shikamaru317 said:
You have to realize though that the Switch rarely gets what you would consider to be a typical, scaled port. Few was the developer who even attempted to scale the same game from Switch all the way up to high-end PC. On the AAA level, scaled Switch ports are practically non-existent, almost all of them have been late ports due to a need to create new, lower than PC low quality assets for Switch. Almost all Switch ports of AAA games have been handled by porting studios rather than by the original developer, and they often take 3 quarters of a year or more to develop due to how long it takes to create lower than PC low quality textures, models, and other assets. The few AAA devs who have attempted to scale the same game from Switch all the way to high end PC, ended up holding back the more powerful consoles and PC as a result. Scaled Switch ports are more common on the AA and Single A/indie level, but no AAA dev in their right mind even tries to scale a game so that it can run on everything from the less than 300 glflop in handheld mode Switch all the way up to 30+ tflop monster PC GPU's. Series S won't have the same issues of scaling as Switch for sure, it will take longer into the generation for devs to begin to feel like it is holding them back, but I do think we will reach the point where scaling doesn't work properly anymore and devs will start to feel like making customized Series S ports with lower than PC low assets is a necessity. We have already reached a point where the highest end PC GPU's have 10x more flops than Series S and we are only 2 years into the generation, towards the latter half of this generation we will be seeing mid-range GPU's with more than 10x the flops of Series S, and high end with more than 20x the flops of Series S. Especially since this gen is shaping up to be 1-2 years longer than any previous console generation, Series S will be an issue for some devs later on, mark my words on that. |
You also have to take into account though that Switch hardware is massively different to PC or even Console architecture so of course it requires a unique porting/development effort, while Series X/S architecture and development environment are almost identical, and yet developers are still porting to Switch and creating high end versions of the same game elsewhere.
We've again got nothing to worry about from indies since they're all over Switch, I don't get why we need to be worried about billion-dollar publishers who more than have the capability of supporting both consoles in good ways, if they don't, that is on them, not Series S and Xbox itself with its 20+ studios will put effort into both, it's usually the case anyway that 1st parties take advantage the most of the tech.
Series X won't be held back by Series S but instead by publishers desire to do something. However, if both consoles continue to sell great, then consumers will have spoken, and publishers should listen and not put out half assed efforts for Series S or Series X. Honestly though, console hardware almost always becomes obsolete by PC hardware almost instantly after release, Lol.
