As for general battery life, based on these figures you'll get somewhere between 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hours and 15 minutes playing Breath of the Wild, depending on the settings you use.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/nintendo-switch-battery-l...
To the GP, Nintendo products have this effect on people. They're different enough that people don't know what to expect. You'll find similar sentiments about the Wii U (especially from Nintendo fans - the next Mario/Zelda/SSB is gonna put it over the top!).
I'm interested in wait and see. The hardware is mediocre even though the form factor is great. They really have to get more games out before the holiday season, though, and where they are at they're competing with both mobile devices and consoles. Parents have to justify spending $300 on this + full priced games against more games and better experiences on other consoles (MS IS launching a 4k console, too) and cheaper (much cheaper) games on mobile devices that aren't restricted to gaming. They're in a no man's land of markets where they compete with everyone (for good and bad).
....though it'll probably sell like hotcakes.
You rarely are burned by waiting and seeing with gaming these days... the games stick around, they come down in price, and their content expands.
For a while. Then the novelty/fad factor will wear off and people will realize that it's mediocre hardware, the screen scratches if you put it in the dock too forcefully, the battery life is abysmal compared to an iPad, and the game selection is arguably worse. Then sales will fall off a cliff, just like they did with the original Wii.
I'm not sure what you mean by the hardware is mediocre - are you expecting a desktop class GPU in a tablet form factor? What is your comparison? The Nvidia SOC is quite powerful, and handles 4k output just fine on the Nvidia Shield. I've had no complaints beyond the kickstand and I am loving my Switch so far.
It's not enough to make me not want a switch. I'm planning on getting one as soon as I can find one, but I'm frustrated by the fact that there's no way to play BOTW smoothly on any system, and when it does play smoothly it will likely be in an emulator on a PC.
It's not just about how Zelda plays, it makes me concerned for the long term viability of the Switch.
Not the same games but Uncharted 4 multiplayer is 1080p 60fps and silky smooth. That's not even talking about PC games - it's dirt cheap to run CSGO at 90 fps and 1440p these days.
Bad performance detracts from the experience and it also limits what Nintendo can do with the console over the next three or four years.
Uncharted 4 is only 900p 60fps in multiplayer, and 1080p 30fps in single player (on a regular PS4)
But regardless, if your going to switch up the games, Fast RMX runs at 1080p 60fps on the Switch, even in multiplayer mode.
Yeah, the Switch does not hit the performance of a PS4. But the Switch has just 1/3rd the power draw of a Slim PS4. (Roughly 30 watts average for the Switch, compared to roughly 80 watts average for the Slim PS4). It's not bad hardware at all, when you consider the power budget it's required to operate under, in order to be portable.
I (and many other people) want to play Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, etc., not silky smooth PC games.
1) rare
2) mostly resolved by the day 1 patch that Nintendo released
No one gives a shit anyway. If people cared they wouldn't ever bother with consoles.
Suffice it to say, gamers tend to have poor crystal balls.
Digital Foundry covered this extensively
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhoiGxl6bnE
If you're going to pretend to make authoritative statements on the basis of "it's been discussed to death", then you should say, "Breath of the Wild, whatever its issues, is one of the best games ever made".
See how unconvincing this approach is to someone who disagrees?
The only condescending statement here is the one you made: "This has been discussed, analyzed, and recorded to death. Breath of the Wild has framerate issues."
Next you'll tell me humans never landed on the moon. I'm done!
If you want to provide facts, say what the framerate is, don't say that there are framerate issues. To continue my comparison, it is a fact that a certain reviewer assigned the game a certain score. Whether that is indicative of the quality is opinion, as are the reviews themselves.
It can be one of the greatest games ever made by subjective and objective measures and suffer performance issues.
The only way BotW does not have performance issues is if you consider sub-30 fps acceptable.
If you can't see one, why assume one exists just out of sight?
>The only way BotW does not have performance issues is if you consider sub-30 fps acceptable.
The popularity of the game implies that most people do.
I'd rather have their stuff than crappy pseudo-PCs.
The only reason to get a console these days, besides the switch, is for the exclusivity. With the switch you also get a handheld console in addition to exclusivities.
Can you link me to where I can buy this other portable gaming console which apparently even has a Blu-Ray player despite the small form factor?
My sources all tell me it is because the hardware is woefully underpowered (I don't think I can share any details), not because the software engineers were rushed (most game development is done under what you would consider "rushed" timelines, compared to the rest of the software industry as a whole).
Although FF7 began life on the SNES game, both that and an N64 version were completely scrapped before work started on the PSN version. I'd submit that starting an engine from scratch is a more straightforward task than getting partially through development on one platform, then having to port the engine and ensure it works reasonably well on both the old platform and a new one.
Regardless of whether or not FF7 is a good or bad example, I agree with the general sentiment that there are other developers that have done a better job porting games across disparate platforms.
My comment was merely to point out that having knowledge of hardware nuances isn't the same as being aggressive in optimizing for those nuances.
I also don't consider a Tegra X1 to be woefully underpowered in the Switch's form factor. Given that and the other evidence of a rushed launch, it seems more likely to me that insufficient optimization is to blame.
But I look forward to additional details, post-mortems, etc. becoming available (from you and others) as NDAS and such expire.
Okay...in a vacuum, the battery life complaints sounded ridiculous. But this...this is straight up bonkers to me. Are there any widely played Ipad titles that are an apples-to-apples comparison to BOTW?
as this actually happen to anyone?
> it's mediocre hardware > the battery life is abysmal compared to an iPad
I cant comprehend your comment, it's the best handheld console on the market. For TV console, it's an experience focused on the game. If I wanted something for the graphics I would have bought a desktop computer not a console in the first place.
> the game selection is arguably worse
for a launch console no
> Then sales will fall off a cliff, just like they did with the original Wii
wat
The assumption that those many new gamers would behave like a "core" market was laughably wrong.
As for the portable, Nintendo is the best in the game, benefited from being up against Sony (the worst in the mobile game... they practically assassinated their own platform), and they have the benefit of a built-in market at home.
The Switch isn't a DS... it's not a pocket gaming platform. It isn't as useful as an iPad. It's as powerful as a console. What is it exactly, other than some kind of massive compromise rendered on substandard hardware?
Edit: left out the "isn't".
I would like an excuse to come back to a console, but so far this isn't it, for me.
Otherwise, the only incentive I have to getting one is Zelda, and I already have a Wii U to play that on.
And this was before the discovered flaws on launch: (Left joy con and scratching issue).
The left joycon is fine for me, the scratching I'm a bit more scared. But it's 300$, it's cheaper than an iPad/iPhone, etc...
I love that it's handheld, I travel a lot and so far I've played that in the plane and in various airbnbs, splitting the controller in two and playing snipperclips or bomberman with my girlfriend.
It's probably the best console I bought since the N64. I see a lot of skepticism here, but I assume it is mostly from non-buyers. I predict that this is going to be the biggest christmas for Nintendo this December.