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[BigD145]

The tablet is using Tegra. It's basically the Shield.

[Tawa]

This seems like a good move on Nintendo's part. The Switch appears to be, at its core, a glorified handheld that console fans can play on their TV; Nintendo's strong point has consistently been handhelds; consoles are losing ground to the PC market. By cutting their losses and moving to what is effectively a handheld-only model, they might be jumping off a burning ship here.

Also, I feel that their porting of Skyrim is a bold move. Nintendo's traditionally been wary about M-rated games getting hyped, so making a widely popular M game a launch title implies they're not afraid to take the company in a more mature direction.

[Ozyton]

Bethesda hasn't actually officially announced Skyrim for the Switch, which has a lot of people worried that Nintendo is creating false hype.

[Neonivek]

Bethesda hasn't actually officially announced Skyrim for the Switch, which has a lot of people worried that Nintendo is creating false hype.

I think that would count as false advertisement...

[Ozyton]

Exactly

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't see why Bethesda wouldn't port it, and Nintendo typically doesn't create false hype of that variety. While I'm hesitant to say a corporate division is capable of competency, I'm sure somebody in Legal, or PR, or Advertising, or Design would have objected to showing a game they might not be able to have.

[Rose]

I wonder if somebody will hack android onto it.

[Ozyton]

And do you really need anything beyond 1080p on a handheld screen? At one point the increase in resolution won't actually be visibly noticeable.

Whenever 4k comes up I like to reference this chart.

Spoiler: Click chart for more bigness (click to show/hide)

An average person's arm is maybe 2 feet long (and probably not holding their system straight out at arm's length), and we aren't sure what the screen size is yet. I might be fine with 720 on a screen that size... but then again I've dealt with the 3ds's terrible resolution.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Going by comparison of the handholds to the hands to the screen? I'd say about eight inches.

...Which still seems to fall into the 4k range, though that far down on the chart I question how much it matters. I'm fine with 1080p equivalent, personally. If it runs at 720p but is at a size where the difference between it and 1080p is 10%, that's alright.

[Rose]

There's an  article that takes an assumption on the thumbpad size, and uses that to conclude 6.5 inches, which seems reasonable

[alway]

And do you really need anything beyond 1080p on a handheld screen? At one point the increase in resolution won't actually be visibly noticeable.

Whenever 4k comes up I like to reference this chart.

Spoiler: Click chart for more bigness (click to show/hide)

An average person's arm is maybe 2 feet long (and probably not holding their system straight out at arm's length), and we aren't sure what the screen size is yet. I might be fine with 720 on a screen that size... but then again I've dealt with the 3ds's terrible resolution.

While that chart is sort of true, there's also the fact that more pixels = more computation for rendering. Increase resolution from 720 to 1080, you're doubling the pixel shader cost. 720 to 1440, 4x. That's computing time and that's battery life. You want good looking games and long battery life, you want low resolution unless you have a time machine for collecting future-tech with.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The 'dock' for the system has no processing power, all of the power comes from the tablet with the screen. The dock just provided a convenient HDMI port from the console tablet to the TV. I know this wasn't exactly explained in the video but Nintendo said so afterwards.
The games are played off cartridges put inside the tablet console, similar to Nintendo's handheld systems.

Oh. Well that's outright fucking impossible and gonna have terrible performance just like the Wii and the WiiU.

I have a tablet PC that runs Skyrim. It's a run-of-the-mill UMPC with an Intel i5 and its HD4000 GPU, and it runs Windows 8 and all other crap that goes on a Samsung tablet PC in addition to that. And it's not even remotely resembling a purpose-built gaming platform. And yet... still runs. 720p. Over an hour of battery life on the go, 11.4'' screen.

With a custom-designed Tegra SOAC, no OS and background driver bullshit to slow it down, and a smaller screen (dimensions-wise, not resolution-wise)? Yes, I am pretty certain this design of the Switch can pull that off, and have the battery life to go with it.

The 'dock' for the system has no processing power, all of the power comes from the tablet with the screen. The dock just provided a convenient HDMI port from the console tablet to the TV. I know this wasn't exactly explained in the video but Nintendo said so afterwards.

Ah that's too bad, I was hoping it might have its own more powerful GPU that it would use when your device was docked. I guess it would make things simpler and cheaper to use one GPU though.

So, the dock's just a charger/HDMI port. Curious whether this thing can actually reach 1080p; obviously 4k is out of the question here.

Back when the leaks were happening, there was a tidbit about the dock-station "providing more power" to the system.

People tend to assume it somehow meant plugging in an extra CPU or GPU. But... why not take that literally? It's a dock station plugged into mains. It can literally supply extra power to the system, to run the Tegra chip at maximum power that can be unsustainable on the go.

Then there's the suspiciously wide slit on the underside where the console attaches to the dock... the exhaust is on top, the speakers are probably front-facing... it looks sort of like an intake... boosted cooling?

[Rose]

Yeah, overclocking the tablet when connected to mains and extra cooling seems to me to be a hell of a lot easier to design for than having a hot-swappable GPU

[BigD145]

Yeah, overclocking the tablet when connected to mains and extra cooling seems to me to be a hell of a lot easier to design for than having a hot-swappable GPU

It doesn't need to overclock. It just means off the cradle it'll underclock. If you want battery life, it had better underclock.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, "overclocking" is relative. It just depends on what you assume as the default setting. Compared to the mobile mode the docked mode might be an overclock; compared to the docked mode the mobile mode may be an underclock. But it sounds cooler and more attractive if you say that it's overclocked when it's in the dock, especially if there's extra cooling involved. That way it sounds like the dock gives more power, rather than that the mobile portion gets a power loss.