Topic: Nintendo finally details the game and visual enhancements to the Switch 1 games that are getting free updates on Switch 2

It's insane how many people expected the SV upgrades to fully change the game immensely. Saw some people who were complaining that the upgrades aren't including a fully redesigned open world map that isn't empty.

Even if we get an upgraded version that fixes the main issue of the game- being FPS, people are still going to find ways and reasons to complain. I'm genuinely tired of being a fan of this series because of how the other fans constantly have to find something to get angry over. It doesn't help that people who do enjoy Scarlet and Violet tend to get mocked or punched around for liking it.

"the game will receive a free update to improve performance and resolution"
: )

"it's fundamentally still the same game though"
> : (

If I had a nickel for every time a gaming franchise I enjoy became the target of unanimous hate online, I'd have two nickels.

_{Which isn't a lot, but it's strange that it's happened twice.}

@VoidofLight
To be fair, one of the main criticisms for the visuals in S/V was the poor texture work which looks to be entirely unchanged. So I can understand people being disappointed in the Switch 2 patch. Frankly I'd also count myself as one of those who is disappointed here.... if not for the fact that wasn't really expecting much from it anyways

I'm sure a lot of the frame rate issues will be fixed with it. But the higher resolutions with little to improve the existing assets..... yeah..... I'm concerned it'll do little more than just give you a clearer look at the low quality assets

As long as they fix the strange geometry bending and pop in, I don't really dislike the graphics.

@skywake While I dislike the lower quality textures, I wasn't really expecting anything outside of FPS increases. Mainly because they've probably moved on to Gen 10 already, and are putting their full focus onto that- along with what they're doing with Z-A.

I feel like the FPS issues being fixed is going to at least make the game playable- even if it won't look the absolute best. More people who got sick from the FPS issues will be able to enjoy the gameplay and the side content that the game has at the least.

Just hoping gen 10 has improved texture work, and that's one of the reasons they took an extra year- outside of the anniversary coming up next year.

@VoidofLight
I'm assuming most of the changes here are removing framerate/resolution caps, increasing LoD cut distances, increasing the distances where framerates for distant assets drop. Then using any additional GPU budget to push the resolution higher. All of which is welcome but I can understand why people wanted to see more, realistic or not, because I also would have liked to see more

I will say that as someone who skipped S/V, which apparently isn't many of us looking at the sales, of the free updates here the game I'm considering getting that I skipped is not S/V. TBH I'm kinda interested in maybe grabbing New SMB U which I skipped on Switch given I had it on Wii U.....

I don't have the memory of a goldfish, but if you really want me to bump this thread in a few weeks to say "I told you so" I will.

Because you ignored this point but unless I missed it Nintendo still as of yet had not said any games will be enhanced naturally without a patch and the ones that are enhanced they are charging for or advertising then as free updates on their website. Why?

You can have whatever theory you like about Switch 2 if it tickles your Jimmies, but hopefully you'll come up with an explanation for why Nintendo isn't advertising that feature when both Sony and Microsoft did since those consoles did actually enhance games naturally. Are they just dumb? Is Nintendo so incompetent they merely forgot to advertise this very cool feature, or what? After all they told us everything else about what the platform does, including yesterday apologizing for failing to include VRR in docked mode.

But somehow you want me to believe they are failing to inform their consumers about a hugely positive thing the Switch 2 does automatically?

Sorry dude don't make me laugh. Unless you can come up with a plausible explanation for why this is, odds are it is not there.

I have never once in all my years buying Nintendo hardware - since NES - have i ever discovered some surprise feature that Nintendo failed to disclose before hand. So did I miss their comment on this subject? If so, link me and I'll concede.

But you can't, can you? And why i ask again do you think that is?

To be fair to @Quantumz00’s point, although I hate I’m saying this, if the switch 1 games are more so being emulated…. Then we already know Nintendo’s policy towards emulating old software is to keep the software running exactly as it did on original hardware.

@Quantumz00 As someone who's been building and upgrading PCs for over twenty years, the major performance boost you notice when upgrading is the ability to hit a game's frame rate cap consistently on the same settings after say, replacing the CPU and GPU, where once they may have waivered between 30-60fps for example.

Once you give a system twice the number of CPU cores, a better GPU and 3x the RAM, this is inevitable, even taking into account the translation layer which allows Switch 1 games to run on the new hardware. The approach Nintendo has taken is a hybrid of sorts, meaning that older software can take advantage of the improved specification. It’s similar to how Valve uses Proton to run windows code on Linux. A translation layer to run code that wouldn’t run on a specific platform.

Nintendo is probably not reporting this because it's really just the hardware doing the heavy lifting, so it's not technically a software update. It's also possible that those in charge of marketing and communications aren't fully grasping the importance of these improvements or are not being made aware of them by the technical team.

Nintendo has mis-communicated a lot when it comes to the Switch 2 since its full reveal on April 2nd and this is just yet another prime example of that. I'm really not sure why you're surprised at this point.

So why did Sony and Microsoft report that even when it was just the system naturally boosting games? Why is Nintendo the only company not telling its consumers this feature exists naturally on SW2?

I know it seems like im being hardheaded, but its the entire ballgame. It makes no strategic sense to withhold that info, and Nintendo has never kept secret a benefit of a platfotm if it exists. Even if its not a number one reason to buy a system, it could still pull in more customers here and there for them. But they stay silent.

I hope your guys optimism is well placed, because after all I have a Switch 2 preorder and this will greatly benefit me and my tastes. But I won't get my hopes up for something that won't be there, because as a Nintenfo fan my whole life i know how this song and dance ends up. If it was there, they would have said so.

But we only have two weeks~ left until it comes out, although this issue is yet another reason why I hope Nintendo gets systems out to publications for review. These are exactly the sort of details we would find out, since Nintendo is withholding according to you guys.

This is the exact same thing that played out with VRR, or the clock speeds.

People were like "oh no if it has vrr when in mobile mode no way its not in docked mode, Nintendo just made a mistake!"

Nope, they just apologized for omitting VRR in docked mode.

People couldn't believe the clocks were set higher in mobile mode than docked mode, but when they did the deep dive analysis this did indeed turn out to be the case. Why? We can only speculate.

Technically they apologized for accidentally saying there was VRR when there wasn't. I suspect they would have preferred to say nothing either way if they hadn't made a mistake and listed on their website that VRR was a docked feature.

As to the 'why aren't they talking about general game improvements' I can think of quite a few reasons:

• 1. It's well known that's how computers typically work when hardware is having a pretty direct upgrade.
• 2. Nintendo likes advertising gimmicks and isn't so big on advertising subtle technical aspects even if they are positive. Hence the 5,000 of hours of gamechat ads even though that is not the most exciting part of Switch 2.
• 3. Nintendo wants to focus on 'buy these specific new or refurbished games' rather than 'buy that random third party game on your wishlist which may now have a more stable framerate'
• 4. It's definitely not true games will get universally better. Nintendo has a whole list of games on their website which got worse (or even broke). Going through all 15,000 games and saying this game was improved, this game is the same, this game is worse would be nice but Nintendo hasn't even managed to figure out all the ones which have issues.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/05/heres-your-first-lo...

Okay, now I'm kinda seeing what @skywake is getting excited for as far as updates to processing power. Larger spawn radius/spawn density in the Switch 2 upgrade for SV is a pretty useful improvement and a worthwhile usage of the Switch 2's improved specs, I've always thought the overworld spawns in the Switch 1 Pokemon games were too limiting, and having more spawns at once means less grinding to find the Pokemon you want (especially helpful for shiny hunting which requires you to sift through literally hundreds or even thousands of spawns). I would still categorize this as a minor QoL improvement rather than a major foundational mechanic to build a new, next gen game around, but this is definitely a noticeable improvement that's a good argument for why stronger hardware may be needed (even if it's not quite the upgrade people would prefer out of a next-gen patch for SV). Still feels a bit more like a Switch Pro than a proper Switch 2, but I'm somewhat impressed, I'll take it.

I mean, I did, I gave a technical explanation for what I'm saying. You just want to ignore what I said because it doesn't align with your non-technical "marketing vibes" argument. Which is fine, but also wrong. As I explained the technical reasons why Switch games should perform better on Switch 2, it is not a Switch SoC in the Switch 2, it is a translation layer. They are not going to throttle the RAM/CPU/GPU/Storage of the Switch 2 to create an "authentic" Switch experience on Switch 2. That'd be significant development effort for a worse outcome. It just doesn't make sense for them to do that

So it stands to reason that Switch games running on Switch 2 will load faster and generally not drop frames or resolution like they did on Switch. Because there's just significantly more resources available

Nintendo doesn't tend to do this kind of thing. Even in the page linked above on this post they don't talk about specifics of what these enhanced versions are bringing and suspiciously omitted any talk of framerate improvements for the 2D Zelda games. You want an example of verifiable enhancement to Switch games via BC before the Switch 2 launches from a company who's generally shy of highlighting technical things such as this.... well, ok.... here is a small clip from the Switch 2 Direct

Catch that? Blink and you'll miss it. That's a clip of Yoshi's Crafted World. A game not getting a Switch 2 edition or Switch 2 free patch, or at least not getting an announced patch. We can only assume that this would be running on the Switch 2 via just general BC. Yet they show it loading the game faster citing improvements to the performance of the storage subsystem

So yeah, two things this shows:
1. Switch games should perform better on Switch 2 "automatically" (within the constrains of the Switch code)
2. Nintendo doesn't highlight this kind of stuff

@Quantumz00 they might not be highlighting it for the reason that doing so may cause confusion.

Assume - for example - practice games with unlocked frame targets will experience an improvement whereas those that are locked to 30 fps won’t. But who (outside of a small and very passionate sub culture) has any idea which games have unlocked fps and which are locked? They never advertise it anywhere - if you know it’s probably only because of DF. Some games have locked frames in “menu” areas and unlocked in actual gameplay.

Even if they already have a list of games that will experience a natural frame or resolution boost it’s very difficult for them to communicate it. Better (& safer) to say nothing.

@Eel ah but the NSO for N64 does significantly improve resolution and frame rates in some games depending on how they were programmed. Pilotwings 64 for instance.

They are not throttling anything. There are multiple ways to make do emulation. Some ways, as in even Nintendo's past efforts, do not take advantage of any extra hardware power to naturally enhance anything. They emulate the games as-is, warts and all.

I understand the blind faith, but i've never been a fanboy and I just cant or won't give Nintendo any benefit of the doubt given their history of consistently under delivering on things like this. Im paying 530 with tax for their platform, they should tell us what the platform does and not hide features that we should lmao just "expect" to be there even though Nintendo has a long history of failing to include things that "should" be there. I expect nothing unless they say it is there.

Your Yoshis Crafted world example is laughable, because that is not equivalent to Nintendo failing to inform their however many millions of potential pre orders and future orders of this very cool thing the system does to all emulated games without any effort.

And there's actually even a range of possibilities within this sphere. For example, you mention loading. With the SSD accelerated stuff, it is possible Switch 1 games might load faster - but still have no other enhancements besides that.

Nobody will convince me that Nintendo is gleefully sitting on their hands about a major feature of the platform, and this idea that we should assume hardware automatically accelerates/enhances emulation in some way is to me silly, given all the examples we have of precisely that not happening. These things aren't even without precedent, but you think kind hearted mega corporation is just including features for our surprise without telling us.

As long as it makes you happy to believe this, you do you. Im not trying to prevent your comically unwarranted optimism. Im just going to continue to be skeptical until i see evidence otherwise, because im a rational person and dont give faceless corporations the benefit of the doubt.

SO I will await actual hands on confirmation so that if it doesn't happen im not sitting there disappointed by yet another glaring Nintendo omission. This is a subject I will gladly be wrong on.

Anyway, im just glad for now Nintendo is updating some games for free, and my hope is that they will expand this program and not forget about it a few months hence.

StuTwo: they don't need to even get specific to confirm this feature. They can say, like Sony or Microsoft have in the past, "emulated titles are enhanced by our ps5 hardware. Experiences may vary, as well as the type of enhancements you'll experience in each game ."

The end. It is not rocket science but we are acting like Nintendo is incapable of confirming this simple thing. It is not like im hinging my entire purchase on whether or not emulated games are naturally hardware enhanced! I just would like to be informed about the product im buying fully!

You really don't have a clue what you're talking about. GC compatibility on Wii was not emulation, the Wii had the exact same architecture as the GC so when running in GC mode they simply lowered the clock speeds. Wii compatibility on the Wii U was not emulation, the Wii U SoC was basically an extension of the Wii architecture so when you jumped into Wii mode parts of the processors were turned off or underclocked to turn it into, effectively, a Wii (it's a bit more complex but for the sake of simplicity lets leave this here)

3DS, DS, GBA, GB? That whole BC chain was basically a case of the old CPU becoming a co-processor in the new system. The GBA had a Z80 (ish) in it to allow GB games to run, the DS had am ARM7 processor which could run GBA games, the 3DS had an ARM9. Literal raw hardware compatibility. All of them

Which is why BC for all of those systems did not take advantage of the new hardware. They were, effectively, not running on the new hardware. They were running on the old hardware, literally and physically, in a box within the new hardware. As in when you were in these BC modes electrically it was the old hardware

Emulation is different to this. With emulation what you do is build a machine within the machine in software. It's an application which runs the application. When you're playing an N64 on NSO for example it doesn't physically light up the N64 circuits on your Switch. There is no N64 on the Switch PCB or SoC. What it does is load an application which simulates an N64. Which has overheads, obviously, but if you have enough power you can choose to run the game faster or tweak the parameters of the virtual system. Usually for compatibility you try to align the settings and dials with the original hardware

The Switch 2 is not hardware compatible with Switch and BC is not being done by emulation. It's neither of these. Switch code on Switch 2 runs through a translation layer. In effect this means that the Switch code becomes a Switch 2 code when running on Switch 2. There's an overhead, sure, but the overhead will be small compared to the significant boost in power. Effectively BC on Switch 2 will be like a quick and dirty port from Switch to Switch 2 has been done on the fly

These games will run better on Switch 2, assuming the translation layer is able to align the API calls. No amount of corporation bashing and dooming will change that. It's just a statement of reality. Is it possible they could make it so that they games run as they did on Switch? Sure. But that would require development effort and possibly even tuning on a per game basis. Which is ludicrous. I can't see them going out of their way to make these games run worse in this way, especially when they've already shown Switch games running better on Switch 2

To be clear, this doesn't mean I am expecting Switch games to suddenly run at 4K/120Hz with HDR. They won't. They're not programmed to because they're programmed for the Switch which cannot do these things. But I do expect a game that had memory bandwidth issues or hammered the CPU in loading zones to suddenly find that those bottlenecks no longer exist like they used to

There are just so many assumptions youre making in order to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt they simply have not earned here. Again, youre hoping these things are going to work this way. You have no evidence this will be the case, to once again be crystal clear. Produce evidence and the discussion quickly ends, won't it? At least im aware I don't know how it will work. The difference between you and I is I actually admit it, and will wait for an actual answer.

You can elaborate whatever reasons you want for why this time it'll be different- i swear mommy - but i will continue to wait for evidence and openly question why Nintendo is staying quiet about this feature. I can assure you, most consumers do not assume the hardware will automatically be improving their past software, so your own personal religious faith in their intent is irrelevant.

In other news, Nintendo just updated the page to change the part that said HDR was in Bowsers Fury only, looks like the entire Super Mario 3D has HDR now!

@Quantumz00
They put out a developer asks outlining how BC works. Given it works that way it would require effort to throttle performance in such a way that these games run as they did on Switch. And I can't see Nintendo expending development effort on that given they're putting effort into improving performance and highlighting things like improved load times of S1 games

You ask for evidence? I'm bringing to this discussion technical knowledge, development experience, Nintendo's explanation of how this works and the known performance gulf between S1 and S2. You're bringing vibes and corporate bashing. Perhaps it is you who should explain why you are correct here given everything we have seen on Switch 2 suggests you are wrong

@NinChocolate
Yeah, that's a fairly good analogy. I think people just need to recognise that, functionally, this is more like PS4/XBOne code running on PS5/XBS than it is a game running in an emulator. If they don't patch it you're not going to get the higher resolutions or framerates or improved asset quality. But even without updates, assuming the compatibility doesn't break, you should see the game comfortably hit targets it would've struggled to hit on original hardware

That is not evidence. Evidence is Nintendo saying "because of this, most of your switch games will be improved naturally by just playing on the switch 2!"

But they didn't.

You just assume it is happening, without evidence.

Despite Nintendos long history of not delivering exactly this.

Because of your "technical prowess", we are to believe this companies oversight.

Welp, let's hope you are right bud. That's gonna be soooome egg on your face If the only thing that improves is loading times.

Ill just be sitting happy to know the ganes are enhanced, im cool with being wrong. Because I don't place blind faith in corporations.

@Quantumz00 So let me get this straight, @skywake presents actual technical knowledge on why it would be MORE work for a worse result, and you argue against it with the good ol' vibes argument? You clearly have no idea what you're talking about and it shows man. I'm genuinely not trying to be rude, but you're making yourself look really silly rn.