The Nintendo Switch is breaking the internet – maybe literally

Ooh la la to the Nintendo Switch

If your friends are like my friends, you’ve seen this trailer for Nintendo’s new system posted approximately a billion times in the past couple days.

The video shows players effortless switching between playing a game on their TV to a hand handheld system and back again. The players featured, who are all adults, remove a handheld device inside a dock and then continue to play. At the end of the trailer they place it back in the doc and play again on their big TV in their high-end but very cozy living rooms.

ALL OF TEH OPTIONS

The key is the Joy-Con controller, which has two removable parts: think Wii nunchucks if they attached to a PSP. These controller pieces can be snapped to a portable screen and held, snapped to a blank middle piece to make them the size of a standard controller, or held individually to control the small, and presumably also larger, displays.

The controllers can also be used individually, giving you a portable multiplayer device. Mario Cart in the car? Why not? You can grab a more standard Joy-Con Pro controller too and use it for the big or the bite sized one to effortlessly connect with your friends systems to play against each other. BASICALLY YOU HAVE ALL OF THE OPTIONS. ALL OF THEM.

Nintendo has always been ambitious and innovative, especially when it comes to their systems. If the switch works as described, it might solve the biggest problem in gaming right now by effortlessly bridging the competing worlds of in-home and portable systems. Like they’ve done countless other times, Nintendo just nonchalantly revolutionized their entire industry.

The most seamless transition in history

In their official press release, Nintendo described the system’s innovations:

“The Nintendo Switch system also enables gamers to play the same title wherever, whenever and with whomever they choose. The mobility of a handheld is now added to the power of a home gaming system to enable unprecedented new video game play styles.

By simply lifting Nintendo Switch from the dock, the system will instantly transition to portable mode, and the same great gaming experience that was being enjoyed at home now travels with you. The portability of Nintendo Switch is enhanced by its bright high-definition display. It brings the full home gaming system experience with you to the park, on an airplane, in a car, or to a friend’s apartment.”

Just. Wow.

Here’s the trailer in case you missed it:

So wait, what?! How does this even work?

But one question that hasn’t been answered yet is how it works. Is it flash memory? Wifi? Is it a hotspot itself? I find myself trying to decode the enigmatic trailer. My Sherlock-esque skills have deduced that some sort of memory card slot is shown and people are playing it on an airplane presumably without internet.

The only downside so far is that the system will not be backwards compatible with Wii-U discs, Nintendo DS cards, or Gameboy cartridges, but this is not entirely unexpected. Many of their newer systems are unable to play previous systems’ games. Perhaps that is another trend to discuss on another day – backwards compatibility of all gaming systems (and technologies to a broader extend).

While this issue hasn’t ever fazed the company in the past, it still garners complaints from gamers who have large collections that now require multiple systems to use.

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