Nintendo is not and never will be referred to as a “major platform” by someone making a moderately demanding game. They refuse to offer the performance required to qualify.
Expecting them to mean Switch is as nonsensical as expecting them to mean it’s going to launch day one on Android and iOS (except that an iPhone will probably be more powerful than the switch 2).
I can only assume it didn’t do very well otherwise we’d have seen more of that.
Still with internet connections getting better all the time it’s only a matter of time before they try again. I tried Timesplitters 3 streaming on PSN the other day (I didn’t want to wait an hour for it to download) and found it actually very playable.
I don’t think it is nonsensical. After all Witcher 3 is not only available on the Switch, it does run quite well on there. You can hate on the hardware all you want, some developers did prove time and time again how much the console is capable of if you optimize your game.
Both Witcher 3 and the Switch originally released within 2 years of each other. The same could be true for Witcher 4 and Switch 2.
It absolutely does not run well on the switch. It’s an unplayable stuttery mess at terrible resolution. The fact that they took money for that junk was incredibly disrespectful.
Last gen launched with CPUs that would have been outright bad many years before. AMD pre-Ryzen was a disaster, and games with meaningful CPU demand weren’t possible. That’s the only reason a dogshit version of Witcher 3 could kind of run on switch.
Current gen has actual functional CPUs. The switch 2 won’t be vaguely in their neighborhood and backporting to it won’t be possible unless they severely compromise the design away from resembling cutting edge in any way.
I honestly think you overestimate how much your average consumer cares about being cutting edge in this day and age. I’m playing Witcher 3 right now on Switch despite having a PS4 sitting right next to it. I do think it plays just fine. And yes, a PS4, because almost everything still releases on last gen and without a side by side comparison games look the same to me on both PS4 and PS5.
I believe the next gen will have a slow adoption rate, just like current gen consoles, even if they won’t run into supply issues. Therefore it would be stupid to exclusively target them anyway.
That’s not the point. The point is what the Witcher specifically, is intended to be. It’s a AAA open world game.
Graphics are always entirely irrelevant. You can scale those basically at will. Mechanics are what matter, and making mechanics work on whatever shitty arm chip Nintendo will put on the switch 2 would be an obscene compromise.
Supporting PS5 is not an issue at all. It has an actual CPU. Even having a discussion where Nintendo is a possibility? That’s a massive issue, because a game that can run on their hardware is not a AAA caliber game, regardless of how much you spend.
Mechanics alone don’t need as much power as you claim. The most mechanically complex open world game I’ve seen is a Switch-exclusive: Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The most beloved mechanically interesting Assassins Creed is on the Switch too: Black Flag. If you want complex fighting mechanics instead, there’s Monster Hunter and Bayonetta too.
Yes, they do, especially in an appropriately populated open world.
Zelda is empty with obscenely basic combat and movement that would have been unimpressive on GameCube. If you think it’s what mechanics mean, we can end this here, because it’s a joke. It’s an incredibly low fidelity, entirely surface level facsimile of complexity. Any interaction can be entirely mastered in 5 minutes, because there’s not the tiniest shred of the tiniest hint of depth.
I’m not talking about movement or combat here. Once again, there are Monster Hunter and Bayonetta for that, both running great on the switch.
Zelda on the other hand got the most impressive amount of systems running in the background. We’ve got a dynamic lighting system, a day-night-cycle, a weather system, the most impressive physics engine I’ve ever seen, elemental interactions - just literal tons of shit you can interact with in many different ways. Most open world games aren’t even close to that level of interactability with the world.
Having more movement options, combos and whatnot don’t actually require much more hardware power. That was an intentional choice, not a limitation in the case of both Zelda games. (On top of that, did you even play the game? You have an obscene amount of combat and movement options if you try building interesting constructions.)
And, getting back to the actual topic: Neither Witcher game had complex movement or combat and a lot less systems running in the background. Witcher 4 won’t play drastically different either, I’m quite sure. It’s all about prepping the right buffs, not about having deep combat.
It’s literally the beginning of the article. The Switch is the most popular console around, therefore the next one is most likely a ‘major platform’.
Nintendo is not and never will be referred to as a “major platform” by someone making a moderately demanding game. They refuse to offer the performance required to qualify.
Expecting them to mean Switch is as nonsensical as expecting them to mean it’s going to launch day one on Android and iOS (except that an iPhone will probably be more powerful than the switch 2).
Control came to Switch in streaming form.
I can only assume it didn’t do very well otherwise we’d have seen more of that.
Still with internet connections getting better all the time it’s only a matter of time before they try again. I tried Timesplitters 3 streaming on PSN the other day (I didn’t want to wait an hour for it to download) and found it actually very playable.
I don’t think it is nonsensical. After all Witcher 3 is not only available on the Switch, it does run quite well on there. You can hate on the hardware all you want, some developers did prove time and time again how much the console is capable of if you optimize your game.
Both Witcher 3 and the Switch originally released within 2 years of each other. The same could be true for Witcher 4 and Switch 2.
It absolutely does not run well on the switch. It’s an unplayable stuttery mess at terrible resolution. The fact that they took money for that junk was incredibly disrespectful.
Last gen launched with CPUs that would have been outright bad many years before. AMD pre-Ryzen was a disaster, and games with meaningful CPU demand weren’t possible. That’s the only reason a dogshit version of Witcher 3 could kind of run on switch.
Current gen has actual functional CPUs. The switch 2 won’t be vaguely in their neighborhood and backporting to it won’t be possible unless they severely compromise the design away from resembling cutting edge in any way.
I honestly think you overestimate how much your average consumer cares about being cutting edge in this day and age. I’m playing Witcher 3 right now on Switch despite having a PS4 sitting right next to it. I do think it plays just fine. And yes, a PS4, because almost everything still releases on last gen and without a side by side comparison games look the same to me on both PS4 and PS5.
I believe the next gen will have a slow adoption rate, just like current gen consoles, even if they won’t run into supply issues. Therefore it would be stupid to exclusively target them anyway.
That’s not the point. The point is what the Witcher specifically, is intended to be. It’s a AAA open world game.
Graphics are always entirely irrelevant. You can scale those basically at will. Mechanics are what matter, and making mechanics work on whatever shitty arm chip Nintendo will put on the switch 2 would be an obscene compromise.
Supporting PS5 is not an issue at all. It has an actual CPU. Even having a discussion where Nintendo is a possibility? That’s a massive issue, because a game that can run on their hardware is not a AAA caliber game, regardless of how much you spend.
Mechanics alone don’t need as much power as you claim. The most mechanically complex open world game I’ve seen is a Switch-exclusive: Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The most beloved mechanically interesting Assassins Creed is on the Switch too: Black Flag. If you want complex fighting mechanics instead, there’s Monster Hunter and Bayonetta too.
Yes, they do, especially in an appropriately populated open world.
Zelda is empty with obscenely basic combat and movement that would have been unimpressive on GameCube. If you think it’s what mechanics mean, we can end this here, because it’s a joke. It’s an incredibly low fidelity, entirely surface level facsimile of complexity. Any interaction can be entirely mastered in 5 minutes, because there’s not the tiniest shred of the tiniest hint of depth.
I’m not talking about movement or combat here. Once again, there are Monster Hunter and Bayonetta for that, both running great on the switch.
Zelda on the other hand got the most impressive amount of systems running in the background. We’ve got a dynamic lighting system, a day-night-cycle, a weather system, the most impressive physics engine I’ve ever seen, elemental interactions - just literal tons of shit you can interact with in many different ways. Most open world games aren’t even close to that level of interactability with the world.
Having more movement options, combos and whatnot don’t actually require much more hardware power. That was an intentional choice, not a limitation in the case of both Zelda games. (On top of that, did you even play the game? You have an obscene amount of combat and movement options if you try building interesting constructions.)
And, getting back to the actual topic: Neither Witcher game had complex movement or combat and a lot less systems running in the background. Witcher 4 won’t play drastically different either, I’m quite sure. It’s all about prepping the right buffs, not about having deep combat.