The September Nintendo Direct was packed with announcements, though some of them were less than impressive. Several trailers presented upcoming Switch 2 ports of games that already live on other systems, and a number of those ports appeared unfinished. The presentation featured new Metroid and Kirby titles alongside updates for existing games, but a large portion of the event seemed focused on third-party publishers moving their libraries over to the Switch 2.
A few trailers showed the Switch handling ports without issue. The combo trailer announcing the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes on Switch 2 was notably solid. However, other trailers raised questions about how well the console can cope with the biggest multiplatform games.
The Lego Batman Trailer That Stuttered
The trailer for the Switch 2 port of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight caught attention for the wrong reasons. The game has an unstable framerate, with visible chugging whenever blasts of Lego bricks and bits appear on screen.
The game is a sprawling, open-world title where countless Lego pieces fly everywhere whenever players smash things apart. Building such a smooth, detailed world was bound to strain the hardware of the Switch 2, and the uneven trailer confirmed as much. It comes as no surprise that the Switch 2 edition did not reach buyers at the same moment as the rest of them.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Struggles Too
The short trailer for the Switch 2 port of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 also showed performance problems. The massive medieval RPG is filled with NPCs, quests, and other systems all happening at once in a grand simulation.
Several viewers beneath the trailer have remarked on the poor framerate, and it’s evident that the Switch 2 edition isn’t performing as smoothly as some had anticipated.
Near the end of the Direct, a reel of third-party games was shown, and some of those ports were not pretty to look at. One of them was The Ascent, a top-down, cyberpunk action RPG that looked like a blurry, stuttering mess on Switch 2. Another game, Hell Is Us, showed short bits of gameplay with nasty performance issues.
What the Rough Ports Say About the Hardware
The big takeaway is that the Switch 2 is a lot more capable and powerful than the original Switch, but it is still behind the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The console struggles with bigger, more advanced-looking open-world games, or titles that feature a lot of things happening at once in a detailed environment.
The distance between the two platforms carries weight as the industry shifts toward the next generation of consoles. Eventually, the Switch 2 will need to manage ports of games constructed for PS6-era hardware.
The Coming Test
Some Switch 2 ports will look great, as the Direct showed. Others will not.
Do you recall how poor some of the last ports to reach the OG Switch appeared? A similar situation could unfold again after the PS6 launches.
A handful of trailers for The Direct came across as polished, while others were so unfinished that they stood out as the film’s biggest problem.
| Trailer Shown | Platform | Initial Impression |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil 2, 3, 4 remakes | Switch 2 | Looked quite nice |
| Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight | Switch 2 | Choppy, unstable framerate |
| Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 | Switch 2 | Poor framerate, stuttery |
| The Ascent | Switch 2 | Blurry, stuttering mess |
| Hell Is Us | Switch 2 | Rough, nasty performance issues |
The issue at hand is the duration for which the Switch 2 can sustain multiplatform blockbusters before the hardware reaches its breaking point. The Direct provided an initial indication of what that limit might be.
Source: kotaku.com
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