The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild had been announced a few years ago. Progress has been slow but steady, despite an announcement of the game’s release being delayed to next year that also came with a new trailer. And that trailer has gotten some tech experts speculating about something interesting.
In a recent episode of Digital Foundtry Weekly, Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Alex Battaglia talked about the trailer that had been released last month. They also did a breakdown of the trailer’s technical aspects, such as anti-aliasing, 1080p/720p rendering, draw distances, and more.
Eventually, a conclusion was reached that the game is too big to perform on the Nintendo Switch, and they may be saving it for a more powerful console. In fact, Battaglia speculated that the sequel could launch similar to its predecessor, getting a release on the Switch and whatever console comes next.
Battaglia also noted that the camera cuts in the trailer had perfect anti-aliasing, and the volumetric clouds were not breaking down when Link approaches them in the sky. This leads Battlaglia to suggest that the game is running on a revised and more powerful version of the Nintendo Switch.
That said, Linneman noted that this isn’t something that Nintendo typically does. Nintendo usually makes sure that, when showing games in trailers, the game being shown is exactly how it is run on the hardware. All of this is speculation based on observations, and nothing has been made official. However, if Nintendo does confirm something like this, we’ll let you know.
Not gonna lie here but this new game will still run on Nintendo Switch even if the original version is not powerful or not honestly. Its just odd that they say the new game is too good to run on Switch is very not understanding to me.
It could just be that the developers better understand the switch system now compared to when it released. They’ve always been good at bringing more out of the system the further into its life. PS1 had this happen with FF9 as well, and I think Vagrant Story was similar in this regard too.
Point is, this isn’t really indicative of new hardware. Devs are just great at their jobs just as they always have been
If you watched the video, you’d know that they ruled this out. The Switch was maxed out from day 1, it’s not much more powerful than a Wii U. And the little extra that it has only allows for maybe a slightly higher resolution or increase in FPS.
“They ruled this out”
Nah man, better games keep releasing. And it’s not about overclocking the switch or anything, it’s about devs finding ways to cutdown on resources while still keeping performance up. If you just believe the dude in a room who says “it can’t be done”, then you’re really selling the developers’ hard work short. I mean, heck, in BotW they literally did optimizations to the game post release and got some areas to run better (slightly, but still optimization was made).
This doesn’t have anything to do with the actual limitations of the switch hardware; it has everything to do with the optimizations devs do to overcome those limitations without sacrificing the integrity of their games. It’s been done before, it will keep happening (as long as the devs care enough to do so).
A good example of this is the guy who just rewrote and optimized the Super Mario 64 code to run at 60 FPS on original N64 hardware.
Wut.tbe switch is much more powerful than the wii u, especially when docked. I agree I think it was pretty close to being maxed on day one, with botw one of the switch best game and in terms of graphics and showing what the system can do, and it even struggles in some areas. It was rumored nintendos WA red a switch pro instead of the oled model, but opted for the oled model due to chip shortages.
The switch is actually much more power I’ll than the WiiU.
I’m no expert, but if they are saying it has anti aliasing then I’m thinking they’re on to something. I heard Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Mario v Rabbids have some AA, but those are more self contained games and not open world. Developers get more comfortable with the hardware and can make some surprisingly great looking games near the end of a system’s cycle, we’ll see.
NINTENDO HAS ACCESS TO FSR NOW. Switch Sports is reportedly gonna use it too. This is a Switch game, and Switch 2 is a long ways off.
The Switch is more powerful than people think if you tailor-make a game specifically for its hardware instead of using unwieldy multisystem-engines, and Nintendos internal studios have always been extremely good at optimizing and pushing their hardware. Also agreed that Nintendo usually shows actual footage without trickery. So I think this runs on the regular Switch.
A new game that’s being released 6 years into the console’s lifespan looks better than a launch title/Wii U game??? OBVIOUSLY it must be next gen hardware!
No it’s just that nintendo isnt lazy. They actually make games on the system instead of saying “the switch is too weak.” “Its too hard to make a game on here” also other companies get paid not to make games on the system
+Me
Not to throw a spanner in the works but wasn’t Metroid Dread literally held off for years because the current system was deemed “too weak” to run it?
If this isn’t released on “NEW” hardware and Digital Foundry is proven wrong again, can they finally close their doors? I’m sick of these Switch “Pro” morons. A new Switch won’t come out until AT LEAST 2024. The Switch Pro doesn’t exist, and never did. The Switch 2 however does exist! There haven’t even been enough legitimate rumors from credible sources about a next gen Switch circling around. We usually start getting those a year or so before a new console is revealed.
This is Nintendo utilizing FRS, absolutely FACTS. Literally EVERY game that’s revealed on Switch has been “That can’t run on Switch!” or “This was an impossible port!” How many times do people have to keep saying this stupid crap?
Actually, specific and credible reporting from industry/finance publications a few years ago indicated that a Switch revision with dedicated tensor cores for DLSS and an 7-inch OLED screen was in production. Said reporting was frankly too specific, and from sources too credible, for it to be likely that the whole thing was a completely unfounded rumor or hoax. Meanwhile, the revision that we actually got, the Switch OLED, is conspicuously unambitious. The most likely explanation for the whole scenario is that COVID-related bottlenecks in the manufacture of the new chips forced Nintendo to change plans relatively late in production, fall back to using the same old chips, and push what they had out the door as the Switch OLED. Not that we’re likely to ever hear Nintendo admit it.
I’m almost certain the Switch Pro existed. What was interesting is that the Switch OLED had pretty much every feature that was rumoured for the Switch Pro – the slightly bigger OLED screen (including the correct screen size of 7 inches), the ethernet port on the dock, bigger internal storage (including the exact amount, 64GB), improved kickstand – all of those things were part of the Switch Pro rumour. The one thing that was missing was the headline item, the improved GPU with DLSS capability. But getting all of those other things right was to me plainly more than coincidence.
I believe that originally there was a Switch Pro planned including DLSS, but that got shelved for whatever reason and replaced with the Switch OLED. I think the evidence we’ve seen indicates this quite strongly.
Utterly ridiculous. It doesn’t look better enough to be a Switch 2, and it makes less than zero financial sense for them to require you to buy a new Switch Pro for Zelda when they’re going to need you to buy a switch 2 soon enough anyway. Remember, this was originally slated for this Christmas. They have quarterly numbers to make to report to shareholders. Which is more plausible, that they were going to sell their primary Christmas title exclusively to people who managed to snake in a preorder to a very difficult to acquire, late announced new console, posting horribly disappointing numbers to the shareholders who are expecting themselves for this game to sell to the entire Switch install base, or that just MAYBE Digital Foundry isn’t as perfect at analysis as they think?
It’s literally just that they are using either FSR or something similar to FSR.
BotW was kind of a… Wii U game before it was eventually released on it and the Switch? Did they forget that? Of course the sequel will look better on the Switch because the original game was initially made for different hardware.
This is kind of like the Fire Emblem games on the 3DS- the character models in Awakening had no feet to save processing power (they just had stubs which honestly was kind of funny) because the developers weren’t sure how strong the 3DS technology was. Later games like Fates and Echoes, the models had feet because now the devs knew what they were dealing with.
This whole claim sounds like nothing to take at face value.
Maybe the graphics are too good to be on Switch, but I’m not sure they look good enough to be on a new console. I would hope that a Switch 2 is going to be a bigger step up than what we’ve seen of BotW 2 so far, and there’s no way a Switch Pro is coming now this late into the lifetime of the Switch.
This is a ridiculous claim for 2 reasons
1. It’s Nintendo’s own system and they are developing the game for said system, of course they are gonna know whether or not it will work.
2. People often forget that Zelda BOTW was meant to be a Nintendo Wii U game and many games that got ported or got a sequel look better than their Nintendo Wii U counter-parts. Meanwhile this game was made to be for the Nintendo Switch from the very start!
I think they have development hardware. This could also be a normal computer, where the footage has been recorded.
It is very likely it will end up a similar case as the first game and be a port for the Switch 2.
+Wang Yuanji
I highly doubt that because the Nintendo Switch, as confirmed by Nintendo themselves, is currently in it’s mid-life phase so it’s likely we’ve got at least 3 more years of that system.
I also feel like the “Switch 2” isn’t gonna be the sequel people think it is, it’s probably just gonna be the rumoured NS Pro as the codename is more in line with that than it being a new system.
It’s already been 5 years now and this game will make it 6. There’s not much reason for me to doubt a new console from them given their history.
And Switch being around 3 more years doesn’t mean it will be immediately killed off, just not the main focus anymore. They just don’t want people to stop buying current consoles and games, so of course they’ll say that.