The Future of Tech and the Nintendo Switch

[Pemalite]

HoloDust said:

It is convinience - once everything is streamed, you will have the same quality whether you're home or on the go. This is one of the reasons why I see streaming hitting hard in some not so distant future.

But it's not just that - I'm fairly certain that future streaming platform holders will use the same trick that's been used throughout the history of gaming to reel in the audience - flashy visuals not possible on previous platforms. It's just that this time they can sell you different visual packages depending on how much you pay, cause you'll be paying for server proccessing time, not for actual hardware itself.

This will provide you with the choice of having something that no standalone consumer hardware would be able to pull off, if you go with, let's say, Elite package, or you can go with some other more modest package suited to your needs and budget.

I can't say I'm too happy with this future, but given how much control this gives to platform and content holders, I'd say they'll do whatever it takes to persuade audience to convert to that.

I think streaming has a few issues to iron out before it ever becomes feasible.

Latency is a big one, streaming video games does introduce input lag... I for one do not look forward to Streaming video games as I am so far removed from any big server farms, it would be a terrible experience.

Rendering quality is another, having a compressed video feed streamed to your screen that has compression artifacts isn't as good as rendering it locally.

I do think it will happen eventually, but I don't think the *entire* planet is technically ready for it yet.

DarthMetalliCube said:

Agreed. Not to mention, the graphical power of portable consoles is rapidly catching up to home console. Hell, Zelda BoW looks goregeous. And Switch is powerful enough that it's capable of having Skyrim ported to it, likely with enhanced graphics too.

Breath of the Wild looks last generation though.

Skyrim is last generation also. Not exactly making a good argument for yourself. :P