5 ms·

I was pretty skeptical about the original Switch but bought it on a whim after being laid off. It quickly became one of my favorite gaming consoles. The abili

• markgreene 2y ago
  cloud gaming has given me this same revelation. It's as portable as a Switch but the gaming experience isn't limited by the hardware in hand. Connectivity is important for the experience, though.
  • machinekob 2y ago
    cloud gaming is good if you live close to the servers and don't care about graphics, but playing with +60-100ms for every action feels very bad. It almost feels like playing on 15-20 fps PC and quality of streaming video is always a problem compared to native quality maybe AV1 will fix it.
    • joseda-hg 2y ago
      I have gigabit, but no servers that are close, it's... rough
      • TingPing 2y ago
        Streaming in the same house still isn’t very good. Games are very latency sensitive.
        • op00to 2y ago
          My kid plays fortnite using home streaming to an xbox, and says he doesn't notice the latency. I do the same on an Asus ROG Ally, and it's "good enough". I am not a competitive FPV player, but suffer from OCD and notice latency and it tweaks me hard.
        • PaulHoule 2y ago
          Depends on the game. I think I'm more sensitive to latency (less able to compensate) than most people. I couldn't enjoy playing Titanfall until I put my Samsung TV in game mode; I would just get hit and couldn't do anything about it playing League of Legends on my gaming laptop with a 4K monitor, but when I hooked up an external monitor, mirrored the screen, and ran a clock, I took photos showing my laptops' screen was behind by 30 ms. I started playing on an external monitor and started to win. I even found I had a hard time with some 1 player games such as Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet if I didn't run in game mode. On the other hand, I went through a phase where I did a lot of streaming from my PC to a NVIDIA Shield and an XBOX. Sometimes through wired Ethernet, something through an airMAX microwave link to my other house. Games like Persona 5 and Orcs Must Die 3 were just fine, but I could not play any Rhythm games, which I have a knack for, High-Fi Rush was no fun at all.
        • wincy 2y ago
          I'm playing single player games via Parsec and the latency feels fine. Moonlight is tolerable but Steam streaming feels terrible for some strange reason. This is running two Wifi 6 devices so nothing is even wired. I often use a controller connected to my laptop, or even better use the wireless controller, connect that to the physical device then you bypass the controller latency and only the video has a lag, which is kind of a neat trick if you're close enough to the computer you're streaming from. The only sorts of games I can't play are things like Binding of Isaac that are super dependent on reaction speeds, but even games like Elden Ring feel fine.
          • TingPing 2y ago
            Steam Streaming was what I used which was noticeably delayed, so I should try some alternatives.
            • hiatus 2y ago
              Sunshine on the server and moonlight on the client blows steam link out of the water in terms of latency. Even on my home network with everything on ethernet, steam link would stutter. I sometimes forget I am not directly connected to a computer while on the couch.
        • jeffhuys 2y ago
          Do you expect less than 7ms? Because that's my latency with Geforce Now. Almost unnoticable.
          • joseda-hg 2y ago
            7ms is intra national ping, I have about half a continent to the closest GeForce Now and a bit more to the closest XCloud 200+ ms
      • lostmsu 2y ago
        Shameless self-PR: we are building p2p cloud gaming at https://borg.games https://borg.games You should get low latency as long as anyone in your city joins as a provider.
        • mh- 2y ago
          Did clicking on the Rent my PC tab really try to benchmark my GPU through my browser, or did I accidentally click another button on that page inadvertently that triggered that? If the former, that's a terrible idea. If the latter, that button really needs a confirmation and explanation of what's about to happen. I'm viewing on an Intel Mac and it hung my entire computer for like 15 seconds. I didn't even connect that it was related to viewing your site until I got the error at the end and everything unfroze.
          • lostmsu 2y ago
            It does. Sorry about the experience, we will try to improve it. Having user confirm it is not a good option, because every click is a hassle. What we could do is first run a very short version of a smaller benchmark, and if that takes too long, don't run the main one. Then the worst case you will have a 100ms lag at this point, which is way better than 5 seconds of reading.
            • mh- 2y ago
              It's a neat feature, I just think it'd be ideal to do a confirmation first. It wouldn't be a great experience if it happened on mobile, either. Every click is a hassle, but principal of least astonishment applies here. Literally not a soul will be expecting that to happen when casually browsing your site.
            • jirf_dev 2y ago
              “Every click is a hassle” so you created a click that is one big hassle?
        • hiatus 2y ago
          What does utilization look like? I would be interested in running this on a spare machine but it's not clear how large the potential audience of renters may be in my area.
    • koromak 2y ago
      Yeah my experience has been thats its basically unplayable. I'm the kind of person who refunds when a game is <60fps though.
    • jeffhuys 2y ago
      7ms latency, 4k120fps with geforce now. 10ms on wifi. I'm not kidding. It's ALMOST perfect. I play BF1 through it. Try it once (I believe they still have the "free for 1hr per session, infinite sessions"? That's what sold it to me). I can play very intensive games (graphically) on my macbook on the couch. It's amazing, and I couldn't believe the 10ms on wifi. It's mind-blowing. BUT I live near Amsterdam, where a server cluster is. Also, about the graphics: I'm borrowing a 4080 every time. Everything is on max. If you're in a very (very) hard scene for compression, then yeah, you'll see (very little) artifacts. But I run it on 75mbit, and that's a LOT.
  • duxup 2y ago
    Yeah I gave GeForceNow a run and I really liked it. There are limits but I like just firing up a game regardless of platform.
  • brink 2y ago
    Streaming videos, leasing cars, cloud gaming, spotify, are all great until the distributor takes it away. I prefer to own my things. The sense that something is mine increases the pleasure of using something for me. It probably stems from my acquired lack of trust in people. The idea that there's a suit in a high-rise building that spends their days thinking about how to exploit my continued enjoyment of a title by raising the fee, or not addressing congestion hours, or retracting the title when the contract is up and renewing would cost too much, or putting a clause in the service agreement that strips me of my right to sue them if I lose an arm in their amusement park, simply by blurring the lines of ownership.. it bothers me.
• ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  The Switch is genuinely one of the last pieces of hardware I was really excited about, and I can't say that about much anymore. It's extremely well put together, I've repaired mine a number of times with no issues (honestly opening anything made in Japan is a joy, the engineering is so good) and the specs leave a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate, but at the same time, you wouldn't know it while using it. The XBox is such a curmudgeonly slow experience to use, everything in the menus takes forever to load, the dash jerks and lags, and it's just like... this machine can run Halo Infinite, why does it struggle so damn hard with just... boxes and jpegs? The Switch has a similar issue occasionally in the store application, but outside of that, settings are snappy, updates are practically instant, it turns on and off so quickly. It's what consoles are supposed to be. And honestly in this same vein, the PS5 is also bloody impressive, but that impressiveness came with an impressive price too. The Switch costing as little as it did and still holding it's own is so cool.
  • erwincoumans 2y ago
    Except for the drifting joycons problems. We had to replace many. Hope Switch2 fixes that drift.
    • bombcar 2y ago
      I kind of like the joy con issue, as it means I can send the controllers back to Nintendo and get them fixed for free, even when the problem isn't the joycon - it's the kids destroying the controller. https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/region/d/joyconrepair https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/region/d/joycon... (Nintendo has always had excellent support - I remember getting a Gamecube refurbished long after the Wii was everywhere).
    • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      Honestly I swapped them myself both in the Joycons and in the Pro controller a couple times each over the years. The modules cost like $15 through Amazon or Ebay, and unlike the XBox controller, they're separate modules with a ribbon connector instead of soldered in, which makes replacing them a breeze.
• _fat_santa 2y ago
  The Switch was the first device where i saw how well the mobile + docked system worked and it was my favorite device until I got a Steam Deck. The Deck is killer IMO because it takes the same form factor of the Switch, gives you more power and no restrictions on games.
  • irrational 2y ago
    No restrictions, except you can't play the Zelda, Mario, etc. games.
    • OtomotO 2y ago
      Of course you can.
      • philistine 2y ago
        We all know about piracy buddy, but between having to deal with a Switch emulator and the major pain points of extracting keys to get Tears of the Kingdom to run and putting in a credit card, I'll take the credit card route.
        • thaumasiotes 2y ago
          You don't need to extract keys. Other people have already done that. The "pain point" is just positioning a file in a directory.
        • OtomotO 2y ago
          You talk about piracy, I talk about just having to bring a single device of the devices I own with me and using a paid product on another paid device.
    • NicuCalcea 2y ago
      That's not a restriction, nobody's preventing Nintendo from bringing those games to the platform. I don't currently have pasta at my place, but that's because neither me nor my partner have bought any, not because it's banned from the house.
• tshaddox 2y ago
  It's fascinating how the Switch can be such a different device for different people. I bought my Switch in 2022 and it has remained exclusively docked under my TV since then. I have yet to even conceive of a scenario in which I would want to play it on the go. Perhaps if I went on long flights more than a couple of times a year? But who am I kidding, I would still read or listen to podcasts on the plane.
  • 2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
    Play it in bed.
    • bigstrat2003 2y ago
      I have no desire to do that though. It's uncomfortable to sit up in bed, and uncomfortable to play games lying down.
  • dcrazy 2y ago
    Airplane is the only time ours comes undocked from the TV.
  • pavon 2y ago
    The initial reason for me was to play it while others wanted to watch TV. And then once I got used to that, I found myself preferring to play it in other places in the house even when the TV was free - on the porch when the weather is nice, on my comfy reading chair, playing rhythm games on the exercise bike, next to the computer to have quick access to strategy guides, etc.
• bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I would say that after being a happy Switch owner for 6 years I still think the portability aspect is useless. It's too big to take with me when I leave the house, and if I'm at home I get a way better experience while docked. I thought it was a stupid gimmick on launch and I still think that. I recognize I'm apparently in the minority, though.