The only thing missing is games and I do know that they are coming similarly like with the Switch 1. I assume we have to get a release date for Metroid Prime 4 soon.
People keep saying there are no games, but dang, I’m overwhelmed. I’m 20 hours in MK World and have barely scratched the surface. I want to get around to the Zelda upgrades, Cyberpunk, and Rune Factory before Bonanza hits next month.
And then Metroid, Pokémon, and that new Zelda Warriors will be coming. Ah!
It's official, 3.5million in the first 4 days. And also an announcement of a new Splatoon spinoff game last night plus a free content and performance bump for Splatoon 3
I look forward to watching how the goalposts will move in light of this new information
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
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I would say Switch 2 has similarities to the Wii U in the sense that seeing Nintendo's output now target a higher quality is compelling in and of itself. And hopefully over the life of the console we'll see some compelling content beyond just the fidelity boost like we eventually got for Wii U. I'm not sure anything we've seen anything yet for Switch 2 that hits in the same way that Splatoon, Mario Maker or Mario Kart 8 did
Even now but, what we do have is what are enhancements. As just straight free updates sometimes. From day 1. Which is something no other Nintendo console has done. I'm getting as much value personally from the TotK Switch 2 Edition as I did Twilight Princess HD on Wii U
If people want to somehow discount these updates for whatever reason? Well ok. I disagree but people do what people do. But even then, it's a severely unbalanced comparison to compare the final library of a discontinued console to the current known library of a console not yet a week old
Why is the Wii U the console that's always thrown around when talking about Nintendo flops?
The Virtual Boy, N64 and GameCube were also flops compared to the competition and what else was on the market. Nintendo home consoles generally don't sell as well as other consoles but none of them are bad (well, the Virtual Boy was bad...).
I adore the Wii U, I love the library of games, even if it is small but that means I can actually potentially get a full collection at some point. It had flaws and it didn't sell well, but the Switch 2 is not going to be like that at all.
PlayStation and Xbox are always just a more powerful version of their last console and that's exactly what people expect. We demand that Nintendo innovate, complain that we didn't need that kind of innovation and expect them to be more like the competition and then complain that they just made a safe console. We're weird people.
The Wii U was a really big step up from the Wii in terms of power. The Wii was quite close to the Gamecube in that regard, and the Wii U was more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360, and their successors weren't out at the time. The gap between the Wii and the Wii U was like 1,5 generations, whereas I think the difference between Switch 1 and 2 is more like that of a normal generation. Apart from power, the Wii U was more innovative with its second screen than the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor, so... nah, the Wii U was a much larger step up than the Switch 2.
The Wii U was a really big step up from the Wii in terms of power. The Wii was quite close to the Gamecube in that regard, and the Wii U was more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360, and their successors weren't out at the time. The gap between the Wii and the Wii U was like 1,5 generations, whereas I think the difference between Switch 1 and 2 is more like that of a normal generation
I think it would be more accurate to say that the Wii U was 360/PS3 adjacent than outright more powerful. In some regards it was more capable given it had more memory available and a more modern and slightly more capable GPU. But the CPU was slower and it was more constrained in terms of memory bandwidth. For small, constrained environments with fancy effects, relatively high resolution assets? The Wii U could beat PS3/360. But for bigger environments? .... not so much. And lets not forget that "their successors weren't out" was only true for about a year. This was very late 360/PS3 era, comparing the Wii U to the 360 is like comparing the Wii to the PS2. You can do it and technically they were on the shelves together but it's a misleading comparison
Of course, Wii to Wii U was a pretty substantial technical jump but so was XBox to 360, or indeed Switch to Switch 2. I don't think the Wii U was somehow ahead of the Switch 2 in this regard. I would argue that yes, both are ahead of the GC -> Wii and Wii U -> Switch transitions in terms of raw power. But outside of those two anomalies (the blue ocean and the move to mobile hardware) all of these generational transitions are largely similar kinds of jumps. If anything the outliers are SNES -> N64 and 3DS -> Switch
Apart from power, the Wii U was more innovative with its second screen than the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor, so... nah, the Wii U was a much larger step up than the Switch 2.
Who says innovation has to be in hardware? Why are we obsessed with innovation in hardware? I've been beating this drum for a while now but now we finally have the Switch 2 in our hands I think it's more obvious to see how software innovation can be as powerful as raw hardware tricks
Ok yes, Switch 2 has a mouse input. One hardware trick. But outside of that we have software advancements, many of which people are way to quick to dismiss but will have an impact. The software level Switch compatibility and solid accounts system allowing new versions or updates to last generation games without requiring the purchase of an entirely new copy. The addition of GameChat which some have dismissed but it's still a one button share/chat with friends. But also GameShare, especially when combined with GameChat, which is basically just the Wii U GamePad implemented in software. All of these things are pretty significant impacts on how we interact with Switch 2 software, I would argue more than touch screen, motion or an analogue stick (all of which, lets not forget, Switch 2 inherits)
Honestly, the Wii -> Wii U transition early on was mostly just Nintendo Land and the promise of Nintendo games in HD. Which for me was enough to get me there on day 1, just, but it wasn't a super compelling story. With Switch -> Switch 2? I'm a fair bit older, I have other things that chew my time, on paper I should be far less interested in new console hardware than I was almost 13 years ago (oof). I can tell you now with a fair amount of confidence, I've been playing more Switch 2 this launch than I did Wii U at its launch
It's because the Wii U existed during the social media era and those other Nintendo systems did not.
Sure, the N64 was a "flop," but if you were a gamer back then, you didn't have people screaming on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram about it constantly, creating this reverberation chamber of sweaty whining. That even went for the Gamecube. Yea, the internet was around, but not social media (Facebook and Myspace were in their initial phases in the early 2000s, but were not yet realized as avenues for people to attack eachother and whine constantly... that came later lol)
So, yea. I loved my N64 and had no idea it was "failing" at the time. And all these years later, we now recognize it failed, but it's so far removed that it's not really a worthwhile thing to talk about much.
Why is the Wii U the console that's always thrown around when talking about Nintendo flops?
What bothers me is that people forget the wider context of this generation as well.
Nintendo was not just riding on the Wii U at the time. 3DS had a slow start but went on to sell 75 million units. For comparison, the Xbox One sold ~60 million, and the Xbox 360 ~85 million. So during Nintendo's lowest point it managed to sell a number of units comparable to Xbox's highest point, and actually came second to Sony in terms of consoles sold (if we're not counting Switch as the same gen as PS4/XBO). Sure, there are some nuances to this discussion (e.g. the handhelds often selling more units due to repeat purchases, handhelds being cheaper than home consoles), but my point is that even when they're doing "bad"...people are still buying their systems.
I think part of why the Switch has done so well is the merging of Nintendo's home and handheld divisions. Nintendo have never failed in the handheld space, and I think the Nintendoom discussion fails to realise this. Sure, there is a first time for everything...but I think a lot would have to go wrong for the Switch 2 to fail.
The Wii U was a really big step up from the Wii in terms of power. The Wii was quite close to the Gamecube in that regard, and the Wii U was more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360, and their successors weren't out at the time. The gap between the Wii and the Wii U was like 1,5 generations, whereas I think the difference between Switch 1 and 2 is more like that of a normal generation. Apart from power, the Wii U was more innovative with its second screen than the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor, so... nah, the Wii U was a much larger step up than the Switch 2.
wii u was generally less powerful than ps3 and 360 overall. Many of the games were inferior with slower frame rates, sometimes it was lower resolution and even had missing content. Both ps3 and 360 could stream in data from the hard drive but wii u pretty much didn't do that and relied on the optical drive. The PS3 had more CPU power than the PS4 overall such was the power of the Cell processors. It also had fantastic 7.1 sound. There were lots of issues with wii u in performance , video output quality and missing controller features but the wii u was a fantastic console due to its exclusive games. The wii u had 3 power pc cpu cores at 1.24Ghz. The PS3 had a similar single power pc core running at 3.2Ghz so even on the powerpc side the ps3 was similar in performance on its own but then the ps3 had 8 spe processors that were uniquely flexible at running different tasks including especially floating point operations. The wii u gpu was 176Gflops, the ps3's nvidia gpu was 192 Gflops and the Xbox 360 was 240 Gflops but the Xbox 360 had 10MB of extremely fast memory built into the GPU and graphically the 360 was most powerful of the 3 I think. It had the most consistent frame rates. The PS3 was strongest in CPU performance and the 360 in graphic performance. I still say a fully optimised ps3 game is the most impressive. The Resistance games with soo much happening on screen is extremely impressive. The wii u spent most of its time competing with xbox one and ps4 but even with their prior generations it was initially competing with it was still inferior technically on most levels. Even the Switch 2 isn't technically that impressive its a cost reduced design from 2021 but DLSS upscaling it enables it to output 1080p graphics that system only has to render at as low as 640x360p. This takes a huge amount of work of the main components. You wonder how fantastic the ps4 or xbox one would have been if they only had to render at as low as 360p under higher loads but with something like DLSS took them up to 1080p. Switch 2 is also a very low performance platform for its release but DLSS massively saves the day and gives the Switch 2 competitive performance which is very impressive. It feels going forward every new gaming device is going to make heavy use of AI upscaling.
@Lazz An update! I found recent videos by Monitors Unboxed on YouTube 100% objective and clarifying regarding the screen of Switch 2.
It turns out that the screen of Nintendo Switch 2 is extremely slow and its speed is a bottleneck for proper 120Hz support. It also happens to be true that it does not really support HDR in spite of Nintendo's claims, which is exactly the same as Digital Foundry's conclusions, although the latter didn't use digital tools to measure this like Monitors Unboxed.
So, I guess I was right about the screen being bad. However, it's also true that some people have eyes that are not as "accurate" in terms of perception, so that would explain why some say that the screen is good. It's also why some don't care about 30fps or less and are not affected by other things like flicker.
Another bit I found really interesting is that Nintendo boosted the saturation and contrast of the screen, in order to disguise the lack of an OLED screen. I'm any case, the low response can't be avoided and is responsible for the considerable lag and blur.
It's important to remember that, during the Wii U era, Nintendo supported two separate formats, now consolidated into one. If we combine 3DS sales with Wii U, what is that ... about 70-80 million units? If Nintendo retains their handheld audience, but the home console audience is diminished, then that's what we'd be looking at. Would Nintendo consider 70-80 million units a failure? I think they'd want to sell more. I personally think that 70-80 million is certainly possible, depending on what moves Nintendo makes during this generation. Holding their current pricing model across console, online and games, and taking into account other factors, I find a success level equal to or greater than the first Switch highly unlikely.
Put this way people using the WiiU comparison to Switch 2 are only here for one reason "Console Wars" nothing else. The fact people must use WiiU comparison shows they clearly want Nintendo to fail at this point.
@sethfranum I bought every Nintendo home console since SNES. The reason why people mention Wii U, when discussing the possibility of failure is clearly because Wii U was a Nintendo console, a recent one, that failed. Suggesting that anyone is somehow "console warring", without mentioning a competing format, aren't you at least a little embarassed that you did that? Sad.
Put this way people using the WiiU comparison to Switch 2 are only here for one reason "Console Wars" nothing else. The fact people must use WiiU comparison shows they clearly want Nintendo to fail at this point.
I'm one of those rare people that bought a wii u and technically it was weak but in other ways it was superb with so many amazing Nintendo games developed for it. In fact the Switch seem to focus on ports from the wii u. Wii u owners were playing many of the games that the Switch took to a wider audience years before the Switch arrived. There was value in having a wii u despite its commercial failure. Yes it was annoyingly weak hardware for its time and the games could have been better with stronger hardware but it was still a huge upgrade on wii in performance terms. I don't think its console wars to discuss the good and bad about different consoles. I don't own a Xbox Series, PS5 or Switch 2 currently but have all the prior generations of their consoles. I've become more of a PC gamer due to the great value that format offers but I'm still very much interested in consoles. I guess I can get annoyed with Nintendo cheaping out on their hardware though but doesn't mean I don't enjoy Nintendo games. Looking at the Switch 2 I can see its both a good and bad piece of hardware for different parts of its specification. I guess I lack the loyalty of some gamers I'm happy to criticise any console I own if I feel it has some sort of failing in its hardware.
@Lazz An update! I found recent videos by Monitors Unboxed on YouTube 100% objective and clarifying regarding the screen of Switch 2.
It turns out that the screen of Nintendo Switch 2 is extremely slow and its speed is a bottleneck for proper 120Hz support. It also happens to be true that it does not really support HDR in spite of Nintendo's claims, which is exactly the same as Digital Foundry's conclusions, although the latter didn't use digital tools to measure this like Monitors Unboxed.
So, I guess I was right about the screen being bad. However, it's also true that some people have eyes that are not as "accurate" in terms of perception, so that would explain why some say that the screen is good. It's also why some don't care about 30fps or less and are not affected by other things like flicker.
Another bit I found really interesting is that Nintendo boosted the saturation and contrast of the screen, in order to disguise the lack of an OLED screen. I'm any case, the low response can't be avoided and is responsible for the considerable lag and blur.
It should be noted that in that same video they outline the performance of the original Switch screen also. Which really isn't that much different on these metrics. The Switch 2 is marginally brighter, the Switch 1 screen is marginally more responsive. Is it ideal? Not really. Could it have been better? Almost surely. But if you didn't have issues with the original Switch screen then you won't have any issues with this one. I suspect what's happening here is more a case of Nintendo under-volting their LCDs to reduce system power consumption rather than a fundamental flaw with the display
In terms of the "some people don't care about 30fps" and "this screen can't do 120Hz". It's worth noting that there's a difference between refresh rate and pixel response. When we're talking pixel response we're talking about the time it takes for a pixel to change colours. The video you're referring to has this as low as ~11ms and as high as ~45ms. Which means if you test a pixel it will take that amount of time to change fully from one pixel colour to another pixel colour
This is not the same thing as refresh rate. Refresh rate is how many image updates are being sent to the screen every second. Does it impact the effectiveness of refresh rate? Yeah, somewhat. Because effectively a pixel response time in the 30ms range means you're effectively getting a "30fps" motion blur applied at a hardware level. On average. But a motion blur does not mean the screen isn't changing what it's displaying. It is what it says, it's blurring, of motion
Probably easier to explain in a graph. This here is a kind of naïve maths-y simulated smooth cycling of black to white on theoretical screens with uniform pixel response times of 0ms, 5ms, 10ms and 30ms. The 0ms is the input, everything else is trying to reach it:
Note that this isn't an actual graph, it's just the raw maths of the idea of it. Also I've definitely got this equation wrong, these lines should reach the targets if the response time is less than the frame time. But it shows the idea of it and, I would say, very clearly shows this isn't really the same as saying it "can't do 120Hz". All it means is that instead of hitting the targets it's always behind. But the target is still updating at that rate. So instead of getting a signal that's still saying "this should be black" the screen, even though it is slow to move to that target, is starting to move to an updated target
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Topic: Does anyone else feel like this is more "Switch U" than Switch 2?
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