I mean if it is like the WiiU situation where they worked themselves to get it on the system then expect minimal improvements. If Aonuma/Fujibayashi want the game to remain parity with the last system then expect better resolution/30fps with some minor improvements.
It doesn’t matter how powerful the system if the teams involved don’t wanna use it or don’t have the time.
While I would also love to see denser foliage and such I don't expect it, but frame rate, draw distance, and level of detail differences seem like reasonable expectations considering the game is still in development. Shadow resolution, too. Anything that requires Drake exclusive assets (such as higher res textures or higher poly models) is unlikely, but even without DLSS Drake is going to be so much over Switch in power that quick, unoptimized implementations of the aspects I mentioned should be able to run decently.
I remember reading that the final stretch of BOTW's development was difficult (which I assume was code for crunch) once it was decided there would be a Switch version, so it's natural to have worries about the same thing happening here, but they had to change from PowerPC to ARM and from AMD to Nvidia, from one SDK to an entirely different one, and they had to overhaul the controls to have parity between Switch and the Gamepad. Compare that to today: it's still ARM. It's still Nvidia. The API is as iterative as the hardware. Going from Wii U to Switch, the challenge was to get it running at all and to keep the versions similar. Going from Switch to Drake, the form factor and controls are similar by nature (we're assuming) and getting it running in the first place is practically a non-factor. Not to mention, the Switch's entire conceit is that games developed for it are scalable; not to the extent we're talking about here of course, so they would need to intentionally take advantage of the hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me if shadow resolution or level of detail will already be different depending what mode you're in on Switch.
As for the idea BOTW2 might be 30fps on Drake, I straight up can't imagine that. Unless going 60fps breaks the engine somehow (which happens sometimes, but not for BOTW so far as I'm aware based on emulators), the Nintendo that advertised SSHD being 60fps isn't going to sandbag the biggest showcase game for their new system's launch just to keep parity. Assuming BOTW2 is a launch game, of course.
Layfolk like myself underestimate game development as a rule, so I'm 100% certain there are difficulties I'm not accounting for, but on the whole I can't imagine the upgrades I've mentioned (again, resolution and frame rate, draw distance, quality of shadows and level of detail) would add anywhere near as much headache to the team as porting BOTW to Switch caused.
If those are the things you meant (aside from frame rate) by minor improvements, sorry for throwing that wall of text at you.
My question is how tech from x box series s can fit in switch which is what, 10 times smaller in size AND have good battery life AND not be super expensive. I am preparing for a modest upgrade model in 2023 but if it is something close to what you guys are discussing then hats off to Ninty! I'll be the first in line in both cases anyway
To build even more on what the others have said (thanks for letting me stand on your shoulders, giants), Drake isn't going to match XSS in CPU power. It might be around one-third of its processing power. But that's a ton closer than Switch, or even PS4 and XBOX One are; imagine Drake is getting D- and XSS is getting A-. Just looking at their grades one is way worse than the other, but they both passed the admissions test and are taking the same class, so they're at least close enough to compare. For the GPU, it would have to be clocked at 1.3Ghz to match the XSS's performance, which is supremely unlikely (maaaaaybe if Drake is on the newest tech Nvidia uses, 4nm [which is really 5nm+], it might reach that in docked mode, but the chances are low we'll be so lucky), but 800Mhz is almost two-thirds that and seems achievable even on the worst-case scenario node (8nm), and between target resolutions being lowered and DLSS (not black magic, but close) likely to be used for quite a few ambitious games, it should look very nearly as good as XSS versions of multiplatform games shared between them.
@Look over there wrote about the price difference between the sorts of RAM used by Xbox and what we expect Drake will use (95~% certainty), and another detail about that comparison is the difference in power consumption. Drake's memory will be a little under half the bandwidth compared to XSS, which saves on power consumption. For the CPU and GPU, power moves along an upward-banana shaped curve, which means if you push things to their max potential (highest stable frequency) the power efficiency is going to be lower, while if you set a processor to, say, one-third the performance of what it's technically capable of it will be using considerably less than one-third the power. To take the CPU for instance: ARM tends to be more efficient than X86 (
@Skittzo alluded to this, and it's another point in Nintendo's favor), so the impact will be even more dramatic in reality, but if Drake's CPU cores are set to 1.2Ghz vs XSS's 3.6Ghz, based purely on those numbers (so putting aside whether Drake might be on a more advanced node) you would expect Drake to use around 12% of the power for 33% of the performance. This benefits lower power machines like Switch, as it helps get them into the same ballpark as much higher-energy machines on a fraction of the power budget, though it obviously keeps them from ever matching or surpassing contemporary powerhouses. Nintendo is also piggybacking on the ridiculous amount of R&D that smartphone and tablet manufacturers have pumped into the industry for the past ten to fifteen years. Earlier I mentioned the GPU might be around 800Mhz, but that's in docked mode; portable it'd be half that at most, which is another thing that helps battery life be acceptable. The RAM also slows down, though not nearly as much.
If that's too wordy or technical (I'm exhausted just proof reading it), Drake will be weaker than XSS, but not by too much, it'll be within earshot, and processors use a lot more energy per calculation as they get faster so you can run a sizable fraction of the same calculations using a less sizable fraction of electricity, aka battery life =
Disclaimer: Whenever I use definite words like 'will' or 'is' about Drake, mentally add a 'likely' before them, since I'm not a time traveler and they're just predictions. Also, I'm not an expert on any of this so take it with a grain of salt, and hit me up with truthfacts if there's a section you think is incorrect. There's a lot of numbers in there so I don't doubt I slipped up somewhere in the hour I spent writing it (lots of fact checking, lol). And I apologize for all of the parentheses, my thought process is nested and I know that can make it hard to read at times.