Nintendo Switch debuts on Jimmy Fallon running The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

Title says it all. Can't wait for the January event to learn more

I have to watch footage of the Wii U version again but this version seems to look sharper and run smoother. I liked that they demoed the hand off from TV to handheld but I had to skim 85% of that video since it was mostly hype nonsense bullshit, also didn't care about Super Mario Run

these kind of segments usually feel pretty hamfisted, but jimmy is cute and excited enough that he really sells it.

it's also too bad that they didn't have direct feed from the handheld version, but I guess they wanted to show off that it's truly mobile

Jimmy sells it good. But this system looks awesome despite that. Reggie's such a controller hog lol.

The screen looks nice. I was trying to see how it would handle the studio lights with those over the shoulder, angled camera shots. I just wanted Jimmy to touch the screen.

Fallon is insufferable but hey the Switch is looking great!

@cmblasko: Oh I don't know. I have heard that Fallon is a huge Zelda fan so I can understand the excitement he had of being able to play the new Zelda on the new Nintendo console with Miyamoto in the audience.

No fair having Miyamoto in the audience. Now I can't stop smiling.

Yep, that looks pretty fuckin cool.

You could definitely tell that Jimmy's excitement is genuine and in the video, you could see Miyamoto was even impressed with Jimmy's knowledge of the backstory of Zelda based on Miyamoto's own history.

It looks really cool and nice to see it "in person" as opposed to simply in that commercial. Battery life is still a concern of mine but I might have to renege on my previous statement about not buying another Nintendo console after the Wii U...

I think I might be a little dead inside because I never get this excited about anything.

Fallon laid it on a bit thick in my opinion.

Jimmy is such a mark, holly shit !

He always does. I think most of the talk show hosts do. I miss Craig Ferguson. He was chill and didn't care about scripts. His conversations could go anywhere.

American TV is too loud for this time of the morning. The tablet size seems about right.

Man, I wish I was still capable of getting as visibly excited about video games as Jimmy Fallon.

The interactions with Miyamoto are just about the cutest shit.

I can't believe it but they just sold that console. Complete overhaul from the WiiU.

It does look pretty cool!

Though, guys, Jimmy Fallon's putting on a show. I'm not saying he's not excited for it, he very well could be pumped and ready to buy one on day one, but... he's putting on a show.

I guess the production doesn't work with videogames because how the hell is it acceptable to capture gameplay like that? Direct feeds are not that difficult. Still looks really good and I'm still sold as hell on this console

From developing the original Super Mario Bros to sitting in an audience for an evening American show watching a mobile adaptation of his franchise get demo'd. Miyamoto has had an interesting life.

Not a fan of Fallon but I persisted.

If Nintendo can work out all of the 3rd party kinks this could be really big for them. Probably not Wii big, but big enough for their console to be a serious option again, outside of the Nintendo diehards. I remember the Wii U having also a semi-strong lineup in the first few years of its life, only for the console to eventually miss out on just about every big multiplatform game coming out, which is probably a part of it's drop in popularity and total sales.

If the price point is as a crazy low as a lot of the rumours suggest ($250-$300) I see this selling very well. The core gimmick is neat, and the marketing of this has so far been very on point as this being Nintendo's big new console and bringing that gimmick across and why it might be something that is worth using. All of these things are the exact opposite of the circumstances surrounding the Wii U's launch.

I just wonder what the purchase options are going to look like. I assume that the dock and tablet will come with every purchase, as that's where the whole 'Switch' thing even comes into play, but how much for a Pro controller? What if my dock gets busted by the main console itself, the tablet, it still fine? Will Nintendo provide ways to purchase that on it's own?

Also, I just realised something. What of Amiibo's? Is Nintendo going to take the figurines behind the shed and shoot them, old Yeller style?

Huh, pretty damn good demo. Still really interested in the Switch.

Biggest news I got out of this was Apple is doing demos of Super Mario Run in-store, which I haven't heard of as a thing that happens. Wonder if they've got a long-term relationship planned.

Still want an Android version of it though :(

EDIT: OK this is just awesome

Now I need to see Jimmy Fallon disappointed.

they seemed to pick a good timeframe to hype the console, close enough to launch that people get excited and are still on that high when it actually releases, as well as people not having to wait forever for it. plus they don't end up forgetting about it after a couple years or completely miss it if they just push it out there. despite what others have said i think this strategy may work out well for them.

miyamoto rules, he'd better be on this earth for a good while yet.

Admittedly, it was a huge ass screen, but looking at the footage they showed there was some very noticeable aliasing on the sword and other areas of the image when it was docked. Looked kinda like it was just upscaling the 720p tablet footage, but for all I know its running at 4k.

Why would they show a direct feed? The content of the game was completely irrelevant to the demo they were trying to shoot. The whole point was to show how the gameplay seamlessly transferred from the big screen to the handheld and picked up in the same spot. You can't show a direct feed and demo that.

EDIT: Should probably clarify since those two comments make me look really down on the Switch, I think it looks fantastic and can't wait to get one. Just not getting my hopes up about performance yet, and god I hope it has a touch screen for Mario Maker.

melt them all together into the Om-mibo

The main issues with Nintendo in the past has been the systems have been kinda hard to port over too/ develop for. With the rumors around with the system, its using a ARM processor. From what I know and have herd, the ARM processor is actually very easy to develop for, perhaps even easier than the X86 found in PS4 and XBOX.

No touch screen would be a bit disappointing, but then if you have it docked all the time that would become awkward in some scenarios. It would also save a bit on the overall hardware cost.

However, I've seen some articles reporting rumours of a multi-touch screen, so I guess we have to wait a few weeks.

So they are going all digital with the switch?

Wow

@jasonr86: Nobody is as excited about anything, not even Fallon. He's got a pretty big reputation for coming off as putting it on way too much, that you can pretty much guarantee every interview on his show will be about 10% questions, 90% Jimmy throwing himself backwards or on his desk, laughing and clapping like a lunatic.

I've never seen a TV host shilling so hard for anything before. The game looks good and having the Switch on TV is cool but there is no way his reaction was genuine. I'm distrustful of ridiculous fake excitement.

@ezekiel: I believe his love of Nintendo and videogames is genuine but yeah, when he is this much of a shill it just makes him look fake even if he's not.

When he grabbed the red coin and the audience flipped out, it reminds me of our chat flipping out when Brad accomplishes mundane things after hours of trying.

I want to believe, but I can remember the Forza Xbone demo looking better on Fallon than the final product.

I thought there was something wrong with the sound on the video until they undocked the switch. That little fan it has (which I guess is off in handheld mode) sounds like a hair dryer. Check out when they undock it in the video, some pretty loud fan whine cuts out. Maybe part of the issue was preproduction hardware or that it was running under that yellow cube for a while, who knows.

"It's weed, isn't it..."

Real talk, programmer here. There's practically no difference in difficulty between architectures given how high-level programming is these days. When people talk about the Wii U being hard to port to, what they mean is the development software support doesn't exist for the Wii U and has to be added, and that can be a lot of work. Once that's done developers don't have to do it again for each game, but it's a big initial investment in manpower to support the console. Technical issues stem largely from the amounts and speeds of memory available. For example, the biggest roadblock for a lot of ports from 360 to PS3 was due to the memory architecture as two separate pools of 256Mb (one faster than the other), not the Cell processor, especially later on in the console generation when most of the dev tools had been ironed out.

Raw processing power can also be an issue, where the console can technically run your game, but the assets don't scale down far enough to get reasonable performance. In that regard ARM could be seen as a handicap, since clock-for-clock compute power tends to be somewhat lower in exchange for energy efficiency.

You guys have to remember, Jimmy Fallon missed out on a shot at dating Nicole Kidman because he was too busy playing Mario Kart.

6:19 "Anywhere you see.. you can get to." Living in the past, are we, Reggie?

@flashflood_29: he's also communicating to a decidedly more casual audience.

@flashflood_29: Not to mention the first time I saw the "instead of having to fight enemies, you can push a boulder on them" line in video game marketing was with Battle Realms... and that was in 2000.

Nintendo is truly the Columbus of video games.

I don't really see why you'd be excited by the Switch if your weren't excited by the Wii U. It's going to have the exact same problem as a console. It's underpowered compared to the competition and is coming out later. It's going to have a handful of Nintendo games from the franchises we've played for the last 30 years and a bunch of indy games.

I guess you could get excited if you want a handheld, but it seems awfully big to actually use outside of the house, and the Wii U already kind of does in home off screen gaming. I also wonder if it's just a slightly more powerful Wii U. I can see there being a wireless signal being sent to the dock so you can use the tablet to play games on your TV. Actually, if you can't do that, it's kind of a disappointment.

I can barely bring myself to watch this. I loathe Jimmy Fallon. He looks like a Macy's manikin that came to life. Except that a manikin's suit would fit better.

More specifically, I'm still not entirely sold on the Switch. It could be cool, but they need something more substantive about it. What I'd really like is some size comparisons between the tablet things and other system's controllers. When it's in it's tablet form everything looks uncomfortably far apart. In controller form it looks sort of tiny in Reggie's hands. But maybe he has big hands and it's about the size and shape of an XBOX controller?

I can't speak to why everyone would be more excited about the Switch than they were the Wii U, but I'll tell you why I am.

I am not a handheld gamer. I don't often find myself in a position to use a handheld gaming system. Perhaps if used public transportation or had the type of job where I found myself with downtime where pulling out a handheld system was an option, but those things don't apply to me. If I am playing video games, I am in my home. Given this, I miss out a lot of great handheld games. Sure, I could buy a 3DS and play these games at home, but there's just something about playing games on a low resolution screen I have to hold in my hands that seems especially unappealing when I'm sitting right next to a nice monitor or TV.

I love the idea of a Nintendo console that combines both their home and handheld systems into one device. Not because I'll ever use that thing in it's mobile state, but because I can now play all those great games that would have previously been handheld games on a TV, with a regular controller. Nintendo releasing all their great first party games on a single device, rather than splitting them between a home console and handheld, is the best thing they could ever do.

The Switch basically has to have more regular and abundant first party offerings because it's essentially all hands on deck. All development teams and studios that make games for Nintendo systems will be making them for the Switch, regardless if they're traditionally a handheld or console developer.

@quantris: I like how they have no mic set up for Miyamoto so you hear nothing of his playing.

so many stick-filled asses in this thread

of course he's laying it on thick, that's what he does, but it's pretty easy to tell the difference between shilling and exaggerating

Yo fuck all this Switch nonsense, Miyamoto played with The Roots!?!

j/k can't wait for the Switch, but still...MIYAMOTO AND THE ROOTS!

That was all pretty awesome. But mostly just Miyamoto playing with The Roots.

hahahah yeah, I think this was a knowing reference by his script writer, given how famous that quote is at this point, but I didn't get the impression that he realized that.

This looks fuuuuckinggg great. Jimmy Fallon is a piece of shit, but his youthful exuberance has allowed for some pretty crazy shit to happen on his show.