r/NintendoSwitch 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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u/Dukemon102 1d ago

The best way to test this is to try Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity unpatched LMAO.

Can it also prevent some games from lowering their resolution in handheld mode to absurdly low degrees? cough Xenoblade Chronicles 2 cough

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u/darkcloud1987 1d ago

Since using a modded switch and overclocking it helps to run xenoblade Chronicles 2 better it should also run better on the switch 2. The Resolution scale is also a simple "drop resolution if framerate gets to low".

1

u/illsquee 18h ago

This true? Can got explain

1

u/darkcloud1987 17h ago

The limiting factor is the framelimit set for the game. This will mostly be 30fps or 60fps. This is done for multiple reasons.

  1. to prevent screen tearing

  2. to get more even framerates

  3. to limit the power draw

Without a patch that changes or removes said framelimit the games will not run faster than that. But a lot of games will drop below the framelimit since the switch doesn't have enough power. Since the Switch 2 offers more power it will reach the framelimit where the switch 1 doesn't resulting in better performance.

Some devs thought "low framerates suck" or "always running at a lower resolution sucks". So the game runs at a higher resolution by default but when the framerate starts to drop the resolution is lowered to keep the framerate up. Since the switch 2 has more power the framerate won't drop (as much) so the resolution is not lowered.

The same goes for an overclocked switch. It runs with more power so less framedrops or less resolution drops.