Nintendo Switch hype thread

[xyzzy]

okay so you have

- a normal controller
- a "station"
- the console itself, which also functions as a screen
- 2 detachable controllers

That's a lot of things that can break, get lost, etc.

Also those tiny controllers would probably cramp my hands after like half an hour of use.

Also also, a lot of what seemed like automatic functions are probably not all they are cracked up to be... (e.g., the Switch won't turn off your TV when you go from console mode to handheld mode. Someone was doing that off-camera for the trailer.)


I'm pretty underwhelmed.

actually, the thing with automatically turning off the TV is very much possible, but it depends on both Nintendo and the television manufacturer supporting it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_ ... cs_Control

I suspect that for the majority of people, the most sensible thing will be to just buy a couple extra full-sized controllers, so the tiny detachable controllers will be a non-issue; offering multiple control scheme options isn't a bad thing, even if not all of them are great. I'm mostly curious about whether this'll be backwards compatible with any of the previous hardware Nintendo has used; I'd really love to be able to just use my Wii U Pro Controllers with this out of the box, for instance. I guess that partially depends on what the precise features of the controllers are--if they've added any gyroscope functionality to the regular controllers (which seems probable, given that they show off what appears to be an updated

Splatoon

), there'll be slight differences in functionality. the fact that the Wii U supports such a wide range of controllers (and that its most notable multiplayer games support nearly all of them) is one of its biggest strengths.

ultimately, I think the most important things demonstrated in the trailer are 1)the third party support; showing

Skyrim

in the opening trailer is a good shorthand for "yes, we're actually going to have third party games on this", and if they can follow through on that, things will be very good, and 2)a hopefully very robust set of launch titles; if all of the games shown in the trailer are available day 1, it'll be an easy sell.

[xyzzy]

having a system where you hold 2 items at once would be a pretty massive change to include in what is just a port; it's probable that it's based on

Mario Kart 8

, especially because it just makes sense for Nintendo to reuse anything from the Wii U that they can, but I think it's probable that it'll be a new numbered entry.

the apparent decrease in performance in

Breath of the Wild

is weird to me, because Nintendo really doesn't have any incentive to deliberately make their game look like it's running slow, and that would be an obvious thing to fix in post production of the video. the handful of times I've watched the footage, it's looked more like the slow downs are tied to hitting enemies in combat, and I seen to recall that being an aesthetic choice present in the Wii U version of the game. I'd have to rewatch multiple videos to confirm that, though, and I'm lazy, so I haven't done that.

[xyzzy]

this video goes through the different options for playing DS games on the Wii U, and demonstrates different ways that the Switch could handle DS/3DS/Wii U games

I'm hopeful that the Switch has some software backwards compatibility; I'd love it if I could just directly import my Wii U digital library to it, similar to how it's possible to transfer the digital contents of a Wii to a Wii U. obviously, the hardware won't be backwards compatible (though I'm definitely hopeful that some of the controllers are usable with it--I've got a couple Wii U Pro Controllers and several Wii Classic Controllers, and I'd love if those were still relevant), but it's still possible that Nintendo supports the software. they've not said anything about Virtual Console, but ideally those would all be pretty easy to transfer.

also, in case anyone hasn't heard, Nintendo is doing a live presentation on January 12.

[xyzzy]

right, and a bunch of the methods that the Wii U uses to display DS games aren't dual-screen.

[xyzzy]

also it just occurred to me that it's not necessarily a given that you can only use one screen at a time. they've only shown off functionality involving one screen at a time, but there's a bunch of possible other features that haven't yet been demonstrated yet. and even if it isn't, I don't think they'll ever fully rule it out. for instance, long ago, Nintendo suggested that it might at some point be possible to use two GamePads at once with a single Wii U; that functionality never came about, but it wasn't something Nintendo ever explicitly said wasn't happening.