Topic: Anyone else a bit unhappy with backwards compatibility?

@rallydefault you do realize this is by far the worst implementation of backward compatibility between the three main systems? This is no longer Wii prices. This system costs on par with a ps5 digital and more than a series S. Both do the backward compatibility better. If you want to charge these prices then you asking to be put under a microscope. Yes the system has sold well. But there’s at least 10 million hardcore Nintendo fans who bought the Wii u. So at the 20 million mark we start hitting casual territory. The hardware has sold well. But there’s only games selling well are Nintendos first party games. And those are in limited supply. Arrogant Nintendo has never ended well and we are well in the super arrogant era.

@sixrings
lol dude what are you even talking about?

If I have a switch 1 game I wanna play on my switch 2, I put the cartridge in and… ta da!! The game plays.

It’s crazy, I know.

So what are you losing your mind about?

I take your point but they have to optimise the engine for ARM processors rather than x86 which is a task in itself and they also have to get the engine working so it makes best use of the Switch 2 hardware and reduces load where weaker. So the amount of pedestrians has been seriously cut back even compared to low settings on PC probably more inline with Xbox One and PS4 I guess (not seen those versions I bought it on PC) because of the very low CPU resources. I see this as a lot of effort and a well optimised port and compared to many Switch 2 offerings they have produced a game that looks technically impressive for a portable system despite its cutbacks. I would never buy the game on Switch 2 as have it on PC and its an old game that I never liked that much to be honest (I don't like GTA series game either they just don't work for me). It's the only game I can think of on Switch 2 that I have been impressed with technically so far. Dare I say it but technically I've not been super impressed with either Mario Kart World or Donkey Kong Bonanza. They both look a bit compromised by weak hardware even though very good games. However I'm talking about looking at high quality video of docked Switch 2 games on youtube with a 4K tv and seeing the aliasing and other visual issues etc. I realise portable screens can be more forgiving. My Switch Lite makes it look like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has no aliasing at all.

@BonzoBanana It is quite a lot of work — but it's mostly QA. There's no new development, it's fine-tuning settings and config files. I've been involved in this work when I contracted as an engine developer for indie devs and medium sized developers. And again, I don't want to undermine the task of QA'ing such a huge game, it's a lot of work.

Personally I think Cyberpunk is impressive on Switch 2 given the power constraints, particularly in handheld, but again, I've played it on my Steam Deck already. And that's 3 year old hardware by this point. So given that it's not really that big a deal. I don't think it looks much better on Switch 2 than Steam Deck, and I think the DLSS in play on S2 subjectively to me is a worse upscaler due to its particular artifacts.

@rallydefault since the Xbox one x (2017) the new standard for backward compatibility has been not just games being playable but them being improved. So higher frame rates. Higher resolution. Auto hdr. We have had a small amount of Nintendo games get free upgrades then a few get paid upgrades. The vast majority just play. I know Nintendo fans want to go on and on and make it seem like modern gamers are entitled and back in the day we played 64 with 10 fps so how dare anyone complain or expect upgrades when previously that wasn’t possible. But we live in this world. 2025. I grew up with a black and white tv with no remote. I played games on that tv. That doesn’t mean that games should be released in black and white and if they are no one should complain. Standards change. We should expect at minimum 1080p 60fps. That’s the bare minimum. Call me when backward compatibility has got us there for free!

To add to the above, thinking of minor configuration updates to existing games to take better advantage of the new hardware as being "free" or a "service" is ignoring the fact that the Switch 2 is not free. In fact it comes at a hefty premium with a tiny library of new games made exclusively for it. And its main competitor at this point is handheld PC's like the Steam Deck and soon the xbox branded line of ROG devices, where all of said "updates" are just a fundamental part of how they work. Have better hardware? You get to play your existing games at higher resolutions, framerates, and quality.

There's no longer a large gulf between the "plug-and-play" nature of the Switch 2 and those handheld PC's either, given how Switch 2 games like Cyberpunk now require you to choose between "graphics" and performance". Steam Deck and SteamOS is mostly as plug-and-play as the Switch platform with the added benefit of giving you all the options if you want them.

Nintendo's handheld no longer exists in a vacuum. And customers shouldn't have lower expectations of them out of a sense of "loyalty" or history. If Nintendo's hardware is no longer special, then they don't deserve special treatment.

Where does the idea that a platform needs its entire lifetime of exclusives in the first 6 months coming from?

PS4 had very little for years and did just fine.

@sixrings
Uhm... except no? Most Switch 1 games, even all of the many without any kind of patch, DO play better on Switch 2. Faster load times, higher resolution, etc. It depends from game to game, but the majority do run better on Switch 2 in some way.

So again, what else ya got?

The firmware updates that fix issues with backwards compatibility are fixes from Nintendo to the Switch 1 to Switch 2 translation layer.

However, in theory, if devs had dev kits, they could potentially find workarounds for bugs in the translation layer.

That's what LRG did for their Carbon Engine titles: they reported the root issue affecting their games in the translation layer to Nintendo, but then they also went ahead and submitted patches to workaround the translation layer bug so that players wouldn't have to wait for an unknown amount of time for Nintendo to fix the root issue.

@rallydefault if they do play better it’s because they had dynamic resolution and an unlocked frame rate on switch one. So that would mean that many of them had some pretty lousy performance on the original switch. I wouldn’t exactly celebrate that. And yes the hardware does naturally help those games get to what a switch ones performance should have been. So the very maximum is 1080p 60fps. Which is what I would say is the bare minimum. But let’s go with Nintendo games. Yoshi, peach, dread, all are bellow 1080p off hand. And there’s plenty of games like Luigi, paper mario not 60 FPS. And we all know we had to pay for Zelda or Kirby upgrades. Btw breath of the wild, tears and Kirby which people had to pay to upgrade still are not true 4k. We can’t get switch 1 games 4k except for NSMBUD???? So no this is not the standard set by other consoles.

I would hope the blatant double standard expressed here isn't lost on people reading this. You could just as easily argue that backwards compatibility, performance improvements and updates are just a fundamental part of how the Switch 2 ecosystem works. Or that the ability to access your Steam games "for free" on multiple devices ignores the fact that those additional devices are not free and things like new GPUs and portable PCs come at a hefty premium

You don't have to rip up one platform to recognise the qualities of your preferred platform. It's possible for both to have positives and negatives. I for one got my Steam Deck because it opened up flexibility for PC gaming and emulation. It's portable, more easily luggable and to an extent dockable. And yes, because it opened up my already existing library of PC games to portable play "for free"

Switch 2? I got it for similar reasons. It improves the performance of the games I've already purchased on Switch. It opens me up to already existing as well as upcoming Switch 2 exclusive and enhanced titles. It's just broadly a more improved and more modern version of the most frictionless gaming device I had. And yes, there are some games that have got enhanced versions that boost performance and in some cases asset quality "for free"

Yes PC gaming is still more flexible in terms of performance, licences, settings adjustments and so forth. PC also allows you to do whatever you want on the device. But that being true does not diminish the fact that Nintendo has done pretty well with the Switch 2 in terms of the generational transition. I don't see how Nintendo not charging full retail for the ability to play Splatoon 3 at 4K is a bad news story. Or the continued expansion and improvement of their emulation services rather than a hard reset. I just don't. These are good

Equally while I think Valve has made huge advances in "consolising" the PC experience with Steam OS and I think broadly Steam Deck is the gold standard in this space. It's not perfect. It's certainly not as plug and play as you'd expect from a console. You say there's no longer a large gulf here, and maybe subjectively it isn't "large" but there's definitely still a gap. But even so, there's a reason why when I went on holidays back in April I packed my Steam Deck and not my Switch OLED or Laptop

In any case, why does it have to be a competition? Why does one have to be "better"

@skywake No no, you don't get to claim that it's the same. For Switch 1 games to run on Switch 2, we're beholden for Nintendo and/or developers to make it work. There's plenty of games that simply don't run, and you can do nothing about it. You're not even allowed to patch the games yourself. That puts a bigger burden on Nintendo to do this job properly if they want to compete.

Valve's had to do the same type of work in making existing games run on Steam Deck via Proton, except they don't charge us for any of it, and even when they haven't gotten a game to run, they made the Proton platform itself on top of Wine and let the community fix rare obscure games they couldn't.

I am fully aware of the technical differences, but as a customer, I have been used to being able to play my existing library running better on new hardware as the default with a few rare exceptions of broken abandoned games (which a community can fix) on PC for decades. It used to be that the tradeoff was worth it for a console because on console you got games tuned and made specifically for that hardware, plug and play, which weighed up for both the pros and the often big cons of PC gaming.

This is no longer the case. We live in 2025. Expectations need to be higher. Especially with Microsoft entering the handheld space in addition to Valve practically perfecting it.

This isn't a console war discussion by the way, I don't care about that. I want people to hold Nintendo to a modern standard, that's all. I am disappointed as their customer. I bought the Switch 2 because it has the potential to be great given the unique hardware features and (hopefully some day great) first party library. I expected third-party support to be yet another generation of mostly bad ports. I'm still going to complain about its problems, like the really lazy backwards compatibility. Why isn't Pokemon Scarlet/Violet's approach the default here?

@skywake oh yes splatoon 3 in 4k forgot about that. NSMBUD and splatoon 3 in 4k!!!!!

I guess part of the frustration is I don’t want to have to own two systems. I was hopeful that I wouldn’t not need two eco systems. And within the first two months I realize that’s not going to happen. The backward compatibility is limited and games like fifa run at sub 60 fps. I’m doubly frustrated because I exclusively play docked. So I don’t get any of the benefits of the portability. If this was a console only at the same price the games would all run better and I could throw out that damn Xbox. This is my frustration.

Actually I’m also frustrated that my Nintendo games don’t all run at 4k 60fps. That might be the most frustrating thing. Even if the games were available on pc I could buy that but because I like Nintendo and because a good amount of people like portable I am having to play an inferior product on my 4k tv. That’s the most frustrating thing. Since Xbox one x in 2017 all of these Nintendo type games could have been 4k if the system was different.

@sixrings
I keep proving that you’re overreacting, you keep moving the goal posts.

This is tiring.

Most Switch 1 games, with or without a patch, run better and look better on Switch 2. End of story, morning glory.

That’s not good enough for you? Uhm… ok?

@rallydefault so you are ok with the very very very base minimum. I am crazy for expecting first party Nintendo switch one games to be 4k 60fps instead of 1440p. Switch games running marginally better on switch 2 is just that…. Better… it is not “good enough” as die hard Nintendo fans like to say as some sort of defense mechanism. And I have always maintained that for other games I would be OK not happy but OK with third party games being 1080p 60fps. Based on fifa I don’t think that’s a thing but again I am sorry you feel I was moving goal posts. I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that but I maintain that this is thee worst implementation of backward compatibility across the three systems. I hope that last sentence is consistent enough for you.

Once again I have had every single Nintendo system since the nes minus the virtua boy and a dk arcade cabinet. I am a Nintendo fan. It’s ok for me to not be happy with everything Nintendo does.

Truer words have never been said. Absolutely. No one gets to chastise or look down on you because you dont like what Nintendo did, does, or has done.

On that note, maybe stop doing the same for people who do like what Nintendo did, does, or has done.

I completely agree and I think this is a very fair post. To add something, when reviewing Nintendo Switch 2, Digital Foundry noticed how they tuned the saturation of Nintendo Switch 2 to better match that of Nintendo Switch 1. It's in their video about the (awful) screen of Nintendo Switch 2. They focused on the screen of the console, but since it's not pure backwards compatibility like on other Nintendo consoles, the output is also different when playing in TV mode.

On the one hand, I appreciate that Nintendo Switch 2 is somewhat backwards compatible and I understand this was influenced by the huge success of the predecessor but, unlike previous Nintendo consoles, the backwards compatibility makes games look or play worse in terms of colour and input lag, although performance can be better because of the more powerful hardware. It's a very interesting topic.

@Banjo-
am curious which games you tried on the switch 2 vs switch 1 since while i dont have a way of measuring i did try a couple of games side-by-side (since i have a physical and digital) with those being octopath 2 and sonic mania with input feeling the same though the image blurring was noticable especially with octopath 2 (due to it running lower res than sonic iirc)

again though i have no way of actually measuring so its not an official "test" by any means.

One of the reasons I'm not unhappy with how this has been handled is because of the reality of the situation (much like making smaller Micro SD Express cards not being any cheaper than making 256GB ones due to lower demand driving the opportunity cost of not making bigger ones instead, thus costing more to compensate supply side).

The Tegra X1 is a very old chip at this stage, production wise. To put one in every Switch 2 as they have done with past successor systems would be....insane. After a certain point, it becomes too expensive to justify keeping production open rather than just move on to something more cost effective.

So what do you do? Cant go out and manually update 15000 games to run on new architecture. Cant emulate it as that requires system resources. They can't just run natively on newer architecture. So build a translation layer instead.

We should have seen it coming, because Pikmin 1+2 and Super Mario 3D All Stars, while not the same, use similar principals in not exactly emulating but also running some things natively in a weird hybrid way.

Although the real funny part is finding out Mario + Rabbids was actually 60fps all the time but had a heavy vsync enabled that locked it to 30fps to keep it stable.

And that Hyrule Warriors was 1080p handheld, though we knew that since it ran awfully handheld.

@Mgalens The red colour is the best to notice the video output differences, so focus on the red elements when comparing the video output or screens of both consoles. The input lag, I guess some people are more sensitive than others, I notice immediately when it's not near zero, but some games manage that better than others because of the engine and code. Sonic Mania is good even on the unofficial 3DS port I tried.