Yea, you make sense. I guess it’s too much to ask for HDR and an on-board scaler. I guess those would be my personal things to include if I were in charge of the company to make the product enticing without adding too much cost.
Another thing to consider with HDR on a portable screen: to really get a noticeable difference from SDR content you need a sufficiently bright screen to display this greatly increased contrast between brights and darks. I’ve read screens should be 1000 nits to really show off HDR… although many TVs don’t hit this figure, they get close enough. Mobile screens do but if you crank the brightness, battery life suffers a lot. The Switch’s screen is estimated at around 250 nits. Can you imagine Switch battery life on a screen that’s several times brighter by default? And when you turn on HDR, the screen must switch to max brightness in order to be worth all the fuss… you’ll probably be looking at 30-60 mins of play time.
Furthermore, and this is just my opinion, I think it may not be worth it on a portable when outdoors and in sub-optimal artificial indoor lighting while traveling. I think the effect would be reduced significantly. At home I draw the shades or wait until night so I can watch 4K HDR content in darkness because it makes for a huge improvement over having sunlight flood in or having the lights on.
Makes sense. I haven’t seen much HDR content, myself. Just on show room floors so far.
But that is something I didn’t consider.
personally i’m expecting 8% better battery life with a pre-scratched screen (so you don’t have to worry about the dock), no backlighting and a bundle that includes a dongle to use for a headphone jack
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I’m expecting smaller/slimmer with better battery life. 4K support would be nice but I’m thinking it won’t be there as Nintendo usually prioritizes keeping costs down, would like to be wrong though.
I can’t imagine the system will be smaller and slimmer unless you think they’ll offer a system without the joycons. The depth and height already sits flush with the joycons.
Smaller and slimmer isn’t going to happen. This is a home console/portable hybrid with fixed controls that attach to the base. The goal is not to make it smaller but rather to make it more powerful over time IMO while retaining the form factor.
I really think any revision they do is going to be mostly internal changes and nothing much external to user’s eyeballs save maybe games running faster/better at higher resolutions on a nicer screen. Better battery life? Sure.
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Oh yeah, good point, smaller is out then. Better screen and battery are probably most likely.
I wouldn’t rule out smaller. A Switch with built-in controls doesn’t need to keep Joycon sizing in mind and could still be paired with them and function the same as the original hardware (playing tabletop, 1-2-Switch, etc). I think Nintendo must be looking into if a smaller Switch is something they can pull off with a few years’ time in tech improvements, and if it’s something that would be in enough demand to be worth pursuing.
Assuming they are looking into it, maybe they’ll discover that sharing the screen and tabletop multiplayer while outside are things most do not use and therefore a big screen and detachable Joycons wouldn’t be a major loss. Maybe they’d find that the large size and the lesser sturdiness of the combined parts hurt the portability factor and that’s all the incentive they need to go smaller/one piece on the next iteration. (Plus cheaper to manufacture and bigger margins over the current Switch + 2 Joycons?)
I dunno… I just think that’s something you do much later in the life of the machine. It kills all the versatility which is a major selling point.
Play on your TV. Play on the go. Play with friends with what’s in the box, both at home and on the go. Play with standard controls. Play with motion controls… it’s all part of what makes the device so interesting I think.
I think I’d personally prefer a smaller one with built in controls. It would definitely have a dpad in that case, and when at home could dock and work the same way.
The Switch is just too big for me handheld, I don’t like it.
Well if they do go with a smaller more mobile based redesign it would be an alternative choice to the current version that they will continue to make and not a replacement that takes away that versatility. The argument can be made about fragmenting the install base with that though.
Right. I guess what I could see them doing in about three or so years is releasing a new console that is far more powerful that works like the current Switch while transitioning the Switch as it is now into a true handheld that plays all Switch games to definitively take the place of a retired Nintendo 3DS.
I know people are all fired up about wanting 3DS to go away in some places, but I really think they’re going to maintain sales of it through at least two more years.
A smaller Switch could have some battery life issues. Well over 50% of the space inside of a switch is dedicated to the battery.
Then again, same is true with the joycons. A unified smaller design may be possible 
It’s hard to say honestly. Lately I realized I like my games on as big of a screen as possible, even on handhelds. I switched back to my N3DSXL instead of playing on the smaller model. And I no longer care about pixel density so much, as long as I’m playing a (somewhat) native-res game. So I probably wouldn’t bite on something smaller.
That said, I’d question whether NOA would even want such a thing. They only brought over the normal sized N3DS in limited bundles. North Americans seem to prefer the larger size in general.
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A smaller one would need to have a more power efficient die-shrink’d processor, which conveniently already exists and has since before the Switch even came out.
That could enable no internal fan, space savings, less battery needed, lower power use, etc.
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I’d love a more portable switch in the vein of the psp go.
As for the existing form factor, the screen is already fantastic but it could be brighter. I’d prefer they stick to 720p and focus on improving framerate and battery life.
I’d love a joycon that added a dpad and swapped it’s position with the analog stick.
It’s really hard for me to predict what Nintendo will do. 4k output is an easy one because it’s such a buzzword but then again Nintendo has never cared about that.
I think they will focus on the budget handheld market that the 3ds currently fills.
I can’t see Nintendo doing anything with 4K during this generation, look how long it took for them to adopt HD.
I would like a console version of the switch so I can use it on my gaming monitor and connect it to my sound bar, I know I can do that with the original switch dock but it’s messy and needs hdmi sound breakout or a 3.5mm audio lead from the top of the switch.
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Exactly. I imagine the TX2 has come down in price and has sufficient yields now to supply a new Switch upgrade, or maybe something even newer from Nvidia. It could be smaller with improvements across the board.
Honestly I think that that is the biggest reason we will not see a trimmed down Switch, since it would be a product in direct competition to their primary handheld line. Even at a higher price, but of course they did it before with the Gameboy and DS while claiming that both were going to continue.
Yup, the 3DS catering to the entry level market - much like the iPod did when iPhone arrived - allows the Switch to remain upmarket. The peripheral prices are another thing which indicates that Nintendo isn’t going to start making an entry level model, and if you want to look further there’s the marketing.
3DS continues to be aimed at kids or parents buying systems for their kids (check out the advert I posted earlier in the thread), while the Switch is aimed at adults with disposable income, and general families (Labo, Super Mario Party, and 1-2-Switch are all being marketed as family entertainment).
My time playing Mark of the NInja on Switch also reconfirms to be that Nintendo will never make a version of the Switch with a smaller screen. The text in areas in that game is almost unreadable on the 6.2" display of the current model. The best you could hope for is a smaller handheld with minimal bezels allowing for the same size screen.
Also worth remembering that the Switch’s size is a key factor in enabling its internal design: Stuff like active cooling with a copper heatpipe, a large battery, and the Joy-Cons shielding your hands from the toasty shell of the device itself are all possible thanks to its larger form factor. Switch is designed more like the internals of a laptop or Surface Pro than a traditional mobile device or handheld.
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