Is Switch's processing power important to you?

[ABizzel1]

Moderately so

There's a yes and no feel for me personally.

The No part is easy.

1. I know Terga's performance should be above the last-gen consoles at worst, considering the Tegra X1 chip was when developers actually took advantage of the hardware, meanwhile the Switch is using Tegra's X1 successor.

2. Nintendo has proven over the last 2 gens and tons of handhelds that power alone doesn't make great games, especially when it comes to their exclusives. They have their own artstyle and their games perform well and look great because of it, even when the competition is several times more powerful. You don't need the most powerful game engine to make games look amazing, when you have a talented team of artist and game programmers.

3. And last but not least It's a gaming tablet, no matter how much Nintendo tries to say otherwise, so my expectation of performance is greatly tapered, because I've had gaming tablets and looked up 2:1 laptops in the $200 - $500 range (NVIDIA Shield tablet, looked up Yoga 9 for my new laptop) and I know their performance isn't the greatest when it comes to gaming.

They can get the job done, but they're not touching a dedicated gaming laptop or current console in performance.

So my expectations are significantly more in line than someone who thinks the Switch is about to be as powerful as a original PS4 / XBO. If it's reaches XBO performance good for them and a bonus, but in reality I'm expecting a middle ground between Wii U and XBO as far as performance goes, which isn't great for a 2017 console, but is more than enough for a 2017 handheld hybrid.

Now the reasons it matter

1. 3rd party developer support will live or die based on how easy it is to port games over to Switch, and performance is one of those key aspects. Plain and simple if a game can't easily be ported from the PC versions low settings, then that game isn't coming to Nintendo Switch in 99% of the cases when it comes to western 3rd party support post Year 1.

2. While Nintendo has proven they can do wonders with low-end hardware, it still leaves the sinking feeling they could have done so much more with even better hardware and it does hold their games back in that regard especially someone who knows they could have had significantly more power with what's available to them at the time for the price they're selling their hardware. This doesn't really apply to the Switch because we don't know the price, and because the hardware by all means will be great for a gaming tablet, but it does apply to the console aspect of it.

3. This is a 2017 device that's supposed to last for 5+ years (2022), with hardware weaker than the current weakest console on the market that launched in 2013 (3 years ago). So once again 3rd party support will likely dry up quick, especially since we'll likely have PS5 and XB4 by 2020.