This brief article is based upon a response I gave to a YouTube user complaining about the negative sentiment that some people in Italy expresses in relation to Nintendo's new console, the Switch. Our national commenters often manages to be less gentle than the worldwide YouTube average, which prompted a disgruntled reaction from the young Giuseppe (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjKjHQXGauy8up1BOURZdyw):
Comments to this video are really sad, you're just making excuses of any sort to dump shit on a console that has no issues as of today. I've read some people complaining about "too much stuff to plug in and remove"
That's kinda sad, actually, so I decided to step in and clear things up in favour of a device that is not flawless, as many outlets are pointing out in these hours, but has every right to play a good chunk of the match before being dismissed. Here I go:
I'll tell you, Giuseppe, despite having immediate issues with the Nintendo Switch design choices, I've always been possibilist about it. The Wii had a cyclopean success, while its unlucky successor still has some great games that people should go back and play. Saying that the console is flawless, though, sounds a little bit too defensive in light of the opinions of those who already had the chance to test it and share their experiences on YouTube, as opposed to us.
Speaking of the manifacturing, the console doesn't sound sturdy at all: I've seen the tablet shaking inside the docking station to a worrying amount, and the joycon's fastening at the sides of the tablet doesn't seem keen on accomodating energic solicitations.
The most sensible thing to do would be sitting comfortably on our sofas and wait for the developers to show us what happens when they really settle on making this pretty little harmless looking console sing
As far as the autonomy outside of the docking station is concerned, the best observed value amounts to 3 hours and half on the OS interface, with the screen always on (75% luminosity) and no games played, before the console died out. Frankly, it is hard to deem this acceptable, improvements are bound to happen in the next firmware updates, but energy consumption is typically hard to improve on the initial figures, so we better not delude ourselves.
Computing power: the chinese portal Taobao.com already dissected the console to find a Tegra/Maxwell chipset inside, which includes a 1.78GHz CPU, a 921Mhz GPU and 4 GB of shared LPDDR4 RAM, which lines up to a recent leak from Foxconn. Those clock speeds decreases from 15% to 40% in portable configuration, in a developers defined figure that directly impacts battery life. On the technical side, then, the Switch doesn't even try to come close to its direct competitors, and everyone is free to deem this a valid approach or not, depending on what they expect from a console.
So, is the Switch flawless? It is not, and that's perfectly physiological for any kind of device. But nonetheless, it's way too early to dump shit on the Switch, when the most sensible thing to do would be sitting comfortably on our sofas and wait for the developers to show us what happens when they really settle on making this pretty little harmless looking console sing.
Striking while the iron is hot, shall we? Not more than a few hours ago, the Nintendo Switch was annouced as the next home console from the japanese company - with a catch: it's a modular device that you can hook up to your HDTV, or carry outside and play on the go on a (supposedly touch) compact display. Just a look at the announcement video embedded below, and you can see how the whole thing screams Nintendo Difference from every angle: the diversity from the traditional setup of the PS4 and Xbox One is stark. And there are a few key concepts that we can already associate to this new product to better understand the impact of its nature on software development.
It's a crossroad between home consoles, portable devices and smartphones, and it can lend itself to all these kinds of gaming experiences. Developers will have the outmost freedom in terms of design, ranging from orthodox couch experiences to casual mobile stuff and everything in between. They will even be able to create specific mechanics for specific scenarios of use in the framework of a single game. Once again, Nintendo came up with a console able to provoke software maker's creativity, without treading too far from its recent past: it's basically a more refined take on the WiiU that accounts for true portability while not messing with the 3DS's market position. In particular, the fact of having two tiny controllers in the portable setup brings up interesting social applications.
The company should not be afraid of tackling highly popular genres as third person action adventures or shooters, bringing its own exquisite taste for quality, refinement and incremental experimentation as a precious added value.
It's powered by a custom new generation NVidia Tegra chipset, which makes it very easy to port stuff from mobile to Switch and viceversa, while offering enough power to support home console level contents. Unfortunately, the exact specs of the machine remains unknown, with only The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (this one as a simple proof of concept, not an actual product) giving a rough idea of its power. It should be noted, though, that Nintendo specifically required *fast* APIs, audio and video renderers from NVidia, so we might be looking at something that in the right hands, may produce visuals not too far behind the PS4 and Xbox One's. Support for resolutions higher than 1080p, though, seems unplausible at the moment.
Third party publishers are there, but... as per usual with Nintendo, we'll have to wait 12 to 18 months to actually see whether they'll stick to the console, or slowly distance themselves from it just like it happened with the WiiU. You may have noticed a change in tone for the advertising campaing of the Switch, which appears to be focused much more on the so called "millennials" rather than the whole family. New software propositions from Nintendo itself outside of their well known brands may encourage third parties to be just as daring and caring: the company should not be afraid of tackling highly popular genres as third person action adventures or shooters, bringing its own exquisite taste for quality, refinement and incremental experimentation as a precious added value. The aestethic element seems to have taken a backseat this time around. The Switch is definitely not the best looking console from Nintendo, and not because of its grim choice of colours: the Joy-Con specular design is neat, but when attached to the massive central square element that makes them work as a traditional joypad they look very awkward, especially in comparison to other more refined controllers. The rest of the components (the TV connecting base, the secondary display etc.) sports an angular, deep black design that frankly isn't anything to write home about.
A proper acknowledgement of e-Sports is probably one of the most interesting parts of the Switch announcement. We can see people bringing their own consoles to a tournament stage in the video, and crowds of people cheering them. Considering how crucial is Internet viewership to all of this, we might as well speculate about an alleged newfound interest from Nintendo towards the online world. The Nintendo Network, the StreetPass and NFC technologies, the Miis and their social features may receive special attention from now on and grow into a more cohesive, better integrated and connected whole.
