Despite being just over three minutes long, there’s a lot to unpack in Nintendo’s reveal trailer for their upcoming Switch hybrid console. Join me as I scrutinize and overthink the shit out of it.
While everyone is saving power, this douche unnecessarily has all his lights on.
We open in a nice upper-middle class neighborhood in, what my best guess is, Jersey City looking over the New York City skyline. It’s just before dawn and you can see our first subject playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Only one deduction can be made here: This man has been playing all night.
He is so mesmerized he forgot he was supposed to hold the controller with both hands.
I want you to be keenly aware that there are no kids or families throughout. Nintendo is done with that demographic. Everyone in this video is in their late 20’s or early 30’s, successful and hot. This guy has rappelling decor above his TV because he is a rock climber and is better than you in every possibly way.
If you think of the USB slots as eyes, it kinda looks like a dinosaur eating a wallet.
Here we see the Switch Console resting in a toaster (or as Nintendo calls it, the “Dock”). There’s a LED next to a TV monitor logo which is presumably indicating a TV output. On the side you can see 2 USB ports. However, I don’t understand why Nintendo would cover the console’s screen when docked. It seems like it could function just the same without the whole front part.
Jokes aside, a modular console is a neat idea. It’s only the flood of accessories that keeps me awake at night.
Here we see the Joy-Cons and the Joy-Con Grip accessory. The Grip has 4 LEDs for each Joy-Con which, if it’s anything like Wii/Wii U accessories, presumably indicate which player the connected Joy-Con belongs to. And they probably blink when their batteries are low. The way he detaches each Joy-Con by pinching the top leads me to believe there is a release switch in the back. That or the Plus and Minus buttons at the top of each Joy-Con doubles as a release button. God help us if there isn’t a locking function, because then pressing up on an analog hard enough could dislodge them off of the Grip.
You can also see from this angle the HDMI and power cable running from behind the toaster.
After a night of begging and whimpering, I presume, the owner finally decides to tend to his dog.
When out of the toaster, the tablet itself acts as the screen. From the off-screen view of this trailer, the graphics look surprisingly good. However, the framerate seems to dip in this mode for some reason, which makes absolutely no sense for something that could have been fixed in post-production. Rumors and patents have indicated that the dock will somehow give the console extra rendering horsepower, though nothing has been officially stated.
Rejoice. All of Skyrim Remastered fits in that game card.
You can see in this next shot that there is a vent on top of the console unit. It would imply there is a fan inside; something which generally goes against design philosophies of small consumer devices. Nintendo avoids moving parts in their handhelds like the plague, and such a feature would suck precious battery life.
What I believe is going on here is that there is no fan inside the console itself. Instead, there is a fan in the Dock which blows air into and through the tablet’s vent (probably from a vent at the bottom and expelled from the vent at the top). This way, when off-Dock the Switch operates in a battery saving mode. Then when connected to the Dock, the processors are overclocked while the Dock helps ventilate. This seems to me a more likely way to boost the power of the Nintendo Switch without some more complicated and expensive “dual rendering pipeline” in which the toaster itself has an extra GPU that works in sync.
Oh, and this shot also shows a game card being inserted. But you already knew this and I’m not here to analyze; I’m here to overanalyze.
If you can’t zoom in, just bring your eyeball in reeeeal close.
This one show shows off the kickstand. Whatevs. I’m more interested in that little button under the trigger. You best believe this is the release switch for the Joy-Con. That or it’s just some glare which I’m reading too much into. There’s a shot later which I believe has a better view of it. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.
For goodness’s sake, give the poor man an armrest!
The camera angle and foreground in this shot suggests our gamer subject is being stalked by a pervert one row ahead. We can also gather from this is that the Nintendo Switch is managing three separate batteries. One for the tablet, and one each for both Joy-Cons.
Moreover, does the Switch not support Bluetooth headphones? Perhaps it does, but Nintendo just wanted to rub their headphone jack in Apple’s face. If so: Well played, Nintendo.
I spent money on four Wii U Pro Controllers. I just thought you should know that.
Here you can see what a Nintendo accessory would look like if it was designed and 3D printed within the span of a day. On top of praying they refine this thing, I’m also hoping the Switch’s new Pro Controller has the same 300-hour battery life the Wii U’s Pro Controller does. It’s certainly following its own trend of looking more and more like an Xbox controller.
That reminds me: Nintendo is returning to a more agreeable right analog stick placement below the face buttons. Also of note is that if you want to play with a real D-pad, you’ll need to buy this thing. The left Joy-Con only has four buttons in place of a D-pad.
This guy’s neighbors were abducted and replaced with stencil paintings.
Nintendo’s target demographic lives in an IKEA model room and owns a straw fedora. The only thing missing is an abstract painting of a unicycle… god dammit.
Kids in the back seat.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned accessories yet. Here’s one that attaches your Switch console to the back of a car seat. This demonstrates the family friendly side of the Nintendo Switch and how your kids will… nope. My bad. Those are just more youthful adults again.
Each Joy-Con can be used as an individual controller.
They’re playing what appears to be Mario Kart 8 on the Yoshi’s Island track, except each player can carry two items at a time and one of the players is using King Boo as his character. It’s probably an enhanced port. I want it.
Also, let’s take a moment to laugh at how absurdly tiny the controllers are for those massive adult hands, and how they’re playing split-screen on a 6 inch screen. It can’t be safe how close these guys scooted forward on the car seat. I’m warning you right now that your kids will be unstrapping their seatbelts for this. At least they only played on their way to ride real go-karts. The same can’t be said for the following people:
I should write something in this caption box but I really have no words for this.
These four men stopped playing actual basketball to play virtual basketball on a bench beside a basketball court. I poured over the footage to try to decipher what happened but I didn’t come to any satisfying conclusion. I thought maybe they were tired from a great workout, but they aren’t even sweating. This means they barely touched the real basketball behind them before giving up and playing on the Switch.
In her computer, there’s an excel file with the full inventory of that numbered drawer system.
She’s playing what appears to be a brand new mainline Mario game, somewhere in the style between Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario 3D World (based on the low yet fixed camera angle).
There a small collection of Amiibo next to her Nintendo toaster, so it’s almost certain it will have Amiibo support. I believe the NFC spot will be the screen of the tablet itself, only because that’s where it was on the New 3DS.
Despite what Nintendo will have you believe, going to a party and bringing your portable console isn’t something adults do.
It’s a bit blurry, but this shot shows what I believe is the release button for the Joy-Con. It looks like a button under the screw hole and right next to the ridge beneath the trigger.
The detachable controls blew this guy’s mind so hard that his entire belief system is collapsing.
The following shots detail how the Nintendo Switch is tournament friendly using Splatoon as an example. Take a look at the chicken scratch below:
“Billy, you flank left while Patty corckscrews a hat-trick sidewinder hail mary blitz fumble into the slam dunk. HIKE!”
I gather that the actors were told to pretend to draw stuff while the cameras only filmed their arms moving, but the director accidentally filmed the chalkboard. More importantly, this highlights something that is perhaps lacking on the Nintendo Switch: touch control or stylus input. If the tablet had a touch screen, it’s reasonable that this would be the perfect opportunity to show it off by having the e-sports team leader draw plays directly on the Switch screen.
On top of that, nobody in the entire video is shown tilting or waving around their controls. Gyroscopic aim is a major feature of Splatoon, after all. This suggests that the Switch also lacks motion control.
That level of stoic composure just doesn’t match the hair.
These e-sports competitors simply insert their tablets into the tournament toasters. What this means is that players will no longer have to plug in their controllers or spend time pairing their controllers to the tournament consoles. Instead, players will simply bring their own Switch and set it right on a foreign Dock. All your controllers that are paired to your console will, in turn, display on the TV through someone else’s Dock. It’s ingenious.
Hell, I’ll buy this game twice. Three times if you give me a chance.
As for the Spaltoon game being played, it also appears to be an enhanced port. The map is new and the inklings have all new hairstyles.
When this was shot, all these actors had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
That was all the important things you may have missed on your first watch and that I gleaned on my 40th watch. Despite some reservations, I must to say that I’m excited for the prospects of the Nintendo Switch.