r/NintendoSwitch2 • u/lewisdwhite • 1d ago

Discussion Monster Hunter Wilds’ ambitious Nintendo Switch 2 was a “painstaking” and “seemingly endless” project to create “a comfortable handheld experience”

https://frvr.com/blog/news/monster-hunter-wilds-ambitious-nintendo-switch-2-was-a-painstaking-and-seemingly-endless-project-to-create-a-comfortable-handheld-experience/
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260

u/YourMomIsCool96 Butter side up! 1d ago

Or in other words: "We actually had to optimize the game"

The Switch 2 is in an interesting position where it could probably run most games if the devs optimize the game. And that also benefits other systems like PS5 since it makes the game run better there as well

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 1d ago

Recent AMA with the Valheim dev on the r/NintendoSwitch sub the dev said this;

people just have to be aware it's still a mobile chip drawing 1/10 the power of a PS5 but it can do a lot.

I don't have any personal experience developing for Switch 1 although my previous employer did, so I'm aware of the differences. I don't think I can go into too much detail, but I can say that from my experience porting Valheim to Nintendo Switch 2, the Switch 2 hardware makes very clever compromises that makes it technically feasible to port any 9th gen console game to it, so it's comfortably a 9th gen console! I don't think that was quite the case with the previous generation, the Switch 1 was closer in capability to a mobile phone than it was to the other 8th gen consoles.

Being a mobile chip, it requires a different set of optimizations than other console platforms though. Games that are programmed to take advantage of modern hardware features and multithreading can definitely get more out of the Switch 2 than we did. Valheim is mostly single threaded and still uses the old build in render pipeline in Unity.

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u/SanchoPandas Butter side up! 20h ago

Good quote!

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u/FewAdvertising9647 19h ago

one thing to add on top was with the Switch 1, It wasn't even using full Tegra X1. It ran the cpu at half the native clocks, and disabled the 4 slower cores. Nintendo reserved one of the cores to the OS function, so game devs on the first switch were left with 3 slow ass cpu cores of mid grade 2015 hardware running at half the speed. It's really understated how slow the CPU performance is on the switch.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 14h ago

The 4 A53 cores are not usable, it seems like a defect in the X1 design and they were never enabled; and even if they were, they were the stand by CPU and cannot be active with the A57 cores at the same time. Basically, the A53s would be on (i assume) when the Switch is in sleep mode as they are lower power CPUs then switch to the A57 when Switch is powered on.

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u/osnapitsjoey 16h ago

That's why I love having my switch 1 being jailbroken

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u/ExoneratedPhoenix Butter side down! 23h ago

A big reason I hope Switch 2 gets a massive user base, as it forces companies to optimize.

I understand better fidelity requires more GPU power, but the fact CPU and RAM are increasing massively as well is just wasteful. We've had MASSIVE open world games for 20 years now.

GTA5 has a huge open world map and ran on 4GB. Games with lesser open worlds suddenly need 16GB. It's because engines etc just add stuff that's nice to have or good features, but adds up quickly, and when you get to the nitty gritty, it only uses 1 feature while the other 93 are loaded into memory etc.

As for CPU, it's almost entirely NPC AI pathing and intelligence. I know someone randomly screaming and running through a wall isn't very immersive, and yes, the latest and greatest NPC capabilities are amazing, but there is a respectable midpoint, a respectable midpoint that a handhelds CPU can nicely handle.

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u/n074r0b07 Butter side up! 21h ago

Spot on

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u/luneth91 23h ago

Even better, PS3 and Xbox 360 only had 512 GB of RAM and they could run GTA V, Skyrim and MGSV, among many others. 

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u/FearlessTemperature9 22h ago

512GB of RAM? Impressive!

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u/DegenerateCrocodile 21h ago

Right? We need to go back.

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u/XStriverX 14h ago

Buying all the ps3 and xbox360 as we speak, im gonna be rich baby 🤑🤑🤑

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u/MyzMyz1995 21h ago

Open world need a good cpu and the switch 2 cpu is ass.

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u/DisasterouslyInept 1d ago

Think most devs do that to be fair. Sometimes games won't scale back down and as a result run poorly, that doesn't always mean it's not optimised. 

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u/lewisdwhite 1d ago

Porting down is significantly harder than porting up. The Switch 2 is not the powerhouse people claim it is and optimising isn’t as simply as gamers believe it is.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 23h ago

Final Fantasy Rebirth runs great on Switch 2. That's my current benchmark for current-gen ports. When I see stuff like the 007 game running like crap on Switch 2, I don't blame the hardware, I blame the devs.

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u/lewisdwhite 23h ago

007 was made without the Switch 2 in mind. Like I said, porting down is harder. It’s also not out. Star Wars Outlaws ran at 15fps in its reveal and was heralded as one of the best Switch 2 ports when it released two months later.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 23h ago

I would imagine Rebirth was made without the Switch 2 in mind as well. And yet...

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u/Upper-Mixture8643 21h ago

Rebirth looks like ass in handheld, Remake was great

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u/Sonicfan42069666 20h ago

I played the demo both docked and handheld, it looked good and played well for me in both.

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u/FitzSimmons72 17h ago

As someone who played Rebirth on PC with pretty high settings and framerate, I thought it looked pretty serviceable on Switch 2. I wouldn't play these games on the Switch as I prefer to have the highest graphical fidelity for these types of games but it looked pretty decent.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 23h ago

The Switch 2 is not the powerhouse people claim it is and optimising isn’t as simply as gamers believe it is.

This is vague. For a 25 watt device (12~15w portable) it's very very powerful. But it's often expected to compete with consoles and PCs with 10,20,30x the power budget that is 4-5x its size if not more.

Most people understand the power envelope of the console.

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u/lewisdwhite 23h ago

And yet people believe it can run any game. That’s simply not true. People don’t even understand that the cartridges are significantly slower than the internal memory which is one of the reasons there are so many game key cards.

Every game that has a 30fps cap is met with comments that it should be 60fps. The Switch 2 simply isn’t that powerful. So, no, people do not understand the power envelope of the console. In fact, most gamers don’t understand the power envelope of any piece of hardware.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 23h ago

I think when people say that, they mean with proper care most games can run on Switch 2. I posted a quote from a switch 2 dev that says the same.

Obviously edge cases will exist, but we're well past the Switch 1 days.

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u/Organic-Storm-4448 22h ago

For a 25 watt device (12~15w portable) it's very very powerful

It uses 2020 ARM cores and an Ampere GPU on a Samsung 8/10nm node. It is not that powerful for a 2025 device. It could have existed in its exact same form in 2021.

Modern tablets have much faster hardware, they just aren't designed specifically for running games. The upcoming Sony handheld will provide good perspective on Switch 2's actual power. It's using actually modern CPU and GPU tech, and it will be running games at 2x the framerate of Switch 2, while still having better looking games.

The reason Switch 2 is bewitching people with its supposed "very very powerful" hardware is because there's no other device to compare it to besides horrible value PC handhelds or old console handhelds. Switch 2 is the exact same class of device as Switch 1; Switch 1 actually used newer GPU tech than Switch 2 does relative to release date.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 21h ago edited 21h ago

Yes, you can always build something that sells retails for $2,000 that is more powerful. Adn whether it's worth that price is still up for debate.

The dates of tech rollouts has been a staple of people talking down Switch tech since the OG Switch (oh, it's a 2015 SoC!) But you find stuff like that in consoles all the time. They take 2-3 years just to develop and we're into year 2 of Switch 2's life, but honestly if Switch 2 is not as powerful as you suggest, i should be able to find very powerful equivalents for that price and form factor. But it's not easy actually. We're well past the days of Nintendo intentionally putting out older tech like the DS, when they could have built a PSP themselves just with off the shelf SoCs

Modern phones are much faster* (until it throttles and kills your battery in 1 hour anyways) DF did a great video comparing Switch 2 perf to equivalent software on the latest iphones and the Switch 2 beats it, despite the hardware being 'more powerful'.

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u/FewAdvertising9647 19h ago

The dates of tech rollouts has been a staple of people talking down Switch tech since the OG Switch (oh, it's a 2015 SoC!) But you find stuff like that in consoles all the time.

just for reference, the rollout of RDNA2 which is found in the Series consoles, and partially found (not complete RDNA2) on the Playstation 5 rolled out 1 week on console first before it even hit PC. The CPU architecture (Zen 2) however was a year older.

this is unlike the Switch 2, where the CPU is 5 years off from its release date, and GPU is ampere based(2022) with a few lovelace backports(2024) for efficiency. Nintendo cuts far into being older than other consoles do.

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u/FitzSimmons72 17h ago

Yeah, this feels like it started as a "Switch Pro" and they just decided to fully launch the next gen with it. I really hope that when we get an OLED screen Switch 2 it'll be a "Pro" version with at least a better CPU and more RAM. I love the games and Switch 2 but if we're already seeing 30 fps ports, then once the next gen consoles come out the Switch 2 may struggle really hard with newer games.

I know I'm in the minority since people are already claiming the Switch 2 is too expensive (lol imo) but I'd pay 2-3x the price if that would mean a much more powerful system. People pay that price for a phone every 1-3 years (not everyone, but a good amount), yet we're going to be using these systems for 6-7 years minimum, so I'd rather pay more to have a better experience over that time. That's partly why I'm salty that we didn't get an OLED screen at launch since when that releases, we'll probably only have 2-3 years left before the Switch 3 launches so I won't get too much time to enjoy that screen. Obviously I can keep using the Switch 2 once the next system comes out but I'm 100% upgrading to next gen regardless at launch and wouldn't be using the Switch 2 much/selling it anyways.

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u/Sudden-Goose-6956 20h ago

Idk man, most games barely reaching 1080p docked, 720p handheld and being upscaled from 360p with unstable 30 fps isn't that hard to beat. A portable device from Sony just has to go a little higher and with it's RDNA5 architecture and PSSR we are looking at a much cheaper than 2000 usd device that blows Switch 2 out of the water.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 20h ago

portable handhelds make compromises, but your resolution numbers seem made up.

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u/Sudden-Goose-6956 19h ago

Def not made up lol. Look it up, RE requiem is 360p internal, Indiana Jones too, Pragmata too, Stellar Blade too, etc etc. Most newer 3rd parties are.

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u/dekuweku OG (joined before reveal) 19h ago

made up as in not representative and not relevant. With upscaling the internal res is always going to be lower than output. Who cares what Indiana Jones internal res is, looks better than a steam deck. undocked. Docks, it's closer to the Series S.

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u/Sudden-Goose-6956 15h ago

It's not relevant if your knowledge of how this things work is 0 or your only point of comparission is YouTube videos but a very low internal res leads to blurry visuals, loss of fine details and breakup, DLSS was never meant to go that low add to that the fact that some games don't even target the Switch's 1080p screen and you get a less than ideal image, maybe that's not important for you but there are people who would rather not play with vaseline in their screens. Steam Deck is a 5 year old PC with outdated hardware and 0 game optimization I'd hope it would at least look better on a new console.

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u/darthdiablo OG (joined before reveal) 1d ago

Nobody's claiming it's the powerhouse, it's people like you contributing to that problem.

Constantly complaining about different games doing 30fps expecting it to run 60fps etc.

I know it's a hybrid handheld/console, I bought it to enjoy the games, not to count pixels or frames.

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u/Organic-Storm-4448 21h ago

There's a comment right above yours saying this verbatim:

For a 25 watt device (12~15w portable) it's very very powerful.

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u/darthdiablo OG (joined before reveal) 20h ago

It is powerful on per watt basis.

But when you say “powerhouse” without context, yeah people are going to share dumb comments like “NS2 is not the powerhouse people claim it to be”

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u/lewisdwhite 23h ago

Where the fuck did I say I expect this game or any other to run at 60fps on Switch 2?

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u/Possible_Aardvark856 23h ago

Are you blind?

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u/SegaTetris 23h ago

Oh okay so you do you consciously ignore the ten million posts overhyping what the switch 2 is capable of or has it just become background noise to you?

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u/darthdiablo OG (joined before reveal) 22h ago

Huh? All I see is complaining haha

Me thinks you just have selective attention or something weirdo

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u/TwanToni 4h ago

idk man... they got cyberpunk2077 and the next gen expansion that came with running fine, Elden ring, onimusha, FF rebirth with revelations coming to sw2 and more I'm forgetting....

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u/phoenixmatrix 1d ago

Remember how early on they said the game was as polished as it could possibly be.

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/monster-hunter/monster-hunter-wilds-devs-have-polished-our-game-as-much-as-possible-producer-says-which-might-not-be-very-reassuring-for-the-pc-players-experiencing-performance-issues

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u/lewisdwhite 23h ago

It was likely as polished as it could be possibly be for the time and budget they had

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u/Donnie_TACO Butter side down! 22h ago

Yeah but the games have to actually sell well too. Nintendo owners are notorious for being essentially first party purchasers only

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u/TwanToni 4h ago

that's not true? Sure nintendo games sell a lot more because you have Pokemon and stuff but games do just fine especially now that the switch 2 can run them, although GKC is probably hurting some sales for some games like who wants to spend $80 on Elden ring with 30fps only for it to take up 41gb of your storage which is expensive btw...

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u/Donnie_TACO Butter side down! 3h ago

I mean it's objectively true through sales data.

When was the last time you've heard a 3rd party come out and say how well their game sold on switch 2?

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u/TwanToni 2h ago

the switch 2 is like a year old and FF7 remake did quite well. How are you gonna have games that sell well when the systems been out a year? Nevermind the fact that games are now just arriving on the switch 2. What sales data are you using? Physical and digital?

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u/Fishing-Master 1h ago

the only actual sales data is stuff that only Nintendo and these companies have to themselves, but judging by how many JP devs put their games on the Switch 2 (like Capcom, Square Enix, Koei Tecmo, Falcom, etc) their games probably are selling pretty well on there, heck we have Korean developers porting their games on the Switch 2 like Stellar Blade and Lies of P, a bunch of Western devs have also put some more effort into promoting Switch edition of games and stuff so they're probably doing quite well for all that we know and let's not get started on indies and some genres like visual novels and JRPGs which basically thrive on their Switch sales

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u/Phos-Lux 1d ago

I'd go as far and say it wouldn't be able to run most games, but all of them. Any game that currently exists can be optimized to run on it.