When in the mid-2000s Sony and Microsoft declared a protracted console war and began burning hundreds of millions of dollars, measured in teraflops, Nintendo shrugged and went their own way. Instead of performance, the gameplay was put at the forefront, and the hardware of the Nintedo Wii game console released in 2007 lagged far behind the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Instead of beautiful “next-gen graphics”, the Japanese offered gamers a lot of not the most beautiful game projects with non-trivial gameplay , which is tied to the management of the gameplay with the help of unusual controls.

Photo from the Nintendo store in Japan.

For example, the Wiimote touch controller can navigate in space and send signals about it to the console. Therefore, when playing tennis, a gamer needs to swing his hand with a controller, like with a racquet, in boxing - punch and hold defense, and when fencing, hold the controller in front of him like a sword. Subsequently, in addition to the Wii, the Japanese released a controller in the form of a dance mat, an auxiliary Nunchuk joystick, a virtual blaster for Zapper shooters and many other exotics that gave players dozens of hours of unique gaming experience.

During the fourth war between Sony and Microsoft, which involved the PlayStaion 4 and Xbox One, Nintendo once again stepped aside. In 2017, she presented to the public the Nintendo Switch portable console, which at first glance did not fit into the landscape of the gaming industry at that time at all. In fact, it was the reincarnation of the legendary portable consoles Game & Watch and Game Boy, which cost a little less than PS4, was significantly inferior to it in power and again could not boast of games with beautiful graphics. Nevertheless, the console brought Nintendo a resounding success. It turned out that the "cartoonish and not serious" Mario Kart, Zelda and Super Smash impressed many experienced players much more, another Sony exclusive with photorealistic graphics and a new facial animation system.

Switch design and ergonomics: how comfortable is it?

Switch has many faces.

The Nintendo Switch marked an innovation with a unique design: it can be called a mixture of a portable set-top box and a home console. It consists of a small tablet with an LCD or OLED screen, on the sides of which a pair of Joy-Con modules are connected with the main control buttons that act as a gamepad. When assembled, the console resembles the Game Boy Advance, which has significantly added muscle mass. The set-top box also comes with a stationary unit needed to charge the console and connect to a TV. Games can be played from cartridges or downloaded digital versions to the console's memory.

The console is not to say that it is large (width 172 mm, weight 400 grams), especially by the standards of modern smartphones. On top of the case there is a slot for cartridges with games, a headphone jack, a power button, a volume key and a ventilation grill. At the bottom is a USB-C port and connectors for a docking station. A small retractable leg and a slot for memory cards are hidden behind. The original Switch has only 32 GB of memory on board, so if you are buying not cartridges with games, but their digital versions, then a memory card is a must have. Cooling at the console is active, there is a cooler inside.

On the sides of the case are inserts for removable Joy-Con controllers, which have a built-in gyroscope, accelerometer, infrared camera and vibration motors. The controllers turned out to be compact (height 100 mm, width 30 mm) and fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. The layout of the buttons duplicates the classic gamepads of recent years: each half has a stick, 4 main control buttons and a pair of shifts.

Play together on the same console? Easily!

The convenience of managing the console depends on how the owner will use the joycons. And you can do it in three different ways.

  • In the first case, the pads are connected to the sides of the tablet, as we mentioned above. The game experience is similar to using the 3DS or PlayStation Vita consoles, only it is more convenient to play thanks to full-fledged sticks and shifts.
  • If the console is connected to a TV and the player does not need a tablet with a screen, then the joycons are connected to each other using a special mount, which is shaped like a classic DualShock gamepad.
  • In the third case, the joycons can be held directly in the hands, without being connected to anything. The fact is that the 4 main buttons of both gamepads functionally duplicate each other, so some games can be played together with a friend by giving him a second joycon.
Nintendo Game Consoles

How successful was the idea of a hybrid consoles?

In the morning you can play in front of the TV, in the evening - in the company of friends.

The idea of Nintendo to cross portable and stationary consoles is definitely a success. Since all the stuffing is hidden directly inside the tablet, you can get the Switch out of the docking station at any time and continue playing on the go without interfering with the gameplay. In practice, this gives the player a whole bunch of possible use cases: you can play lounging in front of a TV screen, lying in bed or sitting in a train car. That is, Switch gives the experience of playing both on a stationary console and on a portable set-top box / smartphone. With the difference that Nintendo releases really interesting games, and most mobile games for iOS and Android are aimed not so much at entertaining the player as at squeezing more money out of him.

Sony tried to do something similar with PS4 + PS Vita, but the problem was that in this pair, Vita played the role of a screen and a gamepad, and a stationary console processed the picture, so the image quality depended on the quality of the Internet connection. In the case of Nintendo Switch consoles, the player does not need to spend money on two devices, and then fiddle with transferring saves. Everything you need is in one place. It should also be noted that several switches can be connected to one Wi-Fi network and play with friends over a local network.

What versions of the Nintendo Switch are there and how do they differ?

Switch, Switch OLED and Switch Lite.

The original Nintendo Switch came out in 2017. It features a 6.2-inch LCD display and 32GB storage. As the brain, an NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor with four ACortex-A57 cores operating at a frequency of 1.02 GHz is used. The amount of RAM is 4 GB. With the release of firmware version 8, Nintendo added an auto-overclocking feature that boosts the core clock to 1.75GHz for a short period of time and increases the overall performance of the console by almost 70%.

Two years later, Nintendo responded to Game Boy fans by releasing a fully portable Switch Lite model with a similar filling, a smaller 5.5-inch display and joy-cons built into the body. Switch Lite is designed for portable use only, it does not have a docking station and cannot be connected to a TV. Actually, this is where the comparisons with the Game Boy came from.

According to most fans of the brand, the most interesting option for today is the 2021 Nintendo Switch OLED modification. It is based on the same hardware platform, but it has a more interesting 7-inch OLED display, storage has expanded to 64 GB, and a LAN cable can now be connected to the docking station. Many gamers note the increased quality of materials and assembly, thanks to which the console is more comfortable in the hands, does not play and does not creak when pressed.

What to play?

Unique Nintendo game library.

And now we get to the most interesting part. The fact is that Nintendo is like that samurai from Japanese parables - it has no goal, it has only its own unique path from which it does not stray. For more than 30 years, the Japanese have been releasing old-school cartoon games about Mario Brothers, Zelda, Danky Kong and Pokemon, which do not have photorealistic graphics, shooting from behind cover, royal battles, donations, interchangeable skins and other delights of modern gaming blockbusters.

What's even more interesting, most of the company's games look like they came out in the distant days of 8 and 16-bit consoles, and are often more expensive than PlayStation exclusives, which have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in development. Nevertheless, it is Nintendo that remains one of the most stable and profitable companies in the gaming market, often outperforming both Sony and Microsoft in terms of profit.

What's the secret? Nintendo makes games with an emphasis on gameplay. They are fun to play because Nintendo uses a wide variety of game mechanics, does not hesitate to experiment and does not take itself too seriously. This is fundamentally different from the philosophy of large AAA studios that invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of the project, be afraid of any risks and use the same game mechanics (hello, stealth in the bushes and shooting from behind cover).

For example, cartoon racing Mario Kart fell in love even with people who are extremely far from racing arcades and simulators. Instead of the brutal seriousness of conventional Gran Turismo, Nintendo proposes to get together in a fun company and arrange a crazy rally with the participation of Mario, Princess Peach, Yoshi the dinosaur and other characters from the Nintendo multiverse. Along the way, you need to collect various amplifiers and pave the way to the finish line using a variety of weapons. And while it sounds like a description of some generic AppStore game, Mario Kart is insanely fun to play regardless of age.

The ability to entertain players in a non-trivial way applies to other Nintendo projects, and few people manage to repeat their formula. For example, none of the clones of the team fighting game Super Smash Bros. did not achieve the same recognition as the original from Nintendo. And The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in which Nintendo reworked the traditional dungeon-crawling formula, was lauded by virtually every gaming media over high-profile AAA open-world titles, including Horizon Zero Dawn, which was released the same year.

With a focus on gameplay over graphics, Nintendo games age like brandy.

Cartoon characters ≠ games for kids.

However, you don't have to be a Big N fan to enjoy the Switch. For more than 5 years, a huge number of cross-platform AAA projects like Doom 2016, the third Witcher and ES: Skyrim have been ported to the console. Riding Roach along Toussaint, sitting in a taxi, is, you see, a unique experience. High-profile indie titles like Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, and Hades are also constantly coming out on the Switch. And all because Switch supports the popular Unity and Unreal Engine engines, and is also friends with the Vulkan cross-platform API, which is slowly pushing proprietary DirectX 12 off the stage.

Against this background, a significant disadvantage is the company's pricing policy. Game cartridges are at the level of PS5 games, digital versions are not much cheaper, and Nintendo itself rarely indulges players with promotions and discounts. As a result of this, a paradoxical situation is obtained when for the Switch version of Doom or the good old Bioshock in stores they ask many times more than for the console or PC version. Each console owner chooses how to live with it. Someone is waiting for the sale of digital versions on third-party sites, someone, like in childhood, buys and changes cartridges (fortunately, they almost do not fall in price), and someone is fiddling with flashing and playing under pirate flags.

Popular game consoles

Bottom line: how cool is the Switch and is it worth buying in 2022?

Switch is a hybrid of a portable and stationary game console.

The magic of the Nintendo consoles is that they offered something new and different from the usual performance improvement - Switch, fortunately, was no exception. This little tablet does wonders by switching between different display modes and control schemes on the fly. And in his freedom there is something terribly attractive: like a full-fledged console, but at the same time completely mobile.

You play on the go, then you come home, put the console into the docking station and continue to play from the same place. Then I played enough, took it off the dock and went to play lying on the couch from the same place. The process is debugged like in a Swiss bank, and while using the console there are no thoughts, they say, in this case it was necessary to do this, but I would remove this chip altogether. Swith leaves behind only a pleasant aftertaste.

In order not to seem like a fanboy, finally, the shortcomings of the console should be noted. We talked about high prices for games a little higher. In addition to prices, I want to scold autonomy. Despite the fact that the battery is capable of holding a charge for about 20 hours, in most popular projects it lasts for 3-5 hours of play. Alternatively, the console can blur the graphics and extend the battery life, but in this case, the picture does not look very pretty to say the least.

The networking capabilities of the console are also frustrating. For example, Nintedo has been ignoring requests from players to add Discord to the firmware for the fifth year in a row. Well, the graphics in cross-platform projects are frankly inferior to their versions for PC and stationary consoles. For example, the same third Witcher on Switch looks like all the graphics settings have been turned to the very minimum.