It's better be 99-150$

It's a dedicated video game console with a built-in screen, so no, it won't be that low. I would expect in the $250 - $300 USD range. Any more than that and they risk pricing themselves out compared to the competition. $100 - $150 is a bit unrealistic given everything that's going to be crammed into this thing. Smaller, more portable tech usually costs more to produce than a more sizable box meant to go under a TV.

But what makes me happy there is the confirmation of IR and motion controls, hopefully that will lead to some HD remakes of Wii games like Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword.

The far more likely outcome would be supporting the Wii as a platform in the Virtual Console. This might allow for some Wii games emulated in higher resolutions, but generally only a few titles get the "remastered" treatment. That said, I would expect to see quite a few Nintendo ports, especially early on in the Switch's lifespan. I just don't think that most of those will come from the Wii. Most will come from the WiiU. The minuscule sales numbers for the WiiU means that a large portion of Nintendo's intended audience for the Switch haven't played most WiiU games. Which means that any number of them could enjoy a second chance at sales if they get ported natively to the WiiU. Not exactly an optimal solution for the Nintendo faithful who showed up for the WiiU. But for everyone else, especially developers, this would be an ideal scenario.

It's also a good idea to do the concept portion of your drawing first. Draw the line-drawing "skeleton" for your character, and animate that first. Drawing each frame of animation when your character is a stick figure is way faster, and will make it much easier to get an idea of the motion you want to create. Once you feel like you're in a good place with the way that the stick figure is moving, add an outline to represent its shape, and animate that in accordance with the way the stick man is moving. Just a rough sketch of the character's outline. Once you've got the animation for that looking good, you can move forward to overlaying this animation with the details for the final character.

Animation is incredibly time consuming. You can do yourself a favor by changing your workflow as I've described, which will prevent you from re-doing your animation from the ground up multiple times. This will save on time in the long run.

Ah hah! So that's how Nintendo intends to implement an experimental VR setup! I seriously question the possible performance of such a solution. It would be little better than the current phone-related VR headsets that we've been seeing. I especially question whether or not the resolution of the Switch's screen would be up to the challenge, though I suppose the refresh rate would be what is really important. But it is still a way for Nintendo to play around with VR for very little overall cost. Those headset "docks" are way cheaper to produce, even if they have to have sensors built into them. A $50 - $100 accessory is a bit easier to pitch than the $400+ headsets that all the other companies are trying to sell.

But of course, this is all speculation, even with a patent filing. You can patent a device that you never actually produce or sell. Still, fairly interesting to see this concept thrown around.

So if a player buys a powerup on their phone, how to let the arcade machine know? Include some encrypted message or a hash to send over and say "Hey, Richard Kain bought the Silver Armor"?

If the arcade is reading the data off the phone, no real encryption is necessary. The only area where you need security is between the phone and the on-line store. Trying to "charge" from the arcade is where you start running into issues. So don't do it. Just have the transactions take place on the phone. The arcade can simply be reading profile information from the phone.

One thing that concerns me is the need for an internet connection at the arcade site, but I think those are fairly reliable these days.

If you just need to establish a connection between a dedicated location device and a mobile device, an internet connection is not necessary. There are several different options, all with differing levels of convenience. You could pair the mobile device to the arcade via Bluetooth. You could install a WiFi router to the arcade and connect to the established wireless network from the mobile device, even if no internet was involved. And if you just need to transfer some data, you could install an NFC reader on the arcade, and have people place their mobile device on a pre-determined panel. There is actually quite a bit of flexibility here. WiFi routers are way cheaper than they used to be, and much smaller as well. If you could streamline the network selection, possibly through the app itself, this would be one of the better options. (as virtually all mobile devices have a WiFi option)

Of course, if you're doing monetization, that WOULD probably have to be done through the internet. But for that you can basically assume that the user will rely on their own mobile internet data connection. And the actual data that you would need for performing those sorts of interactions would be minimal. Data for the transaction and spending of a digital good would have to go over the internet, but the local processing for the game itself wouldn't.

Most animation systems using keyframes don't actually let you have multiple models. They just let you move the individual points on your models around. But the number of points, and the connections between them to form triangles, remain consistent. That's why I say it would be limiting. You would have to sculpt the initial model in such a way that there was a fairly large number of polygons, so that you have more flexibility for sculpting it into different shapes. Doing this in low-poly would limit you considerably.

Not mention that you could also have a pop-up message come from the phone app when someone in the queue's turn has come up. So they wouldn't have to be standing in a line waiting to play, they can put their digital coin on the machine for "nexts" and then their phone will just automatically alert them when their turn to play has arrived. Anything you can do to make the player's general experience smoother and more pleasant is good.

It's unfortunate that more people aren't exploring this type of gameplay experience. There's a much bigger up-front commitment in terms of resources and space. But bringing people together in a physical space represents all sorts of opportunities for unique interactions that just don't happen on-line. The potential is staggering, and not just for superficial "party" games.

I think it could fit with a phoneapp as a way to buy credist & queue plays (each play could be cheap).. personally I think there's some value in players spending money to compete publically - impress your friends, perform for an audience, and there's something more at risk when you spend money -- taking it seriously as opposed to just goofing off at homeconsole.

A tie-in phone app was actually one of the ideas I was thinking of as well. People don't want to pay at a physical location, and they don't particularly want to pay in bite-sized chunks. But they are being increasingly trained to pay for things using their phones, and in games that come on their phones. Even if a phone app were just a type of front-end interface for an arcade game, it would still be a more appealing means of convincing people to spend money on your arcade game. You could make the base version of the arcade game free-to-play. But if a user wants to pair their phone-app profile to the arcade and get a ranking on the arcade, they would have to "spend" an in-app token in order to do it. And in-app tokens can be purchased from the phone-app.

If you're doing a 2-player style fighting game, anyone playing the game for free can be booted out of their game by a different player stepping up and putting in their in-app token. If the first player is currently playing a ranked play-through, such an action would result in an immediate "challenge" match. A record of all such matches would be stored on the local machine for a week or more, and would be placed into regular rotation for the "attract" mode.

The problem with the arcades is monetization. Arcades were part of a different world, and you paid for them in a different way. Now the world has changed, and what used to drive arcades is no longer relevant. Hardly anyone even carries coins anymore. And no one wants to swipe a credit card to play a game. Thanks to their archaic monetization model, arcades were always designed around short-form, immediate gameplay experiences. The player was expected to play for a minute or two at most, before needing to shuffle in another quarter. Even the best players could beat a game in under half an hour, and would then have to pay again. But in this day and age that style of immediate gameplay is already handily covered in the mobile space. You can get a similar experience on the phone you carry in your pocket, at a fraction of the price.

There's still plenty of value in the actual idea of a physically located game. This is particularly true in the case of local multiplayer, experiencing games together with friends and strangers in a shared physical space. That has always been a powerful experience, and a game tied to a physical location provides a focal point for that. But in order to take advantage of that focal point properly, designers will need to distance themselves from the arcade's original monetization model, and all of the limitations that came along with it.

http://killerqueenarcade.com/ which sells boxes for ~12k (wow).

I'm not sure if you've played Killer Queen, but the size of the unit itself is titanic. It is a massive arcade, and requires two units by default. So it's big to begin with, and you always have to have it x2. 12K is actually quite reasonable when you consider how much material and construction goes into it, as well as the custom software running it.

In fact, you're going to see similar prices for most full-sized arcade cabinets. Thanks to the "death" of the traditional arcade, it is very rare to see actual arcades that monetize the games themselves. The margins on pay-to-play games are just too low for the amount of time being spent playing them. And the margins for arcade cabinet creators themselves are also quite low. The majority of arcades cabinets these days are usually produced in very small numbers, or are specifically commissioned, making them much more of a custom specialty item. Even a fairly generic MAME-style box would probably fetch no less than $2,000 USD these days. And that's just for a fairly standard-sized one with two-player controls.

Indie arcade development is possible, but it is far from common, and you will be hard pressed to find buyers for a more traditional arcade experience. You would be better off coming up with a local-multiplayer concept, integrating it with a different monetization path, and then producing a stand-alone version that can run in a specific location.

This is entirely possible, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. For starters, it will significantly decrease the amount of freedom you have in your model. As an added point, it will take FOREVER. There is a reason why hardly anyone does stop-motion animation anymore. It is incredibly time consuming.

I do like the idea of approximating the "style" of classic stop-motion animation. But I would recommend attempting to approximate it without animating every point frame-by-frame. You can achieve a similar look with a rig and a few extra keyframes to add a bit of "jerkiness" to the animation.

I would echo what everyone else has been saying. The best way to gain experience on making games is making games. Jump in, get your hands dirty with some quick and lean designs, and then rinse and repeat to your hearts content. If you aren't satisfied with the polish on a title, release it for free. Releasing smaller early games for free will get you a lot more players, and a lot more feedback. Feedback is valuable.

The clean graphics and production values of larger titles are a product of time and experience. Don't expect your first games to reach those levels. Be willing to throw together some rough projects, just to learn. I focused a bit too much on polish for my earliest title, and the design and gameplay suffered for it. While it's something to aspire to, it will hold you back if you focus on it too heavily early in the process.

Kimishima: "wider array" of Switch accessories/add-on hardware coming

I could have told you this before they even announced it. And after they announced it, all of my suspicions were confirmed.

The Nintendo Switch is going to be accessory-friendly, extremely so in fact. It's part of the reason they decided to go with this form factor. Nintendo wants this thing to have decent retail presence. They need units in stores, and stores happy about it. Making an accessory-friendly device is a big part of that strategy. Accessories are where the mark-up for devices like this live. Accessories are where stores make the real money on games. It will be an accessory-palooza when the Nintendo Switch launches.

I'm okay with this, largely because it opens up some interesting possibilities for custom controllers. I'd really like to see some custom controllers for the Switch that are geared toward vertically-oriented play. I like me some classic shmups, and being able to rotate a screen like this in your hands is a pretty big advantage.

I highly recommend anyone using Unity for 2D games to check out Duality :D

What's the platform reach like on Duality? I didn't find those details on the Duality home page. I noticed that it uses Visual Studio as it's primary development IDE. Is it compatible with Universal Windows Apps for deployment on multiple different platforms?

I always like to hear other peoples accounts of less well-known engines. I occasionally dapple with Godot. (I can't really recommend it to you, as it does not use C#) Please continue sharing your impressions and experiences with Duality, I'd love to hear more.

With this large vent the dock could also pump more air through the tablet to minimise thermal throttling.

Hmmmm... perhaps I typed too soon. It is feasible that the dock could provide some manner of additional cooling hardware for allowing the system to run hotter. (and by extension, faster) It's going to be very interesting to see how this develops.

Target resolution is significant to developers, and how they balance and develop their games. You may have to change quite a bit if your mobile and TV targets are different for the same device. It seems like Nintendo is going out of their way to point out how the experience is identical and seamless. Going for a standardized resolution that would allow them to target the broadest number of displays possible seems reasonable. At the moment, this would be 1080p. An argument could be made for 720p, especially where mobile performance is concerned. But I'm thinking 1080p is more likely, especially with its ubiquity in modern displays.

The kind of scenarios you're describing aren't impossible, but they seem like they'd be more trouble than they're worth. It would be a lot easier for developers to have the option of scaling performance themselves on the software side of things. There are all sorts of tricks you can pull on the back-end of game development, but fixed-resolution displays are quite a bit more difficult to wrestle with.

If anything, the dock upgrade probably just renders at a higher res due to AC power and maybe a little more graphics power for higher fps, better AA, etc. It would be pretty ludicrous to expect totally different effects, models, etc on mobile.

If there's going to be an increase in resolution on the dock, it would have to involve a lower resolution screen on the handheld. But I doubt it would have anything to do with AC power. Placing any rendering tech on the dock would be largely pointless, and not really necessary. Since the thing is designed to be independent of home console play, fragmenting the mobile and console experience too greatly would place too much of a burden on developers. It's likely that the dock is just a dock. Given most phone mobile screens, I would expect the Switch's mobile screen to be 1080p. Most of the more recent phones and tablets have even higher resolutions than that. Having the mobile and console resolutions match makes sense in the current environment.

So games would have to be downgraded specifically for the switch in a similar manner as the CoD wii ports for example. This plus nintendo's different core demographic (already mentioned) means a lot of AAA publishers won't bother porting their new games to the switch. thats my prediction anyway.

A valid concern. Although, not as much as you might think, and partially thanks to Microsoft and Sony's own efforts. The "new" consoles that Microsoft and Sony are attempting to push are going to work in Nintendo's favor. By quasi-splitting the user base on their consoles, Microsoft and Sony are going to be forcing developers to make their games more flexibly scalable from the ground up. This will make it easier for developers to port their games to other systems, as they will already have their assets designed for quality scaling based on performance.

At that point, the primary hurdle becomes the differing architecture. It won't be insurmountable, as the Nvidia's ARM architecture is far more in line with the vast majority of mobile development than Nintendo's previous architectures were. Still different from the x86 architecture of the XBone and PS4, it's true. But the ARM is an extremely well documented and supported architecture with an enormous amount of industry use and development. So it is definitely going to be less exotic than some of Nintendo's previous platforms.

Power isn't the issue. What's going to make or break the Switch is development support. It's encouraging to see that Nintendo already has the major middle-ware developers on board. Unreal 4 and Unity will both work on the Switch out of the box. That will give them a decent head start.

But the Switch is going to require even more support than a standard console would. Since it will be able to function as a portable as well as a home console, it is going to require games tailored to both experiences. It will need portable and home console games available for it. Smart developers might even want to make sure that their individual games have different experiences in them that cater to both modes of play.

We will also have to see what kind of functionality is going to be baked into the Switch's operating system. Bare minimum it's going to need a basic web browser, the ability to check e-mail, and the ability to stream services like Netflix and YouTube. Giving it essential tablet-style functionality would make it a much easier child-focused tablet option that would be considerably more palatable to parents.