It's the Nintendo Switch presentation,
but every time you hear a *snap*
it's a Game Theory about the Nintendo Switch.
One
*snap*
Well, darn.
(quietly) That was fast.
(Theme song.)
Hello, Internet!
Welcome to GAME THEORY!
Where, let's be honest
Someone from the Nintendo marketing team
Clearly misread his e-mails and thought it was the
Nintendo Snap.
Switcha, not Snapa.
Anyway, we've been talking a whole lot about Undertale lately,
So this week we're finally gonna Switch *snap* it up
Don't worry, that's the only switch pun I have up my sleeve...
So don't switch *Snap* to another video!
Alright, that one was weak. (Bad puns are awesome!)
Now if everything goes according to plan, by the time this video releases
The Nintendo Switch should be ready to come out.
Unless of course the editor team decided to rebel on me again...
You stay in the basement! Back! Back, you monsters! Back to the editing basement with you!
Whoo!
(Evil glare)
But just based on what we've seen so far, early feelings from fans, cynics, and developers about the switch have been mixed.
And no, not just because it throws another monkey wrench
into Mario's canon height all over again.
What the heck, Nintendo! We just, WE JUST accepted him as 5' 1" tall
but if that's the case, that means that the "humans" in Super Mario Odyssey are almost 10' tall!
10 feet?! Seriously! Do you think these guys are as tall as Wario?! I think not.
Also also, if this game's version of New York City is populated by creatures this tall,
and Mario is this tall, they're not the same creature! They're not both humans!
So what does that make Mario! What does that make these guys!
I don't know! Are they aliens? One of them has to be!
(agonising groan)
Being a theorist is so infuriating sometimes!
Alright, rant over. I'm just gonna have to accept that Mario has no discernable canon.
Or that Super Mario Odyssey's version of New York is populated by actual giants.
Let's just hope it's better than Crisis City! Balls in your court, Nintendo.
From the "brilliant" minds behind Sonic '06 comes Super Mario '17!
10 years later, still 10 feet tall!
But enough about Mario's height because seriously, if there's one topic I've talked to death, it's FNaF.
But if there's a second topic I've talked to death, it's Mario's height.
Now, today I'm switching my focus to the system itself.
Because the Switch, is a bit of an oddball. Right?
It's kinda portable, but it's also kinda big.
It's a new system, but with graphics that aren't really aiming to compete with new, heavy-hitter consoles.
And it's got these really crazy controllers that are really awesome from a technical standpoint,
I mean you can literally feel virtual balls rolling around in your hand,
Uuh, not in a sexual way...
But at the same time, who's gonna develop for these things?
It's part Wii, part WiiU, part DS, part original NES,
So what's Nintendo's angle here?
Well, I have a theory that Nintendo has a secret strategy with the switch.
One that, I don't think anyone sees coming but, one that could offer us experience like no other gaming console has done before.
Now Nintendo, for all their faults, hasn't made their name by following trends.
Rather, they're far more comfortable setting the trends.
For better or worse
It was the start of their whole Switch presentation
That the Wii's motion controls is the sole reason that this ping-pong ball glued to a Lightsaber exists
Shoulder buttons originated on the Super Nintendo controller
And the GameCube, had a handle
(Presenter) We put a handle on Nintendo GameCube so it, could be carried around.
(Innovation 101!) *slot machine win sound*
(MatPat) Fast forward to today
And the technology that got me researching this theory in the first place
Because while everyone else is focused on gluing laptop clickpads to their controllers,
Nintendo releases these
The joycoms
Weird little handheld controllers packaged in two OCD infuriating colors.
I am not gonna go off on a tangent about that too!
But what's intresting about the controllers, while they may be akward to look at,
Go back to the roots of what made Nintendo successful in the 21st century
Motion controls and haptic feedback.
When you attach a strap to the controller, it basically becomes a motion controlled Wii-mote, on steroids.
The things have an HD rumble!
The ability to mimic the tactile feel of just about anything!
But dosen't mean a whole lot until you actually experence them
In the minigame 1 2 Switch, which is basically this system's tech demo
One of the minigames requires you to guess the number of imaginary marbles
That are rolling around in an imaginary box
Just by moving the controller around in your hand!
And the feeling is unbelievable.
You seriously feel, one by one, balls rolling and bouncing around inside of a box that dosen't exist!
Hitting each other, rolling on top each other, it is that detailed!
And while it is super cool from a tech perspective,
I wondered what the point of it was from a gaming perspective
Because do you think that the next Call of Duty is gonna be including the HD feeling of slitting a person's throat in their next game?
Usually, when it comes to these weird tech features, Nintendo is leading the way with its first party titles
But how does something like that fit into a platformer like Mario Odyssey?
For the HD rumble to really mean anything,
It means you're gonna have to use these joycoms unattached
Like a Wii-mote, or
more accurately, like the HTC Vive, the Oculus Touch, or any of the VR headsets with hand controls.
Only these are gonna be one step up
Cause they're able to mimic the objects you're holding in the virtual world!
My suspicion was further supported by president of Nintendo, Tatsumi Kimishima,
Who said, in an interview, that quote, "They were studying the feasibility of virtual reality, in the switch"
So does that mean that Switch is the second toe in the VR market after the "resounding success" of the Virtual Boy?
Is that the big theory here?
Well, there's more to it than that.
After more digging, I found that Nintendo has secured a patent
For headset mount designed for virtual reality purposes
A head mount that looks suspiciously like the ones that Samsung and Google are currently selling
The Gear, and The Daydream
Which allows you to slot in your phone, and turn it into a virtual reality device
A portable phone that switches *snap* into a VR headset
Kinda sounds like a portable gaming device slightly larger than a phone that switches into a VR headset.
Hm.
And not only that, look deeper into the patent and you'll find, quote
"In the present embodiment, the controllers 3 and 4 may be used while they are removed
from the main unit 2. Therefore, even with the main unit 2 attached, to the main HMD accessory 230,
Controllers 3 and 4 can be used as controller devices. That is, the user can operate the controller using the hands
While the HMD accessory 230 with the main unit 2 attached thereto is mounted on the head of the user."
And here you thought that textbooks sucked to read
It's like all the worst parts of a math problem, coupled with a legal contract.
But, if you actually go back through and translate what that gobbldy gook means in English,
It basically confirms that the Joy-cons have, in part,
Been designed to operate like handsets, while he device is sitting right in front of your eyes.
Just like any other VR device on the market, today.
I also noted in the patent, that it mentions the main unit has an acceleration and velocity sensor
For changing a visual perspective that's being shown on the screen.
IE, the motion you're seeing onscreen is directly related to the movement of your head.
Just like a VR headset!
In other words, everything about the Switch says that it's not
just aiming to take over as both your
your "at home" gaming console and your
preferred portable gaming experience,
but it's also looking to compete with
literally everyone from Facebook to
Google to Sony and
Samsung in the VR space!
And at $300 -- plus whatever that little strap is gonna cost --
they're going to be doing it at a much
cheaper price than anyone else on the market,
even the phone headset hybrids,
which is pretty darn smart!
So is that it? Is the theory here that
Nintendo is tricking you into buying your
first VR console?
Get you to buy a Switch to play Breath of the Wild
but in the process get you one step closer
to a cool new VR experience?
I think that's part of it, but we're not done.
Because I think Nintendo is ALSO moving to
take over a region of gaming mostly ignored by their rival console developers:
Augmented reality.
While virtual reality is all about creating an entirely new universe for you to look into,
augmented reality is about injecting the real world
with more interesting stuff.
Right now, augmented reality is most successful
in the form of, of all places,
Snapchat filters -- which can do anything from
turn me into a cute dog to a cute member of KISS
to a cute kawaii girl.
Now that I look at it, my natural calling
By the power of the moon I shall
punish yoooouuu, aha!
and nintendo is no stranger to this technology or how
or how popularit can get. One of the mayor selling point
of the 3ds was it's ability to create
augmented reality games and
one of the largest trending blow ups of mobile
gaming last year and Nintendo's
bigest stock jump price in years
came from Pokemon Go which netted
over 300 million dollars in the first
few months and allowed you to catch pokemon
in real life through aumented
reality delivered to you via
a small portable screen as you walk
around. And now Nintendo is getting
ready to release the Switch a console
who's biggest selling feature is a small portable
screen that allows you to walk
around. The ability to play
while you're out and about.
Coincidence? I think not.
And that screen ultimately pushes me
away from saying that their backing solely
on the Switch as a VR system. At this point
Nintendo is pretty darn comfortable being
the scrawny kid at the beach party
off at his own sandbar watching the bun fire
but able to offer a great time if his asked.
Because while microsoft and Sony tent to focus
on raw power, Nintendo goes in a
diferent direction. And apparently doesn't
care about the having the bestest card
as long as they could deliver a good experience to the user.
But virtual reality is diferent.
people get for granted how super
demanding virtual reality is
on systems, Decent VR usually runs
at 90 Frames per second and
really, really low latency in order to
minimize the amount of vomit decorating people's homes.
The Switch itself doesn't really seem
like it could handle that kind of lown load. Especially
since it's exported at 720p screen.
When basically every phone in the market has
1080p screens and true
Virtual Reality headsets have 2
1080p screens literally twice the
average HD monitors worth
of pixels, and 4 times the pixels
the Switch sports. But you know what's
less demanging in smaller systems?
Augmented Reality. After all
success of Pokemon GO was that it could work
on almost any phone on the market. Funny
enough, it turn out that it takes way, way
less powerful hardware and fancy nonsense
to project stuff in the world around you.
Heck! even the 3DS could do it.
"But MatPat-" I hear you saying
in your deep sensual "raspy" voice, Augmented Reality
requires input from the
outside world, like the camera on a phone
that allows the image to project down to the
screen...the Switch doesn't have
any cameras. Theory busted.
And yeah, you are absolutely right about that
except for two things. One:
the joycons are easy to switch out. So, if a AR
game suddenlly needed it, you could release
a joycon with a boult in camera. It's an easy
fix. Just release a peripheral
or pack it in with the system itself. But here is
the other thing. The Switch already
a pretty sophisticated camera
hidden in it. It's in a weird place
too, is in the bottom of the right joycon.
It's a motion depth infrared
camera which Nintendo has stated can
differentiate between different hand shapes
like rock, paper and scissors.
The tracker also will be able to detect how far
an object is from the controller.
But it's not just a simple shape sensing camera.
In fact, looking at more of the Switch patent
We see that they've been toying around with functionality
That included projecting an image
or color into a player hand.
Detecting what the player was holding
and things throwing a virtual baseball
projected onto the hand back into
the game, and get this, Nintendo says
that this magic camera is gonna be able to record
full videos sometime in the future
IE that is already able to
sense the outside world and suck that
back into the Switch for you to play
AR games. So, couple
that level of sensory technology
with HD rumble controllers and a device
that can literally give you a magic window
into an Augmented Reality
And you will have yourself a console
that truly offers everything
Console, Handheld
VR and AR, unlike everyone else
who are currently building separated devices
for every single porpuse. Nintendo
in one fell swoop would've created
one system that is truly
all in one for all
of the diferent way that people will be
able to game in the near future
and that truly will be switching it up
we just didn't see it 'cause we were distracted
by the Splatoon guy doing the double dab
doubting nobody was watching
splatoon guy. But hey!
that's just a theory
A GAME THEORY
Thanks for watching.
And hey, Nintendo, if you weren't planing
on doing all that, well uh
you're welcome. You have all the pieces in place now
you just gotta do it, call me! I'll be happy to work on it
with you. Just call me Matamoto
*weirdness intensifies" No, don't call me that
and hey! if you are interested in where
Zelda: Breath of the Wild fits in the Zelda timeline
click that subscribe logo that
keeps snaping together to join
the notification squad. 'cause that's what
I'm working on as we speak..well, not as I speak
I'm actually recording this in the closet
But, as you listen to me speaking
when this video is live I'll be working on that theory
I just gotta play through that enourmus game
And meanwhile if you like this meta theory
you probably are going to like this one, check out how gamers are
ruining videogames it's right there
click it! We only gave ourselves to blame
Now, if you excuse me
I just wanna play with the Switch
Make it happen Nintendo! VR, AR
Console, portable
One system and four ways to play!