Nintendo Switch Announced - Powered by NVIDIA Tegra

[Brian]

Today Nintendo announced it's brand new gaming system dubbed the Switch which will go on sale March 2017. The Switch features a tablet sized screen with detachable controllers called Joy-Cons allowing it to be docked to a unit at home to serve as a traditional console or have the controllers attach to the side of the screen giving gamers the ability to take the system with them on the go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(image: Polygon)

 

In addition, the Switch will utilize mini cartridges as a medium for its games although it remains to be seen whether it will have built in storage to accommodate downloadable games and/or content. There are no details yet about online gaming although given the fact that it's 2016 and the emphasis in the trailer (see below) is on social gaming, it would be a huge oversight not to include it. 

 

                                                                                                                                                            (image: Polygon)

 

Unlike Nintendo's previous Wii U console which saw poor partner support, Nintendo today announced a fairly healthy list of developers for their new console which include EA, Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, Sega, Ubisoft, Square Enix, From Software, Warner Brothers, Codemasters and Atlus.

 

 

Finally, it was rumored that NVIDIA would be behind the Switch and today it was confirmed that they are indeed the ones that engineered the Switch in conjunction with Nintendo - the full press release by NVIDIA is available at the end of this article. 

 

The Nintendo Switch in action:

 

NVIDIA press release regarding Nintendo Switch:

Quote

A Console Architecture for the Living Room and Beyond

Nintendo Switch is powered by the performance of the custom Tegra processor. The high-efficiency scalable processor includes an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards.

The Nintendo Switch’s gaming experience is also supported by fully custom software, including a revamped physics engine, new libraries, advanced game tools and libraries. NVIDIA additionally created new gaming APIs to fully harness this performance. The newest API, NVN, was built specifically to bring lightweight, fast gaming to the masses.

Gameplay is further enhanced by hardware-accelerated video playback and custom software for audio effects and rendering.

We’ve optimized the full suite of hardware and software for gaming and mobile use cases. This includes custom operating system integration with the GPU to increase both performance and efficiency.

NVIDIA gaming technology is integrated into all aspects of the new Nintendo Switch home gaming system, which promises to deliver a great experience to gamers.

The Nintendo Switch will be available in March 2017. More information is available athttps://www.nintendo.com/switch.

Nintendo Switch is a trademark of Nintendo.

 

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[Guest]

Great! More dumbed-down disposable kid toy garbage to give game developers another excuse to suck at PC game development. Just what we needed, LOL.

[Area]

nice concept, the graphic quality seems sub par tho

[davengerr]

would have loved the concept if it was any other other company than Nintendo with the absolutely miserable graphics quality on their last gen of consoles, the 3ds has an extremely small screen and still everything is pixilated and super low res, not expecting the switch to be much different

[casis86]

crap again, nothing more to say

 

1 more thing if they would do a remake of nintendo 64 it woud even sell better then this.

[Spiderach]

I think it'd be rather convenient. I've always found Nintendo's first party controllers to be exceptionally comfortable to hold, 1st party games very well done, graphics in games pretty despite low resolution/power, and their dedication to local play fantastic. I definitely feel that this type of product has a market, especially amongst those who want an experience that takes little effort to get going. Then again, it's just the usual arguments for the validation of consoles. Despite that I feel like this steps away from the use case of PC games enough to justify a purchase. 

[christian19]

I'm very excited about this all, I've been waiting years for this thing ever since it was called the NX and now I've finally placed a pre order and can't wait to play it on March 3rd.

However I wonder would the screen scratch over time when put into the dock?

[thelastpretorian]

[devid489]

nice information

menuprice

[PGenious]

Nice spam up there However, who would thought that Nintento Switch would be such successfull console especially after terrible Wii U (terrible in terms of sales). We are in the middle of Nintendo Gen, with 4 years more to go. Looking forward if this year we will see Switch Pro. Concept of Switch sound very cool, and after few years we can say for sure, it was also very cool in real life Actually I am owner of NS for 6 months now, and idea of having most of my fav. pc games on to go (+First Party Games) is great  

[Myxomop]

Useful information.