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Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

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Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#761

Post by hnlmorg »

jzwinck wrote: post #746
lotsoweiners wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always amazed the Wii with its full size discs could play the GameCube mini discs.

Ability to play smaller discs was normal in most CD-ROM and DVD players for many years before the Wii. A few people (probably half of whom have HN accounts) used to give out mini-CD business cards...sometimes even with truncated edges so the disc was not entirely round: https://www.duplication.com/cd-business-card-duplication.htm

Yeah but most of the optical drives that support this have trays or are top loading. It’s a little more counterintuitive to have a postbox-style drive (I don’t know what they’re actually called) that supports different sized discs.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#762

Post by NicuCalcea »

irrational wrote: post #442
_fat_santa wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Switch was the first device where i saw how well the mobile + docked system worked and it was my favorite device until I got a Steam Deck. The Deck is killer IMO because it takes the same form factor of the Switch, gives you more power and no restrictions on games.

No restrictions, except you can't play the Zelda, Mario, etc. games.

That's not a restriction, nobody's preventing Nintendo from bringing those games to the platform. I don't currently have pasta at my place, but that's because neither me nor my partner have bought any, not because it's banned from the house.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#763

Post by egypturnash »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #493
_fat_santa wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Switch was the first device where i saw how well the mobile + docked system worked and it was my favorite device until I got a Steam Deck. The Deck is killer IMO because it takes the same form factor of the Switch, gives you more power and no restrictions on games.

From a usability perspective, the Steam Deck is pretty good but the Switch blows it out of the water. Fast boot times, you don't need to restart it all the time, games don't crash frequently, controllers just work, it just slots into its dock, a much simpler UI, and no need to futz around with Proton. The Steam Deck is cool but I waste infinitely more time dicking around with it than the Switch, where it just works.…

YMMV, but I'm not finding any of those to be problems with my Deck.

Reboots take a noticeable length of time and could certainly be faster but they're almost entirely "oh there's a new version of the OS" for me.

I haven't had any problem with games crashing either.

Its native controllers largely Just Work, and it's easy to turn on turbofire or rearrange buttons to work better with Steam Input. When I connect it to the projector and pick up the PS4 controller I have attached to the dock that works fine too, someday I should really try to properly pair it so I can use it wirelessly, but I mostly just play it handheld.

I basically spend zero time futzing around with Proton unless I am trying to get some old PC game to run.

I spent a while fooling around with installing emulators when I first got it, but I never actually touch them in practice, that's the only time I've ever been outside of the Steam UI.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#764

Post by freddi333 »

10729287 wrote: post #371
chungy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo has tended to maintain at most 1 generation of backwards compatibility, though you can get some fuzzy ideas of "generations" in a few cases. Game Boy Color: plays original Game Boy games Game Boy Advance: plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games Nintendo DS: plays Game Boy Advance games Nintendo DSi: plays Nintendo DS games Nintendo 3DS: plays Nintendo DS and DSi games Nintendo New 3DS: plays Nintendo DS, DSi…

>Nintendo New 3DS: plays Nintendo DS, DSi, and (old) 3DS games I know HN doesn't have any room for sarcasm but I couldn't not laugh trying to remember what were the NEW 3ds games. Sure the second pad made the 3DS way more comfortable to play, and 3D was a bit better, but we all got scammed here regarding games supporting this new hardware.

Super Smash Brothers worked very well with the second pad.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#765

Post by 63stack »

maronato wrote: post #632
joshstrange wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With emulators those games can also be played on the Steam Deck.

Why pay for the Steam Deck, though? Buy it online and claim it never arrived to get a refund. I’m yet to hear a moral argument for emulating current games you don’t own unless you’re poor and need to choose between buying Zelda and starving.

They have sold millions of faulty joycons (referring to drift), when the solution was already available (hall effect sticks) but it would have cost them an extra $1 per joystick, reselling games that came out in 2010 for $60 today, and using DMCA to bully youtube channels that show videos of their games are some morally reprehensible things from the top of my head.

It does not entitle anyone to pirate their games, but taking your words, Nintendo is not exactly starving either, they could have spent the extra $1 on the joycons to fit them with non drifting sticks. Even if you use their replacement program, you just get another joycon with the same stick.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#766

Post by jsheard »

ad_hockey wrote: post #741
AlwaysRock wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. Since when does Nintendo care about ensuring functionality they add to their devices are leveraged? Other than first party games, and even that can be limited, almost no one ever implements the weird little functionality they add to their devices.

Not just Nintendo. The PlayStation 4 controller had that touchpad in the middle that also clicked in to act as a button. I played a lot of games that used it as a button (usually to open a map, or something) and don't remember a single game that used it as a touchpad.

Microsoft is somewhat to blame for new controller features being underutilized because they're extremely reluctant to add anything to the Xbox controller. Motion control in particular stands out, the hardware isn't expensive and it's proven to be very useful in some types of game, but the lowest common denominator Xbox controller still doesn't have it so multi-platform games can't be designed around it. Especially multiplayer games with crossplay since you can't let some players have more precise inputs than others.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#767

Post by georgeecollins »

adamc wrote: post #481
bargainbin wrote: post #468

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"?

Focusing on tech or unoriginal production values (that's photo real! You don't need a great art director, you need a photo..) is appealing to companies because it's predictable vs the creative uncertainty and subjectivity of "fun".

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#768

Post by acomjean »

dmonitor wrote: post #702
ecliptik wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite video essay's on this is "Nintendo - Putting Play First" by Game Makers Toolkit [1]. It goes into when making a game, Nintendo first determines the mechanic they want to focus on; jumping, throwing a hat, shooting paint, etc and finding out how to make it fun, then building and iterating on the idea. It's how they can keep putting out essentially the same games but are completely different. 1. http…

GMTK is popular, but he's mostly talking out of his ass. He's got zero industry experience and most gamedevs I know personally clown on his takes constantly. Unless he references specific Nintendo interviews where they talk about their design process, I have doubts about this video containing an accurate description of how Nintendo does things.

I've seem some of his videos, but I'm not that familiar with GMTK. But they did release a game, and it was by all accounts "Very positive" /pretty good.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2685900/Mind_Over_Magnet/

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#769

Post by steve_adams_86 »

freetime2 wrote: post #734

I've had a lot of frustration with Switch joy-cons. Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation. No doubt my kids have subjected it to hard use and probably a drop or two, but still frustrating. It looks like they've added some r…

> Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation.

Yeah... I've repaired our joycons so many times (they all ended up getting the hall sensor joysticks from gulikit, some got new batteries), and despite this and actually not even heavy play time on them, the pairing is absolutely brutal. Definitely my most disliked aspect of the Switch.

We use gulikit controllers with the console pretty much exclusively. The price/performance ratio seemed right, I liked the first one we tried, and so I've just stuck with them.

Re: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

#770

Post by dcrazy »

vehemenz wrote: post #752
dcrazy wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a statement that could only be made by an HN commenter. My wife has to drop into Arch to recover her audio every time she connects her Steam Deck to the TV. This is not a product ready for mass consumption.

Honestly, it's a milquetoast take. The only advantages of the Switch at this point are Nintendo exclusives and better support. There are some rough edges with the Steam Deck, but it's a bit odd to frame the Switch as "ready for mass consumption" when it lacks access to Steam, something every other handheld has, and consumers expect in 2025.

The majority of the population doesn’t hang on Gabe Newell’s every word and buy 75 early access Factorio clones at each biannual sale.
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