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nuckles87 on 17 December 2016
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curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:
You'll probably see a Pascal based Switch in 2018 that has considerably better battery life.

Yeah, a New 3DS/DSi type mid-gen upgrade to the Switch is very likely.

 

nuckles87 said:

Treyarch had to build a completely new version, completely from the ground up, for the Wii. Using completely different assets and technology. This was the story with basically every HD "port" to the Wii, with the exception of sidescrollers like Rayman. It was basically a de-make.

Same would be required for Dark Souls 3, or any any game that was built to run exclusively on current gen hardware. The 360, PS3, and Wii U can't just "run" character models and environments using way more polygons, textures, and details than they were ever capable of running. They would require all new models and environments designed to run on them. This is why certain games like Assassin's Creed Unity were not released for Xbox 360 or PS3, which instead received their own Assassins Creed games released at the same time. Because a whole new game would basically need to be built whether it was a port or something else.

So it is very much a question of power as well as cost. If anything, the two go hand in hand: less powerful systems can be more costly to port to because a whole new game needs to be built, with all new assets and changes in design to accommodate a difference in power. More powerful systems that can receive simple ports of another system's games, same assets and everything, are less of an investment. But of course, it's still not always worth the investment even when a direct port is possible, but it at least makes it more likely.

Money is a bigger deciding factor than hardware power.

 Switch isn't going to be able to run PS4/Xbone games without downgraded assets either; how many ports it gets will depend on how well said ports and the hardware itself sell.

COD on Wii was still viable in spite of the heavy re-engineering required, because they consistently cleared the million mark. Likewise, PS3 and 360 got PS4/Xbone multiplats like Advanced Warfare because they sold well enough to justify porting costs. On the other hand, Wii U missed out on plenty of PS3/360 games that it could easily have run because of poor sales.

That Switch could get a port of Dark Souls 3 tells us practically nothing about it's power level, because the 240 Gigaflop Xbox 360 could've gotten a port of Dark Souls 3, if the game had released back when 360 was still a healthy platform.

I didn't just say downgraded assets, I said NEWLY BUILT assets, which is what the Wii required, and which is what cost it MANY multiplatform games despite being a popular console. This is why most multiplatform titles on the Wii aren't even the same game, but a completely different game from a different developer. Because the gulf between HD and Wii was so significant that direct ports from one to the other wasn't even possible. Hence, they basically made a new game, which is more expensive to do, even when it's a demake like Modern Warfare. Hence why, in the end, power is a bigger factor than hardware: cheap hardware can make a port MORE EXPENSIVE, and less worth it. I'm not even saying money isn't also important, honestly I'd say it's a near equal factor. But as you said, Call of Duty Wii sold well. So how come it received so few other high profile multiplatform games in its lifespan?

Now, I admit, Advance Warfare is an interesting case. As far as I know, most cross gen games were made to be cross gen from the get go, but Advanced Warfare, was, according EuroGamer, made for next gen. But then we also have the instance of Assassins Creed Unity on modern consoles and Rogue Flag on last gen consoles, something that is rather pointless to do if Xbox 360 and PS3 were perfectly capable of running games built specifically for PS4 and Xbox One. This type of practice is only done when the less advanced hardware can't handle the main game, which as I've already pointed out was common on the Wii. 

The reason why I harp on Dark Souls 3 is because Digital Foundry regarded it as a very visually,impressive game. Because even PS4 couldnt run Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne at more than 30 fps, despite the games  being built for it, while both it and Xbox One could run Advanced Warfare at 1080p and 50 to 60 fps. I harp on it because nothing about the rumor indicated that From built completely new assets to make their Switch port happen, but instead ported it down DIRECTLY from what the PS4 and One were running.

What I'm basically trying to get at here, is that porting between console generations is rarely ever a matter of "turning down the graphic settings". The gulf of power has, in the past, usually been too great to overcome through any means other than what I highlighted earlier. We have had instances of this happen this generation with the Wii U, with stuff like Project Cars and Yooka Laylee being the most infamous examples. These games weren't canned for the same reason as other less advanced indie titles (because the Wii U was dying) but because the system literally could not run the games well enough to be playable. This generation has been defined by cross gen and games and last gen remasters because companies were slow to invest in this generation, but I'm still not really convinced this has changed. But if I'm wrong, and all of this gen's games, like Dark Souls 3, are scalable to last gen hardware and Switch can receive all the Xbox One and PS4 games it can handle? Then I don't consider its performance to be particularly important at all, I guess, and I don't really have anything else to discuss here. As I see it, what's important to the Switch is that it be powerful enough to run its competitor's games, and receive all the big multiplatform games that Wii and Wii U could not technologically handle. It needs to be able to get the next Dark Souls, the next Red Dead, the next Bioshock, the next GTA. If all it needs to do is sell, then great! I hope it sells well enough to get these titles, and I hope Switch owners buy them when they arrive so we can get more.

in terms of power, I guess we will get a better idea Monday, assuming Seasons of Heaven is ACTUALLY running on Switch. If not....January 12 can't come soon enough.