Nintendo SWITCH(NX) Information - March 3, 2017

[Drai]

Think we'll ever get to the point where cartridge based games can be made with zero load times and on similar scale to breath of the wild? :O A man can dream

[Nitsuki]

What we can dream is that nintendo paved the way to newer consoles getting rid of disc media.

[Krandor]

Paved the way how?

While things can obviously change down the line, at current the Switch is insignificant in terms of sales figures next to the other two current consoles.

[Darus Grey]

Think we'll ever get to the point where cartridge based games can be made with zero load times and on similar scale to breath of the wild? :O A man can dream

Probably not anytime soon.

An important thing people aren't considering is that just because switch cartridges aren't discs doesn't mean they load insanely fast. A Digital PS4 game loaded on an SSD; normalizing for other factors, should load games way faster than a switch cart(2-3x). But the switch cart speed is 3-5x faster than loading from a BD-disc or magnetic HDD(2x-3x), so very fast compared to the current norm.

They load faster than disks, but operate differently than traditional ROM carts. Traditional ROM carts didn't load (most) their data into system RAM, they were just read from directly by the CPU, and in essence treated as an extension of the system memory rather than as a medium to load bulk data from.
(it's more complicated than this, but that's the gist of it).

So even though they're really fast, they're not anywhere near as fast as traditional cartridges, because the data needs to be read from the switch cart, then loaded into RAM before being used by the CPU, a step the original systems skipped.

That said, things like increases in flash speed, things like intel optane etc, might filter down to consumer level goods and decrease load times dramatically, but they'll still be there.

The only technology on the horizon that would bring back something similar to cartridge loading speeds is memristor based storage, and that's like 5-10yrs off from even being prosumer level, but that would be near instant by modern standards for games.

A bigger barrier to this is that even at 50-100gb in size, many modern games still are largely compressed, and there's large performance improvements(at the cost of load times), to be had by using uncompressed assets. So the size(and thus, the amount of data to load) will keep ballooning with each new increase in storage speed and size, offsetting many of the speed gains made.

So we won't see large practical leaps until we either have enough storage(TBs per game) to use exclusively uncompressed data, or memristor based memory(where we don't need to load and just read it like old carts).

[Auspice]

the NES and SNES redesigns didn't change internals and were only cosmetic late cycle changes

For what it's worth, there was a huge difference between the original NES and the NES-101/Top Loader.

Original NES


NES 101/Top Loader

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/BlasterMasterZ/s...41783831822336

Blaster Master has been updated to work with the Pro controller

[Darus Grey]

For what it's worth, there was a huge difference between the original NES and the NES-101/Top Loader.

Yeah, as I've mentioned in the past, there's actually 5-10 revisions of the NES and SNES internally, different chips, different motherboards, different internal components and ICs. Look at all the different 1chip revisions of the SNES as an example.

Most people conflate the external re-model with interior remodels, interior remodels are very frequent to adjust cost and allow them to lower the price, and not the same as an exterior revision(which often also has an internal revision as well).

[Spider-Dan]

What we can dream is that nintendo paved the way to newer consoles getting rid of disc media.

Nintendo was the last major company to finally support digital game releases. Their obsession with cartridges has never had any impact on the proliferation of disc media.

Furthermore, until discs cease to be a distribution medium for movies, Sony has WAY too much invested in the PS as a media player to move away from optical drives. And as we saw with the aborted original XBONE game delivery system, purely digital downloads (or more accurately: licenses) aren't a real solution either.

[Malithar]

Furthermore, until discs cease to be a distribution medium for movies, Sony has WAY too much invested in the PS as a media player to move away from optical drives.

Yeah, love their support of 4k discs with the PS4 Pro. Oh wait...

Not saying it's not still a portion of their overall platform, but I don't think optical drives are nearly as important to them as you're insinuating. Maybe they have data showing that digital is the new way forward and the investment into each console for a 4k drive just wasn't worth it or something, idk. But if their investment was so huge that they couldn't move away from it, I can't imagine who in their right mind would decide it best to not move the platform forward with a 4k drive.

[6souls]

It's being reported that many of the frame rate issues are tied to the Switch's Wifi functionality. Supposed there is a firmware update in the works that will stabilize this.

[bori]

Splatoon 2 demo on eShop right now, march 24 - 26 online servers will be up for the demo

[Spider-Dan]

Yeah, love their support of 4k discs with the PS4 Pro. Oh wait...

Not saying it's not still a portion of their overall platform, but I don't think optical drives are nearly as important to them as you're insinuating.

The fact that the PS4 lineup does not support 4K discs (....yet) is in no way an indication that Sony intends to leave the optical disc market. To the contrary, the fact that 4K Blu-ray even exists in the first place pretty strongly signals otherwise.

If, somehow, Sony and MS do end up leaving the optical drive behind, it definitely WON'T be for cartridges or any other form of chip-based storage; it'll be digital downloads, or nothing. Optical media has enormous cost advantages over chip storage and this isn't going to change anytime soon.

[Kirin]

For what it's worth, there was a huge difference between the original NES and the NES-101/Top Loader.

Didn't know that, honestly. But these hardware changes were more for making things cheaper to produce (likely to increase the profitability in the later stages of the NES cycle) instead of upgrading the internals to a more powerful NES Neo, correct?

[Spider-Dan]

Correct. They are more like PSOne or PS2/3/4Slim than PS4 Pro.

[6souls]

Load Time Comparisons
Internal > MicroSD > Cartridge
Internal is up to 5 seconds faster than Cartridge, There is a Speed Cap on MicroSD
Games that are d/l to the Internal cannot be transferred to MicroSD, Require a fresh d/l
Once a MicroSD is installed it becomes the Primary storage, You cannot choose where to have a game installed

[Boyiee]

I want a second charger so I can bring it to work, looks like the Nintendo one is available in some places for 30-35 or I could roll with the Google pixel one for 35. Also really want a second dock so I can bring the console into the bedroom and just pop it in instead of always being handheld, but they are charging an ass load for that piece of plastic which just houses a USB C to hdmi. Looks like there's some 3d printed ones popping up, come on reddit!

[Kirin]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/14/149...nch-first-week

Early figures are indicating Switch has 1.5 million units *sold* to consumers, as opposed to shipped units to retailers.

Also, Zelda has a nearly 90% attach rate. So thats almost 1.35 million copis of BotW sold as well.

Nintendo had indicated a 2 million goal of units shipped through end of March, so that may have already happened since these figures only account for week 1 sales.

If you see 3d printed docks starting to pop up let me know, that would be awesome if I could have one in my bedroom as well.

[Jamison]

I haven't seen full docks, but there are stands showing up on Reddit & Thingverse.

[Boyiee]

Yeah the stands look great 3d printed, already looking for a public printer in my area, but I need a second dock similar to the one with the console with a charging port and hdmi out. The one with the console is basically a piece of plastic and they are slowly popping up but gotta get the right one, one without a screen scratching front.

[Serra]

TOKYO—Nintendo Co. has decided to at least double its planned production of the Switch console in the year ending March 2018 owing to strong demand, people briefed on the plans said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintend...ole-1489728545