Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Linus: “I’m Buying It.””.
The demonstration used the whatever it was, whether it was a developer kit or whether it was a prototype. You know we don’t know what it is uh to run, both at higher frame rates and higher resolution in breath of the Wild and the Matrix awakens on Unreal Engine 5 Tech demo. That was originally created in 2021 to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox series X. It apparently is capable of both Ray tracing and current gen HD visuals using nvidia’s dlss, AI upscaling, which can I just say called it.
I called this hard. I was like man switch 2 should just use dlss to have like a way better uh, like TV gaming experience without necessarily needing to move past mobile, capable Hardware. What is current, gen HD mean, I don’t know I was actually I was yes, I was I was. I was going to come back to that. Okay, sorry, you can keep going nope, you can keep going because I just got signed out of my Google account. Oh boy, uh. Other reports have corroborated that a switch sequel is in the works and that key Partners already have Dev kits in hand.
It’S possible that a launch could come as early as the final quarter of 2024 really think so. But Nintendo has made no public commitments at this point. Well, it depends what it is. If it’s a completely new gaming experience, a la Nintendo Wii, then yeah, it’s probably going to be a minute, because if developers are just getting Dev kits now, unless they’re gon na Rush these games out in a year, I mean good flipping luck right, then again it Wouldn’T be the first time that Nintendo gave their own internal teams lots of time to work on something and external teams less time um. Where was I going with this right? But if it’s more of a Wii? U, where it’s like kind of that thing, but with a gimmick or you know more different, then no I mean I, I think it could be realistic, like if you just plug in breath of the wild and since everything’s online anyway, it just downloads.
You know new text, new higher resolution textures or something to your console, and then you just Run the game from your internal storage or something like that yeah. I don’t see why um a new console that takes the same basic Game cartridges, but then just runs them at higher resolution and higher frame rate couldn’t come out soon and it might launch without any particular Blockbuster game available for it um I don’t know. I have kind of a conspiracy theory here that tears of the kingdom was supposed to be a next-gen switch title that that would have that would have been what they did and then honestly, it would have made a lot of sense.
It would have made a ton of sense, but I wonder if it was just a matter of you know the timing, not being quite right. You know, maybe maybe um Ada Lovelace came too late and Nintendo really wanted the Improvement. Man give Nvidia Flack. All you want. Go for it. Do it give Nvidia some Flack uh, they’re they’re big mean jerks.
Okay, that was they don’t care about Gamers anymore, truly powerful words. Thank you. Luke 40 series isn’t efficient, yes, really efficient, also very expensive and very efficient, and I find has a lot of issues expensive, efficient mobile Nintendo handheld match made in heaven. So I I had kind of this theory around the time that tears of the kingdom was coming out, that it seemed kind of overdue, like it kind of seemed like this, should have been the launch title for the next big Nintendo console. If it was going to be a switch successor which, at the time was it was rumored to be um, but what I kind of Wonder is if it matters. I wonder if Nintendo looked at it and went holy, smokes the switch and the switch OLED are still selling, not as well as they used to, but they are still selling.
Do we need a launch title, or do we just have better hardware and you can plug in all the same games and we’re going to continue making games and those games will continue selling consoles the same way that they always do because we’re flipping Nintendo and we Make great games that people want to play, and you know honestly, I I talked about this back when the Xbox series came out. My my theory was that the series s and the series X were just the tip of the iceberg. It as it turns out.
I haven’t been correct, at least not yet, but what I thought was that the series name which otherwise seemed phenomenally stupid to me, like I couldn’t I couldn’t come up with any other reason for it. I thought the series name meant that it was kind of the last generation of Xbox and from then on, we were just going to get essentially PCS and Xbox clothing and they would just get upgrades. That’S what was like vaguely communicated at the time and and the games would just kind of run better, depending on which one it is, and I I thought that the whole point of Series S series X was that they were priming game developers in the community. For just you know, Xboxes that are just gaming boxes that can be less powerful or more powerful and it was you know it was already kind of happening in the previous generation with so I um – I I don’t know I haven’t. I haven’t been right about that. Yet, but who knows, maybe Nintendo will be the one to do it and just kind of go: okay, yeah, we’ll just like upgrade the hardware once in a while and keep building gaming experiences for this platform, it’ll run at 720p, 30 FPS and on this one or 60 and then it’ll run at uh. You know 1080p, 60 or 120 on this one and we’ll do another one.
A few years later, it’ll run at 4K or whatever the case may be. 1440P. I don’t know Avon fox, says: uh upgradable Xbox. Let’S go okay that I’m not expecting, I’m not expecting to happen so with all that in mind the real discussion here, even though we managed to talk about this for a lot longer than I expected, was what is your dream now? You bought a switch at some point and then returned it.
If I recall correctly, no, I still have my switch. I still have a switch. I I played it quite well, technically I I so I I had a switch and then I modded it. So I replaced the backing with that, like translucent purple like retro, Nintendo style stuff, I actually use it quite a bit.
How dare you call the N64 retro? I hate you. This makes me feel really old. It is um. I had one too man when it was current um or did we get it? I think we got it the generation after but whatever it doesn’t matter, um uh yeah, but then my parents like stopped working. So I was like I’ll fix it. You can take mine while I do that and then I brought it home and I turned it on and it’s never had a problem since so I’m technically using my parents and they’re technically using mine, but I see they function so whatever.
But yes, I still have a switch long story, short yeah, Okay, cool. So then the whole idea here behind this topic was laying out kind of what we think will happen and what we want to happen. First of all, huh.
Why don’t we take turns my wish list easily backupable save games, no Cloud subscription required. I want it. I think it is not going to happen.
What do you want? What do you think will happen? I want a bit of a return to more fun. Local party games. Okay, that’s content! That’S not the console yeah, but, in my opinion, that’s a lot of what Nintendo stuff has been forever.
I don’t think the actual quality of the console has, like almost ever been a real selling. Point N64, like the quality of the Wii, was not really the selling point. No, no.
You have to go back farther than the content. N64 like it’s right in the name. It’S like it’s 64-bit, blah blah blah like it was a. It was a huge push.
They actually had the the I did that unboxing on short circuit. Recently they had the idea RAM, upgrade or whatever that was. They had the frequency of the chip on the box. That is such a not Nintendo thing to do these days, it’ll tell you how many Hertz the switch runs at yeah, yeah um, but yeah. I think that’s it because, like honestly, I enjoyed the oh.
This is gon na be time for a spicy. Take I enjoyed my Wii, the Wii? U I know more than I enjoyed the switch because the Wii? U is more fun, to have people over and play games on, yeah, that’s fair um! There was like and like not that anyone played it because no one bought a Wii uh, but that Super Mario Bros game that came out for Wii. U that had the fifth player and the fifth player had their own screen on the built-in screen, handheld that had its own gameplay style and stuff. That was really fun, really fun and not doable on any console that wasn’t a Wii! U because you had to have that handheld screen on that extra screw on that extra controller, all that kind of stuff um. So I don’t know I I don’t know necessarily how the console would do it itself, but I feel like the Wii.
U and the Wii itself both invited development of that style and the switch invited single player experiences yeah, I think that’s, I think, that’s really fair. I mean obviously neither you nor I has access to Nintendo’s Telemetry data, for what percentage of play time on the switch is in handheld mode versus docked mode, but I would guess argue most of it’s in handheld. I would guess, with the same thing with no like you’re saying data behind it. I just would argue that that’s true well.
With that in mind, I would like to see a higher refresh rate screen. I I love that I don’t need to see 120 hertz. I’D settle for 90., even 75, anything higher than 60. 90. I would be stoked on 90.. I’D be very happy with 90, because the thing is the difference between 60 and 90 is way nicer than the difference between 90 and 120, and it just has to do with how much I need the reduction in frame. Time is between the two. I’M even gon na go on a limb and say I would prefer 60 to 90 versus uh 90 to 150..
Yes, I think, I’m not sure if, like mathematically, it quite works out to being better, but it’s it’s. I just care there’s so much more about just once. You get to 90, I’m like pretty stoked on the experience.
You know, um game game Grime in float plane chat how about just 60, that’s actually playable on hardware and handled how about just that even okay. The point of this is that it’s a wish list: it’s not a realism list, because I don’t think we’re going to get it. I think we’re going to get 60..
This is this is something that I wanted. I don’t know how they would do it um, but I wanted some form of accelerator when you put it in a dock, I mean that could be done. Usb4, like yeah, there’s no way that Nvidia couldn’t build a chip with some kind of usb4 or Thunderbolt implementation. At this point, but like I wanted to um, I want there to be like a reason to dock it other than it goes on a TV screen, and you can see all them pixels interesting, I um yeah, oh man, just everything, seems everything seems so unlikely. Somehow and yet obviously they have to upgrade it. Here’S what I want to know right back to my conspiracy theory, that’s where I was going with this.
My conspiracy theory that that they just like we’re gon na, have switch two for tears of the kingdom and then just like. Didn’T. I think that steam deck has put a lot of pressure on Nintendo to bother to update this thing. And if you look at the timing for when they might have kind of gone okay, no, we actually seriously do need to actually freaking develop.
This thing: it’s not that unbelievable, because it doesn’t necessarily have to be right when steam deck launches. It could be that it’s that it’s been like a slow pressure, build as this team deck launched and then Gamers really liked it and then emulators not only existed but got super easy to use. And, oh, my goodness, our games run better on it like uh. There might have just been like uh, like a like a wake up, a slow wake up process at Nintendo to the fact that they have competition in handheld gaming again, because that’s the biggest reason that I can think of that Nintendo needs a sequel for the switch. Is that they own handheld gaming? They have tons of competition when it comes to living room gaming and they have basically forever, but they have owned, handheld gaming, basically forever um and so for Nintendo. You know, I would see them losing the living room race.
As you know, a problem, but I think to them losing the handheld race is an existential threat if that kind of makes sense, and I could see that lighting a serious, serious fire under their butts .