PC Gaming

Us folks with original model Switch's ain't barely getting two hours either, though.

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’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.

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.

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.

INB4 it's gonna be a repeat of the Wii U. A confusing, non compatible successor to a revolutionary product.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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