If looking at the Switch (I like the NX name more) as a 3DS/New 3DS replacement, it looks like a far superior mobile gaming platform. Strictly from a mobile gaming point of view, even at $299, due to the large screen, likely more comfortable controls than on the 3DS and flexibility to play on the TV, this would seem like a good deal compared to the $199 3DS. From a performance perspective, compared to the 3DS/New 3DS, this is also a huge leap forward. The major downside for 3DS/mobile owners is that it likely means Nintendo will raise the price of games by $10-20 because they are positioning the Switch as a home console too.
My personal gripe with this console is that as a home console, it is not what I wanted. I am never going to be playing games on the train, in a taxi, on an airplane. That means for home console consumers, we will have the console plugged in at home almost the entire time and will end up paying a premium for the portable features we'd never use. In turn, we also get extremely weak performance for a 2017
home console. Here are are my major gripes (all conjecture at this point) for the Switch as a home console:
1)
Starting price probably doesn't have the traditional controller -- Chances are the rumoured $299 starting console will not have the Pro controller. I guess that's pretty obvious. Once we add the cost of the Pro controller for traditional gaming, the price of the console will go up to at least $349. Hopefully Nintendo ships the Joy-con cradle in the $299 price. If not, that's yet another added cost to push us into the $399 bundle.
2)
Lack of sufficient built-in storage / room for 2.5" HDD expansion in the dock -- Due to the portable nature of the Switch, it seems highly unlikely that it will have storage beyond 128GB. Fingers crossed Nintendo at least left room in the thicker version of the dock for a 2.5" HDD. On one hand, having options for 1-2TB of storage built into the dock would allow Nintendo to sell games online, but otoh, I can imagine how Nintendo would be paranoid that a physical and removable HDD would open them up for piracy. For that reason, I fear there is no HDD storage inside the dock, and there is no space built into the dock for 2.5" HDD expansion. If we add the cost of an external USB 3.0 1-2TB HDD, the cost will go up even more from $349 (with the Pro controller). Suddenly the $299 console would turn into a $425-450 console if one desires the traditional controller and a 1-2TB external drive (assuming storage of games on the external HDD is supported in the first place).
3)
High(er) prices of games due to cartridges -- Extrapolating from the point above, if NX does not have large built-in storage, and since games are approaching 40-60GB in size this generation, it's going to be very hard to have a lot of leeway on discounting games built on cartridges. This is actually what hurt N64 a lot. Even though we already have
1TB SD cards, even 64-128GB SD cards aren't that cheap yet. It will make games more expensive to produce than on PS4/XB1 consoles. As a result, I am expecting Switch games to stay priced closer to MSRP much longer than they are on PS4/XB1 consoles.
4)
Battery life could be a deal-breaker -- Honestly if the Switch's battery life is less than 4 hours, that would be a big deal. If would necessitate buying the Pro controller for home gaming and severely limit the appeal of the console on the go. Nintendo will have to contend with having a large and possibly heavy battery inside the "brains of the Switch" (aka the display section) or not having enough battery life but having a light Switch console. This is a big engineering challenge.
5)
Not even 2013 Home Console Performance in 2017 -- As I said, when looking at the Switch as a portable gaming device, it's looking great. When looking at it as a home console, it's exactly what I feared - not even as powerful as Xbox One. Forget Xbox One because in 2017, after adding the cost of the Pro Controller, it's most likely going to be $349 NX vs. $399 PS4 Pro. When comparing home vs. home console experience (for those who don't care about the Switch's mobile aspects), this suddenly makes the NX seem way too expensive for the hardware we are getting. Since we know from various technical write-ups on Pascal that Maxwell and Pascal's CUDA cores, TMUs, ROPs, etc. have more or less identical IPC, if the SoC inside the Switch even had 384 CUDA cores,
it's only going to be as fast as 60% of GTX750Ti (60%*640 CUDA cores = 384 CUDA cores where 1058mhz Maxwell = 1058mhz Pascal).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7764/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-750-ti-and-gtx-750-review-maxwell/4
We cannot even use the argument of 50GB/sec Pascal having superior delta colour compression to Maxwell because 750Ti has 86.4GB/sec memory bandwidth, easily offsetting any DCC advantages Pascal has.
This is a big deal because the biggest issue of 3rd party ports being easy to port from XB/PS4/PC would still be a challenge due to weak GPU horsepower, and lack of memory bandwidth. To exacerbate the matters, recent XB1 games such as Forza Horizon 3 or Gears of War 4 or Rise of the Tomb Raider show performance well above HD7790 level because developers are now optimizing and have learned the ins and outs of GCN. While in the past an i3 and 750Ti was providing similar or better performance than XB1, now an i5 and GTX950/960 is needed. Even if developers start optimizing games for the Tegra Pascal SoC, it's highly unlikely they can magically go from 256-384 CUDA core Pascal to roughly GTX950/960 level of GPU performance. The other thing is, even if they do, it'll take 2-3 years and by then this PS4/XB1 console generation is all but over. The first 1-2 year of Switch games, are NOT going to be specifically optimized to take full advantage of the hardware of the Switch because almost all the cross-platform console games are made for GCN/PC level hardware, not ARM and custom Pascal Tegra SoC.
6)
No indication that 3rd party support will be strong over the 4-5 year life-span of the Switch -- Originally, we did get some 3rd party games ported to the Wii U. Even though the Switch is going to be way more powerful than the Wii U, the storage on cartridges, memory bandwidth, completely different ARM SoC, and rather weak Pascal GPU compared to modern 2017 consoles could seriously make it very expensive to port 2017-2019 3rd party games to the console. Since the console is not x86 and doesn't even have GCN, it's never going to be as simple as cross-porting games between PC/XB1 and PS4. Automatically it means that making games for the Switch will cost extra and the install base during the 1st or 2nd year is unlikely to reach 40 million.
7)
Launch timing is sub-optimal -- If next generation PS5/XB2 launch in 2019-2020, the Switch only has 2-3 years of time to be relevant. By 2020, PS4/XB1 will be 7 years old and it's unimaginable that Sony/MS will not do a clean-slate PS5/XB2. This means exactly by the time developers will start learning all the ins and outs of the Switch's hardware is when they could shift their game development focus on XB2 and PS5. Even if the Switch has some 3rd party support during the first 2-3 years, it's not hard to imagine that the Switch will be exactly like the Wii U was once PS4/XB1 launched. Because of the timing of the Switch's launch, there is a high likely-hood the console will not only compete with existing consoles, but also with 9th gen Sony/MS consoles. Honestly, that's a very risky move and limits the Switch's life-cycle.
8)
Future backwards compatibility -- By going with ARM/custom Tegra SoC/Pascal eco-system, Nintendo put themselves in a corner. It's highly likely that next gen PS5/XB2 are still going to be x86 consoles. It means the Switch 2 or whatever will once again have to decide to go with x86 and break BC with the Switch OR stick to under-performing mobile SoC / ARM eco-system of 2020. Once Sony say moves to x86 6-8 core Zen in 2020, it's going to take a heck of a mobile SoC to match that in the next Nintendo console.
9)
Reliability of the moving parts -- How long will the parts last if a gamer switches them daily in and out. It's going to be take time to test this out and early adopters will be the ones doing it. That's a risk that's simply not there with the other consoles.
I think if we look at the Switch as the most powerful Nintendo console to enjoy Nintendo games, then it's likely going to be way more successful than the Wii U. In fact, Nintendo should try and port every single Wii or at least the Wii U exclusives to the Switch since so many Nintendo gamers outright skipped both the Wii and the Wii U. If we look at Nintendo's Switch as fixing all the things we didn't like about the Wii and Wii U, imho, they have not done any of that.
I still do not understand why Nintendo did not position the Switch as the 3DS successor and given us a proper traditional home console. It's not as if the 3DS didn't successfully co-exist with the Wii/Wii U. Nintendo has enough $ to have created a 2nd next gen $450-500 powerful console with 4K and VR capability for the home, but they didn't...