Is the Nintendo switch is weaker than a smart phone?

Started by tetrahedronX900 May 5th, 2023 9:31 PM
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Juno

Age 29
Female
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Posted 4 Weeks Ago
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9.9 Years
I'd say most flagship smartphones these days have more powerful processors than the Switch, yes. The draw of the Switch is the exclusive games it has and Nintendo is usually pretty good at optimizing their own games for their console, but like as a piece of technology its hardware is kind of outdated and not as good compared to most smartphones and other consoles.

Hermione Granger

Age 34
United States
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Posted 6 Days Ago
1,693 posts
14.3 Years
Nintendo have never been about power, they always are about the games they release on their hardware. I do think we are due for a more powerful Switch so we can get the third party support since not much third party titles have come lately. I think the final third Party title that will come natively to the switch is Hogwarts Legacy, which that is going to be a question mark on how it runs on the Nintendo Switch.

Elder's Recess
Seen August 4th, 2023
Posted June 14th, 2023
25 posts
133 Days
To be somewhat fair, the Switch is now over six years old, and whilst there was better hardware out there even when it was released, there's been a bit of an explosion in the handheld gaming market recently - due in no small part to the success of the Switch - with devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and whatever the latest Ayaneo is called showing that you really can have high-end performance gaming on more portable devices.

People want a new Switch console because it is literally being carried by first-party software now, with multiplatform titles launching in a truly dreadful state at times with no amount of patching being able to make up for it. For every amazing port like Persona 5 and NieR Automata, you get at least five like Sonic Frontiers, which is agonising to play on Switch. I wouldn't go so far as to say Nintendo are becoming a "hated company" for being bullish about the Switch, but the sales are slowing down to reflect the general market mood and they're not going to be able to sit on it the way they have been much longer.

At the risk of this post aging horribly within the next month - we have not-E3 and can probably expect the standard summer Direct announcing the lineup for the second half of 2023 alongside it - Tears of the Kingdom might have been the Switch's last hurrah.

Megan

She/Her, It/Its
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Posted 2 Hours Ago
19,958 posts
10.7 Years
Nintendo has always had families as their main target. In that regard they deliberately offered hardware with less than optimal performance. That way they could sell it at a lower price/make it more affordable for those people.

To make up for that they put a lot of effort into their first party lineup; trying to get as much out of the hardware they work with as possible. And it shows time and again (TotK being just the most recent title to prove that point). The downside is that many other developer usually struggles a lot at making their games work on a Nintendo console. They just optimized their games under other environments that give them a larger margin of error.
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