21st October 2016, 3:38 PM
So with Nintendo saying that there will not be any more announcements about the Switch this year (why not?), that brings us back to good old rumors and speculation!
The latest is this: http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/10/a-...-and-info/ which, if it's accurate, says that the Switch will indeed have a multitouch screen (good); the battery life on the tablet part devkit is a quite awful 3 hours (ick); the system runs faster when docked, though whether this is just unlocking more power in the tablet due to the wired connection or if there is hardware in the dock is unclear; and all games are required to work with the regular controls so any touchpad controls would be optional. That's a mixed bag there. Also, the side controllers have analog trigger buttons: https://twitter.com/LaurakBuzz/status/78...4307702784 I don't mind the digital buttons of the Wii and beyond too much, but there are some games which benefit from analog so it's a nice thing to bring back.
I have seen no reports of any mention of pointer controls still, which is disappointing given that you will want the tablet docked most of the time thanks to the system being more powerful that way (and the bad battery life!). Going back to a mostly buttons-only console after 12 years of lots of touch/motion controls isn't the worst, but it is unfortunate. Worse is what this means for handheld gaming if Nintendo does go through with replacing the 3DS with this -- as I said last post, this thing isn't a real handheld, it's far too large! And if this battery life report is accurate too, it's not very portable in that respect either, not for trips and the like anyway. Is Nintendo giving up on handhelds and ceding portable gaming to phones? If true, that's really sad...
(One interesting thing about the NX: Isn't this NVidia's first chip for a "real" game console since the original Xbox?)
The latest is this: http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/10/a-...-and-info/ which, if it's accurate, says that the Switch will indeed have a multitouch screen (good); the battery life on the tablet part devkit is a quite awful 3 hours (ick); the system runs faster when docked, though whether this is just unlocking more power in the tablet due to the wired connection or if there is hardware in the dock is unclear; and all games are required to work with the regular controls so any touchpad controls would be optional. That's a mixed bag there. Also, the side controllers have analog trigger buttons: https://twitter.com/LaurakBuzz/status/78...4307702784 I don't mind the digital buttons of the Wii and beyond too much, but there are some games which benefit from analog so it's a nice thing to bring back.
I have seen no reports of any mention of pointer controls still, which is disappointing given that you will want the tablet docked most of the time thanks to the system being more powerful that way (and the bad battery life!). Going back to a mostly buttons-only console after 12 years of lots of touch/motion controls isn't the worst, but it is unfortunate. Worse is what this means for handheld gaming if Nintendo does go through with replacing the 3DS with this -- as I said last post, this thing isn't a real handheld, it's far too large! And if this battery life report is accurate too, it's not very portable in that respect either, not for trips and the like anyway. Is Nintendo giving up on handhelds and ceding portable gaming to phones? If true, that's really sad...
Quote: One thing's for sure, this trailer does make it clear this is a new system and not a remodel, and everyone should know that coming in.That's true, the video does a good job of that.
Quote:So, it is now confirmed that it won't be able to play 3DS or DS games (or Wii U games, but I never expected that). The lack of any sort of backwards compatibility at all is rather disappointing, considering how well Nintendo's portable systems traditionally handle backwards compatibility. Well, considering the RISC processor is being made by NVidia rather than Nintendo's traditional use of ARM designed processors in their portables, maybe that's not all that surprising. Still, it's a bit sad something couldn't be done about that. As it stands, this system is going to have to stand entirely on it's own merits, and those who may not have a 3DS yet, but are very excited about Pokémon Sun & Moon, will now need to decide which system they want more. News sites are trying to put a spin on the "virtual console" being the "backwards compatibility", but we all know that emulated games are NOT in any way any sort of backwards compatibility. I really want to be able to dismiss this, but it really is a pretty big problem for Nintendo.Given the completely different architecture I wasn't really expecting any backwards compatibility. It is something I'd have liked to see, but when changing systems this much it'd have been hard to do...
(One interesting thing about the NX: Isn't this NVidia's first chip for a "real" game console since the original Xbox?)