Nintendo Switch Reveal: More Questions Than Answers

Curiosity Switch Engage!

Finally! We’ve finally seen the Nintendo NX – uh, I mean Nintendo Switch! Nintendo’s new home console pretty much lived up to all of the rumors and turned out to be what we thought it was going to be: a a portable, self-contained home console that you can take and play with you on the go. It looks pretty amazing.

I was really impressed with how much information Nintendo could convey in three short minutes. We got way more out of that reveal teaser than we thought we would, but there are still so many questions left unanswered. A reporter from the Wall Street Journal has stated that Nintendo won’t be revealing any more information about the Switch or its launch lineup until January. That’s not cool.

We have some very pressing questions for Nintendo about its new miracle machine, and these are the most pressing:

How bout that battery life?

I’m not going to lie; I’m not expecting a great battery life out of this thing. This is a self-contained video game console, playing current-gen AAA games in HD, on a big bright screen. My dinky little 3DS barely gets 4 hours of battery life when used continually, so I’m wondering what we can expect from the Switch. Anything longer than three or four hours, and I’ll be very impressed.

High-capacity cartridges?

We saw in the reveal video that the Switch will indeed use game carts. I’m wondering what kind of cartridge Nintendo has fashioned for this thing. How much space will they be able to hold? Games are often larger than 30GB these days. A 32GB SD card is about $15 USD, so it’s not hard to imagine Nintendo getting their games on 40-50GB carts and selling them for $60.

Touch screen: yea or nay?

There wasn’t a single instance during the reveal video where we saw anyone interact with the screen itself. No poking, no swiping, no tapping. We assume the Switch will in fact have a touch screen, but it’s still unclear how much it will be utilized. After all, when you have the Switch docked and you’re playing on your TV, you won’t have that screen in front of you to poke, swipe, or tap.

Motion controls?

The Switch controllers, called Joy-Cons, were rumored to feature gyroscopic sensors and haptic feedback. We didn’t see anyone waving the Joy-Cons around in the reveal, but I’m willing to bet gyroscopic controls will be there. It’d be too hard to play Splatoon without them.

Price?

Pricing could make or break the Nintendo Switch. I’m going to buy it no matter what – I’ve been saving a while for this launch, y’all – but Nintendo will need to price this aggressively. Whether you see this as a portable console or a super high-powered handheld, it comes off as a premium item. Be that as it may, I feel like $300 USD would be a good sweet spot. A good $400 bundle with a couple of games and some extra accessories (maybe a battery recharge kit?) would be awesome.

That about does it for hardware. We still have so many other questions about games and features. What kind of launch lineup can we expect? Is Miiverse still going to be the main online component? What is the operating system like? I’m not sure we can wait until January for these answers, but it looks like we may have to.