Nintendo NX Revealed As Nintendo Switch

[Las7]

I've said before I'd buy their next console after Splatoon sequel is announced... guess it probably won't take me long

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Although I'm getting urge to eat some toast for some reason

Well we already have a purple lunchbox, so a toaster is only continuing the theme.

 

[major_chaos]

Well that was infinitely better than expected. I wanted Nintendo to get away from gimmicks, and get away from gimmicks they did (mostly). I still have concerns about processing power, library, and the now standard Nintendo chicanery (underproducing hardware and software, never lowering prices, stupidly dated network functionality, ect.), but unlike the WiiU I'm actually cautiously excited about this one.

 

[KissingSunlight]

I have always appreciated that Nintendo are constantly innovative about their hardware. If only, they show that kind of innovation with their games. Instead of milking the same IP's for the past 30 years.

My opinion: It's all about the games. Which is why I skipped this generation of consoles.

 

[Vigormortis]

Wait, wait, wait...

Spoiler

That? That's your controller Nintendo?

I might die laughing. Holy shit, my sides. It's a square! A literal, fucking square!

And people are loving it! To think how many around here thought the Steam controller looked dumb and uncomfortable, now they think this monstrosity looks great?

Yeah. I may just die laughing this week. Which is a shame, since my birthday's coming up. Oh well.

That looks fragile and full of many individual parts that can fail.
I'll give it 1 year until those controller things break off.

So many SPOFs on this thing. As soon as I saw them pulling it apart into individual modules I winced a little and thought to myself, "Ooh. Oh no. That'll be a problem a year after launch."

Still, it's an interesting concept. Not buying it as a particularly reliable one, but interesting nonetheless.

'Course, this reveal tells us very little. There's still many, many critical questions that need answering. What's the power profile on this thing? Battery life longevity and expectancy? Screen quality? Input quality? How robust are all of those potential SPOF connections? How many 'required' peripherals will it have? How does its hardware stack up to the rest of the current generation? How much will all of this cost?

Will have to wait and see. For now, the most I can say is that I'm......let's say 'amused'. The next few weeks and months will be interesting. Provided the hardware and software side of things hold up, it could still make for a decent console.

snip

Mine as well. Notice the scenes that were taken straight out of a classic 90's/early 00's game commercial? The very good looking 'friends' playing the game, being the center of the party, while acting all 'action-y'[footnote] Leaning left and right. Bumping arms and exchanging intense glances.[/footnote] with those tiny, absurdly stupid looking controllers in hand. The ball players huddled around the system in the middle of the basket ball court, jumping around all excited and enthusiastic. Etc, etc.

I laughed about as much as I cringed. Good shit. I love you, Nintendo.

Well we already have a purple lunchbox, so a toaster is only continuing the theme.

I like you. You made me smile.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I was like "haha, Nintendo is making an open world RPG that looks like Skyrim all the way until they actually said it's Bethesda. I didn't think this would ever happen.
While I'm not a fan of new Bethesda games, a lot of people are and I'm happy that other Nintendo fans that like them will be able to enjoy their games without having to turn on their PC or PS4/Xbone.

Not even 6 hours in, Bethesda already pulled a Capcom Five on Nintendo, even though there is no reason for that. It really was too good to be true.

 

[144_v1legacy]

Looks like Nintendo learned their most important lesson from the last generation, and didn't include "Wii" or "U" anywhere in the name.
Well done!

 

[Transdude1996]

I was like "haha, Nintendo is making an open world RPG that looks like Skyrim all the way until they actually said it's Bethesda. I didn't think this would ever happen.
While I'm not a fan of new Bethesda games, a lot of people are and I'm happy that other Nintendo fans that like them will be able to enjoy their games without having to turn on their PC or PS4/Xbone.

Not even 6 hours in, Bethesda already pulled a Capcom Five on Nintendo, even though there is no reason for that. It really was too good to be true.

Want to hear the best part? People are already backpedalling about their thoughts on third-party support being vital and going on about how "shitty" of a game Skyrim is. I thought people considered that to be the Godsend of console gaming?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

It seems like Nintendo is trying to merge handheld gaming and console gaming into one system, which might not be the best thing to do; handhelds are generally built with a compact button layout, while consoles have a wide sturdy controller base to hold on to with grouped buttons. The Switch seems to pick-and-mix from either side, potentially crippling itself to be decent at either one. Not to mention the amount of individual parts that can break.

I can see this being popular on college campuses and the occasional friend's night out, though. We might be sitting on an untapped niche this machine can fill.

In all honesty, good controller that attach to a touchscreen device like a smartphone, or a tablet... That's something gamers have been demanding for years, with not much in the way of workable solutions. The Switch has what appears to be a console controller that's split in half, with a dock to use as a controller, or using the console itself as a dock. Not to mention that the console has a screen built in. The biggest issue consoles have had since the PS3/Xbox 360 era is that they're basically shitty gaming PCs without the PC native peripherals of a key board and mouse. Nintendo has been sneering at that idea since the Wii, where they keep trying to do something different to tap a different part of the gamer market. This is so radically different from what you get in consoles and Nintendo has been the only company to make worth while handhelds since the gameboy. Combining the two with such powerful hardware and flexibility. This might be exactly the change the console market has needed and the boost handhelds have needed for years.

Spoiler: Pretty much my reaction during the whole video...

Well, we'll see how well it plays (and how much it costs).

Yeah, that's pretty much my reaction. I mean, does anyone remember the launch of the WiiU? Everyone got hyped, everyone thought this was the new big thing, a bunch of third-party developers said they were going to support it and all loved the system (you know, the usual PR bullshit), and then it sold about as well as aged toe cheese. The running joke of the industry the Vita has sold more units than the WiiU, and I think the same is going to happen here. There might be more of a spike in sales at the start and Nintendo might drag in more non-gamers than last time if they market the thing right, but with the media decidedly anti-gaming instead of saying the Wii cures cancer and people like Oprah handing out consoles to her cultists (I mean audience) and the ubiquity of smart phones, the Switch is going to end up abandoned by both developers and gamers because it's going to be underpowered and probably filled with touch-screen or some other dumb gimmickery. Plus if gamers are bitching about resolution and not having the shiniest graphics and the smoothest framerates possible on the PS4 and Xbone (and their upgrades), then I can't wait to see the number of torches and pitchforks brought out against the Switch. But then again, I suppose it IS Nintendo, which means no matter how lackluster the system is or how big of bastards they are, there's a fairly large group of people who will defend them to the death.

The switch looks to have some pretty impressive hardware backing it up, like a priprietary version of the new GTX 1080 family plus it's doing something very new. Most gamers aren't really that interested in weather or not the frame rates are maxed, if you can play the game at huge resolution, or if a game has the shiniest graphics. Those are actually fairly niche things, because to get that you need a top of the line gaming PC, which is expensive as hell. The big complaint with current generation consoles is that they're basically only shitty gaming PCs. Consoles used to be something vastly different from a gaming PC. This change where the console can switch to portable on the fly, where it's not trying to be a gaming PC... This might be just the change the console market desperately needs at the moment, it's also going to hammer mobile platforms. Because it's not a smartphone form factor, it's a tablet form factor with gaming focused hardware in it. That means that this little machine is probably going to fill the niche Nintendo has been desprate for in portables, because it plays actual games, not strictly click the thing card games, or dead simple puzzle games. The fact that it's a tablet with a gaming controller is a game changer, because gaming controllers aren't something tablets and smartphones have really had anywhere bit in a tiny niche market. I'm expecting this thing to be a paradigm shift for console and portable gaming, because in consoles and portable platforms, there is a core gaming market that hasn't been serviced in years. This looks like the one new idea that's going to fill the role of a console, of a handheld, both at the same time.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Not even 6 hours in, Bethesda already pulled a Capcom Five on Nintendo, even though there is no reason for that. It really was too good to be true.

I don't know why Bethesda would do something so dumb as to say something like that. It's as if they want Skyrim Switched Edition to fail miserably or something. But I am 100% certain that Skyrim is coming to the Switch, whether it's the Enhanced Edition or the standard version with some Switch Bonuses.

Either that, or that wasn't Skyrim and was a very Skyrim-esque game... Maybe it was Raven Blade?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I was like "haha, Nintendo is making an open world RPG that looks like Skyrim all the way until they actually said it's Bethesda. I didn't think this would ever happen.
While I'm not a fan of new Bethesda games, a lot of people are and I'm happy that other Nintendo fans that like them will be able to enjoy their games without having to turn on their PC or PS4/Xbone.

Not even 6 hours in, Bethesda already pulled a Capcom Five on Nintendo, even though there is no reason for that. It really was too good to be true.

Jesus. That has to rank high in the history of Prompt Backstabs.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

snip

I guess there wouldn't be a problem with it being revealed early (we found out everything about the switch like this), but if it wasn't meant to appear why even show it? And why is Bethesda being so secretive about it? The seed of distrust has already being planted as people like ReviewTechUsa are furious at Nintendo for not securing third parties even though we don't have any confirmation about anything.

snip

I called it a Capcom Five for a reason, Capcom promised 5 exclusives, 4 immediately fall from the promise with the fifth one not too far, one gets cancelled and the one that ranked and sold worst was the one that remained Nintendo exclusive.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I think it looks great, and I already want one. I'm very interested in specs and battery life (As well as games, obviously), but besides that, I'm down for it. I've seen criticisms over the square controller, but let's not forget that the back is probably shaped and designed for human hands as well. People thought the Wii U controller was just a brick, but it had some handle-like spots that made it quite comfy. I'm sure this will have the exact same benefit, considering I see handle-like protrusions out of the Joy-Con box.

Looking forward to it!

 

[Brian Tams]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

 

[Transdude1996]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

https://www.sandisk.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2014/sandisk-premieres-worlds-highest-capacity-sd-card-for-high-performance-video-and-photo-capture

Single layer Blu-Ray discs only hold up to 25GB.

 

[Gizen]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

https://www.sandisk.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2014/sandisk-premieres-worlds-highest-capacity-sd-card-for-high-performance-video-and-photo-capture

Single layer Blu-Ray discs only hold up to 25GB.

That's about 800$ though. The real question is, what's the largest cartridge size that's also cheap enough to manufacture that it can compete with discs.

 

[Brian Tams]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

https://www.sandisk.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2014/sandisk-premieres-worlds-highest-capacity-sd-card-for-high-performance-video-and-photo-capture

Single layer Blu-Ray discs only hold up to 25GB.

And I stand corrected.

*looks up at post, considers removing it to prevent getting corrected a thousand more times*

Meh.

 

[Transdude1996]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

https://www.sandisk.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2014/sandisk-premieres-worlds-highest-capacity-sd-card-for-high-performance-video-and-photo-capture

Single layer Blu-Ray discs only hold up to 25GB.

That's about 800$ though. The real question is, what's the largest cartridge size that's also cheap enough to manufacture that it can compete with discs.

Going by the pricing over on Best Buy's website, a 10 pack of regular Blu-Ray discs can cost $15 meanwhile a single 32GB SD card costs, at minimum, almost $20.

 

[Gizen]

So the Switch uses cartridges, not discs.

I don't know how much cartridge technology has progressed, by I doubt they've reached blu-ray level.

https://www.sandisk.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2014/sandisk-premieres-worlds-highest-capacity-sd-card-for-high-performance-video-and-photo-capture

Single layer Blu-Ray discs only hold up to 25GB.

That's about 800$ though. The real question is, what's the largest cartridge size that's also cheap enough to manufacture that it can compete with discs.

Going by the pricing over on Best Buy's website, a 10 pack of regular Blu-Ray discs can cost $15 meanwhile a single 32GB SD card costs, at minimum, almost $20.

Neither of those prices is even remotely accurate, because the price both those things are sold to consumers are subjected to all manner of assorted mark ups, some of which only apply to one or the other for various reasons. The cost of acquiring them for manufacturing purposes is different, and that's what will be the determining factor.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Wow. That is a really ugly design. I normally care about aesthetics for a console, but wow, that really is ugly. Also the rumoured name; Nintendo NX sounds way cooler than 'Switch'. I guess we will see in 5 or 6 months just how far the ball was dropped.