The performance was never the consideration for Nintendo. They want a handheld that can last a long time, so they will always clock their chips down. You can’t compare 30 watts all the time to 30 watts plugged in, let alone 5 watts in handheld mode.
Steam Decks are great, but lets be real; when you play a big AAA title, even on moderate settings, you might get two hours out of the machine pushing it to the limit at full TDP.
This is kind of a nothingburger story. We always knew Nintendo were not going to scale their machines up to the level of PC gaming handhelds.
Us folks with original model Switch’s ain’t barely getting two hours either, though.
Let’s see how long the Deck battery lasts after 7 years. Luckily the batteries in both are replaceable.
With a lot of effort sure. The batteries aren’t a simple swap like they should be.
The performance was never the consideration for Nintendo. They want a handheld that can last a long time, so they will always clock their chips down.
I fully agree with the first sentence, but i don’t think the second quite hits the mark. The real reason is simply cost.
If Nintendo was concerned with battery life, then they’d still go with a modern processor, but as you say clock it down to hit the efficiency sweet spot over chasing performance. But instead they usually choose something that is already dated at release (even accounting for development time), as opposed to a company like Apple that pays a premium to get first dibs on any new processing node.
I think it’s prudent to be on an older node, using stock that’s more abundant, even if it’s older - especially if it still performs the duties well enough. You’re 100% on the cost side of things, especially considering that Nintendo has never had any consoles that were crazy expensive. Everything was always supposed to be family friendly and therefore family attainable.
I still think battery life is a higher concern for them than sheer power when in handheld mode though, and that’s a key differentiating factor between a Deck and a Switch, besides the Nintendo first-party library and chip architecture. It’s really cool that the Deck is flexible enough to do both high performance and low performance tasks with toggles for the draw.
And IIRC Nintendo doesn’t sell their consoles at a loss assuming they’ll make up the loss on licensing fees, so that’s an added incentive to pick a cost-conscious design.
I’ve been playing fallout 4 with a shit load of mods and it feels like I’m doing legitimate harm to my deck sometimes. Super neat that it works, but yeah it’s like 2 hours MAX.
Still kind of amazing considering it’s a full ass AAA game with graphics settings you’re not allowed to touch by default lmao
For me, One of the issues is while it’s docked it doesn’t clock up. The current switch basically runs at half it’s potential.
Hell, The path for a switch pro would have been easy. So you have the regular switch which can be docked or handheld, The switch light which is handheld only, you could have had a switch pro which was dock only. And change the form factor so that it has a bulkier cooling system better power delivery, and then clock up the CPU/GPU and then make it so the RAM never clocked down… But they didn’t because it would have made just how bad the other two were actually running.
So there’s a chance the Deck and modern PCs could emulate the system pretty quickly. Thanks Nintendo!
Thanks to the rise in PC ARM CPUs (Apple Silicone and Snapdragon X), emulating the Switch (also ARM based CPUs) has become extremely easy and efficient. My windows PC needs 180W to emulate Mario Kart 8 at ~60fps while my MacBook Air M2 only needs 15W for better results.
My phone can emulate switch with less than 5W, although it’s not perfect in every game
please share, what’s your phone specs? what emulator? is there a guide or tutorial?
Well I’m not sure at the moment.
I have a phone with a snapdragon 8 gen 3, you need to find the proper drivers for it (I use Mesa Turnip Driver V24.2.0 - Revision 19).
Super Mario Odyssey runs perfectly with it, but Tears of the Kingdom ran at 3 fps in the intro sequence. I saw somebody run it at around 30 but haven’t figured that out yet.
Yuzu used to be available on Android, but that got DMCA’d, so I used the fork Suyu, but that also got DMCA’d a few days ago. Skyline is still available I think, but not sure if that’s still being updated
There is just 0 competition at the current steam deck price point.
That much is a given. Nintendo never goes for top-performance (well, not since the 90s) and it wouldn’t make sense for them either.
Nintendo never goes for top-performance (well, not since the 90s)
GameCube was more performant than PS2 and only a little bit less performant than Xbox. Biggest downside was its small disk.
It’s not the size of the disk that matter, but how you use it
My mom says my disk is big enough.
Was this after you broke both your arms?
The issue with Nintendo is that to their true core, they are still a of card games company that inspire to become the next Disney. The problem with GameCube was polluted with the “for family first”, without realize that their original NES '80 kids where 15~20 year older… not little child anymore. People didn’t want the “Super Mario Sunshine” console, they wanted Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill 2~3 kind of console. The people that buy today the switch are probably clueless parent that buy the “for child” console… or a Nintendo Adult as parallel for Disney Adult.
I like how you lecture the company that produced 5 of the 10 best selling consoles of all time on how they have no idea about what their customers want.
You realize that new kids are born every year right? I was a kid when the GameCube was out and had no experience with NES whatsoever… didn’t matter. And it played Super Mario Sunshine which was btw incredible, as well as shooters.
Despite everything, GC had a pretty solid 3rd party lineup. It was my 2nd favorite Nintendo console after SNES until Switch got all the Metroid Prime remaster and such. Switch now is the Greatest Hits compilation.
Nintendo is at its best when doing something no other game developer would do, and getting laughed at until everyone realizes how great it was in hindsight. What’s new about Switch 2?
INB4 it’s gonna be a repeat of the Wii U. A confusing, non compatible successor to a revolutionary product.
INB4 it’s gonna be a repeat of the Wii U. A confusing, non compatible successor to a revolutionary product.
A bit too revolutionary. Wii had a seriously bad attachment rate. People bought Wii Sports, Mario Kart and Smash. Regular games sold badly. Wii was a party gimmick that collected dust on regular days. Wii U was the attempt (later fulfilled by Switch) to be a regular gaming machine as well.
Yes but the main reason those consoles were so shaky is specifically because they did not address a much younger audience. The original Wii kind of tried to but if you look at its best sellers, a ton of them were not aimed at adults.
The same is true of the Wii U where rather than targeting that audience, they tried to pivot to a more adult console with games like the zombie launch title.
So most of the success of the switch is just that it finally was a family console again. But keep in mind, they have nowhere to pivot to. That’s why the switch 2 is what it is and why it’s so late. They can’t afford a misstep and they also can’t afford to saturate the only market niche they have left.
I think I’ve read backwards compatibility is confirmed, which these days there’s no excuse not to.
I think I’ve read backwards compatibility is confirmed, which these days there’s no excuse not to.
I think they confirmed that during a message to investors.
until everyone realizes how great it was in hindsight.
I don’t think anyone does or ever did think that the Tegra chip was “great”. Lots of things to commend Nintendo on for the Switch, I don’t think that choice was one of them. It was an old chip when they first got it, and they was like 8 years ago.
It’s also one of the reasons so many people pirate, because the Switch has dogshit performance and all of their games look so much better on other hardware.
But yes, I agree, it should be no surprise that they’re not competing with the Steam Deck. And they don’t need to.
I don’t think their choice of chips was what they meant. The Wii’s motion controls, and the Switch’s portable/docked modes and removable controllers are.
None of those have anything to do with performance…
Nor did the comment you replied to previously. It was about how Nintendo innovates in other ways.
Oh look, a modern new Pokemon game with the graphics quality of N64. Must be nice to shit out literally anything from their established IPs, knowing no matter how bland and dated they look, your rabid consumer base will eat it up.
I’d much rather have a game with subpar graphics and excellent gameplay than a game with subpar gameplay and excellent graphics.
I would fucking kill for N64 era 3D Pokemon. Have you seen Pokemon Colosseum animations? The developers repurposed N64 Pokemon Stadium models and animations because they were that good. If those inept fucks at Gamefreak used N64 quality graphics the switch era wouldn’t be considered Pokemon’s dark age.
“What if we just build a clamshell hinge into the Switch 2 and make it small enough to fit into someone’s pocket?”
That’s a brilliant idea! If we’re that innovative again next week, somebody might even suggest adding a second screen to the foldable console.
Learnt from the ps2
There’s a way bigger market in having the cheapest hardware than there is in having decent hardware
Does that account for the fact that the graphics in almost all Nintendo games are dogshit?
Like even with running stupidly low resolution graphics it still won’t perform as well as a steam deck with much better graphics?
I hate Nintendo and everything they stand for with every fiber of my being but graphics in modern Nintendo games don’t seem to be much worse than a average unreal or unity game.
All I ever see are online screenshots though. Maybe BOTW has too many solid colored textures on models where they should’ve made it textured but that’s kind of the style these days so meh. Back in the day Ninendo graphics were quite dogshitty. Wii used the same av cable as the N64 and could output a maximum resolution of something like 854x480 while the other consoles could do 1080p for example. Puke.
I’m not sure how much shittier the N64 was than the Saturn but the PS1 was better. Saturn games could at least handle better textures and weren’t as limited in terms of media storage size. Cds could hold something like 650mb. N64 carts could only hold up to 64mb according to Wikipedia but I seem to remember there might have been some games with larger roms than that.
Good. If I had my way it would be even less performant than the Switch 1, and last for 25 years before needing replacement parts.
There’s nothing with modern complexities that is going to last that long. Think of the complexities of today’s system. I mean I’ve got my original PlayStation, it’s 25 or 26 years old now, and it mostly functions to your point, but it also hasn’t been heavily played (or really played at all) for about 20 years. But my PS2, I went through three of them in 6 years. My Xbox is almost 20 years old, it’s my second (and is making weird noises). And so on. My PS4 at 10 years old runs, but makes a ton of noise and is definitely slower than it used to be. It ain’t making it to 20, that’s for sure, I mean maybe now that it gets zero use it might.
My point is, the more intense they got, the more problems I started to have. As the boomers like saying too, shit ain’t built like it used to be.
Yeah it’s a bit of a pipe dream, but my point was that if they reduced the complexity, increased the build quality, and made it repairable, then I would be so happy.
Nintendo are just the bunch of madlads to pull it off too. It’s not like need to worry about being profitable.
E: my mistake, forgot I was in the gearhead community :p
Another thing is that the power profile of consoles (and computers in general) has gone up a lot since the earlier consoles. Even if it was well-designed, the thermal paste in all of the coolers would still get hard over time and need to be replaced. That wasn’t as much of an issue with consoles like the Nintendo 64 that used a 20-watt wall adapter as opposed to the max of 200 watts* a PS5 can draw under load. (I don’t have a PS5 so I don’t actually know if this is accurate but it’s what Google said)
The switch doesn’t use much power either but having a battery and the thin profile makes that type of longevity a lot harder. (Granted, longevity is hard for anything with a lithium battery)
sigh, takes out 3DS that’s still hanging in there
Just so you know, that wasn’t me. We are having a perfectly reasonable convo, I assure you.
It would actually cost more money to get older process nodes to get lower performance.
No one would be able to afford it if they even tried and failed to make it last that long and there would be no support for it.
Within a couple years there will be an emulator to play it’s games on PC, making it’s durability a moot point
Oh well, maybe this is the best they could do then. Would love to a big player really push the kind of hw we’re talking about, though
Here’s the video that the article references. Timestamped link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X2mBP8i4WYA&t=3840s
