Nintendo Switch's Lowest Resolution Games - 480p, 360p and Lower - Could Switch 2 Back Compat Help? 

I always thought the next Switch would be backwards compatible. There are so many games with dynamic resolution built in. It would instantly transform the library I think.

“Near the expiration date” is what Nintendo calls a second wind.

I once heard a rumor that it was Capcom's idea for the Nintendo Switch to have 4GB of RAM. Apparently, the Switch was going to ship with only 2GB of retail RAM, but Capcom told them that would make porting games to Switch difficult.

I'd love if the next one is called the Super Nintendo Switch

Man, I put 130 hours into The Witcher 3 on Switch even after finishing it on PS4. There was something so magical about playing a game like that ton a handheld. I didn't mind the resolution and minor framerate issues. I then got a Steam Deck and now I'm playing it for the 3rd time. Holy moly what a difference LOL.

The most interesting part of this list for me was the games that intentionally used lower resolutions for other reasons than performance

The fact that devs made many games work with that CPU is nuts. Its basically a Snapdragon 810, a rather badly regarded 2015 Smartphone Chip.

I really hope Nintendo finds a way to make their next console retro compatible with the Nintendo Switch, and make the games run better on it. The Switch has an amazing library, but it's capabilities were a big problem from the beginning.

I hope the new switch will be backward compatible

it's a shame that switch doesn't have analogue outputs. these low res ports would look nice on some SD CRTs :D

To put in perspective, the Switch is only about twice as powerful as an Xbox 360, the fact they got even the few AAA titles to work on it boggles the mind.

there is a setting in a short hike to bump up the resolution to 480p docked, although this is limited to 360p in handheld. but this is only to make sure that the game has no weirdly scaled pixels, as 480p does not fit into the 720p screen. little touches like this help the game keep its sharpness and visual integrity, i love it!

It's unbelievable how much more performance these "smartphone chips" have gained in recent years. as already mentioned, the cpu performance is on the level of a snapdragon 810. The current top model Snapdragon 8 + gen1 is about 5-6x faster in "cpu performance" than the 810 (or the switch) unbelievable

Think a backward compatible Switch system with upscaling capabilities would be an instant hit.

I imagine Nintendo is crying at the idea of making all current Nintendo Switch games backwards compatible for their next system instead of selling them once more to customers. If its not backwards compatible however then I can't see myself buying it.

I love when modern games dip below the resolution of games on the Sega Mega Drive.

For the authentic Switch experience….all Nintendo Directs will now be available on VHS 📼

This was cool, would love to see a similar video on the highest resolution games!

Oof this was a hard watch - especially since there are plenty of Switch games with low resolutions that look better. The recently released Xenoblade Chronicles 3, for example, renders down to 360p at times in portable play, but uses temporal upscale to produce an apparent 720p image. It at least shows that "360p" does not mean the same thing everywhere.

A Short Hike on PC has a great settings menu for that pixelated look. It's a hard choice between playing it at super sharp 4k or at a more stylised lower resolution.

Switch might possibly be my favourite handheld ever, and is definitely in my top five consoles. And I'm still impressed by some of the better "impossible ports" like Witcher 3. But yeah, the handheld market has definitely changed a lot in the last couple years. The Deck is already offering Xbox One performance, and those Chinese models from companies like Aya are getting dangerously close to the Series S in their boost modes. Of course battery life is a lot worse, so that's your tradeoff. I suspect if they stick with Nvidia, they'll use the Tegra Orin NX in 10w mode. Which has an Ampere GPU with up to 2.0 TFLOPS FP32 performance. You can probably realistically cut that in half. But that would still make it substantially more powerful than the Switch. Plus it'll support DLSS due to having the required Tensor cores. Then again, this is Nintendo we're talking about. Their next console could be a stand up arcade cabinet that projects video on the ceiling, and uses RISC-V, for all we know.

Just for fun, DF should try the Crash Team Racing 60fps & blur removal mods on the Switch that the community has made. It's my preferred way to play that game.

This is like Digital Foundry’s version of the Razzies

Should be rating each of these on a scale from 0 to 1080 Ps

I'm going to make a bold prediction and say that the next Nintendo console doesn't come out until 2027. That's right: the Switch will be a ten year console.

If the next gen switch ends up having DLSS, it's gonna be a game changer. 480p games might visually look like they're 1080p. And 1080p games have the potential to appear like 4k. Could potentially save on battery life too since games could opt for a lower resolution and utilize DLSS to upscale them without much or any image quality loss.

Switch is an amazing console but it definitely needs a hardware update. DEFINITELY!!!

No way in hell does Nintendo not jump on the AI upscaling train. With Nvidia making the SOC, being able to use the Switch as the perfect showcase for thei DLSS tech in the mass market, additionally to FSR being open and making big improvements, this would enable Nintendo to save massively on expensive hardware power and cut the price in this sector significantly while being able to offer competitive levels of visuals and perfomance. Funnily enough, I'd say the SoC as well as storage are not the problem but Nintendo spending enough on RAM... they were already cheaping out with the Switch before Capcom stepped in and made them double the RAM. Let's hope Nvidia is making them a good deal so Nintendo can spend more on RAM, next time.

I would have been interested in Snowrunner. Also a game with a highly dynamic resolution that can drop fairly low at times. But it supports AMD FidelityFX which helps a bit. It's often overlooked although it's arguably another miracle port by Saber.

For the record, you can increase the internal resolution for "A Short Hike" so it doesn't look that pixelated, although I rather play it at 240p as the game tries to resemble the Nintendo DS era of 3D games, as you stated!

„BuT iT's PoRtAbLe“ Steam Deck: „Am I a joke to u?“

Fun fact: Nintendo allows developers to use three different frequencies for handheld-mode: 307, 384 or 460MHz The higher the better but also the battery will drain faster Anyway for some weird reason Monolith Soft decided to only use 307MHz for Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition even though they could have used 460MHz. If you overclock the Switch to 460MHz XC:DE looks so much better in handheld-mode than is does officially

Oh I thought they would cover Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 1 DE in some capacity due to how infamous those were

Without game titles exclusivity, this thing is straight garbage in 2022

Wow. it's nearly criminal that they shipped ARK in that state. I'm glad they going back and reworking the port. I hope the people who already bought it are getting it for free.

Good overview. It was totally fine when Switch released, and can still look all right, but with movies games streaming often 4K these days, after being away for a while coming back to Switch can feel quite aged

IMO ever since the Switch as launched, what happened in the software side is definitely going more rapidly in the hardware side. Basically we've been dealing with a roadblock that there's no longer enough hardware performance to spare on brute-forcing pixels onto the display, and thus better upscaling algorithm and more optimized shading algorithm is definitely needed to reach the goal in a sensible way. And like, Switch being an ancient platform by this point really isn't that much of an issue. While gaming phone/tablets would definitely perform much better, they usually would have a tighter thermal budget, and likely would be expected to have a longer battery life (since it's much bigger of a deal to keep a phone alive than a game console -- you can live without being able to play your games but can't miss any message). And then on the more capable side there's also VR and 4K display, especially VR, that basically is a nightmare to run on literally all platforms, for you usually would have to do what's effectively 4K90 on mobile device and 6K90 on PC.

A future switch just upgrading the performance of the existing library would be incredible on its own merits, let alone to think of what it could bring to new titles and ports. I kinda hate that I have to consider which consoles I buy which titles on based on hardware demands - actually, I probably wouldn’t have bought a PS5 at all if Switch got the same 3rd party games and had something even resembling performance parity.

Great video. It's always a fun topic to be looking at.

A Short Hike is beautiful with its visible pixels. When you first boot it up, it looks like it is 2d, but if you go around a corner, you get the 3d surprise. It is one of my favorite indie games on any platform. It is a joy to play.

I actually really, REALLY like how a short hike looks with that simplistic, pseudo cell shaded look and 240p aliased resolution. It's clearly a stylistic choice, and therefore makes the game have a strong chunky charm.

It’s called switch because you switch it off when you realize it’s a children’s toy and turn on a gaming PC.

Honestly that's what I set Dusk to look like on my 2080, I think it gives it a nice chunky throwback look.

It's still quite astounding to consider that right now other up-and-coming handheld solutions with Steam support typically giving either a catalogue AMD APU for everything, or a customized one. NVIDIA's new comparable chips seem to all be tuned for cars and getting near self-driving status. What's gonna happen on the next generation of Big Red N?

If Nintendo makes the Switch follow up its previous handheld system lineup, I would expect to see backwards compat support. However, I feel that they won't ever go into efforts of making older games run better in the way that Micrsoft and Sony have allowed the system to just brute force. Note, I'm not talking about patches from the devs themselves, and refer to the various modes on PS5 like PS4/PS4 Pro mode or how Xbox will brute force or use the Microsoft patches to fix up older games. So I think we'll see those unlocked and dynamic resolution games take advantage of the extra horsepower just fine, but not see Nintendo go and patch up their old games or even more recent ones to run in better resolutions. I do hope they take AI upscaling as a feature at least, and that could help solve a number of games. Either way, I don't think we're seeing a Switch 2 for a few more years, and I don't think we'll see another Switch iteration until after the Switch 2 releases (think Gameboy Micro/2DS situation, a cheap variant with gutted internals to make it something like $150)

0:57 not to be rude but for a moment I honestly wasn’t sure if some of these shots were blurry due to low res or being purposely out of focus 😂

I'm really liking these broader videos. Instead of single games we get larger ideas explored and we look at consoles as a whole.

Great video. Thanks for the analysis. I believe that a Switch 2 will benefit a lot from super-sampling solutions, since its launch - specially seeing that some games on the original Switch are already presenting par solutions.

Nintendo needs to handle the Switch like they handled the New 3DS systems. Make slight power improvements on the old formula but keep the system mostly the same. Make the same library playable on the newer console while having games benefit from more powerful hardware. Nintendo has hit a successful formula with the Switch I would hate to see them mess it up like they did going from Wii to Wii U.

Personally, I just think Nintendo should focus on evolving the Switch template for the successor.

Sorry to say, the switch is just getting started,

Idk the Switch still sells crazy amounts of units. It might be another few years until we even get an announcement

There has been news of Denuvo DRM being available on Switch with anti-emulation features. I wonder if back-compat on Switch 2 could trip said feature. This kind of security always leans on undocumented behavior. And if Nintendo puts workaround patches in place for new Switch firmware, it'd allow people to crack it anyway by finding differences between updates.

I understand Nintendo’s $300 price point & 1st party library that focus on fun instead of raw tech specs but I wish they’d stop cheaping out on SoCs. I mean Damn the series S is a $300 box with an impressive SoC for its price point. They were phones more powerful than the switch when it came out 🤦🏽‍♂️ but I also get how u can’t take a steam deck approach where u give your users all the options to run at different power modes because Nintendo’s customer base isn’t that technicality inclined and includes a lot of kids too. Either way some better compromise is desperately needed

Honestly, I'm not bothered with the switch getting an upgrade just yet, I don't think it will anyway, as Nintendo won't be able to release one at a cheap price point, won't happen with current issues every other console manufacturer is having. But, I play the switch for nintendo games, I have a PC for any other game that catches my eye. Besides, any first party nintendo games on switch are built around the switches weak hardware, but still work and run really well, and yeah, having it run newer gen games would be ideal, but that's not why I buy a Nintendo console. I'm not bothered, but if they do wind up releasing one sooner rather than later, I will buy it, no doubt.

Are you telling me the 5 year old hardware is outdated already? No way!

2:56 recently I've been playing with my 3DS, PS2 and GameCube, and I've noticed that a lot of the games on those systems have seemingly aged better than a lot of the current Switch titles. watching the Witcher 3 comparison in this video made me realise that its likely because of the anti aliasing present in most Switch games. in the comparison, I genuinely think the image without AA looks better, being more pixelated but also sharper, than the image with all the post processing turned on, which just looks like a blurry smeared mess. its a shame that so many games go down this route to try and salvage image quality when, at least in my opinion, they largely look better and clearer without it.

The biggest issue with the switch is the image quality/pop in really limits the games on the system. I also have the steam deck which of course blows the switch out of the water. Especially in terms of power, image quality customizability, etc. Not only does frame rate get sacrificed plus the pop in just makes the gaming experience so much worse. Especially for a game such as botw which already had frame rate issues. Now imagine how much more constraints their are for botw 2. want to play as Zelda you can’t too much data, want to travel from locations seamlessly no can do. I understand sticking to 720p 30fps for handheld mode mainly to save power, but I expect at least 1080p and 60fps when docked. Which the switch definitely is unable to do with most games.

8 year old chip. That's all people need to realize. The Tegra X1 wasn't even top tier when it launched. If you have a mid-range phone from 2018/2019 you can game better and with more portability and battery than the Switch. In 2022 there are low-end phones a lot more capable.

Any chance of a video with a CFW Switch showing these (or similar) titles with a CPU and GPU overclock to unlock the Tegra chip? I often use a GPU overclock of even just ~70mhz or so and it stops games like XC3 dropping frames or res anywhere near as much as stock in portable mode.

Glad they added the no AA later on to The Witcher 3. It was that blurry the first time I just stopped playing. Got back in bussiness with the addition of sharpening and no AA. Wish all low res games let us pick between blurry and jagged edges.

I‘m usually an advocate of substance over style… however, there are some incredible Switch games that are so low-res that they actually hurt in the eyes. I tried but had to put them down e.g. Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Watching 360p games in 4k

I'm ready for next gen hardware from nintendo. The jump from wii u to switch was so small it felt like buying the same console, except switch is handheld which I rarely use as a handheld device.

Will we see a video focusing on notable Switch games that are able to keep a constant 720p/1080p resolution and framerate?

I don't think Nintendo is going to release a Super Switch anytime soon since the chipset shortage is still real even with scalpers slowing down and Switch sales of hardware and software is still going strong. :)

A Short Hike had some interesting settings as well, didn't it, where you seemingly lowered the resolution even further?

A Steam Deck comparison for these games would be great. Could also show the possibilities for a Switch 2 (for these who aren't interested in PC handhelds).

I appreciate that your take on some of these titles was fairly opposite what the DF coverage was back when the titles came out. I'm looking at you Witcher and doom games... The coverage back then was mostly "holy crap this was possible" and kind of critical darlings vs a pragmatic "yeah they did it but... is it really that good?" . cheer's mate. still loving your video's on this channel.

What’s funny about Crash Team Racing is in Yuzu at 60fps 4k it looks like what the PS5 version should…

Does the Switch port of QUAKE let you change the resolution to the original low rez settings like the Xbox One port does? That'd be interesting to see on the Switchs handheld mode!

At least *the Switch 2's hybrid Ampere-based Tegra Orin APU part will offer hardware DLSS 2~ support and full back compat with the Switch 1's Maxwell Tegra part* so a bit of 'last gen' upscaling and frame-rate unlocking (if patched) should be feasible on Switch 2's SoC config -- along with decent quality DLSS 2~ settings to help it output to 4K displays when docked and higher watts profile for the GPU frequency and Tensor cores. They can put "Dynamic 4K support!" in the Switch 2 marketing lingo. The CPU part of the Switch 2's custom SoC will likely be a big improvement, too -- a Hexa core config with improved clocks and on-chip bandwidth/efficiency per watt. Personally, I'm no longer a Switch owner, and only vaguely still a big Nintendo fan, but I love the idea that Nvidia hardware is there in one of the 'Big 3' game consoles -- since AMD has been quasi-monopolizing the space across eight (8) different consoles through the last decade.

Really hoping that the next console will be 1080p 60fps Being a mobile console is nice but the low spec tv experience isn't great.

Amazing, 216p! The Megadrive came out in 1988, and it was a 224p console, sheesh

Ys9 was boarder line unplayable between frame rate and resolution too. Fun video, thanks Olie!

I don't see the switch 2 being a lot more powerful.

I wish we had a "Super Switch," that's still compatible with Switch games, but could handle all of these games at the 720p that they should be.

It's been no secret this console is incredibly dated, I can emulate it with i5 processors dating way back to 2013, at full speed and way higher resolution (if your GPU can handle it, native is still an option). Those who don't want to bother with it, use Yuzu.

To be fair to the current Switch, the Tegra X1 _is_ capable of handling FSR 1.0, which is already used in Nintendo Switch Sports and Splatoon 3.

Loved the video!

Honestly, it's been absolutely wild seeing what would be impossible ports brought to this system. It's a shame image quality is first to go, but if you told me I'd be playing crysis, doom 2016/eternal, and the Witcher 3 on a handheld the rough size of a DVD case... I'd have not even remotely believed you. These impossible ports, while not the ideal way to play if you've gone multiplatform in your household, will always draw me in, if only to marvel at the sheer amount of effort and work that goes into them. Been doing it since the "get it to run doom" and "can it run crysis" days, will continue into the "lemme see the switch port" days!

Dude, DLSS (maybe with only a handful of tensor cores, or custom version without tensor) and/or FSR 2.0 support along with a much more powerful SoC would be incredible. I means it's just crazy how phones from now several years ago have many times the performance of this thing, even docked. Def time for a nice upgrade, along with those future-proofing features to avoid it getting this bad so soon.

a short hike is definitely displayed at that res for stylistic reasons

2 years later it seems we are nowhere near the end of the switch lifecycle

I love handhelds and have an original switch and a oled but man its hard to go back to the switch after playing games on the steam deck like the witcher 3. But battery life playing aaa games is not so great on the deck. I want the next deck to have a more premium build quality, something like a 6800u, faster ram, same resolution but an oled screen and a bigger battery and bigger storage and more ports. It crazy the switch can even play big open world games like xenoblade chronicles 3 with all its playable characters and huge open world. I tried to play the witcher on the switch and it was just too blurry for me.

The biggest upgrade a new Switch could bring is making the docked versions of any game the handheld one. That would give a massive image quality boost to most titles and won't require almost any work from the developers. You can already run docked settings on portable mode with a hacked Switch so I can't imagine it would be that hard to force it on the new hardware.

Ark Survival Evolved is getting a graphical update in September. Hope to see a comparison video between the original and the new update!

You have forgotten Xenon Racer. On portable mode, it can run at 176p

I'm surprised you didn't mention that A Short Hike lets you change how sharp the image quality is, so it can look incredibly pixelated or not depending on your preference. (Maybe that's only a feature on the PS5 however. I haven't played the Switch version.)

Wouldn't DLSS makes more sense to only work during docked play? Nintendo and Nvidia could design an SoC that delivers a good 720p performance during portable play and then turn on DLSS when connected to the dock, where power consumption isn't a problem.

Great video!

very nice video, but please check your camera's focus while showing off screen gameplay, some scenes are so off that you can't read any UI in the left side of the screen.

Did I miss a rumor? Who's saying a Switch 2 is imminent?

Switch users be like: but it portable doe

It would have been more interesting if you talk also about the docked mode of these games to see the difference between portable and docked mode. 😁

Nice review, thank you :)

The NSW is the worst game console i ever bought, and i owned the 3DO back in the days...

I spent a looong time on MK 11, It still is a pretty good conversion to me

holy....i though its 720p and many times lower...but that low...i sell my OLED switch and get my steamdeck this week.

I’m surprised DF Supporters Program for $5 a month, doesn’t include early release to videos. More specifically early videos for upcoming and very soon to release games (like a week before games release). That would be fantastic.