The Nintendo Switch tries to mix up TV console gaming and portable gaming into one device, but this time with full power in your hand and no need for Wi-Fi streaming, but can it hope to do it all?
Nintendo already had its eyes on making a TV-based games console portable when it released the Wii U back in 2012. Sadly, the lack of games, the extremely slow loading of games, and an even more irritatingly slow OS failed to catch on when compared to what the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were doing at the time. What did show promise was the option of taking your gaming away from your sofa, albeit in a streaming form that would still lock you into your home network.
The Nintendo Switch tries to take things a step further with a fully portable games console that can also be used with your TV in Full HD, no streaming necessary.
Nintendo has always been a pioneer when it comes to trying different things in the gaming world, from the dual-screen Nintendo DS to the motion controls of the Wii, Nintendo can never be accused of following the herd. The Nintendo Switch is no different. While others continue to focus on solely TV-based consoles, some of which allow games content to be streamed to other devices such as the PlayStation Vita or some mobile phones. Nintendo wants you to be able to take their console anywhere without tying you to your Wi-Fi network.
I purchased the grey Nintendo Switch on Friday, it was the only model left and from a personal preference the neon model doesn’t interest me luckily. In the Nintendo Switch box you get the main console (the touch screen tablet), two detachable controllers which we will talk about in detail later, a grip which lets you combine the two controllers into a more modern gamepad style, straps which can be put onto the controllers, and the dock which lets you connect the Nintendo Switch directly to your TV.
The box also comes with a short HDMI cable and a USB Type-C power cable that can be attached to the dock or directly to the handheld console to charge it up.
From a design standpoint, the Nintendo Switch handheld console looks bigger than most handheld devices I have used for gaming such as the Vita or 3DS. At the top of the console, you have a headphone jack, volume controls, and a slot where you put in your game cartridges. Sadly, despite the console supporting Bluetooth, there are no options for using headphones or headsets with the Nintendo Switch, something I hope the company can rectify in the future.
At the bottom of the console you have the very cheap feeling kickstand which lets you stand the console on a flat surface such as a table, this also hides the microSD slot which most gamers will sadly have to make use of in the future thanks to the sparse internal storage of 32GB.
Games on physical media do not have to install to the Switch, they are played directly from the game cartridge, but the lack of storage will be an issue for many gamers, especially those that choose to download titles from the store. There is even the possibility that some games may fill up that 32GB in one go in the near future, especially once more third-party games arrive. You also have to take into consideration the screenshot function, which can take up space surprisingly quickly if you like to take a lot of screenshots of games like I have done.
Rounding out the console itself, on either side of the Nintendo Switch you have slots to attach the controllers which the company have called “the Joy-Con” which I will talk about later in the review.
Once you have taken everything out of the box, it is time to hook your Nintendo Switch to your TV, assuming you even want to have it setup that way as you could always use it as a purely handheld gaming device if you really wanted to.
You connect the switch dock up to the TV via the provided HDMI lead and the USB-C power cable. Once this is done you can turn the Switch on for the first time. On first boot, you have to enter your Wi-Fi network details and then setup user accounts. I added my own and other members of my family in one go. It is a very easy setup as you can input text on the touch screen or though navigation with the Joy-Con.
