Thoughts on the Nintendo Switch?
The NX was revealed yesterday as the Switch, and basically all the rumors were true; it's a console/handheld hybrid with snap-away controllers where the sides of the controller either snap onto a sort of controller dock, or onto the sides of a portable screen you can take wherever.
Each half of the controller looks kind of like a short, flat Wiimote with a robust-looking analog stick (not sharing an x-position, 360-style), four buttons (XABY on one half, arrow buttons like the N64 on the other) and two other buttons; a Home and literally-shaped "plus" button on one half, and a "C" button and literally-shaped "minus" button on the other. Each half also has a shoulder button, possibly two.
Each controller half is layed out in such a way that you could use them like a pair of Wiimotes, so two people could play on one screen on-the-go. And indeed, you can play without hooking the controller halves up to anything, just holding them like a wireless Wiimote and Nunchuck.
The console apparently comes with a default controller dock for couch play that is basically just a rectangle that the halves snap on to. It looks like it has separate battery LED indicators for each side. The dock itself may or may not be touch sensitive. It's not known whether the screen is touch sensitive, though. It wasn't used that way in the reveal trailer. (My guess is it DOES have touch functionality, but they avoided showing it off in the reveal trailer to distance themselves from the Wii U.)
There's also an optional Switch Pro Controller you can play with instead.
It does not appear that you can use the portable screen and the television simultaneously ala Wii U. To play on TV at all, you have to rest the screen into its dock, which shuts the screen off and indeed blocks it from view entirely.
The people playing the Switch were shown playing Breath of the Wild, Splatoon (possibly a sequel), a brand-new, "real" 3D Mario platformer and Skyrim.
Also, the console uses game cards which plug into the screen portion of the system, not CDs. Which, just let me say here, I'm quite happy about. Optical media is dead. It's been dead for a decade, it's about time major companies start abandoning it.
No real details were given, this was obviously a very preliminary teaser trailer slash hype generator, and nitty gritty details will come later. I'm actually quite curious as to whether the version of Skyrim shown was a Switch-made version, or whether the Switch can just run Steam (which I've suspected of the NX for a long while now, and would certainly be a selling point).
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Okay, opinion time. As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I have to say. I'm kind of disappointed. I mean, the Switch is gonna be fun, it looks neat, it'll have Nintendo's killer first-party games which are always worth their systems on their own. If it plays mobile or Steam games, all the better.
But for the first time in a long time, this doesn't feel like, "ooh, something new." It feels like "portable Wii U." Which isn't exciting. And I love the Wii U.
More to the point, the Switch doesn't feel like Nintendo leading, forging ahead and being unique like they always are. It feels like an attempt to curry Xbox and Sony fans, plain and simple. Sony and Microsoft consoles have always been essentially interchangable, with Nintendo being this wacky, quirky, cartoony, unique third party. The Switch feels like just a generic modern console, regardless of being portable.
Maybe I'm not being fair. We barely know anything about it. And either way, I'm getting it on launch, like I did the Wii U and Wii. It's just...especially showing off Skyrim (a nearly five year old game at this point), it just feels like Nintendo is trying to be like any other generic modern console, rather than their bizzare usual selves. And that's kind of sad.
Also, you can sort of view this as Nintendo giving up on the console market. The Switch is essentially a handheld, just with a default way to play on a television. Which is also kind of sad.
...
Well, at least I have a new, real Mario to look forward to.