Nintendo Switch / Nintendo Switch Lite (Official Thread)

[Diff-chan]

Iwata said all that? That's why they killed him I guess. Thanks Obama.

[Shin Johnpv]

:~(

[MechDeus]

Why? In game dev today you make everything super high res and then cut down for the target platform. Hell some engines do on the fly scaling of textures to lower resolutions. It'd basically work like a PC game with Low and High settings. There's absolutely no reason for it to be developed for LCD or be a gameboy player.

Some do, but the reason a lot of companies develop for consoles are specifically to avoid any kind of variable settings and hardware, so unless the scaling is built into the OS it's not going to get done on many games. Expecting console games that don't look like Vita games would likely only be from the big Western companies, who probably don't even care about the NX in the first place.

Which would all put it in a great place to be just like the last few Nintendo consoles: Great for internal teams making Mario and Zelda and not much else.

[Shin Johnpv]

With MS and Sony releasing new versions of the One and PS4 every developer is going to have to deal with Variable settings, and yes it can be done at the OS level. I completely disagree with your statement about only western companies making non vita looking games.

[Diff-chan]

Assuming you're correct, and like I said we don't know anything about NX, the difference between a handheld NX and a console NX is far greater than the difference between PS4 and Neo.

[Shin Johnpv]

The difference would be no greater than a low end PC and a super high end pc. Or possibly even the One and the Scorpio. Isn't that going to have damn near 5 teraflop difference in GPU.

[MechDeus]

With MS and Sony releasing new versions of the One and PS4 every developer is going to have to deal with Variable settings

Or just make games with LCD settings, which is what they've been doing for about ten years or so now with multi platform titles.

I completely disagree with your statement about only western companies making non vita looking games.

Any reason why? Japanese developers focused on handhelds and were slow on the uptake for the big two consoles for the last two generations because of cost reasons. Even most PC ports of Japanese games are Vita titles and PS3 versions of cross-gen releases, the cheapest path of least resistance. This also applies to titles from smaller companies, which even when they're only on PC tend to have very little in the graphic options if there's anything at all besides a resolution choice.

Of course all of this is assuming you're right about them trying to make all titles work on both which doesn't sound at all like what Iwata said.

[kedawa]

I hope we at least get a non-gimmicky handheld with one big screen and enough muscle to run zelda at 60fps.

[Yoshi]

Or just make games with LCD settings, which is what they've been doing for about ten years or so now with multi platform titles.

To add more logical support to this argument, outside of VR the only thing we've heard Sony and MSFT talk about with regard to Neo and Scorpio, respectively, is 4K. That would make LCD development and then just upscaling it pretty likely. On the VR side, it's probably all about frame rate to avoid motion sickness.

[Shin Johnpv]

Or just make games with LCD settings, which is what they've been doing for about ten years or so now with multi platform titles.
Any reason why? Japanese developers focused on handhelds and were slow on the uptake for the big two consoles for the last two generations because of cost reasons. Even most PC ports of Japanese games are Vita titles and PS3 versions of cross-gen releases, the cheapest path of least resistance. This also applies to titles from smaller companies, which even when they're only on PC tend to have very little in the graphic options if there's anything at all besides a resolution choice.

Of course all of this is assuming you're right about them trying to make all titles work on both which doesn't sound at all like what Iwata said.

There are still some Japanese developers making things for more than just handhelds. I guess I can't speak of first hand experience in the Japanese development houses, but its pretty standard practice across the board to build models, textures, all that stuff at higher resolutions than you plan on using. If you're target resolution for a texture is 1024x1024 you don't make it at 1024x1024, you make it at least double that. You gain a sharpness from making it at a higher res and cutting it down that just wouldn't be there if you start at your target res. Same with modelling, most stuff is made with way more polys than will be in the in game engine. Most stuff is modelled with really high poly counts and then retopologized to the target res.

There are PC games already that only contain one resolution texture in them, and in real time cut it in half or 1/4s based on settings. It really isn't this overly difficult thing that would make sense for them to chase the LCD.