| Leynos said: I remember Digital Foundry did a test before Witcher 3 was announced for Switch. They made a mock PC with the lowest specs that were somewhat close to a Switch. I don't remember exact details but I seem to recall Witcher 3 just wasn't working well. Yet the port Switch got while blurry. It works. I guess I just I'm just saying some mock DF PC to run on speculative specs what can run on it seems silly. Devs will scale and optimize whatever it is. Also feel a lot of people are setting themselves up for disappointment. A lot of people kept thinking the Switch would have an X2 and 6GB of ram. I like beefy specs as well but not expecting top of the line here even for a handheld. |
One of the things to consider though is that the Matrix Awakens is a demo, not a full game. Spending time to optimize a demo makes very little sense from a financial perspective, unless you're trying to impress an audience of the capabilities of the system, showing off its feature-sets (i.e raytracing.) And from the sounds of it the demo looks good, at least from how the journalists describing it perceived it. I'm not sure if somebody saw the Witcher 3 in the form it ran on the Switch, they'd say the same.
Furthermore, by the time the Switch 2 releases at the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025, an Orin chip die-shrunk to 5nm/4nm isn't really "beefy" or "top of the line." Most current hardware would be on 3nm by that time (Blackwell for Nvidia, Apple is already on 3nm now, AMD plans to use Sammy 4nm and TSMC 3nm, etc.) Nvidia's lovelace (5nm) will be aging technology, and it makes sense for all of their legacy chips to be on that node. The Switch 2, with those specs, probably won't even be the most powerful gaming handheld on the market. AMD's Zen 5 (Nirvana) should be out by then, and mobile APU's on Zen 5 will be much more powerful than the Switch 2, especially if they target a higher power-profile. Mobile ram chips have been rapidly decreasing in price over this year -- most high-end tablets/phones should have 16GB - 20GB (right now they range from 12-16GB) by then, with mid-ranged phones/tablets having 12GB. In 2017, the Pixel 2 (a relatively high-end smartphone that cost $649-$949) had 4GB of LPDDR4X ram, in comparison to the Switch's 4GB of LPDDR4.
Like with any console hardware, one should expect mid-ranged specs for the particular form-factor. PS5 and XBS X were mid-ranged with respect to PC hardware when they released at $400-$450, in late 2020, and the Switch 2 should be about mid-ranged for tablet hardware when it releases for a similar price in 2024/2025. A 5nm die-shrunk, 12 SM, Orin chip with 12GB of VRAM will essentially be mid-ranged for tablets, and low-end compared to gaming platforms in general, but still probably more capable than the DF test, by at least a little bit.
Last edited by sc94597 - on 19 November 2023
