I thought it would be handy to have a separate thread for these, so we can keep up with Switch 2 updates by publishers other than Nintendo itself.
AFAIK, so far the third-party Switch 1 games which have already received an update which specifically upgrades them to look and run better on Switch 2 are No Man's Sky and Fortnite. Maybe there are others that I've missed though, I'd love to hear about them.
I noticed that Harvestella received an update after the Switch 2's launch, which is interesting because AFAIK it hadn't gotten any updates or patches since after it was released in 2022. I think this update was only to fix backwards compatibility issues the game had with Switch 2 though, since it was included on Nintendo's list of games with such issues. I played the game for a bit on the Switch 2 and didn't see any improvements compared to how it looks on Switch 1, except for the automatic upscaling that comes from the console itself. That's a bit disappointing, since on Switch 1 the game clearly runs at a lower the native resolution, which makes the visuals look kinda soft and blurry, and they still look the same on Switch 2. It'd be great if Square Enix released a Switch 2 update to fix this, since surely the new console can run Harvestella at 1080p or even 4K resolution.
We're going to get a lot of performance enhancements out of the box without updates. This seems to be Nintendo's emulation target. Any quality updates will need direct patches such as resolution, textures, lighting, and anything that could take advantage of the actual hardware. We're still seeing games that are CPU-bound on Switch 1, like Dragon Quest Builders, which still doesn't run great on Switch 2. It would need a direct patch to transfer compute units to the GPU. This is one example of issues that we're running into.
Overall, many games will hit 60FPS or a locked 30 with rare dips in performance.
Based on my own collection: Saints Row 3 and 4, MegaDimension Neptunia, Lollipop Chainsaw and Red Faction Guerilla all run 60 fps. Batman Arkham Knight actually runs the way its supposed to now. And I believe the Darksiders games also run a lot more smoothly
If they can get Astral Chain to run at 60fps I'll be over the moon
My biggest disappointment with S2 so far is the lack of performance updates for S1 games. If I can play S1 games in 1080p handheld without upscaling from 720p, the console will definitely be worth the price to me.
So, it looks like Dave the Diver will be the first "indie" game to get a free Switch 2 upgrade. (I know it's was actually developed and published by fairly large companies, that's why I put the word indie in quotes, but it certainly looks like an indie game.) A lot of indie studios probably don't have the resources to provide such updates for their Switch 1 games, but it'd definitely be nice to see upgrades for games like Wavetale or Manifold Garden or The Pathless, whose graphics were clearly downgraded so they could run on the Switch 1, whereas the Switch 2 could probably run them on the same higher settings as other platforms do. I'd be even willing to pay something like 2–5 euros for such upgrades.
@Polvasti I think No Man's Sky counts as an indie and it got a whole free Switch 2 edition.
But yeah, a ton of indies could use updates but not many will get them unless they think they can use it as advertising to sell a bunch of more copies. Same with third party games in general.
@FishyS Yeah, you're right, NMS is definitely an indie game. For some reason I remembered it was published by some larger company, but no, it says Hello Games right there on the spine of its Switch case.
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Topic: Switch 2 upgrades/updates for third-party Switch 1 games
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