Epic Games unveiled the impressive Unreal Engine 5 earlier this week and it had tech enthusiasts foaming at the mouth. The company did state in the unveiling that the new engine would support a range of devices from next gen consoles to iOS and Android. However, the Nintendo Switch wasn’t explicitly stated. Eurogamer has cleared up the confusion by reporting that it will work on the Nintendo Switch, though it will be toned down somewhat.
UE5 gets its first public release early in 2021 with franchise juggernaut Fortnite transitioning across from UE4 later on in the same year. Unlike UE4, however, the new iteration of the engine isn’t a clean break from the past. It has the same system targets as UE4, meaning it’ll run on anything from the most high-end PCs to old Android and iOS devices, encompassing current-gen consoles too – including Switch. Obviously though, you can’t expect the same level of fidelity as the fully-fledged next-gen experience revealed today.
Thanks to Nintendo First Order Reaver for the news tip!
Tech demos are dumb. They just show “potential” using a highly optimised demo. I mean, gameplay should be the absolute focus in game dev BUT if you are the type to focus on graphics… Maybe start working on better character animations and models instead of photorealistic environments.
This demo was playable though. Not to disagree with your sentiment, I do agree that demoes doesn’t always represent the final product we consumers will play at our homes, but some developers are talented enough to get inspiration from techdemoes, and are pushing beyond what is the industry standard. I think that’s the beauty of those kind of demoes; it motivates developers.
But I’m still waiting on that HD Zelda tech demo to become a game :/
Yeah, that’s the problem with techdemoes. Often they’re only there for marketing purposes. I wanted that Zelda bad myself
Bullshit it wasn’t playable! I searched on Youtube and all that exists is that CG trailer.
And they states in the Interview with Geoff Keighley that it is playable, and I bet developers probably have access to it.
That does not make it a fact!
Well, they can be sued if they’re lying about something that big. And many sites states it’s playable. But I do agree that there are almost always some caveats to everything.
What do you mean by many sites state it’s playable. Did they play it? Or did they just reiterate what the devs claimed. Because I can tell that some parts of that demo are scripted. Like all the climbing and jumping sections and when she flies off the platform down to the ground. Scenes like that are obviously not human controlled movements but cutscenes or scripted animations.
You just have to search the net, since you need so much validation from sources, you obviously won’t get it from me ;)
It’s just like this fake gameplay when Google revealed Stadia. It’s not a fact until independend people test it out!
This is my pet peeve as well. Don’t get me wrong environments are amazing and super important for solidifying the atmosphere of a game, but I am soooooo picky when it comes to character models. I had to find that to be of significant importance, in most cases more so than the environment
One aspect I think that we won’t be seeing on Switch is the Nanite-function. It looks way to demanding for Switch. Lumen would be nice to have on Switch though, developers might be able to use that.
I was also thinking if we get to a point where Nanite is widely used by developers, it would make porting to the Switch less attractive; because then they would have to go back to the regular LOD technique again – just for Switch. But that’s probably years of anyway.
I think you misunderstand what nanite is. It allows an insane number of triangles/polygons to be in a scene (“limitless geometry” as the UE5 engineers put it), but it handles them more efficiently, rendering a much smaller number based on what’s visible (and it will scale with how much power the system has). So it should actually be LESS work for games to be ported to the Switch, since the engine will take care of downscaling everything appropriately for it to run. The only point that could be argued is how much cartridge space could be saved by downscaling manually, but I imagine that’s not as big of a hurdle as it might sound. Obviously, the PS5 has a lot more power than the Switch, and will therefore be able to display a lot more detail, but this will still benefit Switch games.
And from what I understand it scales per pixel. Which sounds really demanding, especially in a 720p to 1080p transition. There might be some hocus pocus I don’t understand, and Switch might be able to pull this off nicely, but it does sound a bit too demanding. But for all I know they’ll do upscaling of resolution and other measures to keep things going around smooth.
I don’t think cartridge space will be a big problem either. The new models probably takes a lot of space, but at least they don’t have to make several different models for LOD-distances.
The Krypt in MK11 Switch should give you an idea of what a nanite enabled Switch game would do,
(They manually employed poly reduction techniques that produces similar results)
Shouldn’t it be that the Nintendo Switch supports Unreal Engine 5 instead of the other way around? Switch is the hardware, Unreal is the software.
Not really, the update to support a platform is done from the engine side. Epic (and the game developers) needs to work to make their games work on the Nintendo Switch, not the other way around. Nintendo does however give the tools and libraries necessary to make the transition with their dev kits.
That’s incredible the Switch can handle this. They way haters keep saying how weak it is and how Nintendo needs a Switch Pro.
Engine “support” is a very broad statement, it just means you can run the engine on the Switch but no one ever stated it will run with the same graphics fidelity. After all you could make a full 2d game with the engine if you want.
I’m just going by the stereotype. And so what if the graphics wont show up on the Switch compared to the Xbox series X or PS5 or PS4 pro. According to whatsnon paper, when seeing side by side comparison the Switch out does its visuals compared to what the paper say. So it is actually surprising to see what the Switch can show compared what the paper says it cant show.
And most of those realistic games are movies what a bore.
Nintendo Switch is not that weak to me. Its strong and it can handle this. Maybe in Nintendo’s next console, It will be much stronger for this to work.
I’m just going by the stereotype that haters keep saying
well so would the ios and android versions lol. but thats expected….the three of them use mobile chips….
Will according to the haters’ stereotype the Switch shouldn’t had done a lot of things with its weak self.
The Switch has 8 cores, you know if all 8 of its cores been tapped to the max yet?
You should have added this quote from Tim Sweeney for more context.
“To maintain compatibility with the older generation platforms, we have this next generation content pipeline where you build your assets or import them at the highest level of quality, the film level of quality that you’ll run directly on next generation consoles,” continues Tim Sweeney. “The engine provides and will provide more scalability points to down-resolution your content to run on everything, all the way down to iOS and Android devices from several years ago. So you build the content once and you can deploy it everywhere and you can build the same game for all these systems, but you just get a different level of graphical fidelity.”
In raw power is the Switch closer to Wii U or PS4?
Pingback: As expected Unreal Engine 5 supports Nintendo Switch – My Nintendo News – Gfeedit
Pingback: Unreal Engine 5 Support OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED For Nintendo Switch