This morning in Tokyo, Nintendo held their long-awaited full product launch briefing for their upcoming console, the Nintendo Switch. Previously unveiled back in October of 2016 , Nintendo has been keeping a fairly tight lid on specific details about the console, including its specifications, capabilities, and software lineup. Now with just less than 2 months to go until the console goes on sale, Nintendo is ramping up their promotional campaigns, releasing a good deal of new details on the console, though in a very Nintendo way.
Back when the Switch was unveiled, we learned that the handheld console would be powered by an NVIDIA SoC, NVIDIA’s first console win since 2006. At the time Nintendo and NVIDIA had been very quiet on the specifications of the SoC, and while the full specifications were certain to be off the table, I had been hoping that Nintendo would open up at least a bit more on the SoC. Unfortunately, in admittedly traditional Nintendo fashion, the company has skipped right past anything involving the SoC, and I suspect we’re going to be waiting for the console launch and full teardown before we get any more hard facts here.
For what it is worth, Eurogamer strongly believes that the underlying SoC is a Tegra X1 – NVIDIA’s 20nm Cortex-A57 CPU + Maxwell GPU SoC that’s also used in the NVIDIA SHIELD TV – and while I can’t confirm this at this time, for the moment I don’t have any reason to doubt their suspicions. Tegra X1 is ready and available in volume, and in this respect Nintendo has been conservative for quite some time. Still, it will be interesting to crack open the Switch in March to see if it’s actually Tegra X1 under the hood, or if it’s some sort of Nintendo-specific derivative.
Moving on to new information, while Nintendo held off on SoC information, they have published some new information on the console as a whole. As long suspected, the Switch features a 1280x720p capacitive touch screen LCD. Though lower in resolution than comparable phones and tablets, this is a logical fit for the console giving its performance characteristics, battery life needs, and cost concerns. Nintendo’s website does not specify the type of the underlying panel, though I will be surprised if it’s not IPS or *VA.
For storage, the console will feature expandable storage. 32GB (presumably eMMC) is built in to the console, while the console can be further expanded using microSDXC cards, similar to the current-generation 3DS consoles. And as revealed in Nintendo’s teaser video last year, there will also be a separate game card slot for games released on physical media.
