Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Soundwave]

Chrkeller said:

Soundwave said:

You spent a ton of time saying Switch 2 wouldn't be beyond the base PS4 at all, then over time you gradually had to eat those predictions and modify them later on. At one point I remember you said that there's no way the Switch 2 would be able to even run Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade because Intergrade was a PS5 game and that couldn't be possible on the Switch 2 (lol) *let alone* FF7 Rebirth that we now know is confirmed (and Part III also). Pretty sure you would've gone off for ages if I said not only is Integrade going to easily run on Switch 2 but Rebirth and Part III will be on Switch 2 as well. 

If I said that a couple of years ago here I'd be attacked non-stop by a group of posters and I was. 

Then it became no way can the Switch 2 run a game like Ratchet & Clank on PS5, even in its launch window its running a more ambitious game in Star Wars Outlaws *with* ray tracing no less. Switch 2 could run a game like Ratchet & Clank from the PS5, likely with ease. 

You and a few other posters also made a big stink over The Matrix demo running on the Switch 2 story wasting pages and pages of posts about how that couldn't be. Well that looks entirely plausible seeing the final hardware performance today. 

System is more powerful than most people expected because they were hung up on "I'm a Nintendo expert because I know what the Wii and Wii U were". You didn't factor in Nintendo's leadership today is entirely different from even 10 years ago and made a lot of assumptions without looking at facts like that. I said many times the number of CUDA cores (1536) was too high for something that was supposed to be a crap/budget piece of hardware and things like DLSS and being able to program from the ground up would make massive differences and I got attacked for saying that, I was 100% correct on that. 

This is first 3D mainstream video game console that can run pretty much all of the modern gen games, the PSP and Vita (past "high end" portables) could not do that. This is the first Nintendo hardware in some time that outperforms more expensive devices (like $600+ PC handhelds) in some cases ... that is all very notable and frankly I don't care if some people bet their ego against that and now want to downplay it like this is no big deal. Those are significant points. 

Fidelity output isn't much beyond the ps4 pro.  It isn't.  Check out cross gen games.  In terms of resolution and fps, the S2 is much closer to the ps4 pro than the ps5, just like I predicted.  My original prediction years ago was ps4 to ps4 pro.  And ps4 pro is a fair tier.  

The problem is you have never taken the time to understand what people were actually saying.  Remake on the ps5 is 1620p and 60 fps.  Is the S2 getting this?  Nope.  It is getting a port that is striped back in resolution and fps.  All their ports are stripped back, because it is mid tier hardware.  It isnt cheap hardware and it isnt premium either, hence mid tier.  

I always have and always will be in the camp anything can be ported.  Just a matter of sacrifices, like Cyber having a massive reduction in NPCs.

The S2 is a bit stronger than I expected, but it is a ps4 pro with some bells/whistles.  But you foolishly act like it blows the ps4 pro out of the water and it doesn't.  

Now I will concede it is getting more ports than I would have thought, but the S2 is not massively more powerful than most of us predicted.  It is a 900-1080p at 30 fps, which is ps4 tier. 

The people who thought the S2 was going to be a 4k system?  Go ahead and list all the S2 titles (e.g. not S1 ports) that are 4k..  oh wait, there are none.  

For the record ps4 games are still gorgeous.  I'm playing Tsushima on PC, gsme looks great.

I will never understand why ps4 tier is considered an insult.

In terms of being the first portable to play AAA..  one it isnt, the steam deck has been out for years.  Two, game engines weren't scalable back in the day like they are today.  

Edit

Best example is elden ring.  30 fps on the ps4.  60 fps on the ps5.  What is the S2 targeting?  30 fps, e.g. closer to the ps4 than the ps5.  And that should be expected.  The S2, a great system, simply doesn't have the bandwidth to target high resolution and high fps...  lol.  

I also said storage was going to be a weakness.  How you enjoying those key cards?  

You said FF7 Remake Intergrade wouldn't be possible on the system at first and basically no PS5 tier games would be possible. 

Then it moved to "well things like Ratchet & Clank on PS5 will clearly be beyond the system" or some such thing and that also today looks very, very wrong. 

When the Matrix demo rumors were out there you also scoffed at that notion, today most people would probably admit that Matrix demo likely can run on the Switch 2. 

You moved the goalposts about 50 different ways and also said 8nm would cripple the system's performance and this, that, and the other. 

You were wrong, just move on already. You based your arguments essentially on nothing more than "well in the past few hardware cycles Nintendo made underpowered hardware so that means Switch 2 will be underpowered too" and basically nothing else beyond that. You didn't look at things like 1536 CUDA cores sitting in the hardware leaks for the system and properly account for that. That was always a shit ton of graphics cores and I said so many, many times to deaf ears. Nintendo wasn't going to pay for that many graphics cores and then not use them. 

The Switch 2 has far better performance that most of the nay-sayers (a crowd of which you were one of the most loudest and frequent posters here) claimed and it is a significant achievement in video game hardware to have a mainstream portable console that can run all/most of the top 3D games of its time. Previous "high end" portables like the Vita and PSP were not able to do that. 

Beyond that I think even most insiders/tech experts don't actually understand how chipset production/design works beyond things like "this chip is XYZ node and this chip is ZYX node so that must mean this". People did not take into account how much Nvidia and Nintendo could get out of this 1536 CUDA core component with optimization (and we see it is a very optimized part from x-ray scans the graphics cores are for example much smaller than the full size Tegra T234. Too many assumptions made that it would just be a literal Tegra T234 with no optimization. Nintendo 100% I believe asked Nvidia for a component that could run even PS5-tier multiplatform games, Nvidia likely told them they could hit that performance even at 8nm with optimization. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 11 January 2026