Topic: Anyone else a bit unhappy with backwards compatibility?

You've all read the news (or rumors) that many developers can't get a hold of Switch 2 development kits, and that Nintendo is supposedly encouraging them to develop Switch 1 versions instead and rely on backwards compatibility.

I find myself hestitating to buy Switch 1 software now. I saw a new Star Trek release ("Resurgence") on the eShop, was intrigued, but immediately put off by the lack of a dedicated Switch 2 version.

Why? I don't think backwards compatibility is good enough..

• There's added input lag, I've tested it by running the same game on S1 and S2. I hate that.
• I've got my Switch 2 and TV configured so that dedicated S2 games look great on the TV. With those settings S1 games look worse than they do when I open them on the original Switch. More jagged, washed out colors. I'm aware that this could be down to many factors - how both consoles output their image, how any given TV processes its HDMI inputs, etc. Might be a settings thing. But I'm not an expert, and I don't want to change TV modes when going from a S2 game to a S1 game.

Any thoughts on this?

If I didn’t have a developer kit I would go back into my game on the OG switch developer kit and create an extra mode with dynamic resolution and an unlocked frame rate. Then the switch 2 would run the game at 1080p 60fps which is all most of us care about.

I don't really have an issue? Every games I played so far played great and the bigger screen (i played fully on handheld) just makes the game looks better and easier on my eyes.

So far I've only tried uh... Mario and Luigi Brothership, Witcher 3 (2 hours ish), Cat Quest 1, 2 and 3.

And Fantasy Life i, but that's switch 2 version and it looks awesome so I guess it doesn't count.

It's a very mixed bag. Depending on the art style, resolution target and things like anti-aliasing, I find a lot of games look noticeably worse on Switch 2 in handheld, the primary way I use it.

For example, Animal Crossing on S2 in handheld gets a lot of flickering pixels because it targets 720p with no anti-aliasing. So when that gets stretched to 1080p on a larger handheld display, the aliasing causes a lot of sub-pixel scaling issues.

Then there's S1 games that seem to actually have dynamic resolution targets in handheld, that actually output at 1080p on S2 in handheld. Two I've found are Atelier Rorona and Mega Man Collection 1; both actually output most assets in 1080p in handheld on Switch 2, and in Rorona's case, the framerate is also a stable locked 60. That's a nice surprise.

The added input latency is something that seems very game dependent. I've not noticed it in many games, but in some it's a big deal. Kirby and the Forgotten Land without the Switch 2 paid upgrade is really bad on Switch 2 for this reason. Its 30fps and dynamic resolution in handheld also looks awful. I guess it's a good way to sell the update, but I'm not buying it, and so I'd have to replay it on my OLED for it to be acceptable.

Yeah so far everybody makes it sound like this type of BC is the best thing to happen, even Digital Foundry only praised the frame rate boosts and didn't even mention input lag. Curious.

Maybe it's just me, I work in music and media, latency & sync have been the bane of my existence for >25 years. I was going to give away the Switch 1, looks like I'll keep it around instead. Grumble grumble. Wish they'd gone the tried-and-true Nintendo way of including the actual old hardware.

Yeah, I honestly didn't notice any input lag? So in my eyes I'm actually quite regretting my decision to keep mine for now... If I want to sell it I have to do some updates and stuff that will be annoying and some money. So I'll see.

@NintendoWife I'm puzzled there's no option to play Switch 1 games with a black border in handheld, un-stretched. This is possible with any NSO console, and while Switch 1 BC isn't emulation, it's easy to implement as a feature, even if it requires holding down a button when booting the game up like with DS games on 3DS. It wouldn't help with the input latency though, that seems to be a translation layer side-effect.

I can understand Nintendo focusing a bit too much on Switch 1 games for a while, it has a huge install base which will take the Switch 2 years to get to and they make their most money from the software. I certainly take the point many games don't need to be Switch 2 exclusives and really should be available on both platforms but people won't buy Switch 2 if its mainly Switch 1 games with higher frame rates but an inferior display and poor battery life compared to the OLED Switch 1 model. I finally upgraded to a OLED Switch 1 model recently and I'm impressed with the vibrant colours, smoothness and generally enjoyable visuals. I do like 60fps for gaming but it needs to be with low input lag too. I miss the days of CRT gaming where games seem to have no input lag at all and you could play arcade conversions with beautiful feel. That has been lost in time sadly. Games may look better but they don't feel better.

Also the real strength of the Switch 2 is DLSS where it can render at as low as 640x360p and generate good looking 720p or even 1080p visuals. That's an amazing feature and important in showcasing the performance level of Switch 2. Quite frankly without DLSS the Switch 2 performance level is much lower as it has to render at a higher resolution which lowers overall performance dramatically. The experience of playing Switch 1 games on Switch 2 is both superior and inferior to playing it on the original Switch 1 there are both pros and cons.

However dare I say it as a Switch 1 owner probably for quite a while yet the continued development for Switch 1 is brilliant for me. When I get a Switch 2 it will be almost exclusively for Switch 2 games so need a good library of Switch 2 games. I find the Switch lite the most portable system to have. It's so light and easy to carry in my backpack. I just feel that will be my portable gaming system for a while yet. It actually has a brighter screen than Switch 2 with more accurate colours and definitely much smoother and it works perfectly with the native resolution of Switch 1 games to give what appears to be an anti-aliased image purely because of the size of the screen. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe looks amazing on it. It's the second best Switch screen after the OLED with the Switch 2 screen taking third place I would say. A Switch Lite with a decent pair of headphones can be an amazing gaming experience.

Don't get me wrong Switch 2 docked playing Switch 1 games is in a different league overall with far less issues but Switch 2 playing Switch 1 games in portable mode seems overall dare I say it inferior from what I've seen but maybe I've got too negative an impression.

Lastly there maybe commercial factors in play, maybe Nintendo are not going to subsidise Switch 2 hardware pricing at all. Maybe they are going to keep to a highish margin and allow the console to sell lower numbers than Switch 1 at least for a year or so. Maybe Nintendo are looking at the absolutely huge profits of Switch 1 hardware compared to slimmer profits on Switch 2 and want to get even more life out of Switch 1 so are pushing to maintain Switch 1 development.

I wondered if Nintendo had a huge stock of T239 chips from the aborted release of the Switch Pro model a few years ago and really the launch Switch 2 is making use of all those older T239 chips made back in 2021/2 and in fact Nintendo won't really push the Switch 2 until we get a OLED model with a revised chipset that has decent battery life etc. Maybe Nintendo are a little ashamed of the launch Switch 2 and plan to replace it quicker than previous Switch models. Anyway it does feel like they are trying to extend the life of Switch 1 with some of their decisions and I suspect the main reason is profit.

I haven't really seen any issues with backward compatibility on my S2. Though I do find it odd that Nintendo is pushing S1 development over S2 exclusivity. The S2 has been out for near 3 months and the prices of S1 consoles hasn't really moved, normally prices of old consoles go down but it hasn't. So I suspect Nintendo are pushing to extend the life of S1 for a long while to come.

It does bug me though, we need more S2 exclusive titles, games that use the full power and potential of the S2, and if Nintendo don't at least announce a new Mario or Zelda soon I'm going to flip out.

@NintendoWife
I posted in the other thread about this, but what input lag? What games have you played?

I just went back through to check, and for S1 games that I've played on my S2, I've done: Echoes of Wisdom, Trials of Mana, Alex Kidd, Splatoon 3, Pepper Grinder, BotW, TotK. Some of those had S2 patches, some didn't.

And I haven't noticed any (more) input lag, and I'm pretty sensitive to that because I love playing twitchy platformers like Pepper Grinder.

For screen settings, I'm not sure. I think Echoes looks awesome on my TV, but a little too dark on the S2 screen. That's probably related to HDR, I'm guessing. I don't know lol

@maxrpg What bothers me as well is that there’s practically no exclusive thirdparty games either, so it’s all ports that mostly don’t cater to its strengths and more often than not run and look a lot worse than anywhere else. It’s a really puzzling launch year so far.

RIP Bravely Default remake

but nonetheless like... How many third party exclusives that exist right now? Like, the ones that stay only on Xbox or Playstation only? I think Switch is the last console/handheld that will truly have moments of exclusives since it's just too expensive otherwise.

Like iirc stuff like FF16 didn't really move much sales even when it's exclusive to Playstation and so on. Everything will be far more multiplatform because that's what people prefer.

@darkfenrir Bravely Default is barely a remaster of a 3DS game. I'm talking about new games, if that wasn't obvious. I don't buy a new console to only play old or existing games...

Just because the other consoles don't have exclusives doesn't make it a good thing. The point of exclusives is to fully utilize the targeted hardware in ways you simply can't when you're developing for multiple platforms. I should know; I used to consult and work with indie developers.

It says a lot that not even Nintendo has so far made a Switch 2 exclusive game from the ground up; both MKW and Bananza started out as Switch 1 games. I look forward to something that genuinely uses all of its features, from HD Rumble 2 to the faux surround-sound feature and more, fully.

@OmnitronVariant Yeah that one I was joking a bit with the whole part, although it's still an exclusive at this moment.

And the whole part with MKW and Bananza I'll just uh... I don't know what to say. The fact they explicitly said, yeah, we stopped developing it on Switch 1 since it's not strong enough somehow makes it not exclusive? Like, what? Like... I'm not sure how does that work? That's just a wild way to look at it I would say, because like, Switch 1 isn't strong enough is true, and so it's then developed purely for Switch 2. How is that... not exclusive to Switch 2? The game won't suddenly release on Switcn 1...

I'm also pointing out how it is in other consoles because it shows the wider trends! That releasing only on one consoles are likely not going to recoup the game's dev cost--especially because games are becoming pricier to make, with more content and better graphics. So releasing on all consoles and PC are just the smart move, for like... revenue and profit, which is what they need to make more good games.

Iirc this can be seen on like, Octopath Traveler 2, where it just have massively better metrics compared to the first one because it's multiplatform from the start.

As a customer of a console, I don't care about the financials reasons for X or Y, I want them to provide compelling products. Multiplatform games are hamstrung by design, they'll never fully utilize each separate platform. Obviously it makes financial sense, but I'm not their employee; I really don't care.

I haven’t had an issue so far but I have not decided to port everything over yet. From what I have seen many switch games are either improved or run as well as they did natively on switch 2. BC and NSO plus new switch 2 games means tons to play for me. I love it.

Plus as an xbox gamer this much BC is glorious. I still have to maintain my 360 (and xbox) to play some games. Same with PS2/PS3. Nintendo has always been really good with BC.

Start flipping!.. I've resigned myself to the fact that we aren't going to see any of those games for at least another couple of years.

My guess is: Next year we're going to get announcements for both Mario and Zelda, with Mario releasing the same year and Zelda much later (2-3 years including delays and apologies).

That's for the big all-new mainline entries, 3D Mario and 3D Zelda. I'm expecting them to release a Mario Wonder S2 Edition including new campaign earlier than that, and possibly another 2D Zelda remake too (the Capcom parts would make a lot of sense, using the LA engine).

When is Animal Crossing getting a Switch 2 update? Seems like low-hanging fruit, unless they feel they need to add something and charge a lot for it.

@NintendoWife

I'd be surprised to see a new Zelda before we get into the fourth year of Switch 2's lifecycle even if was for the much alleged OOT remake, we all know Nintendo's track record of dragging it's heels with this much beloved franchise and even more so if they were to scrap the open world and go back to the dungeon based format.