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Conina on 14 March 2021
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Shadow1980 said:
curl-6 said:

Pretty much yeah, it's different enough that it coexists more than directly competes.

The graphics argument in particular never made much sense given the long history of systems outselling graphically superior options. I get that people thought low power would equal no third party support, but even that isn't necessarily the case, see the DS and 3DS for example. Heck, even the Wii had better third party support than people give it credit for.

Yeah. Power doesn't ever correlate with commercial success. The PS4 was the first time the most powerful console from a given generation was also the best-selling one (maybe the second, if you don't count the Neo-Geo as a competitor to the SNES and Genesis; the SNES was more powerful than the Genesis and TG-16). It lost that distinction when the Xbox One X was released (it's not clear if the less powerful PS4 Pro outsold it), but for just the base models it still holds true. Pricing and the strength of the overall software library matter most, though things like marketing and regional differences in brand preference also contribute.

And third parties will indeed support just about any system out there. The difference is in the kind of games they'll put on weaker systems, as I detailed earlier in the thread.

From a handheld perspective, all Switch models are still very powerful (and quite efficient): https://switchchargers.com/nintendo-switch-lite-charging-and-power-usage/

  • the Original Switch has a maximal power usage of 10 watts (8 watts on average)
  • the newer Switch revision has a maximal power usage of 8 watts (6 watts on average)
  • the Switch lite has a maximal power usage of 7.26 watts (6 watts on average)

All with Screen brightness 100%, WiFi on, Blue-tooth on. And less demanding Switch games are in the 3 - 5 watts area.

The new and very expensive PC handhelds (AYA Neo, GPD Win 3...) can run unoptiimed PC-versions only better than the optimized Switch versions, if they have a much higher power consumption (15 - 25 watts for the SoC, 20 - 30 watts for the whole device), which drains their batteries in 1 - 3 hours.

If you run these PC handhelds with a 10W-limit for the whole device (6W TDP for the SoC), games run like shit.

F. e. GTA V with 20 - 25 fps with the lowest settings, 66% resolution scale of 1280x800 and additional dynamic res scaling tricks (Radeon Boost) activated. 13 - 20 fps with the lowest settings, native 1280x800 and additional dynamic res scaling tricks (Radeon Boost) activated.

It looks much worse than the PS3 oder Xbox360 versions:

An optimized Switch version probably could match the PS360-versions in undocked mode with better image quality (better textures due to 8x the RAM of the 7th gen consoles).

So I'm still hoping for Switch versions of GTA 5 and GTA 4 and RDR 1 (and a GTA-collection of GTA 3 + Vice City + San Andreas + Liberty City Stories + Vice City Stories).

Last edited by Conina - on 14 March 2021