Nintendo has shown that its new gaming machine can be used as a portable but it’s not ready to say how long the machine can run in that mode without getting plugged in.
“We will announce more hardware details later,” a rep for the company told Kotaku in a statement, when we asked about the system’s battery life, “but we are developing Nintendo Switch so that consumers can comfortably enjoy games away from home.”
And will it have a touchscreen, something that wasn’t evident in the Switch’s debut trailer?
“We have nothing to announce on this topic. We will make additional announcements about the Nintendo Switch hardware later, before the launch of the product.”
Touchscreen support has been rumoured and could well be part of the system’s design. It won’t make or break the system, but a short battery life could short circuit the Switch’s core promise: to let people easily go from playing a rich, deep game on their TV to playing the same game on the go. The Switch’s trailer showed a gamer doing that with Skyrim, a role-playing game with dozens of hours of things to do in it.
On its 3DS systems, battery life has tended to be about 3-5 hours.
Nintendo is promising that people can “comfortably” enjoy Switch games on the go. Is that code for good battery life? We’ll find out before the system’s launch in March 2017.
Comments
22 responses to “Nintendo Mum On Switch’s Battery Life, Whether It Has A Touchscreen”
From the title I thought this was going to be an authoritative dissertation on the battery life and viability of touchscreen given by the mother of someone who works at Nintendo.
Like “My child works at Nintendo and they told me…” instead of the old nintendo uncle.
Yep, that’s what I thought too! Instead it’s just an article that tells us what we already know we don’t know.
Hah, yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking, and was confused by the story for a second, wondering where the mum was.
Logged on just to upvote this comment
I went one more step cynical, I thought it was going to be the “speaking as a mother” card
Looking at the hardware, its clear its thicker than a regular tablet to allow for cooling and presumably a bigger battery. Touch screen? May go regular just to save a bit of chash on BOM but who knows?
My bet is between 4-6 hours of gameplay which would be pretty amazing considering what it offers. And doubt that its touch – but that mighy explain the Switch “dock” controller. Middle could axt as a touch sensor.
We arent going to get more info until its actually got near finished games and software now.
Probably 4-6 on the menus . But closer to 2-3 when in heavy use.
Lol, 4-6 would be possible if every avalible space in the tablet housing was taken up by batteries, But that would leave no room for the actual hardware. 1-3 hours at most playing games like the ones shown.
I am really happy for no touchscreen.
Same. I rarely use it on the 3DS, and being without it means longer battery life / cheaper product.
It has nothing. They haven’t made it yet and are gauging market reactions before settling in final designs.
The fact that Nintendo is refusing to let any hardware details out to the public, plus the fact that it has lied in its announcement by using videos of games that might not even be on the system (and of the graphical quality those videos show). I’m extremely worried that we’re getting WiiU2.0. An underpowered gimmick that won’t last a year and will be quickly abandoned by third party developers.
I want Nintendo to succeed again, but the more they hide, the more I worry about how bad things can get.
What games did Nintendo lie about?
Skyrim & NBA (It looked like NBA 2K17 on the screen). Even the Zelda footage looked like the WiiU concept demo they showed off on the Direct once
You can suspect that a person or entity is lying, but you need more than hearsay for that accusation to hold. Given that your position relies on information that doesn’t currently exist, at least in the sense that it’s available, I’ll take it for what it is: unfounded skepticism.
I too would like to see Nintendo succeed, if only to hold out against the homogeneity of the other home consoles. But when it comes to dour speculation on that possibility? Not interested.
So Bethesda saying that Skyrim isn’t coming to the system and the footage was a video means nothing. Keep being delusional fanboy
Bethesda released a statement that they are not confirming any specific titles; as in, neither confirming nor denying. That is incredibly different from what you are proposing.
In the future, when there is definite information, you claims may hold true. Until that happens, they are silly posturing.
Why release everything at once? They’ve given us the concept and a few games. Makes much mre sense to start releasing things/building the hype up closer to launch. Make sense to me.
Also, they are definitely lying because a game they have shown is or isn’t coming out? Please. There is no way they would show that game if it wasn’t coming out.
Calling it: No touch screen.
Why have a touch screen when you can’t use it in the dock? Unless there is some other peripheral that let’s you perform touch while the Switch is using the HDMI, it doesn’t make sense. Games designed for touch would never play on your TV via the dock, a core feature of the new system.
Am I missing something? *scratches head*
It’s for today’s kids – there’s GOT to be a touch screen. Otherwise, kids will just sit there, stupidly poking at the screen and complaining that it’s broken.
As a day one Wii U buyer, I’ll be waiting and seeing on the Switch. It all just smells too much like the Wii U launch. Look the Wii U was good, but not what they said it would be.
Tell me specs, give me a demo, tell me exactly what’s coming down the pipeline.
They will. Next year. No reason to build up a bunch of hype and then let it die/get lost in all the craziness of Christmas.