Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

I don't disagree. That has nothing to do with offending existing PSP owners though.

I wasn't making a direct equivalency, but trying to keep on topic of Switch by looking at the option realistically faced by Nintendo based on conversations here. If you just want to (somewhat incoherently) rant about Sony's mobile choices, start another thread.

As I said, I never felt offended by it that offence was certainly present amongst a lot of PSP owners, or trolls pretending to own a PSP. Either way, it had abysmal sales and I don't view that correlation as entirely coincidental. Imagine if the Pro or Scorpio were digital only: they're already selling to a subset of existing owners, so why further limit the potential size of that subset?

It was a bad decision, cynically motivated in an attempt to force people to go digital. I hope Nintendo don't conduct themselves in such a way, because it will seemingly backfire e.g. XBoxOne pre launch.

So, to get back to the original point: Sony have always iterated in quite a strange way, but that isn't a reflection of Nintendo. The upgrades I've seen Nintendo's portables receive have always been exactly that: upgrades.

The 2DS is the only exception to this, with its change to an odd form factor and the removal of 3D: a USP that no-one really cared about (from every person I've talked to and forum post/comment I've read,) and that was only potentially necessary when it had competition.

If the Switch was released by Sony, the next iteration may have had an etch a sketch for a screen. But it's Nintendo, so it will probably be a slight upgrade.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As I said, I never felt offended by it that offence was certainly present amongst a lot of PSP owners, or trolls pretending to own a PSP. Either way, it had abysmal sales and I don't view that correlation as entirely coincidental. Imagine if the Pro or Scorpio were digital only: they're already selling to a subset of existing owners, so why further limit the potential size of that subset?

Yes, digital only didn't work. It was possibly worth the experiment, if only it had been handled properly (not a gimped system in other areas).

It was a bad decision, cynically motivated in an attempt to force people to go digital.

It wasn't forcing anything because PSPGo sold alongside PSP. No-one was forced to go digital only.

The 2DS is the only exception to this, with its change to an odd form factor and the removal of 3D: a USP that no-one really cared about (from every person I've talked to and forum post/comment I've read,) and that was only potentially necessary when it had competition.

It was a side-grade rather than an upgrade. It sold far cheaper and alongside 3DS (like PSPGo), just giving consumers a choice for form-factor versus price.

 

[tuna]

Yes, digital only didn't work. It was possibly worth the experiment, if only it had been handled properly (not a gimped system in other areas).

The PSP Go was not in any way gimped. It had loads of features not available on the PSP-2000 and 3000 (like bluetooth and the ability to have two games loaded into memory so you can swap without restarting them).

 

[tuna]

As I said, I never felt offended by it that offence was certainly present amongst a lot of PSP owners, or trolls pretending to own a PSP. Either way, it had abysmal sales and I don't view that correlation as entirely coincidental. Imagine if the Pro or Scorpio were digital only: they're already selling to a subset of existing owners, so why further limit the potential size of that subset?

I honestly think the negative sentiment against the PSP Go was trolls and idiotic media. I read reviews at the time that compared the Go to iPhones and similar products when they should compare it to the normal PSP and the DS. Actual Go owners (like me) have a bigger reason to be pissed since games like Crisis Core never became available on the PS Store. But I got revenge at Sony/Squenix by pirating it on my PSP-2000 instead!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Okay, not gimped, but it was different such that it wasn't a fair test of whether people preferred UMD or not. It could be, for example, that the reason PSPGo didn't sell was because of the smaller screen rather than beign download only. If PSPGo were exactly the same as PSP except for being download only, we'd have had a fair test on the viability of a download-only device.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I honestly think the negative sentiment against the PSP Go was trolls and idiotic media.

Bad reviews were mostly due to the launch price, which was over $300 IIRC. I bought one for 80€ a couple of years later and it was a great piece of hardware. Up until a couple of years ago I was still using it for listening to music.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

Yes, digital only didn't work. It was possibly worth the experiment, if only it had been handled properly (not a gimped system in other areas).

It wasn't forcing anything because PSPGo sold alongside PSP. No-one was forced to go digital only.

It was a side-grade rather than an upgrade. It sold far cheaper and alongside 3DS (like PSPGo), just giving consumers a choice for form-factor versus price.

Agreed that it was worth the experiment, but was flawed in execution. As for people being forced to go digital, I was wrong in my choice of words: unsubtly encouraged would be better.

The side-grade of the 2DS is a pretty good idea, even if personally unappealing. In the context of likening it to the PSPGo, I agree to an extent: unlike Sony's portable, the 2DS was a well executed and cheap side-grade.

The PSP Go was not in any way gimped. It had loads of features not available on the PSP-2000 and 3000 (like bluetooth and the ability to have two games loaded into memory so you can swap without restarting them).

Loads? Those are two features. Bluetooth was the best feature, because you could connect a DualShock 3 to it and play God of War more comfortably having the ability to load two games into memory was great but faced the direct tradeoff of a smaller library. The "wide colour gamut" looked great, but faced the tradeoff of a smaller screen.

Maybe it was created at a time when PlayStation employees were finishing off Kuturagi's crack rock collection, but it was so near to being a brilliant upgrade/side-grade that it was disproportionately disappointing.

What kind of upgrades would people like to see the Switch receive?

I see it moving to 16nm fairly soon, akin to the DS Light timeframe, and resulting in a slightly smaller console with much better battery life. 7nm is already on the horizon, so I'd rather like to see a beefier iteration at that point, in which its portable mode is the docked mode of the current console. Asking it to deliver 4K when docked may be too much, but a PS4Pro situation would be satisfying: minimum 1080p resolution, with support for higher resolutions and checkerboarding.

 

[tuna]

Okay, not gimped, but it was different such that it wasn't a fair test of whether people preferred UMD or not. It could be, for example, that the reason PSPGo didn't sell was because of the smaller screen rather than beign download only.

People who didn't like UMD could just buy games from the PS Store (or pirate as most people did). The smaller screen in the Go was a function of being a smaller device which made it much more portable than the "normal" PSP.

 

[tuna]

Bad reviews were mostly due to the launch price, which was over $300 IIRC. I bought one for 80€ a couple of years later and it was a great piece of hardware. Up until a couple of years ago I was still using it for listening to music.

The Go was a premium device and priced as such. Most reviewers at the time did not understand that either.

 

[tuna]

If PSPGo were exactly the same as PSP except for being download only, we'd have had a fair test on the viability of a download-only device.

I really do not think that SCE wanted to test or experiment with a download-only device. They just want to create a premium PSP which was slightly smaller. To bad most people did not see it as such.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I really do not think that SCE wanted to test or experiment with a download-only device. They just want to create a premium PSP which was slightly smaller. To bad most people did not see it as such.

Then the blame lies squarely at Sony for not communicating that. It's a company's responsibility to tell consumers what their product is.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Okay, not gimped, but it was different such that it wasn't a fair test of whether people preferred UMD or not. It could be, for example, that the reason PSPGo didn't sell was because of the smaller screen rather than beign download only. If PSPGo were exactly the same as PSP except for being download only, we'd have had a fair test on the viability of a download-only device.

PSPGo would have failed even if it had been exactly the same as the PSP in all ways physical except for the lack of a UMD. PSPGo failed miserably mostly due to the fact that digital titles weren't released day and date with physical titles. They usually lagged behind weeks to months, assuming that they even got a digital release in the first place. Basically, it wasn't a test about whether people preferred UMD or not as much as whether people preferred a smaller library of titles that generally got released much later than the UMD version.

Considering how they botched distribution of games for the PSPGo, it isn't very surprising that it failed. That one key failure on the part of Sony meant that regardless of whether there was an interest in a device that would only use digitally distributed games, it was going to fail.

Think of it another way. Let's imagine that PS4-P didn't get all titles released for PS4. Now, of the titles that it does get, it only gets them weeks or months after the PS4. Distribution wasn't changed in any way (so you'd still have physical and digital releases). It'd quite likely fail in the marketplace even though it's much more powerful than the PS4.

Regards,
SB

 

[bgroovy]

The Go was a premium device and priced as such. Most reviewers at the time did not understand that either.

It was designed to solve the two major complaints non-owners always cited about the PSP: It's too big and UMDs suck. Why everyone reviewed it as if only existing PSP owners would be interested I'll never know.

 

[tuna]

PSPGo would have failed even if it had been exactly the same as the PSP in all ways physical except for the lack of a UMD.

I do not know what constitutes a failure for the Go. How would you define if it failed or not?

 

[bunge]

I do not know what constitutes a failure for the Go. How would you define if it failed or not?

If it was released by Sony or Nintendo....

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I do not know what constitutes a failure for the Go. How would you define if it failed or not?

IIRC, I bought it in a sales clearance in late 2010 for 80€ or something.
Given the initial asking price of ~300€ (in my country), I think this pretty much defines it as a commercial failure.

I also bought my Vita 3G sometime in 2012 for 160€ (release price was 300€ I think). Also a pretty good indicator of how badly it was selling one year after release.

The motives for either one failing are completely different, though. The PSP Go suffered a boycott from retailers, the Vita was treated as a stillbirth by Sony.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I do not know what constitutes a failure for the Go. How would you define if it failed or not?

Sales numbers, how else? This isn't an exotic or even premium enthusiast product that can be a success even with very few sales.

Just as an example of how it was doing in Japan.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/191719/article.html

An entire year's worth of PSP Go sales could only muster ~1/3 of monthly PSP sales (potentially 1/36 of PSP yearly sales). And that includes launch sales which were significantly higher than subsequent months. I really don't expect the rest of the world to have differed significantly in sales composition.

Considering that the rest of the world was roughly similar to Japan (21.41 million NA, 24.14 million Europe, 20.01 million Japan) it's possible that PSP Go sold less than 2 million units WW for it's lifetime.

While a hypothetical PSP-digital which was the same form factor as the UMD equipped PSP might have done better, I don't expect it would have due to the issues with lack of day and date DD title availability.

Regards,
SB

 

[tuna]

I would define success for the Go as paying back its development and marketing costs. It probably didn't do that based on the numbers and anecdotes in this thread.

 

[Recop]

Some strange comments on Neogaf about Tekken 7 :

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=239024973&postcount=61

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=239026800&postcount=87

Yeah, there is almost a complete parity between the PS4/XB1 version of Snake Pass, but this guy expect that the Switch could run Tekken 7 at the same resolution than Snake Pass while the XB1 had to drop the resolution from 900p to 720p and remove some effects to run Tekken 7.

Nice logic... with the Snake Pass port, a lot of people greatly overestimate the Switch hardware.

 

[Entropy]

Some strange comments on Neogaf about Tekken 7 :

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=239024973&postcount=61

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=239026800&postcount=87

Yeah, there is almost a complete parity between the PS4/XB1 version of Snake Pass, but this guy expect that the Switch could run Tekken 7 at the same resolution than Snake Pass while the XB1 had to drop the resolution from 900p to 720p and remove some effects to run Tekken 7.

Nice logic... with the Snake Pass port, a lot of people greatly overestimate the Switch hardware.

Um, why do respond here to a poster on neogaf whose view you oppose?