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

[Soundwave]

Chrkeller said:

Bang for buck, S2 kills portable PC, imo. The S2 holds it own for half the price. I do not think anybody thinks otherwise, so it is an imaginary battle. The major benefit of PC portables is a Steam library that puts any console to shame. The real limit of PC mobile is AMD upscaling is utter crap.

And I think we need to be fair and honest about positions. Nobody is saying the S2 is cheap budget hardware. Nobody is saying the S2 falls massively behind current PC mobile. People are opposed the S2 being premium, because it is not. People are against the S2 being generations above the ps4, because it isn't.

Yesterday was a shit show, we should do better, and it starts with debating the actual positions people are taking, not imagined positions.

Who cares if someone says the Switch 2 performs comparable to a premium handheld device? So what if someone says that? What Bible did you write that makes that impossible to say. Even if that was someone's opinion, so what? Is your day that impacted if someone were to think that? Who died and decreed 3 or 4 people on this board get to decide which hardware gets categorized as such? All this gatekeeping bullshit about what can be considered good hardware from self imposed elitists is really tiresome. "People are opposed"? There's like 10 people total that post on this board, lol, it's a sad state of affairs to begin with. 

In my opinion this hardware result is very impressive, well beyond even my expectation and I had high expectations for this device, higher than most on this board. Further to that, I would say this is clearly a different Nintendo era under different leadership and it shows, this is much more in line with what the N64 and GameCube were for their day ... which was very impressive hardware for that time, with caveats made considering the Switch 2 is a portable device of course. 

Regarding generations, I was clearly discussing PC architecture and PC architecture generations, Ampere/Lovelace are several generations removed from GCN 2.0 that was used for the PS4. That's not even considering that Nvidia's architecture is generally considered better than AMD's to begin with (they don't have 90% plus GPU marketshare by random luck). If someone here wants to get their panties in a bunch about that, I frankly don't care. Ampere/Lovelace IS several GPU architecture generations beyond AMD GCN 2.0 from 2013. There's nothing you're going to post or anyone is going to post that will change that. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 14 January 2026