TL;DR: 12GB of RAM, GPU that’s roughly on par with the Steam Deck. It’s not the most powerful handheld out there but surprisingly not bad for Nintendo standards.
Especially considering it has access to DLSS, I‘m looking forward to see what Nintendo‘s first party studios can cook up with these specs. But I‘m waiting for the OLED model sometime in the future.
Interesting, since we now know the size I would not have expected it to be on-par roughly with the Deck while being so much thinner and a bit smaller. Hrm.
…when comparing TFLOPs, and that’s not comparable across architectures (by different companies as well!).
If we take similar-performing (in rasterization) Ampere and RDNA 2 cards (say a 3080 and 6800 XT), we can see the 3080 has 29.77 TFLOPs and the 6800 XT has 20.74 TFLOPs, an RDNA 2 FLOP is worth about 1.4x as much as an Ampere FLOP.
So extrapolating the 1.6 “RDNA 2 TFLOPs” of the Deck we get 2.24 “Ampere TFLOPs” and that’d make the Deck quite a bit faster than the Switch 2 in portable mode, but slower than the Switch 2 in docked mode.
This is obviously all just wild and silly speculation, but I doubt the Switch 2 will match the Deck in portable mode. Samsung 8nm would just eat too much power for this to realistically happen in a handheld form factor.
I wonder if they’ve fallen into the same trap with not making the console powerful enough. The first switch was also not that powerful when it came out, and it’s really struggled in the end of its lifecycle. A lot of first party releases in the last couple years run like complete shit. They probably missed an opportunity here to stash an eGPU in the dock to provide a more modern experience while playing on the big screen.
There’s a disclaimer that says not every Switch 1 game will work, but I think it will play on the new Switch with the same lousy performance it has now unless you buy the Switch 2 version.
That is how every previous Nintendo back-compat implementation has worked.
GC on Wii
Wii on Wii U
Game Boy on Game Boy Color
Game Boy/Color on Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance on (New) Nintendo (3)DS
Nintendo DS on Nintendo DSi
Nintendo DS/i on Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS on New Nintendo 3DS
In every case, the system drops back to the earlier console's hardware specifications. There are hybrid cross-gen games on some of the handhelds which offer improvements on the newer hardware, but up to this point, older games have never been updated to get the improvements of newer hardware. That doesn't necessarily mean the same will hold, but I'd suggest you assume it will and be pleasantly surprised if they buck the trend.
I’m those cases isn’t it because they had separate hardware built in for backwards compat? This is more of a PC style hardware upgrade rather than totally different hardware (compute wise) so it might be different for that reason?
Sort of, though Wii and Wii U are a bit more complicated than that so this somewhat of an oversimplification. The ELI5 answer is that some hardware components are directly upgraded and can run in a compatibility mode, other components are just the original hardware thrown in separately.
New3DS is the most recent and most notable exception. It's directly upgraded 3DS hardware, but the CPU downclocks to run at 3DS specs on all legacy titles (and there are almost no native New3DS games so this upgrade was pretty pointless). Softmodding can unlock the full clockspeed, and most games do work fine this way but there are a few rare bugs.
I expect Switch 2 will just be the same architecture upgraded, because that's a lot easier to do now, while the old style of true redundancy would inflate costs too much today. It's also worth noting that Switch titles already expect variable performance in order to support handheld and docked modes, so I doubt much would break if allowed to overclock. But I could also see Nintendo not even trying to support it if even one bug might exist somewhere.
Just adding on to this, I do think the "up-specced OG hardware" approach something Nintendo has done before. Upgrades like GC to Wii and Game Boy to Game Boy Color are really just boosts to the clock speeds and RAM, they don't have anything specifically included for BC reasons (unless you're counting GameCube memory card slots). They really are just iterations on the same hardware. Similar to the New 3DS, on modded consoles you can run GameCube games at Wii clock speeds and they almost all work without issue.
On that subject, the fact that Nintendo says the compatibility won't be 100% is potentially encouraging. If the Switch 2 was just going to downclock compatible parts to their Switch 1 performance and was otherwise identical, you'd expect all games to work. The reduction in compatibility could be because games are going to be running with Switch 2 clocks across the board, which most games should handle just fine and a small handful may not.
Sure, but the game sets the resolution, not the console. The game might get a performance boost or a more stable frame rate on better hardware, but unless it gets a patch to detect which system it’s running on and adjust the resolution accordingly, most games will still run in 720p.
Another commenter elsewhere mentioned that things like Labo or Ring Fit won’t (likely) work because of the different sized controllers. I would be surprised if other games that don’t use special extra hardware work just fine.
Normally I’d disagree (because games written for a single console don’t do well with hardware upgrades), but since the old console already runs at different speeds when handheld and docked, I’d expect most games to be able to handle faster processors safely. We’ll have to see how that shakes out. If it really does run them better, and it has drift-proof sticks, I’m quite interested. Otherwise, I’ll wait a year or 2 until there’s a good, cheap library of games for it.
Ah so upgrade cost identical to what Sony did? I can see them doing that … The problem with that is that the games already have the ability on the cartridge. Remember the datamine of Paper Mario TTYD remake and the higher resolution data on the cart?
I would not put it past Nintendo to charge you $70 for Tears of the Kingdom again so that you can run it at reasonable resolutions and frame rates this time.
Maybe, I got the Pimax Portal a while back and due to their magnetic attachments Hall Effect sticks wouldn’t work. I’m sure Nintendo would have a better time solving this issue than Pimax would though
Hall effect sensor expert here! No, the magnets in the joycons that are used to attach to the display/body of the Switch 2 would not interfere with hall effect analog sticks.
Two reasons:
The magnets are too far away (sensors are usually only sensitive to magnets within 10-12mm directly above/below)
The mounting/attachment magnets would be perpendicular to the magnets in the analog sticks (if you imagine the flux lines they wouldn’t cross the sensory boundary).
Regardless, it would be trivial to place a tiny little piece of ferromagnetic blocking tape wherever necessary to prevent interference.
Rumors/Leaks had them and they were right about what we see in the trailer so hopefully. I’m hoping yes, nintendo must be tired of repairing joycons ^^
They wanna be very clear that this is their best-selling console ever but better, I would‘ve been surprised if they didn‘t just slap a 2 on it. There‘s so much riding on this for them.
I don’t think Nintendo have ever done a Console 2 before though. I was hoping for Super Switch but as ever Nintendo absolutely refuse to be predictable!
Yeah, I get that, I was just trying to say that the above is probably their reasoning in my mind. They‘re scared shitless to fuck the transition up, calling it „The Stuff You Guys Loved 2.0“ is the lowest risk move.
I‘m assuming they debated about it until the very last second until they settled with the safest option. The leaks probably accelerated things a lot towards the end and it might’ve been called something different entirely if they had more time to agree on a name.
That‘s not how projects or marketing work most of the time, however. Nintendo is known to use project names throughout development. They have a schedule for each and every step and the recent leaks have turned things upside down for sure.
The reveal itself looks incredibly rushed. I suspect they hastily whipped up a quick animation in Blender by using some simple modifiers and clever editing. It has “Make a product animation in Blender” Youtube tutorial written all over it, if that makes sense. I kind of love it, but it’s not very Nintendo-like and neither is the name.
The Pokemon games all being the same caused me to get bored of them years ago. And now with them suing Palworld for ‘capturing monsters with an object and summoning them in 3d space’, a patent made after Palworld released their trailer, I find the Nintendo brand actively harmful to the state of gaming.
They actively become easier and shorter every generation. Arceus brought a lot of cool stuff into the series and there was a little bit of hope that things would improve only for them to go back to the stale old formula that wouldn’t be as bad if the games weren’t so easy now that you could beat them by mashing A. I know it’s for kids but damn, the old games were somewhat challenging.
The ROG Crate software is actually pretty good. It’s not perfect but I rarely have to interact with Windows at all and once you get used to the controls when doing so not all that bad. And I dislike Windows a lot, but if I feel that it’s mostly a non issue. I wouldn’t go for a SteamOS version either, as I like Gamepass.
Right, the only real issue imo is the lack of a proper sleep mode. Hopefully Microsoft addresses this issue when/if they truly build a handheld windows experience.
And yep, I’ll stick with Gamepass until enshitification runs its course. When it does then I’ll switch to SteamOS. But for now the service is still great for me.
I switched to Linux probably about two years ago. I was annoyed that GamePass didn’t work (because MS specifically handles it in a way to make it not work). Then I just stopped caring. If I want to try a game, there’s other ways to (🏴☠️). MS specifically created their software to not work where I want to be, so they don’t deserve my money. I’m not going to pay my captor to keep me there. I’d happily pay for it again, but they need to meet me where I want to be, and they easily can if they choose to.
Can they though? Isn’t the responsibility of porting games to Linux that of the developer? They could create a Gamepass for Linux but that would probably entail more money spent on licensing that platform, and funding ports which they certainly have no economic incentive to do.
That being said, they seem really committed to their “everything is an Xbox” strategy so it would not surprise me terribly if they ended teaming up with Valve at some point and created some kind of Gamepass on Steam thing, where you can play Gamepass games directly from steam or something, which would presumably also include the MacOS and Linux versions of the game if they are available.
GamePass doesn’t work because it uses a proprietary encryption method for all the games. It’s why you can’t mod them (unless explicitly allowed by MS, which then decrypts the files to be modified). The games almost all work perfectly well on Linux. It’s specifically an issue with the GamePass platform, which was designed by MS to only work on Windows. It’s MS making the choice to not allow it to work anywhere else.
That’s a fair question which I have to cut a little short due to it being a huge topic:
The overhead of a full blown operating system you have to maintain is not a trivial thing. You have to update and maintain os, drivers and applications at least and it’s directed at all purpose use in general. That means all of the above and games might or might not fit well to a handheld device. Even if it’s maintained by a third party (eg Asus) there are many many moving parts that are all purpose. This might be a dialog box with unaccessible options you have to work around or games not working with the controls you need to fix and might never (for me steredenn on steam deck). You can however literally do what you want with it.
Compared to this a console is an optimized experience, golden cage. Things just work. Yes there might be the off chance but in general the producer has a system. 100% under their control and can test and optimize very well, which Nintendo debatably does.
Pokemon is literally the same game over and over, I hugely regretted my purchase of pokemon x cause it was literally a cloned game with barely any new features. It’s probably Nintendo’s most effective cash cow in terms of effort to capital reward.
It is literally the biggest money maker in the world. The games sell about 3/5 as many copies as COD with a tiny fraction of the budget. And then they sell even more in merch. And there are people (like me in the past) that buy Nintendo consoles just for those games.
That doesn’t contradict what they said. It being popular says nothing about quality, variety, or effort. In fact, it may be counter to them, as your example of CoD indicates.
Good! I couldn’t tell. I thought it could be an appeal to popularity saying they’re good games because they sell well, not they sell well regardless of them being repetitive.
X and Y introduced Mega Evolution, arguably one of the greatest iterative improvements in Pokémon.
With the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A in 2025, I’m thinking about replaying X and Y.
Scarlet and Violet were so disappointing that I too am hesitant about future Pokémon games. But I’ll keep my eyes and ears peeled to see how their upcoming games are. I no longer am a day one buyer of Pokémon games, after being burned badly on the rushed Scarlet/Violet games.
I jumped through a couple hoops to get Pokemon Infinite Fusion working on my Steam Deck & I’ve been having a blast slapping shit together to see how fucked up it looks.
Cleffa + Geodude made me giggle for a good 5 minutes.
I'm going to disagree. While it seems to you that it's the same game over and over. They do add more creatures per generation, there are new moves, there are new ways in how pokemon does battling and just new things added per generation.
The formula may have been a little stagnant or not as impressive as other leaps before, but still new things.
I hear this argument all the time, but I don’t really understand it. I remember when Pokemon first came out and me and all the other kids were imagining wandering through dense jungles hunting for rare and elusive Pokemon. Sure, we’d imagine battles too, but the franchise always seemed way more about discovery and adventure than about battling. That’s why I haven’t managed to finish a pokemon have since X and Y, in spite of trying each one. The battles get better, sure, but I just don’t really care. Luckily, Legends Arceus was exactly what I always pictured Pokemon to be about, and I had a blast playing through it. Hopefully the next Legends game will be just as good.
As someone who started with Red/Blue all the way at the beginning, but has grown tired with the formula, I agree Arceus was exactly what I always wanted, but it was also too little too late. It was cool that it finally got to that point, but they’re so far behind the rest of the industry. It easily could have been made 10 years before and it still wouldn’t be ahead of any trends.
Its obviously a game for children, and that’s great. I loved them when I was a child too. I just wish they’d put more effort into it. They make stupid amounts of money, yet they can’t even try to innovate.
Mouse mode has been rumored, and some leaks have shown what could be an optical sensor on the joy con.
Also, if you take your current joy cons and place them on their side like that, they surprisingly feel pretty great as a mouse. Shoulder button for min click, and your thumb hits the four face buttons. I could see it working pretty well.
I wonder if that and/or Labo might be what they meant by the disclaimer that backwards compatibility might not support all titles. Since it's built around old Joy-Cons, might not work with new ones, unless the Switch 2 can just use original Joy-Cons.
Could also be an excuse for Ring Fit 2 built around new Joy-Cons.
In theory the old joy cons could still connect to the system via bluetooth, just not attach to the console itself. So maybe that keeps Ring Fit in play for the system.
If that’s the case you wouldn’t be able to charge them, though? I don’t think you can charge them without connecting to a console (or a third party charging dock I guess)
Yikes… so that list had 21 titles on it, not 22; and there’s a good chunk of them that are remakes. The ones that aren’t sound bad - not fun. “Not really” is accurate. 22 is not accurate at all.
You asked "has Nintendo even released a game?" and the answer to that question is "yes". They released 22 of them. I don't care where you wanna move the goalposts to, you can't say 22 games is "not really".
I guess I should have put the /s at the end of my post so that everyone wouldn’t be so offended. Fuck Nintendo and their lawsuits though, no sarcasm intended there.
I don’t think people are upset at you calling out Nintendo for their rampant lawsuits, but instead at your dismissive reply when someone provided a list of games to answer your question.
Judging by the 15 downvotes on my “Has Nintendo even released a game since that second Zelda game, or are they too busy suing people?” comment, I’m not so sure. I do find this a bit amusing though.
Back to that list though, there’s nothing on it that’s remotely appealing to me, so I guess I’m a bit biased and dismissive.
I also do not consider ports, and remakes new releases, even if there’s a new price tag on them.
there’s nothing on it that’s remotely appealing to me, so I guess I’m a bit biased and dismissive.
Precisely. Just because YOU don’t like them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. As far as non-remakes from that list go, I only liked Pikmin 4, Mario Wonder, and Echoes of Wisdom.
If it’s anything like how the Wii was basically a GameCube it may not even be all that hard to rework existing switch emulators to work with switch 2 games. Given that it’s going to have full back compat I bet that’s why they went after switch emus so hard. They wanted to halt development as much as possible for as long as possible so it doesn’t eat away at their switch 2 sales.
I recall reading something about Nintendo wanting to include Denuvo in the Switch 2. Will be interesting to see whether or not this one’s games and consoles are cracked wide open as readily as before.
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