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Nintendo on Switch’s battery life, leaks, more

Posted on January 18, 2017 by (@NE_Brian) in News, Switch

GamesBeat recently spoke with David Young, Nintendo of America’s assistant manager of public relations. There was some rehash on things we’ve heard before, but some new comments were shared as well. Young weighed in on Switch’s tech specs, battery life (settings are unsurprisingly confirmed), online plans, and leaks.

Continue on below for a roundup of the new tidbits shared by Young. GamesBeat’s full piece can be read here.

On tech specs…

– Young says it’s “more powerful than Wii U”
– No 4K
– Only seems to be Wi-Fi only and will not use 4G / LTE for wireless connection
– For surround sound, it does not have an optical out, instead handling sound passing via HDMI

On battery life…

– Two factors figure into the battery life
– Depends on the game (how much it is using components like the GPU and CPU)
– Also has settings like screen brightness that players can use to try to maximize the life of the battery

On online plans…

“Yeah, you know, this’ll allow really a more robust kind of environment and development of that online.”

– Voice chat is only in the smartphone app, not something that is actually going to be part of the Switch system itself

“Right. That’s what we’ve been discussing, is that this app will allow you [to use] the voice chat.”

On leaks…

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we keep our eyes open on those kind of things. And it is disappointing because, you know, you want to deliver a message with the maximum impact, right? And so, we design things like today, right? And like the broadcast from Japan last night. You want to have things that are synchronized and timed and sometimes, when [there are] leaks, it will interfere with that. But, you know, we do the best we can, right? Sometimes, these things happen when you have this information spread in a broad way, you know. There’s somebody that always wants to say, ‘Hey, I know something you don’t know,’ and post things. And that stuff happens. But I think, for the most part, we did pretty well on moving through and sharing the information. And today, I think, is going really great for us.”

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