Month: March 2017

Video host: Mark Walton (video link)

Since the release of the Game Boy in 1989, there has been a pretty fundamental split between playing games on a TV-based console and playing games on a portable system. Aside from pricey experiments like the Turbo Express, playing on the go meant making significant and understandable sacrifices in graphical and computational power (and, often, controls) compared to contemporary home consoles.

With the Switch, Nintendo seems to be betting that the continued drum beat of Moore's Law and miniaturization has made that dichotomy moot. The Switch is an attempt to drag the portable gaming market kicking and screaming to a point where it's literally indistinguishable from the experience you'd get playing on a 1080p HDTV. Nintendo is betting that a system that fits in a diminutive tablet form factor is now powerful enough to feel acceptably modern when you throw it into an included dock and blow it up to full size on your living room wall.

SAN FRANCISCO—For many games fans, Nintendo has plenty to prove with its Switch console. The biggest issue, arguably, is the flow of new content. The Wii U stopped receiving games much too quickly from first- and third-party creators. That followed more than a decade of pitiful third-party support for other Nintendo systems.

Executives are insisting—yet again—that this time, Nintendo has got it right. But so far, we've mostly heard about Wii U ports and a spread-thin release schedule. Are we already back to déja vú before the new console is even out?

Don't cancel your pre-order yet. In at least one major category, Nintendo just might be getting its act together—and in a giant surprise for longtime Nintendo fans, the company's most promising initiative, and one poised to capitalize on the Switch's strengths, appears to be coming almost entirely from its North American office.

Dolby Vision is one or the highest image quality standards in cinemas. It’s so demanding there are just a handful of Dolby Vision screens across the world. They’re not cheap to make—each screen uses two 4K laser-light projectors, rather than bog standard DLP—but with high brightness and 12-bit HDR colour they look superb.

At MWC 2017 LG and Dolby announced that the new LG G6 supports Dolby Vision, once again raising the question of how Dolby has diluted one of its audiovisual cinema techs this time. After all, Dolby Vision is a standard that ostensibly supports brightness levels up to 10,000 nits, where the brightest phones top out at 600-700.