Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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.

I just remember playing wcw nwo world tour on n64 and thinking... this is it, were at the height of graphics in gaming lol.

I actually remember calling my dad up to my room and showing him how damn good it looked.

We’ll never be at the true height of graphics. They will always be able to improve. But the average increase per unit time is decreasing, as has been for over a decade now. Like an infinite series function, it’s approaching a limit. It’s convergent, not divergent. And every additional term in the series grows smaller and smaller and smaller.

That’s exactly what we see with graphics as a function of time. It will impress less, and less, and less.

Hellblade II on the Series X (graphics from 9th gen power)

Hellblade on Xbox One (graphics from 8th gen power)

Hellblade on Switch (graphics from 7th gen power)

Excerpt of a reddit post from a video game artist at Guerrill...

@JaxonH I think the Wii is why 7th gen lasted so long. Sony and Microsoft had their usual "most powerful console" battle but Wii was so successful that instead of releasing 8th gen around 2010 they created Wii-like devices then instead (Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's PS Move) leading to 7th gen lasting a bit longer. Of course the reason why 8th gen has lasted so long is the mid-gen revisions (XB1X and PS4 Pro).

@Grumblevolcano
There may be some truth to that but I think if you get to the heart of the issue, it’s because it takes longer for technology to make the same leap. So generations now need 7-8 years instead of 5-6, and they need mid-gen refreshes just to keep the consumer engaged, because the graphical leap is so much smaller.

Naughty Dog and a few other companies will turn out a handful of utterly amazing-looking games each gen that show off the true potential of each hardware jump. For 90% of other developers, though, the games won't look significantly different from the kinds of stuff they were outputting last gen.

Versatility and other potential benefits of next-gen hardware will become increasingly important over time as hardware butts up against this ceiling of decreasing polygonal returns. This is already starting on PS5, actually. Sony is making a lot of noise about "instant" loading of games on the PS5's SSD and 3D audio. They know they're going to need a way to differentiate their hardware from Scarlett.

@linq Please. By the time we get multiplatform games actually developed with PS5/XB1 in mind, it's going to be late 2021, early 2022. At that point, Nintendo's better off coasting the last few years of the Switch's life and coming out with the Switch 2 or whatever to play those titles than releasing a Switch pro. The Switch Pro would just divide the install base if it's needed for multiplats, which isn't economically feasible that late in the system's lifespan (It'll be 5 years old by then.) Better to announce the next console at the beginning of the 6th year of life, and have it out around when it's turning 7.

@link3710
Agreed.

As we encroach ever closer to the limit (never actually reaching the limit, but eternally closing the gap with incrementally smaller advancements), the gap between handheld and console will grow ever smaller. In this case, calculus really is the best comparison (which is why we learn these things- we use math to describe the world around us- it betters our understanding).

Nintendo is 1 generation behind due to the hybrid approach. 2 at the changing of guard for gen 9. So let’s just look at a simple equation, with n representing the generational power of home consoles, and n-2 representing Nintendo at 2 generations behind. The ratio of the hybrid’s graphics to that of home consoles as each generation passes can be described by a function, and we can take the limit of that function to see the end behavior.

2/4 is 50% of the way there, but 8/10 is 80% of the way there- meaning the Switch successor should be about on par with PS4/X1, and provide graphics that are 80% as good as 10th generation home consoles. The bigger n gets, the closer the ratio gets to hybrid systems having graphics that look 100% as good, and in practice, I reckon the average person won’t even be able to tell a difference once it gets in the 85-90% range. With each passing generation, the closer the hybrid will approach the power consoles, until eventually there won’t be any noticeable difference left. And that should definitely happen in our lifetimes. But even if it doesn’t, the gap will be so small nobody will care anyways.

I just buy new gaming hardware because that’s where new games are available. Obviously improvements with stuff like lighting effects, draw distances, character models, reflections, foliage density etc... open up creative possibilities, but once photorealistic trees, for instance, become an industry standard, the wonder and amazement wear off.

It’s really the art direction in games that matters in the end. You can use high quality assets in a cutting edge game engine to make a rather mediocre looking game.

A 60 fps standard for console AAAs (if possible) and “no” loading times on the PS5 would be nice. That would be forward momentum in my book, perhaps moreso than the improvements in graphics.

Honestly, I find it funny that one of the only true "next-gen" games was Breath of the Wild with its intricate and crazy physics and game design that truly facilitated open-ended gameplay. And that is a Wii U game.

A lot of other games I love this gen could have been done in previous generations with weaker graphics. Bloodborne, for example, could have been a 360/PS3 game, for example, since it doesn't do much different from Dark Souls aside from changing a few numbers (which is every From Software game, though I mean that in a good way because it just shows how strong the core foundation is for every Souls game if they just need to change some numbers to make it feel pretty fresh between games).

Although of course, you do need better hardware to be more ambitious. Xenoblade X, for example, with its extremely fast loading times and seamless gameplay with a stable framerate, would never be possible even on the 360/PS3. So there's that.

@EvilLucario
lol yea I was thinking that exact same thing about BotW - it's a WII U game at the end of the day lol

It's the poster child for what I'm saying, though. Tech has been at an excellent level for the last couple generations where most devs probably don't feel shackled or constrained. I'm sure limitations are still there in terms of power, but yea, the sky has been the limit for quite some time now. I think it's really up to the skill and imagination of developers moreso than the power of the machines.

@NintendoByNature
I find that a flawed anecdote, though. Because really, even at the time, sure that stuff looked good, but did it look "photorealistic"? I remember booting up Mario 64 and calling my family into the room, too - dang that looked awesome. But did I think it looked just like everything else I could see in the real world? lol no of course not! It looked good for a video game. There's a big difference: looking real and looking good for a video game. We're at the point now where games are basically looking real and in my opinion have been for at least one generation.

If we're talking about games that show what the extra power can do, the first thing that comes to mind for me is Spiderman. PS2 and PS4 Spiderman set out to do the exact same thing. And while there wasn't a PS3 outing, I'd point at Infamous as probably the closest counterpart. If you look at the three games in a row like that, it's pretty easy to see the improvements in the cities themselves, the AI, the fluidity of combat, the cutscenes and facial expressions etc that have been afforded by more powerful hardware.