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Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

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Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#41

Post by Macha »

dlivingston wrote: post #8

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

A premium feel device like Apple feels like a mistake for a device who's audience is largely children. How many people have you seen with iphones with cracked screens? While it's very solid feeling, and yes, better protected against getting scratched by keys, I would wager while the switch is more likely to sustain cosmetic damage (scratches, chips, flaked paint) than an iphone, an iphone is more likely to suffer catastrophic screen failure when dropped. Plastic just doesn't shatter the same way glass does.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#42

Post by Kaiyou »

huffmsa wrote: post #23
nikofeyn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have a lot of complaints about nintendo, but nintendo's only console to be well ahead of their competitors' offerings in terms of hardware was one of their worst competing consoles, in terms of sales. and that's the gamecube. so it hasn't made and doesn't make commercial sense for them to heavily invest in the underlying hardware. ever since the gamecube, and maybe before then, nintendo has been on a divergent path…

> pure laziness in game development Ah you're one of those "how do they keep getting away with making more Mario games?" people. The secret is that they don't release mainline games very often. You don't get a new one every year. You get one every 3-4 (or Metroid 6-10) years. And when you do get a new installment it's just as fun and joyful as the previous ones. They do need to get their shit in gear with the online…

When was the last Metroid game that is "just as fun and joyful as the previous ones"? Metroid has had a tough 20 years or so. Last I checked Nintendo released a poorer version of a remake some fan released a year earlier.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#43

Post by sniglom »

dlivingston wrote: post #8

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

I fully agree. For me, it's not the performance of the switch that is the problem. It's the build quality and the software quality.

For example, my joy cons have problem with losing their connection or having input lag when reception is lacking. I've seen this on other switches too, so it's not only mine. Compare this to my Xbox 360 controllers, I can walk to a different room and still play without this issue. This is just bad/cheap design.

Games are forced to use vsync, even when it ruins the game. Rocket League has much more input lag, compared to other hardware due to this. Actually lots of Switch games have more input lag than for other systems. Nintendo could care about what quality other developers are allowed to publish, but they don't.

The build quality of the switch itself is also so-so. The screen has low contrast, the wifi doesn't have great reception. Let's not even get started on the usb design.

All this would be okay, if the hardware and software was really cheap, but it isn't.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#44

Post by sniglom »

risyachka wrote: post #16
dlivingston wrote: post #8

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

They fully compensate hardware with portability and the most polished titles you can find. Also, their first-party games look better on 720p switch display then like 98% of all games on 4k displays. You can make the best hardware possible, but practically no companies can achieve Nintendo level quality.

Some of the first party titles are polished, some isn't. Most third party isn't. It's a sad state of semi-decent hardware with low quality software overall.

If you're only going to play a selected few Nintendo Games, such as Zelda, Mario and Mariokart, sure. But to be honest here, Zelda and Mario isn't very nice to play portable. Doing boss fights portable is certainly possible, but also so much harder.

I really wanted to like my switch, I really wanted to like the portable experience, but in the end I realized that portable works best for slow indie games and docked works best for a few first party games.

I probably would have enjoyed a cheap Xbox One and a used Playstation Vita more.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#45

Post by slightwinder »

Operyl wrote: post #11

While the article is most definitely talking about their hardware, I can't help but feel they probably take a similar approach to their software. Switch's OS is basically a fork of their 3DS OS, with much more thought put into play about security (the 3DS was swiss cheese). Of course, there were many bugs to be found (using a massively out of date webkit at launch, they outsourced this to some vendor). But after all…

Isn't it more a fork of android with some loose inheritance from 3DS?

But anyway, the problems of software and online-service in japan are old, very old. To some degree it originates in their late adaption of PCs with broader parts of society, to some other degree their early adaption of online-services in the age of featurephones including all the horrible patterns.

Japans society developed quite different in those areas, and you see it all the time with their software, culture and decisions. Nintendo is not really special there.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#46

Post by Operyl »

slightwinder wrote: post #45
Operyl wrote: post #11

While the article is most definitely talking about their hardware, I can't help but feel they probably take a similar approach to their software. Switch's OS is basically a fork of their 3DS OS, with much more thought put into play about security (the 3DS was swiss cheese). Of course, there were many bugs to be found (using a massively out of date webkit at launch, they outsourced this to some vendor). But after all…

Isn't it more a fork of android with some loose inheritance from 3DS? But anyway, the problems of software and online-service in japan are old, very old. To some degree it originates in their late adaption of PCs with broader parts of society, to some other degree their early adaption of online-services in the age of featurephones including all the horrible patterns. Japans society developed quite different in those…

Nope. It contains AOSP code (which started the rumor mill that it was Android) but it was not. It also contains some code from FreeBSD, which similarly sparked the rumor that it was FreeBSD, but alas it isn't. I spent a good amount of time in the early Switch days picking apart the operating system.

Here's a good wiki with a ton of information on the kernel/os: https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Main_Page

EDIT: Here's some AOSP usage: https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Nvnflinger_services https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Display_services and apparently some AAC codec code.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#47

Post by fenomas »

polm23 wrote: post #26
taneq wrote: post #5

"Withered" is a really weird word to use here since all of these old-and-cheap parts are cheap only because they're massively widely used. I think a better translation would be "commodity parts". In fact later in the article it says "This was a poor translation of the original, which was much closer in spirit to ‘weathered.’" It seems to me that the use of the term in the headline was deliberately obfuscating clickba…

The original word is 枯れる, which really is normally translated as "withered", or, contextually, "dead" or "dried up". Translating it as "commodity parts" loses the implication that common sense says the technology is "used up" in some way. It's not a word you'd normally use to praise something. Here's a bunch of sentences with English translations that use the word: https://jisho.org/search/%E6%9E%AF%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B…

Yeah I think the article was off-base there - "withered" isn't a mistranslation at all. I'd probably have gone with "dried-up", but to translate it as "weathered" changes the meaning considerably.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#48

Post by slightwinder »

dlivingston wrote: post #8

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

What do you consider as premium? The switch is a toy for children. So it should be robust, reliable and cheap enough. The switch does serve this very well IMHO.

Additionally, Apple is bigger, selling significant more units of their devices, which are also more expensive, while having a better standing in the industry. Nintendo on the other side was taking a gamble on whether the switch would even sell good enough to survive. So price-calculation for both companies is quite different, with apple having more money to invest in premium than nintendo.

Maybe the rumored switch pro some day will up nintendos premium-game?

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#49

Post by neuronic »

nikofeyn wrote: post #21
dlivingston wrote: post #8

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

i have a lot of complaints about nintendo, but nintendo's only console to be well ahead of their competitors' offerings in terms of hardware was one of their worst competing consoles, in terms of sales. and that's the gamecube. so it hasn't made and doesn't make commercial sense for them to heavily invest in the underlying hardware. ever since the gamecube, and maybe before then, nintendo has been on a divergent path…

That and constantly failing €70 controllers.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#50

Post by huntertwo »

Macha wrote: post #34
Operyl wrote: post #11

While the article is most definitely talking about their hardware, I can't help but feel they probably take a similar approach to their software. Switch's OS is basically a fork of their 3DS OS, with much more thought put into play about security (the 3DS was swiss cheese). Of course, there were many bugs to be found (using a massively out of date webkit at launch, they outsourced this to some vendor). But after all…

Even Sony's offering in that regard has been playing catch up to Xbox Live. PSN on PS4 has reached feature parity with Xbox Live on the 360, but it sure doesn't compete in important areas like actually working, download speeds, and navigating the menus in a reasonable time. Not sure what Live on Xbox One is like as I didn't get a Xbox this generation. Meanwhile Nintendo still hasn't caught up with Xbox Live from the…

I would say Microsoft took a big step back with live on Xbox One. Very unreliable service with regards to communication in parties and joining games via invitation. I don’t think you can say today that Microsoft has better online services than Sony.
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