Japanese site estimates Nintendo spends $257 to make one Switch
Japanese teardown firm Fomalhaut Techno Solutions estimates that Nintendo spends $257 in parts for each Switch that rolls off the assembly line. With a retail price of $299.99, that leaves little margin for error let alone profit.
That number comes after Fomalhaut gutted the Switch console, its Joy-Con controllers and charging dock in an effort to catalog each individual component inside. Best guess is that the biggest chunk — including the touchscreen, processor and dock — runs $167 out the door. The Joy-Cons, on the other hand, are a bit more pricey given their size. Each Joy-Con contains an estimated $45 worth of tech.
Fomalhaut Techno Solutions
Inside the Switch are a number of custom silicon boards layered together. This main one holds the brains of the...
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4 CommentsArcade throwback NBA Playgrounds jams on Switch, Xbox One and PS4 in May
NBA Playgrounds, a game outed at the end of February's Nintendo Switch Direct showcase, was confirmed by its maker today and will launch in May for the Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.
In this trailer, given to IGN today, NBA Playgrounds is shown to be a 2-on-2 arcade style basketball game in the tradition of NBA Jam. Big-headed current stars and all-time greats pull off twirling dunks from high above the rim.
The players, who include active all-stars like Steph Curry and James Harden, along with new hall-of-famers Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson, will be leveled up as players use them.
IGN says NBA Playgrounds will feature solo play plus local and online multiplayer. It's being developed by Saber Interactive and will retail, download only, for $20.
Once a prolific...
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Issue
26
February 27, 2017
What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch
We talk with third-party developers and industry executives about what to expect.
Read moreThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild guide and walkthrough
16 CommentsHow to get through the Lost Woods in Breath of the Wild
Whether you’re looking to hunt down the final location of Hestu in Korok Forest or looking to locate a certain item inside the Lost Woods, the challenge of getting through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s most confusing forest can be annoying. Thankfully, getting through The Lost Woods is actually much easier to figure out than the forest would lead you to believe!
How to get to the Lost Woods
Nintendo via Polygon
The Lost Woods can be found in the north
To quickest to get to The Lost Woods is from Woodland Tower. Of course, once you get to the top of Woodland Tower, you realize that there is a giant stone skull obscuring the top of the tower, making it impossible to glide into the woods from there.
To get there, go on the beaten path toward the...
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild guide and walkthrough
2 CommentsThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - ‘Divine Beast Vah Ruta’ main quest guide and walkthrough
Table of contents
How to get the Divine Beast Vah Ruta quest
Retrieve 20 shock arrows on Polymus Mountain
Swimming up the waterfalls
Getting the arrows and avoiding the Lynel
Fighting Divine Beast Vah Ruta
Divine Beast Vah Ruta dungeon and puzzles
The map terminal treasure chest
Vah Ruta’s map
Terminal 1
Terminal 2 and a treasure chest
Terminal 3 and a treasure chest
Four more treasure chests and a waterfall shortcut
Terminal 4
Terminal 5
Waterblight Ganon boss fight
Part 1
Part 2
The aftermath
Mipha’s Grace
Completing the Divine Beast Vah Ruta quest and getting the Lightscale Trident
How to get the Divine Beast Vah Ruta quest
Speak with King Dorephan to end the Reach Zora's Domain main quest and unlock the Divine Beast Vah Ruta main quest....
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild guide and walkthrough
6 CommentsBreath of the Wild guide: The Great Plateau walkthrough
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild begins on the Great Plateau, and you’ll spend your first few hours with the game here learning a frankly shocking amount about the game. The things you do here and the skills you learn will remain relevant dozens of hours into your playthrough.
But here’s the weird thing: That’s not immediately obvious. In fact, little about Breath of the Wild is obvious when you begin. It’s all a bit overwhelming.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through your first hours, showing you the obvious and not-so-obvious things to do on the Great Plateau.
Meet the Old Man
You wake up from a deep slumber, and there’s only one way to go. Grab your Sheikah slate, put on some clothes and climb your way out of the cave. Turn right, head down the hill and speak to the Old...
Culture
49 CommentsBreath of the Wild’s smartest invention lets you fly over the entire map in 10 minutes
We’ve seen players concoct some fantastic ways to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. YouTuber mety333 has devised one of our new favorites, putting both the paraglider and the Magnesis rune to some great use.
The video shows off what mety333 calls the “ultimate flying method.” It’s a flying machine of sorts, combining a dilapidated block with a discarded piece of woodworking to make one heck of a ride.
The way this works is that the player controls the magnetized bottom half with Magnesis, launching it way high into the air. Mety333 goes as high as he could possibly go, hitting the game’s invisible ceiling above Death Mountain ... and then he sends Link jumping right back into the air, paragliding his way all the way back down.
With the use of some extra stamina boosts and...
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild guide and walkthrough
12 CommentsBreath of the Wild dragon locations for Naydra, Dinraal and Farosh
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features three great dragons hidden across Hyrule. While finding the dragons is an exciting task all on its own, the dragons aren’t around simply to look interesting. Each one is associated with a different spring which helps you unlock a unique shrine.
To help you save time, here are all three of Breath of the Wild dragon locations for Naydra, Dinraal and Farosh.
WHERE TO FIND NAYDRA
Nintendo via Polygon
If you haven’t found any dragons yet, we recommend finding Naydra first, as meeting and dealing with Naydra explains many of the aspects of the role of dragons in Hyrule.
Naydra can be found at the peak of Mount Lanaryu, northwest of Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. You’ll need a few things, mainly cold weather gear (like the...
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild guide and walkthrough
2 CommentsZelda: Breath of the Wild guide: The Eighth Heroine location and how to get sand boots
Breath of the Wild treats armor differently than other Legend of Zelda games, and the sand boots are a typical example. The clothing, which lets you travel faster over sandy environments, is the reward for completing The Eighth Heroine side quest. In this guide, we’ll show you how it’s done and where you need to go.
How to get The Eighth Heroine side quest
Bozai the bozo
Travel to Gerudo town in southwestern Hyrule. (Daqo Chisay shrine is the closest warp point.)
Outside, you’ll find a man named Bozai running around the outskirts of town. Speak to him to unlock The Eighth Heroine side quest.
He’ll also give you snow boots, which let you travel faster while up to your knees in (you guessed it) snow. This is particularly important because the path to the B...
News
31 CommentsNintendo Switch’s best-selling eShop games are missing a big name
The Nintendo Switch eShop updated overnight to include a section for best-selling games. One major name missing from the North American store’s top five? The Legend of Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ekes onto the list at number seven, with six popular indie games besting it in eShop sales. Snipperclips currently dominates, followed by Snake Pass, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, Fast RMX, Has-Been Heroes and The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+.
The majority of these games are exclusive to the digital shop, so we’re not so surprised that they make up the bulk of the list’s top half. Plus, with all that talk of how awful Nintendo Switch cartridges tasted right around the console’s launch, of course everyone would want to pick up a physical game with their system. Breath of the...
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33 CommentsZelda producer hints at more open-world games to come
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s may have set a new standard for Link’s future adventures. In an interview with Famitsu, longtime series producer Eiji Aonuma suggested that Zelda games will likely continue using expansive, open-world settings.
When asked by Famitsu whether Zelda games will continue to use the unique of Breath of the Wild, Aonuma teased that we’d see more open-world Zelda in the future.
“I think that, in the future, open air games will be the standard for Zelda,” Aonuma said.
Nintendo’s found major commercial and critical success with Breath of the Wild, a game that bucks many of the series’ most traditional elements. The non-linear style has led numerous players to spend hours upon hour scavenging the Great Plateau — a totally valid way to play this gorgeous...
My son is playing the perfect game of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
My middle son is obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and he has taught me how to play the game to perfection.
The Switch is a pretty great system if you have a big family, and with five kids, my family is ... pretty big. My middle son is under the age of 10, and his favorite post-homework activity is to grab the Switch and squirrel away somewhere in the house for an hour or two.
He doesn’t have to tie up the television, so the younger kids can watch something else, and he can flutter away to whatever corner of the house pleases him, so the older kids don’t mess with him while he’s playing. He sits, focused, and becomes completely lost in the game. He’s locked into the experience in a way that’s close to impossible when you’re an adult. He has nothing else on his...
Culture
7 CommentsNintendo makes the only company handbook you’d ever want to read
This year’s edition of Nintendo’s Japanese handbook serves as a beautiful reminder of all the games and projects Nintendo has on the docket for 2017. Pictures made it online this week after employees at the company’s Kyoto, Japan-based headquarters received the book in-person. Based on what we’ve seen, it’s a stunning look at the year to come.
There’s some wonderful The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild art; illustrations based on Super Mario Odyssey; pictures from the upcoming brawler Arms; and several works based on Splatoon 2.
Nintendo Company Book 2017 is finally here and beautiful as usual. #任天堂 #Switch /via @masa_fujifuji @Fleece_sliver @meideru pic.twitter.com/uB1MH3AnlF— Ninty Memories (@NintendoMemo) April 3, 2017
.@masa_fujifuji @Fleece_sliver @meideru Nintendo...
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38 CommentsZelda: Breath of the Wild is playable at 4K ... on the PC
The Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of Zelda: Breath of the Wild run at either 720p or 900p resolutions depending on whether the Switch is docked or not, but some fresh updates to Wii U emulator CEMU allow the game to be played at much higher resolutions if you have the hardware to power it.
You can watch the game being played in 4K in the video above, and be sure to stream the video in full resolution if you have the connection to support it. Spoiler warning: Breath of the Wild looks very, very good running in 4K.
The creator of the video is running the game with the system below, and there are extensive notes on how to adjust the CEMU settings in the video description:
i7 6700k overclocked to 4.3ghz
Nvidia 1070 class card
Corsair h110i AIO
16GB of GSkill Ripjaws RAM overclocked...
News
28 CommentsDeal-finder thought he bought a Nintendo Switch from Amazon, got a Wii instead
DealSeeker2U, a user on CheapAssGamer.com's forums, recently ordered a Nintendo Switch from Amazon Warehouse deals for $269.99. You might note that this sucker retails for $299.99. Well anyway, he was delighted to receive his Nintendo Switch box.
That's good, because that's about the only legitimate Nintendo Switch item he got. Stuffed inside was a dirty old crappy Wii, shoddily wrapped in static-free packing paper and bubble wrap.
CheapAssGamer.com
"'Inspected' my ass," says DealSeeker2U, and rightly so. "Everything was missing from the box and instead there was just a dirty Wii console."
Thankfully, he can send this back and get a refund, so he's not out any money. But he still has no Nintendo Switch.
This is hardly a unique problem. Since 2006's introduction of...
News
58 CommentsPETA takes aim at Nintendo for 1-2-Switch’s milking minigame
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization is picking a fight with Nintendo this week, and Switch launch title 1-2-Switch is to blame. After Nintendo garnered some press for challenging a real-life cow farm to a showdown in the collection’s milking minigame, PETA’s president took the developer to task for “sugarcoating the subject.”
A letter to Nintendo from Ingrid E. Newkirk, head of the animal rights organization, made it to Facebook yesterday. She doesn’t mince words, calling the game unrealistic in pretty explicit detail.
“Our staffers and activisits have recently played the cow-milking minigame for Nintendo Switch and realized you’ve taken all the cruelty out of milking,” Newkirk wrote. “We have more than 35 years of experience investigating dairy farms where cows...
News
46 CommentsZelda: Breath of the Wild patch improves frame rates
Nintendo has released a patch for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that has been reported to dramatically increase frame rates when the game is played in docked mode, a situation that used to hurt performance as the hardware and software struggles with the jump in resolution.
The patch notes for version 1.1.1 of the game don’t give us much details about what has actually been changed, however. “Adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience,” Nintendo wrote on the official page. Thanks?
“Went to a forest outside of the plateau with two Moblins where I had major FPS drops,” one Reddit user stated. “Now have a consistent 30 there. It seems that there are still specific areas that tank your frames (the first cliff at the plateau, Kakariko, ect.) but I've...
Culture
18 CommentsBreath of the Wild players are killing its toughest enemy in absurd ways
One of the most satisfying things you can do in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is take down a Lynel, a super powerful, centaur-looking enemy who can resist almost any attack. Tons of players have made it a point to defeat these creatures when they run into them — and some especially ambitious ones are taking the Lynel they reach into with some impressive means.
Here’s DeliciousTea Gaming fighting a Lynel with a Link who’s under extreme duress. The poor Hylian doesn’t have a single piece of clothing, and he’s only got three hearts to his name. His weapon of choice? A rock.
Somehow, Link emerges victorious. Turns out that boulder is a pretty sweet weapon.
For something a little more savory, check out this fight where Link uses an arsenal of arrows, a pot lid and a soup ladle...
News
32 CommentsAmazon choked with Nintendo Switch scams
The Nintendo Switch is suffering from supply issues as demand for Nintendo’s hybrid portable and home console continues to be strong. And where there is demand this strong, there will be scammers trying to cash in.
Amazon’s third-party listings for the Nintendo Switch are choked with newly launched seller accounts that have little to no feedback who are selling the hardware for well below even sticker price. This should send up a giant red flag.
If people are willing to spend more than retail price for hardware due to scarcity, it’s unlikely are people who are willing to sell the hardware at far below market price.
So what’s going on?
This is a big problem with all of Amazon
It seems as if Amazon is being gripped by sellers who sign up with fresh accounts, list popular items below...
News
25 CommentsNintendo Switch owners should be jealous of the Wii U’s new game this week
This week’s set of Nintendo eShop downloads are pretty paltry across the board, but there’s one highlight in the lineup — for Wii U, anyway.
The Wii version of Pikmin 2 is now available on Wii U Virtual Console, and it has added off-screen play support. At $19.99, that’s a steal for a copy of this classic, which became scarce not long after its initial release on GameCube.
Nintendo ported Pikmin 2 over to Wii as part of its “New Play Control” lineup, adding motion controls to the mix, in 2012, three years after Pikmin got the same treatment. It later was included in the Nintendo Selects line of budget-priced games, but even that version is incredibly expensive nowadays. Amazon Prime has new copies for $79, while resellers want anywhere from $10 to $95 for them.
There’s still a huge...
News
46 CommentsWhere to buy a Nintendo Switch (update)
Update #3: It’s still hard out there, and demand is far exceeding supply.
This has caused some retailers to try new things when selling the system. Amazon briefly had the systems but only for Prime subscribers. There are also many new accounts in the third-party seller section with no feedback that are selling the system for far below market cost. Stay far away from these. The price seems to start around $400 for legit third-party offerings; look for sellers with a long history of positive feedback.
Best Buy also offered a limited number of Switch and NES Classic Edition consoles yesterday, but they were sold out within seconds.
Having the systems in stock is a big enough deal that retailers are tweeting about when they will go on sale, so be sure to follow as many as possible if...
News
117 CommentsAnother third-party Switch game causes uproar (update)
Lego City Undercover is the next major third-party port heading to Nintendo Switch, but early copies are already turning some console owners off of the game. It turns out that even physical versions of the Switch remaster require a hefty, internet-enabled data download.
Although Lego City Undercover isn’t due at retail until April 4, some stores already have it in stock. One retail-working Reddit user whose store now has copies noticed that the game case indicates that an internet connection is required, even to play the cartridge.
View post on imgur.com
“Up to 13 GB storage required for game download” is the reason why, as the packaging notes. That’s a sizable portion of the Nintendo Switch’s hard drive space, which is capped at 32 GB.
While PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games require...
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