USB-C has so much going through it, various voltages and protocols, that it’s going to need to solidify into a very strict standard. There can’t be any cheap cables, Chinese knock off power bricks, etc. etc. People will very quickly get fed up with that shit if saving $20 means you fry your $1200 laptop.
It’s a bit of a mess right now, but hopefully it will solidify into the same type of system that’s made USB 1/2/3 A-B so prevalent. I mean, we have USB built into a number of modern power outlets! It’s turned into the defacto, international 5V power standard (with various speeds/amps depending on your charger/device .. but it mostly works well enough).
Maybe the price of backwards compatibility becomes too big at some point ? Also USB C , USB 3.x and USB PD being all “rolled” into a single can’t possibly help with the complexitiy.
If Nintendo can’t do USB PD + USB C + USB 3.x properyl ,they should have stuck with a proprietary connector.
they should have stuck with a proprietary connector
Strongly disagree. Maybe Nintendo should release a proprietary USB-C cable that mimics their dock without the bulkiness of their dock, but the ability to borrow a friend’s phone charger and recharge my Switch? The ability to just bring one charger with me, one that can charge my phone, my tablet, and my gaming console? That’s a really nice feature. I would take that over a proprietary cable that doesn’t work with anything else.
Running a proprietary protocol over a standard connector is a bad idea, because people will plug mismatched devices into each other and the possible outcomes are somewhere between nonfunctionality and starting fires.
It sounds like the Switch is just a very poor implementation of the standard protocol, so that reasoning only partly applies. It is certainly a convenience not to need multiple chargers, but it’s less of a convenience if some chargers can lock up your device. If Nintendo had no intention of interoperating with standard USB-C devices, they shouldn’t have used the connector; and if they did intend to interoperate, they should actually do so.
USB-C has so much going through it, various voltages and protocols, that it’s going to need to solidify into a very strict standard. There can’t be any cheap cables, Chinese knock off power bricks, etc. etc. People will very quickly get fed up with that shit if saving $20 means you fry your $1200 laptop.
It’s a bit of a mess right now, but hopefully it will solidify into the same type of system that’s made USB 1/2/3 A-B so prevalent. I mean, we have USB built into a number of modern power outlets! It’s turned into the defacto, international 5V power standard (with various speeds/amps depending on your charger/device .. but it mostly works well enough).
Maybe the price of backwards compatibility becomes too big at some point ? Also USB C , USB 3.x and USB PD being all “rolled” into a single can’t possibly help with the complexitiy.
If Nintendo can’t do USB PD + USB C + USB 3.x properyl ,they should have stuck with a proprietary connector.
Strongly disagree. Maybe Nintendo should release a proprietary USB-C cable that mimics their dock without the bulkiness of their dock, but the ability to borrow a friend’s phone charger and recharge my Switch? The ability to just bring one charger with me, one that can charge my phone, my tablet, and my gaming console? That’s a really nice feature. I would take that over a proprietary cable that doesn’t work with anything else.
Running a proprietary protocol over a standard connector is a bad idea, because people will plug mismatched devices into each other and the possible outcomes are somewhere between nonfunctionality and starting fires.
It sounds like the Switch is just a very poor implementation of the standard protocol, so that reasoning only partly applies. It is certainly a convenience not to need multiple chargers, but it’s less of a convenience if some chargers can lock up your device. If Nintendo had no intention of interoperating with standard USB-C devices, they shouldn’t have used the connector; and if they did intend to interoperate, they should actually do so.