Hands On With The Nintendo Switch

Video Transcript

Ken: So I actually heard some of the nerds and geeks who work here, I saw them tweeting over the weekend about this Nintendo Switch thing. It’s a big deal, it’s a big deal. Thank Goodness we’ve got the nerds here. Nerds On Call, Ryan Eldridge, here to tell us what this Nintendo Switch thing is all about.

Ryan: And here’s the thing, Nintendo has been hitting it hard this year so far because their Wii U console was kind of a dog, but now look at them. You can get them on iOS with Mario Run. There’s the Nintendo Classic that you can get. It’s sold out, and they brought it back recently. And now the Switch is out. This is 300 bucks. It’s their new console and one of the interesting things about it is, not only does it work on your television but you can take it out and play it as a tablet as well. And one of the cool parts about that is these little controllers here that you just basically pop right out of this little controller piece, like that, and you slide them on the side, and now you’ve got about three and a half hours because the battery is super lame. You have about three and a half hours of game time so you can take it on the road. How cool is that?

Ken: Now, just out of curiosity, what age group does this really benefit?

Ryan: This is for everybody who’s about three years old all the way till about ninety-seven. It works for everybody. It works for everybody. It’s super easy to play.

Ken: Can grown-ups really do this? Can a grown-up really take this and be out somewhere in public and be doing this and not be ridiculed?

Ryan: Well, can they do it without being ridiculed? No, they cannot, no.

Ken: A child can.

Ryan: But any nerd, any self-respecting nerd, is going to have his little Nintendo little carry purse.

Ken: Any nerd that’s worth his salt.

Ryan: Yeah, and he’s going to be cruising around with this. So at 300 bucks for a tablet, it’s not that bad of a deal. But there is some limitations. So here’s what’s going on with the early adopters. We’re finding out that the left controller is losing sync, and so Nintendo’s weird solution to that? Keep it away from an aquarium. Because why would you want to play it near an aquarium? That’s just weird, right?

Ken: Okay.

Ryan: That is what they literally said.

Ken: Ruins my whole Saturday night, but, all right.

Ryan: To fix it, what you can do is connect it back to the machine, turn the machine off, then turn it back on, update the firmware, all of that will usually fix the issue. But Nintendo also says to keep it away from electronics, which I don’t really understand either. Yeah, keep it away from electronics. Don’t put it near your home theater system because it won’t work right either.

Ken: Nintendo Switch gets angry when it’s around other electronics. It’s very competitive.

Ryan: One of the other weird things about the machine itself is that it’s only 720p, which doesn’t sound so bad as a handheld, but it’s kind of terrible when you’re playing it on your screen on your television. It upscales everything so textures look a little weak. Also, it’s only got 32 gigabytes of memory on board, but you can’t take anything off of the console yet. So if you save your games, and you want to go over to your friend’s house and play, you can’t do it. That’s kind of terrible. Also, if you download games, they have their own marketplace so you can download games, but the games will take up so much space that you won’t be able to use it for saving. So you have to buy everything in a cartridge…

Ken: Oh, for crying out loud.

Ryan: …so if you’re an early adopter, watch out. You’re gonna have some growing issues, but, overall, it’s pretty great. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to play Zelda anytime soon and there’s 21 games at launch but some of the bigger games like Mario Kart 8 is going to come out next month, and then Mario Odyssey is going to come out in the summer time, and Pokémon, especially…my kids are dying for that, look for that sometime next year.

Ken: So, basically, what we’re saying initially is thanks, but no thanks. Like thanks for trying but…

Ryan: If you’re not a complete nerd, then I would probably wait for a couple of more months. Let them work out a few of the kinks because you’re going to get a little frustrated with it. But if you gotta get you Zelda on, now is the time.

Ken: Now, we have a nerd in the booth. I will check in with Julian, the other Julian, we have a couple of Julian nerds here. I think he actually had this over the weekend. We’ll get an update from him.

Ryan: Oh, I played Zelda just for a few hours because, unfortunately, my pre-order got canceled, so we had to steal this from one of our guys at work. Nick Bowder [SP], thank you very much for letting us borrow it for today. But I only played it only for a couple of hours and it is a blast. If you’re missing your Zelda, you gotta get it.

Ken: If your fiending [SP] for Zelda? All right. That will take care of that.

Ryan: There’s also a $70 pro controller you can get. This isn’t it, but there’s a $70 pro controller you can get, so if your hands are a little bigger, and you want an Xbox size controller, that’s one of the ways to go.

Ken: All right, that’ll work. Ryan, always good to see you, always good to hear from you. Great stuff. Thank you, man, I appreciate that.