About halfway through it now and I can confirm the "rimlag" theory put forth by DF is not true.

After about 9-10 hours of play, it's not running any worse than it did at the start. If anything the outdoors areas of the first planet are the lowpoint so far in visuals and perfomance; DF would've only been able to play the first few hours so they probably just saw it get worse as they entered the first town and assumed it was downhill from there. Thankfully, that's not the case.

In spite of its ugly graphics, I'm enjoying it a lot. In fact, I'd go so far as to say its in the Switch's top ten best games.

Quite a bit I expect; their involvement used to pretty much guarantee a Switch port would be good, now when it's confirmed they're the ones behind a future port a lot of people's thoughts will go to this.

I feel like people overuse the word "broken" nowadays. A drop to 20fps at a stress point doesn't make a game "broken". I feel like this phrase should be reserved for games that actually do not function, like ones that have gamebreaking bugs.

This is a rough port with significant polish issues, but it's not by any means broken.

That said, I also hope for a patch.

(Wrong thread, sorry)

I was exaggerating, of course the game is not truly broken.  No one has ever claimed it to be unplayable.  It does however, lack polish and does not live up to the standard of what we should expect in gaming today.  We all know the Switch can handle this game better than what this delivers, we have seen it done with more demanding games.  So when I say "broken", I simply mean lower quality than what I would deem acceptable.

Fair enough, it is indeed unpolished and not as good as it could (and should) have been.

It is worth noting I think, as someone who has played it, that the DF video focuses on its worst moments and areas. I mean, they need to, in order to show what's wrong with it. But it's not like the whole game is that bad. Indoor areas generally run smooth and look good, and they make up a substantial portion of the game's playtime.

It's easy to look at screens online or watch DF's video and come away with the impression that its worse than it actually is. It's creaky, but not a total loss.

So can anyone remember how the story went with this one? At first it was announced to relese somewhere at the beginning of 2020, january or february, right? Then it suddenly got delayed to summer with no explanation. Now we know that 2K made a deal with Virtuos to bring Bioshock and XCOM to the Switch, and now we face this port of the Outer Worlds that should have gotten a little more care. Perhaps this 2K deal was the reason for the delay, who knows. It could explain why we now have three games/series that each could have been wonderful but have a giant hook attached to them (which is obviously the heavy amount of must-download content on Bioshock and XCOM and the lack of polish on Outer Worlds). All three could have been a better experiences for the consumers with a little more time, I think. But then again, this is just an assumption and it all depends on when exactly 2K approached Virtuos. It might just as well be the case that 2K came even first, nobody knows for sure.

However, the game seems to be pretty good nevertheless and has a huge appeal to a lot of gamers. A good game can handle a few drawbacks easily. I am happy that Switch owners still buy and enjoy it. It's kind of sad that so many gamers nowadays tend to just rely their opinions on external sources like Digital Foundry and just go with the popular voice that anything that happens to be slightly below a Game of all Time is broken and worthless. I think Digital Foundry and the game reviewers have way too much power and are way too over-exaggerating.

They did give an explanation; their studio was temporarily shut down in early February due to COVID-19. (They're in China)

The other reason they gave was that it was initially going to be a digital only release, but when that news was met negatively, they decided to add a physical release, which probably meant more time compressing as well as just manufacturing and shipping the cards.

They listened; performance patch in the works

https://gonintendo.com/stories/363911-the-outer-worlds-patch-in-the-works-virtuous-looking-into-furthe