Not to mention it's a castrated Tegra X1 as it's clockrates are severely cutback... And only has half the amount of Ram that Tegra X1 can support.

It would certainly be interesting if Nintendo opted for a Pascal powered Tegra with 50% more performance at the same powerlevel for the Switch from the very beginning.

Graphics Core Next 1.0/1.1 is extremely inefficient though, the Playstation 4 pushes ahead thanks to it's sheer amount of functional hardware units. Aka. Brute force.
nVidia could probably get "close enough" right now with 7nm manufacturing, but it would probably take another year or two for EUV to make things a little more feasible to that end... nVidia's Orin design might be the tipping point?

Yeah. They could have done that, especially with how cheap Tegra X1 chips are right now... But they would have had to ditch the USB and went for a PCI-E interconnect to make it feasible.

In saying that... Even when the Switch released there were faster chips Nintendo could have used for more performance, but I assume the Tegra X1's price was extremely attractive for them to turn down? Either way... Can't turn the clock back now.

Still hoping for a Switch TV with faster components, games like this would benefit from it due to the dynamic resolution too.

Games will need to be designed to take advantage of it, otherwise it would default to a single chip... Similar to the approach the Playstation 4 Pro takes.

While I agree that of course they COULD have done some of this, added in more power from the get go... it has to be considered that there is a version of the Switch out there right now which is the cheapest of the 3 currently available systems, between ps4, Switch and X1 there is only one system which can be gotten new for $200 and that fact alone means all of the "they could have added..." arguments pretty much all die a death, I think what's included in the Switch for the cost of the machine is very very fair, I highly doubt Nintendo are making any margin on those machines it's likely to be almost all from Software licensing.

If they ditched the Joycons, battery, display, dock and released a Switch TV on launch, they could have had a $150 or less pricepoint on launch, with more powerful hardware.

Besides I am pretty sure the Xbox One S/SAD has hit the $200 USD price points on a heap of different occasions before the Lite even dropped.

Either way, what has been done is done, not going to change with any what-if scenarios, but doesn't mean we can't critique a company's specific actions.

It's only a fraction the price if you already own a PS4 or an Xbox One.

I paid $100 AUD at EB Games for my copy of Witcher 3; even a preowned PS4 + a preowned copy of Witcher 3 for it would've run me $358 AUD.

That's the thing though, if it dropped those features then the system would be an nvidia shield TV with a Nintendo logo on it, and I really can't imagine it would have been in anyway near as popular a machine as it is today where companies are wanting to port these kinda games onto it, companies will port to where the buzz and money is at, that's the number 1 reason for the switch getting these games, power is not a factor when it comes to the getting of money, only games which just wouldn't work from a control point of view would not be ported to Switch ever, things like WoW or a game which just needs Mouse/Keyboard play... maybe light gun games, classic ones like Time Crisis I mean, just stuff which can't work because of hardware.

<SNIP>

Remove the portable factor and you're talking about a Switch which appeals primarily to just 19% of the users.

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/nintendo-switch-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-complete-edition jb always sell new games cheaper than eb. You should always check price at jb first then price match at eb. Its what i always do when buying new games

From my perspective as someone who bought and played this version, the thread question can be broken down in two crucial ways:

- Is the port well made with regard to the hardware its running on?

- Is the enjoyment of playing it compromised?

As to the first question, yeah, I think this is just about as good as one can reasonably expect the game to look/run on the Switch's hardware given how demanding the source material is. It's not much to look at, but it's clearly not a lazy or half-hearted effort.

As to the second, I never played the PC, PS4, or Xbone versions, but as a first time player I am having a great time with it. Might even have to retroactively name it my GOTY pick for 2015.

There are plenty of bad ports on Switch. This isn't one of them.

I think this is financially conservative port. Saber really did a great job, but without custom art or reworked just for this version it's inevitable that it looks so muddy and blurry.

Honestly, shame, CDPR could've gone an extra mile and really show other publishers how it's supposed to be done (actually, the way it was done not a generation or two ago).