We have a fresh batch of rumors about the Switch 2, from a new trusted source.
Nate The Hate shared his input to what had already been talked about by Eurogamer, Video Games Chronicle, and Brazilian site Universo Nintendo. He shared his insights in the latest episode of his podcast, which you can catch on YouTube here.
First off, about the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild demo at Gamescom. Nate revealed that this demo was running at 4K, 60 FPS, and it was running thanks to DLSS. Nate describes the way DLSS improves the game’s performance as “nothing short of magical.”
Nate also clarified earlier rumors about the DLSS version. Now, Nate clarified that Nintendo did not bring an actual Switch 2 to Gamescom. Developers would have seen a demo unit that had similar or comparable hardware, intended to show off specific features of the hardware. So, Nate explained that this demo was using DLSS 3.5, but it may not have been utilizing DLSS 3.5’s full feature set.
DLSS 3.5 is the latest iteration of Nvidia’s upscaling technology, and is unquestionably the best version to use right now. It’s possible that Nintendo and Nvidia will ultimately decide to use an earlier version of DLSS, hence the demo unit was constrained. Nate insists that there is nothing preventing DLSS 3.5 from being on the Switch 2, so it’s certainly what we shoud hope for.
DLSS 3.5’s feature set would be a huge boon to Nintendo’s next platform. While DLSS 3.5 does have frame generation, that technology is somewhat controversial, and won’t necessarily be what makes the Switch 2 sing. DLSS 3.5’s basic ability to raise resolution will already be incredible, especially if it achieves that 4k 60FPS performance on most games, if not all of them.
The real revelation, however, is in terms of load times. As Nate explains, the load times for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Switch run to around 30 seconds. It’s very good performance for the Switch hardware, and any one can tell you that’s considerably faster than the game does on the Wii U. However, compared to the SSD enabled PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the Switch’s 30 second load time already feels slow.
According to Nate, in this demo on the Switch 2, transitions from menu screens to going in-game are smooth, and “load times have been erased.” That’s obviously really impressive, and would sway not only consumers, but game developers to make games on the console.
And that’s punctuated by what Nate says is the reason for bringing the Matrix demo to Gamescom as well. It’s to show developers that Unreal Engine 5 is working just fine on the Switch 2. That means games like Remnant 2, Lords of the Fallen, Immortals of Aveum, Tekken 8, and Black Myth: Wukong can potentially be ported to the platform.
As impressive as this all is, remember that these are all rumors. Nintendo did not make these promises themselves, and we can be excited for the possibility but we can’t expect them to meet all these expectations like they were promised by the company.
