Update For Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition Enables 1080p Display When Docked

About time! Now I can see just how blocky my blocks are.

I sure hope this means that handheld mode will get improvements.

BUT NOW I WANT 4K LIKE THE XB1X HAS!!1

@memoryman3 Would be cool to play 1080p in handheld mode but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Edit
It has been brought to my attention that 720 is the max for handheld mode, so nevermind then!

It still won't get rid of the jaggies!

@Pod
Ha! In your dreams!

@Kalmaro
I didn't think the Switch could support 1080p in handheld mode?

@Kalmaro The Switch screen is 720p, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

@Jaxad0127 @PorllM @RadioShadow
Alright, alright I get it! Haha.

Double thumbs up from me. Microsoft and 4J Studios are doing us proud. I downloaded Minecraft the first day that my Switch arrived.

Oh now this has been fixed hopefully every other developer who has this issue or encounters it can get the fix and it will no longer be an issue.

Well done.

@Kalmaro To play devil's advocate for everyone telling you no, they could always apply some antialiasing or do some down-sampling, in theory. Even if the screen is natively 720p, they could apply small visual enhancements to make the most out of it! I imagine they'd increase the draw distance in handheld first and foremost, but you never know!

I have never touched Minecraft, but the temptation to buy it on the Switch is strong.

@8bit4Life I've never played it either but am really curious what the fuss is all about. Should buy it at some point on Switch.

@MarioPhD I have found it interesting that Nintendo just doesn't do anti aliasing. It's a decision I don't wholly understand but splatoon does look nice and crisp in handheld mode.

great this one my fav switch games

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I almost fell out of my seat seeing you positive about something

@contractcooker it sounds like a sarcastic well done lol

I heard the Wii U version has better draw distance. Did they fix that?

@contractcooker Why? A lot of these stories I post in the forums before they appear here.

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/nintendo-switch/what_do_you_think_the_nx_is_poll?start=16520#reply-16538

@Kalmaro A good anti-aliasing solution (keyword there is "good" because crappy ones just look bad) requires a fair bit of horsepower to make work which we all know the Switch doesn't have the most of.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE @timson72 not sarcastic. I frequently enjoy @SLIGEACH_EIRE comments tearing something down! It's just funny to see something positive from him.

Noice! I look forward to all of these improvements being included on the cart in the eventual retail release (which I await with feverish anticipation).

Awesome, despite what some people say 1080p in Minecraft is a noticeable upgrade. Sure when looking at a nearby pixalated block the lack of resolution is less noticeable. But when looking at distant objects the lack of resolution would blur objects making them less discernible. The same is true in the benefit of running the game at 4K. Can't wait for the next big update this Fall.

Meh. Call me when they do 4k in portable.

@Kalmaro @PorllM @RadioShadow
You actually WOULD be able to tell the difference if the game was rendered at 1080p in handheld mode. Properly downsampled images can look considerable better than a native render resolution.

Downsampled 4K on a 1080p screen is quite visibly better than native 1080p. This goes for all edges and texture details on screen.

1080 to 720 isn't much of a gain picture quality wise though, and requires almost double the pixel output while also introducing the downscaling step, so it just really isn't feasible. But you'd be able to see it if you knew what you were looking for.

A lot of the games on Wii U ran 720p images that were compressed for 480p if played on the GamePad, and they mostly looked considerably sleeker than native 480 would, with much less noticable "jaggies".

Might get this game when it releases physically - by then, the Better Together update may be out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the physical version has released yet?

@Matthew010 I wanted the physical version, too, but the digital version is half the price (and it takes up less than a gig of memory). I couldn't justify paying $60 for Minecraft, nor did I want to wait a few months for the physical version to release.

Yay! It getting better and better for Switch.

Who else finds it hysterical that Microsoft, Nintendo's hardware platform competitor, is putting more serious effort into properly supporting Switch than most third party studios? When I listen to EA or Activision or Capcom it seems like they're saying "Switch just isn't great, next to powerful consoles." When Microsoft, the actual hardware competitor that makes those powerful consoles talks about Switch it's as though they're saying "Yay, Switch is AWESOME!"

@Pod The only actual gain from downsampling is the free FSAA. Which for a game, can be pretty valuable. For video content there's really no gain.

@Pod You're forgetting that it would massively increase battery drain too. I don't disagree with anything that you said. I shouldn't have said it was impossible, just that it would be a massive worthless effort.

@Kobeskillz On a screen that small, the human eye couldn't discern the difference between 4K and 720p. It's a tremendous waste of expensive technology.

Did that cross-play update come yet? I'm not all that interested in building things in Minecraft, but the game interests me for the ability to explore all of those crazy user created maps. I never bought the game because I figured most of the cool stuff would be made on the PC version.

Although this patch is much appreciated. I'm really wanting to hear more news about the Better Together release date.

Is this update live in the US yet? I'm on 1.05 and doing manual update check shows that I'm up to date.

Cool, but WHERE'S MAH GLIDE GIANTS TRACK PACK FOR SWITCH!?

@thesilverbrick

I know. I was joking. : )

I mean come on 4K in portable? Lol.

Good news!!! Im happy for this.

@Kobeskillz Haha, sorry about that. I'm just used to people posting some pretty ridiculous stuff on here, and I just got carried away.

Good stuff. It's no secret that Microsoft loves Nintendo. Major Nelson isn't shy about admitting he has a Switch and that he plays it all the time on the plane, in the cab, on the train etc. Also, Microsoft did offer to buy Nintendo back just before the GameCube launched. They're both located in Redmond/Seattle WA, in fact there are Microsoft buildings across the street from Nintendo's main North American HQ. If the Xbox One X fails, I'm not so certain if Micro$oft will continue making dedicated videogame hardware. You can sort of already see the trend of them turning 'Xbox' more into a brand or service than an actual physical box with their Xbox Play Anywhere mantra where EVERY Xbox One console exclusive also comes to Windows 10 PC's. They may end up offering Nintendo a huge chunk of change to port their games over to PC under the Xbox brand within the next decade or so OR even offer to buy Nintendo again.

@thesilverbrick You do realize that the physical version of Minecraft on the Switch will most likely be $30, not $60, right? That's what the price of the Wii U physical version was at launch.

@RadioShadow It doesn't. Docked mode isn't just copying the image to a screen, the dock actually lends the system extra power to help it take on the role of home console. Further draw distance, sharper image, etc. Not usually frame rate though, I suspect that may be locked from being changed to keep people from letting the handheld modes of games be useless.

@8bit4Life I was literally just thinking the same thing. I don't play these types of games usually, but I am thinking of picking this one up. Cheers!

@PorllM It's a docking boost. The handheld mode supports 720p, and the docked mode supports 1080. It's pretty standard on the system, the docking boost is why on your big screen the image doesn't look blown up on most games.

@FTPinkRabbit not sure if you quoted the wrong person as that doesn't directly relate to anything I said? But yes I'm well aware

@memoryman3 Handheld mode is 720p max, due to the Handheld screen being 720p

@NEStalgia
That isn't the ONLY gain, but it is a primary one. Actual details in the scene and on textures will be visible at distances from the player where they wouldn't be at a lower internal resolution. So for the overall image quality in video games, higher internal resolution than the display can be a huge boon.

But you are of course right that this is completely useless for video recordings. Afterall, reality is not calculated and rendered per pixel.

@PorllM
Oh yes, it's taxing in multiple unfeasible ways.

@thesilverbrick Oh,I didn't realise digital was half the price - that justifies my choice to buy digital then! Thanks! Bought the Wii U Minecraft, so didn't really want to spend £60 on pretty much the same game again!

@Pod Yeah. Oddly that's a weird artifacting thats real benefit is it makes it slightly more like analogue (crt) by being less perfect. You don't have more pixels than the physical number of pixels on the screen. Actual 1080 rendering should be the best result for pixel perfect display. What you get rendering higher and scaling down is actually artifacts bleeding in at the sub-pixel level from the averaging/estimating/and discarding of data from the higher resolution. Technically "more information in each pixel", as Microsoft said it early after the Scorpio announcement, would be a better 1080p. Just using the artifacts from 4k downsampling is a quick and cheap way to do it, which is actually a weird way to do it. It's a bleak day when we say downsampling is a good way to improve the image I've done a lot of print-grade photo work and when I hear things like that I go into cringe mode.

Yay

@NEStalgia
Haha, know what you mean.
I work with high quality illustration and print as well. Of course it isn't actually the downsampling that improves the image.
But you have more information to work from from the start that way, so you get more bang for your buck out of the display in question.

So I'm just now starting to really get into Minecraft recently. All I've played so far has been Survival Mode. It seems like most of these fixes are for other modes and probably won't impact me directly til I start to branch out. And who knows when that'll be.

However, that this kind of level of support is coming to the Switch version of Minecraft makes me very happy all the same. And short of Better Together and the Super Duper graphics pack or whatever it's called, the thing I've been most anxious for was the 1080p upgrade, so i'm very very happy about that.

I mean, yes, the game will look better in 1080 and better is always....well....better. But the biggest reason I'm happy about 1080 when docked is not as much for the improved visuals themselves, but rather because I always want to see games perform better in the dock than undocked. It's a waste of power when there's no difference, and it also begins to wear on the very magic of the Switch. The Switch is a console/portable hybrid, and that's the true magic. When you reap no benefit from docked mode, it becomes harder to see the Switch as two (or more) systems in one with two different specs, two different levels of performance potential, and two different experiences beyond big screen and small screen. In other words, the narrative "portable/console hybrid" becomes harder and harder to believe, and is increasingly replaced with the notion of "portable with a clever dock for rebroadcasting on the screen". Much less impressive/attractive a narrative.

While the performance vector between Switch docked and Switch undocked is much smaller than the performance vector between XB1 and the upcoming XB1X, nor is there quite as much at stake for Nintendo, but in once sense the two modes of the Switch is the same as the two different XBox consoles - an upper, more impressive software layer that developers have to make for little or no extra money, and a tremendous "erosive" potential from developers that land along a spectrum of some possible combination of lazy, and/or inept, and/or unscrupulously profiteering who will either not bother with the upper layer at all, or do so only superficially, and then the upper form will be undermined.

In that far, even if no further, the docked/undocked thing on the Switch is just like PS4/PS4Pro, or XB1/XB1X. If we're gonna preserve the Pro, the 1X, and the extra enhanced benefits from the dock mode, then we have to see things taking advantage of them. Otherwise they'll just fade away. The first two into oblivion, the last one into irrelevance.

So it makes me very happy when we see developers make meaningful Pro and [in the future] 1X layers....and just the same is true for specifically docked layers for Switch!

I'm glad 4J and/or Mojang and/or Microsoft didn't give up until this issue was fixed! They're part of the solution now, rather than being part of the problem as before.....

....and I very much look forward to seeing what my world will look like with the crisper, richer looking visuals!

Cheers!!

Enter, Digital Foundry

I'm talking about handheld mode's DRAW DISTANCE. It's lower than the Wii U version and docked mode by quite a bit.

How far behind is this version compared to the PC anyways? I heard the PC version has a lot of stuff that wasn't in the Wii U version for example. Still unsure if I'm going to get this game AGAIN...lol

Why does the article say the patch is out? I keep checking and no update for me. Maybe it's only been released in the US so far or something.

@18wonders I could be mistaken, but I seem to remember a news article stating that the retail version of Minecraft on Switch was going to cost more than the download one. And even if I imagined it, several developers so far have stated that Switch game cards are substantially more expensive than discs. And judging from the difference in the retail and digital costs of games like Puyo Puyo Tetris, Rime and Cave Story +, I tend to believe that the retail version of Minecraft will cost more than the digital one. I hope I'm wrong.

@PorllM Haha, oops. Sorry about that. I wrote that in response to someone else, not sure why I replied to you? Must've mixed it up. My bad.

The patch is finally out in the U.K. : D

@thesilverbrick Cave Story+ is the exact same price digitally as it is physically. Believe me, I got it on launch. It was $29.99 which is the same as the digital price.

@18wonders I was mistaken about that one. Sorry. OK, then, replace Cave Story+ with Axiom Verge, which is double the price in its retail form. But my point is that retail releases on Switch are often more expensive than their download equivalents, and I've heard that Minecraft will be the same. I can't remember where exactly, but I seem to remember an article stating that and the trend seems to back up that rumor. I would love to be wrong about this.

@thesilverbrick That issue isn't exclusive to Switch. I remember Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shovel Knight (before it was rebranded as "Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove") being more expensive physically than their digital prices.

@memoryman3
If the resolution is lower, it makesw sense to cut some of the draw distance too. But if it's so significant the game becomes less fun, then that's no good.

@Pod I mean, the overhead should make it so that draw distance should be matched in both handheld and docked mode.

@memoryman3
720p is about half the amount of pixels as 1080p, and the details already get tiny with the ppi on the Switch screen, so I wouldn't really expect to see the same draw distance, and. But obviously it's so noticable it affects your enjoyment, which isn't good.