| Barkley said: The Shield Tablet has a Tegra K1 chip not the more powerful X1. |
You are correct. The Shield tablet launched at 300 bucks just a bit after the Tegra K1 was launched. So it was top-notch tech by then. It was relaunched a year latter, with a 199 price point. As Switch will pack the X1 and it is already 1 year old tech right now, I think we can assume that it is in a similar pricing as the older SoC was in 2015. So I still think Nintendo could go for 199.
| Miyamotoo said: We don't know what other techs/possibilities Nintendo packed in Switch (just look new Switch patent thread), with Switch you also have Switch Dock and Switch Grip with Joy Cons, we have basically real home console and real handheld in one that can be played in local multiplayer out of box. All that at price point of $249 is great price, and will have very good sales, not bad sales. Like I wrote, New 3DS XL is still selling solid at price point of $199, this is just $50 more and offers much more and it's much more capable in every case. I am pretty sure evre PS4 port could run on Switch at 720p resolution, 540p in portable mode and 720p in docked mode. If actual Switch is popular and have good sales, I am pretty sure we will more AAA ports on Switch. PS4 will be same time on market like PS4 Pro, Pro isn't successor to base PS4, it's just a stronger version on first place for 4k users. |
It isn't really packing a lot of stuff. Just the controllers and the dock (probably a more expensive SKU). It also cuts some costs by decreasing the screen resolution, so it can even be the same here. The 3DS is selling at decent numbers for sure, but it has a big library to push it forward. While the XL version is more expensive, people still have cheaper alternatives on the regular New 3DS and the 2DS, so it isn't really selling always at a 200 dollars pricing.
As a portable, it has to be cheap to be used as second console. As it is launching mid gen, this is even more important.
As for performance, it won't be that easy to run current PS4 games even at 720p. X1 normally does it going from 720p to 900p and switch has pretty much less than half its GPU power and half the RAM. The CPU is probably way weaker since it's an ARM. Anyway, having AAA ports isn't a matter of power. It's a question of sales. PS2 was significantly weaker than both competitors and a hard to develop for machine. If 3rd party software sells well on the Switch, they will be ported.
What made Wii U lose 3rd party support wasn't it's limited power. The reason was the low sales of 3rd party games, such as the brilliant port of NFS: Most Wanted. People usually try to justify it with the "60 dollar late port" excuse, but look at what all those remaster are doing on PS4 and X1. If games sell well, 3rd parties will port them to Switch even if they have to almost rebuild the game from scratch.
