The Switch is a brand new console from Nintendo. You can play games on it on your TV, but you can also play games on it not on your TV. Yep, the Switch switches: taking the best parts of the Wii U and the PlayStation 4’s Remote Play, it’s a console that you can take with you and play wherever you are.
Detail on the Switch is still scant; we know that it’s powered by a custom Nvidia Tegra mobile processor, using the same architecture as the company’s most powerful graphics cards — but obviously scaled down massively for the Switch’s form factor and need for energy efficiency. Since you can pop the Switch’s central portion out — like an oversized smartphone — and carry it around while gaming, that’s where all the smarts and processing power will have to live.
If it’s using a variant of the Tegra X2 rather than the older Tegra X1 suggested by Eurogamer — likely, since it has a Pascal GPU inside — it’ll have significantly more power than other mobile-grade gaming devices like Nvidia’s own Shield K1 tablet. That’s a Good Thing for smooth, beautiful gameplay.
It looks like a pretty damn powerful portable gaming console, too — playing games like Skyrim, Splatoon and a new Zelda title called Breath Of The Wind with lovely 3D graphics. More important than that, though, is its utility: a controller that can be used in about a zillion different ways with and without the portable console attached.
What we don’t know: Is it a touchscreen? Is there a stylus? Will it be connected to the ‘net? How long will the handheld’s battery life? These questions, and more, will (hopefully) be answered before the NX’s Switch’s launch in March 2017.