[Chozofication]

Why mediocre? I don't think Switch got many mediocre ports. A lot of them seemed to rely on magic to even run. lol

Think @DonDonDonPata was being sarcastic with the mediocre bit.

But honestly, a fair few of the "impossible" ports are really not impressive like doom and the id engine games where they cut the framerate in half, run at 480p docked and strip all the effects down to the bone.

Like… i'd be surprised if it didn't run on switch after doing all that.

The Witcher 3 port is pretty dang impressive though. They couldn't cut the frame rate in half because it was already 30fps, so minimally is twice the effort of the doom ports

 

[cryptoadam]

I will throw my hat in the ring for something being announced soon.

I actually look at these as controlled leaks. If Nintendo wants secrets they will keep secrets. They gave the go ahead for some small leaks and probably some stooge testing going on.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

I see no reason why Nintendo can't launch a Steam Deck power equivalent handheld in 2024 for $400 at a mild profit.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4k@60 <===> 1080p@30 is way more than 4x the difference. Isn't it 8x+?

For some reason I thought that 4K is double the pixels of 1080p. But now that I think of it, that should be 1440p, right? So 4K is twice again that.

So yeah, 4K@60 to 1080@30 would be an eightfold difference.

I see no reason why Nintendo can't launch a Steam Deck power equivalent handheld in 2024 for $400 at a mild profit.

Asus plans to sell the RoG Ally for $600 and make profit on just the economy of scale. Nintendo could easily make a device at the same power level and sell it cheaper thanks to the software sales profits.

 

[Stilton Disco]

I will throw my hat in the ring for something being announced soon.

I actually look at these as controlled leaks. If Nintendo wants secrets they will keep secrets. They gave the go ahead for some small leaks and probably some stooge testing going on.

Aye, I would not be at all surprised to get an announcement near the end of the upcoming Direct, stating the Switch 2 existing, and planned to launch next year, but that Switch 1 will be getting support and new games both before and after it launches.

I wouldn't expect to see it mind, or even get the official name, but a confirmation it exists, yeah, that I can see being imminent.

If they're smart, they'll also confirm it will be fully backwards compatible straight away too, to reassure players that all their games will carry over, and of course that there's no reason to hold off buying anything.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

I could, honestly, sadly, see them not announcing full back-compat, for various reasons. They never neglected a chance to earn more money than appropriate, for one. Plus even if they keep to the Tegra architecture, it's unlikely that games won't require patching to keep working right - so full back-compatibility would a priori be out the window.

 

[HE1NZ]

Hope they'll have another fusee-gelee fuckup.

 

[Optimus]

Think @DonDonDonPata was being sarcastic with the mediocre bit.

But honestly, a fair few of the "impossible" ports are really not impressive like doom and the id engine games where they cut the framerate in half, run at 480p docked and strip all the effects down to the bone.

Like… i'd be surprised if it didn't run on switch after doing all that.

The Witcher 3 port is pretty dang impressive though. They couldn't cut the frame rate in half because it was already 30fps, so minimally is twice the effort of the doom ports

I see that upon further inspection (and on my desktop rather than phone) with the quotes around it. I also really liked that Doom port. It was far from perfect but it was one of the more visually impressive games on Switch even if it was blurry a lot of the time. lol

 

[Ascend]

Backwards compatibility with the Switch is the most important thing here.

 

[cryptoadam]

Problem with back compat is your tied to the switchs small carts. Games are getting huge now and those 32GB carts arent going to cut it. Not sure what else they could use but do people really want Nintendo tied to those carts for another 7 years ?

 

[HE1NZ]

Problem with back compat is your tied to the switchs small carts. Games are getting huge now and those 32GB carts arent going to cut it. Not sure what else they could use but do people really want Nintendo tied to those carts for another 7 years ?

Aren't they just SD cards with a different shape? Those go up to 1tb in size. They can probably keep the form factor but increase the size.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Problem with back compat is your tied to the switchs small carts. Games are getting huge now and those 32GB carts arent going to cut it. Not sure what else they could use but do people really want Nintendo tied to those carts for another 7 years ?

I don't honestly see an alternative. Tiny discs a-la UMD are silly. Carts are the way to go if you want any kind of physical media in a portable.

If they went the way of Steam with their media distribution, they could allow official flashcarts. Stick any SD card you got in it, with a compressed cache/image of whichever games you want, accept that the console will verify that you own the game before letting you run or install it, and there you go.

Aren't they just SD cards with a different shape? Those go up to 1tb in size. They can probably keep the form factor but increase the size.

They increase in cost exponentially with size, which is the primary issue. Though one they could overcome with mass manufacture.

 

[HE1NZ]

I don't honestly see an alternative. Tiny discs a-la UMD are silly. Carts are the way to go if you want any kind of physical media in a portable.

If they went the way of Steam with their media distribution, they could allow official flashcarts. Stick any SD card you got in it, with a compressed cache/image of whichever games you want, accept that the console will verify that you own the game before letting you run or install it, and there you go.



They increase in cost exponentially with size, which is the primary issue. Though one they could overcome with mass manufacture.

128gb mini SD (10 speed class) is 12$ on Amazon. Those are larger and faster than any Bluray disk. Nintendo can mass produce them for $5. Most of their first party probably won't exceed 32gb, those would be even cheaper.
And the question was concerning backwards compatibility. They'll just do what 3DS did.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

128gb mini SD (10 speed class) is 12$ on Amazon. Those are larger and faster than any Bluray disk. Nintendo can mass produce them for $5. Most of their first party probably won't exceed 32gb, those would be even cheaper.
And the question was concerning backwards compatibility. They'll just do what 3DS did.

Optical media is cents per unit produced. And if you just meant they need to increase the size of the carts... well duh. These aren't SD cards, they can't use established processes. They'll get cheaper to make and we'll see larger carts in use more often, as time goes by. It's not as simple as just making them bigger, because every increase in size loses the accumulated mass production gains. This makes them more expensive, but the only way they'll get cheaper is if they're used more often. But using the more expensive carts means less profit for the publishers (and/or Nintendo), so even if the option exists it's not used as much. It's a catch-22 of sorts, that can only be broken by big and anticipated enough releases that can push the larger cart size into acceptance.

 

[cryptoadam]

I mean is CyberPunk or COD gonna fit on a 32GB cart? And we can be sure the HD on the Switch will prob be max 500GB but probably more like 256 or even 128. Even at 500GB one COD and NBA2K update and your close to full.

Its a tough problem for Nintedo to figure out. Next Gen games keep going up in size and if they want those sweet sweet juicy graphics they will have to do something.

The cost will get passed onto the consumer and we might be back in that spot where games cost more due to a larger cart.

I dont know what they will do. They should bring back those GC mini disks lol. But then of course you have to throw an optical drive in a portable. I am sure most 3rd parties will make you download most of the game. I think its like that now with the NBA series and a few others.

 

[Kuranghi]

For some reason I thought that 4K is double the pixels of 1080p. But now that I think of it, that should be 1440p, right? So 4K is twice again that.

The closest true 16:9 resolution thats the half-way point between 1080p and 2160p (ie 2x 1080p count and 0.5x 2160p count) is 2720 x 1530, the true half-way point is not an integer, the closest resolution divisible by 8 is 2688 x 1512. Its not the best way to think of it though, because the difference in perceived image quality is not linear either.

I use all the "divisible by 8" resolutions here as custom resolutions for when I want to run games between 1440p and 2160p to lock fps:

List of True 16:9 Resolutions – Pacoup.com

pacoup.com

 

[Stilton Disco]

I just hope they don't go for a 1080p screen.

720p is fine for a handheld, and will allow them to more closely match docked mode. I'm expecting them to render at as high above 1080p as they can, then use DLSS to get up to the output needed for 4K TV's. Sticking yo the same resolution as the Seitch one eill give them that much more headroom despite the lowered TDP.

1080p in handheld mode will just needlessly waste battery life and mean more games play at sub native resolutions, or with serious graphical setting cutbacks. I'd much rather have a barely noticeable reduction in pixels and true parity whether on the go or docked.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

If it were up to me I'd put an M2 slot (that's the one for NVME drives, right?) in a compartment on the back of the dock. A 500 gig internal drive with an SD card slot on the machine itself should be fine, and slap a 2 tb SSD on the dock for playing on the TV.

Honestly I thought I was primarily going to use carts on my Switch, but very quickly said, "Fuck that." If they want to go the route of a physical cart just holding the license key for the game to automatically download I'd be fine with that. Back compat must stay.

 

[CAPTAIN RAINCOAT]

and watch this thing utterly decimate console sales on release