Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Ray Tracing is nice in theory (and it certainly has the potential to be gorgeous as movie CGI has shown), but so far the games that have supported it on PC haven't actually looked better for it. Maybe that'll change once XBSX and PS5 are the targets on consoles and the devs are starting to design with Ray Tracing in mind, but as of now, I'm not convinced it's going to be a huge improvement any time during the next generation. Maybe by the time the PS6 and XB whatever roll around it'll have been refined enough...

I’m playing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on Switch right now and it looks incredible. It’s not as good looking as Odyssey, but it still looks excellent and all the gameplay systems are intact. I’m having as much if not more fun than playing Odyssey on my X1X. Only difference is, one I can play anywhere, and the other I’m stuck in one place at home.

Graphics are nice. We all like them. I don’t ever want someone to misconstrue this and think that I’m saying graphics don’t matter. Graphics are lovely. I want better graphics.

That said, graphics are abruptly hitting a point of diminishing returns. Next gen won’t feel much different than this one, and this one hasn’t felt much different than the last one- hence the mid gen refreshes. The closer we get to butting up against this limit of returns the more frequently they’re going to have to push to increase graphics.

We aren’t quite there yet, which is why right now the only reason I’m awaiting the next generation Switch is so that all the 8th gen games can run and performance can be ironed out. And I think once we get to that point where 8th gen Power comes to a hybrid system, we’re there. We’re there. I could play games with graphics of that caliber for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy. So we’re close. 5 more years and we’re there.

@ViewtifulJotun It's Switch-related, so yes, you've posted in the right thread.
I've noticed it as well. It isn't exactly the same effect though, unfortunately (in my opinion). Before, it was more like a fuzzy, colored glow, almost like coming from tube lighting, and now it is a very sharp, defined line, so they did change back the colors, but it's not the exact same original effect that we had before.

This kind of bugs me. Better technologies should EXPAND the number of possible art styles for games. But for some reason, when developers can make worlds that look however they want in any way imaginable, they choose to replicate reality.

A good example of using modern graphics technology creatively is something like Into the Spider-verse, which legitimately looks like a comic book.

@iKhan borderlands, xii, Tetris effects... there's plenty of games which use raw power to make better looking games which aren't realistic. Crash bandicoot, super lucky tale, all look better on other consoles.

I doubt the push for ray tracing is going to affect most developers unless there are certain outliers who consistently attempt to replicate realistic texturing and shading in their games, particularly developers like FromSoftware, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision, EA and Rockstar

I think it'll definitely open up the door to show how close we can actually get to photo realism if that in engine footage of Hellblade II on the Series X is anything to go by

Photorealism I doubt will be the norm going forward but I also eagerly await to see how much developers can leverage out of technologies such as ray tracing and machine learning

I do know for sure that visual variety will always be a thing in the games market, I wouldn't hold my breath on that just dissipating away in favor of more games that attempt to mimic reality

It's moreso about what games require that attention to detail in the first place

It's not like Arc System Works' next fighting game adapting an anime property will suddenly render the models as photorealistically as humanly possible because that just wouldn't fit

@sixrings
I prefer Cartoonish graphics with vivid color rather than OMG ultra HD realistic graphics.
Gameplay does matter for me than graphic.
Just look at FF XV case.
I didn't even like at all with OMG Ultra HD realistic graphic.
I felt even more disgusted by the ultra beefy graphics.
I'm interested more with minimalist or Cartoonish graphic like some Indie developers did and it looked more beautiful than realistic graphics.

"But great graphics do make good gameplay feel better."

Not always.
Just look at FF XIII case.

@Anti-Matter yes but you're a notorious contrarian. Cartoon graphics btw look better on other consoles. Sonic, crash, lucky all ran at 1080p or 4k with HDR!

Of course those games look better on other consoles which are more powerful. Nobody is debating that. But simply “looking better“ at the cost of extreme restrictions in how and where you can play is a poor tradeoff.

The point is they don’t look that much better. They look 95% as good and without sacrificing mobility. So it comes down to whether you want a severely crippled experience for a game that looks 5% better. Like the landline telephone, it may have better call quality and even cheaper calls, but once you use a cell phone that can be used anywhere, it’s really hard to go back. The calls may drop from time to time and it’s definitely not as clear, but the functionality of using it anywhere absolutely trumps everything else.

@JaxonH I guess I just don't game outside of the living room. So the few hours I game I'd prefer less sacrifices. I'm not taking a switch to bed with me. My wife would divorce me. I'm not commuting with the switch, I jog or drive. And I have more than one tv so I can always find a spot. So I don't know what I need the portability for. The rare times I've taken it into the hot tub is for YouTube not gaming.

@sixrings
I never said it was the best choice for you, I’m simply pointing out why it’s not the best choice for others. Just because you don’t like the flexibility of playing games anywhere other than one designated place doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with other people for not seeing things the same way.

You came in here talking about how games look “in 4K!!!” as if everyone is supposed to be astonished at that. We’ve mostly all got other consoles. We all know what games in 4K look like. It’s nice, but eh. Ain’t much different than 1080p tbh. We’re not so easily razzle dazzled by a little more visual flourish to the point we’d sacrifice popping the system out of a dock and gaming in the kitchen when cooking corn dogs, or in the recliner while a game installs for 6 hrs on the X1, or at work on our break, or at our siblings’ houses when visiting and want something to do, or passing the time at the car dealership getting oil change and tires rotated, or even just for the intimacy of gaming on a handheld screen every now and then that no console can deliver.

There are still games that greatly benefit from more power, but not because chasing reality is superior. But rather, because hybrid gaming isn’t quite yet to the level of power that any game can be scaled to run properly. Hence my comments about being close- next gen Switch should do it, and every game henceforth should be able to run and look great on a hybrid platform, all while retaining 95% of the visual appeal, as many 7th gen games (and some current gen) on Switch do now. But even now, so many games look nearly identical yet offer infinitely more ways to enjoy (and not just with respect to portability, but also gyro aiming and multiple controller options). It’s a system built on a foundation of convenience and catering to the limitations of your lifestyle. Rather than demanding you build your gaming habits around the limitations of the system.

And... nobody cares if that’s not the gaming lifestyle for you. There will always be those who only play on the TV and as such see no benefit. And that’s fine. The question is, why you’re coming into a Nintendo Switch thread to tell everyone how gaming on power consoles is so much better. It comes across as “Kneel, and know that my way is superior... 4K baby!!!”

X1 is powerful and runs F76, then the game crashes, stutters, bugs out, decides to phantom kill the player, or otherwise break. I don’t get killed by a goomba that’s hidden in a rock in Mario Odyssey. Bigger isn’t better.

It’s not like Nintendo started having non-par hardware experiences overnight. It’s been this way since GCN. Gamers getting a Switch knew the deal going in.

@HobbitGamer
I enjoyed 3DS as much as PS4 the majority of this decade. Bigger indeed isn’t necessarily better. The games were just so good.

That said, 3DS was severely limited to the point the gaming experiences suffered and had to be dialed back to the extreme. And so in that case, I would say that more power has had a significant impact in the Switch Lite’s ability to offer the best handheld gaming experience.

But I think the 7th gen power threshold is where “more power” stops making significantly superior experiences possible, and only offers performance, stability and higher visual fidelity (which is increasingly becoming more of a resolution increase than anything else). Which, those are good things. Don’t misunderstand. Definitely good things. But for a quality port- you can play the exact same game anywhere, with gyro aiming, and the only difference is you’re playing in 720p on the handheld or 900p/1080p on the TV instead of 2160p on the TV. It still looks great, and at the end of the day is exactly as much fun to play once you have a controller in hand, only now you have things like gyro aiming that make the game twice as fun to experience. It makes playing with strictly dual analog feel like a step back as much as aiming with 2 dpads. And of course the freedom to undock can’t be over-stated.

Right now there is a certain segment of games that are a bit too much for Switch, where significant concessions must be made. And for those particular games, I can still appreciate playing on a more powerful system. But the vast majority look 95% as good, and they’re looking better all the time. Alien Isolation actually looks better (and has gyro). Ori and the Blind Forest actually runs better, and at 1080p looks identical. Assassin’s Creed Rebel Collection looks splendid, a fair middle ground between last gen and current (and handheld looks better than on a 4ktv, and it has gyro, which is a game changer for naval battles, hunting jaguars, spear hunting sharks/whales, etc). Once we have the next generation Switch in hand, I may never touch another console again, barring the odd exclusive here and there.

Switch has already made my GPD Win 2 obsolete in terms of Steam games. All the games I had on that system when I got it, are mostly deleted. As one by one, they released on Switch, and ran better, looked better, had gyro, and could be easily played back and forth on the tv. It’s still got value in terms of portable GameCube/Wii games (at least, the ones which easily map to a controller), but once Metroid Prime Trilogy and Xenoblade HD release on Switch, most of that appeal will be lost too (F-Zero GX is still a gem though, and Lost Story and Baiten Kaitos)

@JaxonH You just made me imagine Last Story and Baiten Kaito's HD Remasters and I'm dying a little inside now knowing that will never happen. At least F-Zero GX coming back stands a ghost of a chance... someday.

That's not really something you can know for sure ahead of time. New graphical techniques and more general programming techniques are invented all the time, and it's almost completely random how much they'll have an effect.

If you look at some of the more specific areas, you can see pretty huge improvements over the last 2 gens. One example would be the amount of detail they can get into an open-world game. Look at the difference between something like Oblivion at the beginning of the 7th gen, up to Red Dead 2 at the end of the 8th gen. The difference is huge.

That's not remotely a good comparison. Bethesda games are never the best looking by any stretch of the imagination, and Red Dead 2 came out 5 years after Rockstar's last game and had all the money in the world to make it.

Graphic power doesn't mean much if you don't have a screen accompanying the new tech.

1080p is 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
And 4K is 3840 x 2160 pixels (Full HD x 4)

Graphic power and screen resolution have to go in tandem. Playing the next XBox on a Full HD screen is not the way to go. Half of the consoles power (and half of the electricity) would be wasted.

Going from 1080p to 4K needs a console four times as powerful at least, so that you can have the same graphics you have now just in a quadrupled resolution.

But people don't just want the same graphics in a higher resolution, do they?
They want better graphics with more details, so consoles must be more than just 4 times as powerful as they are now.

For me personally, we live in times where it doesn't make sense to release a new home console until most people have the latest screen technology at home.

@SKTTR unless you buy 32 inch and under most tv's are 4k with some tv's being 8k. What's worse is very few of the 32 tv's are 1080p anymore. 32 and under seems to be made for the budget buyer and are often 720p. It's harder and harder to find a good 1080p tv to match the switch. Plus in general I watch far more tv than I spend time with games. So I'm going to buy my tv with tv viewing as the priority since its the future anyways.

@Dezzy
Of course there’s improvements, but diminishing returns are real. And every generation will see fewer returns than the one before, I can say that with confidence because it took 8 years for the 7th gen to move on and yet the cross gen games didn’t look any different. That had never happened before. And now, nearly 15 years after 7th gen started, and I look at games that don’t seem that much different. Of course there’s a difference and of course they look better but they just don’t look that much different. That’s also part of why games are becoming more scalable.

@Dezzy
You can, though. People are throwing around "photorealism" in this thread. If that's the goal, here's how you can envision how those games will look:

Open your eyes.

Boom. There you have it. Photorealism. Now just put that on a screen, and there you have it.

Put me in the "cartoony" graphics camp. Games for me have always been an escape into fantasy as far from the real world as possible. I want to be jumping on mushrooms and stomping turtles with big eyes. I want to be flying through rings or boosting a tiny go kart off ramps that barely clear pipes with piranha plants chomping at my heels.

I don't want photorealism in my games. I have life for that. And movies. And music. And books.

In my games, I want the devs to focus on gameplay. I've thought games look "photorealistic" since the 360/PS3, to be honest. But that's also about the time I started to find gameplay more and more lacking, and titles less and less creative and willing to take risks. "Risk," nowadays, is something like Death Stranding: ultra-realistic, even more cinematic than usual, and that's just not my bag. It might be some of you guys' preferred gameplay, but definitely not mine.

I want games that test my reflexes. Platforming. Lovable characters but not a novel's worth of reading and self-aware cutscenes. You don't need much more power than what we already have to do this stuff. My absolute favorite games of the last half decade? Shovel Knight. Stardew Valley. Celeste. To me, those are games. They are fun. Some of them have messages, but they are subtle and only enhance the gameplay, not overpower it. Most importantly, photorealism would make any of those games... kinda dumb. And not games.