Gadgetory

hey this is Andrew with the verge and we're here in New York City taking our very first look at the Nintendo switch now the switch is the next major piece of hardware from Nintendo and it's a device that kind of brings together the two sides of the company now for a long time Nintendo was sort of split into two you had the portable side with devices like the Gameboy in the DS and then you had the home console side with things like the NES all the way up to the Wii U and what the switch does is it brings those together it's a tablet that connects to your television so you can play games either on the go or at home the core of the switch comes in the form of this fairly unassuming tablet it has a 6.2 inch 720p display it features multi-touch but that's also the only tablet that can run a game like The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild and the way this works is through these new controllers Nintendo has come up with called joy Kahn essentially it's a modular controller system so you get these two little parts that can snap on to the side of the tablet so you can play a traditional console game like Zelda on a tablet but you can also remove them and snap them into a shell to make a proper controller so that you can then play the game on your television now in order to emphasize all the different ways you can use the joy Kahn controllers Nintendo showed off a bunch of new games for the switch in addition to more traditional experiences like Zelda and a brand new Super Mario game they're also a number of motion control games where you use the controllers in your hands sort of like a Wii Remote back in the day to play things like the minigame collection when to switch or the boxing game arms where the two controllers essentially serve as your fists so you can punch another player and since so many people miss out on the Wii U the predecessor to the switch company is also bringing back a number of franchises just in case people miss those games there's a new version of Mario Kart 8 called Mario Kart 8 deluxe that add some new characters and tracks to the series as well as the sequel to splatoon colorful multiplayer online shooter that's sort of like a cross between a traditional game like Call of Duty and paintball but where you play as teenage squids now because the switch is essentially a tablet it does come with a few drawbacks in addition to being a little bit underpowered the device also comes with a scant 32 gigabytes of hard drive space and the battery life isn't so great Nintendo estimates you'll get around two and a half to six hours of battery life depending on what game you're playing so for something like Zelda that's a little more intense you're probably only going to get around two to three hours of play time the Nintendo switch actually launches really soon it's going to be available on March 3rd globally and in the u.s. you'll be able to pick it up for $2.99 and you know I've only spent a little bit of time with it but from what I've seen it does a really good job of bringing together those two sides from Nintendo when you play it as a console it feels like a console and when you play as a tablet it feels like a really good handheld experience it's kinda strange it's sort of like a combination of dr. Mario Tetris but I think this character is like crazy stuff at me and