MudMan

I’m not sure that’s how that works. The Switch already had both physical boxes with digital codes in them and cartridges that required mandatory downloads to run. This seems like a physical unlock key for a digital download, which depending on how it’s implemented is actually easier to both resell and use offline than the Switch 1 solution to the same problem.

I don’t recommend purchasing either, and I avoided both of those options on Switch 1, but I’m pretty sure this at least does not make things any worse.

I have major gripes with a number of pricing choices in this thing, but to the best of my current understanding this one is based on a misunderstanding.

See, when people need to rephrase your point to answer it, that tends to not be a great sign for good faith engagement. Case in point, ignoring the inclusion of “and supposed allies” at the core of my point is doing a lot of work in your argument with an entirely fictional version of me.

For the record, you’re not off the hook because you’re a targeted minority. Plenty of organizing and activism is driven by vulnerable people rallying society at large around them. The idea of arguing that protest is for white people because they have the numbers is bafflingly individualistic, which I suppose is on brand. The point of collective action is… you know, that it’s collective.

Look, my argument here is that Americans are handling this situation from an absolutely bizarre set of assumptions and cultural behaviors. I fully stand by that. The passive compliance while bemoaning the ineffectiveness of actions they’re not taking is not unheard of historically but man, is it weird and frustrating.

If you choose to take that as a knock on you specifically that’s your prerogative. I will say that it definitely doesn’t exclude you or the OP. It’s a society-wide issue. Identities aren’t segregated bubbles. The entire framing of this argument is part of the bizarre self-exculpatory, entitled set of cultural assumptions that re-elected the same fascist idiot twice because milquetoast liberals weren’t exciting enough or whatever the hell.

I think the part that gets me is the one-two punch at the very visible performative outrage at Trump doing exactly the things he campaigned on paired with the extreme pasivity as they watch it unfold. The impression from the outside looking in is the US, from elected Democrats to marginalized citizens, is collectively waiting for the regional manager or the kindergarten teacher to come out of the back room and fix things while sharing safety tips and sternly worded objections. And there doesn’t seem to be any sign that things will bubble over into actual action. They will be carried to the camps while aggressively demanding a refund. It’s a grotesque spectacle to watch, being perfectly honest.

No, I am absolutely sure they’re coming after queer people and other minorities.

I’m questioning what infosec will do to prevent that. I’m questioning where political action from both directly affected people and supposed allies is. I’m questioning where all this was during the campaign and the election. I’m questioning why people are choosing to express fear and anger online and share progrom tips in social media instead of organizing.

I genuinely can’t parse how Americans are processing this. Turkey, Serbia? Yeah, I get what’s going on there.

The US? Alien planet. It’s like they never heard of civil society or political opposition before.

Go outside. With a sign, maybe, but you may also find you have a sound-making enabled face-hole.

Voting also helps, if the chance is ever provided. That ship may have sailed, though, so you may find you need to go purchase a time machine type device instead.

Maybe it’s just getting grumpier in my old age, but I’m increasingly annoyed at all these posts going “here’s how to lock down your comms from all the people coming after you for all the protesting you’re not doing. Now hold tight while sitting at home, I’m sure the official summons to go do the revolution is incoming from the official revolution organizers any day now”.

Oh, I missed the UHD bit, right. Triple layer it’d cap at 20-25, yeah. Technically Switch carts were available up to 32GB, but I think like one or two games ever used that much, they were so expensive. That’s where the partial download stuff comes in.

Of course for optical media the solution was always to ship multiple discs, because the smaller discs are so cheap. Or were. With most optical media manufacturing phased out who knows how expensive optical will become.

Good question. What was the UMD, 1GB? From the DVD default, which was 4GB single layer and 8 dual layer? Blurays are 25GB single layer,so 25% of that is like 7gigs, which is still smaller than the 16gigs the larger Switch carts were. But hey, a lot of games on Switch were smaller, dual layer discs would get you almost to the same size and be a fraction of the cost.

Well, the discs would be. I have no idea how much the weird plastic caddy on UMDs pushed the price up.

I don’t know about that. Reception to most of this Direct seems to be positive, they have a literal 10x sales advantage and 150 million people already in the ecosystem.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it sold a lot slower, but half as fast as the Switch 1 is still faster than the PS5 and much faster than the Steam Deck.

Will PC handhelds gain some ground? Maybe, I’m curious to see.

Yeah, it definitely puts their overhaul of digital game sharing in perspective. They are ABSOLUTELY shifting to digital. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Switch 2 Lite had no cartridge slot at all.

That said, their idea here seems to be that you have a physical cart with a game license in it so you can download the game on multiple consoles and then just swap the key around. That is not a new idea, but it goes to show how frustrated by the limitations of having to ship flash memory with every game they are.

Yep. This is a shockingly… Playstationy proposition. First party games aside I would have not been surprised to see a Vita revival be this exact console. I mean, they’re basically shipping Bloodborne 2 and EyeToy.

Yeah, sure, that’s always the case for consoles. I have no objection to that train of thought. If you want versatility and an open platform you’re going to be better off with a similarly specced PC handheld. At the cost of first party exclusives and a few other creature comforts, but if you’re only going to buy one device and that’s a priority that’s clearly the way to go.

Looking at it in general and in the market and just looking at the hardware they’re packing in, though, their proposition isn’t super overpriced. The part that is a bummer is they seem to be shifting that extra cost to other places with the subscription, generational upgrade packs, higher physical game prices and so on.

This conversation is kinda surreal and I think I want it to stop.

Even if you were correct about this, and you are not, especially in modern times, this only applies to one part of the APU. The GPU is still your run of the mill CUDA-based Nvidia GPU, effectively a PC part. And this is a handheld, a lot of the cost is stuck in the display, controllers, storage and the rest of the hardware package. The CPU component of the APU is not going to be what sets the baseline for cost unless you’re building in a super high-end part.

I can’t parse how you’re looking at this, but I assure you that it doesn’t counter the point that this thing seems to both perform similarly and cost about as much as the current batch of PC handhelds. I don’t know how this is a back-and-forth thing.

Yep. The slight difference is that those Switch games typically included a chunk of the game in the cart and sometimes were partially playable. Short of requiring a smaller download, though, it was the same practical function.

I still don’t like it, but those carts get prohibitively expensive at high sizes.

It’s actually not “only on the Switch 2”. There were a bunch of Switch one games that only came with a partial set of assets and required a mandatory download to be played.

It sucks, and it’s what you get when your physical storage is too expensive and too small, unfortunately.

Yep, agreed. I mean, revolutionizing the entire concept of home consoles and starting an entire new hardware segment is a hard act to follow, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away by an iteration on the same idea.

Would have been nice, though.

Sure, anything is cheap if you don’t pay for software. Kinda not how we measure the value of the hardware.

I mean, by that metric, and considering how Nintendo’s software security has been, historically, the Switch 2 is probably going to get dirt cheap real soon, by your standards.

Yes, I am implying that the price is right because the performance is similar. ARM isn’t fundamentally cheaper than x64, I don’t know where you get that. The Switch was cheap because it was running a cheap, old, basically off-the-shelf part, not because that part had an ARM CPU. And indeed the Deck is running an older AMD APU as well at this point.

My laptop has an ARM CPU in it. I assure you it wasn’t any cheaper than the equivalent x64 version with the same performance.

Yeah, well, that’s not really a good thing in my book. You also arguably don’t need a thousand games you’re not gonna play. One of the things I’d like to see this gen on the Switch 2 is more curated discoverability and less shovelware.

I think your argument will make more or less sense depending on how the physical market eveolves. The price bump for physical is a bummer, but this generation it’s been very easy to find cheap physical copies, both new and used.

At the end of the day, PC handhelds are like PCs, you tend to pay more for the hardware (only the very cheapest LCD version of the Deck is cheaper than the Switch 2, and multiple specs are actually worse) and on consoles you get more affordable hardware but typically more expensive games, at least day one.

So at worst the Switch 2 is… you know, a console. The pricing of the hardware is by far the least egregious pricing choice in this whole thing. If anything, the Switch 2 feels weirdly standard for Nintendo’s typical strategy. They have a tendency to sell very old hardware at some profit instead of subsidizing it. This feels weirdly comparable to the PC handheld segment.

I said “considering how similar hardware on PC handhelds stacks up”, meaning the current batch of PC handhelds seem to get similar performance and visuals than what they showed today. You claimed that the hardware isn’t similar because the CPU is an ARM device.

If you meant that to mean that the performance is the same despite the different architecture you have to walk me through how you thought I was going to interpret that from you caveating that the architecture is different with no additional context, but I guess I’ll take it?

I understand what you were saying. I’m saying it doesn’t make a fundamental difference what architecture is being used and there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can’t make assumptions based on that. Plus the GPU is very PC-like, or at least it was on the first Switch. Porting to these things is actually surprisingly straightforward.

Don’t quote me, but I think they will ship a plastic guard to use for the mouse, just like the Lenovo Legion Go does. Don’t knock it til you try it, it does work.

For the record, it’s weird to see Nintendo stumble upon the incredible concepts of Kinect and Discord in the year of our lord 2025. But hey, every Nintendo console needs a gimmick you can proceed to ignore, and this one will at least be useful to… somebody? At least it’s a gesture that online games aren’t an afterthought anymore.

What I’m not sure about at all is the pricing model for games and backwards compatibility as it is. And while the hardware is perfectly acceptable for a modern handheld and very comparable to the current batch of PC handhelds it’s the target for the next decade, presumably, so it’s at best as outdated as the original Switch was while not being the only game in town to play some of those HD ports.

I don’t think it’s an underwhelming propostion at this point, and you can’t deny the first party software on display. I don’t think it’s nearly as exciting as the first Switch, though. We’ll see how it does with mainstream audiences, I suppose.