Have you ever held a switch? Its long, flat and the controllers suck. Awful dpad and bad sticks.
Its almost comical, for a small stick the 3ds stick is better than any joycon stick.
And also, internal storage being only 32 GB, and cart games being downloaded in full to the system.
The switch is a mess. At least the games emulate well.
That’s not even going into the online ransom shit.
And the dock sucks too. Would it have killed Nintendo to add like 2 more USB ports and an Ethernet port.
And not related but powera can eat shit
To be fair when it came out seven years ago it really shook up the portable gaming scene. Every portable console coming out since is an iteration on that design. The joycons can go to hell though. And those weird ass online plans.
I really liked the original 2DS personally. The announcement left everyone incredulous as the device sounded and looked like a dumb downgrade. I mean, it was hard to tell if it was joke or not. In the end though it’s light, cheap, tough and surprisingly comfortable.
Hey, is it too late to buy a couple of n3dsxl in 2024? Is it unusable now as all online services are shut down? Can you still find game cartridges to buy?
I just want something simple to play co-op game with the wife and kids on camping trip or on-the-go sometimes. Last month I dug out my old DSLite from the attic and it’s still boot. My candy-crush-4-life wife love the Mario kart and couldn’t stop playing LOL. But we can’t justify to buy 2-4 Switch.
Because fuck Nintendo and their predatory anti consumer business model.
Isn’t the switch itself just an iteration on the GameGear, or close to ‘home’, the GBA?
It’s not the first chunky, horizontal handheld. The only thing that was new about it was the joycons, and they ditched those immediately for the Lite.
The Game gear and GBA played games that were nothing like the home console games of their time.
This is what the Switch brought to the table. Breadth of the Wild was a great home console title, and you could play it handheld on the go.
I think that calling BOtW similar to other full-scale console games of 2017 like Sniper Elite 4, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Nier Automata, Prey, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, RE7, or AssCreed Origins, is a biiiiiiig stretch.
It was a huge jump for Nintendo (it was basically putting GameCube-level games on a handheld), but it was still far behind other consoles. Witcher 3 (2015) even eventually released on the Switch in 2019, and it was massively graphically gimped compared to *ahem* real consoles.
The Switch design is an evolution of the Wii U controller, which itself was evolved from the the lower screen design of the DS, which itself was modelled on the old Vertical Multi Screen Game and Watches from the 1980s.
Have a look through all of Nintendo’s consoles and you’ll see the lines of inspiration drawn from generation to generation.
It’s definitely not as comfortable as something like the Steam Deck, but I played so much Switch while commuting on the train since it came out. It’s been a real joy to have. It’s also WAY smaller than any of the current-gen handhelds.
What do you mean by “cart games being downloaded in full to the system?”
I never owned a Switch, but I would say it was instrumental in the Deck’s conception. If the popularity of the Switch had never happened, I wonder if Gabe would have taken the chance.
Nintendo cuts all kinds of corners and usually doesn’t bother competing as a “performance” console, but people generally loved that thing when it first came out. I’m sure people will have gripes about Steam Deck v1 when v2+ comes out, too.
Its not about power, its about its horrendous controls. Its like trying to game on a comically long phone
So, let’s take botw, about 10 GB.
If you put the cart in, it downloads, you get hose 10 GB on the system. And you’ll also need the CSRT for DRM reasons or shit
It doesn’t download the game if you have a physical copy. I just checked my switch and my physical copy of botw is using 0 mb of storage.
Further to this - it doesn’t download cart data to the Switch/SD card, but it does store save data, update data and DLC data on the Switch/SD card. So while BOTW may not download its whole 10Gb onto the Switch, you may end up with a few Gb in other data that’s locally stored.
The AYANEO AIR 1S is smaller than a regular Nintendo Switch, being closer to a Switch Lite.
Sure, but the AIR 1S is an x86 device with a 7840U, so it runs regular PC games like the Deck for example.
Well you have to consider it’s 7 years old. It was incredible in 2016.
The OLED dock has an Ethernet port. They’ll work with non-OLED switches so you could buy one if you need the port.
The two USB’s on the side of the case seem sufficient for most use cases. Might be able to add a tiny usb hub if need be, there’s a few tiny ones fore less than $9.
Ergonomics are a bit odd, but the 3DS had similar issues as well. I ended up 3d printing ergonomics grips for my 3ds and I know they have something similar for the switch. I feel like they were towing a line between OTG usability and being able to hold the joycons in multiple orientations (think just dance, 1-2 switch, Mario party, 51 games, etc), or in different accessories (not sure how well an ergo one would work in a leg strap with the ring fit).
Edit: also the first thing I did was buy a cheap 128GB micro SD and never look back. Sure it probably would her been nice if it wasn’t needed, but it’s swappable and it’s cheaper than if they built it in.
For 2024 especially it’s pretty fucking bad yeah. I’m really not a handheld guy but in 2016 it didn’t seem as terrible. Only ever used mine out of its dock for a total of a couple hours