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

[Soundwave]

Chrkeller said:

Soundwave said:

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. 

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. 

Yes.  Rift Apart, as is, isnt possible on the switch 2.  It isn't touching 1600p at 60 fps.  Plus lighting and volumetric would need to be cut back. 

Could the game be cut back for a port?  Sure, most anything can be ported.  But as is, no it isn't running on the S2 without massive downgrades. 

I dont know what else to say that hasn't already been said.  You seem shocked games see scalable and you have this odd view that hardware is the same if a game plays on both..  which is silly given a gtx 1660 plays 99% of what a 5090 plays..  

Yeah just like Star Wars Outlaws has "massive downgrade" ... not really. It's the same game. Switch 2 could run Ratchet & Clank easily and run a nice looking version of it at that. You were wrong on basically everything, this system can run PS5 tier games without much fuss at an acceptable level of performance, making it the first mainstream portable console that can do that in the 3D era this easily. 

And that's likely by strict design too, not by accident. I think Nintendo told Nvidia they wanted PS5 multiplatform games on this system and Nvidia basically gave them the most cost efficient chip that could meet that performance level. This is not just a happy coincidence. 

And that's notable and a significant achievement in video game hardware. You couldn't do that 10 years ago, the version of console multiplats attempted on system's like the Vita were actually light years below home console versions, today we have a non-fringe console that can actually play big ticket modern games off battery power even in a slim form factor. 

People based most of their predictions on the Switch 2 on Nintendo's most recent past hardware era ... and fuck all else (lol), but now people don't want to own up to that and admit they were wrong. Whatever at this point, every time I said things like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Monster Hunter Wilds will be on Switch 2 I got met with a bunch of posters trying to shit talk it down, and welp turns out they were wrong basically every time. 

Having eaten that crow I bet some loud mouth posters here will be a lot more humble when there are Switch 2 Pro and/or Switch 3 rumors coming out. Not every thread will devolve into a lot of bullshit of doomers trying to downplay everything performance wise, they got taught a lesson I think in humility this time around even though they won't admit it out loud. Wii and DS era is fucking over, dead, done, finito, this is a different era. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 11 January 2026