Switch Discussion Thread

[Exhuminator]

I'm not even close to that for gaming, in any form.

Then the qualifiers come into play... how bright is your screen, how loud is your audio, are you running GPS, cellular data, wifi, bluetooth, simultaneous apps all in the background? All these extra things chomp on the battery in tandem with the game itself.

On my Droid Turbo 2, even playing graphically intensive 3D games, I can easily get 5 hours before I need to consider a recharge. I'll be surprised if the Switch can claim a metric even close to that for similar style games.

[fastbilly1]

My phone has no issues playing games, but it also has double the battery of most of your puny phones and is waterproof - Galaxy S6 Active.

Full Brightness, Bluetooth controller, no wifi/cell, I can get eight (8) hours of moderate to high use. With ranodm wifi/cell use I get fiveish. If I dont game or do music in the car, I can easily get two days of average use per charge.

[Exhuminator]

Full Brightness, Bluetooth controller, no wifi/cell, I can get eight (8) hours of moderate to high use.

[Sarge]

Yeah, your phone is rated for double the battery life of mine. Five hours sounds about right.

[fastbilly1]

I only bought the phone since my old phone was a Casio Brigade. The waterproof element was way more useful than cutting edge specs. The brigade fell out of my pocket one day when bushhogging and when I found it it still worked. Despite the large gash in the side of it...And after having a Galaxy S3 and having problems with battery life it was time to upgrade. The S6Active was the only waterproof Android phone that ATT carried in store when I had to replace my S3 last year.

Super Bomberman 1-3 and Mega Bomberman were $60 games. Bomberman DS was $30. So $60 is not unheard of for a Bomberman game. Though Bomberman Blast on the Wii was $20.

Either way I will pay it. I have gotten more than enough fun out of that series that a new version is worthwhile. And since it is 8 player on the go it may replace both Bomberman DS and Saturn Bomberman.

Destructoid is reporting that it will be $50. So if $40 if you have Prime or GCU.

Good looking out BMOC

[Tanooki]

$50 isn't bad, I mean that's what we paid for what would be considered a thin offering before on a teeny ROM chip when it came to Bomberman 1&2 NES, Super Bomberman 1-2(3 SFC), Bomberman HuCard as well. Bomberman Online for Dreamcast was that price and it had nothing for the single player really at all if i recall (or they covered it up to shovel the online aspect, and in that case I need to buy it.)

And no I'm not abusing my phone, Pokemon Go is a battery vampire. If I don't play games, just use it for mainly calls, light browsing, email checks a couple times, maybe even some Mp3s it'll last a couple of days. Anything pushing data, 3D, or worse, both at the same time are just nasty draws on life. Those ratings on that chart aren't really anything but kind of dishonest since it doesn't focus on anything but a very light load.

Since we're on Nintendo, Mario Run I could go hours on easy since it just pops a fast check online to verify the game (dumb, annoying) but after that it's just the game.



Anyway if we're going to go off on these battery stories perhaps we need another thread?

Reality is given the battery capacity we can guess the system tablet body has 3-5 hours isn't bad given the load involved. That falls right in line with the Sony Vita of all things and it's notably better off than that device. If no one who had a Vita who was fine with that has no issue with the Switch then it's the same people just living in Gameboy land wher eyou get 10-20hours depending on the model or more.

[Reprise]

I think Bomberman Online did have a single player/story mode actually. I can't realy remember though, it's been years and years since I have played it. Good game actually.

[isiolia]

I guess Nintendo is doing direct sales in Japan? Since they can order custom color combos there. In case you don't want Batman Grey or Harley Quinn Blue and Red.

Might mean their preorder/supply issues will be different too >_>

I suspect that they're banking on the Japanese market a lot more anyway though, since having the "personal" screen type console is likely very suited to it.

[Tanooki]

Due to a post I saw on AtariAge which someone pointed out the performance of the TegraX1 vs the 360 it got me thinking about a few things, and below is a post(most of it) and after poking around some to cite a few things I don't think this system is as weak as people are annoyingly trying to credit it with.


As shown the X1 can pull off quite a bit, and one thing I don't see people bringing up which I think is a must is Nvidias VULKAN API that the Tegra (and their big computer chips like the 9XX/10XX boards use too) which pulls off some insane stuff with low overhead. In 2015 (cite: http://gearburn.com/...vidia-tegra-x1/) Nintendo got on the board of the development crew the Khronos Group involved in this API so if this isn't in the Switch it would be mind blowing. And well you know what, it is, it's on their own website: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/ado ... cts#vulkan (ctrl+F Switch) gets you this:
Nintendo Switch™CTS Version: 1.0.1.0
CPU: ARM
OS: Nintendo OS

Now consider this link: http://www.gsmarena.com/nvidia_announce ... -10643.php Look at the comparison in power of the stock Tegra X1 in teraflops vs the One and PS4 (it's 1 teraflop of floating point performance. The Xbox One is capable of 1.3 teraflop, and PS4 can do 1.84 teraflop. That's not that huge of a gulf, and neither have access to what Nvidia has including that large boost from Vulkan API which would bridge the gap even further.

Look I'm not saying the Switch is on the same level, or that it is a side by side console beast -- it's not. But what it is is one hell of an overly powered ARM based handheld device with roots in those links I gave with further development since 2014/2015 that also had added performance enhancing customizations and APIs(Vulkan) to benefit it.

Given what you can see of the PS4/One game RIME being shown for the Switch so far, it's not that far back against the stock PS4/One (not their Pro models), so conversion of games to the format will not be that hard or bad to do, and would likely look at least as tidy as the PS4->PS3 conversions or somewhere in between.

[isiolia]

RIME isn't really going to be a good measure, given that it's an indie title with a minimal graphics style.

Vulkan isn't an nVidia thing. It's the cross-platform version of AMD's Mantle API, and is actually available for quite a lot of GPUs - to include those in the Xbox One and PS4 (and Intel graphics for that matter). Regardless of the capabilities of it, it's not a platform advantage.

Objectively speaking, there have been no big cross platform ports announced for the Switch that aren't essentially 7th gen based. The sports titles still have 360/PS3 versions, as does Skyrim. Even what Nintendo has shown is not indicative of a particularly powerful piece of hardware. Zelda is apparently running at up to 30fps at 900p when docked, and that's using less demanding aesthetics.

IMO, trying to hold out for it to compete in the home console space is setting yourself up for disappointment. It's basically Wii U 2.0 there, if not worse off. As a portable/personal device, it's a different story, and I suspect it'll ramp up to being nigh essential in 2-3 years as 3DS development dries up and shifts over.