games but that seems like a really long time.

Pretty much all of the games on Switch have very long loading times. Some stretch even into minutes (XCom and Civ6 come to mind as being pretty bad).

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#126

Post by hbn » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

vikingerik wrote: post #105

hbn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that only really started in the 7th console generation (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) Gamecube and prior was roughly comparable to the competition, but after that the other companies were trying to outperform each other in graphical fidelity while Nintendo released basically another Gamecube but with motion controls. And it was a hit!

It was fairly true for the NES and SNES generations as well. Each used a CPU five years old by then and a RAM size that was common in computers eight years prior. Really, for only the N64 console generation did Nintendo ever try to outdo its competitors on hardware specs.

What was the competition though? The NES pretty much single-handedly revitalized the home console market after the video game crash of 1983 by marketing it as a toy that happened to hook into a TV (R.O.B. the Robot, the light gun, all sold together), so it didn't really have any competition. Sega ended up slipping a 16-bit machine to market before Nintendo by a couple years with the Genesis, but the Genesis and SNES were directly competing for each of their respective lifespans, and both were fairly comparable, each having their own advantages in different areas.

I suppose you could compare to the Neo Geo which was far superior technically, but it was at such a high price point that it never made much of a dent in the market. That generation was pretty much defined by the SNES and Genesis.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#127

Post by mackatap » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #124

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

Sadly, pretty much all of the games I want to enjoy run terribly on the Switch to the point where I had to go back to my 800$ GPU to play them. Pretty much every strategy / tactics game (outside a single one: Fire Emblem) runs terribly, below 30 fps, looks very burry and... the killing blow... has crazy long loading times. You can go grab coffee while Civ6 is loading and still won't be done by the time. Quality contr…

I only use Nintendo hardware for Nintendo software and I'm never disappointed!

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#128

Post by izacus » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

SpacePortKnight wrote: post #86

Factorio's official requirement for x86 is a dual core 3.0Ghz processor & yet it's able to run on Switch which has a very weak 1Ghz quad core cortex-A57 ARM CPU. How is this possible? I would imagine CPU requirements to be more or less same across any resolution / operating system. This is what makes Nintendo Switch interesting to me. It's CPU is even less powerful than an Raspberry Pi 4. Even midrange android smartp…

> Switch and yet Switch can run Doom / Skyrim just fine.

That "just fine" hides a massive understatement on just how compromised these games are on Switch. They usually run on settings even below lowest possible on PC and regularly drop resolution way down to even 640x360, making everything extremely oily and blurry.

These games run and can be enjoyable - but "fine" is not really a word that fits into their performance :)

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#129

Post by hombre_fatal » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #61

xienze wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A teeny tiny one in comparison.

And not a great one, as well.

I think I only use it when entering my character's name in an RPG after slowly typing a few letters with the controller then remembering I can press the screen.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#130

Post by hbn » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

amalcon wrote: post #102

hbn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that only really started in the 7th console generation (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) Gamecube and prior was roughly comparable to the competition, but after that the other companies were trying to outperform each other in graphical fidelity while Nintendo released basically another Gamecube but with motion controls. And it was a hit!

Certainly the N64 (immediately prior to Gamecube) was supposed to be super high tech. They actually stressed the partnership with SGI in the marketing, and literally named the console after the word size of its CPU. In retrospect the former was pretty weird, since the public would not have known that name or anything. Folks can quibble about the Gamecube if they like, but step back one generation and they were defini…

The 90s console wars were all about bits, even though no one knew what it meant other than "more bits = better". It was really Sega that started the bit-wars, releasing the Genesis while Nintendo was still selling the NES. They were very successful with getting kids to compare how powerful their console was to Nintendo's by slapping a giant "16-BIT" front-and-center on the top of the console and mentioning it in all the advertising. And that kinda stuck around for years.

Most of those kids didn't know what 64-bit meant, but they knew it must be better than their old 16-bit piece of junk. That's 4x the amount of bits, therefore the console was 4x better!