It's been a year since the hybrid Nintendo Switch console hit the market. With an NVidia Tegra X1 SoC from Maxwell architecture, the Switch is the most powerful portable console ever, and its performance is close to that of PS4 and Xbox One. However, the choices made on their hardware generated quite a bit of controversy, given that game developers were programming them with the performance of previous platforms in mind.

Has this been a problem? Has Nintendo Switch managed to have a sufficient library of games and fulfilled its promises? Let's review it.

Index of contents

My experience with the Nintendo Switch after a year: I'm having a great time

I reserved the console with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to enjoy on your way out. So we have been able to bring you several of the games that have been coming out, such as Mario Odissey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Fire Emblem Warriors.

I work in Barcelona but almost every weekend I return to my city on a journey of 2 and a half way there and again on the way back. The 3 hours of battery of the Nintendo Switch have been pearls, as long as I had it fully charged. For longer trips, anyway, I did have to stick to a plug, although I can remedy this with a portable battery with USB-C Power Delivery.

Also, it takes 1.5 hours to get to work, so when I take it with me, it is the perfect time to have a few games.

Although I can play with it both on laptop and on TV, in my case most of the time I have been doing it as a laptop. So for me it is important that the performance of the game is equally good when the Switch is not connected to the dock where the frequency of the SoC can be raised.

A great game every month at least

One of the biggest problems on Wii U was the shortage of games. The power of the console was more on par with PS3 and Xbox 360 than the current generation PS4 and Xbox One, and Nintendo did not do like Sony and Microsoft, which made it easier for Development Engines to adapt games to their platforms. Therefore, external studies (3rd parties) found that they were not worth investing time and money on a platform that had almost no players, and players did not bet on a console (Wii U) that had almost no 3rd party games.

It is not the case of Nintendo Switch, which has managed to reverse the situation. Thanks to ensuring compatibility with Engines like Unreal Engine 4, the new Vulkan graphics API… developers have it very easy to make ports of their games for Nintendo Switch. Adjusting values ​​such as resolution, shadows, drawing distance… must ensure that your game runs well on the Nintendo console.

Port City?

The Japanese company promised us that during the first year at least one great game would come out every month, and it has been so. Some of them such as Breath of the Wild and Mario Odissey, have been hailed as the best games of the year 2017. And 2018 seems that it will not decay, given that we have announced enough of our own and third-party games such as Dark Souls Remastered, Crash Bandicoot, Wolfstein 2 and many more.

As always, the easiest way for developers to test the console market is to port games that they already have made on other platforms, and when they are clear, they release their new games on it. It seems that we are already at that point, and the good commercial results make that in 2018 companies like Ubisoft, Bethesda and Square Enix trust Nintendo Switch as the main platform.

Portable or desktop, what are we left with?

There is not much to say, the games that will come out speak for themselves. First-rate games are going to start coming out, obviously without graphic improvements that PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will enjoy, but with all or most of the most important features as happens on their base consoles.

Is it powerful enough? It's not having too much trouble running good current game ports, but if Nintendo wants to stretch it around seven or more years as they say, they'll have to do a overhaul in a few years with more performance. There shouldn't be any major compatibility and development issues, seeing how game engines like Unreal Engine 4 increasingly scale your games to all kinds of hardware. You just need to see how in the same Fortnite game there can be players on iPhone 6S and others on the best consoles or PCs with great features.

Therefore, seeing this I prefer more towards the current desktop console that I can take anywhere.

What do we expect in 2018

A lot of single-player games came out last year. The online mode with the characteristics that we are currently asking you for is what we have missed the most. It is impossible to justify the payment of a service that does not have support on the entire platform for chat rooms with a microphone, streaming and many other options that, although they charge us, the other serious platforms offer us.

We therefore hope that for the release of Smash Bros on Nintendo Switch they implement an online mode that finally allows us to play remotely with our friends with the minimum characteristics and more. We can't go into the third year of the console and continue the experiments like the exclusive wired headset that we tried to sneak in with Splatoon.

We also need them to fix all electrical charging and operating problems with unofficial chargers and TV bases, which due to implementation errors of the Power Delivery standard by Nintendo spoils the consoles of the users when using them with some unofficial accessories.

conclusion

It has been a very good year for Nintendo and its Switch console. They have managed to convince many players with the portability and games that are coming out, and for the second year we see how they are going to do more.

However, Nintendo must hammer loose nails, or its success may deflate if potential buyers start to consider it a toy compared to other more serious options.

And you, do you have your Nintendlo Switch or have you been following these months? What do you think after a year of his departure?