This just shows, most games can live without the gimmicky motion wand shiit. I wish they would make a handheld meant for adult hands. Or just release joycons for bigger hands.
Now they just need to release a console for adults: $199 for a 768 core GTX1650 like GPU with 4 x Cortex A76 cores at 3.0ghz on a SoC, with a pro controller included.
Adults, having more disposable income, will probably get a Switch Max with a larger 1080p screen, slightly larger battery, slightly faster SoC, and a slightly higher price like $349
Yep, I'd even say age 45. People grew up with that shit in the 80's and have been loyal installments since. Even Robin Williams was a devoted Nintendo fan (named his daughter Zelda for fuck sakes) and he was in his 60's when he died.
The most disappointing aspect of this is that they intentionally left out any option to connect to a display. I'm going to assume that modders/haxx0rz will find a method to connect. It wouldn't surprise me if the dock/port is still there behind the plastic. Anyway, it feels like a giant F-U from Nintendo.
It's at a $200 price point. I could give 2 shits about whether or not it connects to an external display. I may pick one up just for the first party titles.
Adults also sit on planes, trains, and automobiles on their commutes, business trips, waiting on their beautiful wife to finish the damn shopping. Time to kill...play a video game.
Yeah. My eyes still work fairly well, but I have trouble playing Zelda in portable mode. I can do fine with Mario Maker 2, but not Zelda. And definitely not Rocket League.
Though, an 8" screen at 1080p and a pro controller split in half, as joycons on the edges. I could work with that.
That's another issue, the joycon button layouts with the joysticks are horrendous for games like rocket league.
AFAIK, the way the Switch is used, they already have a few things in the SoC that are extraneous to the Switch. Those would probably be the candidates for removal, if it benefits the floorpan. The camera interfaces, the other video outputs (HDMI), PCIe endpoint, the 4 A53 cores (if any actual shipping TX1 has ever had them on die), SATA controller, etc.
Does A57 have 16/14/12nm libraries, or is a newer Cortex A7x core possible?
I'm not a microarchitecture or semiconductor engineer by any means, but I would assume that they are either using standard cell libraries or ARM produces libraries for their architectures. Either way, there's usually a plan for a die-shrink in the general architecture, even if updates and extensions are planned. Therefore, I would expect most of the standard library to be drop-in compatible if you just wanted to build an existing architecture on a smaller die, and it's just a matter of setting up the fabs to support it (plus testing, of course).
I had always assumed this was why Intel adopted the "tick-tock" approach. That gives them 2 years between architecture updates, with only an update that is primarily a fab refit and verification in-between. Of course, these days, that's also often when they increase core counts. It has the bonus benefit of letting them test the new process before building a new architecture on it.
I don’t think the deal with nvidia and the nintendo switch is that kind of deal. Nintendo pays bargain bin prices for bargain bin chips. It’s an old design on an old process. It is unlikely that nintendo would pay for any serious semi custom silicon.
That being said my first instinct here is that the better battery life is achieved with lower clocks on a smaller process. Smaller process alone wouldn’t double battery life.
With less space for the battery. It would be more accurate if I said double the efficiency to do the same task, but I figured what I meant made enough sense from context.
Efficiency didn't double -- it went from 4310mAh to 3570mAh and from 3.5h to 4, ergo efficiency increased by ~38%. Which is perfectly within the limits of a fabnode shrink + reduced display consumption. And of course no (hand-held) clocks were dropped, otherwise switch games would underperform on the lite.
Also it went from 3 hours on botw to 4 hours. 33% increase. You’re the first to disagree with that.
Assuming that 3570 mAh number is correct they are lasting +33% longer on -17% battery capacity. Interestingly that is exactly a doubling of efficiency.
38% is not anywhere close to an expected amount of power reduction from a process shrink. Just look at generational numbers. Also display power scales (roughly) linearly with display area. The display on the switch lite is 21% smaller than the switch. A process shrink and nothing else (what this likely is, as these are cheap chips) will maybe net 15% efficiency max. Where is the other 15% if not in lower clocks?
To run the numbers: 3.7 V * 4.31 Ah = 16.0 Wh 3.7 V * 3.57 Ah = 13.2 Wh 16.0 Wh / 3 h = 5.3 W 13.2 Wh / 4 h = 3.3 W 1 - (3.3 W / 5.3 W): 38% increase in efficinecy
Math fail on the 1- at the end, but otherwise correct. Regardless of if higher or lower is better, you can always take bigger/smaller and say "this much higher", or smaller/bigger and say "this much lower".
5.3/3.3 = 1.61, so 61% higher. 5.3W is 61% higher power than 3.3W, and 3.3W is 61% higher efficiency than 5.3W.
3.3/5.3 = 0.62, so 38% lower. 3.3W is 38% lower power than 5.3W, and 5.3W is 38% lower efficiency than 3.3W.
I thought I saw 3570mAh in the article, but I don't see it now, so article either got updated, or I saw it in the comments (there's one on the next page referring to the same mAh numbers, so I didn't imagine those).
I stand corrected on the 3h -> 4h increase -- I misquoted those. So that's 33% increase in battery span. On a presumed 83% battery capacity, that's nowhere near doubling in power efficiency, it's 133 / 0.83 = 161, or 61% of efficiency improvement.
I'm not a switch fan but that is just my own opinion. I do however this is even worse than the regular switch because it will pretty much always be stuck in switch economy performance mode so the games that run better when the full switch is plugged into it's dock will run at the slower rate 100% of the time. Besides that the regular switch can already be used as a full time handheld and 30 minutes extra game play makes this to me at least pointless product release and just another avenue for them to collect more money from suckers. This is just my opinion of coarse I am sure there will be lots of people that will think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I'm not a switch fan either. The last place I'd want to be is crammed inside that tiny casing and the last thing I'd want to have to do is spin around constantly to move enough air to keep the SoC from melting into silicon slag.
I already have a hard time reading text on the switch in handheld mode. And I find the joycons quite uncomfortable. Not sure a smaller screen is good, unless there is a way to make the ingame text larger or more readable.
The Switch's best game "The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild" is a fantastic cinematic experience that I think plays best in dock mode on a big screen with the Pro Controller.
I am reminded of what Director Ridley Scott said about people watching movies on their smart phones... "I don't make films for tiny screens."
I find it odd that they chose to drop the HDMI output from the USB-C port. That can't add very much cost and has the potential of selling docks to buyers who chose to go for the Switch Lite to save a little money up front. The docks are very expensive for what they are so must have a lot of profit margin in them.
By cutting out HDMI out they can simplify the hardware to remove the need for both Power Delivery and Alternate Mode, and present itself as a simple USB device and only pull power for charging, using either the Battery mode or the standard Type C mode.
Switch never supported "HDMI Alternate Mode" and I'm not actually aware of any device that does.
Switch uses (after non-standard negotiation) DisplayPort alternate mode 2 with 2-lane DP 1.2 and USB3.x on remaining highspeed lanes. The dock has a DP to HDMI converter IC (megachips something or other), and switch itself never outputs HDMI.
Getting closer to a ideal system here. They need to lose the active cooling and double the battery life or at least make the battery removable so third parties can offer a physically larger, higher capacity battery. I hated the waste of throwing away batteries, but the Game Boy Color could push well over 20 hours on a single pair of AA batteries (some estimates put it at over 30 hours). Still, I don't see this having any major advantage over gaming on a phone which I have in my pocket at all times or have a spare that no longer has cell service laying around the house somewhere.
You may not be aware of this, but you can purchase games that don't have microtransactions and if a game is designed well for the interface available, the presence or lack of a controller isn't really a big disadvantage. Obviously some games will be better on a controller, but others work nicely on a touchscreen or using tilt sensors. Some games *gasp* work better on a mouse and keyboard, but you don't see me calling a game on a Switch "improper" because its played with a controller with a Switch. No reason to get your panties in a twist over something like that and start cussing it up because you can't handle a difference of opinion like an adult.
In the compatibility table, the Joy Cons are grayed out.
But in the video (by Nintendo), he gave the impression that you can still wirelessly connect regular Joy Cons to it. Which is true? Can the Switch Lite still use the same wireless peripherals as the original?
Nintendo hasn't been the best at naming their products for a while. 2DS? Sounds like it shouldn't be able to play 3DS games, but of course, that's not the case. Wii U? People genuinely thought it was just some kind of gamepad accessory for the Wii.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
51 Comments
Back to Article
Manch - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
This just shows, most games can live without the gimmicky motion wand shiit. I wish they would make a handheld meant for adult hands. Or just release joycons for bigger hands.Alistair - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Now they just need to release a console for adults: $199 for a 768 core GTX1650 like GPU with 4 x Cortex A76 cores at 3.0ghz on a SoC, with a pro controller included.michael2k - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Adults, having more disposable income, will probably get a Switch Max with a larger 1080p screen, slightly larger battery, slightly faster SoC, and a slightly higher price like $349Bulat Ziganshin - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
adults are busy whole day making big money and then go out with beautiful ladies, leaving kids with $199.99 devices to make them busy for a few hoursjakky567 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Or we play games too. I've been gaming since the late 90s.Zaibatsu - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Most Nintendo players are fairly successful men around the age of 25-40.Samus - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Yep, I'd even say age 45. People grew up with that shit in the 80's and have been loyal installments since. Even Robin Williams was a devoted Nintendo fan (named his daughter Zelda for fuck sakes) and he was in his 60's when he died.nathanddrews - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
"Cocaine is a helluva drug..."The most disappointing aspect of this is that they intentionally left out any option to connect to a display. I'm going to assume that modders/haxx0rz will find a method to connect. It wouldn't surprise me if the dock/port is still there behind the plastic. Anyway, it feels like a giant F-U from Nintendo.
schujj07 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Think of this as an upgrade to the Game Boy. By no means is this a giant F-U from Nintendo.eek2121 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
It's at a $200 price point. I could give 2 shits about whether or not it connects to an external display. I may pick one up just for the first party titles.Oliseo - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
"adults are busy whole day making big money and then go out with beautiful ladies,"Spoken like a child.
eek2121 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Hey I make big money and go out with beautiful ladies...granted I bring my kids with me, but still...eek2121 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Then "adults" are doing it wrong. I have 3 kids and none of them have Nintendo Switches.Manch - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Adults also sit on planes, trains, and automobiles on their commutes, business trips, waiting on their beautiful wife to finish the damn shopping. Time to kill...play a video game.Wardrive86 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I dont know why but I like you....Alistair - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
i meant as an adult with worse vision and a better home theatre, I wouldn't want a portable systemeek2121 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I wish they'd release a Zen 2/Navi desktop console with even more powerful hardware and make a dramatic return to the traditional console market.SilthDraeth - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Yeah. My eyes still work fairly well, but I have trouble playing Zelda in portable mode. I can do fine with Mario Maker 2, but not Zelda. And definitely not Rocket League.Though, an 8" screen at 1080p and a pro controller split in half, as joycons on the edges. I could work with that.
That's another issue, the joycon button layouts with the joysticks are horrendous for games like rocket league.
jeremyshaw - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
AFAIK, the way the Switch is used, they already have a few things in the SoC that are extraneous to the Switch. Those would probably be the candidates for removal, if it benefits the floorpan. The camera interfaces, the other video outputs (HDMI), PCIe endpoint, the 4 A53 cores (if any actual shipping TX1 has ever had them on die), SATA controller, etc.Does A57 have 16/14/12nm libraries, or is a newer Cortex A7x core possible?
bloodgain - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I'm not a microarchitecture or semiconductor engineer by any means, but I would assume that they are either using standard cell libraries or ARM produces libraries for their architectures. Either way, there's usually a plan for a die-shrink in the general architecture, even if updates and extensions are planned. Therefore, I would expect most of the standard library to be drop-in compatible if you just wanted to build an existing architecture on a smaller die, and it's just a matter of setting up the fabs to support it (plus testing, of course).I had always assumed this was why Intel adopted the "tick-tock" approach. That gives them 2 years between architecture updates, with only an update that is primarily a fab refit and verification in-between. Of course, these days, that's also often when they increase core counts. It has the bonus benefit of letting them test the new process before building a new architecture on it.
willis936 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I don’t think the deal with nvidia and the nintendo switch is that kind of deal. Nintendo pays bargain bin prices for bargain bin chips. It’s an old design on an old process. It is unlikely that nintendo would pay for any serious semi custom silicon.willis936 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
That being said my first instinct here is that the better battery life is achieved with lower clocks on a smaller process. Smaller process alone wouldn’t double battery life.GreenReaper - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Where are you getting double? It's 33% more, if that. A smaller screen is likely a big part of that.willis936 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
With less space for the battery. It would be more accurate if I said double the efficiency to do the same task, but I figured what I meant made enough sense from context.PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
It made sense to me.blu42 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Efficiency didn't double -- it went from 4310mAh to 3570mAh and from 3.5h to 4, ergo efficiency increased by ~38%. Which is perfectly within the limits of a fabnode shrink + reduced display consumption. And of course no (hand-held) clocks were dropped, otherwise switch games would underperform on the lite.willis936 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Where did you get 3750 mAh?Also it went from 3 hours on botw to 4 hours. 33% increase. You’re the first to disagree with that.
Assuming that 3570 mAh number is correct they are lasting +33% longer on -17% battery capacity. Interestingly that is exactly a doubling of efficiency.
38% is not anywhere close to an expected amount of power reduction from a process shrink. Just look at generational numbers.
Also display power scales (roughly) linearly with display area. The display on the switch lite is 21% smaller than the switch. A process shrink and nothing else (what this likely is, as these are cheap chips) will maybe net 15% efficiency max. Where is the other 15% if not in lower clocks?
willis936 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
To run the numbers:3.7 V * 4.31 Ah = 16.0 Wh
3.7 V * 3.57 Ah = 13.2 Wh
16.0 Wh / 3 h = 5.3 W
13.2 Wh / 4 h = 3.3 W
1 - (3.3 W / 5.3 W): 38% increase in efficinecy
ajp_anton - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Math fail on the 1- at the end, but otherwise correct. Regardless of if higher or lower is better, you can always take bigger/smaller and say "this much higher", or smaller/bigger and say "this much lower".5.3/3.3 = 1.61, so 61% higher. 5.3W is 61% higher power than 3.3W, and 3.3W is 61% higher efficiency than 5.3W.
3.3/5.3 = 0.62, so 38% lower. 3.3W is 38% lower power than 5.3W, and 5.3W is 38% lower efficiency than 3.3W.
blu42 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I thought I saw 3570mAh in the article, but I don't see it now, so article either got updated, or I saw it in the comments (there's one on the next page referring to the same mAh numbers, so I didn't imagine those).I stand corrected on the 3h -> 4h increase -- I misquoted those. So that's 33% increase in battery span. On a presumed 83% battery capacity, that's nowhere near doubling in power efficiency, it's 133 / 0.83 = 161, or 61% of efficiency improvement.
Re power efficiency improvements from process shrink, 20nm -> 16FF+ is 60%
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13445/tsmc-first-7n...
Of course that's just the SoC -- the rest of the components (mostly the display) will have different power improvements.
WPX00 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I know for a fact the A57 can support 14nm. Look at the Samsung 7420.Wardrive86 - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Im fairly certain Samsung just successfully tested their 5nm LPE with Cortex A57rocky12345 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I'm not a switch fan but that is just my own opinion. I do however this is even worse than the regular switch because it will pretty much always be stuck in switch economy performance mode so the games that run better when the full switch is plugged into it's dock will run at the slower rate 100% of the time. Besides that the regular switch can already be used as a full time handheld and 30 minutes extra game play makes this to me at least pointless product release and just another avenue for them to collect more money from suckers. This is just my opinion of coarse I am sure there will be lots of people that will think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I'm not a switch fan either. The last place I'd want to be is crammed inside that tiny casing and the last thing I'd want to have to do is spin around constantly to move enough air to keep the SoC from melting into silicon slag.pbollwerk - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I already have a hard time reading text on the switch in handheld mode. And I find the joycons quite uncomfortable. Not sure a smaller screen is good, unless there is a way to make the ingame text larger or more readable.Alistair - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
yeap this is for kids with great eyesight basicallyTEAMSWITCHER - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
The Switch's best game "The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild" is a fantastic cinematic experience that I think plays best in dock mode on a big screen with the Pro Controller.I am reminded of what Director Ridley Scott said about people watching movies on their smart phones... "I don't make films for tiny screens."
peterfares - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I find it odd that they chose to drop the HDMI output from the USB-C port. That can't add very much cost and has the potential of selling docks to buyers who chose to go for the Switch Lite to save a little money up front. The docks are very expensive for what they are so must have a lot of profit margin in them.michael2k - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
The USB-C hardware has to handle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HDMI_Alternate_... on the full switch, which I believe also requires implementation of the Power Delivery to be implemented.By cutting out HDMI out they can simplify the hardware to remove the need for both Power Delivery and Alternate Mode, and present itself as a simple USB device and only pull power for charging, using either the Battery mode or the standard Type C mode.
timecop1818 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Switch never supported "HDMI Alternate Mode" and I'm not actually aware of any device that does.Switch uses (after non-standard negotiation) DisplayPort alternate mode 2 with 2-lane DP 1.2 and USB3.x on remaining highspeed lanes. The dock has a DP to HDMI converter IC (megachips something or other), and switch itself never outputs HDMI.
xing805 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
am i the only one who can read that the battery has 3570 mah instead of 4310 which makes that computation of a 33% gain totally wrong.Wheaties88 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
mAh does not equal battery life. The battery life is 4 hours up from 3 hours which is 1/3 more. You might be thinking of efficiency.I refrained from shutting that wide open door quite harshly.
PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Getting closer to a ideal system here. They need to lose the active cooling and double the battery life or at least make the battery removable so third parties can offer a physically larger, higher capacity battery. I hated the waste of throwing away batteries, but the Game Boy Color could push well over 20 hours on a single pair of AA batteries (some estimates put it at over 30 hours). Still, I don't see this having any major advantage over gaming on a phone which I have in my pocket at all times or have a spare that no longer has cell service laying around the house somewhere.Phynaz - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
You should study a bit harder to figure out why Nintendo is going to sell tens of millions of these.PeachNCream - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I don't recall seeing any claims of sales numbers in my post. Were you trying to reply to someone else?piroroadkill - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Advantage over a phone? Proper games.. with a proper controller. Not shitty mobile free to play shit with microtransactionsandrewaggb - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I think you forgot your mic dropPeachNCream - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
You may not be aware of this, but you can purchase games that don't have microtransactions and if a game is designed well for the interface available, the presence or lack of a controller isn't really a big disadvantage. Obviously some games will be better on a controller, but others work nicely on a touchscreen or using tilt sensors. Some games *gasp* work better on a mouse and keyboard, but you don't see me calling a game on a Switch "improper" because its played with a controller with a Switch. No reason to get your panties in a twist over something like that and start cussing it up because you can't handle a difference of opinion like an adult.ajp_anton - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
In the compatibility table, the Joy Cons are grayed out.But in the video (by Nintendo), he gave the impression that you can still wirelessly connect regular Joy Cons to it. Which is true? Can the Switch Lite still use the same wireless peripherals as the original?
mode_13h - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
A switch that doesn't switch is effectively a wire. So, maybe that's what they should call it.yetanotherhuman - Tuesday, July 16, 2019 - link
Nintendo hasn't been the best at naming their products for a while. 2DS? Sounds like it shouldn't be able to play 3DS games, but of course, that's not the case. Wii U? People genuinely thought it was just some kind of gamepad accessory for the Wii.