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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

> While the availability of games increases daily, its performance will always remain the weak point.

Honestly I don't care that much about performance any longer, graphics were mostly good enough 10 years ago. Modern graphics looks better when you put them side by side, but the graphics 10 years ago was good enough that you easily get used to it. The current switch has problems running 10 year old high end graphics, yeah that is a problem, but the switch is 5 year old hardware, if they made a new switch with modern hardware it should be able to run all those games smoothly.

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I think increasingly the dominant factor in a game's graphics is the style, not the power of the engine. Give me Mario Odyssey-level graphics and good color and texture artists over a bland grey shooterfest with 100x the graphics power used any day.

Not that everything modern falls into the latter category. Some are both 100x the graphics power and also beautiful. But I would submit, not more beautiful in proportion to the additional effort put in. We're well into diminishing returns on the graphics front at this point. Great games can run on the Nintendo Switch. Heck, great games can run on the XBox 360.

> Give me Mario Odyssey-level graphics and good color and texture artists over a bland grey shooterfest with 100x the graphics power used any day.

Kinda like PC's back in the day with Max Payne 1 against Unreal 2 engine games. MP looked far more realistic due to a vastly better artwork on textures.

30 fps v. 60 fps is a large enough difference to affect gameplay enjoyment. The resolution and texture clarity is not nearly as important as fluidity and responsiveness in controls.

There are a handful of Switch games that reach 60 fps, so it has a ton of promise, but a 2.0 release would certainly be great.

People say that and yet most of the PS1 and PS2 games were 30fps or lower. One of the top games on the PS2, GTA3 (and Vice City, and San Andreas) were all 30fps or less. N64 games as well.

Basically if the game is fun, no one cares. If the game is not fun then they look for random excuses as to why.

Note: I'm not saying they wouldn't be better at 60. Rather Im saying they were multi-million unit sellers and made lots of people happy playing them and yet they were 30. So being 60 is not a requirement for being good.

> 30 fps v. 60 fps is a large enough difference to affect gameplay enjoyment.

That’s very dependent on the game.

Playing a racing game at 30fps is horrible. Playing Mario games 30fps. Is fine.

SNES platformers ran at 60 fps in almost every game, and definitely every Mario game, SM64 was the sole exception. SMO was also 60 fps.

There is no category of games that would not improve in playability from 30 to 60 fps.

Not trying to be argumentative here. As mentioned upthread, I own 2 Switch consoles and the difference between 30 and 60 fps when running the same or similar games are stark. Perhaps i'm more sensitive than others.

It’s just slower moving games it’s less noticeable.

I have 2 switches and I really can’t pick up Xbox or PS anymore. Except my dying wait for elden ring.

But yeah. I think minimum 60fps but depending on the game 30 is fine especially if it’s super fun.

Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube also ran at 30fps.

SMW had a lot of slowdown on real hardware

My favorite racing game ever is Wipeout 2097 on the PlayStation. Needless to say, it didn't run at more than 30fps (in fact, since I was in France, it was probably even 25fps). Gran Turismo on the PlayStation 2 was also fine at 25/30fps.

> Modern graphics looks better when you put them side by side, but the graphics 10 years ago was good enough that you easily get used to it.

Can you get used to it? Yes. Eg. Skyrim is still atmospheric, but graphically it is nowhere near what today's games offer. I'd say that one don't even have to look at games that are 10 years old and modern games side by side to see the difference. Someone getting used to older graphics is that person adjusting themselves to what they're presented, and not an objective observation and games today objectively look better even when they aren't compared side by side in my opinion.

Yes of course you can get used to it. Your brain is the same brain as it was in the year 2000. People still watch old TV shows in 480p and play old games all the time without complaining.

It's not like we couldn't tell back then that Final Fantasy 7 didn't look like real life, we just didn't care because it was so much fun.

People still play chess. Realism isn't everything.

Honestly, you probably haven't seen top-notch modern game graphics.

I remember being wowed a couple years ago by each successive release of Mass Effect that I worked my way through. ME:Andromeda may have been a bit of a dumpster fire, but the graphics were pretty as hell.

Then I played Control, and it blew my socks off.

The recent Alien game was also stunning.

Or it could be the opposite. I have a high-end gaming PC. I have a Switch. They feel pretty much interchangeable to me when it comes to graphics. The difference is nights and day...and I don't care one bit.

Frame rate is another story and definitely an issue with the Switch, mostly BECAUSE they try to push the graphics too far. Mario Odyssey runs at 60fps. It's not as good as what my PC and monitor can display, but it's...okay. Too many games can't keep 30fps because they just had to put more shadows and polygons for no good reason. Still, for the most part I have just as much fun with it as I do with PC games. I have both just for variety. I use an Nvidia Shield TV when I want to play the PC games on the couch.

Looking forward to the Steam Deck though. Being able to play Monster Hunter Rise's PC version in a form factor similar to the Switch will be quite nice.

> They feel pretty much interchangeable to me when it comes to graphics.

> The difference is nights and day...and I don't care one bit.

You used these 2 sentences back to back.

Tbh it's just you not caring about graphics whole lot, but can see the difference. To say that they're interchangeable is kinda hilarious because they're objectively better on PC, consoles than on Switch. You, yourself said so and the whole point in this thread was that of "how graphics definitely improved over the last 10 years" and not a subjective opinion of you not caring (which is fine but invalid in this conversation). Also, one can easily notice graphical differences between games that are released now and 10 years ago.

Their point was not that the difference is invisible, it's that it doesn't matter.

I find for most games that the PS controllers and XBox controllers are interchangeable, but not that they are indistinguishable.

Control was the first game I played on series x after upgrading from a 360 which was collecting dust. Also have a quite decent pc with entry level gpu but control on series x blew my mind. In all honesty xsx graphics fidelity can't be compared to my sons Nintendo switch when you play the games on TV, I assume the same goes for ps5.

Games did improve a lot and maybe all someone needs is to stay off gaming for a bit to notice the difference because the changes are less ground breaking and more gradual.

If you look at Nintendo first party titles they are not even trying to compete in graphics. Nintendo is just always spot on when trying to make games for the age group they target.

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