Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, Control gave me a headache on PS4 Pro, never mind on Switch. My eyes are straining in anticipation.

@nessisonett OMGz, DoN't StArt cOnsolE waRz tAlK oN heRe Plz!!!

I sure love arguing about how my console that looks like a bedroom fan with paper folded around it is superior to your refridgerator

@JohnnyShoulder Got into a discussion today on NLife which is just too good not to share. So essentially I said that Control would be a harder game to port than The Witcher 3. I got sent this:

why do you say that? Did you try to port it? What does Control, which is way overrated and as some people said in here, no better looking than RE Revelations 2, harder than the the Witcher 3? I guess both of them are hard to port, but i remember people saying back then that no way they could pull the Witcher 3 off in the Switch and look at it now, no matter how bad it looks, it's there. Saber didn't took the easy route and stuck it on the cloud, or complained that it was too hard; they made some witchcraft mojo jojo and did it. This guys just come here and say: oh, without the cloud you wouldn't have it, and my question for them is: who asked for it anyway?? I own it on the Ps4 and it bored the hell out of me after 3h because everything looks the same.
Another way of getting more money like the PS5 free upgrade fiasco...

So yeah, ok, let’s try again to convince them. I laid out that Witcher 3 is easier to scale down due to the way data streaming and pop-in is handled on Switch and the fact it’s a 5 year old game that runs on a potato on low enough settings. I was sent this back:

man, have you tried programming something? Particles?? You're talking about particles when the W3 literally has a living, breathing world around you? A world that remembers what you killed 300 saves ago? A world that spams miles and miles plus caves and water levels?
Compared to that, Control seems like childs play no mather how many flashy effects they've crampled into the game, with everything being inside a closed environment that looks so much the same you need a degree to understand were you are in the map.
But you are right, W3 is 5 years old and still manages to look way better than recent games.

So of course, being a year from graduating in Software Engineering and having, y’know, programmed something, it’s hard to take anything seriously. I imagine it must be very difficult for plumbers to sit about and listen to people mouth off about plumbing when they have literally no clue about what they’re talking about. It’s absolutely hilarious. The thing about computing in general is that I’d say my grasp of the subject as a third year student is roughly 0.01%. That means that the average person in the street would probably be into the 0.0001% of actual understanding. And yet people feel the need to go on about stuff they just don’t understand. Reminds me of that thread we had a few weeks back on here 😂😂

@nessisonett lmao some people there is just no hope in trying to discuss it further. Like your 'monopoly' one in the Crunchyroll article! 🤣

@nessisonett But TW3 is on Switch, so anything can be.

I thought the developer's answer in that article was very clear and insightful when they explained why Control would be unfeasible to port. As for the comment section, I had a quick glance then gave up and found something more interesting to look at.

If Jerry of Rivers gaem can be port to sweetch anything can be port to sweetch

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Not only that but it even got ported to the freaking VITA

It's far from graphic intensive compared to stuff like Witcher and Hellblade let alone a game that came out last year

@crimsontadpoles Remedy even said that they’d looked into a native port but it was just a non-starter. I don’t get the people that seemed to think that they were lazy or that it was better for the Switch to just not get the game at all. It’s bizarre.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah Control is basically what Quantum Break SHOULD'VE been

It's actually a really solid action game and probably my favorite from Remedy since the Alan Wake days. It looked way too dense and graphic intensive from the outset to be ported to Switch natively

@nessisonett Yeah, I do dislike the lazy developers argument that regularly gets used in these situations. At the end of the day, Remedy is just an ordinary company with finite resources. If it were possible to port it, it would still take an immense amount of development time to make the game engine compatible with the Switch, then get the game running to an acceptable standard. In this instance, it's not worth it for Remedy, and they're better off using their resources elsewhere.

The only thing that rubbed me the wrong way about what Remedy said was they don't want to make their engine compatible because itd be a one off and a wasted investment.

I mean, surely if you made the engine ARM compatible, you'd view it as a long term investment as now you're engine is usable on phones and any future Switch systems.

But I suppose for a studio like Remedy they'd rather just press onwards as is rather than factor in anything else. Which works out for them it would seem.

I think what most Nintendo fans are nervous about now is developers will just do cloud versions instead of native ports, even if the native ports was feasible, because let's be honest...it probably works out cheaper for them.

And this past year hasn't been great for Switch users. Crash 4 is MIA despite being on UE4 and from the studio that made the Spyro Trilogy. But then again, Crash only happened on Switch at all because one guy ported the first level on his breaks in a weekend. Activision didn't even bother to see if It could happen at all.

Look at DOOM Eternal, the game that's "fine", on the new idTech7 engine which was made with Switch in mind as a target platform for the engine...and the game is just...gone.

I think the users have the right to be worried about third parties diverting to streaming when most of those parties already:

A) Want streaming to be the norm for obvious reasons
B) It seems to be less effort and manpower to do cloud versions
C) These third parties can't even deliver games built on tech the platform actually uses from the outset anymore
D) Those parties were never interested in the first place

@Haruki_NLI Well, that is assuming that 1) they can even get the game to run properly on Switch. And 2) that they will keep using this engine for the foreseeable future, because they may very well be working on a new engine for next gen. Same applies to mobiles, they don't really develop for mobiles, so I don't they why they would care about mobile compatibility.

And yes, I do agree that the alternative, the streaming option sucks, and it may pressure more developers into just throwing a cloud version on the Switch. It may even negatively impact other consoles. Why allow players to keep your game if you can ask a fee every year? EA is probably grubbing their grimy hands together as we speak. Anyway, it is important to keep in mind that Nintendo allows these cloud versions to exist in the first place. They could've said no, encouraging devs to look for ways to port it, if possible.

@Haruki_NLI Additionally, I think it's also worth to add that Switch, by default, requires more effort. PlayStation and Xbox are very close to PCs, so developing a version for PS/Xbox/PC is very easy and it's a giant userbase with relatively few tweaks. To develop a Switch version requires a lot more resources, for a smaller userbase. And when the charts are primarily dominated by Nintendo titles, it may scare off developers thinking that they are never going to buy their game. Maybe something like Crash finds success on the Switch, but how well would Control even sell?

People can solve most of their issues with third party support by not expecting cutting edge AAA titles that strain power consoles to work well on this generation's equivalent of the Game Boy.

@Ralizah This is why I think bespoke games are the way forward. Monster Hunter Rise is a good example because Switch just wouldn’t run World. I loved the Wii days when the console would have plenty third party support but with games that fully took advantage of the hardware. I just don’t think it’s feasible for the levels of third party support to continue when the next-gen consoles release. And a Switch Pro absolutely can’t bring it close to that level, if anything it would only allow ports of slightly later PS4 games.

Yeah I think people especially on NL discussion forums are putting way too much faith in a hypothetical Switch revision being anything beyond just an incremental upgrade. It's definitely not going to be brought up spec wise to the level at which it would be able to handle games purely designed for next gen consoles. Maybe late gen PS4/Xbox One games but I doubt stuff like RE Village or Cyberpunk would come to Switch in any other form that isn't cloud-streamed like Control and Hitman III

@TheFrenchiestFry If it was portable and could run Cyberpunk then it would either cost over a grand or it was brought back in time.

Surely a cloud version is better than no version at all? Think it is unrealistic to expect native ports for some of these games for Switch.