But with Nvidia as its partner, Nintendo does have the capability to bring a more sophisticated SoC to the Switch, while not having to deal with costs to the same extent as before. In the past, where Nintendo has developed its own hardware from the silicon up, it’s made sense that it’s stuck to cheaper and outdated off-the-shelf technology. But at the same time, Nintendo’s partnership with Nvidia, the latter having developed and iterated on their mobile Tegra SoCs, did indicate that Nintendo would be able to do something on the level of the rumoured Switch Pro, and do it fairly cheaply. Perhaps one can say the rumour mill got carried away – 4K, DLSS, and a spec bump that would put the system at or beyond the level of an Xbox One S was a far more significant jump than the Gameboy Color or New 3DS were. Now, there is something to be said about the degree of updates that were rumoured. Nintendo has been doing these mid-cycle bumps for their handhelds since before Sony or Microsoft seized upon the concept, the Switch Pro – had it been real – would merely have been the latest example of that. The Gameboy got Gameboy Color, the DS got DSi, the 3DS got New 3DS. But that… isn’t really true? One of the key points I’ve reiterated in all my discussions of the Switch Pro is that it is right in keeping with Nintendo’s trajectory for its portable systems. But within the context of the years of reporting on the impending Switch Pro, which this decidedly isn’t, we have to ask – what the hell happened here? How was there so much smoke with barely any fire?Ī lot of people, in the aftermath of the Switch OLED announcement, have pointed out that the Switch Pro rumours never made sense, that it went against Nintendo’s modus operandi. In isolation, it’s an inoffensive and innocuous refresh, addressing some common complaints with the system – the kickstand quality, the lack of the ethernet port, increasing screen size and quality – but doing very little beyond the bare minimum. So, where did it all go wrong? Now that we’ve had time to reflect on the new Switch revision coming this year – which isn’t a Switch Pro or anything even resembling that, and is instead just a very minor refresh, more along the lines of a PS4 Slim than a PS4 Pro, an Xbox One S than an Xbox One X – we’ve more or less made our peace with the Switch OLED being what it is. There were reports, leaks, discussions on the pricing and the presumed hardware capabilities, and what that might indicate for how Nintendo approaches hardware going forward, and even discussion on third party support for this thing. So much was said about the vaunted, fabled Switch Pro – a mid-life update for the Switch that would modernize the tech thoroughly, and allow the platform to remain competitive on a hardware level with everything else for a few more years while Nintendo worked away on the Switch 2.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |