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

[Chrkeller]

Soundwave said:

Chrkeller said:

I think there is an important point here.  People see the S2 as punching above its weight, that is mostly because other console upscaling is really poor, thus the S2 can close the gap to a degree.  

Once consoles and PC mobiles get good upscaling, the gap will increase.  FSR has come a long way.  

Meaning rog ally vs S2 is one thing

Rog ally with FSR4 (official support) vs S2 will entirely different 

But credit to Nintendo for knowing how important upscaling is.

Don't think that impacts the Switch 2 at all. 

Nintendo made a system that can run modern gen games, almost assuredly they chose this performance range on purpose knowing it would give them many/most of the next-gen games they would want (Final Fantasy mainline, Monster Hunter games, Madden, FC Soccer, Persona, Yakuza, Call of Duty, Borderlands, Star Wars games, etc.). This is a design choice, not an accident. 

It's like the Atari Jaguar didn't really impact the Super NES, sure it was better hardware that released several years later but it had no impact on the SNES whatsoever because the SNES could run most any game of its day well enough for the mass market to enjoy its games. 

In terms of support, it won't impact the S2.  I meant right now the S2 is above or at the level of PC handhelds.  But the next round of handhelds will support FSR4 and have better chips, meaning it will be the weakest handheld at some point this year or next.  

And when the ps6 gets good upscaling, it can reduce rendered resolution and use power for other things.  I fully expect the ps6 to be built with upscaling in mind.  

In terms of fidelity, not releases, the biggest advantage of the S2 is upscaling.  This advantage will go away at some point via FSR4, which is quite good.

In terms of releases, I am not worried.  Silent Hill F runs on a 1070ti (2017 and 4 generations behind current) all the way up to a 5090.  Games are scalable.  Releases don't classify hardware generations anymore.  We dont live in the 90s anymore.

Edit

Nvidia deserves a ton of credit for the technology and Nintendo deserves credit for recognizing the importance.  Even with my 4090 I render at 1440p and upscale to 4k, versus native 4k.  The difference is massive.  I get 50% more fps.  Easily will take a game from 60 fps to 90 fps, sometimes more.

Last edited by Chrkeller - on 18 January 2026