The following comes from Nintendo’s Masaru Mitsuyoshi, who held a joint session with Capcom’s Masaru Ijuin about Switch.
- Switch dev kits cost roughly $450 to $500
- originally, the Joy-Cons were still in the research phase and weren’t included in the explanation document
- Ijuin from Capcom said that there was only a touch panel form factor and nothing like the Joy-Con
- Ijuin wasn’t sure in what way the device would be portable, but saw how things worked once the Jon-Cons were revealed
- hardware specs for Switch focus on high performance and low power
- you can achieve nVidia GeForce’s high performance capability in TV mode
- you also can use the same device running with a battery in tabletop mode and portable mode
- Nintendo is adopting an original operating system
- you can use plenty of hardware resources for gaming apps and it can secure enough memory space for these apps as well
- Nintendo is putting a high priority on wireless
- even if you go from TV mode to portable mode with Switch, it transmits without a disconnection
- Capcom had been working on Ultra Street Fighter II & are using their original engine MT Framework
- lots of staff at Capcom are used to the engine
- Capcom began to develop an environment to quickly examine the hardware right away
- they initially excluded support of hardware-specific features and also excluded sound and network support
- after this, Capcom began to develop a PC emulation environment in parallel
- Nintendo provided a GPU emulator which is capable of recreating the same shaders of the actual console on PC
- the Switch version of the GPU emulator is enhanced, so it was easier for Capcom to create a PC emulator
- it’s very easy to do iterations on PC, so the advantage of preparing a PC emulator is quite big
- one month was used to understand tools, development environment, and the SDK
- at first, Capcom could secure just two programmers to do the work
- with only one month and two people, they could port basic engine features
- the staff were accustomed to porting and previously developed a Wii U version MT Framework
- the hardware structure was easy to understand
- the port process was overwhelmingly faster than 3DS or Wii U
- on 3DS, it took four months with four people
- on Wii U, it took three months with five people
- the hardware structure was very easy to understand and it also had similarities to Wii U
- Capcom had told Nintendo that the initially planned memory space wasn’t enough
- Capcom’s request was accepted and the memory capacity became as per to their expectation
- there was some talk about whether they should go capacitive or pressure sensitive with the touchscreen
- the situation was considered based on the associated costs
- to examine the situation with the CPU clock and power consumption, it is necessary to have a high-load application
- during the early development stage, there are not many environments which fit that need
- since Capcom was able to get a grasp on Switch in just a month, Nintendo offered Capcom to work on the task
- Nintendo and Capcom collaborated using each other’s specialties
- Nintendo and Capcom built up a trusting relationship while going through a trial and error process
- Switch’s SOC power consumption takes a bigger toll on the GPU than the CPU
- Capcom asked Nintendo about implementing a feature to adjust the GPU clock corresponding on scenes
- Nintendo said that even if you lower the clock, the overall processing time will be longer
- it also won’t necessarily give an advantage in the end
- Capcom is looking into having the RE Engine compatible with Switch
- Capcom wants to develop AAA titles for the platform
from GoNintendo
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