Theory on why Monster Hunter World isn't coming to Switch(yet).

[Nuvendil]

Mystro-Sama said:

Nuvendil said:

I have seen the game.  The only remarkable technical aspects are some of the lighting and particles.  It's using the same old engine, just prettied up.  The Switch could run Worlds, with far fewer compromises than you seem to think.

And just to elaborate: grass density is mediocre, environment textures are nothing special, polygonal complexity of various environmental and character meshes are nice but nothing to write home about, particle effects are nice the few times they use it, and the lighting is quite good.  It's a pretty game, no doubt, but no tech showpiece, not even remotely close.

There are no areas anymore which means no load screens and i'm pretty sure the Switch can't pull that off which by gameplay we've seen is fundamental to the gameplay. You can't work around that.

I've worked with open worlds, in three different engines and followed projects working with other engines.  The size of the world is fairly inconsequential, it's about how you manage the on-the-fly loading.  You don't load the whole map all at once in full detail.  For example, in Skyrim it loads only a specific number of cells around the player and only renders certain components when they fall in your cone of vision.  Same with Xenoblade Chronicles X, whichis far larger than Skyrim with significantly fewer loading screens.  

Again, nothing overly special.  And on top of that, the map is still structured in zones with connecting paths according to Capcom, they just don't have loading screens.  Choke points like that make managing this even easier.