Switch 2 General Chat Thread (Aka, the final video game console)

[neorichieb1971]

I was thinking about getting a Switch 2. But I agree with some guy on youtube. At the moment its a MK world player.

I only have a mild interest in MK world. I prefer my karting games to be about karting, not gliding, grinding, flying, going under water and all that shite. I don't even like the gameplay of DK but I think it looks nice. Smashing rocks seems like fun but for me its like a tech demo, its looks nice but gets old quickly. I don't think i'd ever complete the game through lack of enthusiasm.

Am I the only one that thinks Nintendo of Japan is getting their system subsidized by the west? Nobody is covering this aspect at all. I guess i'm speculating but its a good $100 + cheaper and the games are about $20+ cheaper as well. But the system is region and language locked to Japanese. The yen is weak, I don't think i'm imagining this. I think that $100 cheaper means the true cost should be around $400, so the extra $50 for USA/EU is carried across to the Japanese version which makes it $100 cheaper.

I read yesterday that Nintendo stock holders are worried about Switch 2. Simply about the cost of game developement, prices and access to folk who can't afford it at the current prices.

[Steven]

I do not trust emulation to actually run games properly, nor do I trust ports to not be worse than the original, broken, or have missing things. ShotTriggers is an exception, and even then M2 still sometimes makes mistakes, like how the Same! Same! Same! stage clear jingle's implementation doesn't match the PCB like it should. It doesn't break the game or anything, but it is annoying that it's still ultimately inaccurate when it shouldn't be on the supposed ultimate version of the game, so if you demand perfection in things that you care about (and I think that someone who doesn't demand perfection in things that they claim to truly care about actually does not care about those things as much as they claim to), you're going to be disappointed, which is why real hardware still does and always will matter, at least until it all breaks and stops working, but I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like my Repulse PCB from 1985, which is already older than I am, outlives me. At least M2 Same! is cheaper than buying the PCB, which is rare and expensive.

Also lol youtube

In any case,

I was thinking about getting a Switch 2. But I agree with some guy on youtube. At the moment its a MK world player.

It's more like a "fix the games that run poorly on the Switch, which is a lot of things" system than anything else, most likely, provided that said poorly-performing Switch games don't have framerate caps below 60 FPS. This highlights one of the disappointing aspects of the system so far: most of its games seem to just be native Switch 2 versions of stuff that's been on other systems for a while now, so for people that actually care about modern games (not me, basically) it's an interesting situation because why would they want this thing when they already played these games years ago on more powerful hardware that is capable of better everything? Handheld mode, obviously, but that's about it.

It's somewhat amusing that supposedly that Konmai idol game, which is also a Switch 2 exclusive, is very possibly the best game on the system so far from what I have read, or at least a serious contender for that title, which I didn't expect, but here we are.

I'll probably get one of these things eventually, but for now, it's not a very attractive game system at all, especially with the pseudo everything-except-Nintendo-is-digital-only thing it has going on. It seems that in handheld mode it runs Switch games in handheld mode, which means that it's going to upscale what was possibly a sub-native resolution game on Switch to Switch 2's screen resolution, and that may or may not look worse than it does on the old Switch. I imagine there's probably a reason that it doesn't run Switch games in docked mode in handheld mode despite the supposed massive increase in power between the two (battery life or heat or something like that, perhaps), but if it can, that may be preferable on a game-to-game basis.

Am I the only one that thinks Nintendo of Japan is getting their system subsidized by the west? Nobody is covering this aspect at all. I guess i'm speculating but its a good $100 + cheaper and the games are about $20+ cheaper as well. But the system is region and language locked to Japanese. The yen is weak, I don't think i'm imagining this. I think that $100 cheaper means the true cost should be around $400, so the extra $50 for USA/EU is carried across to the Japanese version which makes it $100 cheaper.

I probably mentioned this before, but exchange rates and purchasing power parity both have to be considered at the same time when analyzing prices of goods in other countries. Make no mistake, Switch 2 is still very much a "$500" thing here, if you will, due to PPP, which is also the thing that makes it not unrealistic to say that games in general are also now in the $80~$100 range here, and that's before you get to boutique (for lack of a better word) developers/publishers like Innocent Grey, who's over here asking 15000 yen/$150 for their most recent games, but at least it's Innocent Grey, so it's worth it in their very special case. Again, if you just look at the exchange rate, yes, stuff is "cheaper", but PPP dictates that 100 yen in Japan has roughly the buying power of 100 cents in the USA, so for us, this thing is still pretty expensive. Then you get to the insanity of the PortStation 5 Pro's price and...

[Sumez]

Same goes for complaints about how the Exa is unfair for being expensive / Japanese exclusive, etc. A lot of the arcade games we take for granted existed because of the same model of arcade gaming that the Exa is following, but we're now really, really spoiled by emulation and think we're entitled to steal whatever we want without regard for the creators.

Eh, Exa opposition gets a pass. Their model has to be the most consumer-hateful I have ever seen in the video games industry, and it deserves to be taken apart completely!
There's no way in hell you could compare that to the classic arcade game business which came out of an orthogonally different climate, and was actually designed around making games available to people, rather than keeping them stupidly exclusive.

[ZellSF]

Am I the only one that thinks Nintendo of Japan is getting their system subsidized by the west? Nobody is covering this aspect at all. I guess i'm speculating but its a good $100 + cheaper and the games are about $20+ cheaper as well. But the system is region and language locked to Japanese. The yen is weak, I don't think i'm imagining this. I think that $100 cheaper means the true cost should be around $400, so the extra $50 for USA/EU is carried across to the Japanese version which makes it $100 cheaper.

Not buying this, especially claiming the US is subsidizing other territories. When the US started messing up the economy, the EU got price increases for Sony products to subsidize them. The US is driving their own prices up.

I'll probably get one of these things eventually, but for now, it's not a very attractive game system at all, especially with the pseudo everything-except-Nintendo-is-digital-only thing it has going on. It seems that in handheld mode it runs Switch games in handheld mode, which means that it's going to upscale what was possibly a sub-native resolution game on Switch to Switch 2's screen resolution, and that may or may not look worse than it does on the old Switch.

People are way too focused on scaling. Scaling 720p to 1080p on a small screen is fine. You should worry more about going from an OLED to a LCD.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

People are way too focused on scaling. Scaling 720p to 1080p on a small screen is fine.

There's actually a couple games that support in-game scaling options to improve framerates, namely EDF 2 and 3 have the option to force it to 720p even when playing docked on a television. It makes so little difference for the quality of visuals and does have a noticeable impact on framerate stability that it's really well worth it.

[Steven]

People are way too focused on scaling. Scaling 720p to 1080p on a small screen is fine.

People are not focused enough on scaling, and I would hardly call this fine because it's not an integer scale, assuming that the game in question is actually running at 1280x720. 1920x1080 becoming the standard was a mistake because nothing widely used prior to it scales to it properly. You could do an integer scale that doesn't fill the screen, which I generally prefer and use when I use my MD, Saturn, etc. on my PC monitor, but most consumers probably aren't going to be satisfied unless the image fills the screen, which won't happen in this case.

For pixel art in particular, if there isn't any interpolation, it's going to completely mangle the artwork and you'll get mismatched pixel sizes just like what you get on Arcade Archives, which lacks proper scaling at all. That Dracula X collection on PS4 uses some sort of filtering on both axes, and as a result it looks softer than I'd like, but it's better than having constant distortion of the artwork like what ACA has on everything. I do not know what Switch 2 does, but it's a concern no matter what because there is a chance that you're getting either distorted artwork or blurry upscaling due to the use of a filter, neither of which are desirable. This is especially problematic when there is an existing solution for at least some games: run those that run at 1920x1080 in docked mode on Switch in docked mode on Switch 2 even in handheld mode if it doesn't cause the system's battery to be depleted too rapidly or cause the player's hands to catch fire, or, even better, give the player the option on a per-game basis. Nintendo will almost certainly never allow the latter, but ideally it would happen if burning hands isn't a concern, which it very well may be.

You should worry more about going from an OLED to a LCD.

As I do not have an OLED Switch, I'm hardly worried about that at all. What I am worried about regarding the screen is that apparently it's terrible. Nintendo probably grabbed whatever the cheapest thing was that was available in large quantities. I am still also somewhat uncertain about input lag, but we'll see how that turns out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

People are not focused enough on scaling, and I would hardly call this fine because it's not an integer scale, assuming that the game in question is actually running at 1280x720. 1920x1080 becoming the standard was a mistake because nothing widely used prior to it scales to it properly.

It's not something I've thought about, but you're right, and it's very annoying. A lot of early games ran at 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 and even 1280 x 720 causes scaling issues in the vertical axis, for 640 x 480 games, right? 1710 x 960 or something would have gotten you a widescreen that allows for even scaling up from 240 or 480 pixel high games which means you can have letterboxed 4:3 games as well as widescreen games.

[Sumez]

I'd argue a 480p/i game would still scale nicely to 720 with some smoothing. Technically not the best solution, but it probably won't really be noticeable. I can't think of any game in that resolution where crisp pixels are essential? Most of them are 3D games.
You really do want 240p graphics to scale by an integer factor though!

[Steven]

People are not focused enough on scaling, and I would hardly call this fine because it's not an integer scale, assuming that the game in question is actually running at 1280x720. 1920x1080 becoming the standard was a mistake because nothing widely used prior to it scales to it properly.

It's not something I've thought about, but you're right, and it's very annoying. A lot of early games ran at 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 and even 1280 x 720 causes scaling issues in the vertical axis, for 640 x 480 games, right?

Yeah. Fortunately, there is a nice resolution that works for a lot of things: 3840x2160. 1440 vertical resolutions are also pretty great for anything that doesn't have a 1080 vertical resolution, although I'm sure there's probably some arcade game with a weird resolution that scales poorly to everything.

There are also things that have vertical heights of 525. I don't know much about the PS2's resolutions, especially because there are a few of them, and I think that 525i is a relatively common one, even if people call it 480i. I was playing Zero (Japanese Fatal Frame) the other day, so I'll go check the RetroTINK's input video information thingy to see what it says about that game since I have my PS2 ready to go. Maybe I'll check a few more games while I'm at it, but that scales pretty nicely to a 1080 vertical resolution, although it's only going to come out to a 1050 height... close enough, I guess. PS2's not that big of a deal since almost everything is interlaced and won't look especially great outside of a CRT or emulator anyway, sadly, but yeah, like Sumez said, deinterlaced 480i is decent at 720.

edit: yep, 525i for Zero.

[ZellSF]

I'm a bit confused, I got the JP version of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and it runs at 30 FPS... I don't understand why, everyone says it should run at 60 and I doubt the JP version is different. I doubt anyone here knows, just saying it's weird.

People are way too focused on scaling. Scaling 720p to 1080p on a small screen is fine.

People are not focused enough on scaling, and I would hardly call this fine because it's not an integer scale, assuming that the game in question is actually running at 1280x720. 1920x1080 becoming the standard was a mistake because nothing widely used prior to it scales to it properly. You could do an integer scale that doesn't fill the screen, which I generally prefer and use when I use my MD, Saturn, etc. on my PC monitor, but most consumers probably aren't going to be satisfied unless the image fills the screen, which won't happen in this case.

For pixel art in particular, if there isn't any interpolation, it's going to completely mangle the artwork and you'll get mismatched pixel sizes just like what you get on Arcade Archives, which lacks proper scaling at all. That Dracula X collection on PS4 uses some sort of filtering on both axes, and as a result it looks softer than I'd like, but it's better than having constant distortion of the artwork like what ACA has on everything. I do not know what Switch 2 does, but it's a concern no matter what because there is a chance that you're getting either distorted artwork or blurry upscaling due to the use of a filter, neither of which are desirable.

Integer scale is a fucking plague on scaling discussion. It's unnecessary a lot of the time. As long as the source resolution is big enough, the output resolution is big enough and the screen is small enough, it doesn't matter.

Now it does matter a bit for the Switch 2, but I'm telling you it's fine. I'm telling you that from experience using it and testing all my games on it, not badly extrapolating data from scaling scenarios that are not at all similar (MD/Saturn on PC monitor, Arcade Archives).

People are obsessed with these two things (thinking integer scaling is the only way, and thinking all scaling is the same) and it's just very misleading.

There are also things that have vertical heights of 525. I don't know much about the PS2's resolutions, especially because there are a few of them, and I think that 525i is a relatively common one, even if people call it 480i.

No PS2 game has a height of 525 lines. No NTSC standard definition video signal at all has a height of 525 lines, there's 486 lines visible at most (usually a few less), the 525i term includes the lines in the blanking interval. Blank lines, with no image information, that are there to help tell your display one image from the next.

PS2 games are generally 448 line height. You can see this by starting a game on any display that can show the image 1:1 after deinterlacing, there will be significant black bars at the top and bottom. If there aren't, you need to familiarize yourself with your display's overscan options.