@nicksmi56: Problem is that some games already run poorly on the Switch. Even first party games.

If someone is thinking about buying this, then that person likely plays a lot on the go. And in that case it's competing more with the Switch Lite than the regular Switch. And paying $150 extra for a slightly better screen and some secondary options sounds like terrible value. I'm very confused but also a little relieved that this is one less purchase I have to make in the near future.

@alanmckinnon: The vast majority run just fine for most people. Only enthusiasts are crying about 60 fps for every game they play. Most people do not care. The Switch's sales prove that. As long as the games are great, people will have fun with them and buy them. That's really all Nintendo cares about. Not some imagined arms race.

@nicksmi56: I mean, I know you aren’t wrong. Most people don’t care. But in 2021, whatever Nintendo is selling for $350 should be capable of at least running Breath of the Wild at a solid 30fps. And yet, here we are.

I don’t expect better from Nintendo, but I do hope for it.

@alanmckinnon: You and I had very different BotW experiences lol. The only place I can remember the frame rate tanking is Korok Forest.

@apewins: Keep in mind, for people who own the original pre-2020 Switch revision, there is a fairly significant battery life upgrade as well

@nicksmi56: Sorry, hard to type while drying my tears (seriously, really?)

Also: Maybe we can stop doing the "nobody really cares about framerate" as the tail end of the last gen and the start of this gen have kind of very much shown that people DO care about better framerates and once they are actually shown consistent 60 it is hard for them to go back to fluctuating <30. Like, folk will put up with it if they have no choice but the moment they see a choice... there starts to not be one in the other direction

Nintendo has always been weird and tend to very much stay in that "I grew up with them so they must be great" category that companies like WWE and the like survive in. Lots of that "Well, this kind of sucks but it doesn't matter because they are successful" and "I want to make sure my kid can enjoy in the same way I did" stuff. Weirdly enough (or, I guess, not weirdly since the sony kids are in their 30s), I am starting to see Sony get the same treatment on a lot of boards as people insist that the way they treat developers is "good business" and even justify a lot of the shitty upgrade policies with the same argument. People don't like realizing that companies they grew up with "lost their way" as it were.

Personally? I want a solid 60 (actually, I want a solid 144). I will settle for a solid 30. And if you give me something with VRR then all bets are off and I am cranking up the ray tracing in Control because 20-40 becomes pretty okay. The switch is none of those. A lot of the games, including first party titles, are fluctuating at 20-30 in handheld with dips down to the teens. When I was a kid having his mind blown that "Doom came this far?" while playing UT at 20 FPS on a Rage 128 with a 56k model, that was fine. Not now that I have actually realized how much smoother and "less bullshit" games are when they have solid and consistent framerates.

And the fact that a flagship first party (previous gen...) game STILL can't even pull off a solid 30 FPS is an embarrassment.

@nicksmi56: Maybe I’m just sensitive to it. I can generally pick up on the drop when it hits ~27fps (armchair science to arrive at that number, to be clear). It didn’t break my experience, but it did harm it.

To the original point, I just think what Nintendo is doing here is a little fucked. Joy-con drift isn’t addressed by this revision, nor is the 6 year old chip driving the thing. $350 is an unreasonable asking price.

@gundato: First off, I hope you aren't expecting the 60fps grace period of next-gen machines to last. Once we exit the cross-gen period and developers start to push the hardware, they'll all go back to 30 fps and below, just like before. Funny of you to bring up Control when it ran like utter trash on average consoles when it came out, yet got everyone's adoration and soaked up award nominations like no one's business.

Nintendo don't continue to dominate sales charts because people grew up with them. They continue to do well because they make great products you simply can't get elsewhere. The hype over BotW2 isn't because people expect it to run silky smooth. It's because they expect to love it.

Great games sell. This is the truth of the business. The average consumer isn't doing a frame rate count before they pick up an acclaimed game. They just hear that it's fun and pick it up. The AAA market would have crashed and died two gens ago at the very least if this weren't the case.

So you can chase after your 60/144 fps all you like, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it. But don't act like me saying frame rate is not a major consideration to the vast majority of consumers out there is me pulling some fanboy defense job. It's simple fact. Anyone looking at the world outside of internet forums can see it.

I just want the games to not look like shit on my TV.

@alanmckinnon: Now that I can agree with. The fact that Nintendo hasn't taken the opportunity to fix their dang Joy-Cons is baffling to me. I have a pretty foolproof fix for mine, but they're literally the first Nintendo controllers I've ever had to fuss over and it sucks. And it's not like they're unaware. They've been sued over it multiple times. They just know that people who aren't in the know will go out and buy new ones to replace their messed up ones for a premium price. It's freaking highway robbery!

That circa-2015 Tegra X1 technology is going the long way around to the sunset, chuggin' and wheezin'!

I have a pretty nice PC so I am definitely one of those framerate-counters. And I do notice the ways the Switch looks to be hitting its redline in Breath of the Wild or Monster Hunter Rise. And I would have been a fan that would've lined up/pre-ordered an upgrade to the System-on-a-Chip.

But...

I think it's kind of nice for me to save the money and for Nintendo to avoid the mistakes it made with the New 3DS line.

Can I finally pair my headphones to it? Natively. Like every other electronic does.

I'm actually happy that the OLED Switch turned out to be a almost pointless upgrade and not the killer app that was rumored by Forbes. I recently got my Switch and would've been more upset if the new one was some massive performance powerhouse that you needed to play the big upcoming AAA titles like BOTW 2.

This was my biggest fear if the Switch Pro turned out to be real. If Nintendo came out and said "You need Switch Pro to play the new Metroid," I would've been piiiiisssseedddd.

@nicksmi56: Just like nobody cared about crossplay and after Rocket League were assholes that went away, right? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember how people were losing their minds over why anyone would need online multiplayer when the console has two controller ports. Let alone the hilarity of when the hardcore nintendo fans started playing fortnite and paragon (?) and realized there were good online infrastructures out there.

I think you ARE right in the sense that we are gonna be back to 30 FPS by the time there is a refresh sku or a PS6.

But framerate is the proverbial cat that got out of the bag. Not because we have had a bunch of games that prioritize it. That always happens. No, the issue is that we were shown what those games were like WITH good framerates. We got patches that made Horizon et al run a LOT better while still looking gorgeous. And that shows people what they have been missing.

And we could even see it with Control. When it launched, I think it was Alex who stopped short of calling it unplayable on a base console while emphasizing it is a PC game. That shit barely flew then and sure as hell won't fly now that, once again, people have been shown that things can actually be good AND fast.

Which I think may have contributed a lot to the decision to not do any form of upgrade with the switch. Nintendo knows they are screwed if BOTW starts running well. Right now, they have The Games (because people hate indie games and eurojank...). But if people start actually understanding how weak that console is and how it was overpriced and underpowered even at launch... yeah.

As for the accusations of fanboyism: When people are incredibly aggressively arguing for a worse experience, there are very few rationales out there.

@nicksmi56: I can't imagine them doing this until the end of the life cycle like they did with New 3ds. Even then, they couldn't be bothered to come out with any sort of exclusives (minus xenoblade chronicles and one other game?), so just by trends, I don't see em shutting out millions of potential customers they already have that don't plan on upgrading.. Games will probably load faster, but exclusives to the hypothetical pro? Doubt it.

@gundato: You have WAY more faith in the gaming community than I do. Won't fly? We're freaking famous for letting stuff fly. You wanna talk online multiplayer? How about people still paying a premium price to play with their friends when PC lets you do it for free?

Or being pressured into wasting hundreds of dollars on mid-gen consoles when their normal consoles stopped playing games well?

Or spending thousands upon thousands of dollars in games like FIFA and GTA to get basically nothing when plenty of games out there won't ask you for a cent beyond the initial asking price? While still paying full price in the first place?

You think faster games are gonna be the golden goose that gamers won't give up on the minute they're threatened with the next big game being out of their reach? You think people are gonna ditch GTA 6 so they can hang on to 60 fps? Good freaking luck. They'll jump back to sub-30 fps and love it!

Gaming is all about chasing the next big thing. It's what the industry runs on. It's what the average consumer will ALWAYS do. And that's exactly why Nintendo, Sony, and all the others will always go after them rather than people like you and I.

And I'm not arguing for a worse experience :P I already said if the Switch Pro actually existed, great! Go nuts! My ire is directed at those who concocted a whole new console based solely off of imagination, got reminded that their imagination doesn't mean jack crap in the real world, and now are acting like Nintendo's personally betrayed them by not reading their minds somehow.

@nicksmi56:

And it is almost like people are willing to spend extra money on a Series X over a Series S because they want improved performance.

As for the rest: I am not sure what RMTs (speaking of, remember how Nintendo locks theirs behind buying a piece of plastic?) have to do with anything.

@gundato: Next big thing, remember? If anything, that just proves my point. They're not doing it because "Wow, 60 fps is an innovation I just can't live without!" They're doing it because it's the biggest, fanciest box in the Xbox ecosystem right now. Not to mention that PS5 is absolutely killing both because that's the box that people recognize as having the better experiences, despite Series X being more powerful.

Seriously, I'm confused on how you can even argue this when the history and current trends of this industry have proved you wrong at every turn.

@nicksmi56: You know how I mentioned that "aggressively arguing for a worse experience" thing? Yeah, no idea why that just came to mind

And again, I pointed out that cross play was a pipe dream until it became the norm. Online multiplayer on consoles was equally "not needed" until it became it. There is a difference between seeing that the Naughty Dog equivalent of a platform can do it (although, I guess the Nintendo ND equivalents couldn't...) and seeing that "normal" developers can and it makes the games you already played on a previous console much better. But hey, there are RMTs so I guess nobody cares about additional performance and everything is just proving me wrong. I guess I'll go cry myself to sleep or whatever else everyone who you disagree with is doing.

Seriously, what is it with the crowd of people who think every interaction is a youtube comment these days?

@gundato: I didn't say nobody cares. I said the VAST MAJORITY do not care. Speaking of people thinking everything is a YouTube comment, do you honestly believe Mom buying her teen GTA 6 is pulling out her phone and going "Wow, only 25 fps? Let me go pick out something different." Because if you do, then I'm not the one in a weird bubble here.

It's not me saying nobody SHOULD care, just that most people DO NOT. It's a fact, plain and simple. Your own personal preferences do not translate to everyone else.

No interest for me, I'm happy with my late-model "OG" Switch. It is universally docked and I purchase physical games for it.

At this point if there was a half step upgrade planned for next year that would make it most likely 5+ years after the launch of the Switch. Doesn't seem like a good value to me. Would make more sense to just have a clear break in performance in year 6-7.

With the talks about a refresh of the Switch because it was cheaper for Nintendo to buy newer hardware then have manufacturers continue making there old hardware, i wounder how much of a price difference this OLED version is compared to the regular Switch, and Nintendo are just grabbing an extra $50 while they can. But also continuing to sell the old version alongside this version is odd, unless there just selling out the rest of the inventory. At this point they might as well not make a Switch Pro, just make the "Switch 2" in a year or two and have all the old Switch games be backwards compatible with performance upgrades. Having three versions of one console all with an odd mish mash of different features is a very Nintendo move.

And my real hope has been that Nintendo just make two versions of the Switch, one that's just a cheaper box (no batteries, screen etc.), and one that is a full mobile version that hopefully has a video out this time.

I will probably pick this up, since I will be upgrading from a Switch Lite. My guess is that Nintendo probably had a plan to do 4K, DLSS, etc., but with the chip shortages they decided to wait until there is a more steady supply. Better to use the OLED screens they have lying around than to wait another year or two to use them in a Pro model.

Here's the thing. I think it's true that there are games that absolutely can use the performance boost of a Switch Pro; my issue is, is that if you talk to certain people they act as if the Switch can barely play even the simplest games, is a garbage console that can't even stream netflix, and are just confounded of at the prospect of people paying Nintendo for their consoles because they "like the games they have." It's a sentiment that's growing; a backlash to the enormous success fo the Switch, but Nintendo's refusal to solely cater to people who seems to think that Nintendo should be make PCs.

And it's kind of dumb. Yes, it's disappointing that the OLED version is not the Switch Pro we were promised, but Nintendo doesn't need a Switch Pro--at least not right now. Go to the switch store and see what are the top selling games; most of them are Nintendo exclusives. Nintendo does not need an Assassin's Creed because people wil buy these things for Animal Crossing--and that's not a bad thing. It's okay that Nintendo caters to a more casual market; it's okay that that things like Pokemon aim for simplicity rather than be complex. It's okay for games to appeal to different people. And I think some people just need to understand that.

I still am on a launch switch so the idea of trading/selling to absorb some of the cost made it seem like a good idea so I pre ordered the oled switch. Maybe I'm a sucker....

I hear one is born every minute...

I have no reason to order one of these, but I did at Walmart and they've already dropped the price $50, so that makes it feel like a slightly better deal.