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| Soundwave said: And some people would've liked to have the PS5 Pro day 1 too ... they had to wait and pay a lot more. A $600+ Switch 2 model really wouldn't be selling well in this economy, $450-$500 as is is pushing it for a lot of people. Holding off on OLED was the correct move, they can release an OLED model with a die-shrink 1-2 years down the line and get a sales boost then, if they had it now it would just be a $600-$650 device with a very niche audience. |
I would have been one of them.
A die shrink is still years away. Nintendo actually did the Die-shrink several years before the OLED variant released.
Thus the Die-Shrink and OLED panel are not tied to the same release.
| Soundwave said: For $450 there has to be some compromises to get a system in at that price point, which is already quite high for a lot of folks. Everyone knows an OLED model Switch 2 will happen eventually and Nintendo is saving it for a future sales bump (just as Sony saves things like Pro models for down the line). |
Great. So you recognize it's not a perfect, premium, flawless machine, that it is actually full of compromises.
| Soundwave said: The most important thing is it can run PS5 tier multiplatform games, that matters far more than what the numbers of anything are. That means its the first Nintendo game console since the GameCube that can plausibly run modern gen titles and as a result it's going to get games like Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Call of Duty, Monster Hunter Wilds, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Resident Evil Requiem, Indiana Jones & The Great Circle, 007: First Light, modern engine NBA 2K, FC Soccer, Madden NFL, etc. etc. maybe even GTA VI at this rate. The window is definitely open, whereas a year ago would some people have scoffed at the idea of many of these games being possible on the Switch 2 at all. |
Agreed. And that is what I wanted out of a Switch 2... The ability to play at a technical level, PS5-graphical featured games.
Just like what I wanted out of the Switch 1, that it could play the same games using Xbox One/Playstation 4 graphical features.
And it worked... So I wouldn't say the Switch 2 is any different in placement relative to it's competition than the Switch 1.
| Soundwave said: This is the first time in the history of 3D gaming hardware too that a mainstream portable console is able to run basically the current gen games of its time. The PSP and Vita could not and obviously the DS and 3DS weren't even close. The Switch had a spotty track record, the Switch 2 is really the coming of a new era of visual performance mainstream audiences can expect on the go, they can play essentially all/most of their home console games in a portable form factor. That's definitely a notable gaming evolution. |
Switch 1 could run the-then current gen games. (Xbox One)
Switch 2's placement in the market is the same relative to it's competition... That-is, from a hardware feature set, it meets or exceeds the competition in every area. (I.E. Ray Tracing)
Which is the same as the Switch 1, where it was able to meet and exceed the Xbox One in every area feature-wise. (I.E. Tessellation)
It's just performance level of the Switch 1 and Switch 2 is a fraction of the fixed home consoles, but raw spec-sheet numbers never tell an entire story.
So it's definitely not the first time.
| Soundwave said: If back in the day with the Playstation 1 or N64, there was a portable device that could basically run games like Final Fantasy VII or Super Mario 64, most people's heads would've exploded. Today's kids get to play Star Wars Outlaws even with ray tracing effects on a relative affordable and portable device, that's fucking bonkers. |
Er. The PC existed. And could run Final Fantasy 7 natively on a portable device. (Laptop)
Ray Tracing has existed for many many years. Ray Tracing was even on the Original Xbox with games like Shrek which used a single light bounce to simulate sunlight... Xbox 360 took things a bit further with Halo 4 using Ray Tracing for the subsurface scattering of light underneath skin for character faces.
Hardware Ray Tracing is what has been a game changer in recent times... But having an RTX 2050 and a Switch 2 on hand, it's easy to see where the RT capabilities fall short, still impressive for the TDP/Formfactor however.
| Soundwave said: Yep, me too. Honestly back in the day I listened to too much bullshit on internet forums and couldn't even appreciate the GameCube because people were saying "24MB of RAM only!!! It should have more than the PS2!!!! XBox has 64MB!". |
Gamecube had 43MB of total memory.
24MB of Main System Ram.
3MB of Embedded RAM in the GPU for the Framebuffer/Texture Cache. (An evolution of the N64 layout)
16MB for Audio, DVD Drive and I/O buffering.
Playstation 2 had 38MB of total memory.
32MB of Main System Ram.
4MB of VRAM.
2MB of I/O memory.
Xbox had 64MB of total memory.
64MB of Main System Ram. Used for everything.
But like everyone seems to fall for... There is more to hardware than the simple black and white specs imply.
The Gamecube could do full S3 Texture compression with ratios of up-to 6:1, where the PS2 often relied on a software approach or A1B5G5R5 which topped out at 2:1 ratios.
So even if the Gamecube had hypothetically less RAM than the PS2 (It didn't), it could still make better use of it.
The TEV also had other intrinsic advantages related to texturing...
Which is why the Gamecube could pull ahead of the PS2 by a significant margin.
The Original Xbox however was in another league entirely, with compression ratios upwards of 8:1 and could also do Alpha compression via DXT5... But also just simply had more memory available in total sheer volume.
| Soundwave said: You said FF7 Remake Intergrade wouldn't be possible on the system at first and basically no PS5 tier games would be possible. Then it moved to "well things like Ratchet & Clank on PS5 will clearly be beyond the system" or some such thing and that also today looks very, very wrong. When the Matrix demo rumors were out there you also scoffed at that notion, today most people would probably admit that Matrix demo likely can run on the Switch 2. You moved the goalposts about 50 different ways and also said 8nm would cripple the system's performance and this, that, and the other. |
Literally anything that runs on the PS5 can run on the Switch 2.
Just like anything that can run on the PS4 can run on the Switch 1.
We had some incredible ports on the Switch like The Witcher 3, Doom, Hogwarts Legacy, Borderlands, Red Dead, Dark Souls, Hellblade Sensuas Sacrifice and more.
It's simply about where to scale things to meet the hardware and the developer competency.
| Soundwave said: False, the Switch is not getting "bespoke" versions of any of these ports. Star Wars Outlaws even has the ray tracing intact because they weren't about to go back and create a custom version. |
Considering the biggest advantage of nVidia's hardware has been Ray Tracing over AMD Radeon that powers the Series X/S/Playstation 5... Games shouldn't need to scale back RT unless they are hitting the RAM wall on the Switch 2. (Which can happen pretty quickly!)
| BraLoD said: I played 1 single Switch 2 exclusive up until now, Donkey Kong Bananza, which generally runs great but have already experienced massive slowdown with it in very few cases, the last boss fight, for example, so even a 2025 proper Switch 2 exclusive is not being ran with ease... |
I have experienced this as well, what I can tell it's the CPU struggling to keep up, which is unfortunate.
I am hoping Nintendo adds a few extra profiles to the Switch 2 that will allow the CPU to boost higher and resolve some of this, they did it with with the OG Switch, obviously the DK developer will need to go back to enable that though via a Patch.
| Chrkeller said: Agreed. And a lot of this is because game engines have come a long way in regards to scalability. On a semi related note, this is also why I do not personally believe in generations anymore. A generation meant new engines that required new hardware. Today, not so much. Plenty of people are still using 8 year old GPUs, like a 2070. That is three cycles behind what Nvidia sells today, but it plays the same games as a 5090. IMO, exclusives are dead and so are generations. |
Generations are definitely still a thing, there tends to be a clear break-away in hardware capabilities of GPU and CPU hardware that we can see from one generation to the next.
How that looks on-screen in games however is another matter entirely which are making people feel that generations aren't a thing anymore. (That and a very elongated cross-generation period!)
Hardware RT and Upscaling are clearly the pivotal technologies of this generation... Last Generation with the Switch 1, Playstation 4, Xbox One it was all about Tessellation.
Generation 7 was all about the Shader Model 3 effects.
Generation 6 was all about the TnL effects.
Generation 5 was about Point Lights and 3D graphics.
| Soundwave said: Watt for watt what the Switch 2 can produce at even just under 10 watts when even PC handhelds need like double, triple that just to stretch their legs is fucking crazy actually. The ROG Ally can't do shit with 10 watts even with a much better node and a larger battery and a far larger body size. |
Steamdeck at 10w can return similar results to the Switch 2 in Raster... And often with better texturing.
Obviously being several years older than the Switch 2, means it's missed out on AMD's improvements in RT and Upscaling that having taken a front and center role with modern games that the Switch 2 can better manage, Steamdeck is clearly a device stuck between a transition of hardware generations.
The GPD Win 5 however running Strix Halo AI Max+ 395 will absolutely make a mockery of the Switch 2's hardware in modern games, even at 10w... Having almost 3x the Ram, 3x the Ram bandwidth, twice the CPU cores at 5x the clockspeed is a generational leap in improvement.
...And you can push the TDP up for better visuals in docked play on the GPD.
Obviously it comes at a cost. But you get what you pay for.
At 10w TDP the GDRP will get more than double the battery life of the Switch 2. And its display whilst only being a 7" IPS, is actually not offensive like the Switch 2 with better G2G response times, latency, colour and contrasts.
| Wyrdness said: Upgrades are not cross gen titles a cross gen title is something like Prime 4, Pokemon Z/A and Tomodachi where the game is actively developed for both platforms at the same time, TOTK and such aren't they're just given updates to unlock a higher performance, these games most likely already had the ability for these performance settings and were adjusted down to be able to run on S1. This is far from a cross gen approach it's just a more efficient version of porting up it would be like calling Pikmin 3 or Luigi's Mansion 2 a cross gen title, the few actual cross gen titles are cross gen because they were already going to be released post S2. Cross gen approach is what you see with PS4 and PS5 where the former still gets new releases even this late on if S2 was doing the same DKB would have still had a S1 version. |
Technically Breath of the Wild is a 3-generation-cross title, starting life on the WiiU.
It's done a GTA5. (And it's not a bad thing with how amazing BOTW is.)
| BraLoD said: GBC is a separate system with BC, not a "pro" model of the GB, it has many exclusives, as many games as the Nintendo 64 had in Japan, if I recall it right. It just had a crossgen period which was new back then, but it's like other systems have since some time now. Devs wanted to support the old system with games because of its existing userbase, just the same as they want now. It's even the same with Switch 2 where Switch 2 games carts that are crossgen can be used on Switch 1 physically, as were the black carts for Gameboy Color back then. Even the best game on GBC, Pokémon Crystal, can't run on a GB, people that say both are the same say because Nintendo combined both system sales, but they are definitely two separate systems, like the Switch 1 and 2 are now. |
Pro devices having "exclusives" isn't a new thing.
There were DSi-only games, there were New 3DS-only games.
Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro didn't feature exclusives for the hardware, due to policy mandates, not because developers didn't wish to do it, they simply weren't allowed.
| curl-6 said: Amen; Xenoblade 1 and X were mind-blowing stuff on Wii/Wii U, and while 2 and 3 did feel a bit constrained by their hardware they still pushed some ambitious tech; I feel like switch 2 should allow Monolith to really spread their wings as it always felt like of all Nintendo's studios they would benefit the most from more powerful hardware. |
It makes you wonder what could have been achieved on WiiU if it garnered better and longer support for the VLIW GPU architecture, which no other console has ever had, it was unique enough to possibly return some truly interesting results. (More so than what we saw with Xeno 1 and 2.)
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