Nintendo reveals more specs for the Switch except for the ones that matter? That's not good....

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, dragosudeki said:

They're good devices, but not nearly as successful as the 3DS. If specs were the only thing that mattered, then according to that same logic, the PS Vita should have been more successful because it was more powerful.

 

Also, there are a couple of games that sometimes run past the 30fps on Nintendo 3DS. I find it hard to believe that Nintendo would say "30fps games only" when there are many games that reach higher rates (disregarding the stupid 3D feature).

i'm sure they're not gonna lock shyte down to 30 FPS, but i'm also sure they're gonna keep lower framerates as an option for those games where the additional eyecandy or game elements are worth the resource more than a number in the top left corner of every benchmark

[AresKrieger]

Regardless of what people say about its specs (720p at that size is fine fyi) this is the first console from any company that has made me want to buy it in 10 years, simply put its mobile feature is a game changer, it appears to use cartridges which is a +(though I didn't see any confirmation on this), and the battery life seems like it will be fine (regardless I'm rarely in a location without access to power even for that 2 hr mark you mentioned), additionally the new Zelda game looks great so I want it.

[dragosudeki]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i'm sure they're not gonna lock shyte down to 30 FPS, but i'm also sure they're gonna keep lower framerates as an option for those games where the additional eyecandy or game elements are worth the resource more than a number in the top left corner of every benchmark

I know that, but comparing to the Xbox One/PS4, this is really nothing new. I don't understand how people can expect Nintendo Switch to have a minimum 60FPS when there are many games on the more powerful consoles that still have the minimum 30FPS. It just seems like that everyone is comparing the Switch (a mobile console) to a Xbox One/PS4 (or sometimes a PC), when nothing different is truly happening between the platforms. The Switch really doesn't do anything new/mind blowing, but seems to bring quite a bit of features in a much smaller device.

[CyanideInsanity]

3 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Regardless of what people say about its specs (720p at that size is fine fyi) this is the first console from any company that has made me want to buy it in 10 years, simply put its mobile feature is a game changer, it appears to use cartridges which is a +(though I didn't see any confirmation on this), and the battery life seems like it will be fine (regardless I'm rarely in a location without access to power even for that 2 hr mark you mentioned), additionally the new Zelda game looks great so I want it.

It does use carts. Or cards as they call them. http://www.nintendo.com/switch/features/ At the bottom theres some nice labeled renders of the device, dock, and joy cons.

[AresKrieger]

10 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

It does use carts. Or cards as they call them. http://www.nintendo.com/switch/features/ At the bottom theres some nice labeled renders of the device, dock, and joy cons.

Yeah I just meant I haven't seen any nintendo media show carts (ie the livestream), the patent showed carts and it appears to have a slot, but I was just covering my bases so to speak

 

Thx for the link btw

[Castdeath97]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Which era of computing are you talking about how? Because back when Quake 3 was the shit, people were aiming for 60+ FPS too. That was at the time when "32bit color support!" was a major feature for graphics cards (like the Voodoo5).

That was in early 2000.

I would assume he meant a bit earlier than Quake 3 (i.e. Golden Eye 007 era). I'm not sure about PC, but in consoles you usually got less than 30 FPS if not even worse...

 

The main aim back then was getting 3D graphics, frame rates were far from ideal, at least on consoles.

[Castdeath97]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

"High Framerates"? You must be new around here.

 

120 or 144fps is considered "High Framerates". 60fps is just acceptable, nothing more.

If 30fps was unacceptable you wouldn't see PS4/Xbox games locked at 30fps sell like hot cakes, people clearly don't mind it! 

 

Is 60fps better? Yes can't argue with that I would even say its a must for racing/shooter games, but outside of that don't see anything below 60fps as unacceptable.

[No Nrg]

I'm not surprised by the underwhelming specs, it's nothing new for Nintendo. I'm sure the GPU spec is below what a XBone/PS4 standard can push.

 

They always concentrate more on trying to catch that lightening in a bottle new trend like the Wii (motion controls) and hope that differentiates them to drive sales.

 

This time it's the hope of leveraging the handheld to pull in the massive 3DS audience but also offering the docking option for you traditional couch gamer.

 

I'm sure this will be about as (not) popular as the Wii U to the avid gamer unless they actual like Nintendo branded games.

 

[Natsoup]

39 minutes ago, dragosudeki said:

If this was true, then wouldn't the PS Vita have done better than the Nintendo 3DS, considering the PS Vita should technically be more powerful than the Nintendo 3DS?

You need many games that can use the power of a PS Vita, instead of just 2 or 3, to sell a PS Vita, powerful or not. If nothing runs on the hardware, there's no point. I have a Vita and the few games that do utilize this hardware correctly are extremely fun, and hit 60fps 95% of the time, and i enjoy them more because of it.

[Misanthrope]

31 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Regardless of what people say about its specs (720p at that size is fine fyi) this is the first console from any company that has made me want to buy it in 10 years, simply put its mobile feature is a game changer, it appears to use cartridges which is a +(though I didn't see any confirmation on this), and the battery life seems like it will be fine (regardless I'm rarely in a location without access to power even for that 2 hr mark you mentioned), additionally the new Zelda game looks great so I want it.

Screen is fine but I love the hypocrisy of many people:

 

- "This phone has ONLY 1080p on a 5" screen? Garbage"

- "The switch however is fine at 7" 720p because....Nintendo! OMG I love Mario and Zelda"

[manikyath]

12 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Yeah I just meant I haven't seen any nintendo media show carts (ie the livestream), the patent showed carts and it appears to have a slot, but I was just covering my bases so to speak

 

Thx for the link btw

it would make sense for them to go the card route if you ask me:

- disks are fragile, no good in something portable, no good in the hands of the younger half of nintendo's audience.

- for as much as a piece of spinning glass is cheap, if you go towards the higher storage options (DVD or even bluray) their price becomes notable.

- power requirements of spinning media.

- cards are more reliable, especially on the reader end, even with disk based consoles not being dropped, their disk readers die hilareously often.

- they can sell fancy cases with card holders (cmon, we all know this is gonna happen, embrace it)

- if the games come on a card, they dont require to be downloaded onto the system storage, solving @AluminiumTech 's hard drive problem. (here's a revolutionary idea: have the cards be R/W so you can update straight onto the card)

- cards please the old time folks that have been on the ride since NES.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Screen is fine but I love the hypocrisy of many people:

 

- "This phone has ONLY 1080p on a 5" screen? Garbage"

- "The switch however is fine at 7" 720p because....Nintendo! OMG I love Mario and Zelda"

please give me a phone with 7" 720p, the battery life would be so good...

[EunSoo]

8 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Screen is fine but I love the hypocrisy of many people:

 

- "This phone has ONLY 1080p on a 5" screen? Garbage"

- "The switch however is fine at 7" 720p because....Nintendo! OMG I love Mario and Zelda"

My phone is for watching TV and youtube and such (at least for me). THere is no reason to stick with 1080 on that. The switch is for portable gaming and I am perfectly fine sacrificing a better resolution screen for better perfomance. The usage for a phone and a switch are very different so they should get different hardware.

[manikyath]

11 minutes ago, SCGazelle said:

The usage for a phone and a switch are very different so they should get different hardware.

the problem is that under the hood, options are rather painfully limited, you essentially have ARM, low power x86, or going back to where they were before their handheld lineup became ARM  (at which point you'd have to go back to the gameboy advance which had a zilog Z80 for backwards compatibility with the gbc games.)

[typographie]

16 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Screen is fine but I love the hypocrisy of many people:

 

- "This phone has ONLY 1080p on a 5" screen? Garbage"

- "The switch however is fine at 7" 720p because....Nintendo! OMG I love Mario and Zelda"

I'm sure this probably wasn't your intention, but due to our discussions in other threads I can't help but feel slightly called out here.

 

For what it's worth, I guarantee you have never read a post from me complaining that a 5" smartphone had "only" a 1080p display. I actually think 1440p is past the point of reason for most phone-sized devices. I use a 720p Galaxy S3 that I'm still happy with.

 

It's performance that concerns me. If the games I want to play are locked 30 FPS, at least in console form, then I won't be buying it. It's mobile resolution does not bother me, and in fact 720p is a gigantic step up from the 3DS.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, typographie said:

It's performance that concerns me. If the games I want to play are locked 30 FPS, at least in console form, then I won't be buying it. It's mobile resolution does not bother me, and in fact 720p is a gigantic step up from the 3DS.

ont hat note tho, mostly out of curiousity, what would you rather have out these two options, in terms of docked mode:

- locked to 30FPS but a "buttery smooth" 30FPS without a hitch.

- 60FPS, but with dips down to 45 depending on what's going on. (to pull up an example, grenades going boom)

 

not saying this directly related to the switch, but more so as a curiousity in terms of choosing between two evils.

[Yoinkerman]

Lol you guys are hilarious.

 

Fun is fun I don't care what the specs are.

[PocketNerd]

You must really be a pessimist if you think that because one piece of information wasn't disclosed (that, at the end of the day REALLY doesn't matter, the games do) you immediately think something is shit.

[YubinTheBunny]

Wanna preorder one... sold out everywhere lulz. The Canadian prices are also stupid because our dollar is so weak right now. $400CAD... dang it.

[manikyath]

13 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

You must really be a pessimist if you think that because one piece of information wasn't disclosed (that, at the end of the day REALLY doesn't matter, the games do) you immediately think something is shit.

as well as some folks mentioning that nintedo never releases their specs anyways.

[Suika]

I mean, do you need higher end specs to run Mario Kart? Because I don't think you do.

[Master Disaster]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm pretty damn sure that Windows Phones use DirectX exclusively.

 

And how have you come to that conclusion?

Hey, my bad. I genuinely was unaware that WP uses Direct3D as the graphics API. I thought I'd read somewhere that WP was using OpenGL but I guess I was wrong.

 

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

He was talking about ARM. ARM is still ARM. It doesn't matter how much Apple or Nvidia mess with it. It's still ARM.

 

They are of the same architecture.

So I suppose AMD & Intel CPUs are both the same too as they both use the same architecture? Tegra has a maxwell GPU core, that alone makes it vastly different to anything else on the market.

[manikyath]

7 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

So I suppose AMD & Intel CPUs are both the same too as they both use the same architecture? Tegra has a maxwell GPU core, that alone makes it vastly different to anything else on the market.

well.. sure.. maxwell gpu core, shall we also mention every other GPU they've ever paired with an ARM core, and the piece of potato turd they squeezed into the raspberry pi?

[Castdeath97]

2 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Screen is fine but I love the hypocrisy of many people:

 

- "This phone has ONLY 1080p on a 5" screen? Garbage"

- "The switch however is fine at 7" 720p because....Nintendo! OMG I love Mario and Zelda"

I would love to see someone who says 1080p on 5 inch is not good enough, even 720p is fine at that size. When the Nexus 7 came out with 720p on a 7" screen no one said the screen was too pixelated even when we had the likes of retina 9.7" iPads (which had a higher dpi on a larger screen!) and the HTC droid.

 

People are getting too spoiled nowadays when it comes to displays.....

[Master Disaster]

21 minutes ago, manikyath said:

well.. sure.. maxwell gpu core, shall we also mention every other GPU they've ever paired with an ARM core, and the piece of potato turd they squeezed into the raspberry pi?

I'm confused, what is your point?

 

Tegra is the only ARM SoC that uses a desktop class GPU core (other than the Kepler based Tegra K1), sure its watered down but at its heart its the exact same GPU that you can buy for your desktop right now. That's the reason its not seen much use outside of Shields, because its useless for a mobile device due to its power requirements. Its also the reason why Tegra differs from all other ARM SoCs, you can list any ARM GPU you like, they'll all be custom designed GPUs to operate in a low power state.

 

Fun Fact: The Shield TV is 2 years old in May and it still tops the 3D Mark leaderboards for mobile devices with the Apple A9 in second place, its closest ARM competitor is the Ardreno 530 on the Snapdragon 820 and its almost 1/3 faster.