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The Nintendo Switch reportedly has a multitouch screen
We have plenty of questions about the Nintendo Switch, but one of the most pressing is: Does it have a touchscreen? During the three-minute teaser, no-one ever swipes, taps or prods the main unit, leading to speculation about its capabilities. Well, according to Eurogamer, the hardware does indeed support grubby fingers. The Switch is reportedly rocking a 6.2-inch, 720p capacitive multitouch display -- a first for the company, which has relied on basic resistive touchscreens until now. What's unclear is that how will affect the Switch's docked mode, which covers the display entirely. Lots of alternate control schemes? Possibly.
Nintendo expects to sell 2 million Switches in the first month
While Nintendo's earnings didn't look so good this quarter, President and CEO Tatsumi Kimishima apparently has a rosy outlook for the launch of his company's next-gen Switch portable console. According to the Wall Street Journal Tokyo correspondent Takashi Mochizuki, Nintendo plans to ship 2 million Switch consoles when it goes on sale in March 2017.
Nintendo loses less money, but Switch can't come fast enough
Nintendo's latest financial report is more dour reading for console gaming. While the company saw sales of 74.8 billion yen ($718.86 million), up since last quarter, it has to contend with an operating loss of 813 million yen ($7.8 million) over the last three months. Well, at least it's a smaller loss than the last quarter. It sold 1,770,000 3DSes and 349,000 Wii U home consoles. In fact, Nintendo almost doubled the number of 3DS consoles it sold compared to Q1. 3DS software sales -- and this is before the launch of a highly anticipated new Pokemon title -- was a highlight, with over 10 million games sold. Pokemon Omega and Alpha and Kirby Planet Robot both sold over a million copies, respectively. On the Wii U, Nintendo sold just 3.6 million titles; a decrease for the a console that simply hasn't caught your imagination.
With the Switch, Nintendo could make controllers great again
There was no more exciting time to be a peripheral fan than 1999. For me, someone who loved the custom controls of the arcades, the Dreamcast was a fantasy come true. Its Visual Memory Unit (VMU) was a memory card with a screen that slotted into the controller -- and a micro-console in its own right. Games like Power Stone and Seaman let you load mini-games onto the VMU to play on the go, but more interesting was its dual-screen potential.
The Switch shows desperate Nintendo is the best Nintendo
Nintendo has something to prove. After the Wii U flamed out spectacularly, the company needed to do something truly different to stay afloat in the console world. Its answer is the Switch, a hybrid portable/home gaming system that's unlike anything we've seen before. While Microsoft and Sony are simply trying to shove in faster hardware to support 4K and HDR, Nintendo is going back to its roots with a device that evokes memories of spending carefree afternoons with your Game Boy, or going head-to-head with your friends in Mario Kart on the SNES. The Switch is a reminder that Nintendo innovates best after it fails, when its back is against the wall and it's not just reacting to pressure from the competition.
Engadget's first thoughts on the Nintendo Switch
We now know that Nintendo's next-generation game console will be the Switch, a hybrid device offering portable and home gaming in one. But there's a lot we don't know. What games will it launch with? How much it will cost? What's that screen like? Will it play games on a TV at 1080p? How long will the battery last? We'll find out more about the Switch before its March 2017 release, and the answers to those questions, and more, will likely dictate our overall judgement. Nonetheless, we're nothing if not opinionated, and seeing Nintendo launch a new console has got us talking. So without further ado, here are eight Engadget editors with their first take* on the Switch. *Other opinions are also valid.
Skyrim, NBA 2K and new Mario are coming to Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo Switch looks like an impressive piece of hardware capable of going from the living room to mobile with the swipe of a hand, but it's nothing without a lineup of acclaimed, high-quality games and fresh experiences. In the Switch's debut teaser trailer, we got a glimpse at some of the software hitting Nintendo's new hardware, including a new 3D Mario game, a new version of Splatoon (look at those hairstyles) and a new Mario Kart featuring King Boo and two item slots. Of course we saw The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as well, but it was the third-party support that really stood out.
'Switch' is Nintendo's next game console
It's been almost a year and a half since Nintendo announced the NX, and now the gaming giant has finally dropped the codename and secrecy in favor of something more official: Switch. Like the countless rumors previously asserted, it's indeed a hybrid mobile and home console with a tablet element and detachable controllers. The tablet itself (which Nintendo calls "the Switch Console") is thin and pretty attractive. It looks to have a screen measuring around 7 inches, of unspecified resolution. At home, it'll plug into the "Switch Dock," which in turn plugs into your TV. While out and about you can either hold it like a Wii U gamepad or use the built-in kickstand to prop it up. In the trailer, a gamer slides what looks to be a 3DS-style cartridge into the tablet, meaning games are likely to distributed both digitally and physically. It's powered by an unspecified custom Nvidia Tegra processor, which is "based on the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards." Whether that means Pascal -- the architecture underpinning the 1000 series of GeForce cards and the yet-to-be-announced Tegra X2 -- or just that Tegra chips in general are based on the GeForce architecture, is not clear. But the question of which SoC is powering the Switch -- and whether it's based on newer or older architecture -- is important to answer if we're to work out what exactly it's capable of.
