Nintendo fans are counting the days until March 3rd, when the new Switch gaming system will go on sale. Price? 300 bucks – pretty reasonable considering all it will do. And it can do a lot. The reason for the name? The system can quickly “switch” from being played on a large home TV to its own portable LCD monitor and back again. The “joy-con” controller handles slip onto the portable monitor or onto a power pack for home use. Pretty slick.
That portable LCD screen is where the brains of the system reside, and it slips into this dock for home use. There’s also a “pro” controller setup with a more traditional wing-type layout, and by the way, the portable LCD screen is also a touch screen for quicker navigation. Gaming processor maker Nvidia had a hand in making the Switch, so expect some robust performance – for a portable. The system also has expandable memory capability and will be region-free.
On the downside, you won’t be able to play your old Wii or Wii U games on the Switch as it has no disc drive, but it’s really time to move on anyway.
A quick look around the White House
As President Obama counts down the hours until he can hit the golf course without having his caddy carry his clubs and the nuclear launch codes, he apparently found time recently to narrate and star in a tour of the White House – a tour fit for the modern age as it was made in cooperation with Facebook and Oculus, so yes, you can view the whole thing in VR, or using Facebook’s 360 video feature. And we gotta admit, it’s pretty cool.
You can get a good look around the grounds, the oval office, and many of the historic rooms in the iconic capitol building. Michelle Obama also helps with the narration. There’s a lengthy preview of the VR tour that you can view now, and the whole thing will be made available soon. The spherical video was produced by Felix and Paul Studios, and if you’re into VR, or just got a setup over the holidays, their website is definitely worth a visit.
Be sure to pay in Bitcoin
And here’s a quick follow-up to one of more… odd stories to come out of CES this year. Following reports that two Razer prototypes were stolen from Razer at CES, including this fold-out tri-screen laptop prototype known as Project Valerie that was a hit at the annual tech show, a for-sale ad has popped up in China for the device, with a price tag of about $21,000.
The ad is on Unwire, a sort of Chinese craigslist for electronics, but so far, the other stolen Razer tech, a projector with the name Project Ariana, is still MIA. Razer is offering a conditional $25,000 reward for a return of the projects, or they could save some cash and just buy it back, although we’re pretty sure they’d rather not. Razer asks that anyone with details about the theft contact them, and we have their information and more on the story here.
