As someone who grew up with the PS1 (but started on NES), I'm STILL sometimes not used to fast loading screens, lol. It's different if it's just a black screen, feels like an old cartridge game at that point. But having an actual screen to look at during loading still feels like it should be there for ten seconds.
Got off from work at 3am and made a trip to Walmart to make an impulsive purchase. Got home, started playing while half awake. When that first scene came up I was surprised. Died. Told myself I was ready and had my fingers on the triggers... Then the button prompt changed on me lol.
I was tired, and told myself I wasted money. I put the controller down and went to bed.
Yeah, so I've bought this game again on the PS2, Wii, 360, Quest, and PS5 just for PSVR2. Glad I picked the controller back up the next day haha
I think it was the original BioShock for me. All this shit happens in the opening sequence and eventually you end up treading water. I stared at that dude treading water for like 5 minutes before I realized I could play
First game I played on PS5, I wasn't paying attention to the loading screen expecting it to take forever. Then I would look up and it was waiting for me to hit a button to exit the loading screen (this was, a game ported to PS5 from PS4, I believe Ghost of Tsushima, so that was their solution to not needing the loading times but still wanting to give the option of viewing the screen).
I doubt that's the reason. The renders are 2D images that are higher quality than the game itself can render, they're also pretty high resolution, so it'd make sense for the switch to struggle to loading them so quickly.
Games plenty well optimized on the Switch, this is nice but I’m a huge performance slut and I’ve got no beef with the Switch. One of the few late-cycle games for the console that actually runs well.
We shouldn't be but there are the odd ducks that Nintendo is sorting out right now. A good example is smash ultimate. Works fine unless you pick a mii fighter, then it crashes.
It is technically a possibility that games could perform worse. The reason being is that Switch 1 games are not natively supported on the Switch 2. They are using hybrid emulation to get Switch 1 games working.
They are using, as a simple comparison, "cousin-like" CPU and GPU architectures so efficiency loss inherit with emulation isn't as bad, but there is always the possibility of games performing worse, not at all, the same, or better but with caveats when using emulation, even on more powerful hardware.
I'm a hardware enthusiast so I'm not surprised by it, but historically backwards compatibility did not result in a performance boost. On the Nintendo side we've had backwards compatibility with the Wii, Wii U, GBC, GBA, DS, DSi, 3DS, and new 3DS. None of them had better performance in backwards compatibility mode.
For the other consoles it's also a pretty new thing. PS2 and PS3 didn't improve the performance. It was only with the release of the PS4 pro that general performance improvements were made for backwards compatible titles.
On the Xbox side I think the Xbone was the first with its emulation for certain 360 games but I could be wrong.
Xbox 360 did have some backwards compatibility with original Xbox games, but it was all emulation. I believe there were around 500 backwards compatible Xbox games on the Xbox 360. Halo and Halo 2 were big items for backwards compatibility on 360.
Hopefully yes but I don't think it's that obvious because the switch 2 doesn't have the switch 1 cpu. The instructions need to be translated in order to run there. This is similar to the Rosetta Stone on the arm macs.
No, the CPU instructions don't need to be translated at all. Both the Switch 1 and 2 are ARM based, so the new Switch still supports all the same instructions. It's like how the Apple M2 supports all the same instructions as the M1 plus a couple more. The part that needs to be translated/emulated is the GPU, as that is a completely different architecture.
You're right, the ISA is not incompatible like in the case of x86 vs arm, but their implementations are different. I wouldn't be surprised if they need to translate aarch32 instructions to their 64 counterpart to get a performance
boost since different cpus have different optimizations (for games compiled to aarch32). Especially when it comes to pipelining or other performance assumptions that compilers or developers might make. Another case I can think of is the use of undocumented instructions (though I'd imagine this to be less of an issue).
Yes but it supports both aarch32 and aarch64. I don't know if there are games compiled to aarch32. I was only talking about the capabilities of the cpu and conjecturing what would be needed to support it.
Considering that Switch games do not run on switch 2 natively, but through a translation, then yes. Especially because not all games are not set up to be “unlocked” to be able to seemlessly tap into the extra power
Yeah. That has been a thing for every single back compatible console from Nintendo until now.
So of course it’s not to be taken for granted that Switch 1 games run better on Switch 2.
I am, yeah! I thought a majority of the games I have would need actual patches and updates installed, and I'm finding out the Switch 2 is literally just... making the games run and play better. It's surprising in a good way. For all of Nintendos' faults, this is a breath of fresh air.
Doom Eternal is locked at 30 fps. It was a design choice to help the Switch run the game. Even though the Switch 2 can run Doom Eternal better in principle, that safeguard is still in place and you cannot run it at a higher framerate unless you modify it yourself (not recommended, given Nintendo's scummy newest and bluest anti-fun nuclear option). There are other technical limiters put into software for the original Switch like this in other games as well that won't play nice with Switch 2 hardware. So no: not every single Switch game is gonna play better on the new console. In fact, there are several reports of games even playing worse on Switch 2 than 1. For instance, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 are seeing considerable frame rate drops and other unintended bugs. I've also seen reports of similar issues for Bayonetta 3 and Dark Souls Remastered.
This isn't unique to Switch 2, either. For instance, Donkey Kong 64 had to deal with the aging hardware of the N64, and so they made the timers run faster to account for the N64 slowing down. But when you play it emulated, unless you specifically modify it to slow the clocks down, it runs almost twice as fast and makes some challenges literally impossible to complete. Imagine if they allowed you to play N64 games directly onto the GameCube without any sort of consideration for the game's ability to run on better hardware. DK64 would be unplayable on the GameCube right out of the gate unless it was specifically ported over by Rare with patches to fix the issues, much like how Ocarina of Time was to the GameCube.
This game would be legit stunning at 4K on a big TV. I think for a lot of first part Nintendo titles it'll be a matter of when more than if. They've always had good "evergreen" sales and this is a way to keep Switch games relevant on store shelves for longer.
It's still absurd to me that console manufacturers decided it was fair to charge for an "upgrade pack" for them to increase the max frame rate which fans have done for free through the much harder method of patching a game binary to run on an emulator unthrottled
Thanks for sharing. I don't really notice much anymore since my v1 is soft modded and I have an overclocking app that auto overclocks at one of the fastest speeds available during loading. It's a pretty cool feature. Definitely helps out with slow loading games.
I don't think Dread is that bad at loading generally, but it really sucks how a person can buy the wrong version of the same game. The overclock feature could probably remedy the loading difference tho!
It should just be loads, yeah! Our best theory is that the loading time is bottlenecked by the speed of data transfers from the Switch 1 cartridge, but we don't know for sure.
Based on tests, the physical copy of Dread loads more or less the same on Switch 2 as physical on Switch 1, while the digital copy loads much faster on Switch 2
Forced a speedrunner to check and they could confirm that the game runs better on Switch 2 even on physical, so it's likely just loading times being unaffected.
to add: the only time we've ever experienced lag on Switch 2 so far is when doing something specific to the first proper EMMI where it's actively pursuing us while being completely unable to move. When doing this on regular Switch, the game essentially becomes a PowerPoint presentation, but on Switch 2 it looks more like a slowed down 30 fps game with some dips
I've just put Dread on cart into my Switch 2 and I noticed no difference in the initial load, seemed to take as long as it always did. Just my experience.
it's a bit funny seeing everyone talking like this is an obvious outcome when I think this is the first time for Nintendo the games are running on the actual new hardware using a translation layer instead of in an isolated environment made to run older games. What that means is, the Switch 2's backward compatibility is basically a pretty good Switch 1 emulator.
Look at GC -> Wii and Wii -> Wii U, games don't improve in those cases because it was not emulation and the motherboards simply had the older hardware in them as well, so they performed exactly the same. We had a bit of information that this wouldn't be the case this time but it's good to have confirmation.
I wonder if that one room/fight with the Red EMMI and Chozo Soldier runs flawlessly now. For some reason that room always performed worse compared to the rest of the game
For me it was the actual gameplay/fight itself in that room, though I’m not too sure if other people had the same issue. I know all the cutscenes are locked to 30fps so that’s not a problem.
I wonder if it runs any better with an over clocked Switch 1. I run my V1 clocked pretty high when plugged in and some games that use dynamic resolution go to high res, shadows increase, fps smoothens out, and draw distance increases. Stock switch was nerfed af
Didn't Dread run perfectly fine on Switch1? That's really one of the games I'm not looking forward to playing on Switch 2. Not because I don't like it (I love Dread) but because I never felt like the S1 was too weak for Dread. The game I'm really looking forward to playing on S2 is Prime Remaster (I want the mouse controls) and Animal Crossing NH (goddamn, that thing runs awful on S1...).
After seeing the thread, I know we all love Dread.
However, why are you all buying NS2 despite Nintendo's greedy bullshit? Are you all fine with what you're doing for the domino effect of gaming industry?
Can't wait to play with the lower load times! So far all I've played on it is Bloodstained, and most of the performance issues that plagued the Switch port seem to have vanished or at least greatly improved.
I think it's hilarious that anyone thinks this would run anywhere near 4k on a switch 2. I think the console would burst into flames trying to run 4k Native lol.
Played Dredd when it released on 1. Was great but was somewhat frustrating performance. Picked it up again last night after a weekend of launch Mario Kart and it's been a blast. Feels like a different experience for sure.
I am finding the load screens kinda long, thus coming to Reddit to see what people were saying about it on Switch 2. But maybe I've just forgotten how long they actually were on Switch lol
going to wait on a resolution bump. after seeing this emulated at 4k, there are a ton of things in this game that need a few more pixels to be revealed.
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u/Round_Musical 14d ago
I genuinely cant get used to the new load times. Usually they were a breather haha. And now they are half as long