 |
|
|
|||||
The Nintendo Switch 2 had its big debut on Wednesday, and the new console looks to be a sizable, if mostly straightforward, upgrade over its mega-popular predecessor. Tucked between the new Donkey Kong and (pricier) Mario Kart games, mouse mode and overhauled party chat features, though, was another significant update: The device supports faster microSD Express cards. This may not be the sexiest feature, but it should bring quicker load times and generally improved storage performance to the upcoming handheld. The company briefly showed new 256GB cards from Samsung and SanDisk during its presentation, complete with Mario logos printed on. However, the news came with a major caveat: The console is only compatible with microSD Express. The cards most people use today which are based on the older UHS-I bus interface will only work for loading videos and screenshots from an original Switch, not playing games, according to Nintendos support site. Nintendo says this restriction is necessary to preserve the Switch 2s performance upgrades, and its worth noting that the console itself comes with a much more generous 256GB of space by default. But if you ever need to expand the devices storage, this change will likely make doing so cost extra, while drastically shrinking the options you have to choose from. Unlike traditional UHS-I cards, a microSD Express card like the SanDisk model on the right comes with a second row of pins on the back. Jeff Dunn for Engadget What are microSD Express cards? SD Express is a relatively recent but seldom-used standard that lets SD cards take advantage of the NVMe protocol and PCIe interface, which is the underlying tech used by SSDs. A microSD Express card has a second row of pins on its back and can utilize a single lanes worth of PCIe bandwidth. As a result, it can produce dramatically faster read and write speeds than its UHS-I counterparts. Whereas the latter advertise sequential transfer rates up to 104 megabytes per second (MB/s), microSD Express cards have a theoretical maximum of 985 MB/s. Thats far behind the NVMe SSDs used by the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but in theory, it makes Express cards faster than some older SATA-based SSDs when it comes to loading game levels, retrieving saves or copying games to the external storage. Its worth noting that many UHS-I microSD cards can exceed the 104 MB/s limit with proprietary card readers, but they still fall well short of microSD Express levels even with those. The same goes for speedier UHS-II cards, which are mostly used by professional types with select cameras and PCs and max out at 312 MB/s. (Theres also a UHS-III interface, but nobody uses it. Getting all of this?) Prior to Wednesday, the only reliably available microSD Express card we could find was this model from SanDisk. We recently tested it for our microSD card buying guide, and the upgrade was pretty dramatic. In the synthetic benchmark CrystalDiskMark, the SanDisk card achieved sequential reads up to 899.12 MB/s and sequential writes up to 650.41 MB/s. For comparison, the absolute fastest UHS-I card weve tested (Lexars Professional Silver Plus) topped out at 209.25 MB/s for reads and 193.93 MB/s for writes so, three to four times slower. In one of our real-world tests, the SanDisk Express card took an average of 20 seconds to move a 12GB foder containing various file types and subfolders to a PC and 52 seconds to write the folder back to the card. The Lexar card averaged 67 and 76 seconds, respectively. The gulf in random speeds which measure how quickly a card can read and write small bits of data scattered throughout a device and tend to be particularly important for gaming was similarly large, and in some benchmarks even greater. SanDisk's microSD Express card is one of the (very) few options you can actually buy today. Jeff Dunn for Engadget Nintendo has not provided any official transfer speed ratings for the new console just yet, but all of this suggests that the Switch 2s storage should be much faster than before, even if its not on par with the speeds of a PS5 or Xbox Series X. Its also possible that, like those other consoles, the Switch 2 has hardware dedicated to decompressing files, which could make the real-world improvements over the original Switchs storage performance even greater. (Weve reached out to Nintendo and will update this post if we receive any further details.) The original SD Express standard was released in 2018, but the tech has mostly gone nowhere in the years since. Theres been the SanDisk card noted above, a full-size SD card from ADATA and not much else. Previously, Samsung and Lexar announced microSD Express cards that wound up missing their original release windows though Samsungs card may just be the same one unveiled today, and Lexar did release a new Play Pro microSD Express card on Wednesday. Host devices that support the standard, which are required to even see any improved speeds, have been highly uncommon over the same time frame. (If you put a microSD Express card in a device that doesnt support the underlying tech, such as the original Switch, itll be limited to standard UHS-I speeds.) And while compatible card readers can deliver the faster transfer rates on certain PCs, they arent cheap, so at that point most people have been better off buying a faster external SSD. The SD Association pointed us to a LinkedIn page (!) with other compatible devices when reached for comment, but the pickings are still slim, and very few of those support microSD Express cards specifically. The Switch 2 is by far the highest-profile device to embrace the standard, so it could be the thing that finally takes these cards from cool idea to useful niche. The Samsung and SanDisk microSD Express cards Nintendo quickly teased during its Switch 2 unveiling on Wednesday. Nintendo Questions of price and heat That said, there are multiple reasons why SD Express has failed to take off before this week, and it remains to be seen whether the Switch 2 will truly fix them. First and foremost is price. Weve reached out to SanDisk and Samsung for confirmation, but for now wedont know how much the microSD Express cards that Nintendo has teased will cost. If the couple other Express models available today are any indication, though, theyre likely to be much more expensive than the conventional cards you may have bought for the previous Switch. SanDisks Express card, for instance, costs $45 for a 128GB model and $60 for the 256GB version. The 256GB Lexar Play Pro is $10 cheaper, but its 512GB and 1TB versions cost a whopping $100 and $200, respectively. For reference, Samsungs Pro Plus another UHS-I card we recommend in our buying guide costs $17 for 128GB, $23 for 256GB, $38 for 512GB and $80 for 1TB as of this writing. Thats a huge difference. Whats more, the Play Pro is the only purchasable microSD Express card weve seen thus far that even supports capacities greater than 256GB. Nintendo says the console can support up to 2TB of external storage, but no Express card with that capacity appears to exist yet. The Switch 2 will be one of the first mainstream devices to truly push SD Express in earnest, so wed expect itll drive prices down and increase competition over time. But how quickly, and by how much, remains up in the air. Nintendo The other concern relates to thermal management. MicroSD Express cards can pump out significantly faster transfer speeds, but theyre still working with tiny little frames that dont leave much room to dissipate heat. When we tested SanDisks microSD Express model for our guide, we noticed that it slowed down under longer, more sustained loads not enough to fall behind than UHS-I cards, but still below its peak by a few hundred MB/s. The SD Express spec does have mechanisms for keeping heat in check, and manufacturers like SanDisk advertise similar protections. Nintendo presumably has come up with ways to further avoid severe throttling with the Switch 2. (We already know that the new dock comes with a cooling fan built in, for instance.) But itll be something to keep an eye on once we can move large game files around the device. In a developer Q&A posted to Nintendos website on Wednesday, Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto notes that the move to microSD Express will help the consoles performance hold up better in the long-term. With the new Mario Kart World, for instance, he says the faster transfer speeds will help make far-off destinations in the games open world visible faster. He also notes that Switch 2 games will have larger file sizes, but that he doubt[s] most people will need a microSD Express card immediately after buying the system thanks to the Switch 2s larger built-in capacity. Hopefully thats the case. Itd be unfair to call this a PlayStation Vita situation, as that portable console relied solely on proprietary memory cards, and the Switch 2 will support options from several third-party manufacturers. But as it stands now, storage upgrades for the new console look like theyll be much pricier and more limited to start. And just how much of an advantage the new tech provides is something we wont know until the console arrives in June. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-nintendo-switch-2-promises-major-storage-upgrades-but-itll-cost-you-193758964.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Hear me out. I too rolled my eyes when A Minecraft Movie was announced. We're all tired of seeing Jack Black in video game movies he was fine in Super Mario Bros., but good god Borderlands was a disaster. And the Minecraft film's trailers did it no favors, another soulless movie produced on a virtual set about a game that's completely open-ended and plotless. But it turns out A Minecraft Movie is actually good. Honestly, I'm as surprised as you are. A Minecraft Movie isn't exactly groundbreaking, to be clear. It certainly never reaches the heights of The Lego Movie. But it's surprisingly funny for a children's movie, and it delivers a decent message about championing creativity in a world that wants to beat down free-thinking non-conformists. And if you were around for the inexplicable Napoleon Dynamite craze of the mid-2000's, you'll notice plenty of that film's quirky sensibility from director Jared Hess. From the beginning, A Minecraft Movie seems well aware of the ridiculousness of its own existence. The story starts off with Jack Black's Steve (dressed just like the game's default skin) retelling his obsession with "the mines," and his inability to go digging while he was a kid. He later grows up, gets a boring office job and remembers his erstwhile calling to make holes in the earth. Once he makes his way into a cave, he stumbles into a portal that brings him to the blocky "Overworld" of the Minecraft universe. It's classic isekai stuff the genre of anime where the main character is transported to another (often digital) world. And yes, I know all of this sounds incredibly contrived as I write this, but Black's zaniness really sells the absurdity of the film. It's as if he's saying out loud, "Yes, I know the idea of a Minecraft movie is beyond dumb, but at least you get to spend time with me in classic Jack Black mode!" Now if you're tired of his schtick, that may be a major knock against the film. But for me, it was a nice reminder of his Tenacious D days. Warner Bros. The film eventually focuses on two siblings, Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers), who are moving to a small Midwestern town after the death of their mother. Natalie is gearing up for a social media producer role at a local business, while Henry is forced to adapt to a new school. Coincidentally, a former gaming superstar lives in their town, Jason Mamoa's Garret "The Garbageman" Garrison, who befriends Henry as another outcast. Danielle Brooks' Dawn, a struggling local realtor/mobile zookeeper, ends up taking Natalie under her wing after seeing how much she's sacrificing for her brother. Inevitably, thanks to a glowing MacGuffin, those four characters also stumble into the same portal that sent Steve to the Overworld. They quickly run into Steve, break their glowing MacGuffin and then head off to find a way to fix it and return home. If any of this sounds boring, don't worry, it's not really important. What works best in A Minecraft Movie is the humor and personality Hess stuffs in between the trappings of a big budget Hollywood game adaptation. Warner Bros. The majority of the film hinges on Jack Black's persona, but I also enjoyed seeing Jason Mamoa play an egotistical manchild who's in love with video games. He's decked out in an absurd wig and hot pink jacket, and Mamoa hams it up just as well as he did Fast X. He's a jerk at times, but he's also kind to Henry and clearly doesn't care what anyone thinks of his personal style. The rest of the cast mostly plays it straight against the force of Black and Mamoa's personalities, but they each get a few moments to shine. Whenever the core story starts to fall flat, A Minecraft Movie veers into more interesting territory, like a hapless Minecraft villager who stumbles into the real world. For those who don't play the game, villagers are simple NPC who can't speak, and often find themselves in danger. I got a kick out of seeing him navigate traffic and have a meet-cute with Jennifer Coolidge's Vice Principal Marlene, a relationship that gets weirder than you'd think. (Again, it's like something straight out of Napoleon Dynamite.) Warner Bros. Im no Minecraft devotee, but I wish the films interpretation of the games blocky graphics were a bit more pixelated. While the characters and animals we see resemble their game counterparts, their over-designed look clashes with the beautiful simplicity of Minecrafts aesthetics. Im sure its tough to unite the low-poly look with live action, while also delivering polished CG that audiences expect, but the path A Minecraft Movie took just feels over-cooked. That being said, the films game world seems more alive than the empty virtual sets in Quantumania. There are tons of characters milling about, and the environments all feel distinctly Minecraft. The kids in my press screening didnt seem to mind the shift in visual language. They loved seeing the games creatures in any form a family of pandas got a theater-wide awww. And they also loved seeing in-game Minecraft tricks represented on the big screen, like using a water block to cushion a fall. My daughter Sophias verdict? I liked it, but I dont think Id want to see it again, she said. But I know shes lying. Well likely end up seeing this thing hundreds of times at home, and even more so once her brother jumps aboard the Minecraft bandwagon. I wont mind, though. As far as kids movies go, its a world I wouldnt mind revisiting.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a-minecraft-movie-review-its-good-actually-190035499.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Following its big Switch 2 presentation, Nintendo revealed in an interview with the team behind the console that one of the (arguably better) names the company was considering before it landed on Switch 2 was "Super Nintendo Switch." "There were a lot of ideas for the name, and we really struggled to find the right one," Kouichi Kawamato, the producer on the Switch 2, says. "We even considered ideas like 'Super Nintendo Switch.'" The issue with the name was that even though drawing a parallel to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was fun, it was also potentially confusing. The SNES was the successor to the NES, but it couldn't play NES games. "Since Switch 2 can play Switch games, it didn't feel right to use the same naming convention as Super NES." Adding a number to the end of the original console's name (the general strategy Nintendo's competitor Sony has taken with the PlayStation) just made things a lot simpler and easier to understand. Nintendo's caution isn't totally unfounded. The Wii U was more powerful than the Wii and featured a unique controller in the Wii U GamePad. Because it's name was so similar to Nintendo's older console, it was backwards compatible with the Wii and it supported pre-existing accessories like Wii Remotes, though, it was viewed as an add-on rather than a new device worth upgrading to. There were other problems that helped do the Wii U in, like a steep decline in support from third-party game developers and a failure on Nintendo's part to explain what made the console distinct, but the name certainly didn't help. The Switch 2 is much better set up for success than the Wii U, but "sticking to what works" seems like the defining idea of the new console, so the name is following suit.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-switch-2-was-almost-called-the-super-nintendo-switch-184243089.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||