Nintendo Switch with Bluetooth support, which games (or application) genres are suitable or not (and extra stuff)

Nintendo has been rolled out Nintendo Switch OS 13.0 recently which added Bluetooth headset support natively. To consider most Nintendo Switch players are focus on casual only, some games will make unplayable due to Bluetooth’s sound latency issue.

Game or application genre can be used with Bluetooth headset

1. Turn-based games
2. Puzzle games
3. Video playback application
4. Simulation games
5. Card/Casino games

Game or application genre can not be used with Bluetooth headset

1. Shooting games
2. Music games
3. Racing games
4. Any games with quick time event (QTE) condition

In a nut shell, if these games does not require realistic sound, it ok when using Bluetooth to play games.

It’s no one care the super effective sound effect when playing Pokémon games (Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash)

And it’s not important to listen NPCs’ gibberish in Animal Crossing (Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash)

But anyway, I still need to explain why these game (or apps) is or not important in latency.

It required synchronized control with beats when playing music games (Photo by Yara Kinds on Unsplash)

Majority of Bluetooth headset or speakers has average 0.4s latency when playing sound. However, it’s does not affect video playback since the app will take control to ensure the video soundtrack and video is synchronized. On the other hands, video games put a lot of calculating resources in rendering graphics, to consider the performance is fluent enough for running platform, it is not necessary to add extra resources for syncing sound and graphic since it may cause non-fluent experience in gameplay.

Why these genres of the game is not suitable to play with Bluetooth headset or speakers

Photo by Niclas Illg on Unsplash

(To reduce redundancy, it skipped the game genres that suitable with Bluetooth devices)

It is important to define location that relying on walking and shooting sound for playing shooting games, music beat accuracy for playing music game and drifting and engine sound for playing racing games. They are the same that these three examples are relying on feedback from visual and sound (QTE too). If these sound is played after the visual effect, the condition of controlling may be delayed and higher chance causing mission failed because of inaccurate sound effect.

I’m loving using Bluetooth audio playback since it does not concern on cable loosing connection inside the plug. But I tried some games uses traditional 3.5mm earphone which came from smartphone is more better than $50 Bluetooth headset since it has better audio sync. Therefore, you should consider which type of earphone will be used before play the game.

Extra: Quirk Bluetooth connection for switch

To be remind that Nintendo Switch’s Bluetooth connection will be disconnected after turn off the screen. It is the same happen when controller disconnected too. However, unlike the controller, you still connect manually from setting menu.