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!
