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Forums - Nintendo - How Will be Switch 2 Performance Wise?

 

Switch 2 is out! How you classify?

Terribly outdated! 3 4.55%
 
Outdated 1 1.52%
 
Slightly outdated 16 24.24%
 
On point 37 56.06%
 
High tech! 7 10.61%
 
A mixed bag 2 3.03%
 
Total:66
curl-6 said:
Chrkeller said:

All those games have roughly the same minimum requirements as Survivor which was ported just fine, obviously with lower fidelity and performance.  So it wouldn't even need that much custom, again same requirements as Survivor which was ported.

Which backs my point.  Building hardware tiers based on what games can be played is antiquated and stupid.  It made sense in the 90s, but that was a long time ago.

The Steam Deck plays 90%+ the same games as a 5090 (32 gb dedicated vram and 1500 gb/s)...  not the same hardware tier. 

To be clear those games would look and run better on the S2, perhaps the ps4 pro could get (somewhat) close.  But the argument, that many of today's games can't run on the ps4 is false.  It could be done, survivor demonstrates this.  

Just about anything can be ported to anything really, it just depends how much you're willing to rework. Hogwarts Legacy runs on the Switch 1 for instance, just in a heavily cut down form.

Minimum PC specs and the Steam Deck may have comparable GPU power to PS4, but they're not bottlenecked on storage and such in the same way, so you would need to do a lot of tinkering, like we see in say Survivor. 

But yes we broadly agree, its just a matter of how much work it takes; Switch 2 can provide a more "intact" current gen port than PS4 could, with less effort expended, which is why we see say Star Wars Outlaws, AC Shadows, RE9, etc on Switch 2 but not PS4. (Plus PS4 simply having less of an active userbase meaning the extra effort brings less of a return)

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 is basically getting the same games on the same engine as PS5 titles without requiring like a year of extra work either. They have different settings, but so what, PS5 has different settings from PC, XBox Series S has different settings from Series X, PS5 and Series X themselves can have different settings, I don't think anyone considers each of those to be bespoke/custom versions of the game. It's the same game, largely the same art assets. 

Again I'm pretty sure Nintendo specifically tuned the system to be able to get this exact performance, it's not an accident it can run modern gen games better than the Switch 1 could. As Nintendo's designers stated in the Switch 2 Q&A they weren't fully satisfied with the Switch 1's hardware performance, but Nintendo likely could not say no to what was probably a sweetheart deal at the time (Nvidia had basically no big customers for the Tegra X1 at the time), and Nintendo had basically no input on the design of that chip. 

This time was different and add in that Nintendo has basically a younger, hardware engineers, well that makes all the difference.



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Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

Just about anything can be ported to anything really, it just depends how much you're willing to rework. Hogwarts Legacy runs on the Switch 1 for instance, just in a heavily cut down form.

Minimum PC specs and the Steam Deck may have comparable GPU power to PS4, but they're not bottlenecked on storage and such in the same way, so you would need to do a lot of tinkering, like we see in say Survivor. 

But yes we broadly agree, its just a matter of how much work it takes; Switch 2 can provide a more "intact" current gen port than PS4 could, with less effort expended, which is why we see say Star Wars Outlaws, AC Shadows, RE9, etc on Switch 2 but not PS4. (Plus PS4 simply having less of an active userbase meaning the extra effort brings less of a return)

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 is basically getting the same games on the same engine as PS5 titles without requiring like a year of extra work either. They have different settings, but so what, PS5 has different settings from PC, XBox Series S has different settings from Series X, PS5 and Series X themselves can have different settings, I don't think anyone considers each of those to be bespoke/custom versions of the game. It's the same game, largely the same art assets. 

Again I'm pretty sure Nintendo specifically tuned the system to be able to get this exact performance, it's not an accident it can run modern gen games better than the Switch 1 could. As Nintendo's designers stated in the Switch 2 Q&A they weren't fully satisfied with the Switch 1's hardware performance, but Nintendo likely could not say no to what was probably a sweetheart deal at the time (Nvidia had basically no big customers for the Tegra X1 at the time), and Nintendo had basically no input on the design of that chip. 

This time was different and add in that Nintendo has basically a younger, hardware engineers, well that makes all the difference.

I didn't say Switch 2 was getting Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1 kind of ports; that was an example of a case where a game had to be pretty much rebuilt a la COD on Wii.

You can port almost anything to anything, but the bigger the power gap the more changes are necessary. Switch 2 seems to be capable of handling fairly intact versions of current gen games, just with things like resolution and other settings reduced to account for its lower power draw. 



curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 is basically getting the same games on the same engine as PS5 titles without requiring like a year of extra work either. They have different settings, but so what, PS5 has different settings from PC, XBox Series S has different settings from Series X, PS5 and Series X themselves can have different settings, I don't think anyone considers each of those to be bespoke/custom versions of the game. It's the same game, largely the same art assets. 

Again I'm pretty sure Nintendo specifically tuned the system to be able to get this exact performance, it's not an accident it can run modern gen games better than the Switch 1 could. As Nintendo's designers stated in the Switch 2 Q&A they weren't fully satisfied with the Switch 1's hardware performance, but Nintendo likely could not say no to what was probably a sweetheart deal at the time (Nvidia had basically no big customers for the Tegra X1 at the time), and Nintendo had basically no input on the design of that chip. 

This time was different and add in that Nintendo has basically a younger, hardware engineers, well that makes all the difference.

I didn't say Switch 2 was getting Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1 kind of ports; that was an example of a case where a game had to be pretty much rebuilt a la COD on Wii.

You can port almost anything to anything, but the bigger the power gap the more changes are necessary. Switch 2 seems to be capable of handling fairly intact versions of current gen games, just with things like resolution and other settings reduced to account for its lower power draw. 

That's a huge difference though whether or not you have to make basically a bespoke, completely stripped version of a game or essentially you have the same version of the game just with some tweaked settings more or less.

I remember growing up playing things like Mortal Kombat on Game Gear (and even Game Boy eeek) which looked or sounded nothing like the Genesis/SNES versions let alone the arcade version, lol. We've come light years since then where today gamers today can just play basically the recognizable same game of Resident Evil 9 or Star Wars Outlaws or Assassin's Creed Shadows or Indiana Jones on Switch 2 just with some settings tweaks as the home console versions, that's wild. 

Even the days of Witcher 3 and Harry Potter and Dragon Quest XI on Switch 1 seem rather quaint now by comparison to what the Switch 2 is already doing 9 months into its life cycle. 



curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 is basically getting the same games on the same engine as PS5 titles without requiring like a year of extra work either. They have different settings, but so what, PS5 has different settings from PC, XBox Series S has different settings from Series X, PS5 and Series X themselves can have different settings, I don't think anyone considers each of those to be bespoke/custom versions of the game. It's the same game, largely the same art assets. 

Again I'm pretty sure Nintendo specifically tuned the system to be able to get this exact performance, it's not an accident it can run modern gen games better than the Switch 1 could. As Nintendo's designers stated in the Switch 2 Q&A they weren't fully satisfied with the Switch 1's hardware performance, but Nintendo likely could not say no to what was probably a sweetheart deal at the time (Nvidia had basically no big customers for the Tegra X1 at the time), and Nintendo had basically no input on the design of that chip. 

This time was different and add in that Nintendo has basically a younger, hardware engineers, well that makes all the difference.

I didn't say Switch 2 was getting Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1 kind of ports; that was an example of a case where a game had to be pretty much rebuilt a la COD on Wii.

You can port almost anything to anything, but the bigger the power gap the more changes are necessary. Switch 2 seems to be capable of handling fairly intact versions of current gen games, just with things like resolution and other settings reduced to account for its lower power draw. 

Yep, exactly.



rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2

Having played through most of it now, RE Requiem really feels like a landmark game for the system, much like Star Wars Outlaws did.

For it to look as good as it does while running at/near 60fps most of the time on a hybrid device is really something.

540p sounds like a steep compromise on paper, but in practise the use of the "full fat" version of DLSS does a remarkable job of restoring image quality to a decent level, while the characters, environments and effects all look fantastic.

It may not quite match the PS5 version, but it feels like its in the same ballpark, in a way that Switch 1 couldn't quite manage, commendable though many of its ports were.



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curl-6 said:

Having played through most of it now, RE Requiem really feels like a landmark game for the system, much like Star Wars Outlaws did.

For it to look as good as it does while running at/near 60fps most of the time on a hybrid device is really something.

540p sounds like a steep compromise on paper, but in practise the use of the "full fat" version of DLSS does a remarkable job of restoring image quality to a decent level, while the characters, environments and effects all look fantastic.

It may not quite match the PS5 version, but it feels like its in the same ballpark, in a way that Switch 1 couldn't quite manage, commendable though many of its ports were.

It feels to me development costs have reached a ridiculous level and commercially no one wants to push the envelope with regard minimum spec needed. PS5 has something like a 16,000 passmark cpu score and the latest PCs maybe 30,000-50,000 passmark CPU but not many games are upgrading their engines to make use of such high CPU performance. Yes you can get high frame rates and resolutions but it doesn't feel like the physics engine of games is improving that much. So you are left with games running across a wide range of platforms with just graphic fidelity and frame rates varying but no actual full barrier to running that game on low end hardware. I've been amazed with how many good games now run on Android, quite ambitious games like Red Dead Redemption, Subnautica etc. As Virtuos pointed out and easily seen in benchmarks the Switch 2 is only around a passmark score of 2000 and 2 of the cores are taken, one for the operating system and one for gamechat. That is low CPU resources compared to Steam Deck at 9000 and many other devices. Sometimes it seems like the only times the CPUs are maxed out is emulating other systems. I'm not as hopeful about Switch 2 into the future running later game engines that are more demanding but it does feel such games maybe fairly rare. Ramegeddon has slowed people buying PC hardware because its unaffordable now so PCs will stagnate to a degree while prices remain so high maybe making PC games less demanding too in the future I guess.

I've only had my Switch 2 a few weeks but general impressions are a fairly weak system but I haven't used mine docked at all to be honest purely as a portable so maybe I don't see the full picture yet but it feels a little laggy and motion on the panel is fairly poor. It doesn't feel as fluid or responsive as the Steam Deck. Yes of course I realise the Steam Deck only has a 800p panel so its a lot easier for that system to be responsive and fluid in graphics and has a far superior panel even in the LCD version for pixel response. Maybe with the panel out of the equation and docked I will think differently. It feels like a system struggling a little bit to provide responsive and fluid gameplay but still a good experience.

It's interesting that Cyberpunk 2077 is still considered a very demanding game and that came out over 5 years ago on PC. I remember a time when my PC kept getting outdated and I needed to upgrade to play the latest games but that doesn't seem to be such a thing now. However I guess that represents the pinnacle of Switch 2 performance so far. That doesn't feel like the full fat experience to me with fairly high input lag, cut down detail and a frame rate that will tank at times but still a very impressive port.

I personally think there is a limit on what the Switch 2 can achieve and pushed beyond that the experience will be reduced compared to PS5, Xbox Series S and later consoles. So far its a mixed bag of Switch 2 conversions with both good and bad ports. However its not just about the hardware its how the games sell on Switch 2 and how much time and money can be spent optimising games for weaker hardware and I guess many of those weak ports were because of a low budget in developing them. These patterns repeat though as when the Switch 1 came out it was seen as weak compared to PS4 and Xbox One but a great platform for polished ports of 360 and PS3 games and now with Switch 2 its a great platform for polished ports of PS4 and Xbox One games but not able to match PS5 and Xbox Series X or the most demanding PC games.

 



curl-6 said:

Having played through most of it now, RE Requiem really feels like a landmark game for the system, much like Star Wars Outlaws did.

For it to look as good as it does while running at/near 60fps most of the time on a hybrid device is really something.

540p sounds like a steep compromise on paper, but in practise the use of the "full fat" version of DLSS does a remarkable job of restoring image quality to a decent level, while the characters, environments and effects all look fantastic.

It may not quite match the PS5 version, but it feels like its in the same ballpark, in a way that Switch 1 couldn't quite manage, commendable though many of its ports were.

I think a lot of that is we have hit the "good enough" area on even weak hardware.  I don't mean weak as a jab, I can't think of a better word.

I mean the days of FF7 where Cloud had no hands, nose or mouth are long gone.  The days of 256x224 are long gone.  Playing 3D games where the fps hit the teens, again gone.

At this point everything looks good, like really good.  

Edit

It is almost like there is no weak hardware anymore. 

Last edited by Chrkeller - on 07 March 2026

rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2

Soundwave said:

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ...YET!

We are still in the first year of the Switch 2. Hogwarts Legacy was release when the Switch 1 was six and a half years old.

Are you sure that the Switch 2 will handle crossgen PS5/PS6 games well in a few years without significantly reworked versions?



Glad we are coming to this point. Hardware limitations is not an excuse anymore. A lot can be achieved even with 8th gen hw perfomance tier, now is up to developers creativity to pull amazing gaming experiences instead of chasing for more graphic intensity and raw perfomance

Last edited by 160rmf - on 07 March 2026

 

 

We reap what we sow

Conina said:
Soundwave said:

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ... that was a game that was significantly reworked to be able to run on a Switch 1 and side by side other versions would look or even play significantly different in a lot of areas. See also things like Dragon Quest XI. 

The Switch 2 isn't really getting "Hogwarts Legacy on Switch 1" type ports though ...YET!

We are still in the first year of the Switch 2. Hogwarts Legacy was release when the Switch 1 was six and a half years old.

Are you sure that the Switch 2 will handle crossgen PS5/PS6 games well in a few years without significantly reworked versions?

I don't think this is going to be a problem, because PS6 (and better hardware) will use the extra resources for path tracing and advanced raytracing. Disabiling them + going for low settings, fps, resolutions etc should be enough to make them playable on Switch 2 level hardware. There will be some games that will take extra work to port, but I think most won't require complete reworking, even past the multi-year crossgen period. 

Compared to past generational jumps, PS6's specs when ML and RT are ignored won't be a huge leap vs PS5. PS6 is also reportedly launching with a handheld version that should be weaker than PS5 in rasterization.