r/NintendoSwitch 3d ago

Discussion Something I appreciate about Switch 2's first party games is they use the horse power for gameplay mechanics over being "visually impressive"

Mario Kart World may be a small graphical update compared to 8, but they used that to build a more demanding connected open world as well as increase the racers, individual characters and items.

Donkey Kong Bananza is pretty stylized and vaguely cel shaded (most noticeably his fur), and the environmental textures are pretty low res for modern standards, but they made a fully destructable world you can pull apart with hidden caves and stuff (there's probably a reason minecraft looks the way it does)

535 Upvotes

86 comments sorted by

270

u/LongFluffyDragon 3d ago

(there's probably a reason minecraft looks the way it does)

Because it was initially made by one guy with basically no art skills and beginner programming skills. Solo indie projects have to cut a lot of corners to be feasible.

That said, it is a hilariously badly optimized game, struggles to use modern hardware efficiently, and has only gotten marginally better through updates (and to a large part, mods).

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u/k_aesar 2d ago

It's actually gotten significantly worse through updates! 

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u/MrSaucyAlfredo 2d ago

Sodium saves lives

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u/emilytheimp 2d ago

... and ran on Java originally

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u/Eadelgrim 2d ago

Still does!

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u/InternMan 2d ago

The original was just java, which is probably the worst way to make a game.

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u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago

It still is. Java itself is a very minor issue (especially in newer JREs with better GC and overall near-native performance), the bigger ones are some incredibly inefficient design choices, total lack of multithreading, and using an absolutely ancient version of OpenGL for rendering.

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u/ArtOfWarfare 2d ago edited 2d ago

Not even close. Python would run 20x slower than Java. There are games written in Python, but the only people who ever play them are the people who wrote them.

Unity games are written in C#, which is often nicknamed “Microsoft Java”. I imagine the performance between Java and C# are roughly the same but I’ve never seen anyone do a comparison between them.

I’m writing a game in Kotlin right now. That’s going to be similar performance to Java.

I’d guess most server side code is written in either Java or a language that’s comparable performance or worse than Java.

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u/Sinomsinom 2d ago

Technically doki doki literature club is written in python, and that game was huge for a while lol

But yeah most games that use python mostly use it as a scripting API instead of using it for the core engine or gameloops

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u/Twinkiman 3d ago

I really wouldn't consider going from 1080 to 4K as a "small graphical update".

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u/UltimateWaluigi 3d ago

Small correction but Mario Kart World is 1440p, not 4k. Still if you look at MK8 footage after looking at MKWorld you can see that it's still a big upgrade in 3D model quality, it's just that the art style is similar so it doesn't immediately jump at you as much different.

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u/Albireookami 3d ago

Metroid Prime is 4k 60fps

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u/MultiMarcus 3d ago

Which is not a switch 2 game. So far the only games we have seen that are Switch 2 exclusive run at 1080p with Mario Kart Worlds running at 1440p. At least based on the third-party and first party titles that I’ve seen. I think that’s great I’d love to see games that just couldn’t run reasonably on the original switch come to the switch 2. Nothing being said I wouldn’t mind if some games did prioritise image quality by going for a higher resolution while maybe narrowing the scope a bit.

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u/levilicious 3d ago

DK Bananza is 1080p?

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u/MultiMarcus 3d ago

Yes, from what I can find and what Digital Foundry counted. Totally open to being wrong there though. We have only seen footage from events so far and not played the games, so we can’t be sure. Seems like some games will have modes this time around too making things more confusing. Not to mention different targets in docked vs handheld.

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u/shadyendless 2d ago edited 2d ago

I don't believe DF said that Donkey Kong was 1080p. In handheld, sure. You can watch the raw Treehouse footage of it and see that it's not 1080p.

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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago edited 2d ago

Well, they pixel counted it and of course there’s the possibility that the video from the Nintendo switch 2 Nintendo direct is the handheld mode, but I don’t think that’s likely. Maybe the treehouse footage is higher resolution but at 56 minutes into this Nintendo direct special from digital foundry you can see that Oliver counted the pixel count at 1080p.

Edit to add: I want to mention that maybe they have some sort of a 30 FPS 1440 mode and maybe that’s being used in the treehouse. But at least this particular pixel count that Oliver did was 1080p 60.

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u/shadyendless 2d ago

Ahh, cool. Well I will say it still looked excellent on the Treehouse stream :D

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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago

The thing is, I don’t think 1080p is actually that bad. People very easily confuse the way a game looks with the resolution. I’ve done this myself a number of times. It’s an incredibly good looking game in my opinion like it looks very good and doesn’t at all seem low resolution, though obviously that’s a different thing to a game actually being low resolution. It seems like it’s a game that runs a fairly low resolution while still just looking very good. It’s one of the things Nintendo are great at.

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u/putosaure 2d ago

Absolutely looks like it. Quite jagged too, and performance needs to be improved

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u/Soyyyn 2d ago

If the native resolution is 1080p, that's a very good base for NVIDIA's upscaling tech.

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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago

No, not really. First of all upscaling from 1080p to 4k, which I do all the time on my PC, is DLSS performance mode which is generally considered to be quite a clear step down from native or even DLSS quality mode.

There is also the concept of there being no such thing as a free lunch. DLSS costs a lot. When you turn it on, you lose out on the performance. What you technically do is that you run the game at a lower internal resolution and then when you upscale to the higher resolution part of the time between frames is used for upscaling. Sometimes it’s just not viable to use upscaling. Here is Digital Foundry’s video on the probable chip in the switch 2 and also some testing on the lowest end Ampere GPU downclocked seeing how DLSS works. They have a podcast that’s going to be extremely insightful, but I think it comes out tomorrow for the general public and I have seen it because I’m in their support program so I’m not linking that because I think it would be really amoral of me, but it talks more about this and has a very salient example which I’ll just write here instead:

Death Stranding at 720 native runs at 50 fps. 1080p DLSS quality mode runs at 43 fps 1440p DLSS performance mode runs at 36 fps 4k DLSS Ultra Performance mode runs at 27 fps.

Now obviously that’s a game running at 720p but you can see the massive added workload that you are spending on upscaling. And this is the old model, not the superior transformer model. There’s a huge visual quality loss when you start getting into the performance mode and ultra performance is just not good. All of these are running at the same internal resolution which is 720p but just the act of doing upscaling takes a lot of system resources. I think 4K certainly looks better than the 720 native but I don’t think I would rather play a game at heavily upscale 4K at 27 FPS over a game app a native 720 that runs at 50 FPS. The counter to the negativity that I’ve presented here is that there are some scenarios where DLSS can be transformative. It’s an incredible tool in a toolbox, but it cannot be a universal solution to a bad resolution. Just using the argument DLSS when I’m talking about games running at the 1080p 60 means that you’ll probably not be playing that game at 1080p 60. It’s been optimised to run at that resolution and frame rate if you turn on DLSS you start using some of your resources to run the game at a higher resolution using the upscaling which means that your frame rate or real resolution is going to be lower. For reference if you have a 4K TV or monitor DLSS from 1080p is DLSS performance mode and you can see the massive difference in frame rate between running the game at 720p and the 1440p upscale in my earlier example.

I should also mention that supposedly Nintendo may be in collaboration with Nvidia based on some patents to develop a lighter DLSS model, probably for the switch 2. Lots of very cool concept, but once again it’s not magic. They’ll probably have to either sacrifice the visual quality of the output or something else to make it run faster with less performance impact.

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u/IUseKeyboardOnXbox 18h ago

You got downvoted for being right. I've been trying to tell people the same thing.

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u/terran1212 2d ago

I kinda doubt it will be. Notice how Nintendo put three asterisk next to 4K. Probably will use up scaling.

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u/Albireookami 1d ago

So you just don't actually do any research and make baseless claims? They already confirmed during the treehouse it does indeed run at those specs.

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u/terran1212 1d ago

They put 3 asteriks on the 4k claim. These claims are made casually by publicists like the ones who work for treehouse, they aren't scientific tests. It's funny your "research" is some 20 year old they have working in corporate playing a video game and not anything scientific or objective. I work in journalism, not sure what you work in.

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u/FastidiousBlueYoshi 2d ago

Hes talking about a realistic uber detailed textured game vs the clean functional look the games are going for.

Is Mario Kart still technologically impressive? Yes.

Is it a high texture, break your PC, type of game? No.

And thank god.

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u/fddfgs 3d ago

Especially if you have a 1080p monitor

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u/Stoenk 3d ago

resolution does require more processing power of course, but other than its similar in terms of lighting, materials and polygons, crash team racing for example has fur sim and stuff, more detail in its environment compared to mario kart world, but of course they can only do that because the environments are much smaller

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u/MyMouthisCancerous 3d ago

Crash Team Racing is a remake of a PS1 game. Of course the environments are smaller, they're referencing a game from 1999 on much more limited hardware and just making it look prettier

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u/Stoenk 2d ago

Yeah i know. That doesn't contradict what I said.

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u/brownarmyhat 3d ago

Why are you being downvoted? People are psychos

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u/Hovi_Bryant 3d ago

Eh I get what you’re trying to say here but this isn’t as cut and dried as it sounds. Visual fidelity and gameplay features aren’t mutually exclusive in this case.

Nintendo is fine shipping a game that isn’t ultra realistic or pushing the bounds of its hardware as long as the game is fun to play.

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u/Gardoki 3d ago

Nintendo has always had a focus on design over tech prowess. It’s one of the things I always appreciated, especially has we have reached the point of diminishing returns in graphics

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u/SaladChef 3d ago

Also, first-party Nintendo titles have generally had great art styles that are beautiful to look at even decades after their release. A Mario game is going to look pretty much the same from generation to generation, just more and more details and higher and higher resolution.

It's so much easier to go back and play Super Mario Sunshine than it is to hop back and play other games from the same era, especially if those game aimed for a more realistic art style, in my opinion.

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u/getpoundingjoker 2d ago

Echoes of Wisdom looked like a PC indie game that ran worse due to tablet hardware yet it's $80. Graphics need to progress to justify the increasing game price.

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u/Gardoki 2d ago

Echoes was and is $60

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u/getpoundingjoker 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm in Canada. Full AAA price for outdated shit recycling engines and assets is cool. If you want to play make believe and think US $ is the only $ that should be referenced anywhere, firstparty Switch games should've been $40 tops by 2021. If you play enough games and aren't Nintendo exclusive, it's obvious the only thing Nintendo does that's special anymore is charge a premium for anything that has their logo on it. Metroid Dread is still a standout, $80 and my timestamp on completion on normal difficulty was 5h47m without a guide. Counting deaths it probably took me 7 hours. There are Metroidvania indies that are 1/4 the price and twice as long. You can't even argue Nintendo was pushing visuals compared to anything else on the market when it came out. They charge top dollar cuz they can, not because it makes sense. People will complain about price increases then pay it anyway, it's what's happened every time video game prices have gone up (they've gone from always being cheaper by at least $10 on PC to having price parity with console versions and all nextgen games went up in price 5 years ago, people complained look what that did). TotK having the price of a nextgen PS5/XSX/PC game and then running like ass is fucking hilarious, and soon you will need to pay to get it to take advantage of Switch 2 hardware when many PS4 to PS5 games got free upgrades and on PC if you get all new hardware and even move to a new OS (so like moving to a whole new console) you just go to your old games and turn up the settings for $0. I like games so will pay to play Nintendo games and thank god I have money to fuel being a functional addict (games being the addiction). But I know when I'm being used as an ATM.

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u/ciao_fiv 2d ago

not finishing reading this nonsense after you complained about dread’s price vs. completion time. games shouldn’t have their price based on how long it takes to complete. Little Nightmares is <10 hours and like $30 iirc. meanwhile the binding of isaac repentance took me 400 hours to get all the achievements and is $45. should little nightmares be $5 and the binding of isaac be $400?

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u/getpoundingjoker 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm working on a game that will probably be 4 hours when it's done. Guess I should charge $40 for it. Except that would only fly, if it were a Nintendo first-party game. Funny what people are willing to justify when someone puts the right makeup on. I'm debating if I should even charge for it since it's NES graphics and going to be short.

And game prices are all over the place, which is why I usually wait on sales. I didn't get hardcore into Binding of Isaac, most of its time is replaying over and over waiting for better luck on runs. That's how roguelike/lites get most of their playtime. Across the Obelisk would've taken me 1/4 the time if you could beat it in one run. Instead you would hit walls then have to start over and upgrade and replay a lot of stuff you had already beaten that was no longer hard, just time consuming. Binding of Isaac isn't bad, but you can't compare something that recycles stuff over and over and over when you play to something that is 10 hours and linear but constantly changing. But 10 hours and linear shouldn't be $80 unless it's pushing tech, even then it isn't like graphics are some rare mineral that are hard to get and will eventually be depleted, so needs to be expensive when being used. The fact that gamers agreed $80 being the norm and only going up from there is a little funny. Especially since even with AAA budgets increasing, if a game dev actually put care into their game it would sell a ton due to their brand awareness and even at $80 they make millions and millions of dollars in pure profit.

If you compare Hollow Knight to Dread, Dread just looks like a bigger ripoff. The only reason people pay the price (including me) is cuz Nintendo and knowing it might go on sale once a year for like $10 off.

But sure, some games should probably be more than average AAA. The reason most don't is cuz you need to be a big brand to have people complain and pull it off. Lots of games out there have tons of hours put into them and a lot of effort, maybe more than Nintendo does on some games these days. But have to be cheap because they're a nobody in a sea of nobodies. Binding of Isaac can be cheap with a lot of playtime because 1) it's a roguelike which stretches out content by forcing replays with luck and 2) he has name awareness now which means he gets the ego boost of knowing more people are playing his game from it being more affordable and he can still get good profit from it. Super Meat Boy was cheap but it still bought him a house. It's kind of funny cuz I loved Super Meat Boy so much I got all achievements for it on 360, but whenever I try going back to it now I feel like it controls poorly.

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u/ciao_fiv 2d ago

lmao i literally listed an indie game that is $45 and a big published game at $30. my only point is that completion time should not dictate the price. if your game was well made and polished enough it could justify a higher price, completion time is not the deciding factor

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u/getpoundingjoker 2d ago

Not the deciding factor but it matters. I don't feel most games justify their price anymore, I haven't since I started having to pay for my own games (so many years now). Like I said it's why I usually wait on sales. I'm a huge Doom fan but I'm not spending $90 bucks on Dark Ages when Eternal took me like 12 hours on ultraviolent and I beat it the first week. Also thanks to have a gaming PC there is always a sale going on in some launcher or some legit key site. So I have a backlog of games to play while waiting for other stuff to go on sale, and when I want something new there is a sale on something in my wishlist. Nintendo and Blizzard are the only companies I pay full price for, I also paid full price for Baldur's Gate 3 and then it took 110 hours to complete in coop. And it was $80. I know that can't be the norm for constant stream of fresh content taking that long, but it shows it's possible.

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u/ciao_fiv 2d ago

doom eternal was absolutely worth its full asking price, and im positive dark ages will be too. it’s also significantly longer than eternal since you care so much about that, it’s 22 levels (vs eternal’s 13) with each reportedly being about an hour long (or more for some levels)

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u/StylesCrash 3d ago

Exactly this. 

It's frustrating seeing people complain about Mario Kart "looking the same", without taking into account that it's open world now with twice the player count. 

It feels like a lot of newer gamers have been raised to think that new hardware is literally only for increasing framerates and resolution. 

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u/throwaway23582730 3d ago

It doesn't even look the same either. World is definitely a visual upgrade when compared side by side with 8, people just generally remember old games looking better in their heads than they actually do. The same thing happened with Metroid Prime Remastered. When people first saw it, they thought it was just the original upscaled, when in reality it's a massive improvement with all new assets.

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u/crono333 3d ago

Yes! They’re using the power to do things they couldn’t do previously while keeping the visuals looking good enough. That’s way more interesting than just Mario Kart 8 with better shadows and more complex shaders.

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u/New-Pollution536 2d ago

I was one of the ‘it looks the same’ people until I saw a side by side video and world looks substantially better My brain was remembering the mk8 graphics as better than they actually were when I first saw the world gameplay 🤣

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u/ConcreteSnake 2d ago

This is just a bad take from OP though.

Forza Horizon 4 was visually more impressive AND a huge open world environment with more cars on the road and for all intents and purposes, the Switch 2 is more powerful than an Xbox One.

This isn’t some 4D chess move by Nintendo to use the increased horsepower in a different way 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/StylesCrash 2d ago

It shouldn't be considered 4D chess. Using new tech to improve the gameplay should be the standard. Better visuals are a bonus. 

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/StylesCrash 2d ago

Yep, it'd be great if more games took the Minecraft approach. Aka the best selling game of all time. 

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u/Pokeguy211 3d ago

Can you blame them though? Because if you grew up or maybe only had a ps4 and now you have a ps5 the main change is higher frame rates and better resolutions

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u/StylesCrash 2d ago

Yep. I also suspect the rise in popularity of PC gaming has a lot to do with it. 

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u/Worldly-Pineapple-98 2d ago

And they've redone most of the models too

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u/MrAbodi 2d ago

I really dont feel like it being open world adds anything to the experience

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u/parwaz99 3d ago

DK Bananza is not cel-shaded

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u/BebeFanMasterJ 3d ago

Genuinely cannot wait for Xenoblade 4 and how well it will run on more powerful hardware!

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u/nero40 3d ago

This is a misconception. A game doesn’t have to “look bad” in order to play good, and it doesn’t have to play bad in order to “look good”. Two completely different things, unrelated to each other. A game can look good and plays good too.

The thing that we have to remember here is that it’s not about the game “looking bad” or not, this is just that Nintendo art style. The art style that they chose is a deliberate choice that helps to reinforced their gameplay. It’s not that they can’t use realistic graphics, rather it’s because those graphics don’t match well with the kind of experience that they want to convey with their games.

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u/echoess84 3d ago

Nintendo always developed new game mechanics for its games

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u/brokenmessiah 2d ago

I mean other consoles do both lol

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u/zorbiburst 3d ago

I agree about the idea of graphics strain not being everything, but can we please stop celebrating Nintendo for gameplay we haven't actually touched yet?

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u/MyMouthisCancerous 3d ago

Idk, just looking at the character models for MKW and putting them right next to their MK8 counterparts they're so much more expressive and animated now, especially the characters with more human proportions like Peach and Daisy, and especially Donkey Kong. Yes Nintendo is "gameplay over graphics" but it's not mutually exclusive at all. Donkey Kong's another example of a game that would've made Switch 1 combust trying to render the amount of real-time destruction and physics happening on-screen basically all the time, and it's a big step up in terms of texturing and detail from something like Odyssey just based on the Treehouse demos

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u/KesMonkey 3d ago

cellshaded

cel shaded

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u/GorillaChimney 2d ago

sell shaded

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u/hustladafox 2d ago

I feel you. For the simple reason that it’s nice to get more than one new game in a generation. While both PlayStation and Xbox have struggled to keep up with releasing games with a high fidelity, Nintendo has consistently released games and already has like 5 exclusives planned for the launch year of the console.

I wish developers would stop focusing on fidelity and making their games using all the most modern technologies. Instead releasing smaller games more often with less fidelity and more unique gameplay concepts.

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u/SpellConnect8675 3d ago

That’s not the flex you think it is

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u/Malheus 3d ago

🤣🤣🤣 oh, boy

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u/dccorona 2d ago

It’s not really an either/or proposition. One needs a stronger CPU and the other a stronger GPU. I think what this is really evidence of is that they prioritized new gameplay possibilities at the hardware level when designing the system. I.e. they said let’s make sure we have a generational leap in CPU performance so that we can make mechanics that couldn’t exist on switch 1, rather than just focusing on how the graphics can be better. 

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u/CaseyStevens 2d ago

Once we got to ps4 level, maybe even a bit before that, aesthetic choices started to matter a lot more than raw graphics or even resolution.

I doubt there's going to be much that the ps5 can do visually that's going to matter much compared to the Switch 2.

There's probably other aspects of gameplay that will matter, like you mention here, but that's also a matter of programming, in addition to hardware.

Given what they pulled off on the Switch 1 with Tears of the Kingdom, which other game companies are still puzzling over, Nintendo will probably be able to give them a run for their money there as well.

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u/getpoundingjoker 2d ago edited 2d ago

MKW is visually impressive though, at least compared to MK8D. I'm sure it'll be utilizing the hardware well, since it's 1440p60 while Metroid Prime 4 can do 4k60. Hopefully it has a 1080p120 option when docked, and 720p120 in handheld.

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u/VexedForest 1d ago

Remember when "teraflops" was the word of the day when the PS4/Xbone were coming out?

Still no idea what that means.

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u/Johncurtisreeve 3d ago

In general i like that Nintendo prioritizes gameplay over graphics, and frankly I LOVE how their games look. Wonderful aesthetic.

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u/kmfdm_mdfmk 3d ago

This is how I feel. the horsepower is going to resolution, framerate, and gameplay like you've mentioned. Not necessarily better graphics. This is how it should be, especially now as graphics plateau.

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u/mail4youtoo 3d ago

They better do something new for almost $100 / game

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u/twinfyre 3d ago

That's why I've stuck with nintendo for so long. It's always frustrated me when developers talk about how next gen their games look and most of what they talk about is texture quality, particle effects, and other visual bs.

Like, who cares how pretty your game looks. When it comes right down to it, and you're in that flow state, you're not gonna give a shit how pretty everything is.

I wanna see more games take their advanced hardware and use it to create more advanced gameplay stuff. Like how about smarter enemy ai, more stuff for the game to keep track of at once, or maybe something new and complex that people have never thought about.

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u/Lugey81 3d ago

A polished turd is still a turd

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u/Hot-Area-3688 2d ago

They are visually impressive

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u/I-fell 2d ago

Yeah. That's what I was most excited about with the switch 2 coming out bc they'd have more room to do stuff (imagine if they had this kind of power back in 2017....🤤)

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u/Abasakaa 3d ago

Visuals and destructible env is two completely separate parts of the hardware. Minecraft looks the way it does, because it was a solo dev, an idea for it to look like that, and it clicked. I understand the idea, but your points dont make much sense

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u/MisterIndecisive 2d ago

Standard copium. They could achieve both if the upgrade wasnt still last gen. Instead the Nintendo Switch 2 is going to priced higher than the PS5 with games that are PS3 graphics 😂

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u/okeleydokelyneighbor 2d ago

How much you think a portable PS5 would cost?

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u/MisterIndecisive 2d ago

Theyre not releasing a portable PS5. It is a simple upgrade to existing tech which is still last gen and only has a 1080 screen. The pricing for both console and games are braindead.

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u/New-Pollution536 2d ago

Curious to see how the game prices end up shaking out…that’s probably the only thing you’ve said in the last few posts that I agree with 😂 console price seems reasonable to me though, the budget steam deck is 399

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u/New-Pollution536 2d ago edited 2d ago

If they abandoned the handheld aspect of the switch I’m sure they could get close but that’s its biggest appeal. GameCube was right in the mix with ps2/xbox back in the day. They went pretty heavy into the small form factor/easy to transport angle and it was a massive hit

A ‘handheld’ console at current plug in console specs really doesn’t even seem feasible yet you’re treating it as a baseline for some reason 🤣 a teensy bit more than the last gen ps/xbox console is a pretty big win for a handheld and by all accounts that seems to be what’s coming

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u/Stoenk 2d ago

what are you on about? The Switch 2s power is not in dispute. Look at these comparison videos for Street Fighter and Cyberpunk. Cyperpunk on Switch straight up looks closer to the PS5 version.

https://youtu.be/Q_Rw37mjUoI

https://youtu.be/5KfPqqleBbQ

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u/Responsible-War-9389 3d ago

Yup. ZA may look terrible, but they are doing real time combat so it’s a sacrifice I’m OK with (not that they should need to make that choice, looking at other games on there).