The Joy-Con grip, which is included with the Nintendo Switch, will keep your Joy-Cons safe (fnar), but will not charge them. Essentially it’s a nice bit of plastic to hang them on, and if you want to charge them whilst storing them you will to get you wallet out
The premium Joy-Con charging grip will cost you £24.99 from Nintendo themselves, or for some unknowable reason, £27.99 from Game and Amazon, and includes a USB connection so you can plug it anywhere to charge the controllers. You can of course charge the controllers when they are connected to the console when it is docked.
tonyyeb
When will Nintendo learn?! These are the kind of mistakes Microsoft made at the Xbox One launch. The top Kotaku comment about the Switch launch summed it up perfectly for me:
“Watching the Nintendo Switch presentation is like watching an ex girlfriend who has so much potential but is totally making the same fucking mistakes over and over and you just want to shake them and tell them to stop.”
The Lone Steven
Feck off, Nintendo! That is a damn joke. It’s a dumb decision and bumps the price up even more if one wants the complete package. Why is it £28? They should have included it. Already, that’s more expensive them a PS4 and guess what? I can get the complete package for the cost of the Switch! The switch is too expensive(though I can’t tell if that is the norm for tablets and this is pretty much taking them or at least, mobile gaming is the primary focus of it) and this, this is something that they could have used to support it by not selling it as an extra thing. Relying on the console itself to charge it is going to be a pain in the arse. And these are the standard(I think, should check,probably won’t) controllers. The Pro, that better come with it’s own charging station otherwise, it will be very awkard. And the Switch has a crap battery life. 6-8 hours. 3 hours is estimated as an average. Combine that with charging and they have shot themselves in the foot.
They have their work cut out for them and will be facing a tough battle. FFS, all they had to do was keep it simple, include a charger(Recall 3DSes having the same issues years back so why the feck did they not learn from that) and guess what? It’s appealing!
This? This is enough to put me off it and I already dislike that I am being a negative git about it. Stop making me be negative and give me reasons to give it praise, Nintendo!
Avenger
If the rumour that the controllers have 15 hours of battery life is true, then it’s nothing too detrimental. However, it emphasises the portability and does little to invite people to play on the TV unless they want to pay the extra.
They can be stored and charged btw, they can be charged when the Switch is docked. It’s playing whilst in TV mode that’s the issue here, is it not?
Stefan L
Yeah, we don’t know about the battery life, but they didn’t seem to be particularly precious about them at the Switch event in London. I’m not worries about their battery life, at any rate.
I think the only potential flaw is that the bundled grip does not seem to include a USB port to charge the attached Joy-Con. If you don’t buy other accessories, that makes it more inconvenient to have to remember to take them off and charge them up on the Switch itself.
Additionally, you should be able to buy the standard grip separately. A pair of Joy-Con costs £70, which would be preferable for the multiplayer flexibility it offers, but if you then want to have a pair of “full” controllers and play on TV, you need a grip, which pushes it closer to almost £100.
Avenger
The requirement to buy an additional accessory to charge controller battery is perhaps a stark contrast from the DualShock 4, that said it’s not far away from Microsoft requiring you to buy a charge kit for Xbox One, and that has a RRP of twenty pounds I think, albeit actual sales price is a bit lower. I know you can whack a couple of double AAs into an XB1 controller, or use a USB micro, but still.
Avenger
I can definitely understand where people are coming from with their various input, but I can’t help but think it’s not all that bad. The RRP of the Switch is £70 cheaper than PS4/XB1(without Kinect) when they launched, and I think the games will adjust in price to £40-50 much like PS4/XB1 closer to launch. Probably the retail price of the Joy-Cons is the only negative, but they could adjust once they hit retail after a few months.
It’s perhaps all undermined by the fact you can buy a home console for cheaper these days, but in fairness Switch is only just starting it’s life cycle. It’s just out of sync with the current generation, but I think the value is not too bad overall. GAME and the like have bastardised the pricing, but Argos are representing some slightly better prices.
NotSmartEnough
I think that not packaging the charging grip is a mistake. For handheld or hybrid users having to connect the controllers to the docked switch to charge them isn’t a big deal, but for people using this as a home console it’s going to be a pain if you have stop playing, take the controllers off the grip and slot then into the Switch to charge. There is no out-of-the-box option for carrying on playing on the TV while charging.
It’s a questionable decision, but the worst thing is the poor communication. A lot of people seemed to be convinced that the included grip was a charger, rather than just a cheap piece of plastic.
Kennykazey
All the accessories seem overpriced. But as the fool I am, I ordered a second pair of joy-cons and a charging handle. That way I’m pretty much set for most situations.