Switch is Holding Back Nintendo’s Potential

The first footage of Pokemon Legends Arceus has drawn a number of different reactions.

You don’t have to mine too far into the depths of YouTube to find a few dozen manchildren – all eerily identical – staring open-mouthed in reaction video thumbnails. Their opinions are absolutely valid, but, come on guys, admit you’re all Metal Gear Solid style clones. The cat is out the bag.

Our own Adam Roffel had some Pokemon thoughts of his own. His misgivings are largely about the gameplay loop and world design, and they’re valid complaints.

But I didn’t even give it that much thought. After nearly 25 years of playing Pokemon, the dream of a truly 3D open-world game has come true… and it looks like this?

And it’s all because of the hardware it’s meant to run on.

Potential and the Switch

Listen, I know the Switch is selling gangbusters. If it keeps going the way it’s going, it’ll outsell the PlayStation 4, and all the more power to Nintendo on this front.

But if you’re using that as an excuse, you’re insane. “Yeah, sure, I don’t mind that Pokemon 12 feet in front of me run at about four frames a second in Legends, because Nintendo have shipped a lot of units!”

Look at this Ocarina of Time remake, running in Unreal. That wouldn’t even begin to run on Switch, so Nintendo won’t even consider something at that level.

Instead we get a Skyward Sword remaster, running at 1080p but with the same strange faces.

It’s not that Nintendo is incapable of doing anything better. My first time seeing Mario Sunshine is almost up there with my first time seeing Sonic Adventure. But their position in the market means they’re aiming for a price point that just can’t be reached without making compromises.

And those compromises are making their games less attractive.

The Bowser Blues

I’m not just talking visually, although yeah. Framerate in Pokemon Legends was definitely a problem. The Witcher 3, as amazing as it is that it runs on the Switch at all, took every compromise possible. Immortals is a great game, exclusively smeared in vaseline and put through a PS2 filter on Switch.

But it’s more than that. I don’t want to play a crazy open-world Pokemon game that doesn’t feel up to the job. That’s a dream many of us had in the late 90s – it was something that regularly got discussed in our playground. But, now that it’s here, it’s totally underwhelming.

Every Nintendo franchise feels better with scale, but the Switch just isn’t up to it. Breath of the Wild felt visually limited. The sequel, which is taking notes from Red Dead Redemption 2, doesn’t have the headroom to borrow even a tenth of that game’s open world charms.

And if a 4K switch does exist, the games are still going to be limited by the original Switch. This isn’t a Series S scaling issue, but more like suffering through the cross-generation period for seven years.

Pokemon Legends will look better in 4K, but it won’t necessarily play better.

Switch is Holding Back Nintendo’s Potential – Conclusion

My biggest concern here is what happens next? I want to play Ocarina of Time in 4K, I want to play an open world Pokemon that lives up to 20 years of imagination…

But it isn’t going to happen on the Switch. And if it doesn’t happen on the Switch, it isn’t going to happen anywhere.