The technology enthusiasts over at Digital Foundry have finally gone hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch. The team played the game at the press event in London which took place on Friday. Here’s the main details you need to know about the Nintendo Switch version of the highly anticipated open world Zelda game.
- 720p and locked 30fps in handheld mode
- 900p and 30fps when docked
- Texture filtering is poor
- Frame-rate drops typically seem to happen when there’s depth of field on-screen
- Lowest recorded frame-rate is 20fps.
That’s actually very bad…
It’s not really that bad for an open-world game. I can’t actually thinkg of a single open-world game that released without any framerate issues on a console.
This is a open world game that runs on the WII U if they can’t make this look nice and run at 60 FPS WHAT WILL? oh god I’m out $300 and another generation of Nintendo lost…
Breath of the Wild running at 720p on Handheld mode doesn’t have as many framerate drops. It has less than the Wii U does when running on TV, and can run at 900p, which is better than the 720p of the Wii U. I only see how this is a better experience than the one you’d get on Wii U.
Well, clearly it’s a better experience on Switch than Wii U. It’s a new console generation, for God’s sake. However, the 5 year gap between Wii U and Switch has only brought us a console that is marginally better than Wii U (at least that’s what Breath of the Wild is showing us), and still waaaaay behind XB1 and PS4, which are in the same price range as Switch. THAT’S what people are worried about. If the Switch is running BotW (which wouldn’t be considered that graphically intensive in comparison to other AAA open world games) at 900p30 at the start of its life cycle, how’s it going to run games at the end of its life cycle? Video game tech will only continue to improve and leave the Switch in the dust. We saw that with the Wii U running BotW in slideshow format. It will only be worse for the Switch, and earlier on in it’s life cycle too.
The Switch’s tech is fine and the graphics are far beyond the Wii U you punk ass hater. It’s not far behind the PS4 and Xbox One…..Super Mario Odyssey and BOTW is proof of that. Both the PS4 and Xbox One are already outdated as so are the upgraded versions. BOTW is a very graphically intensive game that’s uses tessellation and anti-aliasing so you don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about. If you’re worried about power Nintendo could always release a powerful version of the Switch…..just like…..oh wait…..Sony and Microsoft did with their current gen systems. To get home console power that is closer to the Xbox One on a small form factor is amazing. The advantage that the Switch will have is that Nintendo will be able to mass produce newer more powerful versions of the Switch quicker than their competition can with their respective systems because of the Switch’s form factor. You don’t know how powerful the Switch is right now……you’re just talking out the side of your f*cking neck
I agree with some of this. The Wii U version of Breath of the Wild lacks the Switch’s anti-aliasing, tessellation, etc. I would also like to point out to people that the Switch loads in way more grass than the Wii U, and that’s what causes the lag. They could literally remove the lag issue by making it load in 10% less distant grass, and the Switch would still load in more than twice the grass than the Wii U version. It should also be noted that the draw distance of higher quality models on the Switch is much much farther than the Wii U. The Wii U loaded hills that were within 100 meters with less quality than the Switch does with distant mountains. It must also be remembered that the Switch contains almost all of its hardware behind a 6-inch screen, in space less than half as thick as a Wii U GamePad. Even with the dock, the Switch is less than half the size of the smallest competing console, yet it still has much more power than the Wii U.
The Switchย likely has about 1/3rd the shader performance of the Xbox One and has less than 1/3rd theย memory bandwidth. That’s pretty far behind the PS4 and Xbox One.ย You can judge thatย stuff just based on games beingย 900p or 1080p. It’s whatย kind of visuals are those systems pushing at those resolutions.
You don’t know what you’re talking about stupid. The Switch is closer in power to the Xbox One so please shut up
Metal Gear Solid 5
It’s not open world, the game is divided into dozens of ant-sized maps….
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Powerful for a handheld and poor for a home console. I’d wish they had just released a “brother of systems” so one experience doesn’t have to gimp the other.
Uncharted runs at 900p and 30fps…. but of course that gets a pass because it has maturity in it right?
what does uncharted have to do with zelda having bad framerate?
Go f*ck yourself…fake a** Nintendo fan
Hahahaha so i must assume that you are using the alt “switch_rocks” them. It’s easy to see that since both of you seem like retarded assholes that act like whiny babies when people say the truth. So fucking ridiculous.
Fighting people on the internet over a fucking console. Can’t get worse than that. You need to get a life instead of jerking off to Nintendo, dipshit.
Better take a screenshot and post it on Twitter to make people laugh with the title “Nintendo manchild gets angry while crying fanboy tears”
Please, do the world a favor and go kill yourself. No one would give a shit.
You’re a loser. You should be aborted to the depths of hell and never be remembered again, fuckface. And take your Switch with you and shove it up your ass so you can always be with it the whole time since you love it so muuuch!!
You clearly never been laid!๐๐๐๐๐
Which uncharted you’re talking about? It has to be the Golden Abyss, because of the resolution that you mentioned. That game is too old to even compare to a console game like this Zelda…
I’m talking about Uncharted 4 dumbass
shhh!!! the drones are mad lol
Uncharted 4? That game runs at 1080p 30fps on single-player and multiplayer it runs at 900p and >60FPS<.
If you wanna troll do it right, asshole hahahaha
Aside from the fact that they’re both at the same framerate and resolution Uncharted has a lot more technicality behind it I’d imagine not to mention they’re targeting realism. From a personal opinion I’d rather Nintendo for all their games target 1080p60 or even 900p60.
Also, Uncharted loads only micro-sized maps every time, BotW has the whole world loaded all the time….
And it’s on PS4.
A. It’s 1080p30 you clod
B. It gets a pass because the game is actually graphically intensive. BotW would run easily on other consoles and PC.
It’s 900p you bitch
You do realize that cel-shading takes more processing power than realistic graphics, right?
No it does not. Cell shading doesn’t have worry aboutย light bouncing off of otherย surfaces to look good, skin doesn’t have to have sub-surface scattering, shadows don’t have to be as gradated, and hair can be treated asย large clumps. Iย honestly don’t understand how you can think that when we’ve seen pretty excellent cell shadingย going back as far as Wind Waker on the GameCube.
Wind Waker was harder to process than Twilight Princess. Toon Link in Smash for Wii U is more staining than normal Link. Cel-shading is rather inefficient, but can be used to hide lower-poly models. I’ve watched well researched videos about games that happen to be cel-shaded to know that people in the industry say that cel-shading is more intensive. Hell, I have personal experience. I can turn on a cel-shaded mode in G-Mod. It caused lag on my older, weaker PC.
Oh come on! We were so close to a somewhat flawless zelda. I can now accurately foresee a giant suppository like patch for breath of the wild in future.
Holly Shit D: bad news
Acutally… no. Even Wind Waker HD has significant framrate drops in certain areas and Breath of the Wild is in a hole other dimension of gaming. I’m not too surprised there are some issues. The Switch is a hybrid console, therefore compromises need to be made.
Also, Nintendo has enough time to set up a day one path to it that shortens grass draw distance. That’s the only thing that caused frame drops. Outside of massive grassy areas, it was buttery smooth.
What is this based on?
Youtube clip?
I would not take this “analysis” seriously, just wait for the game to release.
It’s direct feed capture taken from the press event we attended on Friday in London and also one in Frankfurt.
Direct feed? With what?
A capture device, obviously. That’s how people get the footage from events.
Yeah, but any capture device would change those details right?
Depending on the capture device’s settings. If it was set to capture at 30, then it would lead to incorrect results on the framerate. It could also, if recording at a lower resolution, impact those results.
I guess it still leaves a margin of error
No not really.ย These are also the same methods they’ve used to determine thatย games were 1080p in the past. In this case, theyย would stay still in a relatively staticย environmentย for 1 GOP and that will allow the compression toย make it’s sharpest picture possible at that given bit-rate. They can then countย pixel stepping to determine it’s resolution.
If the framerate issues are real then I hope we’re allowed the option to turn down the graphics to maintain 30fps (really I’d like 60 but I don’t think 3D Zelda has been above 30). 720p is plenty if I can get a stable framerate.
aside from the first 2, A Link Between Worlds was 60
all the other Zelda were 30fps. This has never been an issue yet Digital Foundry likes to beat up the dead horse with this stuff
Never done before, but should be standard by now. Staying in the stone age is cheap and lazy. 60 fps is incredibly sexy, especially when compared to 30. It makes a huge and obvious difference. Nintendo can evolve and try new things every gen, just not with graphics, am I rite?
They don’t rag on games for being 30 instead of 60. They’re just pointing outย where the frame rate dips from its target and giving their opinions onย the resolution. Like myself, they’re wondering why it can’t reachย 1080p with the clock boost when docked but they believe it might be do to postย processing effects like bokehย andย pretty much anything with alpha effects. This makes sense because that uses more memory bandwidth and memory bandwidth has little to no increase when docked.
Their opinion wasn’t overly negative and completely fair.
That’s not good at all. I thought Nintendo was good at optimizing its games to near perfection. I’m getting the feeling that there might be a new Nintendo switch in the future, like the 3ds got. Let’s all hope for the best.
Well my tv is 720p so I’m hoping that frame rate will improve with lower res.
I will play on the smaller screen usually.
Everything I’ve heard is that it runs best on the small screen at 720p30.
Didnt know that.
Hoping to see the obsessed fanboy manchild that kept crying today that BOTW was 1080p 60fps come here and say that Eurogamer is lying too, as everyone else, and that they’re better off playing PS4 Pro
PS4 Pro is total dog shit!๐๐๐Scorpio shits all over it!๐๐๐
Go play ur PS4 Pro st home which is boring as fuck!while I will play the Switch on the go on the train,bus,plane,park,gym,hotel,restaurant,car,etc everywhere anywhere!๐๐๐๐
Um didn’t IGN prove that the 900p is false?
IGN made a mistake and apologised for it on Twitter.
The MyNintendoNews hands on stated that BotW displays 900p at 60 fps. Sooo which is it? Sickr?
Hope they have time to work a little more on it then, perhaps find a way to render the grass in a cheaper way. But even the PS4 can’t keep a steady 30 fps on open games like GTA V, so it’s probably difficult.
But this is not the finish game they are playing…Why do mister Aonuma says that the game is 1080p???
I like how they oversee the fact tha botw have more things to run than scripted shit, not only being an open world but the hit box, shadow and action reaction physic as way above most games
That’s irrelevant. They’re judging the game for what its trying to do and how successful it is at doing it.
It’s doing all of that well. It struggles because it loads too much grass, not because it has amazing hit boxes, is a systems driven game, or has goodphysics.
I Don’t know about this obsession with fps and if its 1080p 900p or whatever if the game is fun and doesn’t get massive lag i can forgive dips. There is no such thing as the PERFECT game. I believe people are critical of this shit in an attempt to look smart. Dude if your that into this shit CREATE something then.I Will happily buy my copy on wii u because this is the game i bought the system for. If I like what i see with switch down the road i can always buy it again. happy gaming and don’t forget to play them while your counting the frames.
Why do youย feel that people shouldn’t analyzeย theย technical aspects of things?ย I mean some people here have no idea what they’reย talking about demand 60fps 1080p for everything but if you’re talking about DF, they’re justย discussingย things not really being harsh or anything.
That’s a very bad drop in frame rate. :/ Please tell me they are wrong & Colette was right because I don’t recall her mentioning any frame rate drops in her review.
Digital Foundry are full of shit!๐๐๐๐๐๐These are the guys that says Mario Kart 8 was trash…….then it went on to sell 5 million!๐
Funny how at the New York event Zelda played perfectly,and not 1 single media mentioned this low frame rate!
Digital Foundry are Nintendo haters and they just jealous the attention Switch is getting and his no one gives a shit about the PS4 Pro!๐
“With that in mind, don’t let these minor polish issues keep you away from the game – this is Mario Kart at its best and brightest. Racing has been refined to near perfection and its visuals are among the best on the platform. While we were a tad disappointed in the lack of a more robust single-player mode, the overall experience we had with the game was excellent. Old-school fans and newcomers alike will find a lot to love here. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some races to win…”
Yea realย Nintendo haters. Digitalย Foundry does technical analysis for those interested. They have software or a machine that counts frame rate consistency so they’re able to measure small frame dips mostย won’t notice. That being said, the frame dips were very apparent in that videoย so you can’t act like they didn’t happen. We also don’t know if the others noticed any frame dips. It’s entirelyย possible they had them and just didn’t decide to mention them while DF did.ย
Seriously. Stop saying stupid shit.
Funny how the 17 minute hands on video over on Polygon mentioned no frame rate loss or even shown this loss in their video!๐Colette also mentioned no frame rate loss in her write up yesterday.Funny how no one else mentions this frame rate drop but just Digital Foundry.
These guys seriously need to get life’s,let’s see them make a video game!๐๐๐
Really great video again from the DF guys!
Yeah a fake bull shit video!๐
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