Earlier this week, the Switch received the Anniversary Edition of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. As amazing as it is to finally have this particular version of the game on Nintendo's hybrid system, it seems some players are encountering performance issues.
A number of Skyrim Anniversary Switch users are reporting frame rate issues - including stuttering and frame rate drops. Others are supposedly experiencing crashes more regularly now, with a lot mentioning how they've been playing the game's Survival Mode. Here's a look at one of the videos blowing up on the Nintendo Switch subreddit at the moment:
This is seemingly impacting players who have installed the anniversary content, with the base game still "silky smooth" according to some users. Some suggestions are to try a fresh install if these performance issues persist. Problems like this can often be resolved or at least improved across a series of patches, so hopefully, Bethesda takes note.
The Anniversary Edition of Skyrim comes packed with the base game, add-ons (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn), and a load of Club Creation content like quests, dungeons, bosses, weapons and spells. There's fishing, too.
If we hear any other developments, we'll let you know.
Comments 65
Noticed lots of framerate drops in cities or anytime there are a lot of NPCs in the area. I hope this gets fixed.
Yeah don’t use this dlc right now. The regular game is smooth sailing in comparison. This is gonna need patches
Shame, but never expected otherwise. Every FO/ES that Bethesda cranks out, regardless of how long the game has been out previously, releases with bugs. Still bought the upgrade, and like always, will wait 3-6 months to play it.
Bought FO3 at launch on 360, as well as its dlc, didn’t touch the game until the dlc had been completely finished and it had been 3 months. Same with FONV. I still haven’t finished FO4 and all it’s dlc, haven’t even made it past lvl 14, lol. Skyrim I bought at launch originally, but didn’t play and finish it till the first dlc was a week out from launching.
I’ve bought all these games on numerous systems too, and it literally does not matter which system, always bugs, always bugs. Still great games, just never truly finished at release. Oh well, not like I don’t have a trillion in the backlog currently. Jeez
They had months...and yet waiting didn't help much. Should've delayed it even more and actually announce said delay.
lol here we go again
Yup, while my frame rate seemed to be okay; every time I get the "freezing" status in survival mode it crashes my game. That's just a little to meta for me Bethesda! It's a shame because I was really enjoying survival mode and my 'smoothest' playthrough of Skyrim ever was on the Switch when it originally came out. Hoping for a fix soon.
So...it's a Bethesda game.
Feels like if you're wanting to do a stealth release then you probably should make sure it's actually functional? If you're relying on word of mouth to sell it then the word of mouth probably shouldn't be, "Yeah, this runs like garbage, don't get it."
@westman98 ikr, if it had launched without bugs they would have released a 1.1 to patch them IN
Guys don't be so mean, they were rushed with only 11 years of development time to make the game
Minimum optimization and high price. Just a money grab for the developers. Switch need more work than Playstation and Xbox cause the limitations of the hardware. Developers arent willing to put that extra effort
It’s a new release, it will get better in time..
/s
Anyone surprised?
@BadPlayerOne Considering it's an 11-year-old 360 game, yeah, I'm a bit shook.
I think if some dude can get Wolfenstein 3D to run on a Genesis then these guys should get it right
Skyrim gonna Skyrim
Really glad the person reviewing this mentioned it in their article. Sounds to me like they didn’t actually play it. 😂
I'll wait for the add on to be patched, and on sale
This is why I wait a year or two AFTER a Bethesda game has come out. They really suck at making a working game.
Ok so it’s not just me then. Performance is worse and I’ve had 3 crashes, I never had it crash in hundreds of hours of play before this.
Unless it's a Nintendo exclusive, you almost need a secondary platform to actually enjoy these kinds of titles
Uhhhh it does this on every console if you overload it with downloads.
Performance issues? In Skyrim? Surely you jest.
In all seriousness, though, this isn't unexpected. I had a similar issue requiring a total reinstall on PC with anniversary. Not 1:1 the same factor, as I did have some Bethesda mods in addition. However, I found that mass downloading the AE's Creation Club content caused problems. Instead, I went through and picked the ones that interested me, and downloaded them 1 by 1.
I also have AE on the Xbox, and while it didn't cause an immediate issue, it did seem to crash every hour or so. Also the house mods from CC had glaring graphical glitches.
It doesn't surprise me that Switch is experiencing these issues. While the lack of community mods does create a benefit of a lack of CC vs mod conflicts, it does also mean we don't have access to the community bugfix patch. That puts in a ton of work ironing out long-standing issues Bethesda never got around to.
Of course not a mention in your "review" @nintendolife :/ hackjob, again
Lol unbelievable. How many times have we been here now? I've genuinely lost track. This is embarrassing tbh 😂
70€ for an eleven year old game with minimum updates and frame drops? C'mon man, this is just madness.
I guess they crashed the anniversary party.
I'm holding off until they announce the Skyrim: Not Broke Edition for Nintendo Switch.
I kid, I kid. It just baffles me that they released it a second time and it's still having performance issues, and it wouldn't surprise me if they released a third version of Skyrim on the same system.
It just doesn't work
Given the source material, I wouldn't expect anything less to be honest. Hope these get fixed soon though cause some of these seem REALLY bad.
reason why i stick with the physical switch version i got a few years back.
It’s not a bug, but a true Bethesda feature.
I have not played them but have been told framerate problems and crashes are the Bethesda experience.
Framerate and performance issues on the powerhouse known as Switch! That can't be true!
shocked Pikachu face
@Rutkowski87 it’s Nintendolife. They don’t even play half of the games they review.
I was when I tried it on my PS4 pro so I never bothered with it after ,this games really got a pass for its terrible performance since it first launched they've had 10 years to tweak it but haven't really done anything except re release it with some community made mods lol
@NinjaNicky wouldn't say it's the switches fault it was originally released on the Xbox 360 & PS3 , it runs like garbage on my ps4 pro lol
Wow, top notch work there, Bethesda
@PBandSmelly Also, it's not their fault, they didn't even make this dlc themselves, did they? Bad, bad community!
I doubt Bethesda/MS will do anything about it, by the mere fact that they shadow dropped this content, it maybe over a decade old game but it’s still Skyrim.
You can’t tell me they didn’t know that this content would cause the game’s performance to tank.
And Nintendo would have approved the content before allowing it and yet all parties mentioned nothing. Seems scummy to me.
But if you wanted to mention some actually useful info NLife, it would how to remove the update from the base game.
Headline writer, you win phrasing for today.
I'm sorry, Skyrim players who have performance issues.
The older Skyrim got a huge update today, it gave a few free bits like fishing, survival mode and a few other things. I have no idea if it added anything to the graphics though. I think I will give the other paid crap a pass...
@Falien
How much better and when?
I thought people were saying Bethesda would be better now that they are owned by Microsoft.
It seems like they're even worse than usual. There's no way to justify the next gen price for something like this.
....it's on the switch lol I wonder why it's crashing. Smh
@Would_you_kindly lol just bc it ran badly for YOU doesn't make it trash. Most of you on here complaining about "crashing" and "performance issues" are also neglecting to mention the most you have installed as well
This is a simple form of punishment for anyone who gave Bethesda another red cent for this ancient game
@sleepinglion Wrong. Witcher 3 played just fine on Switch and it's a hell of a lot newer than Skyrim.
Playing this game for the first time. It has the clunkiest combat controls ever! OMG, it’s laughable.
@Kvnc77 just keep playing, once everything clicks in to place it's a fantastic game. I struggled at first and left it, then came back and sunk over 100hrs on it!
@antisumo thanks, I will. I’m only a few hours in, I just got to the village the greybeards are in. Did a few side quests. I’m enjoying it, I just can’t get over the style of fighting, especially after already playing through The Witcher and BOTW. I’m trying to keep in mind it’s over ten years old!
@Soapyman1 I installed it on my original PS4 & then on my ps4 pro when I got that ran terrible on both & I didn't install any mods because it disables trophies 👍🏻
Skyrim runs great on a hacked overclocked Switch.
@Would_you_kindly must be a personal problem then bc PS3, PS4, and PS5 the game runs great.
I honestly haven't noticed. The game still looks and plays largely the same for me. The only weird thing that's happened a couple of times is that a small, seemingly random area of the ground texture in the game's open fields of the game might occasionally not load correctly, immediately. In the 2 times where I've experienced this, the unloaded textures have gone away within 10 seconds.
In truth, I can't remember texture loading was also an occasional problem in the base game, as it's been a minute since I played it (and besides which, the game was always janky af, regardless of version or system). However, if it is as a result of having installed the Anniversary Edition, then - at least in the 15 hours or so that I've been playing it thus far - that would be the only noticeable problem that I've run into.
Aside from that, I haven't personally noticed any degradation in frame rate between versions, nor any crashes on my end thus far (hope I didn't just jinx it!). As such, I'm totally happy with getting the Anniversary Addition update - especially since survival mode has been such a blast to play!
My original launch version from 2017 looks and ran better than this one. If y'all hadn't already know the trend, stop buying crappy anniversary version of a game, it's likely the anniversary edition is the garbage version. Anniversary games like Sonic Origins, GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition, Saints Row, Skyrim: The Anniversary Edition, Sonic 2006, Sonic Genesis, etc., are all just rush to release and it's likely some may or may not even be fix.
I have to admit, I held off on the Switch version after seeing that it's on gog for a steep discount.
I skipped this version on my PC and Xbox. I’ll stick with the previous Switch version since it plays fine.
@Slowdive OK thanks for letting me know this, I was wondering why some of the freebies in the update were too small to justify how large it was. I was hoping they would have included better textures or meshes or something. I guess it's just the same game with the creation club mods and doesn't include the same upgrades found in the other console versions.
please note, anyone wishing to buy this who owns the orig, that with the release of the anniversary edition on switch, the following 'creations' have automatically been added for free to the base game:
I'm just writing this because a lot of the reviews i've read seem to lean hard on 'fishing' as the flagship feature. you wanna fish, you don't need to buy the anniversary add-on, just get a rod and get busy
just bought the og version for switch with the dlc included. after about a hour of game play my controler bug out and i cant control any movement
So don't even update your normal Skyrim!
I have such brutal Issues in bigger Areas since then.
Funny enough it also lags on xbox especially in the main menu which never got fixed
The frame rate issues have just been patched. I went to Riften - which was the only area where the frame rate dropped precipitously- and it runs completely normally now.
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