Nintendo switch has a 6.2" 720p Capacitive Multi-touch display

[Sniperfox47]

6 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Was the PS Vita or PSP too small?

Yes

24 minutes ago, sof006 said:

6.2? Isn't that only slightly bigger than the Nexus 6?

 

I remember that phone being big but not big enough for gaming on.

I used to think so. Then I started playing games on my Nexus 6P (5.7" vs the 6" of the Nexus 6) and now on my Pixel XL (5.5") and it's not so bad.

 

Keep in mind the top screen of the 3DS is only 3.5" (4.8" for the XL) and it's where 99% of the actual graphics happen on those consoles.

[michaelocarroll007]

1 hour ago, GER_T4IGA said:

But consider the battery life and the resolution that the chip inside can acctually render for games that look a little better than your averyge mobile phone games ...1080p would sound better but that has never been a way Nintendo had gone in the past so ... This is what they ended up with.

you dont have to render at native resolution can keep it at 720p heck Xbox one doesnt even always render at 1080p.  Screens are pretty battery efficient now days tablets with 1440p screens last well over 8 hours . This thing does not look thin either i know a good amount of space might be for cooling but battery shouldnt be that small

[Sniperfox47]

1 minute ago, michaelocarroll007 said:

you dont have to render at native resolution can keep it at 720p heck Xbox one doesnt even always render at 1080p.  Screens are pretty battery efficient now days tablets with 1440p screens last well over 8 hours . This thing does not look thin either i know a good amount of space might be for cooling but battery shouldnt be that small

Upscaling takes effort, it's not done without cost. Even upscaling from 720p to 1440p would be a transform to stretch each pixel into quads if you want it to look exactly the same. If you want to use the extra resolution to make it actually look better, high quality upscaling is incredibly expensive on the GPU. 

 

The difference between what the Xbox does and what you're suggesting is purpose. The Xbox does it for performance to shave off a few pixels of rendering because a stretch is cheaper than those extra pixels. It does a cheap low quality stretch interpolation and shows that to tighten performance at the cost of visual clarity. If it instead used a high quality interpolation, especially with anti-aliasing it would butcher performance instead, and the Xbox One would probably be better off sticking with native in that case.

 

Comparing tablets to a gaming device like the switch is also silly. Sure they can last 8+ hours... until you try to game on them. Have you tried running graphics intensive games on a tablet? The more graphically intensive the shorter your battery life because the GPU is a huge power hog. Saving any small amount of performance with the GPU can lead to huge battery savings.

 

Then there's cost, a 720p screen is *substantially* cheaper than a 1440p screen in the same size, and they wouldn't sell any of these units if they cost $1000. Same reason I pretty much guarantee it'll be LCD and not AMOLED.

 

And that's just the big points. There are a ton of smaller ones to consider too like the size of the display scaler chip, etc.

[GoodBytes]

For those who are concerned about 6inch display with 720p... Go to your local toy store or Best Buy or alike electronic store, and have a look at the WiiU, which many still have on display. The screen on the game pad controller is 480p, and you don't see pixels.

 

720p is most likely used to allow the system to operate at lower clock speeds while on battery to extend battery life... which, being a home console in the $300 US price range, and not $800 tablet, will probably be 3h, which is should cover most people travels (going to work, school, home, etc.) without a battery pack. Remember, the console does 1080p when docked.

 

I also expect the console to have 4GB of RAM. Why? Well 4GB is actually a lot. Wait! What?! Let me explain.

Console games never has PC graphics to start with. The GPU doesn't have the capabilities to handle super high res textures, 4K ready, and all that. Even the XBox Scorpio, will not match a GeForce 1080, unless the console is over $750 US and the company decide to sell it at a loss. As a result, games consumes less RAM.

 

In addition, because the games are in cartridges, it has fast access time to swap things between RAM and cartridge, which is something that you can't do with disk games, as discs are slllllllllllooooooooooow.  So, it can do this swaping rapidly, allowing to essentially use the cartridge as more RAM. In fact, if the integration is like old console games, where the cartridge is a segment of the system RAM that is extended to (hence why you never did have a load screen, as things are already loaded. And hence why you had to turn off the console when switching games... and not like now where you swap discs, and the system still runs, and load the new game just fine). But I doubt that this will be done, because if it is, Nintendo wont' be able to have a menu system, won't have game swaping without turning off the console, and so on... Unless, they find a way to do this... but I think they'll use what the same system as the 3DS, maybe a bit improved.

 

If the WiiU, with 2GB of RAM where games only had 1GB of RAM to itself, managed to deliver impressive visuals for the hardware specs, including 1080p 60fps on many AAA games and that was on disk... Games should shine with.. say 3GB (assuming the OS still consumes 1GB, which probably will, or less, if they opt to use something like a Android/Linux based OS over making their own from scratch, which seems to what they have been doing in their previous consoles. Oh when I say "Android/Linux based OS", I mean the absolute core of the OS, possibly stripped down to the console needs.. you won't be able to install Linux games or Android apps/games on it... the whole OS will feel different).

 

[michaelocarroll007]

3 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Upscaling takes effort, it's not done without cost. Even upscaling from 720p to 1440p would be a transform to stretch each pixel into quads if you want it to look exactly the same. If you want to use the extra resolution to make it actually look better, high quality upscaling is incredibly expensive on the GPU. 

 

The difference between what the Xbox does and what you're suggesting is purpose. The Xbox does it for performance to shave off a few pixels of rendering because a stretch is cheaper than those extra pixels. It does a cheap low quality stretch interpolation and shows that to tighten performance at the cost of visual clarity. If it instead used a high quality interpolation, especially with anti-aliasing it would butcher performance instead, and the Xbox One would probably be better off sticking with native in that case.

 

Comparing tablets to a gaming device like the switch is also silly. Sure they can last 8+ hours... until you try to game on them. Have you tried running graphics intensive games on a tablet? The more graphically intensive the shorter your battery life because the GPU is a huge power hog. Saving any small amount of performance with the GPU can lead to huge battery savings.

 

Then there's cost, a 720p screen is *substantially* cheaper than a 1440p screen in the same size, and they wouldn't sell any of these units if they cost $1000. Same reason I pretty much guarantee it'll be LCD and not AMOLED.

 

And that's just the big points. There are a ton of smaller ones to consider too like the size of the display scaler chip, etc.

Yes upscaling costs more But for this to be a better overall usefull device i find this nessacary.

 

The  Xbox one example was more so to defend to anyone complaining that a 720p render isnt good enough 

 

Yes i Understand the Battery life delima My point was the screen is not going to be the Problem of the Power Drain just like your saying the GPU/CPU will be the battery hog a 720p/1080p/1440p tablets all are able to have decent battery life even if they take a little bit more power  Amoleds and good LCDs have greatly reduced power consumption over the years.

 

I Think 3 hour gaming life is good enough 4 would be a great number to achieve assuming this actually has decent performance 

 

Yes Again Screen Cost will go up But IMO many will expect this to work like a tablet and many that already carry one will not carry both this isnt a majority but well rounded device is a postitive to me 

[michaelocarroll007]

5 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

For those who are concerned about 6inch display with 720p... Go to your local toy store or Best Buy or alike electronic store, and have a look at the WiiU, which many still have on display. The screen on the game pad controller is 480p, and you don't see pixels.

 

720p is most likely used to allow the system to operate at lower clock speed while on battery, to extend battery life... which, being a home console in the $300 US price range, and not $800 tablet, will probably be 3h, which is should cover most people travels (going to work, school, home, etc.) without a battery pack.

 

I also expect the console to have 4GB of RAM. Why? Well 4GB is actually a lot. Wait! What?! Let me explain.

Console games never has PC graphics to start with. The GPU doesn't have the capabilities to handle super high res textures, 4K ready, and all that. Even the XBox Scorpio, will not match a GeForce 1080, unless the console is over $750 US and the company decide to sell it at a loss. As a result, games consumes less RAM.

 

In addition, because the games are in cartridges, it has fast access time to swamp things between RAM and cartridge, which is something that you can't do with disk games, as discs are slllllllllllooooooooooow.  So, it can do this swamping rapidly, allowing to essentially use the cartridge as more RAM. In fact, if the integration is like old console games, then the cartridge is a segment of the system RAM that is extended (hence why you never did have load screen, as things are already loaded. And hence why you had to turn off the console when switching games... and not like now where you swap discs, and the system still runs, and load the game just fine). But I doubt that this will be done, because if it is, Nintendo wont' be able to have a menu system, won't have game swamping without turning off the console, and so on... Unless, they find a way to do this... but I think they'll use what the same system as the 3DS, maybe a bit improved.

 

If the WiiU, with 2GB of RAM where games only had 1GB of RAM to itself, delivered impressive visuals for the hardware specs, including 1080p 60fps on many AAA games and that was on disk... Games should shine with.. say 3GB (assuming the OS still consumes 1GB, which probably will, or less, if they opt to use something like a Android/Linux based OS over making their own from scratch, which seems to what they have been doing in their previous consoles. Oh when I say "Android/Linux based OS", I mean the absolute core of the OS, possibly stripped down to the console needs.. you won't be able to install Linux games or Android apps/games on it... the whole OS will feel different).

 

 i hope they dont Skimp and make it $299 i think this needs to be priced higher to get it to be a Quaility device 399 maybe slightly more ?

 

 i agree with you on the Ram its not like this will be pushing crazy graphics at 720p 30-60fps  BUT hopefully this does have some power to it and they dont skimp on that they need some 3rd Party support hence why the wii U didnt do so well.

 

720p screen at that size is Good enough for gaming and Videos But anything else surfing web reading text and such it is on the little low side i can without a doubt see pixels on it it in many scenarios   

 

236PPI if anyone is interested in the math  

[Fgtfv567]

2 hours ago, DocSwag said:

720p? On a 6.2" display?

 

Honestly, that's kind of disappointing. Considering it's a handheld device, it really should have a higher res display.

If this was a phone, sure put 1080 or 1440 on a 5.5 to 6 inch display.

 

But it's not. This is a portable gaming system. It runs on battery and is expected to be pushing heavy workloads (games) almost 24/7 when the thing is being used. Putting a 1080p screen in it will drastically kill the battery for 2 reasons. The higher the resolution, the more power the display needs. As well that the CPU and GPU will have to work harder to render at a higher resolution, which will also kill battery. Not only that, putting in a higher resolution display will shoot up the price of the Switch, and in times when people carry around phones and use consoles, that's not a great idea.

 

Putting a 720p screen in here was a great idea, Nintendo

[Autoimmunity]

Everyone saying that 720p isn't enough for a 6" screen needs to remember that the 3DS had a 5" screen at a resolution of 800x240.  

 

The Switch wouldn't be able to run games at 1080p on the go anyway, as that would kill it's battery life. By running at 720p, the Tegra chip won't have to use nearly as much power.  Running the games at a lower resolution than the screen also isn't a great option, as a 1080p screen would make a 720p game look blurry as hell and a 1440p display is probably much too expensive.

[treeroy]

1 hour ago, RagnarokDel said:

if 792p was good enough for the Xbone on a tv, I really dont see how 720p is not enough on a handheld. It's pushing a higher frame rate then most shitty mobile games do.

What? It's the other way around... a handheld is much closer to your face, so it needs a higher resolution. You can get away with a lower res if the TV screen is further away from your eyes.

[Mira Yurizaki]

If you're taking the Switch with you, a higher resolution is going to eat battery life. I'd rather have battery life than higher resolution, especially considering that it's still 236PPI.

[straight_stewie]

2 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

 

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-10-27-nintendo-switch-has-a-6-2-multi-touch-screen 

 

I'm unsure as to  why Nintendo isn't just making an assortment of the different sized "controllers" for popular tablet/phablet devices? It wold be much simpler and hit a wider market than a full, one off, tablet with removable "controller" sides

[treeroy]

If I were to get this I doubt I'd ever use it as a handheld, downgrading the console for the purpose of the people who might use it on a plane (as in their advert) just shows how silly it is to make a multipurpose device - you're just going to make each aspect worse.

[AresKrieger]

1 hour ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

Sure. But we're talking about Nintendo. They'll make up some shit excuse to once again fail to step up to 1080p.

They have native 1080p games on the wii-u so I don't really understand your view on this so much, but it isn't hard to switch the resolution thus they will likely do it as it would benefit sales to say it does 1080p when plugged in.

[VerticalDiscussions]

Yeah, but it will probably still look better than a 3DS XL right? Gosh, the 3DS screen quality is so underwhelming!

[GoodBytes]

50 minutes ago, michaelocarroll007 said:

 i hope they dont Skimp and make it $299 i think this needs to be priced higher to get it to be a Quaility device 399 maybe slightly more ?

 

 i agree with you on the Ram its not like this will be pushing crazy graphics at 720p 30-60fps  BUT hopefully this does have some power to it and they dont skimp on that they need some 3rd Party support hence why the wii U didnt do so well.

 

720p screen at that size is Good enough for gaming and Videos But anything else surfing web reading text and such it is on the little low side i can without a doubt see pixels on it it in many scenarios   

 

236PPI if anyone is interested in the math  

Nope.. 480p web surfing on WiiU is perfectly fine. And like I am being really honest here. I think a good panel technology helps, over using shitty TN panels, which are common on low resolution tablet/laptops

 

[goodtofufriday]

49 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

I'm unsure as to  why Nintendo isn't just making an assortment of the different sized "controllers" for popular tablet/phablet devices? It wold be much simpler and hit a wider market than a full, one off, tablet with removable "controller" sides

They are. 

 

 

[Zodiark1593]

On a mobile device, 1080P with any sort of modern effects will be a challenge. I think 720P to be a fair compromise, especially if Post AA is used. 

[Sakkura]

9 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

On a mobile device, 1080P with any sort of modern effects will be a challenge. I think 720P to be a fair compromise, especially if Post AA is used. 

Hope they go with something more like SMAA than FXAA, then.

[MageTank]

I was about to drone on about resolutions on mobile devices, but to my surprise, many of you did that for me. Thank you to those of you that actually understand PPI and the intended market of a MOBILE device. Those 1440p and 4k smart phones are beyond pointless, and are only wasting battery life at this point. 720p at 6.2 is perfect, and the textures within the games themselves can be upscaled in an OGSSAA fashion for built-in AA (assuming the hardware can handle it). 

[suicidalfranco]

the low res screens sucks, still buying it regardless of that 

[MageTank]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

the low res screens sucks, still buying it regardless of that 

Except it doesn't suck. It will look more than twice as sharp as a 2560 x 1440 27  inch monitor (you know, all the gaming monitors?) and more than twice as sharp as a 1920 x 1080 21.5 inch monitor (every modern OEM monitor).

 

I'd bet if they made it 4k, you still wouldn't be able to tell the difference while gaming (other than poor framerates and battery life)

 

1920 x 1080 @ 21.5" = 102.46PPI

2560 x 1440 @ 27" = 108.79PPI

1280 x 720 @ 6.2" = 236.87PPI

 

EDIT: PPI math added.

[79wjd]

27 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Except it doesn't suck. It will look more than twice as sharp as a 2560 x 1440 27  inch monitor (you know, all the gaming monitors?) and more than twice as sharp as a 1920 x 1080 21.5 inch monitor (every modern OEM monitor).

 

I'd bet if they made it 4k, you still wouldn't be able to tell the difference while gaming (other than poor framerates and battery life)

 

1920 x 1080 @ 21.5" = 102.46PPI

2560 x 1440 @ 27" = 108.79PPI

1280 x 720 @ 6.2" = 236.87PPI

 

EDIT: PPI math added.

Don't forget to factor in viewing distances. 720p will still be fine, but I don't think it will be twice as sharp. I used "isitretina" to show the affect of viewing distances, and my very rough estimate based on guesstimated viewing distances, is that it would look fairly similar to a 1080p monitor. 

 

6 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

-snip-

 

I'll use isthisretina calculator to get a rough estimate on the relative pixel densities relative to viewing distance because I'm too lazy to do the math myself: 

720p @ 6.2": 236PPI --> "retina" at 15" 

1080p @ 24": 91PPI --> "retina" at 37"

 

So the 720P Switch screen is about as good (if not better) than the 1080p monitor on your desk, but the Switch won't have to handle (much) fine text. 

 

The typical distance for the Switch will probably be 10"-16", while the typical viewing distance for a computer monitor is probably about 24"-30".

[MageTank]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

Don't forget to factor in viewing distances. 720p will still be fine, but I don't think it will be twice as sharp. I used "isitretina" to show the affect of viewing distances, and my very rough estimate based on guesstimated viewing distances, is that it would look fairly similar to a 1080p monitor. 

 

 

I completely forgot to factor that in. Kids these days (sound like my father already) sit way too close to the TV as it is, and phones glued to their eyes. Back in my day (did it again) we didn't need our gameboys that close to our face (mostly because we needed an external light source to even see the screen). 

 

Still, 720p should be plenty sharp enough at that size. Let's be honest, it's Nintendo. Cartoon graphics with limited edges is their forte, so everything will look pretty smooth, regardless of resolution. I don't exactly expect modern AAA titles with PC graphics in a handheld. Maybe a few platformers and older titles (bonus points if the platformers look as good as Trine). 

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I completely forgot to factor that in. Kids these days (sound like my father already) sit way too close to the TV as it is, and phones glued to their eyes. Back in my day (did it again) we didn't need our gameboys that close to our face (mostly because we needed an external light source to even see the screen). 

 

Still, 720p should be plenty sharp enough at that size. Let's be honest, it's Nintendo. Cartoon graphics with limited edges is their forte, so everything will look pretty smooth, regardless of resolution. I don't exactly expect modern AAA titles with PC graphics in a handheld. Maybe a few platformers and older titles (bonus points if the platformers look as good as Trine). 

I remember that nonsense.... oh god 

And then the SP came our and everyone went crazy because it had a backlight. Oh how times have changed. 

 

I agree 100%, I have no issues with it being 720p. The typical distance for the Switch will probably be 10"-16", while the typical viewing distance for a computer monitor is probably about 24"-30". So using the above isitretina metrics should give the Switch at least a slight advantage over our 24" 1080p/27" 1440p monitors.

 

Although I would like to see a big battery for great battery life....compared to smartphones, the battery life of handhelds is kind of pitiful (the iPhone 7 has an 11whr battery while the 3ds xl has a 7whr battery). 

 

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

I was about to drone on about resolutions on mobile devices, but to my surprise, many of you did that for me. Thank you to those of you that actually understand PPI and the intended market of a MOBILE device. Those 1440p and 4k smart phones are beyond pointless, and are only wasting battery life at this point. 720p at 6.2 is perfect, and the textures within the games themselves can be upscaled in an OGSSAA fashion for built-in AA (assuming the hardware can handle it). 

At a close viewing distance, going from 720p to 1080p (or 900p) would still be beneficial. 1440p less so, and 4K is obviously overkill. 720p is not perfect at 6.2 inches... but it may be good enough.

 

As for SSAA, it would be better to just have a higher native resolution then. Or to keep the resolution and spend the computational resources on something more useful than inefficient AA.