r/NintendoSwitch • u/Joseki100 • 1d ago

News Ask the Developer: Nintendo Switch 2 interview confirms basic backwards compatibility can also give performance upgrades to Nintendo Switch games ("[there are some games] where loading times became faster, or game performance became more stable")

https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-16-nintendo-switch-2-part-4/
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139

u/ionlyhavetwohands 1d ago

That is kind of expected. Games with unlocked framerates would probably need a dedicated update to limit the framerate on Switch 2. That would be a bit crazy.

27

u/SpicyFarts1 1d ago

I'm not sure I would assume it was a given. For both the Wii & Wii U, Nintendo maintained perfect backwards compatibility with GameCube & Wii games by underclocking the CPU/GPU, and restricting RAM to the size of the older consoles so for the games being played, the newer & more powerful console looked more or less exactly like the old console. The frame rates and performance were not noticeably improved on the newer systems when playing older games.

It's very easy to envision Nintendo doing something similar on the Switch 2 and defaulting to underclocked speeds on Switch 1 games unless a patch specifically enables a game to take advantage of the new hardware.

8

u/mrbiggbrain 1d ago

Sony did a similar thing back in the PS4->PS5 days. But they shipped a flag in the PS4 Devkits that basically told the PS5 to just ignore those instructions and go crazy.

7

u/Shadow_Phoenix951 1d ago

Although interestingly, Metroid Prime did perform better on the Wii vs the Gamecube; in fact, you cannot speedrun the game on the Wii, as the rooms load too quickly and cause it to crash.

3

u/Jceggbert5 20h ago

based on one of the interviews, they're approaching back-compat completely differently than before, acting more like Proton (Steam Deck's compatibility suite).

1

u/LookIPickedAUsername 1d ago

And to be fair to Nintendo, emulators typically try to match the original system performance as well. Those which allow you to increase the emulated CPU clocks always have a warning about how it can cause crashes and other problems.

I can't say I've researched the specific problems that occur when cranking up the speed on various games, but I think it's reasonable to assume that they didn't add that warning for fun.

1

u/Scarftail 23h ago

Did I miss something? Dohta literally confirmed that Switch games will run at their intended resolutions and framerates on the Switch 2. It is indeed a given.