(Updated with more details) Nintendo Official: Switch will launch March 3rd - $299

[Mr.Meerkat]

5 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Well.. it will be very hard to find a Switch for the first couple of months... especially at MSRP price. So you'll wait several months. And at the end of the year, with Microsoft updated console taking the show, Nintendo will either drop the console price by 50$ (which will probably be the initial target price that they had), OR include Zelda or Mario, at worst 1-2-Switch (which isn't worth a full AAA price tag, let's be honest here)

I mean I could just preorder one right now...my debit card says it's fine...

Also wouldn't the same logic apply to a Vega GPU? There would be absolutely no cards available for the first few months  

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

But that means that it will be after E3, and Microsoft would be in people mind and not the Switch. (Project Scorpio is expected to be released by the end of the year)

Later in the spring could mean, say, the same time as MK8 is due to arrive.  I definitely think that Nintendo would need some space to avoid being overshadowed by Microsoft and Sony.

[GoodBytes]

32 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I mean I could just preorder one right now...my debit card says it's fine...

Also wouldn't the same logic apply to a Vega GPU? There would be absolutely no cards available for the first few months  

Yes, but you'll have games.. The Switch... ok let's think positively.

Let's assume that Nintendo didn't reveal all games, including third party companies, because they are all saving it for E3, else Nintendo would basically have nothing.. and of course third party devs needs something for its event as well. That means that the Switch will actual be favorable of purchase in late Summer or Fall, which is closest a game can be released (usually they are no big AAA games released in  summer).

 

OR, you get it on the first day (assuming there is no screw up with pre-orders, which usually is the case, so it will be sometime in March), to get the Switch... to play 1 game... Zelda... I doubt that Zelda is 200h long game Witcher style, with an actual game within a game. so your Switch, will probably collect dust... or you can buy the 3 year old MK8 for 60$ just for battle mode which was not there in the WIiU version (ok technically it was, but it was junk, and lazy where it used actual game tracks, which made no sense), and Spatoon 2, which is really Splatoon 1 with DLC. I mean MK and Splatoon 2 is great if you don't have a WiiU... but if you do... ouch. Horrible value. So yes, you have other games, which is cool and all, but you can play most of them on PC or other console, So it is up to you, if it is worth the portability price.

 

 

[Mr.Meerkat]

42 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

-snip-

Did I mention I have a Wii U?  

[GoodBytes]

27 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Did I mention I have a Wii U?  

Same here.

[Mr.Meerkat]

8 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Same here.

Nice  

 

I guess I could just wait it out till prices decrease and more games comes out as I do have my x5 equipped tablet which can be used for gaming...

I mean it will run my favourite game NFSMW [2005] so...what else do I need?

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Nice  

 

I guess I could just wait it out till prices decrease and more games comes out as I do have my x5 equipped tablet which can be used for gaming...

I mean it will run my favourite game NFSMW [2005] so...what else do I need?

I am waiting, despite my urge to really want to play the new Zelda game now. I just can't justify, in my case, $400 (console) + $80 (Zelda game) + taxes + environment fees, thanks to the Canadian currency going at the bin. I guess, the good news, is that games here are supposed to be $90, but they are $80... considering they were $50-60 (depending on game and system)  just a few years back. So I really need a good value proposition.

 

I guess, like the UK, our Tobleron bars will be like this.

 

 

 

[Derangel]

6 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Yes, but you'll have games.. The Switch... ok let's think positively.

Let's assume that Nintendo didn't reveal all games, including third party companies, because they are all saving it for E3, else Nintendo would basically have nothing.. and of course third party devs needs something for its event as well. That means that the Switch will actual be favorable of purchase in late Summer or Fall, which is closest a game can be released (usually they are no big AAA games released in  summer).

 

OR, you get it on the first day (assuming there is no screw up with pre-orders, which usually is the case, so it will be sometime in March), to get the Switch... to play 1 game... Zelda... I doubt that Zelda is 200h long game Witcher style, with an actual game within a game. so your Switch, will probably collect dust... or you can buy the 3 year old MK8 for 60$ just for battle mode which was not there in the WIiU version (ok technically it was, but it was junk, and lazy where it used actual game tracks, which made no sense), and Spatoon 2, which is really Splatoon 1 with DLC. I mean MK and Splatoon 2 is great if you don't have a WiiU... but if you do... ouch. Horrible value. So yes, you have other games, which is cool and all, but you can play most of them on PC or other console, So it is up to you, if it is worth the portability price.

 

 

 

One of the NOA higher-ups is promising more game announcements and stuff in the coming weeks. He was saying the currently revealed games for this year are not all of them. Why they didn't actually talk about more games during the bloody event I'll never know.

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Derangel said:

 

One of the NOA higher-ups is promising more game announcements and stuff in the coming weeks. He was saying the currently revealed games for this year are not all of them. Why they didn't actually talk about more games during the bloody event I'll never know.

Cool, agreed, and why they didn't talk about Virtual Console games... I mean it is the easiest solution to solve game shortage, but i guess there was no time for this as we needed people coming on stage, just to say "Yup.. we are working on something... we got nothing to show you..", not to mention that many translators (basically everyone, beside Bill Trinen) where not very good, to put it nicely. The whole presentation should have been in English, I mean this is the biggest market (North America), and many people in European countries knows English.

 

To me the whole Switch console... I feel this the going on at Nintendo:

The console was designed by the young team, brought new ideas, and better understand of the market, but in typical Japanese business culture, the seniors don't like it one but as it was not their ideas, and do everything to make this console fail, as they are too proud to admit defeat.

 

I hope I am totally wrong. But to me it doesn't make sense.. the console was perfectly targeted, excellent ideas. People got super excited, and now senior staff got pissed off, and go "Ok we need to make this bad... let's push the console to be 50$ more, paid online (and I bet you it will be crap... I mean chat and voice chat will be done on your smartphone... brilliant"), let's not talk about all the games to be released, no Virtual Console, make the younger Nintendo developers/producers on stage look like idiots.. sigh...

I don't know.. I hope I am totally wrong.

[Derangel]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

Cool, agreed, and why they didn't talk about Virtual Console games... I mean it is the easiest solution to solve game shortage, but i guess there was no time for this as we needed people coming on stage, just to say "Yup.. we are working on something... we got nothing to show you..", not to mention that many translators (basically everyone, beside Bill Trinen) where not very good, to put it nicely. The whole presentation should have been in English, I mean this is the biggest market (North America), and many people in European countries knows English.

 

To me the whole Switch console... I feel this the going on at Nintendo:

The console was designed by the young team, brought new ideas, and better understand of the market, but in typical Japanese business culture, the seniors don't like it one but as it was not their ideas, and do everything to make this console fail, as they are too proud to admit defeat.

 

I hope I am totally wrong. But to me it doesn't make sense.. the console was perfectly targeted, excellent ideas. People got super excited, and now senior staff got pissed off, and go "Ok we need to make this bad... let's push the console to be 50$ more, paid online (and I bet you it will be crap... I mean chat and voice chat will be done on your smartphone... brilliant"), let's not talk about all the games to be released, no Virtual Console, make the younger Nintendo developers/producers on stage look like idiots.. sigh...

I don't know.. I hope I am totally wrong.

I agree with your assessment. I also think that on top of that Nintendo's board is struggling to find it's new path. Iwata was very much the one that would push for "fun" and trying to present new ideas, new games, new systems in a fun manner. He never presented himself has a typical Japanese businessman, but as a programmer and someone that genuinely wanted to put out the best products he cool. Kimishimi gives off none of that impression. He's stiff, formal, and feels like every old Japanese businessman out there. Completely disconnected from not only the younger generation of Japanese people but also the rest of the world. It just feels like Nintendo isn't quite sure how to continue on without him, especially since he had never selected a successor. Nintendo needed another programmer or game designer running the show.

[Commodus]

Why would Nintendo's top management try to sabotage what could be its most important product for the near future?  That's like claiming that Ford management tried to hinder Focus sales because they'd rather sell more Transit vans.

 

If there's any serious management issue at the top, it's that they won't have as close a connection to gamer culture as Iwata did.  But the new CEO hasn't been on the job for very long, and I suspect the Switch started development before Iwata passed on.  This isn't the product of new leadership -- it's a response to low interest in the Wii U.  It's an attempt to keep Nintendo relevant without either building a plain-jane tablet or giving into pressure to clone Microsoft and Sony.

[Sniperfox47]

21 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

You know what you just describe for the SD card is exactly the same for HDDs (not to mention to deal with fragmentation, consume way more power, and a drop of the device would result in a device failure (HDD needs to be replaced)).

 

For SD card performance, you can check reviews and benchmarks.

 

Large files has always faster read/write times than small files due to overhead in file creation/closing when reading and writing

 

Like HDDs.

I'm not saying that's not true for Hard drives. I know big file read and small file read will be different. But the 480Mb and the 30Mb garunteed are both for sequential file write. They're both speeds for writing a single large file sequentially. 

 

I understand that Hard drives have some of the performance issues that SD cards have but nowhere near to the same extent... When have you last had a hard drive overheat and slow to a crawl? When was the last time you bought 2 5400rpm hard drives and had one be bloody 6 times the speed of another for random reads? I'm not talking cached input, I'm talking filling past the cache and still having 6 times the speed... How often have you bought a 5400 rpm hard drive and had it be faster than a 10000 rpm hard drive? Frequently class 4 SD cards were faster than class 10... Frequently UHS-I Class 1 cards are faster than UHS-I Class 3 cards...

 

Fragmentation can be largely resolved by just not using fat/NTFS... And since Nintendo has always used a custom filesystem there's no issue there.

 

And as far as hard drives risking breaking and consuming more power, I should apologize. I thought it was clear that I was saying I'd prefer a hard drive over an SD card in a general sense as a hyperbolization of the issues of SD cards. Obviously I don't expect them to put a swappable hard drive in the switch, not because of power draw draw or fragility but just from a standpoint of general feesibility. It's not very realistic to put a hard drive on removable cassettes. (I'm looking at you, PSP...)

 

Issues with overheating are mostly resolved on UFS cards due to the simpler controllers, small file access is much better on UFS due to a lighter protocol, and because they're designed as high performance drives the performance levels between them should be closer on the low end, giving developers a set stable speed to target for their games.

 

With SD cards it's going to come down to the same compromise as usual for mobile games...

Low resolution textures with compression so you can cram tons of them into RAM, or a compromise on world size and load times whenever you have to swap out textures and models.

[ShadowCaptain]

Honestly, not sure if it will be a purchase from me. Its not cheap, the extra controllers are very expensive, and so far very few games or reasons for me to pick it up

 

It needs more awesome first party games, and needs better third party support before it would be a "must buy"

 

I also worry about the battery life and performance in tablet mode, as thats a major draw to me, and if it cant play the top end games properly or for long, kind of makes that mode pointless 

 

region free is nice!

 

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

Honestly, not sure if it will be a purchase from me. Its not cheap, the extra controllers are very expensive, and so far very few games or reasons for me to pick it up

 

It needs more awesome first party games, and needs better third party support before it would be a "must buy"

 

I also worry about the battery life and performance in tablet mode, as thats a major draw to me, and if it cant play the top end games properly or for long, kind of makes that mode pointless 

 

region free is nice!

 

I fully intend to pick up Zelda on the Wii U (I've heard rumours it plays like arse on Switch anyway) & other than Mario Odyssey I've seen nothing that makes me want a Switch either plus expensive peripherals and games, non free multiplayer and the ridiculously shit announced lineup make me wanna ignore the thing entirely TBH.

 

I'll buy one at Christmas for Mario if things work out differently to how they did for the Wii U but I fear by Christmas the thing will already be classed as a flop and will have been abandoned by everybody except Nintendo first party stuff.

 

Mario Maker is single handedly keeping the Wii U alive right now and they can't even be bothered to port it to Switch? Why Nintendo? Why?

[Derangel]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I fully intend to pick up Zelda on the Wii U (I've heard rumours it plays like arse on Switch anyway) & other than Mario Odyssey I've seen nothing that makes me want a Switch either plus expensive peripherals and games, non free multiplayer and the ridiculously shit announced lineup make me wanna ignore the thing entirely TBH.

 

I'll buy one at Christmas for Mario if things work out differently to how they did for the Wii U but I fear by Christmas the thing will already be classed as a flop and will have been abandoned by everybody except Nintendo first party stuff.

 

Mario Maker is single handedly keeping the Wii U alive right now and they can't even be bothered to port it to Switch? Why Nintendo? Why?

 

If you expect the Wii U version not to have problems you're in for a surprise. BOTH versions have framerate issues. You can see them clearly in nearly every single Wii U video Nintendo has released for the game, especially recent ones. "Arse" was never really implied by people that played either version though. Just not perfectly smooth, at least when docked. It's hard to get a feel from videos since Nintendo is Nintendo and has very weird rules when it comes to recording footage. That said the stuff they showed on the Treehouse stream looked smooth, but it could have just been the area of the game they were playing.

[Master Disaster]

11 minutes ago, Derangel said:

 

If you expect the Wii U version not to have problems you're in for a surprise. BOTH versions have framerate issues. You can see them clearly in nearly every single Wii U video Nintendo has released for the game, especially recent ones. "Arse" was never really implied by people that played either version though. Just not perfectly smooth, at least when docked. It's hard to get a feel from videos since Nintendo is Nintendo and has very weird rules when it comes to recording footage. That said the stuff they showed on the Treehouse stream looked smooth, but it could have just been the area of the game they were playing.

Info coming from people who played the switch version at the hands on events Nintendo put on after the Switch announcement seem to imply it runs like arse.

 

Apparently the version they previewed at the event was "clearly not running at 60 and was struggling to maintain 30 at some points with visibly clear framerate dips' and it would be a safe assumption that they demoed a fairly recent build at their own event 3 days ago.

 

I fully expect the Wii U version to run better because I fully expect Nintendo to nerf it and I can live with less visuals for a more consistent framerate.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Derangel said:

 

If you expect the Wii U version not to have problems you're in for a surprise. BOTH versions have framerate issues. You can see them clearly in nearly every single Wii U video Nintendo has released for the game, especially recent ones. "Arse" was never really implied by people that played either version though. Just not perfectly smooth, at least when docked. It's hard to get a feel from videos since Nintendo is Nintendo and has very weird rules when it comes to recording footage. That said the stuff they showed on the Treehouse stream looked smooth, but it could have just been the area of the game they were playing.

Actually, I looked at MarryKate video, and the game version they saw on the Switch was the one identical to the E3 of last year, just on the switch.

The frame drop only happens when dock and you go over grass, where you have a lot of grass. This issue could have been long fixed by now, for all we know.

 

The WiiU version looks uglier. It has lower resolution textures, no bump-mapping, and color compression on textures and effects. You can see the shaders being simplified on the WiiU a bit,.

 

 

 

[suicidalfranco]

20 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Same here.

great times to have a WiiU (well... at least the WiiU games) with CEMU brining 4K packs. Now if only the gamepad worked with it 

[GoodBytes]

You guys will love this.

 

So, you know the Switch comes with the joycon grip... well it is actually not the same one as the one that you can buy separately, and shown in adverts.

The one in all adverts that you see is the Joycon Power Grip. It features a USB port and can charge the joycons. The one in the box is just a plastic shell. You need to put the Joycons on the Switch itself to charge them.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/16/14285146/nintendo-switch-joy-con-grip-charging-not-bundled

 

The good news is that the Joycons have 20h of battery life... at least what Nintendo says.

 

In better news, Jim Sterling found a way to have Nintendo Japan and Nintendo of America fight for copyright claim, and as a result, Nintendo can't monetize on the video of others, as YouTube holds the money until the dispute is settled with all 3 parties. The beutty of big large corp in action right here.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JimSterling/status/821053856452931585

 

 

 

[AdmiralKird]

You'd think they'd at least run a wire through the center of the Grip Shell so the Joycons could be slaved to only broadcast one wireless signal.

 

I'm skeptical about anyone really wanting to use the Joycons as a controller if they can help it anyway. You look at the placement of the right thumbstick and it's the only controller I can think of that has the stick placed vertically, directly below the buttons. They did this so the Joycon can be flipped horizontally for two players, but they gimped its comfort and accuracy when used in tandem. Imagine holding it, but flicking your thumb down in a vertical position to control the joystick. Your thumb will be at a near complete arch, which offers no fine motor movement and is incredibly uncomfortable. The grip shell has at least some sort of paddles to offset this a little bit, but there's nothing to aid this when the Switch is on the go.

 

[GoodBytes]

The controller setup will really depend on the grip you have.

For example, due to the shape of the controller with the WiiU Pro controller, reaching Y and B button is hard, but no problem for X and A button.

I have 0 problem with the WiiU gamepad which has identical layout.

 

 

 

So I like to wait, try and see.

 

 

[Derangel]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Info coming from people who played the switch version at the hands on events Nintendo put on after the Switch announcement seem to imply it runs like arse.

 

Apparently the version they previewed at the event was "clearly not running at 60 and was struggling to maintain 30 at some points with visibly clear framerate dips' and it would be a safe assumption that they demoed a fairly recent build at their own event 3 days ago.

 

I fully expect the Wii U version to run better because I fully expect Nintendo to nerf it and I can live with less visuals for a more consistent framerate.

Apparently it runs pretty much like how the Wii U demo ran at E3.

 

2 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Actually, I looked at MarryKate video, and the game version they saw on the Switch was the one identical to the E3 of last year, just on the switch.

The frame drop only happens when dock and you go over grass, where you have a lot of grass. This issue could have been long fixed by now, for all we know.

 

The WiiU version looks uglier. It has lower resolution textures, no bump-mapping, and color compression on textures and effects. You can see the shaders being simplified on the WiiU a bit,.

 

 

 

Yeah. The Wii U version might not even look like that anymore. Heck both versions might run just fine. Massive frame rate problems are not generally something you expect from Nintendo titles. At least on consoles.

[Commodus]

If the Joy-Cons last for 20 hours on a charge, I'm not particularly worried.  That basically means that you just remember to slot them into the docked Switch whenever you're done playing.  It's only really an issue if you have more than one controller pair... in which case, you're probably already buying either a grip or a dedicated charging dock.

[ConnorDahne]

First console launch in a while I've been excited about.
Portable enough to play on break at work, and relatively affordable.
The announcement of a new shin megami game and zelda are all I really need for now lol