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> It really makes me think Nintendo has an untapped market here to sell a little box you plug into your PC that plays switch games, interfaces with their contro

> It really makes me think Nintendo has an untapped market here to sell a little box you plug into your PC that plays switch games, interfaces with their controllers, etc. They've done oddball stuff like the SNES Gameboy player and GameCube GBA player add-ons in the past, it feels like there would be people willing to pay to properly play Switch games on their gaming PCs. It seems unlikely they would be willing to let go of control like that. With all their oddball stuff, you were still largely within the Nintendo ecosystem. They also probably don't want to deal with the piracy problem on PC, considering they already deal with it on their relatively locked-down consoles. For better or for worse, Nintendo also likes to really control the experience you get playing games on their platforms; It would probably not be a great look for them to have to deal with thousands of customers that are trying to run their games on hardware older than a Switch and complaining that it's a terrible experience. Yeah the existing hardware is underpowered, but its uniformly underpowered, and that's worth quite a bit too. I think for Nintendo, the more prudent solution would be to release an updated Switch with some more powerful hardware that's fully backwards compatible with the existing Switch library. It would be very par for the course for them, and assuage most of the complaints about the Switch being underpowered.

bzzzt 3y ago
People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch.
- ZoF 3y ago
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- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  More recently the comparison I've been hearing is against things like the Steam Deck, which are a little more fair. > It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch. Of course, but there have been plenty of games released for the Switch that could seemingly do with a bit more oomph from the hardware, TotK being the current example.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    I've just been playing TotK for a few hours and was so engrossed by all the little details that make the game world feel alive the frame rate didn't bother me at all. It's perfectly fine if you just want to experience the game.
- monocasa 3y ago
  > People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. I mean, the SoC on the switch was long in the tooth at launch. It's almost exactly the same hardware as in the tegra shield that came out two years prior, but Nintendo clocks it down to 1Ghz, about half the speed of the shield. There's some legitimate complaints that it's a dog slow system because of that. For instance this new Zelda is frame locked to 20fps in some areas apparently.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    The Switch combines lower powered A57 (a soc from..2012 on a 20nm process) with a Maxwell GPU (9+ years old at this point) Honestly this is the time to start working on a Switch successor, they could easily more than double the current compute capabilities while keeping the same or lower power envelope. That doesn't even counts the untapped bonuses from much higher memory speeds. I would instantly buy this, we would be looking at mobile machines more powerful than a PS4 Pro which is imho more than enough for the type of console. Nintendo doesn't even need to build it on the latest state of the art TSMC process, even the 5nm should be enough.
    - Tepix 3y ago
      > I would instantly buy this Why? Will it make the games more fun to play? Does it enable more fun games? I don't see it. Nintendo has always thrived on underpowered hardware.
      - epolanski 3y ago
        By your logic, why move past the Wii U or Wii or any console before it? The machine I descrive is already quite underpowered compared to Nintendo's competition by magnitude of orders. This limits my enjoyment of Nintendo games and I prefer emulators. Anyway hardware limits are already apparent and yes some games aren't as enjoyable due to very low stuttering performance.
        Jorengarenar 3y ago
- lawn 3y ago
  > People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Not really. If you can get better performance emulating a newly released game on the Steam Deck, then the complaints have merit. (See Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for instance.)
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    There always will be faster hardware, that's beside the point. Games that are designed for their target hardware should not have problems.
  - shaoonb 3y ago
    Scarlet and Violet was as much an optimisation problem as a hardware problem.
- zirgs 3y ago
  I don't expect PS5 level performance, but Steam Deck level performance should be the bare minimum.
- kenhwang 3y ago
  Rather, I wish it'd have closer to PS5 performance while docked. Mobile performance is totally understandable given the battery/heat limitations. Even smartphones have been thermally limited for performance for the last couple years. What I'd like to see is a much stronger CPU/GPU that gets severely undervolted/underclocked while on mobile (or the big cores in it's big.LITTLE design being way bigger), but a dock that comes with fans that force feeds air in to allow the hardware to run significantly faster when docked. Expandable SSD storage on the dock would be excellent as well.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    That would be counterproductive. Game DEVs would optimize for docked mode primarily and it would clash with the usage of the customers. Many users like the Switch for its portability. My kids only dock the switch when they want to play dance games.
    - kenhwang 3y ago
      They already have to optimize for docked/undocked modes separately anyway since it's rendering different resolutions using different hardware speeds depending on whether it's docked or not. There's already a mobile optimized hardware with the Switch Lite too, is it really that much of a stretch to make a dock-optimized version? Besides, the Steam Deck has shown that even very demanding high end games designed without any consideration for mobile hardware can be sufficiently scaled down to run on mobile hardware (and mobile hardware has gotten powerful enough where the tradeoffs are tolerable).
      - nirvdrum 3y ago
        On the other hand, the Steam Deck goes the other way with docking. It doesn't improve quality at all.
    - ascagnel_ 3y ago
      People have been asking for a docked-only/screen-less version of the Switch since it was announced, but I don't think that market is big enough to sustain itself (or would be particularly happy with the result.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Valve has proven that you can get extremely high performance on a mobile device with the Steam Deck. Personally, I'd be happy enough if the Nintendo Store didn't take half a minute to load assets.
- ilyt 3y ago
  >People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch. Sure it is. But that's not what AAA titles are, most of them run at locked 30 that sometimes drop to 20 and in action game that will be noticeable. People are complaining beacuse the "console sellers", the biggest budget titles are struggling and just play better on emulation
- darkteflon 3y ago
  No one with even an inkling of what that feat would require is asking for that. Many would be happy just to get 60fps across the board for their flagship titles like Zelda. That doesn’t require anything like “PS5-level performance”, and is an entirely reasonable ask given the current Switch is on 9 year-old silicon.
- smcl 3y ago
  > PS5 level performance on a mobile device PS5-level performance on a six year old mobile device, no less. It's showing its age now, but it's still a fun little device and has a few absolute bangers. BotW and Super Mario Odyssey alone are nearly worth picking one up.
- Jackson__ 3y ago
  For me it's simply seeing that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer using nvidia hardware. A new version of the console, 2x more powerful, on Ampere/Lovelace hardware would be absolutely revolutionary for this console space. With it they could rely on DLSS2/3 to increase performance from 720p30 -> 1440p60.
conaclos 3y ago
> I think for Nintendo, the more prudent solution would be to release an updated Switch with some more powerful hardware that's fully backwards compatible with the existing Switch library. It would be very par for the course for them, and assuage most of the complaints about the Switch being underpowered. This could result in fragmentation: some games could only run smoothly on the new version. I pretty like the idea of using old hardware and to require game dev to adapt to this.
- trufas 3y ago
  It's happened before[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS
sudosysgen 3y ago
The piracy point is moot. If you go on torrent websites, you'll find repacks of Nintendo games with prepackaged and set up emulators. It can't really get worse than that.

bzzzt 3y ago

People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch.

ZoF 3y ago
[dead]
genocidicbunny 3y ago
More recently the comparison I've been hearing is against things like the Steam Deck, which are a little more fair. > It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch. Of course, but there have been plenty of games released for the Switch that could seemingly do with a bit more oomph from the hardware, TotK being the current example.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  I've just been playing TotK for a few hours and was so engrossed by all the little details that make the game world feel alive the frame rate didn't bother me at all. It's perfectly fine if you just want to experience the game.
monocasa 3y ago
> People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. I mean, the SoC on the switch was long in the tooth at launch. It's almost exactly the same hardware as in the tegra shield that came out two years prior, but Nintendo clocks it down to 1Ghz, about half the speed of the shield. There's some legitimate complaints that it's a dog slow system because of that. For instance this new Zelda is frame locked to 20fps in some areas apparently.
- epolanski 3y ago
  The Switch combines lower powered A57 (a soc from..2012 on a 20nm process) with a Maxwell GPU (9+ years old at this point) Honestly this is the time to start working on a Switch successor, they could easily more than double the current compute capabilities while keeping the same or lower power envelope. That doesn't even counts the untapped bonuses from much higher memory speeds. I would instantly buy this, we would be looking at mobile machines more powerful than a PS4 Pro which is imho more than enough for the type of console. Nintendo doesn't even need to build it on the latest state of the art TSMC process, even the 5nm should be enough.
  - Tepix 3y ago
    > I would instantly buy this Why? Will it make the games more fun to play? Does it enable more fun games? I don't see it. Nintendo has always thrived on underpowered hardware.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      By your logic, why move past the Wii U or Wii or any console before it? The machine I descrive is already quite underpowered compared to Nintendo's competition by magnitude of orders. This limits my enjoyment of Nintendo games and I prefer emulators. Anyway hardware limits are already apparent and yes some games aren't as enjoyable due to very low stuttering performance.
      - Jorengarenar 3y ago
lawn 3y ago
> People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Not really. If you can get better performance emulating a newly released game on the Steam Deck, then the complaints have merit. (See Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for instance.)
- bzzzt 3y ago
  There always will be faster hardware, that's beside the point. Games that are designed for their target hardware should not have problems.
- shaoonb 3y ago
  Scarlet and Violet was as much an optimisation problem as a hardware problem.
zirgs 3y ago
I don't expect PS5 level performance, but Steam Deck level performance should be the bare minimum.
kenhwang 3y ago
Rather, I wish it'd have closer to PS5 performance while docked. Mobile performance is totally understandable given the battery/heat limitations. Even smartphones have been thermally limited for performance for the last couple years. What I'd like to see is a much stronger CPU/GPU that gets severely undervolted/underclocked while on mobile (or the big cores in it's big.LITTLE design being way bigger), but a dock that comes with fans that force feeds air in to allow the hardware to run significantly faster when docked. Expandable SSD storage on the dock would be excellent as well.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  That would be counterproductive. Game DEVs would optimize for docked mode primarily and it would clash with the usage of the customers. Many users like the Switch for its portability. My kids only dock the switch when they want to play dance games.
  - kenhwang 3y ago
    They already have to optimize for docked/undocked modes separately anyway since it's rendering different resolutions using different hardware speeds depending on whether it's docked or not. There's already a mobile optimized hardware with the Switch Lite too, is it really that much of a stretch to make a dock-optimized version? Besides, the Steam Deck has shown that even very demanding high end games designed without any consideration for mobile hardware can be sufficiently scaled down to run on mobile hardware (and mobile hardware has gotten powerful enough where the tradeoffs are tolerable).
    - nirvdrum 3y ago
      On the other hand, the Steam Deck goes the other way with docking. It doesn't improve quality at all.
  - ascagnel_ 3y ago
    People have been asking for a docked-only/screen-less version of the Switch since it was announced, but I don't think that market is big enough to sustain itself (or would be particularly happy with the result.
mschuster91 3y ago
> People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Valve has proven that you can get extremely high performance on a mobile device with the Steam Deck. Personally, I'd be happy enough if the Nintendo Store didn't take half a minute to load assets.
ilyt 3y ago
>People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch. Sure it is. But that's not what AAA titles are, most of them run at locked 30 that sometimes drop to 20 and in action game that will be noticeable. People are complaining beacuse the "console sellers", the biggest budget titles are struggling and just play better on emulation
darkteflon 3y ago
No one with even an inkling of what that feat would require is asking for that. Many would be happy just to get 60fps across the board for their flagship titles like Zelda. That doesn’t require anything like “PS5-level performance”, and is an entirely reasonable ask given the current Switch is on 9 year-old silicon.
smcl 3y ago
> PS5 level performance on a mobile device PS5-level performance on a six year old mobile device, no less. It's showing its age now, but it's still a fun little device and has a few absolute bangers. BotW and Super Mario Odyssey alone are nearly worth picking one up.
Jackson__ 3y ago
For me it's simply seeing that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer using nvidia hardware. A new version of the console, 2x more powerful, on Ampere/Lovelace hardware would be absolutely revolutionary for this console space. With it they could rely on DLSS2/3 to increase performance from 720p30 -> 1440p60.

conaclos 3y ago

> I think for Nintendo, the more prudent solution would be to release an updated Switch with some more powerful hardware that's fully backwards compatible with the existing Switch library. It would be very par for the course for them, and assuage most of the complaints about the Switch being underpowered. This could result in fragmentation: some games could only run smoothly on the new version. I pretty like the idea of using old hardware and to require game dev to adapt to this.

trufas 3y ago
It's happened before[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS

sudosysgen 3y ago

The piracy point is moot. If you go on torrent websites, you'll find repacks of Nintendo games with prepackaged and set up emulators. It can't really get worse than that.