So among all of Switch's announced launch window games, Steep sticks out to me in terms of providing a concrete benchmark of Switch power levels.

Many of the Switch 3rd party offerings known so far aren't graphically intensive. For now, Steep is really the closest thing we have in a true AAA 3rd party game on the Switch.

I really think how that port turns out will say a lot about how powerful the system really is - and whether 3rd parties can really work with it.

Will it be massively downgraded? If so, in what ways? Would the downgrades only be for portable mode - or for the docked mode as well?

And if it's actually comparable to the PS4/X1/PC versions in docked mode - what does that really tell us?

If it holds up to the PS4/X1 version, you could just say that Steep isn't pushing those systems. Fair enough.

But, we also have the PC min / recommended specs to infer something upon - which aren't too different from raw PS4/X1 specs.

From ubisofts website

Supported OS: ​Windows® 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 or Windows® 10(64bit versions)
Processor: Intel Core i5 2400s at 2.5 Ghz or AMD FX-4100 at 3.6 Ghz
Memory: 6GB
Video Card: GeForce GTX560Ti or AMD Radeon R7 260X
DirectX: DX 10
Hard Drive Space: 25 GB


The Recommended Requirements are as follows:

Supported OS: ​Windows® 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 or Windows® 10(64bit versions)
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K at 3.4 Ghz or AMD FX-8150 at 3.6 Ghz
Memory: 8GB
Video Card: GeForce GTX680 or Radeon HD 7970
DirectX: DX 10
Hard Drive Space: 25 G

Taking a quick glance at it - there's no way a PC game requiring these specs would run in any form on the WiiU IMO due to memory limitations alone. That may already say a lot.

These of course are not earth shattering PC requirements - but again the GPUs listed here are not far off from what's inside the base PS4/X1. In other words, if the Switch is truly significantly less powerful than base PS4/X1, Ubisoft would need to do major downgrades to Steep to even get it to run on Switch even in docked mode - let alone portable mode also. They'd likely downgrade some aspects of the game to accomodate the portable mode anyway - so downgrading to run in docked mode is not out of the question. Nonetheless, that's a hell of a lot of downgrading. So perhaps this again invites the possibility that Nintendo Switch is not as far off from X1/PS4 as many would assume? But only if this port holds up good... If it's clearly a downgraded port, that really lays out the cards once and for all doesn't it?

Of course many 3rd parties gladly produced downgraded ports for the Wii in it's prime. Ubisoft of course was no stranger to that.

Further, Steep was never a portable game or a last gen game....

So do you have a link to any video of the game running on the Switch?

BOTW is 900p 30fps. It is made by the people who supposedly know the platform best. Seems like a good benchmark.

Well we already know its much more than Wii u due to 4 player splitscreen 1080p 60fps MK8. Thats a big improvement already

Well .. by the trailer of Skyrim seems to me the Definitive Edition of the consoles (Special Edition of the pc) and the definitive version has a high requirement for the pc, maybe it can be a good test for the switch.

Massive flaw with the OP, you state PC requirements and say how will a console match those to run the game.

Google the mini requirements of GTA5 on the PC, Google the specs of the X360, that game should never run on that hardware.

What will be a perfect benchmark really when the machine launches is how it runs a game which has obviously been given a lot of time porting over to the switch and that we know exactly how it runs on a number of configurations and that is The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, people will know immediately the power of the system based on exactly which effects make it into the switch version and exactly how well the machine can reproduce them in portable and docked mode.

Not exactly, since it was designed with a system with a very different and older archetecture in mind and the move to the Switch likely happened late in development and split a team which was't very large by modern AAA standards to begin with..  With added development time just for the Switch they might well have gotten it to 1080p or improved the visuals even further.  Many of the 1st party games this year were probably orginally in development for the WiiU and their graphics suffer for that.  A third party 8th gen multiplat with no 7th gen, WiiU, or handheld versions is a very iportant test.

I swear we have this misconception of understanding optimization ever generation.  GTA VI will likely be a similar story of PC requirements, yet somehow run on PS4 and X1.

Yeah, that will be interesting to see...I doubt Ubi will just do a hack job with this one, so it will provide decent comparison of what big 3rd party devs will be able to pull out of Switch with reasonable effort...theoretically of course.

That portable mode though...that's just way too weak.