> The inability for most docks to support the Switch 2 may not be malicious from Nintendo. It might just be a poor or lazy implementation of the USB-C specification
From the verge [0], 2 months ago:
> When I analyze the conversation between the Nintendo Switch 2 and its dock, I can see the two devices begin speaking in Nintendo’s own flavor of “vendor defined” language early in the conversation, before they sign off on any video output. And then, seemingly before the dock confirms that it’s engaged video-out, they send over 30 proprietary “unstructured” messages to one another.
> […]
> According to Antank, which says it checked with its chip supplier, that hexadecimal string “is indeed the current key being used by Nintendo.” My other sources are less sure.
I'm pretty sure lttl's conclusion is plain wrong. It is not JUST lazy USB-C implementation, but a purposefully designed special proprietary protocol on top of USB-C
There's a lot of misunderstandings about USB PD communication, in particular Vendor Defined Messages. The LTT video kept making this mistake, and mixing in misunderstandings around messages to the eMarker chip itself (SOP'). It was a painful watch.
Vendor Defined Messages have is part of any normal PD exchange, as they're simply anything that isn't defined by the PD spec itself. You'll see VDMs when connecting any device supporting more than just dumb charging, as it's used for all sorts of things like DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, eMarker identification, etc. - stuff we'd expect ehre.
The quote from Antak refers to just a single, possibly/likely proprietary, message. This could be to ID the dock on the basis of e.g. rejecting the switch 1 dock should one cram it in, or to reject switch 1 dongles. Maybe it's Nintendo speak for "dock capabilities: cooling", with the switch having no mode for docked gaming with reduced performance without cooling.
Intentional incompatibility, yes, but it's 1 message of an unknown type within bog standard USB-PD, not a "vendor defined lanugage" or "over 30 proprietary messages".
Why reject switch 1 accessories though? Sure the video resolution will have to be limited to 1080p, but that's kinda expected and I'm sure switch 2 can do that anyway
Switch currently runs in one of two modes: Docked and handheld. Games are written to expect those two modes, with rendering adjusted to those specifically and nothing else. Think of all the render settings in a PC game (in reality there are way more things the developer can adjust, but just for the sake of illustration), and assume there are instead two hardcoded presets which are selected based on whether or not the device is "docked".
For Switch 1 games, docked means "we're running as fast as the internal cooling can handle and outputting 1080p, assume the user can't use the touch screen and such". A dongle is fine here as long as you don't block the air inlets or exhausts, or place the Switch on something heat sensitive.
For Switch 2 games, docked means "we're running as fast as the externally boosted cooling can handle and cranking out 4k, and assume you can't use the touch screen and such". Assuming the fan does useful work here, then with a dongle you'll be thermal throttling and have a bad gaming experience - on a PC you'd turn down the settings, here those are hardcoded.
So, what about using the switch 2 handheld mode on a switch 1 dock, seeing it's the same resolution? Well, if you tell it to run in handheld mode it might assume you have access to the touchscreen, always-on VRR and HDR, is using internal speakers, etc.
It's totally doable, but to do this right the stack needs to be prepared for it. As such, I understand why they did it.
Heck, this was the same issue for the Switch 1, and it took a while for third-party docks to pop up. It'll take all but a moment for third party docks to support this.
Ah so the Switch 2 dock has an extra fan? I didn't know that.
Still, what happens if you connect a Switch 2 to a 1080p display? I assume it would render at 1080p, because rendering at 4K and downscaling for output would be too wasteful. Switch 1 even has a setting for that, allowing you to choose between 480p, 720p, and 1080p.
> DP -> HDMI conversion hardware is pretty intense.
It can be, but it doesn't have to be. DisplayPort is mostly a superset of HDMI, with different voltage levels. Going from HDMI to DisplayPort is much harder than going from DisplayPort to HDMI, though the hardware to do this is apparently much cheaper than it used to be, which is nice to see.
DisplayPort to HDMI only requires level shifting, as I understand it. I'm sure someone will correct me if they see this and I'm wrong.
This is not true, DisplayPort and HDMI is not compatible, but the dedicated converter chips are quite efficient at their job. One is present inside every USB-C to HDMI cable, dongle or dock, as there is no such thing as USB-C HDMI alt-mode. Heck, even laptop HDMI ports are usually implemented through a DP converter.
You might be thinking of DisplayPort++, which is a special port supporting both DisplayPort and HDMI, allowing passive adapters. This is not available in the USB-C DisplayPort AltMode.
It's not. Every USB-C to HDMI cable in existence is a DisplayPort alt-mode cable with a DP to HDMI converter at the end. They don't require active cooling, even if they get a little warm.
Because the Switch 2 is a different machine. Games being backwards compatible (via emulation) doesn't mean the hardware is (or has to be) backwards compatible. Different display chips, different display protocols, etc.
People made all kinds of claims about how the Switch 1 wasn't USB Type-C compliant when it was discovered that the Nyko dock kept frying the power management IC in the first Switch console. I think a lot of that false communal knowledge has carried forth to the Switch 2, unfortunately.
At least on the video they made it quite clear that they assumed thant Nintendo did it on purpose, but they did not have enough proof to actually say it.
So instead they sad "Nintendo stopped early with developing compatibility"
You can sue someone for anything, and Nintendo is infamous for doing so. They will put an army of lawyers on a case that has no merit (or just enough merit not to be thrown out early) to cost the defendant lots of money or just create sufficient risk that the defendant will settle to avoid the slim chance that they lose.
Nintendo literally uses people for playing their games in ways they don't like, regardless of if the user has actually broken any laws. They'll sue over people posting videos about games!
It isn't. The point is that it establishes that they are litigious.
There's a tier above them (Oracle, for instance), but they're pretty up there in their willingness to head to court not just with other big corporations but with individuals.
It's called plausible deniability, i.e. Nintendo can claim they were just ignorant, and there's no proof of the contrary. That is, until EU rightfully fines them.
Seems Nintendo has good reasons not to support it with 3rd party devices: Their own dock has active cooling, so with generic dongles the switch wouldn't be able to enter the docked performance mode (or have to throttle down pretty soon) and would have to output a blurry mess to 4k screens.
Sure, but what about 3rd party docks which do have adequate cooling? And how is it a good user experience to just silently refuse to work?
If Nintendo genuinely cared about experience they'd just follow the standard and work with any dock, then pop up a notification if it notices that the device is overheating - perhaps even with a "We recommend the official dock" text.
The current behaviour is completely unacceptable and needlessly user-hostile. There's no way around it: their USB-C implementation is broken.
I agree that their behavior is user-hostile, but doing it their way gets rid of all of the ambiguity involved with USB C.
I kind of understand why they would rather break their USBC support intentionally and make it very clear that video out is only happening with their dock. Especially considering their audiences.
> doing it their way gets rid of all of the ambiguity involved with USB C
At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all? Just use a proprietary connector if you're not going to follow the standards.
Having a separate USB-C port for charging should satisfy e.g. the EU regulations requiring that, I think. (Assuming that is the reason they used USB-C in the first place)
The choices aren’t limited to USB or bespoke. There are thousands of mass produced non-USB connectors available at any major electronics parts distributor.
> At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all?
To satisfy charging expectations with the same port as display that they decided to do something proprietary with. On the flip side, why not do that when people will buy the console no matter what?
> At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all? Just use a proprietary connector if you're not going to follow the standards.
They are following the standards. They don't have to communicate with devices that they don't want to communicate with. There's no requirement in the USB spec that connected Type-C compliant devices interoperate in all cases.
> make it very clear that video out is only happening with their dock
What about it is "very clear"? It worked on the Switch 1, it's expected to work as it's USB, there is no error message, it just will appear that maybe the USB dongle or HDMI cable or whatever is defective.
The switch 1 situation also wasn't great with reports of switches being bricked or picky about 3rd party docks. I guess that's why they stopped trying to be compatible at all.
There was one dock which did this, and firmware on the Switch 1 quickly worked around the problem the Nyko dock had, and Nyko released new hardware which prevented the problem that the Nintendo Switch firmware update worked around.
The Nintendo Switch wasn't super picky about docks, but in order for external display to work, the dock had to support the mobile DisplayPort protocol that Nintendo used, "MyDP" instead of vanilla DisplayPort, which is what most devices supported at the time the Switch was released. Again, that wasn't a non-compliant thing on the part of the Switch, the Switch just used a technology that wasn't commonly used by much else, which is very commonly done by Nintendo.
Would you rather have your phone refuse to charge for no apparent reason, or have it popup "slow USB charging" as it does when you connect it to a weaker charger?
Nintendo unnecessarily chose to make their device partially USB-C incompatible in an intransparent way. A lot of users will rely on this working (as it already did on the Switch 1) and then it just won't, and probably the user will just assume their third-party USB dongle is broken and maybe buy another one, which means Nintendo won't get anything out of it and the user will lose more money. Everyone loses but at least the pesky customer can't use a third-party product.
Because it wasn’t possible for Switch 1. After some time, some alternative USB-C hubs supported the Switch video output but it was basically reverse engineering and I totally remember this first "compatible" hub back in the early days of the console which happened to brick consoles.
Nintendo is like Apple they :
- Don’t want you tu use the Switch in unpredictable ways : with the switch on the dock the cooling is guaranteed to be efficient, even on Switch 1 because it meant that the console wasn’t lying on a blanket.
- Don’t want you to buy anything else than their expensive dock.
Again you're just excusing the lack of engineering time put into an onscreen message.
'Overheating detected, reducing video resolution'.
Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.
> Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.
Nintendo ships a dock with every Switch 2. How big is the market for people buying aftermarket docks? Nintendo has always aimed very squarely at the mass market.
Apple devices work near flawlessly with third-party periphery in my experience, what are you talking about? They have some questionable limitations at times (like iPads supporting Thunderbolt but not being able to safely eject USB drives), but I don't buy Apple cables & adapters and that's because they're not needed. I can charge a Macbook with a random USB-C charger on my desk, I can turn on my third-party BT headphones and they're connected within two seconds, I can connect a screen with a third-party USB-C adapter and the only possible issue is that not all USB ports go up to 240Hz. I cannot say some of these things about my PC on which Bluetooth audio simply is not usable at all and some other basics need janky workarounds or ironically only work on Linux.
I have many reasons to be pissed at Apple but connectivity is not one of them.
Lightning was pretty limited. Third party companies either had to be blessed by Apple or clone them some how. For some accessories like video out this was a big limitation.
Please don't shill and try to find straw man arguments. Plenty of 3rd party solutions can be better than first party and cost just as much. It's not just cheap junk.
That's not a good reason not to allow it, it's a good reason not to support it. If I do that and complain to Nintendo support about overheating, they can tell me to fuck off. Worst case it should give a scary popup saying "your dock isn't actively cooled so your device is likely to overheat". Absolutely no excuse for not allowing third-party docks though.
There's never a good reason for a vendor to lock you in. There isn't a single problem that is actually solved that way. It is 100% always a money lock in tool and literally never about safety or security. Users using your product in ways you do not like is not a valid reason to do block them or sue them.
It seems like this should be based on the observed situation rather than what the dock says? What if the fans of the official dock are stuck, dead or just pushed up against something? What if they ambient conditions are just so hot that the cooling isn't effective. What if a third party dock has better cooling?
> > The inability for most docks to support the Switch 2 may not be malicious from Nintendo. It might just be a poor or lazy implementation of the USB-C specification
> I'm pretty sure lttl's conclusion is plain wrong.
They stated it MAY be lazy, it MAY be intentional. They declined to state a singular conclusion so I 'm not sure how they're wrong. I think maybe you feel they're saying it's not, but they're actually saying "we don't have conclusive proof either way, but we could see either being true given Nintendo's history of laziness at some times and maliciousness at other times."
Given the Verge seems to have mixed info from their sources and LTT is pulling their punches, it seems like it is at the very least not obvious that this is what they're doing. And at least one third-party seems to work with it, so it's plausible that it is not a cryptographically enforced incompatibility.
> Our monitoring of the interactions with the USB-C monitor shows that the negotiation does not even get to the point of the Vendor Defined Messages(VDM) where the dock would theoretically have to send the correct responses.
The Nintendo switch was the poster child for “don’t standardise USB C, standardise the charging protocol”, and I used it as the poster child for why I disagree with USBC being a faux-standard
Back in COVID times, when I had all the time in the world, my Switch got bricked after I charged it using my laptop charger. Nintendo refused to honor its warranty, citing some mumbo jumbo about proprietary USB-C hardware. Fortunately, we have pretty good consumer protection laws here in Australia By the end of an entire two month saga, they sent me a brand new Switch.
I always did think it was odd that a USB-C cable that wasnt Nintendo could break my Switch.
Nah; Apple's notoriously not-very-good 12" MacBook and the Chromebook Pixel had it since 2015, and Apple's more mainstream laptops since 2016. Nintendo doesn't really have any excuse for the original Switch's problematic USB-C beyond laziness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803
Early devices were things like the OnePlus 2 [0] and there were plenty of phones out before the Switch even hit the market in 2017 [1]. There were some issues with standards compliance, sure, but the market had vastly improved by the time the Switch had come out.
Back in that time, my switch broke twice. And I eventually find out. If I am using one of the e-marked wire with the switch, the port get destroyed immediately. Every single device in my room works with that wire exactly like it should. Except for switch. Their typec port is so broken, and not broke in a safe way.
Switch 2 seems to be more up to standard. I was able to charge it with a normal phone charger and also the Switch 2 charger seems to work with everything else unlike the one for Switch 1. Fortunately I never bricked anything with that, but it just never worked with anything other than the console.
Switch 1 require the charger to support pd2 12v to charge at all. Some changer may decide to skip that voltage, and support only 9v and 15v. So Switch is not happy about it.
Every device in my room except for switch supports more than one voltage config. Wondering why on the earth switch decided to handle voltage setting like this.
Usually, pd charger will label their supported voltage config. And you can read that label to find out whether a charger will work with switch or not.
Source: I do use my phone charger to charge switch during traveling
Also notice, some charger will disable part of the supported voltages when there are more than one device connected. Mine apparently drops 12v when there are other device connected (thus prevented switch 1 from charging)
That's what we're discussing here. Nintendo is doing something proprietary with their usb-c video mode, hence it only works with their dock. Still a usb-c connector though, because they are dirt-cheap.
It's not that strange. USB-C is a plug, not everyone who implements the plug also implements it correctly. Some chargers with a USB-C Plug might just send a fixed voltage over the cable, rather then implementing the protocols.
I'm not saying that's the case for you, but USB-C is a minefield and I've seen some weird things happen with USB-C plugs.
I've once received a USB-C charger with a portable breast milk warmer device that outputted 18V at 2A without doing PD negotiation.
That fried another device when I plugged it in.
This is non compliant in the EU, but when I reported it to the responsible authorities, they didn't feel like doing anything about it.
We are talking about a charger that can fry any device and potentially cause a fire, coming with a product aimed at people with babies, that's clearly non compliant to be sold in the EU, and they are doing nothing at all. Pretty shocking if you ask me.
> but when I reported it to the responsible authorities, they didn't feel like doing anything about it.
One problem with EU regulation (or at least most regulations; a few have union-wide regulators) is that you're really quite dependent on whether your national responsible body is any good.
For something like this (assuming it's sold union-wide and not just in your country), it might actually be useful to notify the responsible bodies on _other countries_ (once it's actually investigated and recalled the recall should be union-wide).
I recently bought a really cheap Android Auto screen for my car. It had a USB-C power input. Suspicious, I opened up the supplied cigarette power adapter. The USB power pins were hooked straight to the car battery rail. On most vehicles that's connected straight back to the alternator. Hilarious. I wonder how many people fried their phones because they thought "oh, I forgot my charging cable, but I can borrow my nav screen's for a bit"...
I got a mini PC with such a charger (Mele Quieter). I was so shocked I immediately put a label on the USB end with a stark warning not to plug into anything.
Yeah, I'm surprised that I'm being down-voted for this comment for this exact reason. Manufacturers are adding non-compliant USB-C plugs to tons of equipment and it causes these types of issues.
It's possibly because of conflating USB-C (the connector) with the USB protocols (what goes down the wires).
I could put a USB-C connector on a device and have it not even try to do any USB protocol over the wire. If not being careful about pinouts, it could be super easy to destroy either device if plugged into some other USB-compliant device.
Usually a competently designed USB-C input should have over-voltage protection and short-to-VBUS protection for over 20V (25-28V). Putting out any voltage before detecting a sink is breaking the standard, but a charger putting out over 20V without any PD negotiation would be absurdly wrong and dangerous...
So there are non-compliant plugs, but if your device breaks just because it sees a regular PD VBUS voltage (5-20V) then it means that it was designed badly - either through ineptitude or foolish cost saving.
> Putting out any voltage before detecting a sink is breaking the standard
To be pedantic, I believe that only applies to USB-C sockets; AFAIK, a USB-C plug (like on a USB-A to USB-C cable) can in some cases put out 5V (but only 5V) before detecting a sink.
> but if your device breaks just because it sees a regular PD VBUS voltage (5-20V) then it means that it was designed badly
The standard was designed so that devices never see anything over 5V unless they ask for it, so why should a non-PD device (for instance, a mouse) care about it? In some cases (like a USB-A mouse plugged into a USB-A to USB-C adapter), the device might even have been designed and built when USB was 5V only.
A USB-A device obviously wouldn’t have been designed for anything more than 5V. But anything with a USB-C socket is living in a world where a faulty source could accidentally give it a higher voltage. At that point it’s just about your tolerance for risk - maybe for something worth $100 or less and not supporting PD you can skip out and if there’s a faulty charger that blows it up then whatever, but for something selling for a few hundred dollars (like the Switch, or phones, etc.) it’s worth the 50c in BOM cost for the extra protection…
They did this to micro sd cards on the first switch. Looks like they found another way. Nintendo isn’t customer friendly. Gone are the days of the N64 and gone are the days of Nintendo pushing the boundaries of fun and entertainment.
Now, they make underpowered handhelds for kids with proprietary dongles like Apple in hopes of trapping their customers to their platform.
They also threaten to sue grassroots scenes playing their >20yo games. Scenes that spend on their own dime to host 1000+ entrant tournaments and use skilled time to push the old game to the limit. (Melee). They have the scene currently in a legal stranglehold. It's partially gagged, but people who host Melee events are beholden to Nintendo so they can't run even lightly modded gameplay.
Melee runs on mods always nowadays (input processing patches for fairness and bugfixes), but they mod it in a way that doesn't have any visible difference so they get away with it.
But that's not something with only approved microSD cards work with save games. The Switch will not write save game data to any microSD card, regardless of features/manufacturer/branding/royalty payments/whatever. It's just not a supported feature, at all.
The GGP comment makes it sound like Nintendo only supported proprietary microSD cards at launch. While they did sell and recommend their branded microSD cards, one could use any brand of microSD card with the system and have the same functionality.
Weird comparison. With N64 everything was proprietary. The power brick, the memory card, the controllers. With Switch a lot more follows standards. USB-C charging. SD for storage. Bluetooth for controllers and headsets.
I don’t see a single reason to think Nintendo of that time would do anything differently.
The reason for not accepting whatever dock/adapter seems pretty good in this case. The dock should have active cooling to conform to user expectations. And there’s no signs that Nintendo will prevent anyone from making a dock that supports it as long as it follows the procedure to confirm that it has active cooling.
The games, not the expansion. You could throw any microsd card into your 3DS to get more storage. I’m talking about the memory card the games are written on.
I have a different random 5-letter company name version of this one [0] (the one I bought [1]) that LTT tested. I was nervous after remembering stories about Switch 1 “USB-C” shenanigans but at $28 (vs $124 for the original dock) I decided to roll the dice.
As far as working as a replacement dock for the original, it does the job very nicely while being smaller and easier to use overall (IMHO). At $28/ea I can afford to have a dock on every TV I would even consider playing my Switch on at less than the cost of 1 official dock.
I'm surprised it continues to exist at all. The main content ltt puts out these days is purely mass market entertainment. Physical products are still pretty good!
No, his point was that the lab isn't necessary for the content ltt is producing, so he expected them to stop the lab project to keep the profits higher
Other than LTT continuing with LTT Labs just because they enjoy deeper dives into tech, I'd imagine it also serves a practical purpose, in that if it's a slow tech news day, and they can't think of a video concept they want to try, they have a ready-made set of labs content they can base a video on.
Linus is no longer CEO but he and Ivonne still own 100% of shares. They seem to have enough money, so can burn on projects they feel passionate about like Badminton Center or LTTLabs.
This, Linus has stated he doesn't expect either to be particularly good business decisions, though they will hopefully sustain themselves, and it seems to mostly be because it's something he wants to exist.
That's always been the case though, even when labs started.
The reason labs was started was to be able to produce different kinds of content, and to have a moat on technical data and quality of reviews that no one else can pull off.
They had benchmarks before Labs as well and almost 100% of tech reviewers don't have this kind of equipment, so no, it's not necessary. But it definitely helps.
Now they have automated benchmarks across more test configs. This is something almost no reviewers have available. That's partially from labs investment. They also have destructive benchmarks like they did with the power supplies - again almost nobody does those in public.
That's true and I agree this is valuable for the audience, but still it is not necessary. Most successful tech reviewers put out good content without these resources.
"Good" content without data is unsubstantiated content.
Data to provide evidence of performance objectively evaluates products, benefiting everyone. For example, show me who has been verifying the quality and performance claims of computer power supplies without equipment such as LTT labs.
If you want to be reductive about it - technology and their gadgets are valuable for the audience, but not strictly necessary.
The original point in this thread was that the lab isn't necessary for LTT to produce their content as they successfully appeal to a large audience either way. Which is obviously true, given the lab did not exist for most of the channel's lifetime and growth.
You argue that it's beneficial for informing the consumer. It is, but no one here disagreed with that.
I would assume LTT does this to build and retain a clear competitive advantage over their competitors in the same space.
I don’t think LTT goal is just be another commodity YouTube review site whose entire appeal is dependent on a single personality. That not really a scalable or long term sustainable approach.
Large journalist organisations of any kind aren’t built by aiming to be mediocre.
yeah, they catch lies pretty regularly but they don't act like "OMFG THIS IS SOO BAAAD!!!". it's one of the things I like about LTT, they are more neutral or positive in their content. they try to be viral but usually don't ride the negativity/toxic viral wave.
Its better for business and sponsor relationships to be that way. That's why I prefer gamersnexus since they only serve the viewer and consumer, they can afford to tread on companies toes freely. Without a bit of sensationalism people and companies would never care.
The LTT video was painful to watch. I don’t know much about USB or USB-PD, but it was clear they didn’t either. It felt like they were just rambling with some vaguely technical jargon, with no actual understanding.
It seemed more like the technical guy wrote the post and 'they' made it into a video format without really explaining it.
I think they did a bad job. They struck a poor balance between not explaining it and trying to explain it. They should have gone full technical or not at all and stayed very high level regarding the issue of bespoke protocols.
Interesting. I saw some of their video about this the other day. The video gives the impression that Nintendo is intentionally not supporting external monitors that aren’t the official switch dock.
But the conclusion on this article seems to lean more towards that it could be a mistake or bug. I guess that might be the case - didn’t they screw up USB-C on the switch 1? I know it’s an incredibly complex standard.
I guess the only way to know if it’s intentional or a bug, is if Nintendo updates the switch to fix it. As Linus said in his video, the Nintendo USB isn’t very “universal”.
The Switch 1 had more of an excuse since it was released just as USB-C, particularly the more advanced parts like video out and PD were still very new. And the hardware was likely designed long beforehand.
The Switch 2 came out in a world with widespread standards compliant USB-C.
Switch 1 was released in 2017. PD 1.0 was 2013 , and display port out was 2014. Both were supported by numerous devices by the time the switch 1 was out.
Granted they really wanted hdmi alt mode which was 2016 but the switch 1 doesn’t even support display port out which could have been coupled with a converter in the dock.
The simpler reason is that Nintendo both cheaps out on parts and has no incentive to increase compatibility. The number of users who care is not worth it for Nintendo to care, and they’re not afoul of any regulations.
Don't ever mention PD 1.0, it's a cursed standard that was never actually used and that nobody should ever use. USB PD started with PD 2.0, and we shall never speak of the stillborn child that is 1.0
Displayport would have been fairly useless. I've never once seen a TV with Displayport inputs. They really should have had 9v PD working but at least 5v worked.
While technically true, there's no devices that do HDMI protocol over USB-C. Most USB-C adapters to HDMI have a built-in DP > HDMI converter. There was a standard for HDMI over USB, but no devices used it and it died: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/hdmi-to-usb-c-spec-a...
Pretty sure the Switch (1) Dock used a similar HDMI adapter. Even the PS4 had a DP > HDMI adapter internally for some reason.
DP has a HDMI compatibility mode that allows a DP output to output a HDMI signal, but at the wrong voltage. The external adapters are just level shifters to bring the signal voltages into compliance with HDMI, but their entirety passive devices.
> Even the PS4 had a DP > HDMI adapter internally for some reason.
DP is far more than just an external display protocol. Its biggest use case is internal display signals, so it’s used to power pretty much every laptop screen.
As a result standard PC hardware (which is what the PS4 is) has defacto support for DP, because is the standard display transport between embedded video components. As a result it’s a lot easier and cheaper to build a device that outputs DP, and then slap a HDMI converter on it, than it is to build a device that uses HDMI natively.
> DP has a HDMI compatibility mode that allows a DP output to output a HDMI signal, but at the wrong voltage. The external adapters are just level shifters to bring the signal voltages into compliance with HDMI, but their entirety passive devices.
That's DP++, which is not supported on all DP outputs, and notably is not supported by the USB-C DP AltMode.
If you were to read the entirety of my comment, you’d see that I mention HDMI alt mode as well as the possibility of including a signal converter in the dock to get it to hdmi prior to hdmi alt mode existing.
Display port would have still allowed for a standardized format for other docks to provide conversion, or for connection to computer monitors.
Please do not generalize like this. DP over USB-C is essential for devices like Xreal One and One Pro — these work great with the Switch 1 and do not work at all with the Switch 2. It's a complete showstopper at the moment for people who would like to play games displaying them on those glasses.
It was certainly heavily implied to be intentional. With the title referencing "Nintendo’s greed"[0] and in the first minute they call it “locking down a product, not for a good reason, but just because [nintendo] can, or […] because <bleep> you”
It’s not until much further in the video that they backtrack a bit and call it “tactical laziness” by Nintendo. Honestly, I did not get that far on my first watch.
[0] YouTube now confusingly shows different titles randomly. I’m seeing “Nintendo’s Greed could Change the Tech Industry” but that may not be its real title for all I know.
Modern youtube has uploaders submit multiple thumbnails and headlines, then it AB tests them and selects the one that performed best. Pretty much every news website seems to do the same thing these days too.
The early comments are all clearly qualified as their opinions, rather than factual statements. The final conclusions are factual statements, with conclusions that avoid at cost saying anything could be considered libel.
> "The Nintendo Switch 2 only ever charges at a maximum of 15 W(as far as I can tell)."
This is already higher than stated in legal EU-compliance documents [0], where the PD-charger is required to not provide more than 12W "in order to achieve the maximum charging speed"
Also interesting[0]: "TV mode requires output power of 54 watts. This is higher than the power requirements for charging given above. This product supports USB PD fast charging and is capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages up to 15 volts"
According to this, the device will obviously only use the 20V/3A mode (=60 watts) for TV mode, and will not utilize it for charging. Whereas the provided charger (NGN-01) also supports a 15V USB-PD mode which MAY be used for charging.
I assume the device will request max. 15V/1A for charging then, adding up to 15W (not sure why they state the charger should not support "more than 12W"). However, I guess at 15V the majority of power in this state is going to the device and not the battery (they only have a single battery-cell which should be charged with 5V. If they want to charge the battery, they could also request 5V/3A from the charger)...
That means the monitor tries to change its own role from USB host (which it defaulted to because it's the power source) to USB gadget. And the Switch rejects the request because it sees itself as the USB gadget (for example to exchange data when you connect it to a PC).
The article itself also says "Our monitoring of the interactions with the USB-C monitor shows that the negotiation does not even get to the point of the Vendor Defined Messages(VDM)" so I see no hint of foul play by Nintendo. (And why would they? They are not in the business of selling USB monitors.)
My guess would be that the connection failure is due to a firmware bug in the monitor. But I am also heavily biased here because my last Asus screen had A LOT of firmware issues.
Assuming that you are referring to the Nreal Air VR goggles, those cannot accept a regular video signal over USB-C. They are NOT monitors. For making them work, they need to do pre-processing of the video stream on the host device, thereby degrading gaming performance. That's why they need an app, because they lack an integrated CPU/GPU and that makes them not compliant with the USB-C monitor spec.
And I believe that's also the real reason why Nintendo would block them: They make otherwise fluent games stutter, which will reflect badly on Nintendo and the game developers. Because people in general won't know that their Nreal Air is stealing some of the Switch's GPU performance and that they are creating performance issues themselves.
Oh I didn't realize that, I thought they were blacklisting the EDID or something. I thought the projection for them would be simple enough to do on the device, but maybe the unwarping and chromatic aberration correction was too expensive for that or something.
For consoles, it was actually the original Xbox that started this trend, using a proprietary physical connector, but with a mostly standard usb protocol, for no other purpose than to be consumer hostile. Physical hacks was of course rapidly found in this case to adapt it to be standard compliant.
Then again, with xbox360/kinect, the camera was using the usb procotol, but microsoft prevented it from working with pcs in windows. Instead you had to buy a several times more expensive "pc" version, that had the same specs, except for having the malicious compliance tech was removed.
The Xbox breakaway controller cables weren't magnetic. They also could have easily put those on normal USB cables because they were a couple inches from the port anyways.
Some labels/descriptions could use a bit more polish. For example in test 8 "Averages 15 W delivered to the Switch at maximum." - I kinda see what they mean, but that's a very awkward way to phrase it. The maximum is over 20W. There's a few spikes that go over. I guess that's the maximum for a moving average? For their labs, they could be more precise.
It's USB-C, "you'll never know" is the answer, often it's "kinda working, but extra slow". I consider having a cheap USB power meter a necessity at this point.
I also found out the hard way that many modern powerbanks will shut themselves off if the charged device doesn't draw enough power, which means many smartwatches will simply not get charged by default. Supposedly that behaviour can be turned off by pressing/holding the power button the right way, but telling non-tech people "with this specific device you just have to remember to first do this arcane ritual before it works" is usually not received well.
> EPR even supports up to 240 W! Plenty of power for any device you'd reasonably power with USB-C.
I feel (or rather hope) we'll see more than that at some point. Being able to replace device-specific wall adapters would be a huge win. This has largely already happened for everything that needs 10 watts or less, but between that and things that actually need a lot of power (i.e. kilowatts, not watts) and/or benefit from AC (mostly motors), there's still an annoying valley of power bricks.
I especially hate the type that's hard-wired to the power plug that blocks 1-2 other outlets due to its bulk and inevitably gets lost during a move or trip to storage and back.
The situation with chargers isn’t ideal. With a single USB-C port, everything works fine.
The problem starts when multiple ports are involved. Plugging in a second device can trigger unpredictable behavior, which is usually acceptable for battery-powered devices. But for devices that need a continuous power supply (e.g., a Raspberry Pi), multi-port chargers aren’t reliable –– connecting another device may briefly interrupt power.
Using a traditional power strip with one dedicated adapter per device avoids this issue.
For now, I’m sticking with individual USB-C adapters for non-battery-powered devices.
It’s a limitation of the early versions of the PD spec. The PD spec now includes features that allow a device to express its needed power draw, and wanted power draw, along with info like the fact they’re a battery pack.
In addition the spec now has messages that allow a charger to renegotiate the PD contract with a device with resetting the entire USB-C connection. So if you have chargers and devices that support these elements, you can connect and disconnect devices with interrupting the power to anything else connected. The charger just does a live renegotiation and redistribution of its available power envelope.
Also means that when a phone and battery pack get plugged in, the charger can pull power allocation from the battery pack to send to the phone so the phone charges first. Then once the phone is charged, reallocate the power budget to the battery packs again.
I guess hardware vendors are allowed to make USBC devices that goes outside the USBC specs? Although this seems to be within the USBC spec?
Would be interesting if future hardware standards would not allow to be licensed as "within standard" if they break a few rules.
I could see some hardware vendors using their own implementation of a standard just to fool customers into believing it supports a standard while there are exceptions.
Isn't that what happened to bluetooth?
I am not an apple user, but isn't apple also abusing hardware standards to encourage clients to buy its products?
“* The Nintendo Switch 2 dock will request 3 A at 20 V from the point of connection, whether it is planning to use that power or not.
* This is in contrast to the Antank dock which will request additional power only when the Switch 2 is turned on and requires additional power. Arguably a better 'citizen' of the USB-C PD specification, potentially
bringing your electricity bill down by a few cents”
Why would this bring your power bill down? Isn’t that always going to be calculated on the basis of kWh actually drawn?
So, as there are a couple of docks coming out that work with Switch 2 and have apparently reverse engineered the protocol... I wonder if some company could make a small dongle that just sits between the switch and my monitor, or my USB-C docking station, and fixes the communication.
For a DIY solution, protocol wise it doesn't seem too complicated, but electronically USB-C or HDMI is out of reach for most hobbyists. And I assume most USB-C interface chips you can get aren't programmable to the degree neccessary...
I own a Switch 1, and the other day I wanted to play on the train, but the battery was low. I figured "no problem, I can connect it to my laptop and let it charge off is battery".
Nope. The MacBook Pro started charging off the Switch instead.
I was really excited when I learned that unplugging the cable, waiting some short period of time and plugging it back in, triggers a power-role swap.
I've only tried it out on one occasion, and I'm not clear on the delay, or whether both ends need to be disconnected or only one. I was a little surprised it isn't talked about more.
Is that for a specific device? For standard dual-role USB-C devices they do a negotiation that is partially based on chance which power role they land on (but they can have policy that strongly prefers one role over the other).
Whatever I read made me think it was some sort of standard.
You know more about this than me, so now I think what I stated about unplugging and re-plugging is likely incorrect advice, one step above "turn the cable around" which I think also works enough of the time that people keep trying it and repeating it as a method.
I have this issue with my power bank and my Linux machine. In the end my workaround has to put it in suspend by closing the lid then plugging in the power bank
For two DRP (dual role) devices connected to each other, I believe in a default case the one that happens to advertise as a source first just becomes one.
The standard allows for a role swap at any point while connected, and if that’s triggered will be dependent on the firmware/config on one or both ends.
There’s probably more nuance hiding in the real world hardware too.
They can also prefer one role, with a mechanism called Try.SNK and Try.SRC (‘try sink’ / ‘try source’).
Basically DRPs toggle back and forth between sink and source until they happen to match up (one side has switched to source and one to sink). If it doesn’t prefer to do the role it’s resolved to randomly, it can switch to the other way and wait a bit - if the other side is fine with it then it will switch too and everyone is happy, if not you can switch back.
We use this for a device that can on-charge a device when it has external power plugged in (in which case we prefer source role) but not when running on battery (in which case we prefer sink but don’t actually pull any power because it’s self powered).
> Any DRP port must have pull-down 5k1 resistors on CC wires (as a sink), AND 10-22-56k pull-ups (as provider), but not at the same time. The DRP then alternates the sink advertising (5k1 pull-downs) with pull-ups (source advertising) about 10 to 20 times per second.
> If another DRP is connected, they both will toggle their advertising until a correct (pull-up - pull-down) combination occurs. Then CC controller(s) will stop toggling, and the end that happens to be in provider mode will provide +5VSAFE VBUS. The process will end in one or other direction, which will happen at random (since frequencies of toggling are independent).
It works surprisingly well in practice. The key thing to remember is that you rarely connect identical devices together.
A laptop and a power bank both support both modes, but the laptop will have a "prefer sink" policy and the power bank will have a "prefer source" policy. As long as you don't connect two laptops or two power banks, it'll work out just fine.
Moreover, it has an override mechanism in case you do connect two identical devices. If you do connect two laptops together for data transferring, the OS should be able to let the user override the power flow direction - or even disable charging altogether.
What are the alternatives, for a mass market standard like USB used literally by everything out there nowadays?
Unplug it and plug it again until it works it's easier for everyone that going to some obscure menu (although maybe smartphones/laptop/console could just display a modal "do you want to charge or be charged?")
Usb historically solved this with ended connectors It was why you had "A" and "B" sides. usb C has an awful lot of user hostile fallout considering it's stated goal of "a cable that just works for everything"
I think to solve it, while keeping all the other goals of usb C would be to orient the charging pins on the plug, not charging the direction you want? unplug then flip one side.
Having a plug that works differently based on the orientation it’s plugged in, feels like it would not quite be „keeping all the other goals of USB-C”.
It could default to charging the device with the lowest battery level. Can't find it but I believe having read years ago Apple does something like that.
This happens with one of my powerbanks! If connected to a USB hub as a USB device (not as the power source), it still starts charging my Macbook which is connected to the hub.
Interestingly, there don't seem to be limitations the other way around. I saw a video of someone running a USB-C extension cable into the dock and using that to hook up a Steam Deck to it. It seemed to be fully capable and interestingly even exposed VRR, something that the Switch 2 itself gives you no option for when docked.
If USB consortium cared about being consumer friendly, they would have mandated that USB cables clearly mark their capabilities, and require that every cable must transmit data.
Instead we have this mess where you don't know whether a cable is good for laptop charging, and whether that same cable can be used for data in addition to charging. (skipping that data wire saves a few cents, that sounds like a great idea!)
So nothing will come out of them regarding Nintendo's behavior.
I don't think it's a coincidence that both Switch 1 and Switch 2's usb-c compliance is a shambling wreck. It's pretty clear to me it's a good way to sow doubt and disability in the industry of third-party docks while maintaining perfect plausible deniability.
Hmm - I use a switch pro controller USB C -C cable to charge my Pixel 8 sometimes, and I notice that the phone often starts and stops charging while plugged in. Maybe there's some extra hardware in that cable...
I tried to use a USB-C HDMI dongle I had. But I assumed it was because the switch 2 was looking for something that could deliver enough power and actively cool it, like the first party dock does.
With the behaviour Nintendo has been 'in the last few years' - I no longer will purchase Nintendo consoles.
We purchased a Switch and the kids have enjoyed many games on it. After reading other comments on here, I am surprised my Switch has not been bricked - and I am not doing anything dodgy at all.
As for the Switch 2. I was showing the announcement videos with the kids - they did not look excited for it. As for me, I was smirking when they were not revealing the price of the console and games. I knew something was up. Within hours there were angry youtube channels blasting their prices.
I am not even getting into Nintendo's legal behaviours over ROMs, youtube channels, or games like Palworld.
"Oh.. that thing you do in this game... Yeah... we have a patent for that!"
Of course, every game Nintendo creates are completely new ideas. Sure, I give Nintendo credit with their involvement in video game history - but I am sure "new features" in Mario Kart World are inspired from other games..... but if you do something Nintendo consider is their idea (especially patented) - they will throw money at you *towards their legal department*
Nintendo are not a family-based games company. They lost that title some time, now. Unless they really change their ways, I wont buy Nintendo again. I do not support their practices. Sure we might not have Mario Kart World or Zelda or other Nintendo specific titles - but a decent PC have many, many great games of the last 30 years - and they will run faster, smoother, etc.
> Sure we might not have Mario Kart World or Zelda or other Nintendo specific titles
Well, that's why people buy Nintendo consoles. You don't buy a Switch 2, you buy the device needed to play Mario Kart and Zelda, whatever it is.
In general, consoles are defined by their games, they are not general purpose machines and everything is to be seen from this angle. Hardwares specs don't matter, what matter is how well the games you want to play run. It is even more so with Nintendo as they have generally less powerful hardware with some of the best games as exclusive licenses.
If people want to spend £400 on a console, as well as £40-£100 on Nintendo games is their choice. I am sure there are many people who purchased a Switch 2 on launch day and now regret it, likely due to Nintendo's practices. If anything, it likely has made more people aware of Nintendo's behaviour in the last number of years.
With this, despite the fact Switch 2 might sell well this generation - I think Nintendo need to be very cautious next time. We shall see.
Personally, and I am not poor, but I think it's expensive to purchase Switch 2 + games when I legally do not own them. You are getting what seems to be known as a Revocable License.
This means many things. Its not just Nintendo cancelling or bricking your Switch 2 when you do (or presumably) something naughty... it means Nitendo can officially push for end of life to the console itself. While Nintendo may not do this to the Switch 2, servers for games eventually will. Paying nearly £100 for a game that might stop working in 7 years... unless you pay another £500 for their next console and move it over. LOL!!!!!
It does not make sense to pay this sort of money when it blurs the lines of ownership. We can go back-and-forth on this all day, but if people have no issues and still want to buy a Switch 2 is up to them. Again.. It's is their choice and I respect that.
I have explained this issue to my kids and they understand my point of view and why I wont buy a Switch 2. Of course, if they want to buy one with their own money - they can.
The type of model Nintendo are pushing works better like a Netflix monthly subscription.. or... perhaps more comparable to XBox Game pass. They will likely do this next time. I am just interested what their monthly price will be. I am sure it will be laughable!
The older generation can see past all the BS.. but the younger generation will blindly accept it. When they get older and see the differences to their first purchase.. then they can moan like I am now. It wont matter.. as the next younger gen will rinse and repeat. The cycle continue.
To me, like many things, the best way to make a statement is with your wallet. That's all I am doing. If I am the minority then so be it. I might be pointed or laughed at - but atleast I stood by my principles.
(Its similar with Microsoft Windows license going back to the 90s. I dont own it. I purchase the right to use it. I dont agree with it, so I use Linux.)
I mean, we are already at the point where you have to put a colored tape on all your usb plugs and sockets to know which ones are compatible and which ones will brick your devices. Maybe its time to drop the "universal" aspect and go back to propietary ports?
That makes no sense. No one sane wants to go back to a time where all mobile electronics had separate chargers, especially since the number of mobile devices we use on a daily basis is higher than ever before.
If anything, manufacturers that are able to provide working, compatible solutions should be preferred by consumers to those that don't, and the laws of economics will take care of the rest.
But some of those manufacturers have large loyal customer bases that will find ways to justify them even if they were to employ child labor, so there is that.
If I have a cable that sucks, I don't bother tagging it. It just goes in the bin. If it doesn't list what its ratings are, I don't buy it. Why bother keeping cables that don't do what you need it to do? Why bother buying cables that don't fit your needs?
I'm far happier that I only have one charger in my backpack that works for practically all my portable electronics. I'm far happier I've got an extra power bank in my bag that works with one cable to charge practically all my portable electronics and can be charged by that one wall adapter. I'm far happier I have one dock cable on my desk that provides power/kvm/network to my work laptop, my personal laptop, my spouse's tablet, etc. Far better than having a dozen different cables for a dozen different devices.
Just one more reason not to buy a Switch 2. Seriously, Nintendo has become worse than Apple when it comes to treating their customers. I own hundreds of Nintendo games and every console they ever made, sometimes in multiples. But when I saw of all the shit they were trying to pull with the Switch 2 I decided I was done with that company for good.
Nintendo was and is primarily a toy company. The deal is if you buy their stuff you get entertainment. You're pretending it's a general purpose computer to make a point about interoperability, but it's neither.
What kind of 'shit' do they pull with Switch 2 they already didn't with Switch 1? Both are expensive DRM locked game devices, Switch 2 is just a bit faster.
For example, they retain the right now to brick your console remotely if you go against their usage policies. Which they retain the right to change at will. So, effectively you really do not own that console in any way shape or form. Shame really, used to like Nintendo once.
From lttlabs:
> The inability for most docks to support the Switch 2 may not be malicious from Nintendo. It might just be a poor or lazy implementation of the USB-C specification
From the verge [0], 2 months ago:
> When I analyze the conversation between the Nintendo Switch 2 and its dock, I can see the two devices begin speaking in Nintendo’s own flavor of “vendor defined” language early in the conversation, before they sign off on any video output. And then, seemingly before the dock confirms that it’s engaged video-out, they send over 30 proprietary “unstructured” messages to one another.
> […]
> According to Antank, which says it checked with its chip supplier, that hexadecimal string “is indeed the current key being used by Nintendo.” My other sources are less sure.
I'm pretty sure lttl's conclusion is plain wrong. It is not JUST lazy USB-C implementation, but a purposefully designed special proprietary protocol on top of USB-C
[0] https://www.theverge.com/report/695915/switch-2-usb-c-third-...
There's a lot of misunderstandings about USB PD communication, in particular Vendor Defined Messages. The LTT video kept making this mistake, and mixing in misunderstandings around messages to the eMarker chip itself (SOP'). It was a painful watch.
Vendor Defined Messages have is part of any normal PD exchange, as they're simply anything that isn't defined by the PD spec itself. You'll see VDMs when connecting any device supporting more than just dumb charging, as it's used for all sorts of things like DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, eMarker identification, etc. - stuff we'd expect ehre.
The quote from Antak refers to just a single, possibly/likely proprietary, message. This could be to ID the dock on the basis of e.g. rejecting the switch 1 dock should one cram it in, or to reject switch 1 dongles. Maybe it's Nintendo speak for "dock capabilities: cooling", with the switch having no mode for docked gaming with reduced performance without cooling.
Intentional incompatibility, yes, but it's 1 message of an unknown type within bog standard USB-PD, not a "vendor defined lanugage" or "over 30 proprietary messages".
Why reject switch 1 accessories though? Sure the video resolution will have to be limited to 1080p, but that's kinda expected and I'm sure switch 2 can do that anyway
Switch currently runs in one of two modes: Docked and handheld. Games are written to expect those two modes, with rendering adjusted to those specifically and nothing else. Think of all the render settings in a PC game (in reality there are way more things the developer can adjust, but just for the sake of illustration), and assume there are instead two hardcoded presets which are selected based on whether or not the device is "docked".
For Switch 1 games, docked means "we're running as fast as the internal cooling can handle and outputting 1080p, assume the user can't use the touch screen and such". A dongle is fine here as long as you don't block the air inlets or exhausts, or place the Switch on something heat sensitive.
For Switch 2 games, docked means "we're running as fast as the externally boosted cooling can handle and cranking out 4k, and assume you can't use the touch screen and such". Assuming the fan does useful work here, then with a dongle you'll be thermal throttling and have a bad gaming experience - on a PC you'd turn down the settings, here those are hardcoded.
So, what about using the switch 2 handheld mode on a switch 1 dock, seeing it's the same resolution? Well, if you tell it to run in handheld mode it might assume you have access to the touchscreen, always-on VRR and HDR, is using internal speakers, etc.
It's totally doable, but to do this right the stack needs to be prepared for it. As such, I understand why they did it.
Heck, this was the same issue for the Switch 1, and it took a while for third-party docks to pop up. It'll take all but a moment for third party docks to support this.
Ah so the Switch 2 dock has an extra fan? I didn't know that.
Still, what happens if you connect a Switch 2 to a 1080p display? I assume it would render at 1080p, because rendering at 4K and downscaling for output would be too wasteful. Switch 1 even has a setting for that, allowing you to choose between 480p, 720p, and 1080p.
It renders at 1080p and the dock doesn't get as hot.
Note that the cooling fan inside the dock is for cooling the dock and not the Switch 2 itself. The Switch 2 has its own fan for that.
So while not everyone docks the Switch 2 to a 4K display, the Switch 2 dock must support that.
DP -> HDMI conversion hardware is pretty intense. I haven't owned a device that does this and doesn't at least get warm.
> DP -> HDMI conversion hardware is pretty intense.
It can be, but it doesn't have to be. DisplayPort is mostly a superset of HDMI, with different voltage levels. Going from HDMI to DisplayPort is much harder than going from DisplayPort to HDMI, though the hardware to do this is apparently much cheaper than it used to be, which is nice to see.
DisplayPort to HDMI only requires level shifting, as I understand it. I'm sure someone will correct me if they see this and I'm wrong.
No, it requires active protocol conversion, https://www.exhibitedge.com/how-to-connect-a-displayport-dev...
But also yes, most display port implementations also speak hdmi and can get away with simple converters
This is not true, DisplayPort and HDMI is not compatible, but the dedicated converter chips are quite efficient at their job. One is present inside every USB-C to HDMI cable, dongle or dock, as there is no such thing as USB-C HDMI alt-mode. Heck, even laptop HDMI ports are usually implemented through a DP converter.
You might be thinking of DisplayPort++, which is a special port supporting both DisplayPort and HDMI, allowing passive adapters. This is not available in the USB-C DisplayPort AltMode.
It's not. Every USB-C to HDMI cable in existence is a DisplayPort alt-mode cable with a DP to HDMI converter at the end. They don't require active cooling, even if they get a little warm.
> Why reject switch 1 accessories though?
Because the Switch 2 is a different machine. Games being backwards compatible (via emulation) doesn't mean the hardware is (or has to be) backwards compatible. Different display chips, different display protocols, etc.
People made all kinds of claims about how the Switch 1 wasn't USB Type-C compliant when it was discovered that the Nyko dock kept frying the power management IC in the first Switch console. I think a lot of that false communal knowledge has carried forth to the Switch 2, unfortunately.
At least on the video they made it quite clear that they assumed thant Nintendo did it on purpose, but they did not have enough proof to actually say it.
So instead they sad "Nintendo stopped early with developing compatibility"
They had to tip toe around this to avoid lawsuits. In practice, they made it quite clear they think this is on purpose.
I'm not so sure nintendo would sue someone over wrong details on specifics of usb-c implementations.
Nintendo is well-known for suing for all kinds of incredible reasons.
You can sue someone for anything, and Nintendo is infamous for doing so. They will put an army of lawyers on a case that has no merit (or just enough merit not to be thrown out early) to cost the defendant lots of money or just create sufficient risk that the defendant will settle to avoid the slim chance that they lose.
Yes, our legal system has major flaws.
Nintendo literally uses people for playing their games in ways they don't like, regardless of if the user has actually broken any laws. They'll sue over people posting videos about games!
Are you familiar that half the memes about Nintendo about suing people over ridicolous violations of their IP?
How is pointing out incompatible hardware related to IP?
It isn't. The point is that it establishes that they are litigious.
There's a tier above them (Oracle, for instance), but they're pretty up there in their willingness to head to court not just with other big corporations but with individuals.
It's called plausible deniability, i.e. Nintendo can claim they were just ignorant, and there's no proof of the contrary. That is, until EU rightfully fines them.
Seems Nintendo has good reasons not to support it with 3rd party devices: Their own dock has active cooling, so with generic dongles the switch wouldn't be able to enter the docked performance mode (or have to throttle down pretty soon) and would have to output a blurry mess to 4k screens.
Not a great user experience.
Sure, but what about 3rd party docks which do have adequate cooling? And how is it a good user experience to just silently refuse to work?
If Nintendo genuinely cared about experience they'd just follow the standard and work with any dock, then pop up a notification if it notices that the device is overheating - perhaps even with a "We recommend the official dock" text.
The current behaviour is completely unacceptable and needlessly user-hostile. There's no way around it: their USB-C implementation is broken.
I agree that their behavior is user-hostile, but doing it their way gets rid of all of the ambiguity involved with USB C.
I kind of understand why they would rather break their USBC support intentionally and make it very clear that video out is only happening with their dock. Especially considering their audiences.
> doing it their way gets rid of all of the ambiguity involved with USB C
At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all? Just use a proprietary connector if you're not going to follow the standards.
Having a separate USB-C port for charging should satisfy e.g. the EU regulations requiring that, I think. (Assuming that is the reason they used USB-C in the first place)
Presumably, sticking with USB lowers costs. Just buy mass-produced ports rather than invest in tooling to build a bespoke port.
They already produce custom designed ports in order to add some tolerance to make it easier to dock the device.
The choices aren’t limited to USB or bespoke. There are thousands of mass produced non-USB connectors available at any major electronics parts distributor.
> At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all?
To satisfy charging expectations with the same port as display that they decided to do something proprietary with. On the flip side, why not do that when people will buy the console no matter what?
> At that point, why use USB-C for the dock connection at all? Just use a proprietary connector if you're not going to follow the standards.
They are following the standards. They don't have to communicate with devices that they don't want to communicate with. There's no requirement in the USB spec that connected Type-C compliant devices interoperate in all cases.
> make it very clear that video out is only happening with their dock
What about it is "very clear"? It worked on the Switch 1, it's expected to work as it's USB, there is no error message, it just will appear that maybe the USB dongle or HDMI cable or whatever is defective.
The switch 1 situation also wasn't great with reports of switches being bricked or picky about 3rd party docks. I guess that's why they stopped trying to be compatible at all.
There was one dock which did this, and firmware on the Switch 1 quickly worked around the problem the Nyko dock had, and Nyko released new hardware which prevented the problem that the Nintendo Switch firmware update worked around.
The Nintendo Switch wasn't super picky about docks, but in order for external display to work, the dock had to support the mobile DisplayPort protocol that Nintendo used, "MyDP" instead of vanilla DisplayPort, which is what most devices supported at the time the Switch was released. Again, that wasn't a non-compliant thing on the part of the Switch, the Switch just used a technology that wasn't commonly used by much else, which is very commonly done by Nintendo.
Would you rather have your phone refuse to charge for no apparent reason, or have it popup "slow USB charging" as it does when you connect it to a weaker charger?
Nintendo unnecessarily chose to make their device partially USB-C incompatible in an intransparent way. A lot of users will rely on this working (as it already did on the Switch 1) and then it just won't, and probably the user will just assume their third-party USB dongle is broken and maybe buy another one, which means Nintendo won't get anything out of it and the user will lose more money. Everyone loses but at least the pesky customer can't use a third-party product.
Aren’t we talking about video out from the dock ?
Because it wasn’t possible for Switch 1. After some time, some alternative USB-C hubs supported the Switch video output but it was basically reverse engineering and I totally remember this first "compatible" hub back in the early days of the console which happened to brick consoles.
Nintendo is like Apple they :
- Don’t want you tu use the Switch in unpredictable ways : with the switch on the dock the cooling is guaranteed to be efficient, even on Switch 1 because it meant that the console wasn’t lying on a blanket.
- Don’t want you to buy anything else than their expensive dock.
Again you're just excusing the lack of engineering time put into an onscreen message.
'Overheating detected, reducing video resolution'.
Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.
> Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.
Nintendo ships a dock with every Switch 2. How big is the market for people buying aftermarket docks? Nintendo has always aimed very squarely at the mass market.
Apple devices work near flawlessly with third-party periphery in my experience, what are you talking about? They have some questionable limitations at times (like iPads supporting Thunderbolt but not being able to safely eject USB drives), but I don't buy Apple cables & adapters and that's because they're not needed. I can charge a Macbook with a random USB-C charger on my desk, I can turn on my third-party BT headphones and they're connected within two seconds, I can connect a screen with a third-party USB-C adapter and the only possible issue is that not all USB ports go up to 240Hz. I cannot say some of these things about my PC on which Bluetooth audio simply is not usable at all and some other basics need janky workarounds or ironically only work on Linux.
I have many reasons to be pissed at Apple but connectivity is not one of them.
Lightning was pretty limited. Third party companies either had to be blessed by Apple or clone them some how. For some accessories like video out this was a big limitation.
Please don't shill and try to find straw man arguments. Plenty of 3rd party solutions can be better than first party and cost just as much. It's not just cheap junk.
I would say that not having any video output is a worse user experience than having blurry video output.
That's not a good reason not to allow it, it's a good reason not to support it. If I do that and complain to Nintendo support about overheating, they can tell me to fuck off. Worst case it should give a scary popup saying "your dock isn't actively cooled so your device is likely to overheat". Absolutely no excuse for not allowing third-party docks though.
There's never a good reason for a vendor to lock you in. There isn't a single problem that is actually solved that way. It is 100% always a money lock in tool and literally never about safety or security. Users using your product in ways you do not like is not a valid reason to do block them or sue them.
I recall reading that the dock’s cooling is for its own internals rather than those of the switch.
It’s for the dock yes, but a dock passing its heat to the console is no bueno since the console pushes its hardware in docked mode.
It seems like this should be based on the observed situation rather than what the dock says? What if the fans of the official dock are stuck, dead or just pushed up against something? What if they ambient conditions are just so hot that the cooling isn't effective. What if a third party dock has better cooling?
> > The inability for most docks to support the Switch 2 may not be malicious from Nintendo. It might just be a poor or lazy implementation of the USB-C specification > I'm pretty sure lttl's conclusion is plain wrong.
They stated it MAY be lazy, it MAY be intentional. They declined to state a singular conclusion so I 'm not sure how they're wrong. I think maybe you feel they're saying it's not, but they're actually saying "we don't have conclusive proof either way, but we could see either being true given Nintendo's history of laziness at some times and maliciousness at other times."
Given the Verge seems to have mixed info from their sources and LTT is pulling their punches, it seems like it is at the very least not obvious that this is what they're doing. And at least one third-party seems to work with it, so it's plausible that it is not a cryptographically enforced incompatibility.
> Our monitoring of the interactions with the USB-C monitor shows that the negotiation does not even get to the point of the Vendor Defined Messages(VDM) where the dock would theoretically have to send the correct responses.
The Nintendo switch was the poster child for “don’t standardise USB C, standardise the charging protocol”, and I used it as the poster child for why I disagree with USBC being a faux-standard
And here we are again.
Back in COVID times, when I had all the time in the world, my Switch got bricked after I charged it using my laptop charger. Nintendo refused to honor its warranty, citing some mumbo jumbo about proprietary USB-C hardware. Fortunately, we have pretty good consumer protection laws here in Australia By the end of an entire two month saga, they sent me a brand new Switch.
I always did think it was odd that a USB-C cable that wasnt Nintendo could break my Switch.
I've bricked a samsung phone (galaxy s10+) using the switch usb c charger so that doesn't surprise me at all
USB-C was really really really rough in the early years. The switch 1 was one of the first products to come out with USB-C IIRC.
Nah; Apple's notoriously not-very-good 12" MacBook and the Chromebook Pixel had it since 2015, and Apple's more mainstream laptops since 2016. Nintendo doesn't really have any excuse for the original Switch's problematic USB-C beyond laziness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803
Not even.
Early devices were things like the OnePlus 2 [0] and there were plenty of phones out before the Switch even hit the market in 2017 [1]. There were some issues with standards compliance, sure, but the market had vastly improved by the time the Switch had come out.
[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_2-6902.php [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMax=2017&nUSBType...
"rough" doesn't explain any of what's happening here.
Nintendo messed up, that's it.
Back in that time, my switch broke twice. And I eventually find out. If I am using one of the e-marked wire with the switch, the port get destroyed immediately. Every single device in my room works with that wire exactly like it should. Except for switch. Their typec port is so broken, and not broke in a safe way.
Switch 2 seems to be more up to standard. I was able to charge it with a normal phone charger and also the Switch 2 charger seems to work with everything else unlike the one for Switch 1. Fortunately I never bricked anything with that, but it just never worked with anything other than the console.
Switch 1 require the charger to support pd2 12v to charge at all. Some changer may decide to skip that voltage, and support only 9v and 15v. So Switch is not happy about it.
Every device in my room except for switch supports more than one voltage config. Wondering why on the earth switch decided to handle voltage setting like this.
Usually, pd charger will label their supported voltage config. And you can read that label to find out whether a charger will work with switch or not.
Source: I do use my phone charger to charge switch during traveling
Also notice, some charger will disable part of the supported voltages when there are more than one device connected. Mine apparently drops 12v when there are other device connected (thus prevented switch 1 from charging)
Wow that's some nonsense; if it was proprietary, they would've gone back to using their own connectors.
That's what we're discussing here. Nintendo is doing something proprietary with their usb-c video mode, hence it only works with their dock. Still a usb-c connector though, because they are dirt-cheap.
It's not that strange. USB-C is a plug, not everyone who implements the plug also implements it correctly. Some chargers with a USB-C Plug might just send a fixed voltage over the cable, rather then implementing the protocols.
I'm not saying that's the case for you, but USB-C is a minefield and I've seen some weird things happen with USB-C plugs.
I've once received a USB-C charger with a portable breast milk warmer device that outputted 18V at 2A without doing PD negotiation.
That fried another device when I plugged it in.
This is non compliant in the EU, but when I reported it to the responsible authorities, they didn't feel like doing anything about it.
We are talking about a charger that can fry any device and potentially cause a fire, coming with a product aimed at people with babies, that's clearly non compliant to be sold in the EU, and they are doing nothing at all. Pretty shocking if you ask me.
> but when I reported it to the responsible authorities, they didn't feel like doing anything about it.
One problem with EU regulation (or at least most regulations; a few have union-wide regulators) is that you're really quite dependent on whether your national responsible body is any good.
For something like this (assuming it's sold union-wide and not just in your country), it might actually be useful to notify the responsible bodies on _other countries_ (once it's actually investigated and recalled the recall should be union-wide).
I recently bought a really cheap Android Auto screen for my car. It had a USB-C power input. Suspicious, I opened up the supplied cigarette power adapter. The USB power pins were hooked straight to the car battery rail. On most vehicles that's connected straight back to the alternator. Hilarious. I wonder how many people fried their phones because they thought "oh, I forgot my charging cable, but I can borrow my nav screen's for a bit"...
I got a mini PC with such a charger (Mele Quieter). I was so shocked I immediately put a label on the USB end with a stark warning not to plug into anything.
Yeah, I'm surprised that I'm being down-voted for this comment for this exact reason. Manufacturers are adding non-compliant USB-C plugs to tons of equipment and it causes these types of issues.
It's possibly because of conflating USB-C (the connector) with the USB protocols (what goes down the wires).
I could put a USB-C connector on a device and have it not even try to do any USB protocol over the wire. If not being careful about pinouts, it could be super easy to destroy either device if plugged into some other USB-compliant device.
Usually a competently designed USB-C input should have over-voltage protection and short-to-VBUS protection for over 20V (25-28V). Putting out any voltage before detecting a sink is breaking the standard, but a charger putting out over 20V without any PD negotiation would be absurdly wrong and dangerous...
So there are non-compliant plugs, but if your device breaks just because it sees a regular PD VBUS voltage (5-20V) then it means that it was designed badly - either through ineptitude or foolish cost saving.
> Putting out any voltage before detecting a sink is breaking the standard
To be pedantic, I believe that only applies to USB-C sockets; AFAIK, a USB-C plug (like on a USB-A to USB-C cable) can in some cases put out 5V (but only 5V) before detecting a sink.
> but if your device breaks just because it sees a regular PD VBUS voltage (5-20V) then it means that it was designed badly
The standard was designed so that devices never see anything over 5V unless they ask for it, so why should a non-PD device (for instance, a mouse) care about it? In some cases (like a USB-A mouse plugged into a USB-A to USB-C adapter), the device might even have been designed and built when USB was 5V only.
A USB-A device obviously wouldn’t have been designed for anything more than 5V. But anything with a USB-C socket is living in a world where a faulty source could accidentally give it a higher voltage. At that point it’s just about your tolerance for risk - maybe for something worth $100 or less and not supporting PD you can skip out and if there’s a faulty charger that blows it up then whatever, but for something selling for a few hundred dollars (like the Switch, or phones, etc.) it’s worth the 50c in BOM cost for the extra protection…
No, usb-c is a protocol too. Those devices (includinf switch charger) are garbage. Worst case it should just not charge, not damage something.
They did this to micro sd cards on the first switch. Looks like they found another way. Nintendo isn’t customer friendly. Gone are the days of the N64 and gone are the days of Nintendo pushing the boundaries of fun and entertainment.
Now, they make underpowered handhelds for kids with proprietary dongles like Apple in hopes of trapping their customers to their platform.
No thanks.
They also threaten to sue grassroots scenes playing their >20yo games. Scenes that spend on their own dime to host 1000+ entrant tournaments and use skilled time to push the old game to the limit. (Melee). They have the scene currently in a legal stranglehold. It's partially gagged, but people who host Melee events are beholden to Nintendo so they can't run even lightly modded gameplay.
Melee runs on mods always nowadays (input processing patches for fairness and bugfixes), but they mod it in a way that doesn't have any visible difference so they get away with it.
Nintendo have always been a company making toys for kids. Kid toys that are also fun for adults but still primarily for kids.
It's the same company as when you were a kid playing N64 or SNES or NES or whatever, just now you're older and jaded.
Nope, the old guard has passed away. It’s not the same.
> They did this to micro sd cards on the first switch.
What do you mean? From what I know it was bog-standard microSD(HC/XC) with the maximum supported speed being UHS-I with nothing proprietary.
It's more nuanced than that. The nintendo software prevents things, like save games, being saved at places which it deems unworthy.
But that's not something with only approved microSD cards work with save games. The Switch will not write save game data to any microSD card, regardless of features/manufacturer/branding/royalty payments/whatever. It's just not a supported feature, at all.
The GGP comment makes it sound like Nintendo only supported proprietary microSD cards at launch. While they did sell and recommend their branded microSD cards, one could use any brand of microSD card with the system and have the same functionality.
Weird comparison. With N64 everything was proprietary. The power brick, the memory card, the controllers. With Switch a lot more follows standards. USB-C charging. SD for storage. Bluetooth for controllers and headsets.
I don’t see a single reason to think Nintendo of that time would do anything differently.
The reason for not accepting whatever dock/adapter seems pretty good in this case. The dock should have active cooling to conform to user expectations. And there’s no signs that Nintendo will prevent anyone from making a dock that supports it as long as it follows the procedure to confirm that it has active cooling.
When has nintendo not tried to trap customers to their platform? Every single piece of the n64 is proprietary.
Like the Game Boy? Or the 3DS?
The Switch v1, not the v2 OLED. The 3DS had their own memory card “format”
I was thinking more like the power adapter. Game Boy always seemed to have a proprietary adapter.
The 3DS family of devices used standard SD and micro SD cards.
The games, not the expansion. You could throw any microsd card into your 3DS to get more storage. I’m talking about the memory card the games are written on.
I have a different random 5-letter company name version of this one [0] (the one I bought [1]) that LTT tested. I was nervous after remembering stories about Switch 1 “USB-C” shenanigans but at $28 (vs $124 for the original dock) I decided to roll the dice.
As far as working as a replacement dock for the original, it does the job very nicely while being smaller and easier to use overall (IMHO). At $28/ea I can afford to have a dock on every TV I would even consider playing my Switch on at less than the cost of 1 official dock.
[0] https://antank.net/products/s3-max
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FCF8PV2H
Didn't know LTT's labs was already running.
I'll be curious to see how their testing and data compares to gamersnexus testing and what their first catching a manufacturer's lies event will be.
I'm surprised it continues to exist at all. The main content ltt puts out these days is purely mass market entertainment. Physical products are still pretty good!
You're surprised they still exist... because they target wider audiences?
No, his point was that the lab isn't necessary for the content ltt is producing, so he expected them to stop the lab project to keep the profits higher
Other than LTT continuing with LTT Labs just because they enjoy deeper dives into tech, I'd imagine it also serves a practical purpose, in that if it's a slow tech news day, and they can't think of a video concept they want to try, they have a ready-made set of labs content they can base a video on.
Linus is no longer CEO but he and Ivonne still own 100% of shares. They seem to have enough money, so can burn on projects they feel passionate about like Badminton Center or LTTLabs.
This, Linus has stated he doesn't expect either to be particularly good business decisions, though they will hopefully sustain themselves, and it seems to mostly be because it's something he wants to exist.
That's always been the case though, even when labs started.
The reason labs was started was to be able to produce different kinds of content, and to have a moat on technical data and quality of reviews that no one else can pull off.
What? Labs is the source of all benchmark and performance data they show on the main channel productions.
Labs is necessary for their content.
They had benchmarks before Labs as well and almost 100% of tech reviewers don't have this kind of equipment, so no, it's not necessary. But it definitely helps.
Now they have automated benchmarks across more test configs. This is something almost no reviewers have available. That's partially from labs investment. They also have destructive benchmarks like they did with the power supplies - again almost nobody does those in public.
That's true and I agree this is valuable for the audience, but still it is not necessary. Most successful tech reviewers put out good content without these resources.
"Good" content without data is unsubstantiated content.
Data to provide evidence of performance objectively evaluates products, benefiting everyone. For example, show me who has been verifying the quality and performance claims of computer power supplies without equipment such as LTT labs.
If you want to be reductive about it - technology and their gadgets are valuable for the audience, but not strictly necessary.
The original point in this thread was that the lab isn't necessary for LTT to produce their content as they successfully appeal to a large audience either way. Which is obviously true, given the lab did not exist for most of the channel's lifetime and growth.
You argue that it's beneficial for informing the consumer. It is, but no one here disagreed with that.
I would assume LTT does this to build and retain a clear competitive advantage over their competitors in the same space.
I don’t think LTT goal is just be another commodity YouTube review site whose entire appeal is dependent on a single personality. That not really a scalable or long term sustainable approach.
Large journalist organisations of any kind aren’t built by aiming to be mediocre.
I’ve been out of the loop, what happened?
They still regularly reference labs sourced findings & data in the current videos.
https://www.lttlabs.com
They have their own site and all
yeah, they catch lies pretty regularly but they don't act like "OMFG THIS IS SOO BAAAD!!!". it's one of the things I like about LTT, they are more neutral or positive in their content. they try to be viral but usually don't ride the negativity/toxic viral wave.
Its better for business and sponsor relationships to be that way. That's why I prefer gamersnexus since they only serve the viewer and consumer, they can afford to tread on companies toes freely. Without a bit of sensationalism people and companies would never care.
The LTT video was painful to watch. I don’t know much about USB or USB-PD, but it was clear they didn’t either. It felt like they were just rambling with some vaguely technical jargon, with no actual understanding.
It seemed more like the technical guy wrote the post and 'they' made it into a video format without really explaining it.
I think they did a bad job. They struck a poor balance between not explaining it and trying to explain it. They should have gone full technical or not at all and stayed very high level regarding the issue of bespoke protocols.
The bespoke protocol was the issue.
Interesting. I saw some of their video about this the other day. The video gives the impression that Nintendo is intentionally not supporting external monitors that aren’t the official switch dock.
But the conclusion on this article seems to lean more towards that it could be a mistake or bug. I guess that might be the case - didn’t they screw up USB-C on the switch 1? I know it’s an incredibly complex standard.
I guess the only way to know if it’s intentional or a bug, is if Nintendo updates the switch to fix it. As Linus said in his video, the Nintendo USB isn’t very “universal”.
The Switch 1 had more of an excuse since it was released just as USB-C, particularly the more advanced parts like video out and PD were still very new. And the hardware was likely designed long beforehand.
The Switch 2 came out in a world with widespread standards compliant USB-C.
I feel like that’s a significant retcon.
Switch 1 was released in 2017. PD 1.0 was 2013 , and display port out was 2014. Both were supported by numerous devices by the time the switch 1 was out.
Granted they really wanted hdmi alt mode which was 2016 but the switch 1 doesn’t even support display port out which could have been coupled with a converter in the dock.
The simpler reason is that Nintendo both cheaps out on parts and has no incentive to increase compatibility. The number of users who care is not worth it for Nintendo to care, and they’re not afoul of any regulations.
Don't ever mention PD 1.0, it's a cursed standard that was never actually used and that nobody should ever use. USB PD started with PD 2.0, and we shall never speak of the stillborn child that is 1.0
Displayport would have been fairly useless. I've never once seen a TV with Displayport inputs. They really should have had 9v PD working but at least 5v worked.
While technically true, there's no devices that do HDMI protocol over USB-C. Most USB-C adapters to HDMI have a built-in DP > HDMI converter. There was a standard for HDMI over USB, but no devices used it and it died: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/hdmi-to-usb-c-spec-a...
Pretty sure the Switch (1) Dock used a similar HDMI adapter. Even the PS4 had a DP > HDMI adapter internally for some reason.
DP has a HDMI compatibility mode that allows a DP output to output a HDMI signal, but at the wrong voltage. The external adapters are just level shifters to bring the signal voltages into compliance with HDMI, but their entirety passive devices.
> Even the PS4 had a DP > HDMI adapter internally for some reason.
DP is far more than just an external display protocol. Its biggest use case is internal display signals, so it’s used to power pretty much every laptop screen.
As a result standard PC hardware (which is what the PS4 is) has defacto support for DP, because is the standard display transport between embedded video components. As a result it’s a lot easier and cheaper to build a device that outputs DP, and then slap a HDMI converter on it, than it is to build a device that uses HDMI natively.
> DP has a HDMI compatibility mode that allows a DP output to output a HDMI signal, but at the wrong voltage. The external adapters are just level shifters to bring the signal voltages into compliance with HDMI, but their entirety passive devices.
That's DP++, which is not supported on all DP outputs, and notably is not supported by the USB-C DP AltMode.
DP++ seemed to work fine on my Samsung S24 phone when I tried it after seeing that comment and was curious.
I've got a pile of passive adapters because I have an esoteric device that has broken DP audio but HDMI audio using DP++ works fine.
Isn't the reason dp has higher per pair throughout than hdmi giving you more bandwidth with less wires? (I'm not entirely sure though)
If you were to read the entirety of my comment, you’d see that I mention HDMI alt mode as well as the possibility of including a signal converter in the dock to get it to hdmi prior to hdmi alt mode existing.
Display port would have still allowed for a standardized format for other docks to provide conversion, or for connection to computer monitors.
> Displayport would have been fairly useless
Please do not generalize like this. DP over USB-C is essential for devices like Xreal One and One Pro — these work great with the Switch 1 and do not work at all with the Switch 2. It's a complete showstopper at the moment for people who would like to play games displaying them on those glasses.
The ltt video didn’t suggest it was intentional, it was careful not to. But Nintendo were certainly aware of it before release.
It was certainly heavily implied to be intentional. With the title referencing "Nintendo’s greed"[0] and in the first minute they call it “locking down a product, not for a good reason, but just because [nintendo] can, or […] because <bleep> you”
It’s not until much further in the video that they backtrack a bit and call it “tactical laziness” by Nintendo. Honestly, I did not get that far on my first watch.
[0] YouTube now confusingly shows different titles randomly. I’m seeing “Nintendo’s Greed could Change the Tech Industry” but that may not be its real title for all I know.
Modern youtube has uploaders submit multiple thumbnails and headlines, then it AB tests them and selects the one that performed best. Pretty much every news website seems to do the same thing these days too.
The early comments are all clearly qualified as their opinions, rather than factual statements. The final conclusions are factual statements, with conclusions that avoid at cost saying anything could be considered libel.
re: [0], that’ll likely be the uploader modifying the title - they test titles and thumbnails until one grabs attention
See Tom Scott video, “this video has 74 million views“ (quantity subject to change in future)
The video did very much suggest it was intentional but did so implicitly.
It explicitly stopped short of explicitly suggesting it due to a lack of evidence.
> "The Nintendo Switch 2 only ever charges at a maximum of 15 W(as far as I can tell)."
This is already higher than stated in legal EU-compliance documents [0], where the PD-charger is required to not provide more than 12W "in order to achieve the maximum charging speed"
Also interesting[0]: "TV mode requires output power of 54 watts. This is higher than the power requirements for charging given above. This product supports USB PD fast charging and is capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages up to 15 volts"
According to this, the device will obviously only use the 20V/3A mode (=60 watts) for TV mode, and will not utilize it for charging. Whereas the provided charger (NGN-01) also supports a 15V USB-PD mode which MAY be used for charging.
I assume the device will request max. 15V/1A for charging then, adding up to 15W (not sure why they state the charger should not support "more than 12W"). However, I guess at 15V the majority of power in this state is going to the device and not the battery (they only have a single battery-cell which should be charged with 5V. If they want to charge the battery, they could also request 5V/3A from the charger)...
[0] https://www.nintendo.com/eu/media/downloads/support_1/ninten...
"Test 5: DR_SWAP always rejected"
That means the monitor tries to change its own role from USB host (which it defaulted to because it's the power source) to USB gadget. And the Switch rejects the request because it sees itself as the USB gadget (for example to exchange data when you connect it to a PC).
The article itself also says "Our monitoring of the interactions with the USB-C monitor shows that the negotiation does not even get to the point of the Vendor Defined Messages(VDM)" so I see no hint of foul play by Nintendo. (And why would they? They are not in the business of selling USB monitors.)
My guess would be that the connection failure is due to a firmware bug in the monitor. But I am also heavily biased here because my last Asus screen had A LOT of firmware issues.
> And why would they? They are not in the business of selling USB monitors
Not true, they block nreal to make them pay the store fee for an enabling app to make their usbc mini monitors work with the switch.
Assuming that you are referring to the Nreal Air VR goggles, those cannot accept a regular video signal over USB-C. They are NOT monitors. For making them work, they need to do pre-processing of the video stream on the host device, thereby degrading gaming performance. That's why they need an app, because they lack an integrated CPU/GPU and that makes them not compliant with the USB-C monitor spec.
And I believe that's also the real reason why Nintendo would block them: They make otherwise fluent games stutter, which will reflect badly on Nintendo and the game developers. Because people in general won't know that their Nreal Air is stealing some of the Switch's GPU performance and that they are creating performance issues themselves.
Oh I didn't realize that, I thought they were blacklisting the EDID or something. I thought the projection for them would be simple enough to do on the device, but maybe the unwarping and chromatic aberration correction was too expensive for that or something.
Or maybe it allows some of the warping to happen with GPU extensions that allow for some non-readback processing of DRM protected textures
For consoles, it was actually the original Xbox that started this trend, using a proprietary physical connector, but with a mostly standard usb protocol, for no other purpose than to be consumer hostile. Physical hacks was of course rapidly found in this case to adapt it to be standard compliant.
Then again, with xbox360/kinect, the camera was using the usb procotol, but microsoft prevented it from working with pcs in windows. Instead you had to buy a several times more expensive "pc" version, that had the same specs, except for having the malicious compliance tech was removed.
I guess nintendo learned from this.
There was no standard USB connector that the original xbox could have used that still had magnetic attachment.
The Xbox breakaway controller cables weren't magnetic. They also could have easily put those on normal USB cables because they were a couple inches from the port anyways.
Some labels/descriptions could use a bit more polish. For example in test 8 "Averages 15 W delivered to the Switch at maximum." - I kinda see what they mean, but that's a very awkward way to phrase it. The maximum is over 20W. There's a few spikes that go over. I guess that's the maximum for a moving average? For their labs, they could be more precise.
Agreed. Also I'm curious about "measured before AC adapter" - what? Does it mean that this data includes the losses from the AC adapter?
I was hoping this site was going to be a list of common chargers that worked with the Switch 2.
?? It's USB-C, "all" would be the answer. Unless I'm misinterpreting your hopes.
It's USB-C, "you'll never know" is the answer, often it's "kinda working, but extra slow". I consider having a cheap USB power meter a necessity at this point.
I also found out the hard way that many modern powerbanks will shut themselves off if the charged device doesn't draw enough power, which means many smartwatches will simply not get charged by default. Supposedly that behaviour can be turned off by pressing/holding the power button the right way, but telling non-tech people "with this specific device you just have to remember to first do this arcane ritual before it works" is usually not received well.
Oh my sweet summer child
> EPR even supports up to 240 W! Plenty of power for any device you'd reasonably power with USB-C.
I feel (or rather hope) we'll see more than that at some point. Being able to replace device-specific wall adapters would be a huge win. This has largely already happened for everything that needs 10 watts or less, but between that and things that actually need a lot of power (i.e. kilowatts, not watts) and/or benefit from AC (mostly motors), there's still an annoying valley of power bricks.
I especially hate the type that's hard-wired to the power plug that blocks 1-2 other outlets due to its bulk and inevitably gets lost during a move or trip to storage and back.
The situation with chargers isn’t ideal. With a single USB-C port, everything works fine.
The problem starts when multiple ports are involved. Plugging in a second device can trigger unpredictable behavior, which is usually acceptable for battery-powered devices. But for devices that need a continuous power supply (e.g., a Raspberry Pi), multi-port chargers aren’t reliable –– connecting another device may briefly interrupt power.
Using a traditional power strip with one dedicated adapter per device avoids this issue.
For now, I’m sticking with individual USB-C adapters for non-battery-powered devices.
It’s a limitation of the early versions of the PD spec. The PD spec now includes features that allow a device to express its needed power draw, and wanted power draw, along with info like the fact they’re a battery pack.
In addition the spec now has messages that allow a charger to renegotiate the PD contract with a device with resetting the entire USB-C connection. So if you have chargers and devices that support these elements, you can connect and disconnect devices with interrupting the power to anything else connected. The charger just does a live renegotiation and redistribution of its available power envelope.
Also means that when a phone and battery pack get plugged in, the charger can pull power allocation from the battery pack to send to the phone so the phone charges first. Then once the phone is charged, reallocate the power budget to the battery packs again.
I guess hardware vendors are allowed to make USBC devices that goes outside the USBC specs? Although this seems to be within the USBC spec?
Would be interesting if future hardware standards would not allow to be licensed as "within standard" if they break a few rules.
I could see some hardware vendors using their own implementation of a standard just to fool customers into believing it supports a standard while there are exceptions.
Isn't that what happened to bluetooth?
I am not an apple user, but isn't apple also abusing hardware standards to encourage clients to buy its products?
“* The Nintendo Switch 2 dock will request 3 A at 20 V from the point of connection, whether it is planning to use that power or not. * This is in contrast to the Antank dock which will request additional power only when the Switch 2 is turned on and requires additional power. Arguably a better 'citizen' of the USB-C PD specification, potentially bringing your electricity bill down by a few cents”
Why would this bring your power bill down? Isn’t that always going to be calculated on the basis of kWh actually drawn?
So, as there are a couple of docks coming out that work with Switch 2 and have apparently reverse engineered the protocol... I wonder if some company could make a small dongle that just sits between the switch and my monitor, or my USB-C docking station, and fixes the communication.
For a DIY solution, protocol wise it doesn't seem too complicated, but electronically USB-C or HDMI is out of reach for most hobbyists. And I assume most USB-C interface chips you can get aren't programmable to the degree neccessary...
I own a Switch 1, and the other day I wanted to play on the train, but the battery was low. I figured "no problem, I can connect it to my laptop and let it charge off is battery".
Nope. The MacBook Pro started charging off the Switch instead.
I was really excited when I learned that unplugging the cable, waiting some short period of time and plugging it back in, triggers a power-role swap.
I've only tried it out on one occasion, and I'm not clear on the delay, or whether both ends need to be disconnected or only one. I was a little surprised it isn't talked about more.
Is that for a specific device? For standard dual-role USB-C devices they do a negotiation that is partially based on chance which power role they land on (but they can have policy that strongly prefers one role over the other).
Whatever I read made me think it was some sort of standard.
You know more about this than me, so now I think what I stated about unplugging and re-plugging is likely incorrect advice, one step above "turn the cable around" which I think also works enough of the time that people keep trying it and repeating it as a method.
I have this issue with my power bank and my Linux machine. In the end my workaround has to put it in suspend by closing the lid then plugging in the power bank
I've wondered how this works (and who wins).
For two DRP (dual role) devices connected to each other, I believe in a default case the one that happens to advertise as a source first just becomes one.
The standard allows for a role swap at any point while connected, and if that’s triggered will be dependent on the firmware/config on one or both ends.
There’s probably more nuance hiding in the real world hardware too.
They can also prefer one role, with a mechanism called Try.SNK and Try.SRC (‘try sink’ / ‘try source’).
Basically DRPs toggle back and forth between sink and source until they happen to match up (one side has switched to source and one to sink). If it doesn’t prefer to do the role it’s resolved to randomly, it can switch to the other way and wait a bit - if the other side is fine with it then it will switch too and everyone is happy, if not you can switch back.
We use this for a device that can on-charge a device when it has external power plugged in (in which case we prefer source role) but not when running on battery (in which case we prefer sink but don’t actually pull any power because it’s self powered).
According to https://superuser.com/a/1773195
> Any DRP port must have pull-down 5k1 resistors on CC wires (as a sink), AND 10-22-56k pull-ups (as provider), but not at the same time. The DRP then alternates the sink advertising (5k1 pull-downs) with pull-ups (source advertising) about 10 to 20 times per second.
> If another DRP is connected, they both will toggle their advertising until a correct (pull-up - pull-down) combination occurs. Then CC controller(s) will stop toggling, and the end that happens to be in provider mode will provide +5VSAFE VBUS. The process will end in one or other direction, which will happen at random (since frequencies of toggling are independent).
A protocol designed on who wins an race condition? That's wild.
It works surprisingly well in practice. The key thing to remember is that you rarely connect identical devices together.
A laptop and a power bank both support both modes, but the laptop will have a "prefer sink" policy and the power bank will have a "prefer source" policy. As long as you don't connect two laptops or two power banks, it'll work out just fine.
Moreover, it has an override mechanism in case you do connect two identical devices. If you do connect two laptops together for data transferring, the OS should be able to let the user override the power flow direction - or even disable charging altogether.
What are the alternatives, for a mass market standard like USB used literally by everything out there nowadays? Unplug it and plug it again until it works it's easier for everyone that going to some obscure menu (although maybe smartphones/laptop/console could just display a modal "do you want to charge or be charged?")
Usb historically solved this with ended connectors It was why you had "A" and "B" sides. usb C has an awful lot of user hostile fallout considering it's stated goal of "a cable that just works for everything"
I think to solve it, while keeping all the other goals of usb C would be to orient the charging pins on the plug, not charging the direction you want? unplug then flip one side.
Having a plug that works differently based on the orientation it’s plugged in, feels like it would not quite be „keeping all the other goals of USB-C”.
It could default to charging the device with the lowest battery level. Can't find it but I believe having read years ago Apple does something like that.
Ethernet has been doing this kind of thing for four decades. With only two nodes and short cables, you'll rapidly converge.
This happens with one of my powerbanks! If connected to a USB hub as a USB device (not as the power source), it still starts charging my Macbook which is connected to the hub.
Interestingly, there don't seem to be limitations the other way around. I saw a video of someone running a USB-C extension cable into the dock and using that to hook up a Steam Deck to it. It seemed to be fully capable and interestingly even exposed VRR, something that the Switch 2 itself gives you no option for when docked.
At such times I wish the USB consortium would flex their muscles. A high profile case that maliciously breaks interoperability.
If USB consortium cared about being consumer friendly, they would have mandated that USB cables clearly mark their capabilities, and require that every cable must transmit data.
Instead we have this mess where you don't know whether a cable is good for laptop charging, and whether that same cable can be used for data in addition to charging. (skipping that data wire saves a few cents, that sounds like a great idea!)
So nothing will come out of them regarding Nintendo's behavior.
People often buy USB cables without data wires for security reasons, so personally I would like to keep them around.
USB consortium itself has written a standard for implementing DRM to restrict third party accessories. Which isn't even what Nintendo used there.
Still, don't expect anything good to come from them on that front.
I don't think it's a coincidence that both Switch 1 and Switch 2's usb-c compliance is a shambling wreck. It's pretty clear to me it's a good way to sow doubt and disability in the industry of third-party docks while maintaining perfect plausible deniability.
Hmm - I use a switch pro controller USB C -C cable to charge my Pixel 8 sometimes, and I notice that the phone often starts and stops charging while plugged in. Maybe there's some extra hardware in that cable...
I tried to use a USB-C HDMI dongle I had. But I assumed it was because the switch 2 was looking for something that could deliver enough power and actively cool it, like the first party dock does.
So what's the best portable emulation device that connects to HDMI too?
With the behaviour Nintendo has been 'in the last few years' - I no longer will purchase Nintendo consoles.
We purchased a Switch and the kids have enjoyed many games on it. After reading other comments on here, I am surprised my Switch has not been bricked - and I am not doing anything dodgy at all.
As for the Switch 2. I was showing the announcement videos with the kids - they did not look excited for it. As for me, I was smirking when they were not revealing the price of the console and games. I knew something was up. Within hours there were angry youtube channels blasting their prices.
I am not even getting into Nintendo's legal behaviours over ROMs, youtube channels, or games like Palworld.
"Oh.. that thing you do in this game... Yeah... we have a patent for that!"
Of course, every game Nintendo creates are completely new ideas. Sure, I give Nintendo credit with their involvement in video game history - but I am sure "new features" in Mario Kart World are inspired from other games..... but if you do something Nintendo consider is their idea (especially patented) - they will throw money at you *towards their legal department*
Nintendo are not a family-based games company. They lost that title some time, now. Unless they really change their ways, I wont buy Nintendo again. I do not support their practices. Sure we might not have Mario Kart World or Zelda or other Nintendo specific titles - but a decent PC have many, many great games of the last 30 years - and they will run faster, smoother, etc.
This Dock <--> USB-C drama is just laughable.
> Sure we might not have Mario Kart World or Zelda or other Nintendo specific titles
Well, that's why people buy Nintendo consoles. You don't buy a Switch 2, you buy the device needed to play Mario Kart and Zelda, whatever it is.
In general, consoles are defined by their games, they are not general purpose machines and everything is to be seen from this angle. Hardwares specs don't matter, what matter is how well the games you want to play run. It is even more so with Nintendo as they have generally less powerful hardware with some of the best games as exclusive licenses.
If people want to spend £400 on a console, as well as £40-£100 on Nintendo games is their choice. I am sure there are many people who purchased a Switch 2 on launch day and now regret it, likely due to Nintendo's practices. If anything, it likely has made more people aware of Nintendo's behaviour in the last number of years.
With this, despite the fact Switch 2 might sell well this generation - I think Nintendo need to be very cautious next time. We shall see.
Personally, and I am not poor, but I think it's expensive to purchase Switch 2 + games when I legally do not own them. You are getting what seems to be known as a Revocable License.
This means many things. Its not just Nintendo cancelling or bricking your Switch 2 when you do (or presumably) something naughty... it means Nitendo can officially push for end of life to the console itself. While Nintendo may not do this to the Switch 2, servers for games eventually will. Paying nearly £100 for a game that might stop working in 7 years... unless you pay another £500 for their next console and move it over. LOL!!!!!
It does not make sense to pay this sort of money when it blurs the lines of ownership. We can go back-and-forth on this all day, but if people have no issues and still want to buy a Switch 2 is up to them. Again.. It's is their choice and I respect that.
I have explained this issue to my kids and they understand my point of view and why I wont buy a Switch 2. Of course, if they want to buy one with their own money - they can.
The type of model Nintendo are pushing works better like a Netflix monthly subscription.. or... perhaps more comparable to XBox Game pass. They will likely do this next time. I am just interested what their monthly price will be. I am sure it will be laughable!
The older generation can see past all the BS.. but the younger generation will blindly accept it. When they get older and see the differences to their first purchase.. then they can moan like I am now. It wont matter.. as the next younger gen will rinse and repeat. The cycle continue.
To me, like many things, the best way to make a statement is with your wallet. That's all I am doing. If I am the minority then so be it. I might be pointed or laughed at - but atleast I stood by my principles.
(Its similar with Microsoft Windows license going back to the 90s. I dont own it. I purchase the right to use it. I dont agree with it, so I use Linux.)
I mean, we are already at the point where you have to put a colored tape on all your usb plugs and sockets to know which ones are compatible and which ones will brick your devices. Maybe its time to drop the "universal" aspect and go back to propietary ports?
That makes no sense. No one sane wants to go back to a time where all mobile electronics had separate chargers, especially since the number of mobile devices we use on a daily basis is higher than ever before.
If anything, manufacturers that are able to provide working, compatible solutions should be preferred by consumers to those that don't, and the laws of economics will take care of the rest.
But some of those manufacturers have large loyal customer bases that will find ways to justify them even if they were to employ child labor, so there is that.
If I have a cable that sucks, I don't bother tagging it. It just goes in the bin. If it doesn't list what its ratings are, I don't buy it. Why bother keeping cables that don't do what you need it to do? Why bother buying cables that don't fit your needs?
I'm far happier that I only have one charger in my backpack that works for practically all my portable electronics. I'm far happier I've got an extra power bank in my bag that works with one cable to charge practically all my portable electronics and can be charged by that one wall adapter. I'm far happier I have one dock cable on my desk that provides power/kvm/network to my work laptop, my personal laptop, my spouse's tablet, etc. Far better than having a dozen different cables for a dozen different devices.
Woah, Lttlabs on hacker news front page!
They put up a video the other day with the summary of this testing, but it’s cool that the full table is now available.
for me buying switch 2 is like giving a key to my front door to nintendos lawyers
Just one more reason not to buy a Switch 2. Seriously, Nintendo has become worse than Apple when it comes to treating their customers. I own hundreds of Nintendo games and every console they ever made, sometimes in multiples. But when I saw of all the shit they were trying to pull with the Switch 2 I decided I was done with that company for good.
Nintendo was and is primarily a toy company. The deal is if you buy their stuff you get entertainment. You're pretending it's a general purpose computer to make a point about interoperability, but it's neither. What kind of 'shit' do they pull with Switch 2 they already didn't with Switch 1? Both are expensive DRM locked game devices, Switch 2 is just a bit faster.
For example, they retain the right now to brick your console remotely if you go against their usage policies. Which they retain the right to change at will. So, effectively you really do not own that console in any way shape or form. Shame really, used to like Nintendo once.
> What kind of 'shit' do they pull with Switch 2 they already didn't with Switch 1?
The shit that the linked article is about, for one.
The Switch 1 was worse and could even be bricked by a third party dock. So nothing new there.