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potato_hamster on 10 July 2019
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Barkley said:
potato_hamster said:

A knife is a tool. It's made for cutting things. Anything can become a weapon depending on how it's used. A Motorcycle Helmet that was purpose built to save someone's life can also be used to bludgeon someone to death. In that sense, why does the designed intent matter? That motorcycle helmet was still used as a weapon, even if the creator never intended it to be used that way, or thought of it being used that way while creating it.

So no, I don't necessarily think it's created intent matters that much.

So if the intent behind creation isn't relevant then is something defined by what it is used for?

If yes then the Switch is clearly used both as a handheld and a home console, thus it can be defined as both.

If the answer is no, then I would be very interested to know how you define something if it is not defined by the reason it was created or what it is used for.

On both counts the Switch is both, it was created to be both and it is used as both.

How do you know the Switch was created to be a home console? How do you know they didn't create the Switch as a portable console with detachable controllers that could be used in a table top mode and some engineer didn't pipe in and say "you know, this thing uses USB-C. We should be able to have this output to a television pretty easily. In fact, since it's plugged into a wall while docked, we can overclock this a little bit and output at 1080p" and thus a very cheap dock was created, and packaged with every Switch sold. For all we know that dock and that TV mode is literally an afterthought. And I really don't want to get into a case of "whataboutisms", I'm just pointing out you can't actually know what the Switch was intended to be simply because the final product can be used that way.

There's certainly nothing about the internals of the Switch that indicate its a hybrid console, much less in the design itself. Almost every single design decision favors playing it in portable mode, whether it be a touch screen that can only be used in portable mode, the size of the joy cons being way too small to use comfortably by themselves, the fact that the joy cons that cannot be charged while using the Switch while docked to the tv out of the box, or the fact that my switch has literally warned me of overheating and even shut off after playing BOTW while docked for over 2 hours to name a few. What design decisions favor TV mode? They had to install a slightly bigger fan and add a bigger heat sink that slightly impacted battery life to support a high performance mode to output in 1080p. That's it. It's very very clear the Switch designed to be a portable first and foremost, and if that isn't clear to you look at how little had to be changed in order to make a Switch portable only. Now think about how much would have to be changed in a switch to make it home console only. It's dramatically different.

The Switch is a portable at heart. Always has been. They've included some accessories in the box that made it really easy to hook up to a TV and that was enough for you to call it a hybrid. And that's great for you. I just don't buy it. No one at the time would say the Sega Nomad was a hybrid console, and I don't see any reason to start, but you might need to.