Topic: Anyone else a bit unhappy with backwards compatibility?

@sixrings
Yes. You are crazy.

I put the game in. It plays. Different games have different graphics and looks and whatever. I like some of them and don’t like others. Some look great, some don’t. Some are fun to play, others aren’t.

I don’t get what’s so difficult here lol

It's pretty simple. The claim was that the free updates on Switch 2 are not free because it requires buying the Switch 2. But simultaneously the improvements to performance of games on PC are free because that's just how those platforms behave

All I'm highlighting is that Nintendo here has moved closer to the "buy one game licence, own across platforms, get updates and performance wins with be hardware" model. Something that PC has always had by the very nature of the platform. And that this is a good thing

And simultaneously I'm highlighting that if buying a Switch 2 to get performance gains on Switch software is a huge cost burden for improvements to performance? Then equally the same must be said of new PC hardware

You can't argue one side of the coin for one platform and a different side for the other. It's disingenuous and, frankly, I don't see why you feel the need to talk down one platform just to prop up your preferred platform

@skywake Because on PC I can modify the software. The community can fix things the publishers don't. See: From Software's games. Nintendo needs to step up its quality assurance game and demand more from publishers that want their games to be on their system, instead of accepting blurry unoptimized ports.

Don't try to make this into me having a "preferred platform". I'm using PC and Steam Deck as a direct comparison because Nintendo is now competing with Steam Deck. I would prefer a plug and play handheld system like the Switch 2, I really would. With Switch 1 for the first ~5 years I did prefer it, because there wasn't viable handheld competition, and so in that context it was perfect for handheld play. But things have changed.

@skywake
im curious, youve discussed a bunch of technical related stuff in the past and am wondering what the take is on the whole idea of the BC causing additional input lag, i know ive mentioned it a few times but its something ive seen a bunch of mixed results on especially when it comes to handheld mode (as mentioned most discussion seems to focus on either the pixel response of the screen which from what i gather is a seperate thing related to ghosting and also the gamecube emulation which isnt BC or a transition layer but rather full on emulation)

I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that the backwards compatibility could increase input lag for some games. The fact that it's a software layer means that not every hardware function has a one-to-one mapping and there may be a worse case scenario where games can run slower and with increased latency. It's not like there aren't a substantial number of games that are completely borked, after all.

Still, as much as there has been objective testing done, that doesn't seem to happen beyond the obvious example of the GameCube app, and even that's not particularly egregious, only being about a twentieth of a second more than you get with actual hardware hardware.

Still, with 15,000 games out there, I wouldn't like to make any overly broad generalizations.

@OmnitronVariant
Yes, on PC you can mod and adjust settings and on consoles things are relatively locked down. Thanks Sherlock for that stunning insight

Again, your complaint was that improvements to games when running on Switch 2 were not free because it requires buying the hardware. And as a counter example you cited how PC games allow you to run at higher settings

All I've done is point out that Nintendo blurring the generation boundaries moving their platform closer to what exists on PC is a good thing. And that the fact that Switch 2 costs money is an odd point to make given you are citing PC gaming which, as much as I love it, isn't exactly the cheapest hardware platform

@Mgalens
Repeating what @Matt_Barber said, it's certainly possible. I personally don't have the tools to measure it but anecdotally I haven't noticed it and, one assumes, if it was a significant issue it would have been widely reported. But I would say increased latency isn't inherent in their approach like it would be for pure emulation

Until presented with evidence to the contrary I would say the issues expressed in this thread boil down to:

• Poor TV setting choices
• The relatively high latency Switch 2 screen
• Imperfect scaling from 720p to 1080p
• Changing user expectations when jumping back to Switch software

I agree that non-upgraded Switch 1 games look worse on Switch 2. I think that's because a 4K TV upscales the picture when the original Switch sends a 1080p signal. The result is a smoother picture that hides all the jaggies.

However, with the Switch 2, the TV receives a signal that's already in 4K. Even Switch 1 games are technically being sent in a "4K" signal despite the in-game resolution being limited to 1080p. So the TV doesn't do anything with the picture when playing Switch games on Switch 2, because it still thinks the signal is in 4K. The result is a much sharper picture than on the original Switch, exposing all the ugly aliasing in the process.

I tried to play Mario Party Superstars the other day on Switch 2 and the characters look like they are outlined by pixels. The blurrier picture on the original Switch used to hide that.

I won't ask for the moon here. If Nintendo doesn't want to visually upgrade all their first-party games for whatever reason, that's fine. But man, just a toggle in the settings to slightly blurr the picture for non-upgraded Switch games would help.

@Humblepaysan
The only sense what you're saying would be true is if your TV is doing something funky when upscaling a 1080p image in a way that Switch 2 is not. 1080p to 4K is a perfect 2X scale and 720p to 4K is a perfect 3X scale. If anything Switch 2 should provide a cleaner image for Switch games when docked given that 720p wasn't uncommon

When you go to handheld mode it gets a bit funky because 720p doesn't scale cleanly into 1080p. Which means they have to do some kind of interpolation to figure out what those additional pixels should be. Which inevitably creates blur or aliasing (the impact of which IMO has been somewhat overblown). But docked? Yeah, that's not really a problem

@skywake
That's exacly my point. This "cleaner" image on Switch 2 is what causes me to see everything better, especially the aliasing and artefacts. Again, I would just want an option to smooth the edges if an upgrade is unavailable. I have spent over an hour in my TV's settings trying to hide all the jaggies in Mario Party Superstars and other non-upgraded Switch games. My TV's display is as "blurry" as possible. There's nothing more can do more for it.

@Humblepaysan There's a similar problem in handheld with a lot of titles. I want an option to be able to launch the games in the original 720p "size" with a black border on the larger Switch 2 display, much like how you can hold "Start" while launching DS games on 3DS to disable the upscaling that looks really bad in a lot of DS games.

But this time around, Nintendo just doesn't seem to care at all about how their existing games look and run on the Switch 2. Unless they can sell us an upgrade pack, that is.

@OmnitronVariant
The amusing thing here is that @Humblepaysan is actually complaining that the Switch 2 is scaling these games cleanly. Technically what they're asking for is an option to do exactly what you're complaining about but in docked mode

@Humblepaysan, if you set your Switch 2 to 1080p output it should do this. Why you would want that I don't know but still, should work

I have yet to encounter a Switch 1 game that looks weird on my Switch 2 screen. Not saying they don't exist, but yea, I've been through dozens of games and still haven't hit one of these that [certain] people are losing their minds over.

@skywake
I can do that. But then the games that looked good with a 4K or 1440p resolution look much worse.

I can change the resolution setting back and forth everytime between an non-upgraded game and the others, but that's annoying after a while. Again, just a toggle to smooth over specific games in the settings, if upgrades are out of the question.

My Steam Deck offers all kinds of options for this. I keep all my games at 1080p or even 720p and they still look nice because I can mess with the picture settings a lot more on this device. Why can't we have a mere toggle in Nintendo's most powerful hardware?

Nintendo want a simple to use platform which is designed for a wide age range including very young children. Yes you could upscale Switch graphics to maybe to 4K graphics and then downscale back down to the 1080p Switch 2 screen but that is a lot of processing power to do that. It will shorten battery runtime, create more input lag but you will get a better image. I just don't think that is something the Switch 2 is capable of. Much better for Nintendo to sell customised upgrades to games that deliver new optimised code to run original Switch 1 games to a higher level on Switch 2. Nintendo makes money from these patches either because of having to purchase them or being behind a paywall i.e. the Nintendo Online service. Switch 1 games looking a bit rough on Switch 2 is surely a good thing commercially if you sell upgrade packs separately.

The reality is most Switch 1 games look better emulated on other systems and run better too. It's only really the upgrade packs that make Switch 1 games on Switch 2 competitive with other formats. If you have a PC powerful enough you can play Switch 1 games at 4K 60fps with community upgrades on top. The Switch 2 hardware can't compete with that.

I'm still wondering when or if they're gonna fix Neir Automata on switch 2. Still says it's not compatible. That's the only major release I can think of that people really care about That's not fixed.

@Humblepaysan
I would argue that "I want to abuse the poor scaling performance of my TV for Switch games so they look blurry rather than the cleaner scaling of the Switch 2 hardware" is a relatively niche complaint. Especially given that the majority of the complaints about BC are about them doing quite literally what you want to see in portable mode

And in terms of the Steam Deck offering more options here and allowing you to set things per game. Sure. And there's some value to that flexibility. But may I just highlight the fact that you are pointing this out in response to me suggesting you change the resolution on a system level. That you're annoyed that you have to change the resolution here to get what you want

As a Steam Deck owner I can tell you now, the ability to change the resolution on Deck isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is that I have to change the resolution. Constantly. For every game. Every time I dock it. While, generally, on Switch 2 you set it once and are done. The fact that it's a bit more set and forget is kinda one of the main reasons I generally prefer Switch over PC

.... but again, sure, in your case your particular and I would argue fairly odd desire here for a lower quality upscale it's probably annoying. Although, to be fair, I would kinda hope that forcing a worse output should be annoying

@sixrings You're implying that the Switch 2 is worse than other consoles with back compat and since no one else seems to have really challenged you on this, I guess I will. Switch 2 back compat works identically to PS5's. Select titles receive free updates (which don't always bring them up to 4k btw, Last of Us 2 as an example is 1440p), some receive paid upgrades, and the rest run as they were originally unless they had DRS or an uncapped framerate. A PS4 exclusive game like Bloodborne is still 1080p 30fps on PS5 in 2025. Obviously it'd be nice if every game was 4k 60fps but a patch is needed for each game to reach that, and while it'd be nice for Nintendo to more speedily patch all of their Switch 1 games, Sony wasn't exactly quick with PS5 Patches either and 5 years on there's still a number of games that haven't gotten one. Switch 2 back compat is pretty great so far.

I'd say that the PS5 enjoys significantly better backwards compatibility, but much of that is down it being five years since the console launched, which has allowed them to whittle away at the list of games that don't work. At any rate, there's only six now, where the list for the Switch 2 still runs to the hundreds. Maybe they'll get there in the next five years; they've already managed to fix all the ones I've got, but I wouldn't be expecting it to hit single digits any time soon.

There are also a heck of a lot more games that have performance patches too. Again, that's partly due to the passage of time, but I gather that Nintendo has been relatively stingy with dev kits, telling a lot of the smaller indies to just keep making Switch 1 games.

I've been super impressed with the level of Switch 1 compatibility on Switch 2 but there are the issues that if you aren't using a upgrade pack the Switch 1 graphics don't upscale well to a 1080p screen and the Switch 2 display panel itself is fairly low end and not really HDR at all (Switch Lite screen is brighter with more accurate colours). Obviously there are some occasional compatibility issues because the hardware is so different but generally hats off to Nintendo for a brilliant job.

Personally I still think an OLED original Switch is a better portable platform for Switch 1 games. The colours just pop and of course the resolution of the panel is ideal for the resolution of the games and you get very good battery runtime but where an upgrade pack exists or you are prepared to pay for them then the Switch 2 becomes the better platform.