Nintendo finally reveals the Switch console

Is it “Go Vacation”?

It took 8 months. In Japan, anyway.

Hmmm, only $45 cheaper than one without a dock. And a dock on its own costs $70 from the Nintendo Store (plus shipping I’m guessing).

Yeah, they’re pitching it as a second system for people who already have one.

Or they are toe-dipping to see how it sells without the dock & charger, which is how the New 3DS was sold (chargerless, anyway).

This bit of news led me to the rather-obvious-in-hindsight discovery that I can charge my Switch without it being docked. Still not sure how often I would need to do that, but good to know. I play it docked at least 95% of the time but this certainly makes it more viable as a portable console.

That’s it, thanks!

I recently picked up Rayman Legends on sale, and wow is that a great game. I played it before on PC a couple years ago, but i think its even more enjoyable the second time. If you like platforms even a little and haven’t played this, you really should.

My kids love this game so much that they want me to break out the wii again so they can play, despite having a shiny switch.

Yup. Had two 5+ hour flights this week playing Battle Chasers. Tabletop mode on the plane is awesome.

I basically only use the dock as a charging station. If I were starting from scratch, I’d probably get it without the dock, as long as the price delta was at least £30 or so.

I use both the dock and portable mode regularly, since a good number of games (including the newly-released Switch port of Hyrule Warriors) are absurdly unoptimized for portable mode (in this particular case, 60fps with drops in docked mode and sub-30fps with drops in portable mode).

Do you know how it behaves when undocked, but plugged in to a non-dock USB-C charger? I’d assume that it acts like it’s still in un-docked mode, but if there’s a charger, I could see it increasing performance to full-screen mode because battery life is nor an issue.

I don’t really know the answer to your question, but I use it that way a good chunk of the time. I never noticed a difference between being powered or not, but it might be very game-specific.

As far as I’ve seen, the system looks for the HDMI out to determine whether to go into docked performance mode, not just whether or not it’s receiving power through the USB port. It has a bunch of little quirks in the interface and such that only apply in one mode or the other, so it’s not just the performance toggle.

So I’ve been seeing some mentions of this “Pokemon Quest” game that just came out, and I keep seeing it referred to as “Free to Play” or “Free to Start”. Does anybody know what the payment model of this game actually is? If I let my kids download it, are they going to be begging me for loot boxes in a couple weeks?

I played it and it looks like it’s mostly energy and timer based monetization. So you’d have to pay to speed up certain upgrades or continue playing if you do too many missions.

Ugh, so you have to plug quarters into it like an old-timey arcade game? Hard pass, thanks.

It’s a standard mobile-game stamina system - the game is free, but you can only play a few stages before running out of stamina, which recharges at a rate of one tick per half-hour (or you can buy refills). There’s no lootbox mechanic or anything along those lines, and everything can be earned through regular play, though it’ll be slower than if you buy stuff.

It behaves as in un-docked mode (I think ventilation/ heat caused by the screen is still a significant concern)

Mario Tennis Aces demo is live.