Nintendo Switch Specs: CPU and GPU Clock Speeds Reportedly Revealed

[MadOne627]

Your quote made me thing. What if Nintendo is trying to bring there DS market into their console market. This would mean most of these people are interested in ds, phone, or tablet games. This would mean things like a quality drop like the unofficial stats would mean nothing to them. The vast majority of 3ds owners really only care about the nintendo specific games any way. I only have one for pokemon and fire emblem.

 

Also if their venture to get third parties to make games for it fails they still keep their mobile platform alive and could claim that the switch was a great addition to their mobile gaming market. Seems like a no lose Senerio for Nintendo, while also having a chance to pull in all the Wii only buyers.  

[Sniperfox47]

5 hours ago, MadOne627 said:

Your quote made me thing. What if Nintendo is trying to bring there DS market into their console market. This would mean most of these people are interested in ds, phone, or tablet games. This would mean things like a quality drop like the unofficial stats would mean nothing to them. The vast majority of 3ds owners really only care about the nintendo specific games any way. I only have one for pokemon and fire emblem.

 

Also if their venture to get third parties to make games for it fails they still keep their mobile platform alive and could claim that the switch was a great addition to their mobile gaming market. Seems like a no lose Senerio for Nintendo, while also having a chance to pull in all the Wii only buyers.  

The problem with this theory is that Nintendo can't keep going in the console world with only their current audience. Sure, the 3DS did great, but even that market alone doesn't let them keep competitive as a business. They need to grow their market.

 

Nintendo fans we can ignore. Why? Because for the most part they're "crack addicts". Nintendo could release a potato for the next gen console, and as long as it runs Mario/Zelda/Kirby/Metroid/Smash the Nintendo fan crowd will, for the most part, be satisfied.

 

So how do they grow? They need to attract people who aren't Nintendo fangirls/fanboys. How do they do that? They need attractive mainstream titles on their console. They don't need Call of Duty or Titanfall or Dark Souls, but they do need things like sports games, assassin's Creed, Minecraft, and other big draw titles.

 

Without those things people will look at the $300 price tag and go "There's a game or two that I want for it, but does a game or two really justify buying a $300 console?"

 

I hear a lot of "the Wii-U flopped because it had shitty marketing", and that's not wrong. But it's one piece of the answer. Even with shitty marketing, the Wii-U could have succeeded if it had word of mouth. There's the problem though. Other than the standard Nintendo titles what is there to suggest a Wii-U for? The Wii-U has very few really good titles outside of "kiddy" games like Mario and Zelda. Xenoblade Chronicles is pretty much the only game I heard any chatter about outside of the Nintendo fan crowd. Why? Because it turns heads. It doesn't look like a Nintendo title. It's cartoony but not in a childish way, and it doesn't have that "Nintendo is for kids" association tacked onto it because of that.

 

Tl;dr: If Nintendo wants to grow their market and appeal to more than fangirls and fanboys, they need to get some more "modern" titles on their system to appeal to more casual gamers.

[Carclis]

6 hours ago, MadOne627 said:

Your quote made me thing. What if Nintendo is trying to bring there DS market into their console market. This would mean most of these people are interested in ds, phone, or tablet games. This would mean things like a quality drop like the unofficial stats would mean nothing to them. The vast majority of 3ds owners really only care about the nintendo specific games any way. I only have one for pokemon and fire emblem.

 

Also if their venture to get third parties to make games for it fails they still keep their mobile platform alive and could claim that the switch was a great addition to their mobile gaming market. Seems like a no lose Senerio for Nintendo, while also having a chance to pull in all the Wii only buyers.  

I think you're right on that one. Nintendo's portable system sales are on the decline and while they're far from bad or unprofitable, they need to do something different. Unfortunately this move will only consolidate all their users within a single platform with the potential to alienate both camps. The push to gain users is surely going to be an uphill battle for them especially with them moving portable users into competition with Sony and Microsofts home consoles.

[Master Disaster]

This video explains it perfectly...

 

 

[Misanthrope]

9 hours ago, MadOne627 said:

Your quote made me thing. What if Nintendo is trying to bring there DS market into their console market. This would mean most of these people are interested in ds, phone, or tablet games. This would mean things like a quality drop like the unofficial stats would mean nothing to them. The vast majority of 3ds owners really only care about the nintendo specific games any way. I only have one for pokemon and fire emblem.

 

Also if their venture to get third parties to make games for it fails they still keep their mobile platform alive and could claim that the switch was a great addition to their mobile gaming market. Seems like a no lose Senerio for Nintendo, while also having a chance to pull in all the Wii only buyers.  

That's an interesting take and fairly plausible for them not to have considered at the least but planned it as that in all likelihood

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

That's an interesting take and fairly plausible for them not to have considered at the least but planned it as that in all likelihood

Nah, they don't show Skyrim in a trailer for a console aimed at the DS/mobile crowd.

[Misanthrope]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nah, they don't show Skyrim in a trailer for a console aimed at the DS/mobile crowd.

Everything else kinda is though

[Sniperfox47]

42 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Everything else kinda is though

NBA? That's clearly home console audience.

 

Mario Kart and Zelda? Kind of both ways. 

[Jahramika]

On 12/19/2016 at 11:36 PM, sgloux3470 said:

Competent devs will target 60 FPS for docked and 30 FPS for portable mode, or a locked 30 for both with enough headroom to run the same in portable as docked.

 

It's no different than how most of Nintendo's titles on the Wii U ran at 60 FPS or at the minimum rock solid 30 FPS.  It's a matter of targeting the specs rather than pushing visuals at the expense of performance. (Which is what most PS4 devs seem to do.)

 

 

 

 

 

Actually competent developers will put their efforts into Xbox/PS4/Computer titles so they can make money.

[Sniperfox47]

7 minutes ago, Jahramika said:

Actually competent developers will put their efforts into Xbox/PS4/Computer titles so they can make money.

I agree with this so much. I cannot see any major devs developing for the switch unless either A) it has ridiculously good sales compared to other Nintendo consoles, or B) Switch games have really good markup and it is ridiculously easy for them to port their titles, mitigating costs.

[ZackBarletto]

Throw in a little frame timing and 30fps will be okay for nearly anything mobile gaming related.

[AlTech]

17 minutes ago, ZackBarletto said:

Throw in a little frame timing and 30fps will be okay for nearly anything mobile gaming related.

I get headaches when I see framerate below 30-40fps...

[ZackBarletto]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

I get headaches when I see framerate below 30-40fps...

Was it with good frame times like using free sync or g-sync? I hear that alleviates many of the issues associated with low FPS.

 

Never experienced it first hand apples to apples, but it definitely looked better in the demos i saw.

 

unrelated, but gunner optics glasses actually help out a bunch too... speaking of eyes hurting. lol

[Sniperfox47]

3 minutes ago, ZackBarletto said:

Was it with good frame times like using free sync or g-sync? I hear that alleviates many of the issues associated with low FPS.

 

Never experienced it first hand apples to apples, but it definitely looked better in the demos i saw.

 

unrelated, but gunner optics glasses actually help out a bunch too... speaking of eyes hurting. lol

...console... g-sync/adaptive sync... console...

 

Mind=blown.

 

Didn't even consider the fact that they totally could do this... It would be the laptop G-sync, but still!

[ZackBarletto]

1 minute ago, Sniperfox47 said:

...console... g-sync/adaptive sync... console...

 

Mind=blown.

 

Didn't even consider the fact that they totally could do this... It would be the laptop G-sync, but still!

Thats the first thing I thought of when they mentioned 1080p 60fps or 720p blah blah blah. Why 60? gaming on mobile console?

 

my thought: When it unplugged from the dock, an (OPTIONAL) efficiency mode can be enabled to lower voltz, MHz, frame rate and have anysync standard for when a game drops to unlikable frame rates.

[Sniperfox47]

2 minutes ago, ZackBarletto said:

Thats the first thing I thought of when they mentioned 1080p 60fps or 720p blah blah blah. Why 60? gaming on mobile console?

 

my thought: When it unplugged from the dock, an (OPTIONAL) efficiency mode can be enabled to lower voltz, MHz, frame rate and have anysync standard for when a game drops to unlikable frame rates.

When did they say 1080p at 60fps? I must have missed that somewhere along the way. The last I heard all they had anounced resolution and frame rate wise was that it would support nothing over 1080p with no info provided on frame rate.

[AlTech]

6 hours ago, ZackBarletto said:

Was it with good frame times like using free sync or g-sync? I hear that alleviates many of the issues associated with low FPS.

Who do you think I am? An Nvidia or AMD shill?

 

NO. Ain't nobody got money for that. I'm not rebuying 2 monitors now so that I can have freesync.

 

[vanished]

10 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Who do you think I am? An Nvidia or AMD shill?

 

NO. Ain't nobody got money for that. I'm not rebuying 2 monitors now so that I can have freesync.

 

You don't really need freesync do to it.  Just v-sync to 30 fps instead of 60

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You don't really need freesync do to it.  Just v-sync to 30 fps instead of 60

No. Literally. if I play a game at 30fps or lower (Doesn't matter if it stays at 30fps) I will develop a massive headache.

[vanished]

7 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

No. Literally. if I play a game at 30fps or lower (Doesn't matter if it stays at 30fps) I will develop a massive headache.

I couldn't stand it either but if getting it stable is the goal, my point is you can do it without freesync  

[dragosudeki]

On 12/20/2016 at 3:51 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

Not to mention the shield tablet was already primarily CPU bound in most games (as far as I can tell) so this being even more powerful on the GPU side (albeit only slightly so but still) makes it insane that they would then cut CPU performance down to less than half what it was.  And, while I don't have numbers to back this up, I kinda assume the GPU is going to consume a lot more power than the CPU so if they were trying to save power, they targeted the wrong area imo.

Wasn't the shield tablet run games mostly by streaming (or otherwise play much older games)? Can't see how you can compare the battery life of a tablet that streams from a PC/Cloud to a handheld device meant for doing its own processing...

Plus, the I don't think the shield tablet actually did well (in gaming), so trying to copy aspects of it wouldn't really help.

[MageTank]

8 minutes ago, dragosudeki said:

Wasn't the shield tablet run games mostly by streaming (or otherwise play much older games)? Can't see how you can compare the battery life of a tablet that streams from a PC/Cloud to a handheld device meant for doing its own processing...

Plus, the I don't think the shield tablet actually did well (in gaming), so trying to copy aspects of it wouldn't really help.

Plenty of the shields games were ran native on the device itself. I had the Shield Portable, which was essentially the older weaker version of the tablet, and they had games specifically developed for the device, including older AAA titles. Last I checked, they were working on a Borderlands title for the device too. Battery life on the portable wasn't too bad for emulators or android games, but playing some of the native games (Sonic, Trine 2, etc) seemed to drain the battery life considerably. 

[Biggerboot]

Keep in mind this console isn't using Android OS like the Nvidia shield, it's Nintendo's own API, so the two factors may even out (in terms of it's relative performance to the shield).  I think the main concern is how easy development is.

 

That being said, the specs do feel a little underwhelming, but if you already planned on getting a Switch, I wouldn't let this sway your decision.  I could, however, see it prevent some people from jumping on launch day.  We'll probably see newer version of this just like every other nintendo handheld with nvidia tegra refreshes.  I'm just waiting to hear the full software lineup for this thing, hopefully coming in January, then I could make a more educated decision.

[RagnarokDel]

9 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I get headaches when I see framerate below 30-40fps...

so you get headaches every time you look at your phone?

[Biggerboot]

12 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

This video explains it perfectly...

 

 

Rich's big stink about Nintendo trying to be an industry outsider is a tired old argument and irrelevant to the Switch (the whole second half of the video is just him listing Nintendo's post N64 history).  But hey, that's Rich.

 

I do agree that specs matter to some extent, it's just you can't expect everyone (or even a majority) to know how to read 'specs' and understand the implications it has from a dev's standpoint.