RAM was also a bottleneck for the Wii U, since the OS took 1 GB and only left 1 GB for developers.

I expect the OS-footprint of the Nintendo Switch to be much smaller than 1 GB... probably around 0.5 GB. The other 3.5 GB will probably be available for game developers.

With 3.5x available RAM compared to the Wii U, the Switch will do fine. 

You mentioned PS3, I will mention that Wii U have 3-4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360 and yet multiplatform games on Wii U in some cases worked worse, furthermore Xbox had twice RAM of PS2 memory and they played same game. Offcourse Its always better to have more RAM, power, etc, but point is that RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck and you can always make games using less RAM.

PS4 Pro got more than twice stronger GPU than regular PS4, they cloced CPU and they add just 1GB RAM for machine that will have even native support for 4k games, that's actually very small upgrade RAM compared for huge boost in power of GPU. Why!? Beacuse 8GB is already more than enuf for regualr PS4 and for PS4 Pro they add just 1GB of RAM.

The term bottle neck is contextualised to an environment, its to say that one component is stopping the others from running at full capacity. Wii U's RAM is 2-4x bigger then Xbox 360 & PS3's and was certainly not a bottleneck for third party games in 2012/2013/2014, infact I believe it may been the area where it transcended the PS3/360 the most. Its CPU was the obvious bottleneck and blamed for some bad ports.

In context of the current generation (PS4/Xbox1), I think the Wii U in its totality is just a walking dinosaur. No one component is an obvious bottleneck, its just all crap.

Sure. It technically can be done (and I wasn't saying it couldn't). But it's going to require a lot of work and a lot of simplification in order to get that memory footprint down. And it can't always be done (see Project Cars). Look, I'll be the first to admit that CPU/GPU processing is much more important than RAM in terms of sheer concsole capability. However, with the Switch's technical specs already looking, well, sparse for a home console, having to also deal with the challenge of making this game fit on essentailly half the memory introduces even more work. For any type of third party looking to bring their games over to the Switch, this is a bigger deal than you're letting on. 

I mean we literally had people claiming that Red Dead Redemption 2 was coming to the Switch. Someone actually bet their ass on it. That obviously is not happening, and likely never was. It's just not worth Rockstar's time to scale that game back as severely as they'll need to, especially considering that ports on relatively underpowered Nintendo hardware tend to sell horrifically. The cost/profit ratio just isn't there.

Lets be honest, its not like Switch will have other parts of hardware that will be strong, so that we can say 4GB of RAM is bottleneck. Reality is that Switch will be around half of power of XB1, with that on mind actualy Switch with 4GB of RAM will be very balanced hardware.

Will or what 3rd partys will port games to Switch is totally different matter, but of course that can be done. Switch have Nvidia+ARM, very modern tech/hardware, and will have full suport of Nvidia with Shield experaince, new tools and APIs, engines, software...so developing/porting games for Switch will be pretty easy especially compared with Wii U. Also on Neogaf there few insaders that said porting XB1/PS4 games on Switch will be very easy if they actualy want to port a game.

I'll believe the Switch will be easy to port to when I see it. Very similar things were said about the Wii U when it was compared to the Wii, and while all were true, it was still absolutely terrible to try to port anything to that console.

Well looks like Switch being garbage is confirmed. RAM has always been Nintendo's hardware weakness. Been that way since the N64. Looks like Nintendo never learned their lesson. I wouldn't be shocked to see it being abandoned by 3rd party devs in a year. Maybe less.

Moderated - Miguel_Zorro

Actualy its metter, like I wrote, Switch hardware will be around 3x stronger than WiI U so there is no chanche that Nintendo will use slower RAM than Wii U has for Switch, it doensnt make any sense. Also fact is that Nintendo always pay attention on memory and that's actually most advanced feature of their hardware.

You forgeting that Switch isnt only handheld, its home console and with around 3x stronger hardware than Wii U, so it want be just "somewhat better than Wii U graphics", difference would be very obvious compared to Wii U graphics.

Tegra X2 is also similar to X1, main difference between X1 and X2 is efficiency and bigger memory bandwidth.

Nvidia confirmed they providing chip for Switch that is "high-efficiency scalable processor includes an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards", most likely is custom Tegra 2, thats pretty modern tech with full Nvidia suport, Wii U tech was basically GC tech and basically didn't had anything modern.