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Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

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781 points HelloUsername | 8 comments | 16 Jan 25 13:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source | bottom
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wat10000 ◴[16 Jan 25 14:12 UTC] No.42725342[source]▶
It seems like the days of revolutionary consumer electronics are over.

This looks nice, for sure. But it’s really more of the same. Not surprising. It does surprise me that there’s such emphasis on it, though. There’s the name, of course, and then the entire video is based around “it’s the same thing but a little better.”

Game console updates used to be big deals. The SNES was a revolution. PS2 was huge. Now… PS5? What’s different from PS4, again? Is there a 6? What’s different about that?

I don’t blame Nintendo or the others. I have no idea what they could do here they would be revolutionary. I think the design space has just been thoroughly explored by now and that’s where we are.

This pattern repeats all over the place. TVs are maxed out, with better visual quality than people care about, and size limited by wall space. Computers get a little faster every year. This year’s phones are last year’s phones with a minor performance bump and slightly better cameras. And again, I don’t see what they can do better, and that’s probably how it has to be at this point.

But it’s still a little shocking to see a company lean so far into the theme of “we made incremental improvements to this thing we released 8 years ago.”

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1. isk517 ◴[16 Jan 25 16:37 UTC] No.42727568[source]▶
>The SNES was a revolution

Nintendo has actually stated they view the SNES as a evolution of the NES. They have directly stated their hardware development cycle goes Revolution>Evolution>Revolution. Considering that the Switch was considered one of their revolutionary leap (their first hybrid console) it is no surprise the Switch 2 is a simple evolution of that concept. If their next console is another iteration of the Switch THEN it is safe to say they are no longer aiming to revolutionize their hardware.

Edit: After tons of searching I am starting to think that I am misremembering thing. I think this idea came about from the Wii's 'Revolution' code name and I Mandela Effected myself into think there was a interview we're either Miyamoto or Iwata talked about this being there philosophy when designing system.

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2. isk517 ◴[16 Jan 25 16:45 UTC] No.42727657[source]▶
I apologize, I tried to find the interview were this was stated but unfortunately search engines are terrible now and no matter how hard I try I only get news about the Switch 2 or old stories about when the Wii has code named Revolution. Feel free to not take my word that this was actually stated.
3. hedora ◴[16 Jan 25 16:53 UTC] No.42727734[source]▶
I’d be curious to know when they said that. It sounds like revisionist history to me.

Based on the switch launch video, the delta between the NES and SNES was much higher than Switch -> Switch 2.

Here’s an analogous snes ad, which spends most of its time showing off 3d and increased sprite counts:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBFw93V3Rg

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4. isk517 ◴[16 Jan 25 17:08 UTC] No.42727927[source]▶
Sorry, tried to find the interview and failed. It would most like have come out around the Wii's release/development since it used the code name Revolution.
5. staticman2 ◴[16 Jan 25 18:07 UTC] No.42728673[source]▶
That really sounds like something someone made up in marketing.

The Wii came about because an independent company pitched motion control technology to Nintendo and they liked it and licensed it. Not because of the 3d chess game of going from "evolutions" to "revolutions".

The Switch came about because it's less expensive to make software for a single hardware unit than a separate handheld and console and this became an issue as games got more expensive to make.

6. int_19h ◴[16 Jan 25 19:52 UTC] No.42730037[source]▶
At the time, at least, I don't recall seeing SNES as a "revolution". It had better graphics etc, but the form factor was the same, and games were broadly similar, so it was more of a luxury option.
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7. wat10000 ◴[16 Jan 25 21:42 UTC] No.42731291{3}[source]▶
It was the first taste of (sorta) 3D, at least in Nintendo’s lineup. Games like Pilotwings and Mario Kart were a big change.
8. phendrenad2 ◴[17 Jan 25 02:58 UTC] No.42733630{3}[source]▶
The SNES was, objectively, a huge jump over the previous generation (NES, Master System, etc.). Much better sound, 16-bit color, pseudo-3D with Mode 7, support for much much larger carts, support for coprocessors within the cart... An expansion port for a hypothetical CD-ROM addon (spoiler). I think that the revolution>evolution>revolution is revisionist, or at least something they said much later on. SNES might have started as a luxury option, as all consoles do, but it was obviously intended to compete with whatever Sega put out for that generation (and compared to the Genesis, Sega pulled out a few tricks so in the end the SNES wasn't a huge step above the Genesis either).