Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

I hope you're right! That recent Nintendo quote saying games will take longer and be more expensive is a little scary, but I'm hoping that only effects a few of their 'fancier' games. Even though I personally have only bought one of them, I really like that Nintendo is still giving us 7 games in the first 7 months of this year.

PlayStation and XBox: What are exclusives?

Nintendo: releases 12* exclusives last year, with 7 exclusives this year (so far, we don't know anything past July)

*Pikmin 1+2 is considered as 1 release

@FishyS Possibly 8 if we get a shadow dropped game at the June Direct (Luigi's Mansion 1 please)

@PikminMarioKirby Given that Nintendo went so far as to stick the nes world championship game in July ( I bet that had been on their shelves just waiting until they needed to fill in an empty release gap), I think it's pretty much guaranteed we have at least 4 more games this year post-direct. At worst they might keep it at 11 games instead of 12 so they can spend some time hyping up Switch 2.

@FishyS June/July I think will be a normal time for Nintendo. June already has LM2HD, however a game could potentially be shadow dropped at the June Direct. In July we probably won't see much else besides the NWC:NES Edition. I think during this time DLC has a chance of releasing as well.

August/September are usually smaller for Nintendo in terms of games. August would be a good fit for DLC, a Legends Z-A trailer/Pokémon Presents, a game specific Direct, or perhaps more word on Switch's Successor. We get Directs most of the time in September, so maybe we could get a port/remaster shadowdrop then. (For the DLC option, SMB Wonder would be a great choice, could also be available for NSO Expansion Pack since they haven't added DLC to it for a long time)

October/November, if I had to guess, might have around 3 games this year (2023 had 4 games within those 2 months). All of these games should be revealed at the June Direct.

December will likely be pretty empty for Nintendo, besides possibly DLC or something, however I'm leaning on that not happening at all.

So if this all somehow was correct, then possibly 5 games on top of the 7 we already know about could release. That ends up being 12 games, which is pretty much what we got last year. But even if 1-2 of those didn't happen, it's still a very good amount!

I'm not sure any GameExplain video is really worth anyone's attention...... anyways.... I think my views on this topic are fairly clear so I'm not going to dive into it too much. I will throw a reply down to this but:

I would argue that while this is somewhat true it's more a function of developer culture rather than the specs of the hardware. And it kinda goes without saying that this being somewhat true doesn't mean that you can't create innovative game ideas by just having "more specs"

Also I would note as much as we may scream from the rooftops that specs are less important than a good art direction and vision. That they're less important than good gameplay. And again, I'll scream along with you when you do that. But I don't think "imagination" really helps you at all when faced with 10 second load times before every level in DK:TF. It doesn't help either when you drop into a pre-rendered cutscene in TotK and are presented with video compression artifacts. And having a crisp 4K image for a game like Super Mario Wonder isn't suddenly going to make the gameplay worse. These are, indisputably, things that could be improved with better hardware

Commentators and fans expend so much energy talking about how much more expensive games have become and they notice the correlation between that and the power of these consoles. And yes, to a degree that's somewhat true. More powerful hardware allows for higher fidelity games and higher fidelity games require higher asset detail and larger worlds. And more stuff is, almost by definition, more expensive. But the word is allow, not require. And it allows more than just higher fidelity games

It also allows shorter load times and the removal of loading zones and hidden walls. It allows developers to expend less energy on optimisation because the bar for "running well" becomes lower. It potentially allows for more simulation and less scripting of things like physics. It allows for more stuff like lighting to be based on the actual context of the environment rather than being baked into the scene

And sure, it also allows games to push for a "more realistic" style that's "less creative". And there are some devs which seem to use this to make games that are basically just b-grade action movies movies where you occasionally press buttons or hold a stick in a direction. But I'm not sure we're at much of a risk of these guys making a game where you're generic action dude #209 in a soul-less game pressing F to pay respects as the only interaction between lengthy cutscenes. Except possibly as a punchline to mock said games

edit: Also, it's all good and well to have a theoretical discussion about the priorities of console hardware in some kind of cost-benefit analysis. But in regards to the Switch right now vs what the Switch 2 will be i.e. in the context of this specific thread at this specific point in time? The costs of making that kind of spec jump have become so low and the benefits so blindingly obvious that the "specs aren't everything" bit in this current context has become, frankly, absurd

We don't need a portable 4090 or PS5, it would be impossible to make or justify the cost of that. And I would agree it would've also been impossible to justify, let alone make, a portable PS4 or 1080Ti when the Switch launched. But it is not 2017 and this isn't the Switch launch, the "spec window" has shifted. We will benefit greatly from moving on from the limitations of the Switch and the cost of that upgrade will be small compared to the size of the benefit. In the same way that the benefits of moving beyond the limitations of the 3DS were greater than the costs of upgrading to the Switch

Going to drop a bit of an analogy up in here. Lets ignore gaming for a second and think about physical media for the distribution of movies. Now, does the pure fact that a movie is on a UHD BluRay make it automatically better than a movie on BluRay, or DVD, or even VHS? No. Of course not. Infact you could fairly comfortably make the argument that modern movies are, generally, a bit crap and a bit too focused on spectacle. Especially blockbusters. And maybe part of that is down to the fact that movies are generally disposable content that we just use as wallpaper to show off our increasingly higher end displays rather than content. So statistically a movie old enough to be on VHS is probably better and there's possibly a correlation there

But correlation or not, the better media doesn't hurt. Frankly, it doesn't matter at all how much better movies might or might not have been 30+ years ago. There is no universe where, if given the choice, I'm watching Lord of the Rings on VHS over the properly HDR colour-graded and very decently mastered UHD BluRay release on a nice OLED set with decent surround. Obviously what makes that movie great isn't the media or the hardware I'm playing it on. The movie itself is what makes it great. I'd gladly watch the Star Wars original trilogy on VHS over the IMAX enhanced 4K HDR Disney trilogy. But for the same content, the superior tech is superior. Give me 4K HDR Balrog every time

Sorry for triple post but I saw a DF Clip that indirectly did a good job explaining these discussion points

Clip is more about "do we need ever increasing amounts of VRAM" but they do touch on the cost of asset creation being a development bottleneck. Something that these higher specs have allowed but we're now well and truly reaching a point where that spec is no-longer the bottleneck for the fidelity chasers. But then also make the pretty fantastic point about where we're going next. That we are probably eventually going to get to the point where we start procedurally generating some of these assets. We've moved beyond the memory bound era into this new asset creation bound era and after that, eventually, we'll move into a compute bound era

And the natural conclusion to make would be that.... eventually the spec will reach a point where the constantly improving spec will start to reduce the requirement for super expensive asset creation. And games will become cheaper again. Or at least, stop getting more expensive

@skywake
I think I'm not getting something here. You say, for instance, you'd rather watch the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS over the 4k stuff on Disney Plus (I would as well.)

But then you say you'd never do that with Lord of the Rings? I'm missing something, but I keep reading your post and I'm not sure what.

For me, I'd rather watch/play the media in its original format. For instance, I know I have access to lots of awesome Gameboy games through my NSO, complete with save states and all that jazz. And I could even use the Switch NES controller if I wanted to try and get closest to the feel, but I still prefer to play Gameboy games on my actual Gameboy instead of NSO or even one of the many third-party handheld devices that are out there. I just love the feel of the chunky original Gameboy and those massive buttons - it's what the game was meant to be played with.

No idea if any of this links with what you were saying lol

@rallydefault
My point was that yes, content is king. Doesn't really matter what format or display you watch it on the original Star Wars Trilogy will always be better than the Disney Trilogy. But content being king doesn't mean that we should dismiss entirely advances in technology that allow us to throw out some of the annoyances of lower spec hardware. And my example there was that I would always pick my UHD BluRay copy of Fellowship over my VHS or DVD copies I have floating around somewhere....

The bit about playing GB games on original hardware. I mean sure, and that's a good point. And the GameBoy is a particularly odd one because the very, very garbage screen is kinda iconic. Are you even experiencing a GB game if it's not in the back seat of a car trying to get the sunlight at right angle? But, even so, there are some other things where.... we should just leave that stuff behind. I just feel like there are some people who are so stuck on this "gameplay over specs" bit that they're unable to see that they both matter

It's like, you can't turn corporate cashins into masterpieces by just rendering more and more pixels. And I think we can all agree on that. But it is also true that something like DK:TF, as fantastic as it is, would be a better game if it was running on hardware that allowed the removal of that 10s load before each stage. Hyrule Warriors would be a better game if it it was on hardware that allowed it to hit a stable 60fps or possibly even have VRR to mask dropped frames. TotK would be a better game with hardware that allowed them to improve the visual quality of its cutscenes

Content and specs are not two things that compete against each other

@skywake
Ohhhhhhhh, ok - I didn't get the part about the original trilogy versus the new one. Gotcha.

Yea, the Gameboy is unique in many ways. The screen is absolute trash, but I just love it. That's what those games were made with in mind, so I feel like putting them on bigger screens and with controllers that have way more buttons takes the magic away. I felt that way even back with the SNES Super Gameboy - I hated it.

@rallydefault I think the 'play on original hardware' thing is very much a personal preference. I've been playing a lot of NSO games lately and I can't help but think I still love the games but would no longer enjoy them as much on the original clunky hardware or original less nice controllers.

I was playing my Wii for the first time in a long time yesterday and my very strong reaction was that I desperately want my favorite games from there to be ported to Switch. I liked the controls at the time, but now I'm over them. But I still love the actual games. The same game but with modern controllers and ideally tweaked to fit on a modern tv screen? I would love that. Slightly remastered because those lovely visuals look a bit washed out by modern standards? I would love that even more.

@FishyS
Wow, really? Yea, that's very strange to me, I definitely don't feel that way.

If I'm playing a Gameboy game, I gotta have a Gameboy in my hand. It just feels right. Those games were tailor-made for that awful little screen and chunky buttons. I got the SNES and N64 controllers for my Switch, so that's pretty awesome, too.

Certain games that have been remastered lose the need for the original hardware, though. Link's Awakening is a perfect example. They did such a job on that game that the Switch controller and buttons felt great. They made it feel like a brand-new game, really. Skyword Sword is another one, though it's different for me: I only played the original on Wii very briefly, so I never truly married to the nunchuck controller. So, playing it on the Switch pro controller felt fine to me, but that's basically all I ever knew of it.

@rallydefault I find original hardware makes it easier for your muscle memory to kick in. But if a game is good enough, playing with a different control scheme makes it fresh again

@rallydefault
Not a huge fan of NSO, just because of the obvious input lag coming from the emulation. The real thing on real hardware on a CRT can't be topped. But that's a far more expensive less convenient route to take. Heck, i was content with the Wii's Virtual Console's emulation latency just because the 32" sony wega CRT i was using at the time didn't have any. It was flawless. You weren't getting a double whammy effect of lag like you are with an OLED TV's 10-13ms of lag, and the lag coming from NSO games.

I hear EverDrive Flash Cart roms don't add any lag either, since something like the SNES or Super Nt reads the roms as if they're actual carts.

And once again, NSO botched the colours with all of it's NES games. They're super dessaturated and dark compared to the real thing. You can always compensate by maxing the color on your TV and using wide color gamut, but it still isn't the same. Those NSO NES, SNES, GEN & N64 controllers look pretty awesome. I would of gotten them if they were 2.4g wireless and could connect to the original consoles Vs settling for 8bitdo & Retrobit's offerings.

I think Scoring either a 42" OLED(LG C3 or C4) or a 43" QD-LED(Samsung QN90C) as a secondary TV strictly for NSO games, or any 8-16bit+ sprite based retro console/arcade title on Switch is a far better fit in 4:3 at that size, than it would be on lets say your main TV, being a 65" OLED. It's way too large, even a 55" is seriously pushing it for older games in 4:3, unless you sit much farther back.

NSO is good, but virtual console is far superior, as I can actually own them instead of renting them through the online service! Will all my progress just disappear once NSO shuts down, and I'll no longer be able to play those games? Who knows! That's why I like virtual console better. I still think NSO is good and is better than any other gaming company's gaming subscriptions.

@PikminMarioKirby
Agreed. I hate the idea of paying annually for games that i can't purchase individually and own.
The VC was exciting and fresh on the Wii, but now it's all played out. it's mostly the same old stuff that's been released before. It's transitioned into a Netflix Streaming-like downloadable with a bunch of games that I don't even care to play anymore. Plus the lag is annoying.

I'd rather just buy EverDrive flash carts, pop them either in a Toploader, SNES, GEN & TGFX and play them on a secondary smaller 42" OLED TV using a RetroTINK4K scaler, or better yet, the AVS, Super Nt, Mega Sg & Duo connected directly into the TV via HDMI. That would only be 10ms of latency coming from the TV itself, instead of 10ms of TV lag plus the added frame or so of latency that's inherent to those NSO titles. There will be even less latency too when using original wired controllers, Vs Switch's NSO bluetooth wireless controllers. I think it's cool that we have options, and i'd probably be content with NSO if i were using it on a lag free CRT TV, but I'm not, so...Ya.

Just think of it as an excuse to replay all those old games once a decade or so. 😆 That said, I'm hoping NSO is now permanent. I wouldn't mind paying the small yearly fee just for cloud save and online functionality and vouchers for cheaper games and Tetris 99 tournaments and occasional game trials but I really enjoy all the retro games thrown in also; it would be nice if they just stay through to at least Switch 3.

That said, I don't like expansion pack and wish those games were done more like virtual console at least as an option.

@NeonPizza I think it'd be cool if NSO is an option but Virtual console could also be an option for some of the bigger releases on NSO.

@FishyS If NSO is pretty much permanent, then count me in! I really enjoy the vouchers, cloud save, online, and the game consoles all being there. I think it'd be useful if it was an option to buy a specific game on NSO for a small fee, so you could keep it on your console without the subscription.

As to the input lag issue, I've never noticed enough lag to really effect gameplay enough to annoy me; I rarely notice at all. Plus a tiny bit of lag just increases the platforming challenge which I don't actually mind. 😝

One fun fact - Pro controller has more lag in wired mode than wireless. Presumably Nintendo could have made that not true, but they didn't.