First Footage Of Elden Ring Running On Switch 2 Appears Online

What's about handheld (mode) and apprehended? 😉

They should just add a Performance Mode with reduced visual detail or resolution and smoother framerate

If Switch 2, a brand new console (not brand new tech by the way, because It seems similar to the PS4 from 2013) can't run games on Its first year, imagine what It will get in 3 years, that is If this thing still has third party support by then.

Why is it so hard to properly optimize games? There should be a performance mode.

Docked mode is how I will play, but I mean, the point for people to get this is probably because they want to be able to play BOTH handheld and docked... It seems like the game is running okay docked, from what I saw in the vid.

I played this on ps4 and it was rough in spots - at times enemies in the background moved like stop motion - but it didn’t matter because the game was so overwhelmingly great. So if they can get it close to that performance, it’ll still be better than 99% of games

Hoping handheld mode is still work in progress, as thats the only way I play

If Cyberpunk can run like it runs Elden Ring should not be a problem at all.

Lousy engine optimization, also on pc and other consoles.

@Paulo I was wondering when I'd see the "NintenDOOMED!!!" responses. You win.

@BaldB3lper78 Have you played this on other systems? The OG switch had The Witcher and most if not all Doom games. There is no excuse for a poorly performing game like this on Switch 2 except poor dev skills and optimisation.

Handheld mode performance doesn't bother me at all since I always play docked. As long as docked mode is good, I'm good to go.

@Charmiley that game didn’t even run on 60fps

Typical From Software performance. You’d think they care a tiny bit

Not my type of game souls like give me TOTK any day.
Also it’s 30fps so Boooooooo.
But glad switch 2 is getting the game for others.

@Paulo The Switch 2 chipset is from 2022 afaik and not very similar at all to the PS4 as it's a mobile chipset and the console also has a lot of capabilities that the PS4 doesn't at all.
And this game is just not properly optimized. That's all there is to it. More demanding games already run on the Switch 2 with better performance.

Or are you being sarcastic?

@Paulo it's the opposite. Developers are learning the hardware, which started development in 2020 btw. As the generation develops they will get a better hang of the hardware and it should be easier.

Also - Elden Ring is notorious for not running optimally, even the PS5.

@Pillowpants same. This is the mind of game I play docked.

I will echo previous sentiments that I've had. The double standard for Switch 2 is a little wild because these are or were known issues for FromSoft games that still received widespread critical acclaim. But suddenly everyone cares when Switch (2) enters the chat.

Oh, and I watched both docked and handheld footage from Pax. It looks pretty good, imo.

I’m more interested in Borderlands 4 on the next screen 👀 (but I do hope that this game runs acceptably for those of you who want to play it)

FromSoftware always seem to have performance problems, their 30fps capped games tend to have pace frame pacing issues, and 60fps modes fail to meet their target. The exceptions on consoles seem to be when 60fps can be reached more comfortably, so Dark Souls 1 and 2 on PS4 or Elden Ring's PS4 version running on PS5. I am never a fan of an uncapped frame rate hovering in the 40-50 fps mark, but when 30 is the target the inconsistent frame pacing also hinders that experience. It's a shame, I still found Bloodborne and Elden Ring playable on PS4, but I noticed the the judder no doubt.

I expected far worse and hard to tell anyway with this footage. I won‘t be buying but hopefully it will be decent enough once released.

@Paulo a tad dramatic whilst quite misinformed.

@BaldB3lper78 Man, do you do anything but complain? Did you complain about Elden Ring performance on other hardware? This is a Fromsoft issue, first and foremost.

If the bad press continues Nintendo will get involved and help resolve some issues. They want this title to be strong like Witcher was for the switch.
It attracts a new demographic to the switch 2 which is what Nintendo is trying to achieve this generation.
It looks like it’s running ok in docked so handheld shouldn’t be to hard to rectify.
When’s the release date?

@Paulo I know, that's what makes me discouraged.

@Lord I hope so. Assuming they can.

Okay, I'm encouraged by people saying this is likely an optimization issue and a tunnel-vision issue. Haha. Thanks, everyone!

This game struggled on every console. Even on my gaming pc. Its just badly optimized. Cyberpunk devs and street fighter 6, showed how you do it correctly. So i am confindend they will optimise it in the final release.

Where is the tarnish.. er handheld mode?

@The-Chosen-one i can play it fine at my series s...

That's about what I expected. The fact that we're getting it on Switch 2 is enough to make me happy even if it's an inferior version.

Elden Ring runs 60fps on my Steam Deck. Isn't Switch 2 more powerful? I haven't really kept up w/ specs lately.

@BaldB3lper78 Alternative take - this is what ports just two months after launch, imagine what ports will look like when studios have had more time with the hardware and dev kits and get more comfortable with the system.

@arkanjo29

I played it on every console, all of them had frame dips. And on series S stuttering. I have a gaming pc where i play every game on ultra, but with this game it was not running well. Fps going below 30.
Even on ps5 pro i noticed the frame dips. Steam deck was even worse, where the game just closed, dont know why.

It looks pretty rough IMO.. What do you people think?

@ElkinFencer10 honestly I’d rather have no version at all if they can’t properly do the game

This is .... bad. Why would I pay for this?

@Paulo It's a sad thought but a real one and one that Nintendo does not care about. Otherwise, docked mode would have been twice or three times the performance while undocked would have been like now. They did not care to do that, unfortunately, so we must keep using other consoles or PC.

@DominionGamma It looks okay to me from the footage. It's nowhere near as bad as Doom 2016 was on Switch.

graphically does not look anywhere near as good as the ps5 version.

FromSoftware is not known for their optimization prowess. Look at reviews of most souls games when they came out. Even on target systems they ran with issues.

Kind of funny a port is being shown off at conventions, these games are new to me, but they already have a reputation.

@The-Chosen-one “ Steam deck was even worse, where the game just closed, dont know why.”

Strange. I would double check which version of Proton you were using. Steam Deck was probably the only place where Elden Ring was playable without massive performance issues on low end spec since Valve did a lot of behind the scenes work for Proton to get it running. Elden Ring still consistently well performing due to Valve continued work.

@sketchturner No it doesn’t. The game struggles to hit 40fps consistently even with sacrifices. You would have to make the game very ugly to get 60 fps and if you’re using fsr you will get major control lag.

@Paulo switch 2 power is between ps4 pro and ps5 so its not the switch 2 fault if some 3rd party devs cant optimize their games properly

@Paulo This isn't a question of what it can or can't run; this is an issue with the developer always struggling to optimize their games.

@Medic_alert to counter your point I'd that most Switch 1 games ran worse over time. I think that's what people are responding to here when they worry about the Switch 2 already having trouble.

@Res462 they're terrible at optimizing but this is a huggggge detail filled open world. We may already be seeing the limits of the CPU.

Game key card and it runs like crap?😐 Double insult to Switch 2 owners who were/are excited for this

There’s just some games you don’t play on Switch, but that’s ok it’s a different tool for a different function. There’s some games (ie Witcher 3, Elden Ring, current Doom series, etc) that I only want to play in full 4K on a 60”+ screen and can leave at home.

@Paulo you do know Arm and X86-64 aren’t the same architecture, right? The Switch 2 hardware is far more advanced than the old Jaguar AMD X86 based APU in the PS4. It might not have the muscle at the moment, but DLSS is something PS4 did not have at all and the Switch 2 does.

@Paulo

Developers tend to get better on optimization the longer the console been on the market, it's not like they get worse on it over the years. That's why quick ports made for the launch-weeks tends to have bad performance, bugs etc.

@Paulo

It's a fair comment.

Legendary art design and story telling but for context Fromsoft are not great programmers and their games are almost always better optimised on Xbox (even though they have a longer history of support for Playstation weirdly).

Nightreign on the PS5, for example, is dreadful. Utterly unacceptably optimised. Pop-up all over the place for a game engine (the original Elden Ring) which was built with the previous generation in mind.

@Paulo The Switch 2 is more powerful than a Steam Deck. It's plenty powerful to run this games and more as evidence by Cyberpunk, SFVI and Madden on the system among others.

This is just bad optimization. Give the devs time to work on it, it's not even out yet lol.

Been a member of Nintendolife for YEARS...never thought i would have an article about me. Thank you for sharing

I really don't understand why some people are stating that this is "running okay". If that's really "running okay" then I can't imagine when it actually lags. Had I to decide whether to buy it or not right now, I'd refuse. Hopefully, things will improve before the release.

I think the Switch girl liked the guy who was playing. She was giggling quite a bit.

@SirLink It looked to me like a pretty consistent 30 fps for most of it save for the occasional dip. 30 fps definitely isn't desirable these days, but for a handheld running a game as demanding as Elden Ring, it's a fair compromise.

I won't mind if the whole game runs about that well docked, though since they haven't announced a release date, they can probably still make some improvements before launch. I doubt I'd ever want to play something as challenging as a FromSoft game in handheld anyway, but hopefully those who do won't suffer too badly for it.

Remember when everyone (speculated) that the Switch 2 was more powerful than the Steam Deck, despite them being vastly different consoles? LOL

Enjoy your 15 fps while my SD has 30.

@kmtrain83 60 fps should standard in 2025

@rushiosan Because optimization in general is hard. You try to improve one thing, and it might cause something else to become worse for instance.

This is especially true if the core software design is not sufficiently modular. You'll have a hard time improving the performance/fidelity. I'm guessing FromSoftware's game engine has serious design flaws.

@RasandeRose
I remember with original switch there were things like dragon quest heroes 1+2 which came out at or close to launch in japan and was apparently a disaster performance wise, and yeah as you mentioned things tended to get better as it went on and while the bad ports were still bad it felt like the good ports got better.

Definitely felt like an odd era when it came to that kind of thing was the psone/N64 era in that towards the end of those you got games which pushed the visuals at the cost of performance but even then the fact that FFVII and FFIX were on the same console definitely showed how much a console can progress.

Naturally i expect in a couple of years when PS6 and whatnot come out it could be a challenge but if that rumoured sony handheld happens there will still be games made with handheld specs also targeted plus im hoping the rumor is true since it would be nice to have additional options when it comes to dedicated portable consoles.

a bit of a ramble but i imagine the general gist of this comment is able to come through.

I think people will be surprised what the Switch 2 can do once you get actually properly optimized and developed games for it down the line.

We're going to have some rough ones for now it seems, again more on optimization by third party devs than anything. Perhaps also the lack of dev kits doesn't help? I don't know what the situation is there, but maybe the reported lack of dev kits doesn't help.

@eldersnake Which other games have been rough? This is the only one I know about so far and it hasn't released yet. Donkey Kong may have had some framedrops, but it wasn't really "rough".

@roboshort Not the first party Nintendo games, more some of the third party games (not including Cyberpunk) and the ones upcoming like Borderlands that have to omit certain features and lock at 30fps.

I think there's a bit of an adjustment period but should hopefully improve later on when devs get more of a handle on the hardware. As long as they aren't lazy that is.

Have people forgotten that Elden Ring has frame drops even on modern consoles? I play on performance mode on my PS5 and I still get frame drops on Elden Ring. That’s a sign of poor optimization

I just need to have it run "good enough" docked.

1080p, 720p, 500p, I don't really care. Just want it to run smoothly.

If it looks/runs like ***** on portable mode then there was little point for this port.

@SurprisedRobinChu optimization matters. There are already plenty of examples shown on YT of games played on S2 being better than on a SD. Cyberpunk S2 vs Cyberpunk SD already kills your narrative.

SD isn’t even considered a high spec portable PC machine now. They long since been lapped by competition since Valve doesn’t want to do yearly upgrades. You don’t even need a SD if you just like the Steam Os.

Also FYI as someone that own a SD…ER definitely struggles to even maintain a 30 so no idea why you are even bragging about ER on a SD of all things as if it was a technical marvel.

@SurprisedRobinChu

The switch 2 is indeed more powerful than the deck.
This is just an optimization issue from the developers side.
I have the Steam Deck and its nowhere near that stable as you are telling lol. Even on lowest settings it struggled.

Even PS5 pro had frame dips. Also my gaming PC

The game struggles on any hardware. Even on PC it seems inconsistent depending on your pc build. Fromsoft is known for making fnatadtic games with really bad optimization

Runs better on the now pretty old OG steam deck tbh

I’ll just go ahead and echo sentiments that it’s entirely ridiculous to set your expectations based on over the shoulder cam footage, and add that From Software have released games with entire biomes that bring consoles to a standstill, and that they are also some of the best games of all time.

@Paulo Elden Ring runs quite badly on all platforms, so I wouldn't lose hope yet. Besides, developers haven't necessarily had that much time with the development kits either.

@Paulo
You know... You could stick the "Wii" there and realize that's not a great comparison.

Even if you tried to retort and replace it with the "Wii U", you'd actually prove the Switch 2 in the right... because the Wii U absolutely could run plenty of games during its era, but 3rd parties didn't care to.
Back then it was marketing wars. Nowadays? ... I mean, it very well could still be about marketing wars.

Edit: Also, the Switch 2 by specs is pretty comparable to the Steam Deck while selling for a little more than half its price.
If you keep doubling down, you'd be simultaneously downplaying the Steam Deck while indirectly complimenting the Switch 2, chief.

@Paulo Yes because it's the Switch 2 that's the issue, and totally not the fact FromSoftware uses outdated engines and bad track record of piss poor optimizing

@The-Chosen-one Sure Jan.

@Zuljaras

That looks pretty fine!

@abbyhitter can you remove the pedo profile pic? It's quite disrespectful to impersonate him and you should feel ashamed.

It's crazy to read what some people expect from what is essentially an underclocked mobile chipset? You can't compare this device to a Steam Deck as that is essentially running on AMD64 architecture with some power constraints, the Switch 2 runs on ARM and is essentially a mobile device, 'optimizations' or not

@Duncanballs Switch 2, unlike Switch 1, is overpriced and expensive. You are paying a premium to have a subpar experience (paying PS5 prices and getting PS4 quality)

@The-Chosen-one well, it worked fine at my series s, other consoles i cant say since i dont own them.

@Paulo Yet other third-party titles are getting proper ports like Final Fantasy.

@SurprisedRobinChu It still has a better GPU.