[overcast]

The dock is pretty underwhelming from what I've seen. There is no protection for the screen, sliding in between two pieces of plastic. Pretty cheap, for a premium priced, and well engineered hybrid device, that will be taken in and out.

Semi-relevant. Breath of Wild looks like such a fantastic game, but it's completely ridiculous that the performance is often times WORSE in the docked mode. I'm hoping this is just crappy porting issues, and can be patched. But running only 900p, and getting 20fps shouldn't be tolerated.

[MBCook]

I really do wonder how optimized the game is. From what I've heard (I'm waiting for a good digital foundry comparison video) it sounds like the game plays identically on the WiiU and the Switch in docked mode. The only difference is that the WiiU version runs at 720p instead of 900p.

We know this started as a WiiU game, i'm wondering if this is another twilight princess where they did very little except up the resolution for the new console and we're not really seeing what the machine is capable of.

[Larrikin]

Has there ever been a game released within a year of the launch of a console that displayed the power of the console? It usually takes a few years to really get the full power of the console

[vvillena]

Crash Bandicoot for PS1 was so revolutionary that most studios were never able to catch on. Naughty Dog improved even more with Crash Bandicoot 2 and Crash Bandicoot 3, but the first game was already at the top of what the PS1 could do.

[vanderZwan]

Time to post this series on the development of CB again. I'm sure the LISP fans here will love it, even if most of them will have already read it:

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ban...

[overcast]

There is a difference between maxing out the available power, and making the game work properly. You can have a less than visually impressive game, run at a solid frame rate. Then later on, have something like The Last of Us come out, and blow the doors off of even next generation stuff. Graphic fidelity isn't as important as performance. This is just a shitty port.

[Narishma]

Killzone Shadowfall was a launch game on the PS4 and is still one of the best looking on the system. Similarly for Risen on Xbox One.

[ekianjo]

for ps4 and xbox one thats not the case at all. You are talking about much older generations.

[MBCook]

This is the report I was waiting for:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-the-le...

[aaron-lebo]

Yes, the docked mode is grating at times. You've got these great mechanics and beautiful world but constant input lag. Very frustrating. I'd prefer to be able to sit down and play on a TV at a higher resolution, but it's a worse experience. It effectively makes it a mobile game.

It's 2017! 1080p or 60fps should be the minimum. To be fair that's not doable at $300 on a mobile gpu, but as a console that's rough.

re: screen + dock = scratches:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5xc6gw/using_the_...

Some really odd design choices. v2 should be nice, though.

[sparkpeasy]

I've played Zelda on Switch docked for 10 hours and have not yet once experienced input lag. It occasionally hits seemingly 20-25fps with a lot of enemies and environmental grass and such for a few seconds but that has absolutely not sullied my experience of playing one of the most thoughtful and enjoyable games of all time.

[aaron-lebo]

Glad you've had a great experience and I agree it's a great game.

Perhaps input lag is the wrong term or you just aren't looking but even just walking out into the starting area framerates start to drop and the game becomes noticeably slower. Try it in undocked mode and it's very obvious.

If you are used to playing at higher framerates (which isn't uncommon seeing as other big console exclusives are 60fps usually at 1080p) it's a real difference.

[georgemcbay]

Even ignoring the underwhelming performance, it seems ridiculous that you can't just choose to run in 720p mode when docked. I'd rather have my TV upscale the content than have the game be close to unplayable due to lag... the engine is clearly capable of rendering to a 720p framebuffer since it does that when not docked, just add an option to let me do that when docked...

[nicky0]

Can't you set to 720p in screen settings?

[DaiPlusPlus]

I suspect it would still render to 900, then downscale to 720

[CydeWeys]

> It's 2017! 1080p or 60fps should be the minimum. To be fair that's not doable at $300 on a mobile gpu, but as a console that's rough.

It is possible on a $300 device, it's just that the Switch has lots of other design considerations (modularity, hardware controller costs) that drive the cost substantially up. You can definitely make a simple $300 tablet with good 3D performance, and indeed that's exactly what the Nvidia Shield is.

[ebbv]

What makes you say it's not doable on a $300 mobile GPU? There are phones out that cost $300 that have better performance than the Switch.

Also it's really down to the software. They could have targeted 1080p resolution with 60fps with the new Zelda but they would have had to make sacrifices on draw distance, effects, texture resolution, poly count, etc.

[aaron-lebo]

That's my point, though. They clearly can't make a game with the features of BotW - draw distance, effects, etc without major compromises.

Not personally aware of any games as full-formed as BotW that are running on $300 mobile sets. Though this could just be poorly optimized, which makes it more disappointing.

[ebbv]

I don't think anyone has cracked making an open world game on a phone. But just from raw hardware specs perspective there are phones with more performance than the Switch.

[overcast]

Depressing. I was going to wait till much later to even consider purchasing this. But I definitely won't be until that's addressed.

Why isn't the screen glass?!

[kalleboo]

> Why isn't the screen glass?!

Durability when handled roughly by children?

[bcook]

I dunno. My ~3 year old neice has her own aging, hand-me-down iPad that she mistreats like it was any other $5 toy and it's been going strong for maybe 2 years.

[kalleboo]

And yet somehow I see adults everywhere with cracked screens :p

It could be the stronger glass Apple is using is too expensive for the price point Nintendo is aiming at

[vinceguidry]

Cracked screens happen when you drop it, and kids just don't have enough height on them to generate the forces needed.

Also adults think nothing of putting huge padded cases on kids' iPads. I can't be bothered with a case for my phone.

[cmrdporcupine]

I bought the Wii U version instead of a Switch because of the complaints I heard about the docked game.

Played it tonight. Very very nice, my kids love it.

I'll buy a Switch in a year once there's more games and they have the kinks worked out. If I feel like playing Breath again, I'll get it second hand.

[slantyyz]

In case anyone wants to see a comparison of Zelda between the two platforms, someone has already posted a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yFON2UON3k

To my untrained eyes, the Wii U version seems perfectly fine.

[BinaryIdiot]

I've been hoping they'll drastically lower the Wii U price so I can pick it up that way :)

[cmrdporcupine]

So far I'm loving it, it's like a kid-friendly, slightly simpler Skyrim.

Though so far the atmosphere isn't as deep as the Zelda games have done in the past.

Though I thought Skyward Sword was just annoying so this is a relief.

[slantyyz]

You can get refurbs and second hand Wii U's for pretty cheap.

[BinaryIdiot]

Hmm the best I've seen is $200 which seems a bit much for a now previous console model with limited title support and low end hardware. I'll wait until I see it for $99 I think.

[_jdams]

I bought a $199 Wii U refurb direct from Nintendo about a year and a half ago. Surely you can find a cheaper Wii U on craigslist or something..

[knodi123]

> v2 should be nice

Has there ever been a v2 of a nintendo console?

[satysin]

Depends how you define v2. If you define it as a revision to the original version then -

The DSi was an upgrade to the DS but not a whole new console generation.

The Wii Mini was a downgrade (seriously) to the Wii to make it cheaper/smaller.

The New 3DS was an upgrade to the 3DS similar to the DS->DSi upgrade.

Plus all of the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance models which you could argue were often more revisions with some new features but still compatible than a totally new product.

Such as the Gameboy SP and then Micro which were totally new designs for the Gameboy Advance with a better screen but otherwise the same console.

[knodi123]

okay, I never went to the nintendo portables, so I was shockingly oblivious about these. I define v2 as both "set of games you can play on it is identical to the first one", and "not a retro notalgia remake". But even by that standard, wikipedia tells me you gave a lot of good examples. I can only hope the switch makes the list, because I'm not interested in spending significant game time with a handheld tablet, but I also need enough distance to flirt with their limitations.

[iamphilrae]

There were two versions of the NES and the SNES, one for Japan, the other US/EU. Technically the same insides but a different version none the less.

[ClassyJacket]

They don't revise their home consoles much, but they do revise their handhelds. So... probably. This console seems so flawed and badly designed it kinda needs one, quickly.

Gameboy > Gameboy Pocket Gameboy Advance > Gameboy Advance SP > Gameboy Micro DS > DS Lite > DSi 3DS > New 3DS

Some of these revisions even had their own sub-revisions or regional variants like the Gameboy Lite. The Gameboy Color is the only one I can think of they didn't revise significantly, but you could argue that the Color itself was a huge revision of the Gameboy Pocket with a Colour screen.

[zerocrates]

Well if you count the Switch as a portable, they've done at least one revision/refresh of almost every generation: Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, GBA SP, Game Boy Micro, DS Lite, DSi, 3DS XL, 2DS, new 3DS. They've actually really gone to town on revisions lately with handhelds.

TV consoles are a different story. The NES and SNES had later variants, and there's the afterthought Wii Mini, and that's all I can think of.

[cma]

The NES 2:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v-c-XkVH82w/maxresdefault.jpg

[grapeshot]

They've done at least one revision of most of them, usually with significant cosmetic differences and less features. There was the top loading NES, the SNES Mini, the GameCube was revised and the digital output port was removed, and for the Wii there was the version with the GameCube ports removed and the Wii Mini with all the remaining ports removed.

[JimmyAustin]

GBA has three generations (stock, SP and micro), 3DS had 2 or 3, depending on if you count the XL. Wii had two (original and mini). Other then the New 3DS, none of these have been system hardware, but given that the Switch is built on a tegra chip, I can see it getting upgraded with full backwards compatibility at some point.

Not to mention

[boondaburrah]

Hell I don't even count the GBA Micro, considering it couldn't run GB games despite having a Z80, simply because they dropped 5-volt support. That's not a refresh, that's just taking a dremel to the thing!

[darren_]

GBA sp, new 3ds. It's not unheard of.

[pikzen]

Going from 720p to 900p is a ~50% increase in pixel count, but the bandwidth increase from docking is only 20%. And since it already chokes at times in tablet mode, this doesn't bode well for a fix that isn't lowering graphical quality.

[Dylan16807]

The memory only runs 20% faster (maybe?), but the GPU core runs more than twice as fast.

[anbotero]

But you know, in a review made by Digital Foundry, they found out Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4) doesn't have physics applied to grass or a lot of environment objects when the character goes through them. Here, the grass has to realistically move to the passing of Link and also the wind. Also, the physics are handled by the CPU, which has a constant speed regardless of the mode the system is running at in order not to interrupt game logic like, you know, the grass, heh. I'm betting that's what's causing the drops, having to apply physics on the grass (and other objects on the environment).

In any case, yeah, hopefully they'll improve it a bit with future patches.

[Strom]

If the screen is behind something like Gorilla Glass [1] like all the other tablets on the market, then that plastic will never scratch the screen. This is due to the way scratching and physics work. [2] A good reference is Mohs scale of mineral hardness [3]. Generally speaking, a softer material will not scratch a harder material. Plastics are really soft, glass and toughened glass are strong. There's a pretty good demonstration video on youtube. [4]

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_Glass

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardness

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ANcWQEUI8

[overcast]

It's not. The screen is plastic. I know how material hardness works.

[Strom]

Interesting that you would call a plastic screen tablet well engineered. I imagine the dock is going to be the least of anyone's worries when they use this as an actual mobile device. Everything will scratch the plastic.

[Domenic_S]

The screen and digitizer are not fused, which means if you can handle the bezel adhesive (and get the replacement part), screen replacement isn't an issue. Compare against.. pretty much every other tablet.

[nissehulth]

Waterjet teardown.

https://youtu.be/qBVyF0I2Ruo?t=2m24s

[overcast]

Amazing that stayed playing with an entire triangle cut out of it.

[gdulli]

I don't know how they justify selling it at the same price as the current gen consoles. You also have to pay extra for a real controller.

[_ph_]

Because its a console which also is a mobile device. It not only comes with one controller, but, depending on the game, the JoyCons allow two players to share them. Without buying additional hardware. They also happen to be complete Wiimotes with motion tracking - something you had to buy extra before. And of course, it is the best and most powerful gaming hardware made by Nintendo. A PS4 is cheaper and has more GPU power, if you don't mind it being a big box. And it doesn't play the Nintendo games.

[endemic]

> And it doesn't play the Nintendo games.

The hardware actually looks like the ideal form factor for me right now (I have young kids, so it's hard to sneak to the den for those marathon gaming sessions), but honestly the thing I really care about is the software.

[on_and_off]

the joycons are real controllers too :).

So far I don't want to switch to a classical controller. Especially since I use the gyroscope of the right joycon in order to aim more precisely.

[Rapzid]

The pro controller has gyro as well.

[on_and_off]

is it practical though ?

With the joycons, I kinda wish I could draw a bow with both joycon in order to aim.

Not sure if that would work, but I would like an easier way to aim precisely. Right now I am starting to miss my mouse.

[snovv_crash]

You don't need to buy an extra screen or controller, and it is mobile. The price seems fair to me.

[tw04]

Because it's not a loss leader. Both the ps4 and xb1 sold for a loss the first couple years of their existence.

[Alreadyobsolete]

Are the joycons not real controllers?

[overcast]

Correct, they are pretty uncomfortable.

[Pxtl]

Current gen consoles you have to pay extra for a real screen.

[M_Grey]

Because they have legions of rabid fans who not only buy their products regardless of quality, but act as an army of apologists for them. The result ironically, is that unlike Sony's harsh lesson learned around the PS3, Nintendo has no such backlash to fear.

The worst they can do is just own the portable market, and sell a few iterations of a console to their diehards, which are numerous.

[simonh]

If that was true, Wii-U would have been an inevitable smashing success. But no.

[tastythrowaway2]

wait is this thing made by Nintendo or Apple?

[dstaley]

One benefit of the dock being so simple is that it should be relatively easy to design a replacement dock that doesn't suffer from those issues. I'm thinking something like Apple's iPad Dock [1]. I think the dock design they went with is more kid friendly, so if you're an adult who is going to be mindful when docking your Switch I think something more minimal would be fine.

[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images2000x2000/Apple_MC...

[Fej]

Currently, the only way to get HDMI out from the Switch is via Nintendo's dock. No other cables work. From what I understand, Nintendo is not planning to make a breakout cable or expand functionality in that area.

[dstaley]

Sorry, I realize my comment was unclear. I meant the actual board in the dock is quite small and easily accessible, so removing it and placing it into a new housing should be fairly straightforward.

[Rapzid]

My biggest beef with the dock is that the switch ROCKS in it. If you press the game card side down you will experience this. Sloppy :(

[M_Grey]

This is Nintendo... in a year or two you can buy the Switch DS!!! Now with a charging port on top, 1080P, and more battery life!

I mean... assuming by then it's not clearly another WiiU or worse.

[Razengan]

Yes, let's just make one product every 10 years and never make any incremental updates for people who like them and can afford them.

[josu]

His point is that all those changes could have been added to this version. No need to have a plastic screen, a 3 hour battery life or that stupid location for the charging port.

[M_Grey]

Do you really think the only option other than selling you a new full-price console every couple of years, is a decade of PS3 or the like?

Come on.

[jwatte]

The dock plastic is softer than the glass so it won't scratch/wear the glass. As long as you keep it clean of other debris/grit!