nesdev.com

I figure someone had to make a discussion about this. (We got one for the NES "Classic", although I suppose that's more relevant to this website.) For people who have happened to dodge YouTube for 24 hours, (#1 "trending" video) it's the NX. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI (Damn that music sucks.)



The biggest reason I'm excited is that everyone else seems to be. While I was initially a little disappointed that this would not be a conventional home console (although I honestly wasn't expecting one), I realize that Nintendo has always excelled at portable consoles and, really, makes sense. I'm also glad it puts the BS power issue to rest, as people can't possibly expect this relatively tiny thing to be as powerful as the next VCR Microsoft makes.

I gladly embrace that they are using cartridges. From cost effectiveness to reliability to performance, they are better than discs. Man does that controller look uncomfortable though... Look at the "awesome" D-Pad. Whatever. At 2:46, my mind was set.

So, it's a tablet with gaming controls that uses cartridges. How innovative. (Sarcasm level: 100%)

Shut up and take my money.

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Here come the fortune cookies! Here come the fortune cookies! They're wearing paper hats!

Is it just me or was that trailer extremely cringeworthy? I'm surprised anyone could feel excited from watching that. Is the game footage for real? If so, what the heck is going on with the shading in those games?

Eh, console gaming has been dead to me for years now, it's not surprising that I'm completely disinterested in this.

It was. Stopping a basketball game to play a basketball video game? The fact that we need to know what it is called every 15 seconds? The song? ("I need you like bacon needs eggs"?) The larger-than-life Splatoon tournament? I'm honestly surprised how popular it is right now. I find it kind of incredible how well this was hidden until now, which I think has a lot to do with it. If Nintendo can keep this hype until March (My 18th birthday, oddly) is another deal.


Screen images are almost always simulated in commercials. As for the footage itself, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just rendered on the computer. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Skyrim and 2K game videos are recorded from another system. About the lighting, I personally didn't see anything particularly odd.


I don't know of one that uses cartridges, but yeah.

My Samsung Galaxy Tab A uses cartridges called microSD cards.

The innovation is actually putting some marketing effort into a tablet that ships with gaming input. Previous efforts at this (Xperia Play, Archos GamePad, Shield, and a bunch of JXD tablets) never had much of a promotional campaign stateside. Plus they were stuck with an operating system known for audio latency so long it's distracting.

Word on the street (ie: Twitter and NeoGAF) is that it's likely to throw mobile-style power and thermal management out the window when docked. I imagine this would be to enable true 1080p on the TV without a performance sag (the handheld being 720).

I wonder if the stand itself actually includes additional hardware to boost it. I'm not sure how possible that is though, or if it would even be needed.

Better heat management, possibly. Anything else will be tricky, even given hypothetical hot-pluggable PCIe lanes.

Nintendo ought to know all about hot-pluggable PCI Express lanes, seeing as Thunderbolt has been in Pikachu's learnset since Pokemon Yellow Version.

But seriously: Back when it was still called NX, there were rumors that the stand contained a "performance module" with an extra GPU. And if that's really a Tegra in the Switch tablet, NVIDIA is also known for its Optimus technology that switches between the integrated GPU and a separate discrete GPU depending on a power and cooling profile.

And I can actually verify it is here too. If you look at about 2:25 at 1/4 speed, it appears that the bottom right corner of the screen is going through her arm a little.

Yes, the gameplay videos are CLEARLY overlaid, but I was wondering whether it was actual game footage. The weird shading made me think it wasn't.

I'm really not sure what you're finding weird. Both Mario Kart whatever and Splatoon (2?) look almost identical to how they are on the Wii U in terms of graphics (which includes shading). Skyrim looks normal, and NBA 2K always looks like everything is made of bright plastic:

I think it was the Zelda game that looked the weirdest to me.

The shading is odd in it, in that it's cell shaded about as much as Skyward Sword, but really only with the characters while the environment looks more realistic, I guess to pop out more. You can see it better in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPxiXXxftE (I'll tell you what's not more realistic though, and that's the ugly ass foliage on the trees) It kind of reminds me how just about every interactive thing in Metal Slug is outlined while the background isn't necessarily.