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Nintendo Switch launch event - 5 things we're hoping to hear

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Nintendo Switch launch event - 5 things we're hoping to hear
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Like a kid waiting for Christmas, the days seem to be crawling by in the lead-up to January 13th - the day Nintendo spills the beans on its new Switch console.

On that day, from 4 AM UK time, the Switch will be revealed in its entirety. Then later that same day at 2:30 PM, we'll get a more games-focused Treehouse Live livestream containing more on the games.

So what are we actually hoping to hear from Nintendo on this momentous day? What's the best-case scenario for this unprecedented hybrid handheld?

£200 price tag

There's been much debate about the likely cost of the Nintendo Switch. We've indulged in a spot of it ourselves.

The general consensus seems to be that the Switch will cost somewhere around the £200 / $250 mark - though some feel that this is a little optimistic. We're hoping for everyone's sake that it proves to be accurate.

Any more than this, and the Nintendo Switch will be straying away from the magical pull that seems to exist at the £200 'impulse buy' mark. It'll also carry the console into the region of the latest PS4 and Xbox One consoles - both of which are going to be considerably more powerful than Nintendo's console.

Legend of Zelda as a launch game

The first Nintendo Switch game we all knew about is also the one most of us want the most - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's been in development for years as a Wii U game, but its long gestation - and the latter console's early demise - led to a widely predicted switch (arf) to a dual-platform release.

To all intents and purposes, Breath of the Wild became the Switch's flagship game. It goes without saying that recent reports suggesting the game would miss the launch of the Switch were a little worrying.

It seems Nintendo is going to great lengths to ensure the game is perfect across the board, and that will seemingly entail an extended localisation process. This could mean the game misses the Switch launch, at least in some areas of the world.

We're still hopeful that Breath of the Wild will make the Switch launch, and we're holding out for a firm commitment from Nintendo to that effect on January 13th.

More on original games

Nintendo has already offered a fine sneak peek at the Nintendo Switch and the kind of games we can expect to play. But one worrying aspect of that teaser video was a lack of truly original gaming content.

There wasn't a great deal that was new, other than what could be an all-new 3D Mario game (which is exciting in itself). Elsewhere the glimpsed Mario Kart and Splatoon footage seemed to suggest enhanced versions of pre-existing Wii U games, while Skyrim looked great - for a five-year-old cross-platform game.

Even the aforementioned flagship Zelda is, to all intents and purposes, an enhanced Wii U game rather than a purebred Switch original.

We know that the Nintendo Switch isn't going to be an order of magnitude faster than the Wii U, and that it perhaps came along sooner than Nintendo would have liked. But we sincerely hope that doesn't mean the early years of the Switch's life will be filled with ports. We're expecting Friday to provide some reassurances.

Custom hardware tricks

It's pretty much known that the Nintendo Switch will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. What isn't known is the precise degree to which Nintendo and Nvidia have worked to customise a stock part that was last seen powering Android devices in 2015.

Worries about performance have been allayed, to a certain extent, by assurances from Nvidia that it has provided extensive access to the X1 chip, and by the fact that there won't be a flabby smartphone OS hogging system resources.

Still, we'd love to learn that the Switch has some unique graphical tricks up its sleeve.

Solid third party game details

Yes, we've seen the long list of third party partners Nintendo shared during the initial Switch reveal. Guess what? It's worth very little indeed.

Nintendo provided similar assurances for the Wii U launch, and we all know where that got us. There's been a trend with Nintendo home consoles from the N64 onwards for declining third party software support.

Many die-hard Nintendo fans will tell you that this doesn't matter a jot - that we're all here for Nintendo's own games anyway. We'd agree to a certain extent, but the fact remains that Nintendo can only make so many games in a year - and of a certain type.

If you want to play a gritty FPS, gruesome survival horror, hardcore RPG, accurate driving sim or licensed sports game, Nintendo isn't going to be of much help. Here's hoping Nintendo has some actual evidence of third party games in production.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.