Nintendo Switch is powered by NVIDIA

[itsmydamnation]

exactly, it had weak hardware and the only reason it sold any units was with the gimmicky sports crap. as far as a top tier console with AAA titles it failed.

My kids play the Wii far more today then our PS4 and they have ~20 games on the PS4 to choose from.
mario
mario kart
Zelda
pokemon
donkey kong
etc

Great gaming doesn't need to be visually leading edge. Kids are pokemon mad today, that alone will ensure the switch does ok. If you think the switch costs a lot i don't think you realize how many kids have their "own ipad".

 

[crisium]

A criticism of the Switch presentation last week was that they didn't show a Pokemon game. Go figure. ^_^

 

[Face2Face]

Isn't the new shield more powerful than the Switch though?

That's the word on the streets. I was just pointing out that Tegra X1 looks like it can hang a little bit on the AAA titles. I'm sure the Switch has a clock speed deficit compared to the Shield, but it's still nice to see.

If you think the switch costs a lot i don't think you realize how many kids have their "own ipad".

Very true. Most friends of our kids in the neighborhood have their own tablet/iPad of some sort. I've noticed a handful of Kindles, but mostly iPad minis.

On another note, the Switch I'm getting is primarily for my kids. I'll just swipe it at night and play some Zelda for an hour before I go to bed while my wife watches TV

 

[Rifter]

What I fundamentally don't understand is why so many people DEMAND Nintendo goes for the brass ring. What is wrong with being a great secondary console in a market that right now doesn't seem like it can support two top tier options?

Nothing is wrong with having a great secondary console, the 3DS was great i own 3 of them and dozens of games. What is wrong is pricing your secondary console like its a top tier AAA console. I mean who in their right mind is going to buy one of these things for $300??? Thats as much as a PS4. If you are going to price it vs the big boys you had better be prepared to be compared to them, and ripped apart when you fail vs them. Its that simple. If they priced this at $150-200, which is where it should be like the 3DS was, it would have been much better received.

We are demanding a top tier console for the sole reason of thats what nintendo is trying to pawn off on us, a top tier console, price wise anyways, they are seriously under delivering on the hardware/games available side.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Nothing is wrong with having a great secondary console, the 3DS was great i own 3 of them and dozens of games. What is wrong is pricing your secondary console like its a top tier AAA console.

Adjusting for inflation the Switch has the fourth cheapest launch price of any home console ever:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/10/04/comparing-the-price-of-every-game-console-with-inflation

I mean who in their right mind is going to buy one of these things for $300??? Thats as much as a PS4.

A 32Gb iPad Mini is $400. That is as much as a PS4 Pro and people still buy tons of them for their kids.

If you are going to price it vs the big boys you had better be prepared to be compared to them, and ripped apart when you fail vs them. Its that simple.

With no consideration for the fact that the Switch is a portable console and the "big boys" aren't?

If they priced this at $150, which is where it should be like the 3DS was, it would have been much better received.

Uh, the $150 price for a 3DS is a recent thing. The 3DS was $250 at launch, which is only $50 less than the Switch. I imagine the Switch will get cheaper too over time just like the 3DS did. Hell I expect it will come with a game for $300 by Christmas.

We are demanding a top tier console for the sole reason of thats what nintendo is trying to pawn off on us, a top tier console, price wise anyways,

Well it is by far the most powerful mobile console ever. It blows the Vita or the 3DS out of the water.

Heck, both the PS4 and the Xbox One were $400+ at launch, and the "current" PS4 is $400 right now. We have no clue what price the new Xbox will be, and it will be competing timewise with the Switch.

I can understand being disappointed with the Switch's initial third party support, and I do think the accessory prices are crazy, but $300 for a console and two controllers isn't that bad. If it came with a single game it would be a slam dunk.

 

[Rifter]

Adjusting for inflation the Switch has the fourth cheapest launch price of any home console ever:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/10/04/comparing-the-price-of-every-game-console-with-inflation



A 32Gb iPad Mini is $400. That is as much as a PS4 Pro and people still buy tons of them for their kids.



With no consideration for the fact that the Switch is a portable console and the "big boys" aren't?



Uh, the $150 price for a 3DS is a recent thing. The 3DS was $250 at launch, which is only $50 less than the Switch. I imagine the Switch will get cheaper too over time just like the 3DS did. Hell I expect it will come with a game for $300 by Christmas.



Well it is by far the most powerful mobile console ever. It blows the Vita or the 3DS out of the water.

Heck, both the PS4 and the Xbox One were $400+ at launch, and the "current" PS4 is $400 right now. We have no clue what price the new Xbox will be, and it will be competing timewise with the Switch.

I can understand being disappointed with the Switch's initial third party support, and I do think the accessory prices are crazy, but $300 for a console and two controllers isn't that bad. If it came with a single game it would be a slam dunk.

Launch price is completely irrelevant, you cant go back in time, what matters is todays prices since it is today we are talking about, and today you can get a PS4 with a game for under $300, and this switch is more than that, with no game, And no top tier titles.

And sure the 3DS was more before, so were the big consoles at the time, nintendo had to lower it because no one would buy one priced at $250 today when a ps4 is $300. How nintendo realized this and dropped its price but doesnt realize that selling the switch for the same price as a ps4 is insane is truly baffling to me.

And yes its portable, i guess, but with 3 hour battery life its barely portable. Nintendo even screwed this up, all their previous handhelds had great battery life 6 hours or more, this is a joke even compared to their own previous products.

 

[Sonikku]

Nothing is wrong with having a great secondary console, the 3DS was great i own 3 of them and dozens of games. What is wrong is pricing your secondary console like its a top tier AAA console. I mean who in their right mind is going to buy one of these things for $300???

 

[Bacon1]

And yes its portable, i guess, but with 3 hour battery life its barely portable. Nintendo even screwed this up, all their previous handhelds had great battery life 6 hours or more, this is a joke even compared to their own previous products.

Wasn't there a quote from them saying that they didn't want to compete with the 3DS? But yeah it seems akin to a gaming laptop. It's not as good while docked and it's barely portable as well.

 

[Sonikku]

I think that if this thing was roughly as powerful as a four year old Xbone when docked, and as powerful as a downclocked lower res Xbone when undocked that it would seem like a better price. Such as it is though it seems like Wii U performance when undocked. I can hardly believe how slow it's clocked when on the go for the battery life it has considered it's based on Maxwell.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Launch price is completely irrelevant, you cant go back in time, what matters is todays prices since it is today we are talking about, and today you can get a PS4 with a game for under $300, and this switch is more than that, with no game, And no top tier titles.

Uh, Zelda is a top tier title. But yeah the Switch is not a PS4 competitor. Maybe that is a good thing, the Xbox One tried to be a PS4 competitor and it is getting killed this generation. Meanwhile the mobile game market (aka tablets aka the Switch) is growing every year, which is why Nintendo wanted a piece of that action instead of going toe-to-toe with Sony.

Again a brand new iPad Mini with 32GB is $400. That is the value statement Nintendo really needs to beat for parents that want to placate the kids on car rides, not vs a PS4. Maybe the first generation model doesn't have the battery life or pack-in games to get there yet, but Nintendo has some wiggle room with a $300 price.

And sure the 3DS was more before, so were the big consoles at the time, nintendo had to lower it because no one would buy one priced at $250 today when a ps4 is $300. How nintendo realized this and dropped its price but doesnt realize that selling the switch for the same price as a ps4 is insane is truly baffling to me.

I think by the time Nintendo gets to a hardware revision of the Switch they will drop the price some. At the very least I expect a pack-in game for the $300 price by Christmas.

Heck the $300 price gives Nintendo flexibility. If they don't sell like hotcakes then Nintendo can release a new "base" model without the dock or Joycon holder for $250 or less that would compete directly in the market the 3DS did. The only reason I assume they didn't do that from the start is because they really don't want to admit the Switch is replacing the 3DS so people keep buying them. They want to sunset the Wii U first, and then the 3DS.

And yes its portable, i guess, but with 3 hour battery life its barely portable. Nintendo even screwed this up, all their previous handhelds had great battery life 6 hours or more, this is a joke even compared to their own previous products.

Actually the original 3DS had a listed battery life that was almost exactly the same as the Switch. So compared to their previous portable console Nintendo is doing about the same. The 6+ hours of battery life came with hardware revisions, which I am sure the Switch will have.

That is the exact thing I can't understand- why is the Switch held to an artificially high standard? When the PS4 went on sale no one cared that you could get a 360 for cheaper, and people didn't avoid the 3DS because of battery life (some did because of the price though). It is like you want to judge Nintendo by a different set of standards than anyone else in the gaming market.

I think there are a lot of valid complaints about the Switch- the controllers are too expensive, third party support seems lacking, the 1 2 Switch game isn't close to worth the asking price and should be a pack-in, and all the highly anticipated first party Switch games are Wii U ports. Those are all legitimate complaints.

That Nintendo isn't selling a portable console for $150 bucks that competes with a PS4 isn't a legitimate complaint, its just a way to rationalize why you yourself don't want to spend the money on it. Which is fine at a personal level, I just don't understand why so many people act like what Nintendo IS offering can't appeal to someone other than themselves (namely small children or parents of small children).

 

[Sonikku]

Don't worry Poofy, 1 2 Switch will probably end up being that Christmas bundle pack in game. They sure as hell aren't giving away their "other" launch title!

 

[Spjut]

Nintendo could have easily skipped some of the criticism just by marketing the Switch as primarily a handheld instead of a home console. Nintendo officially saying they consider it to be primarily a home console will of course make people compare it to the PS4 and Xbox One.

 

[Rifter]

That Nintendo isn't selling a portable console for $150 bucks that competes with a PS4 isn't a legitimate complaint, its just a way to rationalize why you yourself don't want to spend the money on it. Which is fine at a personal level, I just don't understand why so many people act like what Nintendo IS offering can't appeal to someone other than themselves (namely small children or parents of small children).

You are completely misunderstanding me if thats what you got from my posts.....

Im not saying at all that nintendo should be selling a $150 portable that competes with a PS4. Im saying that they should be selling the switch for what it is, a underpowered portable hybrid, in the $150-200 price range.

And that if they do want to price it with the big boys(PS4) that it should then offer the hardware specs/gaming performance/graphics and game catalog of big boy consoles. Something which so far its failing to deliver on.

By pricing this at $300 no game even more $$$ than a PS4, im expecting it to be as good or better than a PS4 as justified by current on the shelf prices. This is not unreasonable, expecting it to perform similar to equivalent priced consoles. And its clearly not. Thats the problem.

 

[Sonikku]

Nintendo could have easily skipped some of the criticism just by marketing the Switch as primarily a handheld instead of a home console. Nintendo officially saying they consider it to be primarily a home console will of course make people compare it to the PS4 and Xbox One.

Especially when it is priced the same. Nintendo wants to recreate the success of the Wii. But the Wii was a system and a game for $250. ($200 in Japan without a game) A playstation however set you back a staggering $600, even if you went with the bare bones variant at $500 you were still basically paying twice what a Wii went for. In that case I would agree, any spec comparisons are unfair. But now we've gone from a Nintendo system going for $250 and a Playstation system going for $600 to a Nintendo system going for the same amount as the Playstation system. When you consider that Playstation also comes with a AAA title like Uncharted while Nintendo won't even pack in 1 2 Switch the comparison becomes even worse.

 

[Rifter]

Especially when it is priced the same. Nintendo wants to recreate the success of the Wii. But the Wii was a system and a game for $250. ($200 in Japan without a game) A playstation however set you back a staggering $600, even if you went with the bare bones variant at $500 you were still basically paying twice what a Wii went for. In that case I would agree, any spec comparisons are unfair. But now we've gone from a Nintendo system going for $250 and a Playstation system going for $600 to a Nintendo system going for the same amount as the Playstation system. When you consider that Playstation also comes with a AAA title like Uncharted while Nintendo won't even pack in 1 2 Switch the comparison becomes even worse.

At least someone gets it!

 

[Bacon1]

To add on to the price looks like it's an extra $30 to charge the controllers while using them:

http://bgr.com/2017/01/16/nintendo-switch-price-specs-accessories-vs-ps4/

And very very expensive controllers :O

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...-nintendo-switch-keep-adding-up/#6063f2c63559

 

[Rifter]

To add on to the price looks like it's an extra $30 to charge the controllers while using them:

http://bgr.com/2017/01/16/nintendo-switch-price-specs-accessories-vs-ps4/

And very very expensive controllers :O

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...-nintendo-switch-keep-adding-up/#6063f2c63559

so ontop of selling this underpowered console for full powered console prices they are also nickle and diming you on accessories?

On the flip side if this flops we should see these things seriously marked down by Christmas.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Nintendo could have easily skipped some of the criticism just by marketing the Switch as primarily a handheld instead of a home console. Nintendo officially saying they consider it to be primarily a home console will of course make people compare it to the PS4 and Xbox One.

I 100% agree with this. Nintendo is purposefully downplaying the portable aspect of the console because they don't want to cannibalize the 3DS market, and in doing so they invite comparisons to other home consoles that isn't warranted. The way I see it the writing is on the wall no matter what, and the sooner Nintendo rips off the bandaid the sooner the Switch can maybe build some marketing momentum.

Im not saying at all that nintendo should be selling a $150 portable that competes with a PS4. Im saying that they should be selling the switch for what it is, a underpowered portable hybrid, in the $150-200 price range.

I just don't get where you get that price range from. $250 yeah maybe I get it. But $150?! The 3DS sells for $150 and it's a potato compared to the Switch. Hell the Vita still sells for around $200 used. I feel like to get to $150 of value you basically have to ignore the portable aspect of the entire console and pretend it's a Ouya (aka Tegra-based non-portable console) instead of what it is- the world's new Gameboy.

And that if they do want to price it with the big boys(PS4) that it should then offer the hardware specs/gaming performance/graphics and game catalog of big boy consoles. Something which so far its failing to deliver on.

Does a $400 iPad have to "compete with the big boys" to get parents to buy one for their kids? Obviously not. Mobile devices ALWAYS come with different expectation levels, and no matter how Nintendo wants to frame the Switch it's a tablet with controllers attached to it.

By pricing this at $300 no game even more $$$ than a PS4, im expecting it to be as good or better than a PS4 as justified by current on the shelf prices. This is not unreasonable, expecting it to perform similar to equivalent priced consoles.

How is it not unreasonable to expect a PORTABLE device to have the same amount of power for the same cost as a PS4? Basically what you are saying is you personally give $0 of value to the portable aspect of the Switch, which is kinda like saying "The Wii would have been a great console without motion controls." The Wii WAS motion controls, and the Switch IS a tablet. It should be compared to tablets, it should be compared to iPads and Shields (the latter of which I could see someone saying it doesn't compete with well). I mean hell, iOS devices play games too and have game revenues comparable to consoles, but no one cross shops a PS4 and an iPhone.

 

[poofyhairguy]

But now we've gone from a Nintendo system going for $250 and a Playstation system going for $600 to a Nintendo system going for the same amount as the Playstation system. When you consider that Playstation also comes with a AAA title like Uncharted while Nintendo won't even pack in 1 2 Switch the comparison becomes even worse.

A $400 32GB new iPad (aka a tablet like the Switch) has no Uncharted, has no modern AAA console games. If I follow your logic parents would be CRAZY to buy iPad for their kids when they could just buy a PS4 with Uncharted (a mature game they might now want their kids to play) for the same price or less. And yet millions of parents buy iPads for their kids every year because it isn't about what is the best value you can put under the TV, its about what they can shove in their kid's hands to shut them up for an hour or two.

Frankly the most appealing thing to me as a gamer is how CHEAP the Switch is compared to what was before it. You see, prior to the Switch someone had to pay $450 ($300 for a Wii U plus $150 for a 3DS) to get all of Nintendo's best games. Once the Switch kills the 3DS (which will happen no matter how Nintendo frames it unless the Switch is a complete flop), then a $300 console will play EVERY good Nintendo game that comes out. A Switch plus a PS4 (or maybe a gaming PC) basically covers the entire market of top tier games. It gives you the best "real" console along with the best portable one.

If you don't care about Nintendo's games that value shift doesn't mean anything to you, but I feel like if you think the Switch is a bad deal than frankly every console Nintendo has sold since the Gamecube has been a bad deal. This device is $50 more than an original 3DS, with the same battery life, and a Wii U+ shoved inside. If I could have bought a Wii U and 3DS for even $350 total back when they came out I would have done it in a heartbeat, and the Switch offers that same advantage for less.

Again, the Switch has problems but the fact it isn't a sit-on-the-couch gaming value a PS4 is shouldn't be considered one of them. Hell a lot of people already own PS4s, and the Switch will offer a hell of a lot more exclusive top tier games as a secondary console than a Xbox One does. THAT is who Nintendo needs to beat for a solid #2 showing, and I expect by the end of it's life the Switch will have outsold the Xbox One.

 

[Rifter]

How is it not unreasonable to expect a PORTABLE device to have the same amount of power for the same cost as a PS4? Basically what you are saying is you personally give $0 of value to the portable aspect of the Switch, which is kinda like saying "The Wii would have been a great console without motion controls." The Wii WAS motion controls, and the Switch IS a tablet. It should be compared to tablets, it should be compared to iPads and Shields (the latter of which I could see someone saying it doesn't compete with well). I mean hell, iOS devices play games too and have game revenues comparable to consoles, but no one cross shops a PS4 and an iPhone.

It isnt even being marketed as a portable device, nintendo is trying hard to avoid doing just that. Im simply treating it like nintendo is, a home console thats priced the same or more than its competition(Ps4). Nintendo is treating its portability as a afterthought why shouldnt I or any other consumer?

 

[Sonikku]

If I follow your logic parents would be CRAZY to buy iPad for their kids

They are crazy, Poofy! THEY ARE CRAZY!!!

Lousy stinking good for nothing brats. Hell I can't afford an Apple device w/ Apple proprietary accessories for myself.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It isnt even being marketed as a portable device, nintendo is trying hard to avoid doing just that. Im simply treating it like nintendo is, a home console thats priced the same or more than its competition(Ps4). Nintendo is treating its portability as a afterthought why shouldnt I or any other consumer?

I wouldn't go that far. Nintendo's main demo video is this young guy playing a Switch on a train. They didn't hide the portability, but they also won't say the obvious statement that "this thing will replace both our console lines" because the 3DS market is still hot.

THAT is Nintendo's fault, I agree 100%. They are completely screwing up the marketing for the Switch.

With that said, reality is reality. The Switch is a tablet. Anyone looking at one who either isn't in the market for a portable device or who doesn't want Nintendo's games isn't going to get the same value out of it that they could with a PS4. But for a portable device the Switch isn't that bad of a value, at least until you start adding accessory costs and the like.

What I fundamentally don't understand is what you wanted Nintendo to do instead. You obviously don't value portability so you probably wanted them to shove as much power as they could in a box that only displays on the TV, even though bigger and richer Microsoft (who western developers like a lot more) has already tried to go toe-to-toe PS4 in that same way and failed. You want Nintendo to sell the Switch for 3DS prices if it HAS TO be a portable, yet the 3DS is still selling well and doesn't cost Nintendo (who isn't flush with money like some companies are) anywhere near what the Switch costs. Seems like the best case for you when Nintendo decided that they couldn't compete with Sony was to just give up on consoles outside of the 3DS because they can't provide value anywhere else, well until the 3DS dies and then I guess they have to go the Sega route because they will never provide PS4 on sale three years later-level hardware value ever again.

Maybe you are right, but I for one would be sad as hell to see Nintendo turn into what Sega is today. What I see is a Nintendo who instead of competing with Sony for hardcore gamers is trying to compete with Apple (who honestly never really tried with gaming) for "what mobile device do I shove in front of my kid?" To me that seems a lot more realistic than to expect Nintendo to undo 20 years of burned bridges with developers and who couldn't afford to come in third place behind the Xbox One with yet another Xbox One+Mario.

 

[poofyhairguy]

They are crazy, Poofy! THEY ARE CRAZY!!!

Ok, maybe they are. But the facts support the concept that parents are being that sort of crazy. Take a look at this link:

http://brandongaille.com/32-distressing-ipad-demographics/

• 1 in 4 iPad owners primarily use their tablet for gaming purposes. With over 300+ million iPads sold that means that 75 million iPads are gaming machine. Nintendo would love to cut into that market.
• 49% of iPad revenues come from the iPad Mini line of tablets and 60% of iPad shipments are Minis. So the iPad Mini is the real Switch competitor.
• Households which own at least one iPad are 3x more likely to have at least once child than to not have any children. That stat shows us clearly that parents are driving iPad sales in part
• 21% of iPad customers have an annual household income that is ranked in the top 25% of global incomes. So about the same percentage of people who have iPads for gaming also are in the top 25% of global income and therefore can afford a $300 Switch or $80 controllers before the average Joe can
• 50% of people who say that they own at least one iPad are under the age of 45. Therefore half of iPad owners are in the target market for all gaming consoles
  

Meanwhile Microsoft spent $1 BILLION dollars on Xbox One launch exclusives to make it competitive with the PS4, and despite that has largely failed to compete with the PS4.

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Spends+1+Billion+on+Exclusive+Xbox+One+Games/article31656.htm

Nintendo's profit is around $300 million a year, which means it would take them THREE YEARS of profit to match just the resources the Xbox One had for LAUNCH, a launch that everyone now considers to be a failure.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ts-full-year-sales-operating-profit-forecasts

I just don't see how anyone reasonable can look at those facts and think "yeah screw mobile devices, Nintendo should have gone after the PS4." The only pot of gold that Nintendo can chase with the resources they have is to cut into those iPad sales.

 

[Sonikku]

I just don't find the Ipad vs Switch deal to be an apples to apples comparison is all. On this point you and I will simply have to agree to disagree.

Right off the bat an Ipad has a ton of uses. Use it to play games, sure. But you can use it to read a book, use it to watch movies on, plug in your headphones and listen music, use it for a number of things. The Switch in contrast is solely a gaming device. Ain't nobody buying it for book reading inbetween bouts of shutting the kid up with angry bird. But the truth is the difference goes so much deeper than this. Apple has historically seemed like a very poor value for the money to me. And that's fine for their clientele that are willing to fork out any amount of money for their stuff, but Nintendo seems to have an AMD esque low end hardware high value "budget brand" reputation, but now minus the low Wii price.

As I graphic designer I always built my own PC because the amount of hardware for the money always made Apple's offerings look overpriced or gimped in comparison. Apple seems like the kind of company that overcharges their customers because people are willing to buy it for the name brand. Having an Apple branded product almost seems like a status symbol of prestige. So much so in fact that people that buy an overpriced Apple phone will go so far as to pick out a phone protector for it that has a circular cut out in the back for no other purpose other than to ensure the people that see you use your phone can specifically see the logo on the back of it! Apple fanatics are like a cult of people that will foolishly buy whatever their preferred brand will shove in front of them time and time again, regardless of said product's flaws.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Good points to be made, tablets are not an easy market at all. Nvidia didn't have a lot of success with the Shield and for all we know the Switch is a way to dump those SoCs. Right now the Switch lacks Netflix or a web browser plus a lot of stuff so they have work to do. I can see your point, but Nintendo can also inspire loyalty and can change the device in software down the road.