Gadgetory

the Nintendo switch was announced this morning this is what the NX has become Nintendo NX was the codename the official product is called the switch it's a new console it is a portable console that can be docked for a normal TV use and we're talking about it here today because it's interesting from a few perspectives one of which is of course Hardware big news point for any console the switch has a new Tegra Pascal SOC we'll get into the details on that in a moment first of all this coverage is brought to you by an tech and their new cube mini ITX case designed by Razer which can support a full custom loop liquid cooling solution the switch is built in partnership with Nvidia it's using a new Pascal Tegra chip so the Tegra line is a more mobile and portable line of GPUs or actually SOC s is the more appropriate term and the Pascal one we haven't seen a whole lot of yet it started to appear in cars but certainly is in the Nintendo switch and that's because Nvidia themselves posted an announcement saying we're using our architecture that's in the world's best GPUs in the switch which means Pascal so it is a Pascal SOC system on chip this chip will also be on ARM architecture because that's what Tegra runs on so it's not an x86 architecture it is arm and unless something major has changed with Pascal in the news head where that will probably remain the case as it was with the Maxwell versions of the Tegra chips other interesting news the Tegra Pascal SOC will have a unified memory which is not something that's possible with the add-on cards with x86 architecture so that will be feasible I don't know if Nintendo has enabled that but it's certainly a possibility and probably likely that they're using unified memory that would be a good thing in the trailer for the switch we saw very clearly that the Elder Scrolls Skyrim is in there I'll talk about the other games in a moment but Skyrim is the one I want to point out because that is obviously a PC games on other consoles too but it is a PC game and the interesting point here I suppose is that Nvidia already has OpenGL and Vulcan running on the Tegra k1 and the Maxwell Tegra so in theory because OpenGL and Vulcan works on both those it should be a bit easier to port games from one device to the other though you're still dealing with new api's so the api that's advertised for the Nintendo switch is called NBN API and video already has its own and V API I'm guessing the extra n probably means Nintendo so it probably just means Nvidia at Nintendo API so that's the application programming interface used for the Nintendo switch as far as we know right now not sure how Skyrim is coded if it's through NBN or something else but just points of interest there from a software level as far as we're aware right now the switch is probably processing and rendering all of its output on the device itself even when you undock it and take it mobile and I'm guessing that's the case because this is shouldn't be something like a shield where it's just rendering remotely and then wirelessly transmitting to the device there's a lot of reasons to believe that one of them is that Internet's just not that good worldwide and the switch was shown and it's commercially used on a plane which absolutely does not have enough up and down internet speed to do any kind of remote rendering and the latency would be insane so it should all be processed on device it's basically a tablet that's got two controllers on Rails so they hook into it on Rails and then you can pull them off and use them separately as two controllers and they can even be separated into one controller per person so you have local multiplayer on it two players and each person uses one half basically of the controller set if the game has simple enough functions like Mario Kart where that could be done alternatively those two controllers can be docked into a single sort of base station not to use a five-word but we'll call it that and that just creates one fixed controller more similar to what you're used to for a local console gaming experience in the living room I'm not sure if that mount that base station has any sort of battery pack or anything like that in it but you can't hook them into that and then as a third alternative there is a more traditional rounded controller that's shown in an eSports scene in this trailer which is worth pointing out because that Nintendo has not had a good history of supporting eSports and video AMD Intel they all pretty much get it they support eSports pretty heavily in the PC space we all know that so maybe Nintendo start to feel a bit of pressure or encouragement to do that this time around but we'll see if it remains anything outside of the the trailer that we just saw so the three types of controllers all have pretty much the same input other than when you're using the detachable ones stand alone as two separate single controllers and that includes it to analog thumb sticks a d-pad which is kind of faked on one of them X Y a B button so you've got four buttons on the top side a home button a mystery button I'm not really sure what that one does and then plus and minus buttons which are probably for paging or volume or whatever the controllers also definitely have at least the normal left and right buttons but I'm not sure if there are bumpers on them yet and as far as the games that were shown in the trailer this morning we know for sure that Skyrim HD is in there the skyrim remastered remake that's coming out very soon for all platforms that it's currently on including the switch which will be next year March 2017 is its release date so Skyrim probably a launch title and other games on it we saw splatoon too Mario Kart 9 a new 3d Mario in there there's NBA 2k16 or something 2k16 have been old I guess at the time it launches so maybe 2k 17 but an NBA game and then breath of the wild which is the Zelda game that I've previously stated I'm actually pretty interested in so that's what we know about right now in terms of the games the software API is the nvn API the SRC is a Tegra Pascal chip I don't have a block diagram on it I don't have specs on it detailed ones anyway we've asked Nvidia for more information they basically said we can't tell you you have to go to n2 Nintendo because this is their product so waiting on Nintendo to talk to us not sure that'll happen and maybe they won't like our use of their trailer in this video because they don't have a great YouTube presence either but that's everything we know so far I am planning to get one of these and minimally tear it down if not do more just because it is an interesting device we'll try and take it apart without destroying it but at the heart of things it is a portable handheld console that is kind of entering the space of the 3ds can be docked into a normal laptop docking station equivalent that connects it to your your TV or monitor whatever so you can play it normally from living room environment so that is everything as always patron Lee commercial video for more information to help us that directly things like that subscribe comments below I'll see you all next time you ah I gave you