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dov_EL

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I went to my local Best Buy this morning and showed up at 10:10 eastern time to pick up my copy of Breath of the Wind for the WiiU that I had preorderd and when I was standing at the pickup counter I heard the manager tell another employee that all the tickets for the Switch had been filled and he then pointed to a stack of about 10 Switch consoles and said that they were remaining for the public to purchase so I purchased one. I originally had no intentions of purchasing one because I thought there would be none remaining and I did not want to get one until they came out with more quality games.

So I do not know if I got lucky or they are not flying off the shelves like everyone expected. A think lot of people are gun shy about picking one up looking at there history of the lack of games for the WiiU. Like I said I was not going to pick one up but it was so easy so I did anyway. I am not a Nintendo fanboy or hater either and want to see them succeed with this console but my heart tells me they will not and they have lost there way in the console market but I hope they prove me wrong.

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I'm playing for $383 just bought Zelda and the system no charging grip, no Amiibos, no pro controller. With the included controller dock or what ever we are calling it I have the only controller I need to play Zelda and with no two player titles (Okay there is 1,2 Switch and the Dance game but I'm not buying those and they don't require two full controllers) I don't have a need for a 2nd one at this time.

Edited by DOS76
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http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/3/14809324/nintendo-switch-joy-con-issues-interference

Nintendo suggests, and I'm inclined to believe, that the joy cons are susceptible to interference and multipathing problems (the reason they mention aquariums). My semi-professional opinion is that the signal is simply weak. Has any data come out or been discovered about the joy con comms protocol?

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Those joycons have an insane battery life, but very low input lag. So, I don't know if the issue was fixed, GameXplain did a second video about it, if they were fixed from the day one patch, but I haven't seen it yet.

For me, The Switch at $300 (I got it from Amazon instead of Walmart, which I could have gotten $30 off, but the stock was limited and went out fast so good chance of not getting it), Zelda special edition and all 5 amiibo at $156. I think that's it. We were gonna get a Pro controller last night, and part of me wishes we did, but as I played (and streamed) Zelda last night, it got a lot easier to play. At first I was mad I couldn't charge them and play without buying a charge grip or buying a pro controller, but the batteries lasted the whole time and never drained on the meter, and I got used to them. I love my 3DS and Vita, and had to get used to those. Maybe a 3rd party will release a better JoyCon grip like I have grips for my N3DS and Vita (just to make my hands cramp less).

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I have experienced the joycon disconnects as well and also experienced one other thing a few random times on where the right joycon says the battery is low even though it is not and the battery meter says it is full. I hope Nintendo figures these problems out soon and issues a firmware update to fix the issues.

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For those interested the communications chip is a Broadcom Bluetooth IC (marketing copy, not datasheet): http://www.cypress.com/file/298421/download

I was looking at the iFixit teardown and there's no discussion or image of the Bluetooth antenna, unfortunately. So it's not clear if it is suffering from the same problem as the iPhone 4 ("You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs) or something else. The chip is dual mode BLE and full Bluetooth. Not clear whether the comms protocol or the IC uses both. If it does , it's not impossible that there's a mode switch problem. If It just runs on BLE, then there might be a range problem. It's a dual band transceiver (2.4, 4.1GHz) and Nintendo made suggestions that there are definite interference problems with the controllers on 2.4. It shouldn't be vulnerable to multipathing, but water could be an attenuator creating dead spots.

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Which I see tests being of people, so water being a big problem is funny there. 2.4Ghz is one of the most used frequency. Everything, frikin, uses, it. When I have too many wifi signals going on or bluetooth turned on for some devices, it really effects the performance of a device I am trying to use. For example, FTPed in to my 3DS last night and the connection did NOT want to happen. While it was stuck trying to connect for 5 min, turned off the bluetooth of my phone and pressed the power button on my Switch, then it connected right away. So, in an ever connected world, sure, that is a very big problem that no ones really "at fault" for. If you guys have dual band routers (the extra band is 5Ghz), and have devices that can connect to that band, that helps. I wonder if they chose a lower spec Bluetooth for power draw reasons, to keep the JoyCons battery up there with their very small body. The Pro doesn't seem to have that issue, but I assume it has a much larger battery, so it can afford the higher power draw of a more sophisticated Bluetooth? If they even draw more power? Just a theory. I also wonder if it can be addressed, even somewhat, in an update.

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Power budget in the design would be my best guess. And I would never underestimate 2.4 interference. You're supposed to design devices to be fairly robust, but engineers can't do miracles. There's still the occasional resonant leakage from microwave machines (really!) and weird wall construction that disrupts communication even with good reasonable output routers.

I don't know much about the bluetooth standard, low power or otherwise, whether the signal is isotropic linear or polarized, what the packetization method is like, or anything really. And given a lack of knowledge about the BT Broadcom driver (knowing the Raspberry Pi it would involve signing an NDA and a business proposal to get engineering data), it's not clear whether the chip auto switches between protocols in the Switch or sticks with one or the other. If it's BLE, I would not be at all surprised that a) they took a risk and geared it toward the average Japanese apartment/home size and b) there is an attenuation problem given sufficient distance.

Basically I've got 3-5 possible WAGs regarding the issue, all reasonable.

 

disclosure: I'm a systems engineer in aerospace navigation. So I deal mostly with much more robust communications layers than this. I'm mostly spitballing and this should not be taken as a professional opinion, let alone conclusive.

Edited by Bedwyr
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