Video: New Switch Hardware Won't Stop Bad Ports

Nintendo hasn't made a console that can compete on a power level with competition since the GameCube.
The Switch can't even compare in power to an Xbox One or PS4, unfortunately
So, if like me, you have Nintendo hardware but want to play 3rd party games, buy a Seies X or PS5.

The next system will probably be at best, as powerful as a ps4 pro or something along those lines. Maybe as powerful as the steam deck?

Edit: nintendo never does cutting edge, at least not in the last 20 years.

I think what people fail to realize is that even after a proper hardware upgrade, the Nintendo console will always be the weakest. It's been that way since the Wii a whole 15 years ago. Compromised ports are the name of the game at this point, and even if the next gen Switch does clear PS4 Pro/Xbox One X level performance, it's still going to be rapidly outpaced by the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, and we'll be right back where we are now.

The Switch runs 360/PS3 games well and struggles with Xbox One/PS4 games. Its successor will most likely run Xbox One/PS4 generation games well but struggle with Xbox Series/PS5 generation games.

Of course it won't. A bad port is on the developer not the hardware. I thought all gamers knew this?

This is so frustrating for two reasons:
1. Nintendo has never cared about competing with other consoles since GC. They're more interested in gimmicks than power.
2. Game developers will ALWAYS choose power over gimmicks (such as HD rumble, which is usually only done if your game is Switch exclusive)

@GrailUK That just goes to show that game development is massively flawed these days, cause portability apparently isn't as important as making a game powerful/look good. Major studios will always go that route, probably indefinitely.

I tend to not talk about ports, but I've been saying for a while now that that there aren't really good excuses for games to run poorly on the Switch. Breath of the Wild set a high bar at launch, back when there weren't as many known tricks for optimization. And Monster Hunter Rise showed that a third party is fully capable of making a fantastic looking game that runs well just as much as Nintendo is. There have also been plenty of specialized studios focused specifically on working miracles with Switch ports. It's all dev work. Stronger hardware might mitigate the problem a little, but it won't fix unoptimized games. It's the same with PC gaming. A monster PC will still struggle with a badly optimized game.

Thank you, some people act like if you throw hardware at it that magically optimizes games. Devs don't prioritize nintendo hardware unless they are good partners. However that still excludes most of the AAA western devs. Nintendo can't afford to pay for that relationship the way sony and MS do either. At this point it's on the consumer to demand better from devs/publishers. Get a subpar port? Flood their social media and let them know you don't appreciate being given sub par goods in exchange often at full price. MS and PS gamers go to town on devs when they get a bad game (cyberpunk fiassco for instance) but Nintendo gamers blame the hardware.

Depending on what Nvidia is working on in their labs, the new SOC could be slightly less power CPU/GPU cores performance than a PS5 or XSX. My hopes is Nvidia has been taking pages from Apple's A-series chips and has something on the level of an A12, A13 or A14, which would be quite a bit of power for a hybrid system such as the Switch. Here's to hoping they're using Arm Cortex-510 instruction.

Even with these conditions where the Switch has plenty of power, yes @GrailUK, it won't stop a bad port or poor development. We've seen it on all systems. We've seen this problem on all platforms.

Yup, I keep saying this, bad ports are fault of poor optimization, not the hardware. It's a shame more people don't realize this.

@Ade117

Makes sense.
I can't really get it how some still don't understand Switch is a handheld. You can't even get PS5 level of performance on a Steam Deck released 2022. Switch is outdated and they could ofc do a lot better hardware, but it will still need a lot of work to run current-gen console games, and it would still not match them in resolution and frame rates.

There is actually a harsh physical limit on how big a GPU can be on a mobile SoC, and how much performance it's possible to get out of 5-10 watt.

Ninja Gaiden is mostly fine though? A few hiccups here and there, but overall a fairly good port job I'd say.

Since Nintendo like to focus on gimmicks rather than power, my hopes are they continue with the hybrid formula of the Switch, just better.. like a wireless dock or even the TV transmission without a dock.

As for the perfomance, if they manage to do something more powerful than a PS4 (as expected at this point) and by some divine force be capable to put a SSD drive on it, maybe JUST MAYBE it will be on pair to some good ports.

But that's just an optimistic vision of mine.

For third party games to be of consistent good quality, the Switch needs to have power equilant or higher than the Xbox Series S. That would make it less of an effort for developers and fewer trade-offs.

Nintendo players deserve that much.
Crossing my fingers, but preparing to be disappointed.

There's really no excuse for Alan Wake being such a bad port (other than maybe not having much faith in it selling well on Switch and therefore doing a quick and cheap port)

But Nintendo needs to put out new hardware soon. And they probably will in the next 12 month or so (and then it will probably be on par with the PS4 or the Steam Deck power wise).

And then we'll probably see some PS5 games ports down the line, if the new hardware (Switch 2) becomes popular enough, that is.

@Ryu_Niiyama Amen, Ryu

@shgamer Indeed, no excuse. The 360 version performs and looks better.

It's one of my favourite games, and I had hoped to introduce it to a few Switch friends. Unfortunately this version damages the brand so much that even the thought of AW2 on PC and other consoles sours in my mouth.

Going to be honest; I cannot even be asked to play my PS5. Have a couple games, though nice looking, they're just not... Fun?

I dunno, I have been far more excites by indies and ports of old games than I have of any new hyped-up benchmark hallway action simulator that has been announced for the passed 5 years.

AAA games are just... not being AAA outside presentation.

@progx You're gonna be disappointed if you're hoping for something in the recent Apple A class range. Think something more like the Tegra Orin NX ball park, and your expectations will have less chances of being dashed

@Paraka Sony is betting on their "Too big to fail" approach to exclusives. It's a bit Marvel Studios-esque in approach, for my taste. They'll all be on PC eventually anyway.

@theneslink With how Switch development is basically mostly done for the devs with engines like UE4/UE5 (a toggle to literally do a bulk of the work) the amount of bad ports on those engines is ridiculous. The Switch has been able to do incredible things and almost every "impossible port" such as No Man's Sky, Witcher 3, Doom Eternal you name it has run on the hardware. Unless it is a custom engine like Luminous (Square Enix's in-house engine) at this point I don't see how almost any game cannot run on the Switch with the right compromises.

It would have to be a logistical problem with the publishers (i.e. low funding, understaffing or just straight-up hiring an incompetent studio) to handle the port. I can understand massive open-world games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey (dear god the amount of water physics and densely populated environments) needing to rely on the cloud, but stuff like Resident Evil 7 or the Kingdom Hearts Collections? Shove off.

The next Switch will probably be closer to the PS5/XSX in terms of raw power than the Switch was to the PS4/Xbone just due to how far mobile hardware has advanced. I don't see any reason the Switch's next console cannot run the Resident Evil remakes, Final Fantasy VII Remake games, Cyberpunk 2077 and others without minimal effort.

I think I'm just tired of the excuses when so many impossible ports did not just arrive on the Switch but also shined on the Switch.

It's true.

But a stronger hardware means a development cost that is reduced, it's easier to port on a mega tegra SoC with DLSS and 3Tflops than a X1+.

On the current hardware a developer needs more time to optimise his in-house engine, find a lot of tricks to compensate anything from the weak ARM CPUs to the slow micro-sd speed rates.

Now there's Nier for instance, runs quite well and games like Alan wake, who are indeed bad ports. It's just that at one point a developer will study the port and decide to release a cloud version because it's just may not be worth it otherwise.

We need a new switch tbh, something that would be cross gen for 2-3 years no issue for current owners but there's definitely a market there, otherwise the steam deck would have tanked.

I'm seeing BOTW who struggles to keep 30 fps in some areas, Hyrule warriors or BOTW tears of the kingdom who seem a little choppy in the trailers I do believe it's time.

@TSR3 I won't be disappointed with the next Switch. The advancements Arm-based SOCs have made since the release of the original Tegra X1 has been lightyears ahead of X64-86 world. Low watt draw, big time performance power. On the low end, I hope it'll be on par with the A12 or A13. Doubtful on the A14, A15 or A16. I suspect it'll full short of "PS5/XSX power" for whatever that seems to mean anymore. Billions more people just play games on their phones anyway.

@Paraka yeah I totally agree. My Switch collection absolutely makes my PS5 collection look puny.

I'm tired of the underpowered Nintendo console business model, and tired of missing out on modern games. I want one console that can play modern games and Nintendo games. My money is ready.

PS5 can’t even play PS5 games. Most games require you to choose between 4K /or/ 60fps. Meanwhile the box says the console is 8k ready. I don’t even know what that means. Why would switch 2 play PS5 games?

I think physical media will be a problem for the Switch 2.

High capacity Switch carts are expensive; most Switch games are under 40GB. The biggest Switch game I could find was NBA 2K21 at 39.4 GB: https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-switch-games-biggest-file-size-gb/

A Switch 2 may be more powerful, but if you want the ports to have the best possible graphics, audio, etc, then the game file sizes will also need to be much larger, like 80 to 150+ GB. The Witcher 3 was heavily downgraded, yet still about 32GB on Switch.

Physical media purists will be screwed, as either these games will ship on very expensive carts, or most of the game will be a digital download.

@Deady It was the same at the start of the PS4/Xbone generation where most 1080p games either ran sub 30fps unless the game had a "performance mode" where the game ran at 720p at 60fps. I'm sure in a few years as the devs get used to the newer hardware of the PS5/XSX more games will run in 4k, or at least at 1440p 60fps.

Also as @progx mentioned above mobile hardware has advanced so much since the custom X1 used in the Switch. It is not unreasonable to expect closer parity in graphics between the PS5/XSX compared to what the next Switch will look like. It will probably be closer to the XSS (Xbox Series S) as that console is a bit more compromised to hit that lower price-point for Microsoft.

Bad ports have been true of any target platform. Tons of examples where a console game was ported to the PC and even with highend hardware it ran like crap. Going to a lower spec device is even harder. It's a function of how well the porting team understands the target platform, have the experience with that hardware and how much support they have from the original team to make good choices on how to fit on the target platform.

If specs made ports, everything would run flawlessly on pimped-out PCs and [insert the beefiest home console of the generation]. As for portable consoles, they have never had nor sought spec parity with home ones yet seen their share of "miracle ports" since time immemorial while some of their "peers" on the same hardware had hiccups or bugs even despite much less demanding visuals and such. But the general third party trend has always been about "catching up" and accomodating the older games that weren't viewed as viable for porting to contemporary handhelds prior; in fact, by this standard Switch has seen a very impressive number of games from its own generation (from Doom Eternal and The Outer Worlds to Wreckfest and World War Z) the likes of which oh so many of its predecessors would have once seen but in the form of homonymous yet conspicuously different "[Title] Color/Advance/DS" - if at all. As someone who has Nintendo and Sony portables primarily for third party stuff (well-wishing advisors like @JH1022 still can't seem to acknowledge the sheer limitations of home console gaming during the adult, fully employed and quite often matrimonial/parental phase of a gamer's life), I recurrently feel spoiled by the Switch library as it is.😄

In the end, though, I still don't take the newer games for granted and I'm perfectly content with waiting for the next gen successor to possibly push the margin even further (as has been discussed ad nauseaum, a mythical "Switch Pro" wouldn't have done even that much due to having to ensure compatibility with older models - indeed, like the very PS4 Pro whose example the fans and the schreiers of the domain have adamantly projected upon Switch's case down to the naming😏). I've already said before, there's still a MULTITUDE of pastgen games ripe for being experienced "anytime, anywhere [and with anyone]". Sure, even they don't have a "port to Switch" button and the results may vary (Persona 5 and the Bioshocks hail from the same generation as Ninja Gaiden and Alan Wake), but when they work, they're indubitably welcome. Cheers for whoever "played this old crap long ago" (read: caught its respective first releases in their blessed school/college years with enough free time on their hands to do so), but they aren't the extent of the market nowadays. How much and whose talents publishers want to invest in the rest of said market is the question the answers to which will continue to shape the "Off-TV" console gaming landscape regardless of what specs Switch has and what specs the hypothetical "Super Switch Advance" will eventually boast.

I have different opinion with my Switch after owning the machine for 5 year.
I found a lot of 3rd party games on Switch have downgraded performance than the PS4 / PS5 version and it made me think I have wasted my money for bad ports so I pick the PS4 / PS5 version for 3rd party multi console games.

Of course it won't stop bad ports if Nintendo releases new hardware. It'll still be barely on par with PS4 if it even matches PS4. It'll be at least two more systems before Nintendo will be caught up to PS5 hardware and by then Sony will have moved on to PS6.

Sigh! What ever happened to now you're playing with power?

@yuwarite We have to remember the bloated file sizes of a lot of modern games have to do with how PC games work. The PC version has to include different sizes for textures, models and pre-rendered cutscenes that way it can run at the lowest system spec possible (which in a lot of cases is still a GTX 960 and a Core i3-series) as well as "rich flex" settings on the beefy RTX 4090 and a Ryzen 9 5900x.

On a home console, it is far easier to cut the bloat of a file size down as you don't need all those different textures, models, and pre-rendered videos that take up a bulk of the file sizes. For example, MW2 (2022) is only 125 GB on a PC. If you gut it down you can probably hit 40 GBs on Switch. I mean let's take Doom Eternal as an example as it is 16 GB on Switch compared to 80 GB on PC. And that is before we talk about custom textures, models and other tricks devs can use to cut down even more on file size.

tl;dr I'm not worried as an optimization on Switch has already shown that PC file sizes mean nothing on consoles unless the devs did a bad job optimizing their game.

Anyone here plays PC/PS5/XS remotely? I do and it's a owesome job, even using smartphone 4G. I'm not sure Nintendo should stay on the hybrid formula anymore. Yes, it's plays better at home, on the same wifi (in that case, I play with the console/PC wired and smartphone with WiFi6 and Razer Kishi v2, the results are PERFECT), but I tried at my girlfriend's house (about 7km) using both her wifi and my 4G and I feel it's good enough for me.

I would prefer if it have a full power console and play remotely when I don't want (or can't) use the TV. Thay even can have a Switch app to use the current switch as a host

If you think cpu/gpu make games great and run great, you’d be sorely mistaken. All of that is entirely up to the development team and coders.

I mean you can lock up a Series X with a few lines of code and no art assets whatsoever, so yeah. All extra power enables is 2 things - games to look prettier and with more physics going on, if the developer chooses.

Two of the biggest problems in coding both fall under “lazy coding”. Over inflated ways of accomplishing tasks, cause it’s usually the easiest way to get something to work the way you want, but it’s also the hardest on the cpu to have to read through your wall of text instead of hopping between modules. The second also falls under the same banner, and it’s making flow charts / leaving notes for other coders. When that isn’t done, and coder 3-4-5-6-52 etc has to come in an adjust something or fix something, it’s easier for them to break what was working, and harder for them to adjust/fix what they need without a step by step of the thought process.

Working in coding myself, its been my experience that about 30% or coders think in the same OCD like fashion, 60% follow the “lazy” route, and about 10% think completely outside the box, for better or worse.

So yeah, it falls under 2 categories if something is going to run smooth or not - “lazy” coding, aka if someone or some people thought to take the time to make things run smoothly, and cost, if the company decides it’s worth the time/money to ensure the coders make things run smoothly.

There’s been great examples of both sides of this, with companies like Panic Button and Sabre Interactive showing what can be achieved with time, effort and optimal coding. And then there’s stuff like Bloodstained or GTA Trilogy, that were hot messes across all platforms at launch due to p*** poor coding and optimization.

@ketrac - That's just another thing; I own a PC aptly named "Megatron" from friends. Thing is a powerhouse, so even if I wanted to want PS5 games, they're functionally optimal on my PC.

That's only assuming I want those powerful "showcases" that are being called games nowadays. I just have not found myself to be excited for any of it.

I was more excited, and elated, to see Episode 1 Racer being ported than I have DMC5, RE8, or FF7.

Hell, I saw an indie on Twitter feed, about a yokai styled Pokémon Snap. That's Game is far from anything Complete, but I am more excited seeing small updates on that than most of all AAA games.

@RCGamer It unfortunately still is not that simple for most North American gamers. Most areas in North America still have rather limited bandwidth just due to the US and Canada's aging internet infrastructure as well as stretching over a continent of varying development (compare Atlantic Canada to Orange County California as just an example). It is one of the reasons Google's cloud service crashed, burned, was atomized and the remaining ashes snorted up the noses of Google stock investors.

In advanced Asian countries (and some parts of Europe) like Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan it is very possible for cloud gaming to not just be viable, but preferable compared to having a gaming PC. But, for most of North America and Europe (especially in the US where internet providers cap data usage), it is not possible. And that is before we talk about server proximity which can allow weaker connections to play better than stronger connections based purely on how close to the server you are.

I feel like this deja-vu for me... I swear I had this discussion when Google's cloud service first launched.

@PessitheMystic - I am nearing the 1400 mark for Switch physical games. But outside the novel collecting I am doing, indies don't require all that power and have less of a hard time being optimized.

Enjoyed Pumpkin Jack once more for Halloween as an example.

@Wexter I dig it, thanks. I figure the same about how developers will get better as time goes on at squeezing more out of the system, but I don’t know anything about the actual technology involved (mobile tech and so on) as it pertains to switch.

I am looking forward to a time where the PS5 is commonly available so that developers can really start trying to flex their muscles on it as opposed to keeping games cross-gen with PS4, but again, I’m clueless on the tech end. I look at games now and wonder how they could possibly look any better, but I thought that in 2001 when I saw the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 10. (Personally I think they still hold up)

How about this. I don’t care about ports. I care that first party Nintendo games are 1080p 60fps.

Until we get 1080p 60fps first party games on the switch I am going to continue to think even Nintendo is admitting this hardware isn’t strong enough.

@Deady Oh, the pre-rendered PS2-era FF games look fantastic even today! I still marvel at how good the FFXII pre-rendered cutscenes look!

And no issues friend. Tech nerds like me may understand what is going on with a lot of current PS5/XSX games, but I can totally see why casual people will be kinda disappointed with how games look. Especially when games like Gotham Knights one of the first real "next-gen games" run worse and do not look much better than the Arkham Trilogy (two of those games being on the Xbox 360 and PS3). But, patience is a virtue and I'm sure we will get that Final Fantasy XV-like showpiece at some point in the future. Probably around the time more PS5s and XSXs are in consumers' hands.

@GrailUK @Ryu_Niiyama

its the same way that a game could be developed for specific hardware and end up with performance issues.

in the end there are many factors, in the same way both nintendo and other systems audiences have many takes since for every comment criticising the hardware you see others acting like people are graphical snobs for criticising a game for not hitting a stable 30fps (see the pokemon discussions)

its a complex situation though i am personally hoping that we see announcement of a switch successor, im not expecting hardware to match ps5 and xsx but with how much mobile tech has advanced since the launch of the system and how much i love the switch i would love to eventually see a switch that could run the likes of FFVIIR or the new star ocean without going the full portable PC route,

(also seeing what magic monolithsoft could pull off with it)

apologies for the ranting, have trimmed it down somewhat.

@Mgalens If I'll be frank I don't see how FFVII Remake is not even possible on the current Switch. The game is not that graphically intensive, the environments are not that expansive and the game is built on UE4 (no really go look at the PC specs it is insane how modest the requirements are). I think it is just mostly Square Enix probably rather waiting for the next Switch to have the game be a showcase piece for the system rather than just them putting the game on Switch currently and the game not shining nearly as much. That and probably wanting to make sure the other entries can even run on the thing first before just handing us only part 1 and bailing on part 2.

I think we'll be fine and get our Nomura fan-fiction fix on the next console with no problems.

@Wexter even Apple's M1 and M2 can blow the PS5 and XSX out of the water. However, those aren't popular PC gaming machines, so nothing is really coded to take advantage of Apple's powerhouse SOC. Here's to hoping Qualcomm's Snapdragon M1-clone will kick Intel in teeth.

@progx the classic curse of Apple hardware. Damn impressive pieces of tech, but devs never actually utilize them for gaming... But, yeah I agree 100%! The next Switch even running a modest custom Nivida mobile GPU will probably be far more impressive than people think it will be compared to the 4k twins.

@JH1022
I'm not like you, I enjoy my games for what they are, and a game running at 30 fps or even mid to high 20s doesn't bother me.

@Dr_Luigi The Tourist runs at 8k.

@Mgalens I'm buying the next Switch model day one! No fear. Love this little machine.

@Wexter
ah yeah there's the other 2 parts to consider too, good point.

Though from what i hear it may not be entirely on nomura regarding the changes since going by an interview Kitase (the producer) envisioned the game to have dramatic changes from the original while Nomura and Hamaguchi (director and co-director) wanted to keep as much of the original in it as possible and in the end both parties met in the middle, though iirc Nomura isnt directing rebirth.

@Mgalens I'm not saying that a piece of software developed with a system in mind won't have issues. I'm saying that because many devs don't prioritize development for Nintendo Switch the same as they do other consoles we get ports that are technically less proficient when they shouldn't be. If Alan Wake Remastered, a game that all three systems are powerful enough to run natively had the same bug throughout then that is a code clean up (and a different conversation), but that isn't the same as optimizing for each individual platform. So I stand by what I said. I still say that nintendo gamers tend to go "need better hardware" when it should be "devs need to optimize their code".

@Mgalens I was half joking with the fan fiction comment... But, yeah finding out that information has me both excited and nervous for Rebirth. But, we're now getting off topic.

Frankly, unless Nintendo can get back to the mentality of the GameCube era and put out a console that is as powerful as it's competitors, no port will ever be as good on a Nintendo system as it would be on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC.

Ever since the Wii era, Nintendo stopped caring about making sure that their consoles could run games that could be found on the competing consoles. The result was AAA games like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, GTA, Metal Gear, etc., appearing on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, while Nintendo got a bunch of party games and minigame collections that you found at the bottom of the bargain bin.

That mentality continued during the Wii U era. And even though the Wii U was on par in terms of graphics and power with the Xbox 360 and PS3, because of a lack of marketing and a game controller that no one knew what to do with, a lot of AAA third-party titles also skipped the Wii U.

The Switch, while still being about as powerful as a Wii or Wii U, has better third-party support, but if Nintendo wants to keep it that way, they really need to step up their game and make their next console a beast of a machine, on par with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, or the future consoles for those companies.

Bad Ports and ill informed commentary. Persona 5 don’t run at 60fps on PS4 and neither does Nier Automata. Jurassic Park theorem should apply to the porting decision. Just because you could port does not mean that you should port.

@Dm9982 Thank you!

@WoomyNNYes Nintendo does not want to subsidize 100+ dollars a console on the "hope" that they will get the same parity of games. It didn't help them during the gamecube era when they were second and it is doubtful based on history that it would help them in the future. And the withered technology business model has helped them work just fine with keeping up with supply chains while MS and PS (while doing better) still struggle. Their business model works.

@Paraka Return to Monkey Island is my game of the year, just saying
Still looking forward to Zelda and Starfield next year.

@Ryu_Niiyama Their business model works. That's what they thought after the Wii and we all know how WiiU turned out.

No rest for the wicked, they have to be ambitious else we'll have another disaster.

@ketrac and after the wiiu came the switch (which is still as far as I can find, not subsidized). You haven’t refuted what I said at all. You’re speaking in idioms and not saying anything. Nintendo’s R&D teams are constantly researching and developing (as with any company). That doesn’t prevent market failure.

@Ryu_Niiyama I don't have to refute any fanboyism which creates artifical limits for us as consumers.
Nintendo has the momentum, again. Would be a shame to fall, again.

I want more and better games for all players, something you should support. Tech has moved a long way since 2017.
WiiU also made a profit per console sold, but since they couldn't sell enough of them or thereby games, Nintendo could've seized to exist as we know them.

Just having a good version of Call of Duty on the platform could make a big impact on software sales.

@AstroTheGamosian While we praise the Gamecube (with good reason. The system was rather great even with its anemic 3rd party support) I would not say Nintendo should go back to a business strategy that kept seeing them lose more and more of the market share. The Wii and Switch are two of the best-selling systems of all time! The Switch is fully projected to overtake the PS4's lifetime sales within the year! The only console that really flopped with Nintendo's current strategy was the Wii U and that was for far more reasons than horsepower (Nintendo's first time developing in HD, the same-ish feeling of their games, the lack of marketing, the abysmal 3rd party support due to poor sales of the hardware). The Switch is proof in the pudding that weaker hardware can get AAA games on it if the audience for them is there.

That and with how advanced mobile GPUs are going, there is almost no reason for Nintendo to go with the multimedia brick strategy of Sony and Microsoft. That and Nintendo have really captured a niche that they've been rocking since the 1980s portable gaming. Despite what "pundits" might have said over the past 15 years (since the 360/PS3) that mobile phones will make portable gaming obsolete the Switch has been making a killing despite everyone having an iPhone or Andriod phone.

The thing is if the audience is there then the games will also be there! And while we may mock the Wii as the party game system... did we all forget about Pandora's Tower, Madworld, Red Steel 2, No More Heroes and plenty of other 3rd party games were on the system and were some of the most experimental and praised games of their era? The Wii almost singlehandedly revived the rail shooter and lightgun genre. The Wii also revolutionized FPS gaming where motion controls are way more comparable with a mouse and keyboard than twin sticks (to the point that gyro-aiming is a prerequisite for most FPS games on Switch and thrives on PC).

And I will cut this comment short of another paragraph as that is before I bring in the GBA, DS and 3DS (all of which sold like gangbusters despite more powerful portables being on the market).

what the heck is with you guys asserting that No Man's Sky is "one of the best ports on the system". It's just not. it looks barely less ugly than the Ark port and the frame rate tanks in the late game with base building making the endgame simply not fun. i hate to be a conspiracy theorist but is it because you guys got to interview sean murray before launch? or because you only played it for 10 hours?

@ketrac - Adventure games are an acquired taste in my eyes. Since I didn't grow up with the original, I haven't been too excited for the new one. The art may be jarring for some, though. Hope it finds its style. Most my indies I have bought recently are released in the previous year. As mentioned, I just got done with Pumpkin Jack for the second time. Good stuff.

To me, I don’t play games that perform poorly, but I also only play games with great gameplay. The fact that on the switch you can play most of the play worthy games in game pass portably is pretty amazing.

The next switch iteration we all know will never be as powerful as Sony and Microsoft systems. AS LONG as you can use the current Switch game library digital and physical, I’m good! Otherwise BYE Nintendo!

@NicolausCamp Exactly, Ninja Gaiden runs very well on Switch. A few areas in Ninja Gaiden 2 & 3 have dynamic resolutions and/or a few drops in framerates but to say the collection "struggles" to run is just false.

Controversial opinion. A lot of people in this article say Nintendo should go back to the strategy they had with the Gamecube where they had arguably the most powerful system (I say arguably because the Xbox was overall more powerful, but the Gamecube did some things better). My question is why? The biggest home console flop for Nintendo of all time is the Wii U with 13.56 million units sold. You wanna know how comparable the numbers are between the Wii U and Gamecube? About 8.18 million units sold. That is not a lot in terms of raw hardware sales. And to put that in greater perspective the Gamecube sold 11.19 million less than the N64! That means the sales differential between the Gamecube and Wii U is better than the Gamecube and N64. And that is before we talk about how the Gamecube got crushed by the "weaker" PS2 by over 120 million units! That is a greater roffle stomping than the Wii U got by the PS4. And in the Switch in five years less on the market is now about to overtake the PS4 in lifetime sales. The sales differential between the PS4 (the current 4th best-selling console of all time) and the Switch is 6 million units. About 2 million units less than the Wii U sold in comparison to the Gamecube.

So explain to me how it makes any sense at all for Nintendo to give up on the Switch strategy and go back to one, where it got crushed by 120 million units and sold only 8 million units more than the Wii U?

This has been my ted talk.

@Ryu_Niiyama
i may have worded parts badly I wasn't referring to something like Alan wake remastered when i was talking about limits of hardware, since that was a remaster of a game which launched on hardware weaker than the switch, or kingdom hearts where it was a cloud version of a remaster of a remaster, its one of those games where the fact that it turned out so bad felt like an anomaly.

the reason i criticized the term "Nintendo gamers" was because it was too generalized, its one of those terms which you could apply to many different takes and even extremes, its the same way that the term "sony gamers" or "sony fans" has also been applied to those critical of Nintendo and/or Nintendo systems in other discussions.

even among the specific group of "people who want more powerful hardware" there is a large variety of takes.
again apologies if i worded it badly

@Wexter
Yeah I'm in the camp that while i would like to see more powerful hardware i would rather have a switch successor using newer mobile tech than a Nintendo equivalent to the ps5 and series X.

To say the switch strategy paid off would be putting it lightly which is why im hoping that the successor is more like what the 3ds was to the DS than going for a completely different strategy.

Considering the ps5 and Xone are not at all living up to their potential if a new switch comes out it will be on par or almost on par to them. If you think about it both the 5 and series X are both being held back by prior gen systems first of all and second most companies are not utilizing the full specs anyway. I see no problem with a new switch model keeping up.

@Wexter it wasn’t the strategy that crushed all of those systems actually. The N64 and Gamecude had issues with developers putting their games on the systems due to hardware (cartridges and mini disks). As for the Wii U it failed due to marketing. The Wii U GameCube and 64 all were better systems than the competition but yet failed only because of poor planning.

@DdG1408
Though when the wiiu was released the ps4 and the xbox one were also on the horizon (the wiiu was more part of that generation than the ps3/360)

The system itself did also feel like it was kind of all over the place in concept, including aspects which felt like they were at odds with each other (dual-screen gameplay and off-tv play)

with the switch the main concepts behind it were things that had already worked in the past only refined, Nintendos handhelds had already seen a lot of success combined with it also being able to function as a console which brought in those who weren't fans of handhelds/smaller screens. and outside of a few examples (mainly from early on) its features could all exist in the same game allowing for choice (avoiding the wiiu 2-screen/off-tv play example)

@ketrac nothing in my post was fangirling. Have you not seen Nintendo’s financial reports? Nintendo has been using withered tech since the 80s and for consoles since the wii. Their business strategy is sound. You are acting like one market /marketing failure means that their strategy which they used again for the switch mind you didn’t work because you want more powerful hardware. Again you have not refuted anything. Withered tech has allowed Nintendo to sell system either for profit or with a small break even margin and has allowed them to keep up with supply and demand (mostly) during a chip shortage.

If you wanna take hot takes be my guest, but I am not the woman to indulge you. Saying idioms or suggesting that easily researched sales figures is because I am a fan is off the mark. Now if you had said because I am a shareholder then yes but again I based what I said on financial results and market share and historical actions made by devs/publishers. Call it what you will. Have a nice day.

Either actually present an argument or tag someone else.

@DdG1408 Even if we went that route the Xbox, Xbone and XSX all sold substantially less than the PS2, PS4 and PS5. So I'm not sure how Nintendo doing the powerful media box is a good idea... So, you're not really answering my question though.

So long as current-gen 3rd party titles get released on Nintendo 1+ year AFTER every other console, Nintendo consoles will continue to be criticized for being a weaker console.

Don't get me wrong, the Nintendo exclusives really are great while they last and they are of exceptional quality, but when a new 3rd party game is about to come out for current-gen, such as Hogwarts: Legacy, Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6, Grand Theft Auto 6, Fallout 5, etc. - if you're a Switch-only gamer, you can't be excited by any of these games because they won't be on Switch at launch, and the majority won't come to Switch at all.

I think Nintendo uses the word "port" a bit differently compared to other consoles, as it's usually meant to say an older game brought to a newer system or an exclusive brought to a different system, but in the case of the Switch - the term "Port" is often used when referring to game that came out 2-3 years ago everywhere else but only just recently created a modified version to run on Switch (The Witcher 3 and No Man's Sky are prime examples of this).

It's a strange landscape for developers now, where before they would develop a game using the most current-gen technology and then release it across 3 different, but similarly powerful, systems. Now they have to either:
1. Limit themselves by building a low-demanding game from the start
2. Build a special version of the game that is lower demanding so it runs on Switch, or
3. Just don't release the game at all on Switch, and lose potential profits because of this decision.

It's a hard decision for devs to make, I'm sure.

Why you need to buy a pc / Xbox or ps5? By nintendolife

Anyway mine is 9”, how big is yours?

Nintendo is way past the console wars, he's on his own path. Sure they improve their graphics and power, but their main focus is in gameplay, how they can improve or change the way people play videogames. Sure they'll miss a lot of franchises that you can only run in more powerful consoles, but companies have found ways to adjust there games to Nintendo's consoles. And sure not all franchises come to Nintendo hardware, but Nintendo games don't go to other consoles, so I think it's a fair trade.

@Mgalens I merely used alan wake as this is the article for it (or rather using it as an example). However we have seen enough hit or miss ports and a lack of willingness of devs to learn switch development on house. That is a business that is unwilling to invest in the platform.

Considering the obsession with “switch pro” and the bevy of complaints that often litter comment sections about wanting more hardware I am fine with using a general term because enough folks complain that the tone seems to follow that. While I certainly respect your desire for precise language I don’t, of course from my anecdotal perspective, think that I am far off base from that based on what I have seen so I will still say Nintendo fans. It would be unwieldy for me to say “group a of people that happen to claim to like Nintendo. “ and I did start my initial comment with “some people “.

@Wexter You're missing the point of my comment.

The reason file sizes for Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, etc, on Switch are smaller than elsewhere is because they use low resolution assets, which allow the games to run better on Switch, and easily fit on a standard 32GB Switch game cart.

But, the point I'm trying to make is that for the Switch 2, the expectation is that the graphics, sound, assets, etc, will be at least of PS4 quality. Witcher 3 on PS4 is 50GB, for example: https://gamerant.com/playstation-ps4-games-file-size-biggest-ranked/

"[Nintendo Switch] cards come in a variety of capacities: 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. 64 GB cards were released in 2020 after having been delayed for two years and are being made using XtraROM technology from Macronix."

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Game_Card

The Witcher 3 fit on to a 32GB cart, because "CD Projekt Red wasn’t cheaping out":

https://www.destructoid.com/the-witcher-3-will-fit-on-a-single-switch-cart-because-cd-projekt-red-isnt-cheaping-out/

64GB carts have only recently been introduced, but it sounds like almost no games use them, and they are expensive. The fact that 32GB carts were considered "expensive" to use 3 years ago is already a bad sign of hoping that developers will ship on 64GB (or more) carts for the Switch 2.

@Wexter actually, the GameCube was more powerful. The Xbox ran a stripped down Intel Pentium 3 process with an Nvidia graphic card that was somewhat less capable than the ATi and IBM PowerPC 750 combination at the time. The PowerPC G3 was even giving the Pentium 4 a hard time, let alone Motorola’s PowerPC G4 (PowerPC 74XX) chip Apple would later adopt in late 2000s.

The PS2 crushed them both and it was weaker compared to the late 1990s PC hardware found in the GameCube and Xbox. It didn’t do either of them any favors. Nintendo picking the mini-discs was a huge obstacle as they were smaller than DVD-ROM discs. OG Xbox… well, its software library started off inferior to the other two, plus the Xbox System Software dogged the hardware. A 733Mhz Pentium 3 isn’t necessarily on the same level as a 500Mhz PowerPC 750 chip. Apple and IBM broke Intel’s megahertz myth. However, it didn’t gain Apple or the AIM (Apple, IBM, Motorola) PowerPC alliance any ground.

Even earlier versions of Windows were designed for early 1990s PowerPC chipset since IBM didn’t want to let Intel take the chip crown for PC clones. However, Intel made a lot of back door deals to prevent Windows95 from functioning properly on competing chipsets by gaining exclusive features.

Microsoft made some questionable choices with the GeForce 3 in the Xbox, it was able to handle extra vertex shaders but was inferior to its PC counterpart with lower pixel fills. Nintendo’s Flipper was developed by ATi on Rage 5, which was early Radeon and paired with the “Nintendo Operating System,” the GameCube’s low system overhead made it a very efficient machine.

However, Nintendo’s continued use of the 750 into the Wii U and Freescale 2 even put it at a disadvantage to the Xbox 360 and PS3. It was a giant generational divide in CPU architecture that made it difficult to port games backwards from the 970 to the 750. More Apple terms, there was a reason why Apple was not able to allow PowerPC G5 Macs to dual boot into Mac OS 9, it was entirely incompatible and would’ve had to be rewritten. The G3 and G4 chips shared a common point since Motorola evolved IBM’s PPC 750 with additional technologies, which included the Velocity Engine. PowerPC 970 was light years ahead of it, so Apple was able to strand together a different Mac OS Classic environment for those Macs, but that was the least of their problems with the chipset. The PowerBook G5 was never able to happen due to the chip running too hot when shrunken down. Even Tim Cook said in 2005 it was be a feat of engineering to squeeze a G5 into the PowerBook.

Pardon my long winded response, but as a former “Crazy One” in the Apple world, that was a unique and fun time to be a consumer in the processor wars. The t-shirts were epic too! The whole thing was fun, it came to a crushing end when Apple switched to Intel in 2005. IBM would eventually get out of building consumer chips by 2013. PowerPC 970 is now open source. Motorola spun off their chip division into Freescale, which I think is now gone, it was putting PowerPC 74XX chips into copiers from Kyocera.

@Truegamer79 The Switch is inferior to the PS4 and Xbox One but not by such a large margin like saying that it's two consoles behind since it's not even one. It's in a middle point in which it blows the PS3 and 360 out of the water but doesn't reach those. Of course there's no way to assure how powerful will the new console be, but it's expected to be superior to those and inferior to the PS5 and X Box X.

As for the topic, I don't get why people go to extremes: yes, having good and bad ports depend on developers, but powerful hardware is definitely an important advantage that impacts on that. That's it.

I agree with this post but would interject there are developers out there not as experienced as others. Some of these teams have the capability to port insane games like Witcher and No Man's Sky because they know what needs to be done and have been doing optimization for years. Hello Games has the experience of working on the same game for almost a decade so that thing is going to be so polished it will reflect and blind the sun itself. But the raw power is for those developers that need something to fall back on. It's not rude to say they lack the experience but giving developers who have REALLY good games some extra power to be lax on optimization because the hardware is also pulling its weight is not a bad thing. Right now it really feels like the battle for a consistent framerate with the best visuals achieveable rests 90% on the people creating the software and 10% the switch saying "ok I got this" there are some really good mobile chips out there and really the switch is in a spot where it can be refreshed every year or two with a new chip and it would sell like hotcakes for a decade.

Not sure I really care as long as the software is great!

Amen. The Switch still has plenty of life in it, it's just up to the developers to care about what they're doing enough to give ports the attention they need.

@Wexter FF7R pushed the PS4 to its limits plus it would be pointless bringing it over when the sequel would be impossible to bring over due to it being designed around the SSD.

@Wexter I live in Brazil, if you think US don't have structure, it's even worst here. And we have security problems too. I mean, it's nearly impossible to play any kind of game outside. People are afraid to even pick their smartphones inside a bus in my city (Salvador) because if they do that, can be robbed in a blink. "portable" here is a way to play in safe places, like home, it's not to play on a park, or mall In this way, you can use your own wifi, don't need internet. And if you are in another house (like a friend, cousin, girlfriend, etc) you can play in their internet, and for that, it's enough.

@Paraka I slogged thru some pretty bad comments, but I finally found someone willing to say what you said.

I know 7 people with PS5s. They were my Destiny 2 PC crew and I didn't convert to PS5 with them, due to price. They all said "but the exclusives and AAAs your PC won't run soon!"

Years on, they don't play any of those games and never really did. They all re-gifted eachother the same copy of Death Stranding as a birthday present as a joke, because none of them could stand to play it.

The Switch is far less powerful than a OG Xbox One model as it is roughly 1.5x a Wii U (just like GCN to Wii) which means in some ways it's better than a 360 and others its weaker. The Switch is finished, Switch 2 to launch with the next Zelda.

Regardless it is time for a nextgen Switch.

@Ryu_Niiyama
I guess the best way to describe the situation would be that its less that people aren't being nuanced about it but more that online as a whole by its very nature make nuance difficult because of just how wide the discussion is.

Switch Pro exists, its called the Steam Deck 😎

Seriously tho, currently playing Uncharted 4 and this thing has me re-evaluating my expectations for what a Switch 2 should be. Honestly would prefer a new pocket sized handheld, I still carry around my Vita and I would totally buy a Switch Pocket in a heartbeat.

@WallyWest I dunno if I fully believe that. I'm not saying there won't be major compromises if the game came to Switch (the hair physics would probably need to go, and the number of particle effects scaled back), but this is not FFXV where the engine is such a resource hog/unstable where the game would need to be completely rebuilt for Switch. The other half of my point was why compromise the game for Switch when they can just wait till the next Switch and be able to not just run Remake, but also Rebirth and Rewhatever? With how advanced mobile GPUs are getting (the Steam deck already runs Remake with zero optimization with fine enough results) and proper optimization that we know Square Enix can do... yeah FFVII Remake will for sure come to the next Switch or I'll eat my hat.

@veesonic You basically just hit the nail on the head as to what the next Switch will look like. The Steam Deck is already kneecapped in its potential because games are not optimized for it and have the same problems as a low-mid gaming PC. The next Switch will be running probably on a rather advanced Nividia chip and have the benefit of games being optimized for it.

The PS5 is comparable to a mid-high-range PC running an RTX 2070. So a successor Switch being similar in power to an Xbox Series S is not unreasonable. There is not this insane power gap people have in their heads as it's not like the PS5 and XSX are running RTX 3090TIs.

I don't understand what makes people think that constantly raising expectations will lead to anything but disappointment. Or that one day hardware will be at a level that any developer can tap into unlimited potential and power without restrictions. Ports from software made for more powerful hardware will have visible setbacks in comparison, obviously. Good ports, of good games, will have the right setbacks, the ones you don't really notice when enjoying the game, bad ports often left in way too many useless effects at the cost of the ones that would have kept the experience good. But sadly, most people are already counting frames and pixels and nitpicking the details and comparing BEFORE they ever tried the games. I played Alan Wake on Switch because I wanted to, and the price on the Mexican eshop was wrong and therefore ridiculously cheap. And I enjoyed it a lot. It could, and arguably should have been better technically, but the game is good, and when you're playing it you have other things on your mind than pixels and framerates. They never got in the way of me enjoying the game throughout.

@Wexter completely agree! for this reason I am glad the xbox series s exists as devs are forced to optimize for that low bar hardware. 😄😎

@Wexter I think the issue with modern games though is once they drop last gen Devs will really start taking advantage of what the SSD's bring, granted this sounds like PR talk but SE have said the reason FF7 Remake sequels are exclusive to PS5 is because the PS5 has the SSD speeds needed for them. Look at Returnal that game is a game built with an SSD in mind, the instant transition between the various game worlds is pretty incredible and something last gen could never do without some kind of loading. Hopefully Nintendo can find a way round that or current gen games may be very uncommon for Switch 2 or Pro or whatever they name it.

@ChickenJoe - Yeah, bought Miles Morales, physical... Only to find myself not wanting to finish it. Though, admittedly, the required download for physical media was also a pretty heinous reason.

It lacks something. Everything feels like "look at this" instead of "play there." And I noticed this long ago, but it just feels far more prevalent now. And I see it in even Nintendo many times as well.

@Mgalens and that’s fair. However since it is your personal standard/request for nuance it is reasonable to know that most will not accommodate you as you would technically be trying to adjust someone’s pattern of speech. Well that was an interesting aside but we have gotten well off topic. So I’m going to move on now. Have a great day!

@Ryu_Niiyama
tbh its more that i have trouble sometimes articulating things online and can go all over the place, also doesn't help that yesterday evening when i was reading this topic i wasn't exactly the most mentally sound.

(also considering a frame of reference i had was the dark days of the gamefaqs Nintendo boards where anyone critical of anything was considered "not a true fan" or even a "sony fantroll", i was speaking more from my own odd experience, have no idea what that place is like now though)

@WallyWest I'm sure Nintendo has probably figured out how to use an SSD in the Switch. My concern is more about how large will it be and how will it impact the price. I mean an SSD NVMe is not outrageous and could probably fit the thin form factor of a Switch, but how much could it raise the price of the console? That is more my concern than how powerful the system will be.

@Wexter
Yeah things like the price/form factor/heat/battery are things I'm curious about regarding the theoretical successor.

considering how much they got out of the current switch tech im looking forward to seeing what devs can get out of a newer one.

@Mgalens Same concerns! I'd be okay if the next switch is at most a couple of cm thicker than the current model. But, I really don't want to lug around something the size of a Steam Deck. This is Nintendo and they are the masters of making things small and impressive. So, I'm curious as well.

It will be interesting how much the Switch sold in the july-september 2022 quarter. I think it will revealed tomorrow.

The Splatoon 3 edition(s) probably helped japanese sales quite a lot (we're probably talking a couple of hundred thousand units in the the weeks just before and after Splatoon 3's release)

Depending on your lifestyle, portability and the pick-up-and-play factor are worthy trade-offs for graphical performance. I have a PS4, but barely get time to play it because it's more of a time investment. With a Switch, I can just fire it up and play within seconds, game for a few minutes, then put it down knowing I can just immediately pick up where I left off.

strawman argument, no one actually thinks bad ports are only to do with weak hardware, why do pc ports suck so bad in that case when pcs have the best hardware available

There is a difference between a bad port, and a port that literally just can't successfully be done. I'd call that an impossible port, but that term has already been used for something else entirely: games designed for much more powerful hardware that are not only entirely possible to port--but have been, with impressive results.

Yes, bad ports will always exist as long as there are lazy developers and poor management that doesn't care about quality. They are also possible if there is just too big a difference between the source and target system's specs--and again, if greedy companies didn't try to bite off more than they could chew just to say "we did it! We did the impossible," it wouldn't happen.

Of course, these things will continue to happen, and we just have to watch out more than ever these days. Especially with digital games, since traditional 30-day money back/exchange guarantees do not exist.

Commenters! (Not video):-
Please stop talking about it when you don't understand, and saying "optimisation" like you work on this as an expert. Such engines that most of us utilise in the industry: UE4, Unity, GM, etc. We do not (usually can't) optimise them. This is not the point of them. They are not open, they're locked down tool sets. Sometimes one learns the engine and it gets you the jobs. We make the game — not making equivalent to Havok Physics (even BotW uses this) or writing shader compilation, rendering techniques, shadow volumes/mapping etc. THis is how most games developer are. Not C/C++ experts like previous eras where these legends now make the engines.

Witcher 3 is REDengine. P5R uses in-house engine. No Man's Sky has so much on a technical level that I do not have the effort to say. Doom is using id Tech. Resi and Monster Hunter are own engine. It is no surprise to you, big talented houses with own engines prosper here? Of Course Ark is using UE4

I would prefer less hardware-driven demands and more software. It is something missing. Remember there was bespoke versions of Dead Space, CoD on Wii and DS platforms. Did not fight to get the multi-plat version downgraded, it was a bespoke build. Many good games made just for these platforms.

Switch does not quite have the punch to run first party well for current standards. BotW is very lag game, and drops to mid 20fps many times. However, since 17 you can use this portably with a few hours battery. Trade off is always there. You can play open world action game on Steam Deck 60fps for how long...?

When I was studying, I thought we all wanted powerful consoles, realistic graphics, VR; and to play this on huge TVs systems and sat in home cinemas w/ surround sound. I got that totally wrong. I thought mobile games would dominate and kill off handhelds - also, wrong. Obviously (!), we want small portable screen core video games on low powered hardware.... but still expect latest 3D graphical tech to run!!!

Please hold your punches, some of us have to do this work to pay the mortgage and family. You don't argue with your doctor or mechanic and pretend to be expert. Only with us you do it.