The "Hardware Limitations" of the Nintendo Switch

Get up to 50% off & FREE SHIPPING at bit.ly/satisfy... and use code WULFFDEN for an additional 5% off
The Nintendo Switch is being blamed for the shortcomings of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, which very clearly released in an unfinished state...
🔔GET NOTIFIED: SUB! www.youtube.com...
▶️New Videos AT LEAST weekly
👕W U L F F D E N A P P A R E L 👕
wulffdenapparel...
➤➤➤Support the channel! Become a sponsor: kzbin.info...
• Access to Sponsor only Discord chat
• Chat badge & Emotes
• Priority game time for chat multiplayer streams (whenever we do them)
🎮Twitch: / wulffden
🐦Twitter [Bob]: / bobwulff
🐦Twitter [WulffDen]: / thewulffden
📸Instagram: / thewulffden
🔷Facebook: / wulffden
💬Our Discord Server: / discord
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

[@Antigen__]

The only thing the PC emulator argument proves is that a mid spec PC can just brute-force through the shit software and make it run well through strength alone. It's the developers' job to make your software run as effortlessly as possible on the intended hardware, not just hope more powerful hardware can make up for how poorly it's put together.

[@clydefrosch]

It is, but gamefreak has been hacky devs since pokemon red and green. It is how it is.

[@TortillaPizzeria]

Literally, and I’m glad someone could explain this better than I could. You are absolutely right.

[@HiPlayerProdigy]

100% Game was launched way too early that's the fact. Poor design decisions as well but overall just cause it runs better on Steam Deck with some patches doesn't mean anything. Nintendo needs get their sh*t together.

[@techboy95]

Now I don’t know what the “mid spec PC” was but an Nvidia RTX 3060 is around at least 50 times more graphical performance. It’s really not anything that you can compare when it’s also using probably close to 50x-100x the power. the closes modern hardware you could compare would be a steam deck but again that has many times more horsepower. Regardless of any of that, when breath of the wild was released more then 5 years ago for the same hardware and runs great and even Pokémon legends Arceus runs great and has similar graphics, you just can’t blame the switch

[@ryanleninfan1337]

You honestly dont want super powerful hardware in a handheld lol. My steamdeck already has super rough battery with the minumum performance id want at 800p. Nonetheless when i pirated scarlet (shamelessly) yuzu ran like shit and i have a 6800xt and 5700x edit: and yuzu cant fix the playdough textures

[@squidgybuffalo]

To be fair it's 90% on gamefreak for not giving their devs time to optimise, polish and finish the game.

[@DominicWatch]

Not 100% gamefreak though. Nintendo contribute heavily towards deadlines. Along with creatures inc.

[@thechazz8080]

To be fair, Game Freak devs themselves arent exactly much to write home about. Most of the recent games, (since sun and moon) have issues

[@DominicWatch]

@@thechazz8080 they have had optimisations issues since gold and silver. Satoru Iwata solved it for a while, till 2013 when he died.

[@julianx2rl]

Yes! I mean let's assume the Switch did have the power to run the game smoothly in its current state. Are we OK with un-optimized garbage eating our battery life in chunks? Running at 30fps when it could've been 60 like Sonic Colors?! Fuck that! Our games need to be optimized, and if they don't like it, we don't care!

[@julianx2rl]

@@thechazz8080 - Sun and Moon do have some of the best visuals on 3DS tho. I mean, just compare it to something like Fantasy Life, A Link Between Worlds.

[@TheMocutMiester]

It's easier to hide an unfinished Pokemon game with the old 2D art style. The new 3D art style makes it a TON harder to hide bugs. They also probably rushed it for Christmas.

[@captainflowers748]

2D is also easier… way easier to make

[@PlatinumMage]

Only a 9 month development period

[@happyfire5951]

I like Pokémon scarlet and violet very much despite the issues

[@theviniso]

@@captainflowers748 Yeah, I was gonna say that. Older 2D Pokemon titles were much easier to make. Hell, even the early 3D titles were much easier to make than these new free-camera fully open-world games we get nowadays. Still Gamefreak's fault, of course.

[@NormansWorldMovies]

5

[@Mbadcraft]

Gamefreak need to choose between being a small game studio or making a pokemon game every 1-2 fucking years

[@finestcustard5647]

I really don’t get why they keep the studio so small. It’s so dumb :(

[@joseaguilar3323]

Or just outsource the games to other studios.

[@Hadeks_Marow]

It's not gamefreak who makes that choice :/

[@finestcustard5647]

@@Hadeks_Marow who hires new employees to make game freak bigger then? If they can’t chose to stop the yearly Pokémon cycle then they need to get a lot more staff so they have the brute force to make a good game.

[@Hadeks_Marow]

​@@finestcustard5647 You are talking about multiple different branches now. There isn't one group that does both of those things. And you know how stingy nintendo is with getting outside help. I'm sure that policy extends to the second party studios nintendo works with. What you have is the case of 3 heads: 1 head is telling the body to do the action. The second and third head both acknowledge that the body can't do these actions. The second head tells the third head to slow down the cycle. But the third heads job tells the second head to hire more people, train them and still meet the deadline first head set. Head 2 won't do the solution head 3 suggested cause they are still waiting for head 3 to do the solution that head 2 told them to do. Head 3 won't do the solution head 2 suggested because they are waiting for head 2 to do the solution that head 3 suggested. And all of this is a mute point because both heads 2 and 3 have to follow the whim of whatever head 1 tells them to do. The problem is head 1 doesn't care how they get it done, they are expected just to get it done as if this stuff works like magic because head 1 is listening to what the consumer, investors and company partners are telling them to do. All of whom ALSO don't care how this stuff works and only cares that it gets done. What you are left with is impossible demands with everyone else waiting on their version of a reasonable solution but might not be reasonable to those they demand it from. Meaning no solution is ever acted upon because they want the other department to do something on their end. If you were able to get through that whole paragraph, congrats, you now understand what company mismanagement looks like.

[@logan317b]

Breath of the WIld shows you how amazing an open world game can be on the exact same system when you give the developers enough time to actually complete it Edit: Despite this I know it's still time for an upgrade. Making good games on a 5 year old tablet can be done but it won't be sustainable forever.

[@somethingelse4282]

Botw is a AAA game that was years in development, got delayed several times and had the best team working on it, don't compare them to the likes of pokemon just because they sell

[@Cat-ir8cy]

@@somethingelse4282 you do realize that it was developed for the Wii U? It was ported and optimized to the switch in less than a year and had a different architecture to the Wii U which means that optimizing games to the switch should not be a problem.

[@Left4Bill]

@@somethingelse4282 Wow almost like pokemon (AAA title) should have been delayed and given more than 2-3 years of development time.

[@gekkou3733]

@@somethingelse4282 point is, it is not the hardware’s fault. They’ve released it not “too soon” is not the word. They released it broken

[@GBreadCreations]

Botw is a great game but you have to be honest.. the world is dead and empty. The world feels so stale. It's huge but contains basically nothing and no one. I wanted like a qol update so bad but I think we are way beyond that now.

[@tristanneal9552]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Persona 5 Royal, and Nier Automata all released on Switch this year with nearly no performance issues. This isn't a Switch issue, it's a Pokémon issue.

[@duke_8747]

I think the problem is they don’t have any incentive to make the game any better. They know their game will sell regardless of what they output. Until fans start holding GameFreak accountable nothing will change.

[@jeffn1215]

Their largest audience by far are children who don't complain on twitter. As long as the mom's and dad's keep buying Pokemon, nothing will change and it'll continue to sell like hotcakes.

[@geodude6244]

Pokemon needs a competitor. The game is bland now. A different monster style game with different mechanics. I could see yugioh being cool with a good story line. Pokemon feels like your playing a game designed for 2 year olds at this point

[@ToxcynTV]

@@jeffn1215 to this point maybe it’s time for us to move on from Pokémon as adults. They should still make games better but you are correct about the target audience being small children.

[@inari3217]

@@geodude6244 There is competition, pokemon fans dont care about monster collecting games though, it's just about the brand and being part of the newest hip popular thing If you want a good monster collecting game that has a great artistic direction and gameplay try Monster Hunter Stories 2, it runs good enough on the switch but it runs and looks better on PC if you have anything better than a toaster

[@FartPriest69]

*Hold either Nintendo/Pokémon company accountable I don’t think any sane video game developer who actually worked on the game isn’t absolutely soul crushed by having they’re project release in the state that it did

[@A-Spoto]

Thank you WULFF DEN for holding the Pokémon company responsible for not optimizing their game for the only console it was released for.

[@CosmicFrenzy]

These "hardware limitations " somehow didn't stop much heavier games from performing much better than Scarlet and Violet. Yes, hardware plays a part, but the devs play the biggest part.

[@MidtownMeezus]

70/30 Devs

[@CosmicFrenzy]

@@GLaD0S666 Look at Xenoblade 3. A massive open world game, much larger than Pokemon that looks much better, runs much better, and has a whole lot of stuff going on on screen during battle. The hardware isn't the main issue with Pokemon, specifically. It's the absurd lack of time they put into the development. I just think it's insane to let Game Freak or The Pokemon Company off the hook continously when the evidence is right there that ambitious games can run just fine on the Switch when devs are able to actually put in the time and effort.

[@Physictsdrumtoo]

@GLaDOS look at dying light. And get back to us if it’s just “hardware limitations”. They got dying light to run very very well. It is lack of development.

[@MakenaForest]

@GLaDOS shin megami tensei V and xenoblade 3 are both switch exclusives that look like they belong in fucking art museums, and both came out BEFORE PSV. both are heavily open world games with larger environments than PSV and both have higher quality textures and models than PSV. Not to mention, nier automata is also on swich, looking as amazing as anywhere else. when dealing with modern pokemon, you simply cannot lay blame on the hardware anymore, because i know a wii game that is bigger and only looks worse in model quality and even then only by a small margin. there are gamecube games that look better than it. the biggest decriers of switch hardware are pokemon fans, and its laughable because the only reason there isnt a good pokemon game on switch is because of corporate greed, not hardware. heck heres an example why. the actors **should not** be loaded when they are offscreen. having them loaded means you were too lazy to optimize the game.

[@Thewaterspirit57]

Considering when Cyberpunk 2077 came out on PS4 and Xbox One…. It was for sure the devs, not the hardware. There were still games on that thing which performed well, even older games that had open detailed worlds. Infamous 2nd son is a good example. 1080p 30fps, but still hit that consistent frame rate, and that game had lots of detail but didn’t look muddy.

[@firebirdstark]

I have been hearing “this Gen is a great step to that next game that will be the best pokemon game ever” since Gen 6. We’re now at Gen 9, and it feels like a net regression in many ways

[@astaldo]

US/UM did feel like peak post Gen 6 Pokémon, nothing really was left on the table and it was one of the 3DS’s best games.

[@firebirdstark]

@@astaldo now that is a hot take

[@muizzsiddique]

@@firebirdstark Visually Sun/Moon was the best looking Pokemon had looked in 3D. The problem with Lets Go/Sword&Shield and to some extent Scarlett&Violet is that the visuals can be overly simple and sometimes it looks like the game is still designed for a 3DS display and not a HD 720p/1080p display.

[@pikaachoo3888]

Gen 5 was peak pokemon for me. BW and BW2 are just freaking amazing.

[@XanthinZarda]

Much like Sonic trying a new interesting mechanic each game in the 3D series, none of the "good steps in a right direction" mean nothing if they don't commit.

[@Technonova323]

The fact that the game has sold 10 million copies is not only shocking given how unfinished it is, but also frustrating since I could think of *so* *much* other titles that deserve that kind of success.

[@tomsanders2094]

I think the problem is there were insane numbers of preorders, I'd love to know what the refund rate is now...

[@ShadowMan64572]

I just wanna know how the game got positive reviews. Maybe evidence that paid reviews exist?

[@checob224]

I'm not really surprised, because those same people bought pokemon arceus

[@toututu2993]

Good quality does not usually equal great number of sell

[@JH-vb1wo]

I agree. When u have unlimited funding and you know ur game will sell there is no excuse not making the game as good as possible. Honestly I'd rather them release a 2d cell shaded Pokémon game that looks gorgeous then some 3d ugly game

[@Saicofake]

I always felt hardware limitations was a bullshit reason when the Switch has consistently shown that it can run a lot of great looking games smoothly.

[@VGamingJunkieVT]

Hell, even third party games that weren't made for the system (Witcher fucking 3) run far better than this Pokemon game, that was made with the Switch in mind.

[@Delaretro_]

You couldn’t have said it better !

[@Thewaterspirit57]

@@VGamingJunkieVT Witcher 3 ran at 720p 30fps, and would sometimes dip bellow that, looking like a muddy mess. Pokémon S/V would’ve had a more consistent 30fps If the devs had time to optimize the game. Especially as it runs at a dynamic resolution maxing out at 1080p. Plus the game looks just a bit better looking than legends, so it’s clear they did more, but had no time to optimize the game due to TPC releasing Legends early than it should have.

[@Deadsea_1993]

@@VGamingJunkieVT . Dying Light was a far more impressive third party port. The Witcher 3 on Switch looks absolutely horrid

[@mparagames]

@@Thewaterspirit57 xenoblade also runs at a low resolution but has lots of stuff going on there; a big map full of stuff, zelda runs at 900p bu also has much better graphics than SV and pleasing aesthetic ion general, runs at 30 fps. .Nier Automata runs at 30 1080p, had to do some visual sacrifices compared to the original version, but still looks ok. So yeah SV was poorly optimized and could run well AND have better graphics had the devs had time and effort to do it

[@bubmario]

I’m surprised you didn’t compare it to “Legends: Arceus” at all. To me, that is the nail in the coffin here - that game eschewed so many issues with the Pokémon formula and here they reverted back in some frustrating ways.

[@rollinburket]

*exactly*. i feel like every single pro you could list about this game was introduced in PLA and done better. i won’t list the gameplay mechanics from PLA that they straight up ruined or omitted bc there’s too many but man it was so disappointing to see gamefreak take so many steps backward after such a refreshing formula change

[@Ehal256]

The combat in PLA is probably the one letdown, but aside from that yeah, a lot of the good stuff in SV is from that game.

[@franc2255]

@@Ehal256 THE COMBAT FROM PLA IS THE ONE LETDOWN ??? MAN ARE YOU SMOKING SOMETHING ?? You fckg like when pokemon are hitting via wifi ?? at least in PLA they go real melee.

[@qactustick]

@@Ehal256 I think the changes to combat are probably the most polarizing change PLA introduced, not necessarily good or bad. I personally liked all of the changes because I feel like it brought a lot more 'danger' back to battling when you couldn't necessarily just overlevel and oneshot everything you ran into, not to mention the situations where you can get ganged up on by multiple Pokemon at once. I think it was a nice step towards adding 'difficulty' to the game directly rather than it being mostly limited to player-driven challenges. Anyway, some comparisons between PLA and SV are to be expected, but I don't think it's necessarily fair to put them squarely side-by-side. Remember that PLA was intended to be more 'experimental' in nature, and that both games were overlapping in their development and with mostly different groups of developers. Bearing this in mind, SV wouldn't really have had the opportunity to borrow much of anything from PLA. We'll have to wait until the gen 10 games to see how much GF decides to bring over from PLA, that or the next Legends game, if there ever is one (and I really hope there is).

[@MorrisseyMuse]

as someone who hasn't played either game, what are the differences between Arceus and the new games? besides lots of lag obviously lol

[@CryoCrow]

Another odd thing I found is that for some reason they removed the option to change the battle style to "set". Also despite adding a pokemon that needs you to use a move x times they removed the option to disable battle animations! Like why was it even considered to remove these options that have been in the games for the longest time let alone actually remove them? I can't recall a game that had LESS settings than its predecessor.

[@Xanthelei]

Both options were in the game since Gen 1. I pulled up my Pokémon Blue digital copy to be sure. There are exactly 3 things in the Options menu: battle style set/switch, battle animations on/off, and text speed slow/medium/fast. This game removed 2/3rds of the original options menu.

[@Aquanex2]

@@Xanthelei That's wild

[@dingleberry1242]

I think they removed the ability to cancel battle animations is because tera raid battles are time based not turn based like dynamax raids in sword and shield. Disabiling battle animations is cheap way to get more time on raid battles if it was an option

[@XanthinZarda]

And what's worse is that in trying to streamline out obvious cruft and chaff, the battle system is just as jarringly slow as it gets. Do you want to use AncientPower? Too bad, here's a message for every time it procs, the leftovers you gave them have to slowly animate, here's an update on the weather, the status effect you played on the opponent, the minor status effect and---oops, looks like you timerscammed your tournament.

[@LeviathanMusic1]

@@dingleberry1242 I mean, they could've just made it so Tera Raid battles were unchanged from that setting regardless if it was set to off so there wouldn't be any issues with timing.

[@sonusmeister2325]

Based on the clipping glitch, Gamefreak only applies distance based LOD, but not occlusion based one. So at the same time it render the cities and plains, it also renders caves and building underground including the shadows that taxing the GPU. Lower fps for animation in the distance like what the Gamefreak did really helps the CPU, but still burdens the GPU because it still needs to render the model. Another game like MH Rise just swap the models with ultra low poly models or straight up swap it with an empty object if it's far away or covered by something else but still have something that needs to be calculated like AI or stats.

[@trapadvisor]

Oh my god, loading the models then shadows over it is literally game making 101

[@sonusmeister2325]

They never need to care about it since previous game has fixed perspective, so they used to just hard code it.

[@trapadvisor]

@@sonusmeister2325 just goes to show their inexperience.

[@Thewaterspirit57]

@@trapadvisor they literally had three years to make this game. Of course it’s gonna look bad no matter how much you try :/

[@trapadvisor]

@@Thewaterspirit57 there’s no one stopping them from taking longer on it except investors and higher ups

[@drivillain4967]

This is 100% on Gamefreak and The Pokemon Company in general. They need to end the three year cycles for Pokemon and give Gamefreak more time to work on the games.

[@neonlights_12]

And gamefreak needs to suck it up and have more than 170 people on staff, too. I believe it was Digital Foundry who noted that a lot of names were on Arceus and S/V credits, meaning they're working on at least 2 games at a time which is ABSURD for the largest media franchise in the world. Gamefreak owns The Pokemon Company in part with Nintendo and Creatures, and TPC did reported sales of $1.6 billion, with a gross revenue of $700 million and a net profit of $325 million last year. That's record profit for them, and even if Gamefreak only gets the money from games, Sw/Sh has sold 22 million copies, and Arceus did 14 million. There's NO EXCUSE to not do a CoD cycle and have two teams alternating games, at the very least.

[@Reydriel]

3 years is honestly more than enough time to develop a game of this fidelity, especially since it mostly follows a decades-old formula at this point. No, they don't need more time, they need better devs and a better game engine lmao

[@gingersnap931]

It seems to be a common theme now with some devs that they would rather release an unfinished game and patch it then delay the game and make it an finished game. Pokemon 100% should have been delayed but they clearly wanted a xmas release

[@tresaidh3y90]

Development is easier that way with how the industry is. Don't blame the developers blame their project managers.

[@kon0212]

honestly yeah, though games always end up being better if they go through releasing it first and then patching it with multiple updates than finished ones that cant be updated nor patched, and if that game is finished, it is completely closed off to upgrades and fixes if it is bad. so id say eh

[@zackrack8942]

I mean, they could still have to delayed it to next year's xmas while making this year's xmas the legends arceus' show. But nahhhh. The anime is coming to an end. The merchandise has become pretty stale overall ( not that pla's lack of new mons helped ), the vgc is about to start a new season ( guess why bdsp wont work on vgc lol ),... U can see pokemon has tied itself to a hell full of deadline coming from every corner. I guess there are downsides to being the biggest media franchise in the world. Yikes.

[@seangallagher9435]

Game freak already announced they have no plans for patches in the near future

[@zackrack8942]

@@seangallagher9435 except that they just did. Patch 1.1.0 was announced yesterday, so yeah.

[@michaelballack3051]

Lol many of us were saying this back in 2019 when Sword and Shield released but people just dismissed the criticism as "whining" or "it's just a pokemon game". Now people are finally realizing the many issues these games have. Not that it matters tho. Ever since Pokemon moved to the Switch, their games have been selling like hot cakes. No need for improvement really

[@kurtkaufmann8885]

Bob Wulff telling it how it is as always. The Switch is being used as a scape goat for bad optimisation, here's hoping for a patch otherwise I might just give this generation a miss

[@da9nerdy]

Get a steam deck

[@throwawayacc2494]

@@da9nerdy get a life

[@Hadeks_Marow]

More like "optimisation" is being used as a scapegoat for insufficient hardware.

[@kurtkaufmann8885]

@@Hadeks_Marow then why does botw, Legends arceus and the xenoblade series play seamlessly

[@spike5499]

@@kurtkaufmann8885A better example would be xenoblade chronicles 3 since legends arceus doesn't look and run great either, but it does look and run better than scarlet and violet so I'll give you that

[@zachw566]

The issue is that gamefreak is only having 1 year to develop these games. They should have 3 teams that rotate working on a game for 2-3 years.

[@ChefVsWolf]

Gamefreak claimed they started development after sword and shield so 2019-2020. That’s 2-3 years of development. Separate teams made Arceus and BDSP….

[@jmepik]

There's actually a chart showing how two teams developed Arceus and S/V respectively over three years. Scarlet/Violet got three years. It's not enough.

[@Peej2189]

They rotate which studios develop the game, but lets also not act like COD hasn't released with some shit bugs this year.

[@QuizMasterEntertainment]

They've been working on this game since 2019 and a lot of this game shares mechanics with pokemon legends arceus, if they wanted to reuse the code, they could have, it wasn't a time crunch, it's just game freak refusing to improve their ways again.

[@user-xn3kt6bn5r]

@microwaveeee and for years there have been 2 studios working on each game in parallel which is how they can keep up the pace.

[@PorthoGamesBR]

You know the worst part? The ideas behind this game, the pokemon design, the mechanics, everything is good. If they had just a little more time to work on technical issues, this would be the best pokemon game ever made with no doubts.

[@LittleSparklingStars]

Ikr I’m having so much fun, but ut breaks my heart that there was barely done any QA.

[@Vash.Baldeus]

I recall reading a while back that originally during the early R&D for the Switch, Nintendo planned on 2GB of RAM, the developers convinced to upgrade to 4GB. In my honest opinion, should've tried to convince for 8GB, would've been a bit better idea.

[@ThatLaloBoy]

Eh at that point the GPU and CPU aren't going to be able to use the extra RAM. Regardless, I think the Switch is due for an upgrade as even midrange phones now are more than twice as powerful as the Switch. Shove a Tegra chip with RT cores to enable 4K upscaling and Nintendo can keep it going for another gen.

[@MrMattumbo]

They could've beefed it up in a lot of ways, it's not like Nintendo consoles ever go on sale or see a real decline in sales throughout their generation. With the horribly outdated hardware in the switch still selling for full MSRP like hotcakes Nintendo is rolling in enough money to have subsidized the greater cost of better hardware at the start like Sony and Microsoft do with their consoles. Nevermind that Nintendo 1st party games are practically all people buy the consoles for, game sales alone offer them enough profit to sell the Switch at a loss at launch.

[@meikahidenori]

If I recall that was Capcoms Monster hunter portable team that asked for that so they could put Rise on the switch instead of the 3ds which the game was originally going to be made for.

[@repeekyraidcero]

It was Capcom pushing it.. But tbh you only have 3.2 Gigs, cause the OS needs space too

[@MorrisseyMuse]

The Switch has proven already that hardware means very little if you have amazing games. It's consistently outsold all of it's more powerful rivals since launch, from the PS4 to the Xbox to the Steam Deck (if you can call that poor excuse for a portable PC a rival lol)

[@danytalksmusic]

We should've seen this coming when they announced 5 Pokemon games releasing in the span of one year!

[@faresfares-ultra]

There is nothing wrong with multiple pokemon been released in the same year as long they are not from the same team like pokemon new snap and pokken

[@ekinteko]

I don't think that's the entire reason. It is probably a factor that their team isn't that skilled, their team is somewhat small, and management isn't doing much improvements. Aside from the low graphics, stupid glitches and poor performance... well it's not a very interesting game. There's so much to improve in-game wise that it boggles the mind. Characters are mute, dialogue is bland, story is predictable, and there's nothing extra to do. So had they made those changes, the fans wouldn't be as upset. For the first time, I'm hearing more complaints from people who bought the game than those who haven't, which means something has gone wrong. With that all said, we still can't expect too much. We are talking about a device with 2010 level of performance. If you think about it as an evolution of the 3DS then it seems decently powerful, but if you look at it as an evolution of the GameCube/WiiU then it is utter trash. Remember it is much closer to a 2005 Xbox 360 than it is to a 2013 Xbox One.... and that last one was considered slow upon release. All the while the Switch was released in 2017 which is a lifetime when it comes to technology. There is no denying that Nintendo really cheaped out on the hardware upon release, they stuffed up simple. They could have built a PS4-level performance but as a handheld and it would've still been relevant in 2023. Now they look like a clown as people have impressive Xbox Series X or PS5 visuals in the same living room as the Switch. Or if you're out and about, there's the Valve SteamDeck that is almost PS4 Pro level in performance. So in a square and logical world, this Pokemon game would have so much more, it wouldn't have any performance issues, very little bugs, and visually great. And the hardware it runs on would be awesome. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in one where companies take money out of a product and cheapen the experience, but they invest more money into marketing and ultimately it gives them higher profits. Any bad reputation they have, they can just buy it with good publicity. You (the masses) have noone to blame but yourselves, perhaps what breaks the cycle is better education for higher wisdom and higher intelligence in the population. Wishful thinking.

[@alexcortez3007]

Wulff Den, BeatEmUps and a lot of other creators saw this coming and talked about it. I was hoping they were wrong.

[@snow6094]

As a previous indie developer it’s really aggravating me how few people understand that games have to be optimized, especially that tiktok guy

[@OcelotSF]

Mostly, due to hardware, they don't see a need in optimizing anything now. And I can't understand why people don't argue with devs about this all.

[@georgioszampoukis1966]

I've always considered legends Arceus 'decent but not impressive' in terms of visual style, but seeing them now side by side with scarlet/violet, Arceus looks like a piece of art. Also plays extremely better too. Having bought every pokemon game at launch date, I am not going to do that anymore. I will wait a couple of days to see actual reviews and then decide.

[@Ecastro179]

That’s what I did with these games and I’m glad I did. Gonna wait for a sale and hoping that it gets patched to improve it performance at least (if it happens).

[@georgioszampoukis1966]

@@Ecastro179 yeah, or buy them used. I am sure there will be a lot of frustrated people selling them away.

[@Ecastro179]

@@georgioszampoukis1966 That will be the time to strike

[@GGs-c1u]

except that there's pre-order merch that you miss out if you do that unfortunately. Like the scarlet/violet art books from the japanese pokemon store

[@Ecastro179]

@@GGs-c1u I don't really mind that, in my case would be timed downloadable content. Like in Legend Arceus with Shaymin.

[@dawlyndiaz148]

The performance of the new Pokémon it’s not a a Switch problem, it’s the GameFreak and Nintendo to release the game in that state

[@KopfdesRiesen]

Facts. Doesn’t matter what everyone says but botw and Mario Odyssey feels like generations ahead. No excuses for a first party exklusiv to look worse then even last gen ports that run at 60 fixed

[@retrofraction]

@@KopfdesRiesen Mario Odyssey also is very down-rezed to ensure the 60fps. Certainly looks okay, but sub 720 in a lot of places to keep up with the demands of the game. The Switch is very dated atm.

[@TerraTheWise]

@@retrofraction Doesn’t matter how dated the switch is. It’s the job of the devs that specialize in optimization to put out a game optimized for the systems it’s made for.

[@angelvillegas9604]

@@retrofraction nic excuses. Mario odyssey looks amazing. Monster hunter rise looks amazing.

[@johnwarosa2905]

@@retrofraction the switch being dated does not excuse pokemon looking like an early wii game

[@_SparkHere]

Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Colors: Ultimate are examples of this. While Colors Ultimate was already glitchy in the first place, Frontiers' graphics are being blamed on the Switch (myself included).

[@MichaelCutts7]

I think there is a domino effect of decisions here that led to the poor performance and technical issues: 1) S/V started and ended development in the pandemic era, the Devs having to work from home presumably for the majority of development time. 2) Almost all major studio games developed during this time suffered long delays (6 months-1 year) to compensate for the WFH transition. GF did NOT delay the release because that would put S/V after Christmas sales 3) Pokémon seems to now be in a 3 year cycle, as they shuffle between games (Spin off year/remake year/Mainline year). Delaying would mean they would have to push back future plans. 4) New Pokémon cards and merchandise would be delayed as well if the game was pushed back. 5) We all know that with a new or upgraded switch will be coming sometime for Nintendo, presumably the next Mainline Pokémon would be targeting that system. This would require either updating the existing engine or building a new one from scratch. Giving more development time for S/V would cut into development R&D for the next mainline game. This was a calculated move. This game will sale more than enough to recoup development costs, but they need to know that the next game would need to take full capabilities of the next Switch because otherwise the blowback would be even worse. This is all my guess. We’ll see how this shakes out

[@HatsuneTku]

"MUH PANDEMIC" when are people going to stop using this excuse?

[@sylvy16]

@@HatsuneTkumaybe in a couple years. atleast in japan it was still a real issue till mid 2022 so it was an actual reason why this game wasn’t that good. but it’s not the main reason why it looked that bad, it’s one of the many reasons.

[@strawdeath263]

@@HatsuneTku When new games stop having been (at least partly) developed during the pandemic. SV was at least partially developed during it, and therefor would have been affected by it to some capacity.

[@dante19890]

GameFreak is just a subpar developer who cant make 3d graphics. Their skillset is still stuck in the gameboy 2D era. Even if they developed this for the ps5 we would essentially see the same game but with 4k resolution.

[@ssbsk6571]

As a programmer myself, these issues pretty much stem from developers UNLESS, the hardware is so outdated and the game is so advanced and complex, that it is just not possible. I mean there are issues even with AAA games running like crap on absolute space station level PCs. In the programming world, there is a legit issue with developers being worse (or lazy) at optimizing games since it requires more knowledge of programming and systems level design (think of languages like C and C++). With hardware getting so good (this even affects other sectors of programming like webdev) the programmer has less to worry about with optimizations. There are libraries and other abstractions that do things for you, but tend to not be the most optimized/fast ways to do it. This helps with development time and allows for quick learning, but when this starts to creep into game development, many issues have come up. I do not blame devs for not trying or not even having much time to optimize games perfectly due to games becoming more massive and complex, but it is not an excuse for games to run like crap (maybe games should have lower budgets). The switch being underpowered is an issue for sure, but to 100% blame the switch and nintendo as being the sole issue just makes no sense from a technical perspective. It is obvious to me that either gamefreak does not have enough time to make these games, or their quality of programmers and designers has just gone down. Additionally, to just point at hardware being the issue is such a cop-out in most cases especially now-a-days with how insane our hardware is. Like of course if the clock speeds were twice as fast and the ram was twice as big of course the game would just run better by some percentage. It's such a non-argument that does not actually deal with the issue at hand.

[@adamw9764]

This game has a lot of potential, it makes me sad that they dropped the ball so badly on this. I really hope that they release a big patch to fix these issues but I am not holding my breath.

[@tazmanceltic]

Don't think they will tbh which is sad

[@mangotar0]

I wouldnt even expect anything for Pokemon Violet/Scarlet at this point, not even a single performance patch

[@tb4076]

Really? I've not played a pokemon game since diamond/pearl, so I was really hoping to get into this one. Has gamefreak had a history of not releasing even simple fixes like performance patches?

[@noltec420]

@@tazmanceltic They just might I have hope lol

[@mikethepokemaster2012]

@@tazmanceltic they are dropping a patch.

[@-TheFacelessGamer-]

The one thing that bugs me is that they also don't utilize the touch screen. Like, you could easily make sorting your pokemon way more easier...

[@findantu]

Pokemon lost me when they made go. I could get into them for the collecting aspect and the "Strategy" But walking all over town and mindlessly mashing my phone screen while GPS eats my battery is the line .

[@irishsurname187]

I'm admittedly having a lot of fun on it, and I had skipped the last few mainline games before it. That being said, oh yeah. It 100% deserves all the flak for poor performance. The best I can say is that it hasn't crashed... yet.

[@TheSuave187]

same !!

[@Laskivi]

Mine crashed once lol

[@fluffyisyermom7631]

"I bought the shit product but ya its shit." Lol

[@JayceCH.]

@@fluffyisyermom7631 Nice victim blaming kid. Its a product, not a political movement.

[@IbakonFerba]

9:34 I feel you, was exactly the same for me. It feels like the franchise just does not care about its long term fans anymore

[@robotom6595]

SV have made me really start to point at the Pokemon Company as a problem. They have set up this schedule in which content has to come out to line up with the TCG, the anime, merch, etc and it forces the games into unmovable release dates. This has to have a major change. They either need to give GF more resources in man power and/or funding, or chill tf out with this franchise money train and give these games more time to cook in the oven (tho we know that prob won't happen).

[@codemonkeyattack]

I remember hearing that the Pokemon games were being handled by the "B Team" because GameFreak wanted to focus on other things with the "A Team." It seems the "A Teams" games all failed to be breakouts so I wonder if next game might be the return of that team since it seems like with Arceus they're refocusing on Pokemon and letting remakes be handled by 3rd parties.

[@dgchvz]

Obviously that was a dumb move, and they should just be ONE team focusing on ONE game to make them GOOD

[@RusticRonnie]

@@dgchvzthe problem with that is, development studios need a constant flow of projects to hold on to staff or else they need to lay off employees and have a major risk of bankruptcy

[@dgchvz]

@@RusticRonnie POKÉMON is the HIGHEST GROSSING franchise of ALL TIME its bigger than MARVEL AND STAR WARS please be serious

[@drcola143]

@@dgchvz Pokémon makes most of their money from merch and trading cards

[@nik021298]

@@drcola143 even so, The Pokemon Company should have enough money to keep Game Freak employed.

[@LittleSparklingStars]

Unfortunately, since the switch is limited, you absolutely need to schedule dev time in performance. That has happened with all the top games on the switch. Gamefreak just does not get enough time to do proper QA at all.

[@Kiri68419]

"Just get better, stronger hardware" is literally the Yandere Dev excuse.

[@lambdacore3246]

One thing I’ll add about the steam deck: emulation is exponentially more resource intensive than running games natively. Pokémon Scarlet would probably be a pretty easy to run on mid range hardware if you natively ported it to PC or Linux.

[@selenakylie666]

Dude you took the words straight out of my soul, I have been beyond frustrated with this game and it is so disappointing to see this game in this state.

[@gecko3941]

The entire Satisfye sponsor segment gives off extreme Spamton energy and I love it lmao

[@nicole9680]

I feel like it is a universal truth that it is almost certainly the fault of management at all of the companies involved with the development of Pokemon games. Gamefreak has too few developers for the schedule they are on, and that schedule is way too aggressive. Arceus and Scarlet and Violet releasing within the same calendar year is just bonkers. Sure the game was in development since 2019 but it couldn't have been the main focus for the studio for any reasonable amount of time considering what they've put out since then and the quality of the end product and that is just failure to manage schedules and resources properly.

[@kommunismusarbeiterjonny]

Well gamefreak mentions well over 700 contributors for their last games so I don't think there are not enough devs

[@nicole9680]

@@kommunismusarbeiterjonny contributor doesn't necessarily mean they were part of the main development team and their team remains smaller than most AAA devs.

[@kommunismusarbeiterjonny]

@@nicole9680 they can just hire more people they obviously have the fucking money

[@nicole9680]

​@@kommunismusarbeiterjonny No way, man really? I had no idea that one way of alleviating resource concerns is to hire more people. You're a fucking genius my guy.

[@N8Squared]

I hate the deadlines that the pokemon company give game freak. They really wanted to make something great but instead it turned out a buggy mess. But I mean, I found it fun (and the only bug I encountered was a singular crash). Also it seems that having it installed to a micro sd card makes it even buggier and even slower, so it could be some sort of memory issue.

[@repeekyraidcero]

ILCA > Gamefreak

[@zeromythosver.]

@@repeekyraidcero nuclear cope, one of twelve BDSP fans detected Bad as SV run at least they actually attempted to do anything interesting unlike BDSP

[@obnoxiousNoxy]

Game Freak controls the Pokémon company, not the other way around

[@N8Squared]

@@obnoxiousNoxy Hah, hahaha, I wish! Gamefreak is the developer, they make the games. The Pokemon Company calls the shots, budgets, advertises and publishes. Therefore, they are the ones who set the unreasonable time constraints and the volume of games. Within 3 years we got Sword and Shield DLC, Legends Arceus and Scarlet and Violet, and that's just gamefreak-developed games. No game developer with limited budgets and employees wants to make 1 VERY DIFFERENT OPEN WORLD GAME EVERY YEAR FOR 3 YEARS STRAIGHT. Breath of the wild was in development for 5 years ( I believe) so I think, yeah, maybe the Pokemon Company does like to rush the developers without consequence, and it pisses me off. What happened to Pokemon ScVi and Sonic Frontiers is tradgic, these devs really wanted to make something amazing but higher management (Pokemon Company and SEGA) gave them small budgets and limited timeframes and with sonic, the head of sonic team had to campaign for frontiers to get pushed a year back and they reluctantly allowed it. Sorry for going on such a tangent but yeah, just that reply really got me riled up.

[@imaginationsquare]

3:21 the bugs and horse poo that happen on switch are not because of "hardware limitations", that is not how "hardware limitations" works. Unright excuse.

[@kokonotsu_j]

I do think Nintendo and GF management have some responsibility to take for this one. It’s only 10 months after Arceus released, and normally GF wouldn’t release two big games even a year apart (consider 2020 when they only did DLCs for SS). They could likely be asked by Nintendo to push for this release since this holiday there’s no other BIG titles for Switch, and the managers at GF accepted without understanding the scale of the project for their team. Bayonetta 3 is good by not the 10 million seller Nintendo wanted, and yep, Pokemon SV surely was sold for over 10 millions in 3 days. Given one more year GF would have a much more polished game; even if not a constant 30 fps, it would at least be closer to what Arceus looked like. It’s just unfortunate when business decisions affect game quality this much. Surely XB3, BotW and Mario Odyssey looked far better, but these games all took at least 3-4 years to make. It’s fair for GF to give its teams more time.

[@jimmyjohn6479]

Honestly gamefreak has a reasonable amount of time to make the games (3 years) yes I agree they need more time but it’s also them being the worst triple A developers out

[@yoso378]

@@jimmyjohn6479 yeah from what I remember, xenoblade 2 was made in something like 2 years which is insane considering how packed it is. It's definitely not a perfectly polished game but it runs circles around anything pokemon has done with the console in the same time frame and much later after launch while having way more money at their disposal.

[@DrSwitchDisrespectParody]

Nintendo switch is garbage lmaoooooooooo Get a steam deck instead lmaoooooooooo

[@JayceCH.]

@@jimmyjohn6479 3 years is not a reasonable time for an open world game lmfao. How long did GTA5 take? How about the almost mythical GTA6? How about BotW itself? Hint: Not 3 years.

[@JayceCH.]

@@yoso378 3 years. They began in the middle of Xenoblade X. Also, not an open world game. It also has freezes, crashes, and bugs like falling through stuff at launch. Not as in variety as SV, but freezes and crashes without autosave is a bigger deal.

[@Noisymedal]

It’s not even GameFreak, it’s The Pokémon Company. You can see little touches here and there that only come from devs who clearly care about the game. They were not given the time & resources to do sufficient QA.

[@curcapsicum]

I really want to play Violet which I've got, but it literally gives me headaches playing it with the glitchy low frame rate and trying to look closely at what TINY pokemon are hiding in the grass. Like, within 20 minutes of playing, I have a headache.

[@ricardosearch4544]

Same here, the pop-up when storage box is open gives me migraine

[@TerraTheWise]

The game runs like shit but if you’re getting headaches and struggling this much with the game that’s more of a you problem. Or you could just be exaggerating idk.

[@R_wir3]

You are not the only one, a friend who has Scarlet also gets headaches

[@R_wir3]

@@TerraTheWise this is def not a "you problem" when a lot of people are having this problem. From kids to adults.

[@robertarvidsongarcia2133]

One episode of the cartoon series gave kids epileptic seizures. They’ve come a long way with this franchise but it’s never going to be perfect.

[@RodScorpion100]

Worst part is that from Sun and Moon, to Sword and Shield, to the Gen 4 remakes, and to Arceus my friend said those have been awful. He's been having so much fun with Violet regardless of the technical problems but he even said he noticed them and he wish this series wasn't yearly as that's one of the main reasons the 3d games are poorly optimized

[@retrogamer64007]

No, Legends Arceus destroys Scarlet and violet. Has more features

[@R_wir3]

Well, he needs to stop supporting the IP if he wants to pressure GF

[@Hetsu..]

@@retrogamer64007 Scarlet and violet are better lol

[@ACuteAura]

4GB of unified memory is frankly inexcusable. It was when the Switch launched, and it is now. But I'd guess it more had to do with GameFreak biting off more than they could chew. Sw/Sh was not nearly as complex with it being mostly linear. It's a pretty small studio (even with creatures helping with the pokemon models) that has never shipped a game on this scale, all things considered, and being a franchise with a ton of ancillary media like the anime and TCG makes delays unthinkable.

[@Bourney382]

The way Bob said out of the blue every girlfriend cheated on me and then when he handed the switch over to the woman and said please don't cheat on me I am howling laughing 🤣🤣🤣

[@uroboloss]

I love how you say "mid ranged PC" while it's running on a 12900K with a 3080 TI. But yeah, the point still stands.

[@modermonkula]

I found that "mid range" pc running a 3080ti pretty hilarious

[@RusticRonnie]

Its last gen specs

[@ninjason57]

@@RusticRonnie the new gen just came out. It’s still considered high end hardware.

[@TropicalCyc]

A pc that costs more than 2000$ is mid ranged?

[@johnwarosa2905]

@@RusticRonnie a 3090 ti is also last gen, but nobody in their right mind would call that a midrange card

[@owenjbrady]

the kids in the classroom on pokemon at the start of the game render like 2 frames back and forth.... not a hardware issue... pure lazyness by developers

[@hmlh]

It's one of those games where, the thought of playing an open world Pokemon is better than actually getting to play the open world Pokemon game

[@cocoxcocoa]

As someone who's been playing on Scarlet on an emulator with my high end PC (i7-12700k, RTX2080, 32Gig ram) I'll be able to get 30fps most of the time, but despite my hardware never going above 40% utilization, the game will still drop down to 15-20fps at times. So no its not the hardware, it's 100% on the devs for being completely incompetent.

[@TechSpaceCowboy]

“Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has cheated on me “ I died laughing at this part lmao perfect comedic timing

[@theBio.]

So glad you made this video. Yes the Switch is a problem, but in this case it's not an excuse. Of COURSE more power can brute force past any performance issues, that's a given. But that doesn't take the blame from Game Freak. If they need to rely on raw hardware to brute force past their incompetent optimization OR engine issues.. then the problem strictly points to Game Freak. Especially considering other studios can push more demanding games seemingly without these problems.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

before you use the words "incompetent optimization" google game programming jobs - you'll see that optimization is a different job, one they didn't hire anybody for. It's not the developers fault - it's the managers for not listening to them.

[@EmberStudios]

Given what we see can be done. And given the graphical style of this game. I pretty much put most of the fault on gamefreak and the way TPC handles it. But honestly, game is so damn fun and I absolutely can’t stop playing it.

[@FanTheDeck]

Another great video. Game freak is ofc more to blame for this specific fiasco but we've hit a critical juncture where more of the discourse around Switch is about how "aged" it is rather than the games. It really feels like Nintendo has to do something about this at this point.

[@Memorywholed]

Okay but the "aged" discussion shouldn't be a thing. The discussion should be about how switch devs aren't optimizing their games to run on the switch. Games made by Nintendo that came out 5 and 6 years ago still run fantastically. There's genuinely no excuse for devs to not optimize their games

[@FanTheDeck]

@@Memorywholed I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is now Nintendo's responsibility even if it isn't Nintendo's fault. Nintendo has a problem of perception and it's their problem to either fix... Or live with (since this sold so well after all)

[@jemiebridges3197]

get this, in the past, developers ... developed more skills as they made more games.

[@pchris]

A bad craftsman blames his tools.

[@RunsWithKniefs]

Its 2022 and people are using ubisoft's excuse to not optimize and telling people to "just buy a better PC"?

[@maleeks8329]

So happy you didn’t take that TikTok for face value cause I played and finished Pokémon Scarlett on the ryujinx emulator, firstly it doesn’t run just fine at a steady 30 unless you have a specific build for the emulator made for Pokémon Scarlett and Violet. Secondly all the glitches are still there and thirdly the fps hits a solid 10 frames during the endgame zone

[@gar_ee8884]

The games are a small part of the machine that they just don't care that much about. They can't stop to give them time to polish them, they need everything to be churned out yearly so everything lines up with the anime and merch cycles.

[@feller6766]

I used to have a low end pc, I'd play at the lowest shittiest texture as long as the game's playable. But you couldn't pay me to play this game on any platform.

[@hooky17]

Yes the game would run better on improved hardware with no code changes. That’s true. But the bottom line is this game was made SPECIFICALLY and EXCLUSIVELY for the Switch. And therefore should have been optimised for that console, much like the other titles you mentioned (BOTW was a Wii U game sure but still stands, Mario Odyssey, Xenoblabe 3). Ultimately it’s a matter of time and it’s pretty clear GF didn’t have enough to optimise. Especially considering this was in development for 3+ years (aka, throughout the pandemic) they clearly needed more. Aside from that though, given the DLC model of Sword / Shield, this title is obviously intended to carry through a few more years until the next mainline title. By which time there will likely/possibly be a newer updated Switch, which hopefully will run it much better. I guess it’s possible they have some hindsight on this like Bob said

[@lucidreviews6809]

Just spoke to a friend about something similar and he said the hard ware is capable and more developers need to optimize for it. I agree, and I do think a switch pro that is like an Apple TV or something and it can still accept switch games would be cool. But I mostly want a switch pro cause I want to play warzone casually 😂 but I understand the switch is a family console so that wouldn’t happen

[@rob465]

switch hardware is not capable in modern gaming . Not with the time crunches for developers and lack of resources. Publishers just want game after game, gaming lost its soul. Developers dont have time to optimize games to run on a low powered APU with 4gb of ram it aint right....

[@silashinton6873]

honestly a switch pro would probably be either underutilized or there would be games that only release on it. switch 2 would be a better solution i think.

[@Saroku1000]

The Switch isn't a family console, that was the Wii U

[@jhgcup9223]

Just get a steam deck

[@thegoggle823]

At this point, whatever limitations the Switch imposes in terms of graphics are WELL KNOWN by the developers BEFORE they decide to make their game. S&V performs like ass because GF didn't optimize their game to exist within the constraints they ALREADY KNEW ABOUT. If you make a game today for the Super Nintendo, and it runs like ass, that's your fault, not the elderly hardware.

[@zetropad4671]

Switch : We got hardware limitation on pokemon games PS2 : kratos laughing on GOW 2 at 60fps

[@WorldLoveGaming]

The next-gen will most likely be at least 3.6x faster and have 5.2x more GFlops than current gen, as that's the difference in performance per watt between Nvidia's Maxwell and Ampère architectures. That's 2 TFlops in Portable Mode and 4 in docked, but this could very well be higher if they boost battery size or thermal solutions.

[@neonlights_12]

Will we get nex gen stuff in the Switch 2 though? Maxwell was the 700 series, which was 2014ish, 3 years before the switch launched. At that rate Switch 2 will probably be Pascal, maybe Turing if we're lucky lol

[@spacemoai]

I'd like to treat Switch like it's Sega Saturn and all I run is 2D games. In fact, it runs Sonic Mania PERFECTLY!

[@신-r2r]

The time crunch makes sense, specially knowing that fixing bugs for 2023 would mean that they would be releasing on the same year as Zelda

[@Sphyell]

pokemon is so massive that they don't need to compete with anyone at this point though

[@Ricolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

@@Sphyell Until Palworld releases.

[@nathanlamont9920]

@@Ricolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Palworld wont beat Pokemon. I put it on my wishlist and I looks good, but that is just another competitor. In terms of popularly, I doubt to will beat Digimon or Yugioh.

[@Ricolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

@@nathanlamont9920 Won't beat pokemon in sales or in players? If it's really good and they get offered a show deal or something it's quite plausible.

[@nathanlamont9920]

@@Ricolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Even if they get a show deal, they are starting from scratch. Palworld is not even on TPC's radar. Scarlet/Violet and SWSH showed that they don't even have to try to make a good game (in SV case, functional) to get millions in a few short days. Palworld is essentially the local Ma & Pa shop trying to take on Wal-Mart.

[@Kniffel101]

2:50 An emulator of a "modern" system runs the games better than the original low-clocked mobile chip... duh, that's what emulation us for!?

[@akshatjain7005]

I feel like the Switch is underpowered to a point where it's an issue for the devs but like that's not really a valid excuse when the only console you're making the game for is the Nintendo switch. With the whole Breath of the Wild argument that game was originally being developed for the wiiu so I dont really feel llike it's a valid arguement too.

[@LittleSisterTribute]

9:35 my thoughts exactly. I just finished Scarlet and Violet. Nobody will battle me, the matchmaking is fucked, the rules are even worse, and I have no idea why i slogged through all of that garbage. tried battling my brother and it ended our battle before it was done. no way to extend the time limit. it's frustrating because the core game structure is still there, with the raising and lottery system of looking for scarce things that you want. The streamlining of elements is great, but even with that, i don't understand why there is so little to do with your friends in multiplayer. it makes it pointless to collect anything or train anything when the NPCs are complete and total pushovers in every game. i'm totally done with pokemon lol

[@Pika-Chu64]

I really like how they did it on the 3ds. Yes, the jump to 3d wasn't smooth and had its issues (lack in movement with pokemon during battles), but the games were amazing. The new look of the now 3d characters meshed well with the cartoony look of the pokemon. If they want to go this realistic open-world route like other games, they should make everything work together. The landscape can't be realistic if everything else isn't. It has to be cohesive, or it'll just end up looking ugly and weird. Like what we have now.

[@Subzearo]

I'm sick of people making excuses for the poor quality of Pokemon games. People should ask for more, not settling for subpar products.

[@brianguerrero3752]

I haven't had a major issues with scarlet. The worst thing that has happened was the frame drops, but seeing other people's problems it's easy to see that it's definitely optimization. We have heavier games Open world games like Xenoblade and they run smooth for the most part. It's a shame because that game freak failed on optimizing the game since scarlet is a really great pokemon game and they decided to take a few risk that I believe to be amazing

[@heyspookyboogie644]

Performance is always a combination of hardware and software. The hardware being underpowered means it’s harder to optimize for. More powerful hardware just means software can be sloppier and still run well.

[@ninjafrog6966]

It is absolutely not the hardware that’s the issue here

[@dazzlesoftware]

I switch developer in the industry for AAA studio. what people dont know is that the switch hardware is from 2012 really. I talking about the CPU

[@PaperBanjo64]

I'm not really surprised at all, anything that ain't first party struggles to run smoothly and is ugly.

[@andremation]

Developers know what console they are developing for, it's their job to make it work for that console

[@Bloodhoven]

3:20 maybeeeeeeeee.. the actual problem is stupid people talking about things they don't understand? the pc emulator is mostly better optimized than the majorty of switch games PLUS even a low spec computer nowadays has way more power than the switch, which makes actual comparisons under similar circumstances quasi impossible, bonus question: if the switch is the problem, how and why do games like xenoblade chronicles 2 and 3, Monster Hunter Rise, Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of The Wild, Witcher 3, the bioshock collection, Astral Chain, Luigis Mansion 3 and Metroid Dread exist for the switch, actually run good or even very smooth on it?

[@brianbryant4534]

Just stop man you don't know what you're talking about. Bail bail run

[@MeatFloat]

As a developper that worked with Switch, the hardware is yes, terrible, but also Gamefreak doesn't seem to understand how using it that well. They are lacking in many ways on their technical teams, and we have many major hints toward that. A great example is in Arceus, how they handle shading of the water; it doesn't affect performance at all to have few trickeries under your sleeve to fix long-range texture tiling with really simple math tricks in a shader, and they manage to miss that kind of technical feature that doesn't require ''extra'' performance if it's to say a few texture samples in the fragment shader. Another technical proof of their lack of technical knowledge is related to animation. Many environment props are dropping their animation rate at some distance; it's a MAJOR HINT that they animate props with skinned assets, which can be quite heavy on CPU (animation is usually dealt by gamethread). The easy example is the Wind Mill, slowing down and jumping rotations when far from it. Animating this with a rotate about axis math function literally takes 5 mn to implement into any shader, but they missed this. Or also the flags dropping frames at some distance also means they use skinned mesh to animate this... YOU COULD JUST SCROLL A 26 ALU SAMPLED NOISE ON THE VSHADER AND MOVE YOUR VERTICES WITH THAT. But no. All this semi complex explanation is mostly to prove that they lack of technical knowledge for modern pipeline. Related to that, I'd assume that the major issues comes from CPU bottleneck and is related probably to occlusions queries, drawcalls, etc.; Those issues weren't so present in Arceus because, well, the game is a bit less cluttery from buildings. Maybe having a merging actor setup would have bonified the output of what the CPU would have to process, I dont know. Well, all that to say, I'm not gonna put a penny anymore until this money-maker company is gonna take seriously performance issues for their game, they can afford it.

[@gnawty4662]

I love my Switch! I have a PS5 and a Sony OLED with all bells, and still, Switch games bring so much joy to our house. No game should ever be released with such issues, imo. Great video. Happy Thanksgiving Bob!

[@spike5499]

Rare wholesome youtube comment

[@MasterSaltyJedi]

I love your videos they always make me laugh. When you handed her that pink grip, she said "cute",and you said "please don't cheat on me" lmao. Don't ever change Bob because you're amazing.

[@paulunga]

God, I can't remember the last time I wanted to punch my monitor as instantly as when that TikTok dude started talking.

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

I mean both are true imo. Nintendo needs to refresh the hardware & Game Freak needs to hire outside help. Game Freak has shown themselves incapable of modern 3d game design and they need some help. The voice acting too...they animate the mouths already, just get the actors from the anime that people have enjoyed for 2 decades.

[@TortillaPizzeria]

Pokémon company desperately needs the help of Monolithsoft or Panic Button

[@kumori86]

I just really love your content. The well-thought opinions, the random data, and your sponsored sketches, everything always presented with spotless edition and quality. I thank you for your hard work and I can't wait for the channel to hit the million subs

[@dingusbingus7463]

I have to say, with time the gaming community has shown how far we're fallen. We used to be harsh, but fair critics who knew what we were talking about. Now people buy whatever comes out from big devs and AAA's and only complain about minor problems or not at all. With this overtime the boss' of big devs at AAA's have successfully dumbed down our community with the steady release of the same games with slightly better graphics and mechanics all the while pushing more and more DLC. We buy it up (I say we but I wouldn't include everyone nor myself). We need to wake people up to these problems, but the same problem can be said of most people with anything. We became lazy among other things, and it's a huge problem. The price of games has doubled and the amount of systems has increased. Before this turns into a rant I just wish people would wake up

[@AI-AITUM]

I agree, people have no clue about hard work, thorough work...thus making everything produced just half-assed! And when you buy or accept half-assness, we all pay more and suffer from it...making things worse and our lives harder because you just gave those getting over on you, more leverage to shovel more bullshit to you and you continue to eat (buy) it up.

[@dingusbingus7463]

@@AI-AITUM yup, and I don't blame the actual devs making the games. At this point they're just doing what they're paid to do without being able to make changes that would be good for everyone. The boards and shareholders decide what games to make and how instead of the people who will actually play them

[@ViralWatchMedia]

I think the problem is is that they didn't give the quality assurance team enough time to test the game into fix all of the bugs and technical issues. Also time crunch definitely head and impact on the game as well because they could have had more time to polish the graphics.

[@shyler602]

Definitely on Gamefreak. There are so many issues that are easily fixable by optimization for the switch. This could have been done if Gamefreak had given their devs more time and delayed then game release.

[@nugget6635]

It's obviously the time crunch. Because if you think about it the game just wasn't properly tested. They basically skipped all the testing and released it. It IS made with the Switch's limits in mind but without testing you just can't be sure about anything.

[@momok8879]

Hey man spot on! The team was obviously not given enough time to polish and optimize it. I hope the success of the launch, doesn't over shadow the issues they shod have fixed.

[@lordmavbmp]

Fuck hardware limitations. Ive barely used my switch and have joycon drift, an unclickable left analog, and a blinking screen that people on the internet say is fixed by connecting the power cable before the hdmi, which only works sometimes. Ive literally never experience this many issues with a game system and i grew up playing the nes for the 1st 6 or 7 years of my life

[@ZERARCHIVE2023]

This is sad , sorry about that buddy, same experience but with the SNES btw The Switch was a bad design choice and a terrible console, sold with no care (no screen protector until you buy the OLED model, not the "V2" one... yeah. This is sad brother

[@lordmavbmp]

@@ZERARCHIVE2023 thanks for your kind words bro. Crazy part is, i bought it for my son but the only games he plays could have been bought on any system. He doesnt even mess with the exclusives. If only i would have known.

[@ZERARCHIVE2023]

@@lordmavbmp I mean, you can still convince him that you can get him a superior hardware with better FPS and graphics if he sells out this console. Since the game are still high priced 5 years later, you should not have too much trouble getting him a steamdeck with "desktop port" to use it like a switch. Big up bro, sorry to hear that.

[@ErickVideoGameGuy]

It would be amazing that the next Pokémon game released in four years instead of three, it would make a big difference.Sadly I don't think The Pokémon Company would do that.

[@zorashki]

they want $$ bro.... so every year if not less they make a new game.

[@ErickVideoGameGuy]

@@zorashki Tecnically we had TWO Pokémon games this year, and Pokémon will always sells very good regardless of the quality of the games.

[@pikkyuukyuun4741]

Fun fact, the Switch was outdated even when it first released

[@Jenamphetam1ne]

I don't think we should blame developers. I think when a game comes out in this kinda state it's almost always the fault of publishers and higher ups.

[@Memorywholed]

I don't know man. When it's every single year they're fucking up, I'm starting to doubt the "it's higher ups fault," defense. When other dev teams are pressed for time, they still release triple a games that perform well with minimal bugs. When gamefreak is underpressure, it's like they just stop working. Pokemon Company can hire more people, or get rid of the devs who aren't picking up slack. Like I'm sorry, but there are problems all around. You can't keep blaming the illusive "higher ups," or devs never will care.

[@SairinEarthsea]

@@Memorywholed I think when people say higher ups they mean the ones who allowed the games to be released in that state.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

@@Memorywholed - That's a stupid thing to say. It's still the fault of management because if the programmers aren't good enough? they should be hiring other programmers.

[@AntonioCunningham]

No. I don't get why people try to pass the buck to higher ups. It's likely they think the none higher ups have no agency. If you're a developer of a game, you should take some responsibility.

[@JJJ42069]

Devs need to be knocked down a couple pegs if their egos are creating this and people giving them passes for no reason. You put out a bad game you’re bad at your job if your job is making games lol

[@limitedlistener6460]

9:06 Not saying it would fix anything in this particular game since I don't know how it happens here, but a lot of studios with outdated design fundamentals will tie game physics calculations to the framerate, and deviations from the intended framerate will cause collision checks between frames to simply break.

[@gokublack8342]

You mean Bethesda aka "It just works?"

[@Smellbringer]

The same year the Switch gave us Xenoblade 3 it also gave us Scarlet and Violet. This is not the Switch's fault.

[@user_anthony]

Maybe instead of rushing different teams and projects in short time (arceus bdsp and scarlet violet) why not either focus wholly on one project or allow longer time frames. I get that the anime trading cards and other media force a lot of these conditions, but legitly those things can hold out for say 2-3 more months for more optimization of a game. You cant tell me that jouneys couldnt use more episodes to flesh out stories or characters rather than rushing to have a sv anime season. Or that tcg sales would be negatively impacted if a new generation of pokemon get added a few months later. Greed and corporate timelines are stupid for not seeing the larger positive impact and sales a quality product makes over rushed ones

[@lancebarana3013]

Yeah, I think you missed the entire point. The emulation simulated in theory comparing if a more powerful switch (a computer) was used and if it would pose the same gameplay problems.

[@Beefnhammer]

But what is that meant to prove? Are you saying that we should cut Game Freak some slack because they're developing for a system that doesn't have the wiggle room to compensate for poorly optimized code like a PC does? If that's what you're saying, I couldn't disagree more. Badly optimized code is never a good thing. Just because it can be more well hidden on more powerful hardware doesn't mean it should be seen as acceptable. There are plenty of far more graphically demanding games on Switch that run great because the code is properly optimized. Metroid Prime Remastered is the latest example of this, it looks fucking amazing for a Switch game and never dips frames.