Dcubed

Nice to see that even Jim Sterling (son) approves of the Switch trailer. Pretty much agree with everything he says in the vid (except what he says about Star Fox Zero, he's still totally wrong about it :p )

Shamelessly stolen from GAF... The sensor bar for the JoyCon's IR camera could well be inside the base unit itself. Would explain why part of the Switch sticks out from the top of the dock... Actually makes a lot of sense! Though it does beg the question of where the dock would need to be positioned relative to the TV (since you're obviously not gonna be able to stick it directly above or below it...)

Yeah, I cracked up when I heard that. Brilliant touch The 64DD actually had a really nice bootup sequence as well! Stylish and yet very playful! Nice.

It's probably gonna be Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. Really can't see it being anything else (MH5 will be Switch exclusive - it kinda has to be) It's really a matter of diminishing returns on 3DS at this point though. As much as I love Monster Hunter, I'm not really itching for another 3DS outing really... We already have 3 games (4 if you include the original version of MH4 that was Japan only and 5 if you count Stories; which you really probably shouldn't). Hopefully we get an announcement of MHStories for the west at this Direct. As for what I'd like to see with MHGU? I just really want it to be harder. Most of the monsters in MHG are really pushovers... Gimme a proper challenge! This probably hints that MH5 is quite far out though. Makes sense I guess; it'll be the first proper HD Monster Hunter (i.e made for a HD console and not a cheap port up), so it's gonna be baking for a looooooonnnggg time...

I could see them using that logo animation that they use in the teaser trailer for the boot up. Short and sweet, but dat satisfying click!

God I hope so. I hope that it's able to fully replicate a Wii Remote Plus! These things do already feature IR blasters, that's how they connect to the base unit (same as the Circle Pad Pro), so it's not really a stretch to imagine it having a Wii Remote esc IR camera) Skyward Sword does use the IR pointer. It uses it for re-calibration (just like how Wii Sports Resort does). You can actually see what it's like playing without one, since the game has an option to turn off the IR re-calibration (it predictably messes up the calibration pretty badly - it's useful if your play area has a lot of light pollution though; which is the source of most people's problems with the Wii Remote's motion controls in that game)

Ravio looks so wrong with his new lanky proportions

There are times where you actually feel like playing a trashy game though. Yoshi's Island DS is absolutely terrible (the fact that its acronym sounds like a disease is not a coincidence), but I felt that I just HAD to play through the whole thing; morbid curiosity you see (and a bit of masochism on the side too), despite having much better games waiting for me on the backburner.

That would be quite the boon indeed. It's perfectly possible too, given that the Switch basically stole the internals of the cancelled Nvidia Shield 2

Funny you should say that... Ask and ye shall receive! (Or rather not receive in this case, thanks jerk!)

Those games were not native resolution, almost no Vita games were. That was kinda of half the problem with it. The screen was too high res for the hardware powering it and was a poor use of the total handheld budget. The costs associated with the screen would've been put to much better use elsewhere (or just dropping the cost of the machine) and it would've lead to a better experience overall, because the games would've run in their native res and not look like a blurry mess. As much as people like to joke about it, the Wii U is actually a significant step up from the PS3 and 360. Mario Kart 8 is a much harder game to get running at the same quality as the Wii U version than the Talos Principle on Shield (remember, it has to run at a perfect 60FPS, even in splitscreen. Framerate dips aren't acceptable here). The Shield K1 fails to match the Xbox 360 version of Resident Evil 5 in like for like tests and the same applies for Metal Gear Rising (before anyone quotes the Doom 3 BFG test, that one is kinda rigged since most people don't know that the Shield version has a lot of graphical compromises, allowing it to "outperform" the PS360 versions in like for like tests). Wii U is a step up from the Xbox 360 even still, so matching it in a handheld is no small feat. The Switch is basically the cancelled Shield K2, in terms of hardware (hence why Nintendo got such a good deal on the chips for it, they basically stole them all when the K2 was cancelled), which should be able to comfortably match or exceed the Wii U now; but not to the point where it can do so at 1080p (and even then, the specs are better spent elsewhere - You don't want non-native res games on a handheld). Also, you have to remember that most tablets and smartphones cheat when it comes to games. Yeah, they've got super high res screens, but almost no 3D games on there actually render at their native resolutions... With the Switch, gaming is the whole point, so you need to set a sensible target that your hardware can comfortably reach; otherwise, you're just wasting the money you spent on the screen, like what Sony did with the Vita.

BTW, before anyone else nicks it... Trauma Center: Under the Switch Knife That's my witty title. Don't steal it! 1080p is a huge waste on a handheld. It's a massive extra drain on GPU resources for something you're barely going to even notice on a small 6.3 inch screen. There's no way they could run games at Wii U level, at 1080p on a handheld. The tech simply isn't there. You'll also ramp up the production costs of the screen too, costs that can be much better spent elsewhere (like on the GPU and RAM for instance...) 720p at 6.3 inches gives you 233.11 PPI, which is better than the PS Vita. That's more than good enough; those extra resources are better spent elsewhere. Besides, the thing would output 1080p to the TV screen anyway, so you'll get your 1080p support that way. Plus there's the issue of battery life too. They're apparently already struggling to get it up to something acceptable. 1080p would just destroy it completely. Bigger numbers aren't always better, it's a balancing act.

Well, not quite... If you can't hold items behind you, then it'll be more like Double Dash than MKWii. DD wasn't so bad for that... certainly nowhere near as bad as MKWii. Everyone was really positive about the change with MK8, so I reckon that they'll put some effort into balancing it. Mostly I'm just hoping that we finally get a proper battle mode like in MK64/MKDS!

Well the rumours (that have mostly been spot on) stipulate a capacitive touch screen and motion sensors for the JoyCons (along with "next gen vibration technology", whatever that means...), so they've no doubt got some neat surprises up their sleeves here... Also there's the mystery button as well that people think is a Share button of sorts. So there's obviously plenty to it that they're not telling us yet. Interesting indeed. Sounds like the system just upclocks when docked then and then ups the resolution/graphics/framerate to match the console standard. £249.99 actually sounds doable. If the dock doesn't have any crazy hardware built-in and it's based on the Tegra X2 (which it probably is, considering that N-vidia said that it's based on their same architecture as their top-end Geforce cards; which means Pascal, which means X2 based), then that would put it in the £249.99-£299.99 range. 720p screens aren't terribly expensive these days either and they're a sensible target for this kind of hardware on a handheld device if they're targeting Wii U quality visuals on a handheld (which it looks like they've pulled off). Motion control sensors are also dirt cheap these days, as is NFC and a touch screen; so that wouldn't really bring the price up much at all. Yeah, £249.99 might actually be doable (although it'll probably be a bit higher here in the UK, because the pound sterling is basically worth a half eaten packet of peanuts these days) Also, these parts are generally off the shelf so to speak (obviously customised, but not exotic in design) and there's no set cost pieces in there like a hard drive, so the production costs should drop fairly quickly too. BTW, can I just say that JoyCon sounds like some sort of Chinese knockoff? 'cause it totally does

No way on this planet that is happening. You're in lala land. What smart devices (tablet or phone) even comes close to that while playing a high end game? (repeat, while playing a high end game - remember that these devices throttle down in most cases and use up significantly less juice when doing most non-game things) The New3DS lasts for around 3-6 hours at best. This thing is orders of magnitude more powerful! 2-4 hours and that's if you're lucky (more likely it'll be 1.5-2.5 at best) Well, in the trailer, Zelda BOTW seems to run at a lower framerate when undocked than when played on the TV... (could just be a bad capture, but I doubt that). So there's definitely something going on with the dock (could just be throttling the processor speeds when played undocked, with the full speed only being unleashed when plugged in, or it could be actual additional hardware. Who knows?)

Everything has bad battery life these days. Expect around 2-4 hours at best.

I bet that they'll work with Namco and make Gen 8 using a modified Pokken engine. The battles already work in much the same way in terms of camera movement and such (and it's all arena based). Just remove the fighting gameplay aspect and make it menu based; then re-use the camera engine, the rendering engine etc. They'll have to reuse the existing models from Sun/Moon (there's no feasible way of them making 800+ models at Pokken's fidelity, no way in hell; not even for Namco), but use the same rendering engine (so same lighting, shading etc). There's no way on this planet that Game Freak are making Gen 8 on their own. They're struggling to make 3DS games, let alone a massive HD project. Namco are the obvious partner, not only because they're Nintendo's go-to, but because they worked on Pokken with TPC before... As for the overworld... Maybe adapt the engine used for Xenoblade X? That doesn't mean that the game would be of the same scale (no way is that feasible), but Pokemon games are and have always been open world in structure, so why not re-use the fancy shmancy HD 3D open world engine that you already have (hell Breath of the Wild is almost certainly using a variant of Xenoblade X's engine, so there's precedent there). Monolith have a lot of history with Namco too, so there's precedent in that regard too! It's all about re-using as much as you possibly can. Hell, you could say that the initial launch lineup is all about that anyway (MK8.5, Splatoon Switch, Skyrim Switch etc), only fitting!

Oh... Good catch. I missed that. Mind you though, you can connect multiple devices together over local wireless as seen in the trailer, so perhaps you can use multiple devices to replicate the Wii U setup if you so wish? I mean, the Wii U was originally designed to support multiple Gamepads after all... Now they have a way of doing that properly here!

????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????? It's a Super Mario Galaxy style camera, not SM3DL/W. Dunno what you're on about. I'm keen to see what new style of play they have in place here. They always switch (HA!) to a new style of 3D Mario after two games (64/Sunshine, SMG1/2, SM3DL/W), and this is not quite like any of the others, so we'll have to wait and see...

That was one damn slick trailer! Dat click sound/animation effect! SOOOOO GOOOODD!!! Skyrim on this thing is a big surprise! I can't believe that Bethesda are supporting a Nintendo console! The sky really is falling! There's no way this thing doesn't have a touch screen, of course it will. The big question though, is whether or not you can display two different things on both the TV and the tablet screen... The trailer is a bit coy about that...

Oh my God, please don't let it be called Super Mario Switch. In fact, please just don't add "Switch" to the end of everything Nintendo, it sounds insanely dumb...

Probably yeah. I'd still expect some supplementary details on the main site though. We're supposed to be getting the reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2 for NX as an exclusive at the same time as the NX reveal itself and I'm pretty sure that won't fit into the 3 minute slot... Ok that could be part of a later video, but the rumour/leak did say the NX "reveal", which would rightfully be today, so...

At last! The pitch black nothingness is over!!!! We can finally have some sort of conversation about it! 3 minutes seems strikingly short for a brand new reveal though. Not much time to make an impression, so hopefully that means that they're confident that the message is simple enough to get across and not confusing...

FTFY. You're basically gonna have to switch off from the internet completely I'm afraid :p

I never said "confirmation", I said that it's a hint. It's a rumour that has been going for some time now (corroborated by the fact that Ubisoft tried to get the site to take down their report on it), long before Ubisoft re-announced the game a couple of weeks ago. The part about Nintendo funding it comes from the initial rumours and some educated guesses (given that reviving cancelled 3rd party projects in exchange for exclusivity is Nintendo's MO right now and given Nintendo's relationship with Ubisoft, it's not a stretch to assume that's what's happening here too).