Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Soundwave]

curl-6 said:

Soundwave said:

It's the first mainstream portable gaming device that can handle modern 3D games of its era ... that's becoming basically a fact and it's a significant moment in the evolution of game consoles, previous "high end" portables like the PSP and Vita could not do that and generally speaking even devices like high end Android and Apple tablets north of the $1000 still don't get a lot of modern console games as the Switch 2 will. 

The system also performs better in some cases than more expensive PC devices (like PC handhelds) ... that certainly was not the case with things like the Wii, Wii U, DS, or 3DS. That is a *significant* difference and much more in line with previous Nintendo consoles like the NES (for its time), the Super NES (for its time), the N64, GameCube. 

And that's also significant, nothing wrong with admitting that now. 

And the reason it's fair to fucking point that out is because every damn Switch 2 thread on this forum for about 3 years was a nightmare here of the same group of naysaying posters downplaying the Switch 2 non-stop at every turn. Now I think deep down they realize they fucked up, they'll never admit it out loud of course because they basically wasted everyone's time for months on end in multiple threads. But they know it too, when Digital Foundry praised Star Wars Outlaws massively it was a massive kick in the junk to those kinds of posters who had invested hard in the opposite narrative ("those" types of games with "those" types of graphics setting are only for Playstation/XBox/PC players, not for Nintendo gamers ... that's essentially the status quo they were hardcore invested in for whatever dumb reason). 

So with Switch 3 or Switch 2 Pro threads, watch, there will be a lot more humilty not things like "Nintendo shows off Switch 2 dev hardware with Matrix demo running" followed by non-stop posting of "ahahahahah faaaaaake. No way that's true" type crap. Provided this board even makes it to Switch 2 Pro/Switch 3 discussion of course.

Switch 1 was capable of running PS4/XBO titles. The gap in technical quality was bigger then that it is now with Switch 2, but stuff like Witcher 3, Doom 2016/Eternal, Hellblade, Sniper Elite 4, Ace Combat 7, etc ran on Switch just fine.

There was indeed a lot of downplaying of Switch 2's capabilities prior to release and early in its life, but I think you need to let that go and move on at this point. Time proved them wrong, there's no need to hold a grudge.

It was 3 years of non-stop of the same thing in every Switch 2 thread to be fair. And I held back in saying too much, like for example you could see people were licking their chops to declare the Switch 2 a hardware disaster as early Star Wars Outlaws videos looked iffy on performance, but then the final build came out and you could see the air went out the room for a lot of folks on that bandwagon. Not only was it a competent port, it was an extremely impressive port and this is a game only a few months into the system's product cycle.

I refrained from crowing too loudly then, but you bet your ass if that port was bad the folks on the other side of the fence would've made a massive stink about that with non-stop posting. 

The Witcher 3 is the example everyone uses on the Switch 1 but that was a fairly rough port and required a full dev team to sit down an entire year to make. We're already getting quite impressive ports on the Switch 2 right from basically the beginning of its product cycle. 

I was the most optimistic person on the Switch 2's capabilities probably on this board and it not only has largely fulfilled everything I predicted the final product is honestly better than what I would have predicted. I would have thought ray tracing for example would maybe happen in like games like Animal Crossing and Switch 1 ports, things like that. But to have it in a modern gen open world game with the graphical fidelity of a Star Wars Outlaws? That runs reasonably well? I mean that's beyond my expectations for sure.